Contentment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From A Way of Being (1980)

  Six Vignettes I tend to learn the most from small, intense experiences which illuminate for me different aspects of what I am doing. They also illustrate in a vivid fashion some of the more abstract concepts of a person-centered approach. Frequently I write them down in order to store them as memories or to provide them for the use of the people involved. I have assembled six of these experiences here, each very different, but each illustrating some point or points. They are all true stories, yet they also have something of the quality of fables. Each one has been, and is, quite precious for my own growth or for my confidence in what I am doing. The first, “I Began to Lose Me,” contains a young woman’s letter describing her experience in therapy. I do not know the woman, nor do I know the therapist. But her experience crams into one letter a whole gold mine of learnings about individual therapy. “The Cavern” is an intensely personal account, again by letter, of how the experiencing of the emptiness of a person—the inner void—can become a rich and fulfilling event, when it is accepted. It, too, is an account of a one-to-one therapy relationship. “Nancy Mourns” tells of an incident which will always remain fresh in my memory, involving my daughter and Nancy and several others in a large person- centered workshop, aimed both at facilitating personal growth and the building of community. “Being Together” is a particularly well-documented story of the long-range effects of an encounter group experience. I was discussing recently with colleagues the rich data we have, in personal letters and contacts, of the frequently far-reaching effects of even a weekend group. Here is a case in which those effects can be shown in a series of “snapshots,” starting with the original experience of one of the workshop participants, and ending with a letter I received from her nine years later. “The Security Guard” is one of several fascinating examples of the kind of energy that emanates from a community-building experience. We influence, in unknown ways, people who have no direct contact at all with the workshop. Here is a clear instance of that influence. “A Kids’ Workshop” brings us back to hard reality. In addition to a rewarding account of how young children respond to a person-centered climate, it clearly

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Bob and I aren’t lovers. There’s a forty year age gap. I like men with hair above the neck and none below. Bob likes men who are the reverse of that. We get along like old friends, sharing a room with two beds in each of the cheap motels to save money. 144 Cheyenne Blue And so our evenings fill the space of a motel room and our mouths and hands follow the predictable routine of takeout and conversations we’ve had hundreds of times before. I wouldn’t change those conversations; I wouldn’t change Bob. Only the location of the Motel 6 changes. It teleports itself from Chino to Riverside to Prescott to Pueblo so that it’s there when Bob and I fly up in Buttercup to prepare for the next show. And one day, the conversation goes like this: “Got you a man,” says Bob, reaching over with a fork to snag a pork ball and dunk it in my sauce. “Can get my own.” “Not that sort of man. Got you a man on the wing tomorrow.” Now my interest is up. Not many men wing walk. It’s for the girls; the men are too chicken. Or too heavy. Can’t have a 200 Ib man moving across the wing. Bob couldn’t keep Buttercup steady if that happened. ““‘Name’s Leon. He’s a novice but he’s keen. Thought we could try out some fancy pants double act.” There’s a mild alarm that [ll have to split my cut with this Leon, but I’m intrigued. P’ve never wing walked with a man. Only girls and there’s always an element of competition in that. Whose tits can jut the furthest, whose leg can stay extended the longest, whose hair looks the best backswept and big as we leap lithely from the plane to greet the fans. “Where’d you find him?” “Came to the hangar when I was putting Buttercup to bed. We had a bit of a chat.” He must have been convincing. If I had a dollar for every person who says to me, “I did that once” or “I’d love to do what you do”, I’d be rich enough to buy Bob his Mexican island staffed by Sigourney Weaver clones in loincloths. With dicks. Leon is there the next morning. He’s lean, feline like his name, small and wiry, the same height as me. He wears some sort of tight pants and a thick clinging fleece. The pants show off his ass pretty well. I think that he’s probably gay. I’m wearing an old costume, stuff that is now not good enough for shows. There’s a smear of oil across the chest and there’s a couple of small holes: one a rip on the thigh where I caught it on the door catch, a small hole in the crotch where a seam gave when I did a handstand. “Jaye, Leon, Leon, Jaye.” Bob does the introductions and I check to see whether he’s watching Leon’s ass, but he’s already turned

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  As ever, writers the width and breadth of the English-speaking world (and occasionally further afield), continue to fire up their wild imaginations and deliver stories that amaze me, tickle my senses and more and delight readers in myriad ways. The explosion of erotica writing and publishing marches on, despite the closure of some noted imprints, and 2009 saw a veritable florilege of new anthologies on specific themes (which made my selection tougher in so far as it would have been awkward to feature too many stories about, say, voyeurism, spanking, hotel rooms, vampires, swinging, BDSM, etc....) to which an avalanche of eBooks and further web magazines was added to complicate my editorial choices. There was truly an embarrassment of sexy possibilities, and I finally read almost 1,800 stories to reach the forty or so featured inside these pages. A personal sense of satisfaction this year comes from the fact that for the very first time there are almost as many male authors as there are female in the book, a rare occurrence in the world of erotica but one which I feel does better reflect the profile of readers from _ my own past observations. Sex, in all its manifestations, is an equal opportunity temptation and looking at it from both sides of the XIV Maxim Fakubowski gender divide proves a fascinating experience, which reflects real life and not just editorial presumptions. In addition, there are a couple of handfuls of new names, which I hope we will keep on seeing in contents pages, as well as a marked increase in the number of British authors. A milestone year indeed. So, why waste my time any longer praising the stories and their imaginative variations on a subject too many have always assumed was limited? Jump straight into the book and enjoy the luscious spread of erotic delights that lies in store, and keep your prejudices (and your clothes?) at the door. Savour, one story at a time! Maxim Jakubowski The Cavern Valerie Grey I. The Hotel Arensen sits atop a spacious island planted with formal gardens and hedgerow mazes, tall poplars and tangled strands of ancient oak. One view is more beautiful than the next, and the whole is a symphony of light and form and shadow. The island is connected to the shore of the lake by a macadam drive; when the sun slants low like this and the water burns red, the hotel and the island appear to be consumed by a lake of fire, attached to the mainland by a road of smoke. Where the drive connects with the island is a long causeway and at the end of this causeway are the statues of two angels, one on each side of the road; one looks towards the Hotel Arensen, the other looking away, so that one faces the traveller as he enters, and the other faces the guest as he leaves.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Every Sophist had his own school and party, which was attached to him with incredible zeal, and endeavored to gain every newly arriving student to its master. In these efforts, as well as in the frequent literary contests and debates of the various schools among themselves, there was not seldom much rude and wild behavior. To youth who were not yet firmly grounded in Christianity, residence in Athens, and occupation with the ancient classics, were full of temptation, and might easily kindle an enthusiasm for heathenism, which, however, had already lost its vitality, and was upheld solely by the artificial means of magic, theurgy, and an obscure mysticism.1941 Basil and Gregory remained steadfast, and no poetical or rhetorical glitter could fade the impressions of a pious training. Gregory says of their studies in Athens, in his forty-third Oration:1942 "We knew only two streets of the city, the first and the more excellent one to the churches, and to the ministers of the altar; the other, which, however, we did not so highly esteem, to the public schools and to the teachers of the sciences. The streets to the theatres, games, and places of unholy amusements, we left to others. Our holiness was our great concern; our sole aim was to be called and to be Christians. In this we placed our whole glory."1943 In a later oration on classic studies Basil encourages them, but admonishes that they should be pursued with caution, and with constant regard to the great Christian purpose of eternal life, to which all earthly objects and attainments are as shadows and dreams to reality. In plucking the rose one should beware of the thorns, and, like the bee, should not only delight himself with the color and the fragrance, but also gain useful honey from the flower.1944 The intimate friendship of Basil and Gregory, lasting from fresh, enthusiastic youth till death, resting on an identity of spiritual and moral aims, and sanctified by Christian piety, is a lovely and engaging chapter in the history of the fathers, and justifies a brief episode in a field not yet entered by any church historian. With all the ascetic narrowness of the time, which fettered even these enlightened fathers, they still had minds susceptible to science and art and the beauties of nature. In the works of Basil and of the two Gregories occur pictures of nature such as we seek in vain in the heathen classics. The descriptions of natural scenery among the poets and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome can be easily compressed within a few pages. Socrates, as we learn from Plato, was of the opinion that we can learn nothing from trees and fields, and hence he never took a walk; he was so bent upon self-knowledge, as the true aim of all learning, that he regarded the whole study of nature as useless, because it did not tend to make man either more intelligent or more virtuous. The

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  I have always been better at caring for and looking after others than I have in caring for myself. But in these later years I have made progress. I have always been a very responsible person. If someone else is not looking after the details of an enterprise or the persons in a workshop, I must. But I have changed. In our 1976 Workshop on the Person Centered Approach in Ashland, Oregon, when I was not feeling well, and at the 1977 workshop in Arcozelo, Brazil, I shed all responsibility for the conduct of these complex undertakings and left it completely in the hands of others. I needed to take care of myself. So I let go of all responsibility except the responsibility—and the satisfaction—of being myself. For me it was a most unusual feeling: to be comfortably irresponsible with no feelings of guilt. And, to my surprise, I found I was more effective that way. I have taken better care of myself physically, in a variety of ways. I have also learned to respect my psychological needs. Three years ago a workshop group helped me to realize how harried and driven I felt by outside demands—“nibbled to death by ducks” was the way one person put it, and the expression captured my feelings exactly. So I did what I have never done before: I spent ten days absolutely alone in a beach cottage which had been offered me, and I refreshed myself immensely. I found I thoroughly enjoyed being with me. I like me. I have been more able to ask for help. I ask others to carry things for me, to do things for me, instead of proving that I can do it myself. I can also ask for personal help. When Helen, my wife, was very ill, and I was close to the breaking point from being on call as a 24-hour nurse, a housekeeper, a professional person in much demand, and a writer, I asked for help—and got it —from a therapist friend. I explored and tried to meet my own needs. I explored the strain that this period was putting on our marriage. I realized that it was necessary for my survival to live my life, and that this must come first, even though Helen was so ill. I am not quick to turn to others, but I am much more aware of the fact that I can’t handle everything by myself. In these varied ways, I do a better job of prizing and looking after the person that is me. Serenity?

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  we are fully open—first to one another, and later to the whole group; we are prepared to explore new and unknown areas of our own lives; we are truly acceptant of our own differences; we are open to the new learnings we will receive from our fresh inward journeys, all stimulated by our staff and group experiences. Thus it can be said that we now prepare ourselves, with much less emphasis on plans or materials. We value our staff process and want that to be available to the group. We have found that by being as fully ourselves as we are able— creative, diverse, contradictory, present, open, and sharing—we somehow become tuning forks, finding resonances with those qualities in all the members of the workshop community. In the relationships we form with the group and its members, the power is shared. We let ourselves “be”; we let others “be.” At our best, we have little desire to judge or manipulate the other’s thoughts or actions. When persons are approached in this way, when they are accepted as they are, we discover them to be highly creative and resourceful in examining and changing their own lives. While we do not persuade, interpret, or manipulate, we are certainly not laissez-faire in our attitude. Instead we find that we can share ourselves, our feelings, our potentialities, and our skills in active ways. We are each free to be as much of ourselves as it is possible for us to be. Part of that way of being has become ingrained: it is our desire to hear. During periods of chaos, or criticism of staff, or expression of deep feelings, we listen intently, acceptantly, occasionally voicing our understanding of what we have heard. We listen especially to the contrary voices, the soft voices, those that are expressing unpopular or unacceptable views. We make a point of responding to a person if he or she spoke openly, but no one responded. We thus tend to validate each person. We do not stop here. We as a staff are continually exploring new facets of our own experience as individuals. Recently, this has meant uncovering the learnings we are gaining from our intimate relationships in our differing lifestyles. It has meant facing openly the increasingly intuitive and psychic aspects of our lives. As we push on into these unknown inner areas, we seem better able to help each new workshop community—individually and collectively—to probe more deeply into their own worlds of shadow and mystery. In turn, each workshop has brought us learnings we did not anticipate.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  that you will accept them as mine regardless of the lack of style, format, or academic expression. . . . My real concern is to try to communicate with myself so that I might better understand myself. I guess what I am really saying is that I am writing not for you, nor for a grade, nor for a class, but for me. And I feel especially good about that, for this is something that I wouldn’t have dared to do or even consider in the past. . . . (Rogers, 1969, p. 84) It seems clear that he had learned a great deed at the affective and experiential level, for the first time in twenty years of education. He has grown as a person. However, one might well question whether this change would really make him a different kind of administrator or teacher. Here is another small portion of his report: My staff meeting Tuesday was truly significant as I was able to relate to the staff how I really felt. Many told me afterwards that they were very surprised and impressed and wanted to applaud, not because I had said anything different, but it was the way I said it. I have had various teachers in my office daily who have wanted to relate to me and state they now find me more accepting than ever. . . . I feel that life has so much more meaning, (p. 89) This has been my experience: when inner changes take place in the attitudes and self-concept of the person, then changes begin to show up in his or her interpersonal behavior. A Program of Change in Teacher Training I should like to turn now to the more difficult question of whether it would be possible to change the teacher-training institutions. I am bold and brash enough to say that if I were given a free hand, and if I had the energy and ample funding (say the equivalent of the cost of a half dozen B-52 bombers), I think that in one year I could introduce such a ferment into schools of education that it would initiate a revolution. Since I am sure that must sound like an arrogant statement, I would like to state as precisely as I can what I would do. Much of the plan would change, of course, as obstacles were encountered and as the participants desired to move in somewhat different directions. First, I would enlist the aid of a large number of skilled facilitators, who are familiar with small-group process. This would be entirely feasible. Then, since it is necessary to begin somewhere, I would in each institution indicate that task-

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  No birds were singing in the trees by the roadside, but a silence prevailed, more lovely than bird song; the thoughtful and holy silence of winter, the silence of trustfully waiting furrows. For the soil is the greatest saint of all ages, knowing neither impatience, nor fear, nor doubting; knowing only faith, from which spring all blessings that are needful to nurture man. Sir Philip said: ‘Are you happy, my Stephen?’ And she answered: ‘I’m dreadfully happy, Father. I’m so dreadfully happy that it makes me feel frightened, ’cause I mayn’t always last happy—not this way.’ He did not ask why she might not last happy; he just nodded, as though he admitted of a reason; but he laid his hand over hers on the bridle for a moment, a large, and comforting hand. Then the peace of the evening took possession of Stephen, that and the peace of a healthy body tired out with fresh air and much vigorous movement, so that she swayed a little in her saddle and came near to falling asleep. The pony, even more tired than his rider, jogged along with neck drooping and reins hanging slackly, too weary to shy at the ogreish shadows that were crouching ready to scare him. His small mind was doubtless concentrated on fodder; on the bucket of water nicely seasoned with gruel; on the groom’s soothing hiss as he rubbed down and bandaged; on the warm blanket clothing, so pleasant in winter, and above all on that golden bed of deep straw that was sure to be waiting in his stable. And now a great moon had swung up very slowly; and the moon seemed to pause, staring hard at Stephen, while the frost rime turned white with the whiteness of diamonds, and the shadows turned black and lay folded like velvet round the feet of the drowsy hedges. But the meadows beyond the hedges turned silver, and so did the road to Morton. 6 It was late when they reached the stables at last, and old Williams was waiting in the yard with a lantern. ‘Did you kill?’ he inquired, according to custom; then he saw Stephen’s trophy and chuckled.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  She giggled. “Lovely, but don’t forget ’m playing tennis with Henry at ten.” “Hmph. Girls’ night out, tennis with Henry. My girlfriend is in high demand.” Ian moved off her, pulling her over on her side and into his arms, where she settled with a contented sigh. “At least until you get knocked up. Then you’re all mine.” “Exactly the way I want,” she said, stretching like a well-fed cat. “Maybe this month is my month.” “Well, if it doesn’t happen this time, we’ll just have to try again ~ next month,” Ian said. “It’s all about the timing, right?” “All in the timing,” she agreed. Double Take Madeline Moore Patricia Sheldon was the eldest — by eleven minutes, but that was enough to make her Jeannie’s older sister; just as well, for Patricia went first in everything. She walked first, said “Dada” first and was the first to read. Physically they were identical in every way. Nothing but their personalities distinguished one blonde, blue-eyed twin from the other. Mrs Sheldon dressed them alike from top to toe. They both wore their wavy hair long, tied with identical ribbons. When they were very little they switched beds and giggled when their hoodwinked father kissed Patricia on the head and said, “Goodnight, Jeannie,” and then kissed Jean on the head and said, “Goodnight, Patty.” Patty loved volleyball but hated math, so she went to gym class for her sister, who hated volleyball but loved math, and Jeannie went to math class for Patty. This way they maintained high marks in everything and were never absent from a class often enough to raise eyebrows. Mr and Mrs Sheldon took the twins to the Twin Convention in Twinsburg, Ohio every August. The girls loved the event because just being twins didn’t invite attention, so they could vie for it like normal people, and be gratified when they got it. They sang duets in the Twin Talent Show and ate up the applause. The whole family looked forward to it. They rode the float in the Year 2000 parade. A beautiful blond boy sat down beside Patty on the crowded, slow-moving float. “Hi.” “Hi,” said a mirror image of the first boy as he sat beside Jeannie. “Hi,” the girls said, and gulped. Where had these two come from? Heaven? “We’re new,” said the first, as if reading their thoughts. “We moved to Oregon this year, from Australia. But you’ve been coming to this Convention for years.” Daub Take 183 “Uh huh,” said Patty. His eyes were green. Green! If there is anything gorgeouser than green eyes and blond hair on a boy, she didn’t know what it might be, except green eyes and blond hair on two boys. “How’d’y’ know?” Jeannie asked. “We looked at the Convention pics online,” he said, “and we thought you were the prettiest girls ever.” “Shut up,” said his brother, blushing. “We picked you because — you'll never guess—”’

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “What you did was artistic,” I said. “Communal.” I fumbled along at some length trying to convey my notion that there’d been more going on with her dancing than met the eye, but I don’t know if she took my meaning. She said she was going back to school to become a veterinarian. “I want to help sick little animals,” she said. I told her I was going back to school myself. “To study what?” she asked. “T don’t know.” At the time, I really didn’t know, and it was fun just pondering the savory menu. “Something worthwhile.” The moment had come for me to strip away my inhibitions — to get down to the naked wood. In this regard, I was more capable than some people would’ve believed. She gave me her phone number, and in the days ahead we’d get together again, more than once. But the important part of what would happen between us had already happened, and that was eriough. + Hands on her cart, she tossed her hair in a way that made my blood jump. “It was nice seeing you,” she said. I watched her as she pushed the cart up the aisle. “It was nice seeing you,” I said. Only When it Rains Rose B. Thorny Why it happens only when it rains, I have no idea. Well, that isn’t totally accurate. I have a few thoughts on it, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t actually care, and no one else would understand, so it’s of no consequence. In the winter, when it snows, it doesn’t feel the same at all. Perhaps, because it is just too cold and cold is invasive, cruelly invasive. Or perhaps, because, in the snow, I would leave behind footprints, evidence, and my mind has made that adjustment to facilitate self- preservation. In the winter, I like to closet myself. Push the doors tight against the gusting winds and freezing draughts, frame the windows in heavy drapes so I may observe the drifting white fall of chiffon snow without actually feeling its frigid caress, watch the sweep of wind- driven flurries, and listen to the crystalline glissandos of sleet against the glass, without suffering the needles of icy pain piercing my skin. In the winter, I like to build a fire in the wood stove and kneel before it to warm my hands. I like crumpling the old news and tossing it on to the blackened, ash-stuccoed iron grate and building little pyres of kindling over it. I arrange them, just so, tiny wooden structures, like frail stick houses that a huffing, puffing big, bad wolf might blow down without a second thought. What a silly tale; fire is so much more effective, so effortless by comparison, and so much more gratifying.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  recent years I have enjoyed some of the teachings of Buddhism, of Zen, and especially the sayings of Lao-tse, the Chinese sage who lived some twenty-five centuries ago. Let me quote a few lines of his thoughts to which I resonate very deeply: It is as though he listened and such listening as his enfolds us in a silence in which at last we begin to hear what we are meant to be. One statement combines two of my favorite thinkers. Martin Buber endeavors to explain the Taoist principle of wu-wei, which is really the action of the whole being, but so effortless when it is most effective that it is often called the principle of “nonaction,” a rather misleading term. Buber, in explaining this concept, says: To interfere with the life of things means to harm both them and oneself. . . . He who imposes himself has the small, manifest might; he who does not impose himself has the great, secret might. . . . The perfected man . . . does not interfere in the life of beings, he does not impose himself on them, but he “helps all beings to their freedom (Lao-tse).” Through his unity, he leads them too, to unity, he liberates their nature and their destiny, he releases Tao in them. (BUBER, 1957) I suppose that my effort with people has increasingly been to liberate “their nature and their destiny.” Or, if one is seeking a definition of an effective group facilitator, one need look no further than Lao-tse: A leader is best When people barely know that he exists, Not so good when people obey and acclaim him, Worst when they despise him. . . . But of a good leader, who talks little, When his work is done, his aim fulfilled, They will all say, “We did this ourselves.” (BYNNER, 1962) But perhaps my favorite saying, which sums up many of my deeper beliefs, is another from Lao-tse: If I keep from meddling with people, they take care of themselves, If I keep from commanding people, they behave themselves, If I keep from preaching at people, they improve themselves, If I keep from imposing on people, they become themselves. (FRIEDMAN, 1972) I will admit that this saying is an oversimplification, yet for me it contains the sort of truth which we have not yet appreciated in our Western culture.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The æsthetic principles are at bottom such axioms as that a note sounds good with its third and fifth, or that potatoes need salt, We are once for all so made that when certain impressions come before our mind, one of them will seem to call for or repel the others as its companions. To a certain extent the principle of habit will explain these æsthetic connections. When a conjunction is repeatedly experienced, the cohesion of its terms grows grateful, or at least their disruption grows unpleasant. But to explain all æsthetic judgments in this way would be absurd; for it is notorious how seldom natural experiences come up to our æsthetic demands. Many of the so-called metaphysical principles are at bottom only expressions of æsthetic feeling. Nature is simple and invariable; makes no leaps, or makes nothing but leaps; is rationally intelligible; neither increases nor diminishes in quantity; flows from one principle, etc., etc.,—what do all such principles express save our sense of how pleasantly our intellect would feel if it had a Nature of that sort to deal with? The subjectivity of which feeling is of course quite compatible with Nature also turning out objectively to be of that sort, later on.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  can’t help staring at the strange, shrouded lump that is my body as Eric signs the check. “Is your wife all right?” he asks. “My wife couldn’t be better,” Eric replies. I hear an edge in his voice that the waiter probably misses. “We’re just playing a little game.” “Hide and seek?” Eric tries hard not to laugh. “Not exactly ... There you go. Thank you.” “Sure thing. Have a nice lunch.” “Oh, we will.” I’m laughing too, in relief and in joy at being alone again. I should have known that he wouldn’t risk exposing me that way. Then I think of some of our past encounters, and ’m not so sure. “I’m always torn,” says Eric as he works at undoing my bonds. “Between showing the world what a delicious slut you are, and keeping you all to myself.” I stretch out my legs and groan at the stiffness. “Sorry to keep you tied up so long. Maybe I got a bit carried away.” “T’m out of shape. Not used to this stuff anymore.” “T’]l get you whipped into shape in no time.” He hands me my sandwich with a grin. “Here. You’ve got to keep your strength up. “You know, it was so hard to decide what to take with me this time. I thought about bringing my laptop and some recent videos. We could watch them together — there’s nobody I can really share that sort of kinky stuff with except you. But then I thought we wouldn’t have the time ... One idea I had was to make a ginger fig for you — you know, a little present after not seeing you for so long. I’d love to see how you react to a spicy plug of raw ginger up your ass. But then . .” I realized that it would dry out on the trip, wouldn’t be effective . He talks on between bites of his hamburger. I’m content just to sit here in his presence, my sex still humming from my orgasms, listening to my master, face to face with him at last. After a while, though, both his food and his conversation run out, and we're there, looking at each other, wondering what comes next. “T want to see you naked,” I say finally. “Well, I want to try out that wooden ruler.” So he does, and of course, I like it. Pve always been willing to let him experiment on my body. It turns me on like nothing else, to put myself in his hands, to let him investigate the effects of various implements, positions and techniques. Sometimes the sensations are pleasurable. Even if Reunion 343 they’re not, giving myself to him sends me flying. When we’re apart I miss his voice, his hands, his humor, his intelligence, but most of all I miss the roller-coaster thrill of his taking control and his outrageous sexual imagination.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  THE NOW—AND THE FUTURE I should stop here, but I cannot. It is always a strain for me to look backward. It is still the present and the future that concern me most. I cannot close without a quick overview of my current interests and activities. I am no longer actively engaged in individual therapy or empirical research. I am finding that after one passes the age of seventy, there are physical limitations on what one can do. I continue to engage in encounter groups when I believe they might have significant social impact. For example, I am involved in a program for the humanizing of medical education. Up to the present, more than two hundred high-status medical educators have been involved in intensive group experiences which appear to be more successful in facilitating change than we had dared hope. Perhaps more humanly sensitive physicians will be the result. Such group experiences certainly represent a new area of possible impact. I have also helped to sponsor, and have taken some part in, interracial and intercultural groups, believing that better understanding between diverse groups is essential if our planet is to survive. The most difficult group was composed of citizens of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Represented in the group were militant and less militant Catholics, militant and less militant Protestants, and English. The film of that encounter portrays the participants’ difficult and partial progress toward better understanding—a first step on a long road. I see this encounter group as a small test-tube attempt, which might be utilized in greater depth and much more widely. I continue to write. I recognize that while my whole approach to persons and their relationships changes but slowly (and very little in its fundamentals), my interest in its application has shifted markedly. No longer am I primarily interested in individual therapeutic learning, but in broader and broader social implications. As I say this, the question arises in my mind, as it often has in the past, “Am I spreading myself too thin?” Only the judgment of others can answer that question at some future date. And then I garden. Those mornings when I cannot find time to inspect my flowers, water the young shoots I am propagating, pull a few weeds, spray some destructive insects, and pour just the proper fertilizer on some budding plants, I feel cheated. My garden supplies the same intriguing question I have been trying to meet in all my professional life: What are the effective conditions for growth? But in my garden, though the frustrations are just as immediate, the results, whether success or failure, are more quickly evident. And when, through patient, intelligent, and understanding care I have provided the conditions that result in the production of a rare or glorious bloom, I feel the same kind of satisfaction that I have felt in the facilitation of growth in a person or in a group of persons.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  WHAT ARE THE RESEARCH RESULTS? It has been truly fascinating to see research evidence pile up over the years indicating that there is some validity to the hypotheses that I so tentatively presented years ago. I wish to dwell on the evidence from education, but first, one small finding from the field of therapy. In a study of therapist-client relationships, Barrett-Lennard (1962) found that those clients who eventually showed more therapeutic change perceived more of these therapist qualities at the time of the fifth interview than did those who eventually showed less change. This finding has been corroborated in a larger group of cases by Reinhard Tausch (1978), who found that prediction could be made after only the second interview. I feel certain that this finding would hold in the classroom world as well. If we measured the teacher’s attitudes during the first five days of the school year—the attitudes as they exist in the teacher and as they are perceived by the students—we could predict which classrooms would contain learners, and which would contain prisoners. To the degree that these attitudes were held and perceived, we could predict the classrooms in which learning would be by the whole person, with its accompanying involvement and excitement. We could also predict the classrooms in which students would be passive, restless, or rebellious, in which mostly rote learning would be going on. The research that has endeavored to discover specific relationships between these attitudinal conditions and various elements of the learning process has come about largely through the efforts of Dr. David Aspy and his colleagues, although others have also contributed. There is not the space here to describe the details of the researches, but I will discuss very briefly some of the findings. To give some samples: The levels of these interpersonal conditions can be measured with reasonable objectivity. It has been shown that they are significantly and positively related to a greater gain in reading achievement in third-graders (Aspy, 1965). They are positively related to grade point average (Pierce, 1966); similarly, to cognitive growth (Aspy, 1967; Aspy, 1969; Aspy & Hadlock, 1967); to an increase in creative interest and productivity (Moon, 1966); to levels of cognitive thinking and to the amount of student-initiated talk (Aspy & Roebuck, 1970). They are related to a diffusion of liking and trust in the classroom, which in turn is related to the students’ better utilization of their abilities and greater confidence in themselves (Schrnuck, 1966).

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The crucial figure in enriching the options within asceticism was Jerome, who in terms of Eastern Christian asceticism can be described as a failed monk: after a couple of solitary years in the mid-370s, he fled his effort at eremitical life in a rural area south of Antioch (not quite so much of a wilderness as he later liked to make out) and returned to Rome and to what proved a much more congenial role as secretary to Pope Damasus and chaplain to the ultra-rich. [72] As we have seen, his career in Rome also came to an abrupt, unplanned end, at which point he relocated to Jerusalem, alongside a number of Roman self-exiles in Palestine led by such exalted figures as his friend the Lady Paula (mother of the late Blesilla), who now presided over a distinctly aristocratic Latin-speaking monastery in Bethlehem. Jerome joined Paula’s community (despite his rudeness towards her); it was a perfect setting for continuing the biblical research that had already begun to fascinate him during his unhappy Syrian venture. Jerome was a pioneer in suggesting that the demands that scholarship made on him and like-minded monks – those congenial hours spent in his chamber sifting words to craft his great new version of the Bible – were just as much a sacrifice of self as the spiritual athleticism of a pillar-saint. This self-serving thought was the spark and justification for subsequent centuries of monastic scholarship that had not previously been a significant part of ascetic life. Henceforth the monastery was a vital conduit for conveying the imperial knowledge and culture of the Mediterranean forward to transformed societies. The sheer variety of ascetic experience that so proliferated between the fourth and sixth centuries has continued to give it vitality and appeal amid the choices

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  THE PHYSICAL SIDE I do feel physical deterioration. I notice it in many ways. Ten years ago I greatly enjoyed throwing a frisbee. Now my right shoulder is so painfully arthritic that this kind of activity is out of the question. In my garden I realize that a task which would have been easy five years ago, but difficult last year, now seems like too much, and I had better leave it for my once-a-week gardener. This slow deterioration, with various minor disorders of vision, heartbeat, and the like, informs me that the physical portion of what I call “me” is not going to last forever. Yet I still enjoy a four-mile walk on the beach. I can lift heavy objects, do all the shopping, cooking, and dishwashing when my wife is ill, carry my own luggage without puffing. The female form still seems to me one of the loveliest creations of the universe, and I appreciate it greatly. I feel as sexual in my interests as I was at thirty-five, though I can’t say the same about my ability to perform. I am delighted that I am still sexually alive, even though I can sympathize with the remark of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes upon leaving a burlesque house at age eighty: “Oh to be seventy again!” Yes, or sixty-five, or sixty! So, I am well aware that I am obviously old. Yet from the inside I’m still the same person in many ways, neither old nor young. It is that person of whom I will speak. ACTIVITIES New Enterprises

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  decorous construction of a common life. Within that framework, many radicals created communities where resources were shared, but on the basis of monogamous families – the sort of Hutterite village that sheltered the dying Ochino in Moravia. Their leadership remained male: a Hutterite community was called the Court of Brothers (Bruderhof). The radical Peter Riedemann, in drawing up one of the most prominent Hutterite confessional statements in 1540, set the tone of his discussion of the role of women by sounding an utterly traditional note: ‘We say, first, that since woman was taken from man, and not man from woman, man hath lordship but woman weakness, humility and submission, therefore she should be under the yoke of man and obedient to him.’ [43] Hutterite communities nevertheless boasted one distinctive feature: a reversal of the medieval Western trend to emphasize a couple’s initiative in marriage. Arrangements were taken out of the hands of a prospective couple and given to the community elders (men, naturally), so it broadened out from the ancient dynastic principle that marriages should be arranged by the fathers of bride and groom. The elders would choose a small group of eligible young people from among those of suitable age and bring together those selected; thus suitably supervised they then chose their partner, avoiding ‘the inclinations of the flesh’. Hutterite marriage custom proved one of the greatest points of internal contention in their determinedly peaceable communities. In the seventeenth century, one of their most distinguished bishops had to put a stop to widespread blatant fraud, as young lovers schemed to gerrymander the chosen group for particular wedding occasions. The dispute rumbled on until the mid-nineteenth century, when the Church authorities finally admitted defeat and gave up their prerogatives. [44] Matters were different in the Magisterial Protestant Churches, which hearkened to the Pauline epistles in emphasizing a couple’s individual choice. No doubt a consideration in this was the aspiration of clerical families to heroic marital partnerships, together with early Reformation uncertainties for Protestants in dealing with unsympathetic Catholic parents. The Reformed Protestant Church of Scotland has seldom boasted a reputation for sentimentality, but right away during the revolutionary birth of ‘the Kirk’ in 1560, when making official provision for marriage in the First Book of Discipline, it emphatically declared that the attraction between young people was ‘a work of God’ which trumped the admitted desirability of parental consent. If parents stood in the way of their children’s happiness for ‘no other cause than the common sort of men have, to wit lack of goods and because they are not so high-born as they require’, then the minister should try to win the parents round – but if that did not work, he should overrule them and go ahead with a marriage. ‘For the work of God ought not to be hindered by the corrupt affections of worldly men’: one in the eye for patriarchy, echoed elsewhere in the Reformed Protestant world.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  imperial official in Basel, she was first widow to the Basel humanist artist Ludwig Keller (Cellarius) before wedding in succession three prominent clerical Reformers: the former monk Johannes Oecolampadius (Hussgen), the first Protestant pastor of Basel; another former monk Wolfgang Capito (Köpfel), pastor in Strassburg; and finally one of the Reformation’s most eloquent propagandists for happy companionate marriage, the former friar Martin Bucer, chief pastor of Strassburg and finally Regius Professor in Cambridge. Wibrandis had been recommended to Bucer by his dying first wife Elisabeth. Oecolampadius gave her a rave review: ‘what I always wanted...She is not contentious, garrulous, or a gadabout, but looks after the household.’ Bucer wanted a little more pepper – ‘My first wife felt somewhat more free to admonish me and now I realize that that freedom of hers was not only useful but necessary.’ Many clergy were to discover that a frank but affectionate wifely perspective was helpful preparation for the inevitable critics outside the parsonage door. [21] Only gradually, as in the 1530s and 1540s Protestantism began winning the allegiance of more and more territories in and beyond the Empire, did the clergy wife begin to reflect what the new emerging Church authorities wanted in the marriages of pastors, in the manner of Fraulein Rosenblatt: a solidly respectable background in families among the middle layers of urban society. It took time for social attitudes to reflect changing realities beyond the ranks of men and women who championed clerical marriage as an ideological statement (Plate 24). In the Holy Roman Empire, it was not till 1555 that military defeat of the Habsburg Emperor and his Catholic allies and the resulting Peace of Augsburg forced the Habsburgs grudgingly to grant secure legal status to Lutheran clergy marriages and their children within the Empire. [22] In England, where a truly Protestant Reformation rapidly gained in momentum after 1547 through a regime acting in the name of the young Edward VI, the one part of their legislative programme that met prolonged obstruction from conservative nobility and bishops in Parliament was the full legalization of clerical marriage; that legislation did not finally pass till 1549. Then when a version of the Edwardian Protestant Church was restored in 1559 after the death of Catholic Queen Mary, her half-sister Queen Elizabeth showed herself untypical of Protestants in her lack of enthusiasm for clerical wives (but then Elizabeth had problems with most people’s wives). This personal idiosyncrasy could not withstand the Protestant tide even for the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, but it had one curious long-term effect that outlasted Elizabeth’s own capacity to choose her bishops; after the death of her happily married first Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker in 1575, no occupant of the see of Canterbury had a wife until John Tillotson in 1691. [23] It is not surprising that an initially uncertain place in Western society encouraged clergy and their children to stick together socially, resulting in a great deal of intermarriage among clergy families.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The times were favorable for the development of monastic communities. If our own is the age of the laic, the mediaeval period was the age of the monk. Society was unsettled and turbulent. The convent offered an asylum of rest and of meditation. Bernard calls his monks "the order of the Peaceful." Feud and war ruled without. Every baronial residence was a fortress. The convent was the scene of brotherhood and co-operation. It furnished to the age the ideal of a religious household on earth. The epitaphs of monks betray the feeling of the time, pacificus, "the peaceful"; tranquilla pace serenus, "in quiet and undisturbed repose"; fraternae pacis amicus, "friend of brotherly peace." The circumstances are presented by Caesar of Heisterbach under which a number of monks abandoned the world, and were "converted"—that is, determined to enter a convent. Now the decision was made at a burial.538 Now it was due to the impression made by the relation of the wonderful things which occurred in convents. This was the case with a young knight, Gerlach,539 who listened to an abbot who was then visiting a castle, as he told his experiences within cloistral walls. Gerlach went to Paris to study, but could not get rid of the seed which had been sown in his heart, and entered upon the monastic novitiate. Sometimes the decision was made in consequence of a sermon.540 Caesar of Heisterbach himself was "converted" by a description given by Gerard of Walberberg, abbot of Heisterbach, while they were on the way to Cologne during the troublous times of Philip of Swabia and Otto IV. Gerard described the appearance of the Virgin, her mother Anna, and St. Mary Magdalene, who descended from the mountain and revealed themselves to the monks of Clairvaux while they were engaged in the harvest, dried the perspiration from their foreheads, and cooled them by fanning. Within three months Caesar entered the convent of Heisterbach.541 There were in reality only two careers in the Middle Ages, the career of the knight and the career of the monk. It would be difficult to say which held out the most attractions and rewards, even for the present life. The monk himself was a soldier. The well-ordered convent offered a daily drill, exercise following exercise with the regularity of clockwork; and though the enemy was not drawn up in visible array on open field, he was a constant reality.542 Barons, counts, princes joined the colonies of the spiritual militia, hoping thereby to work out more efficiently the problem of their salvation and fight their conflict with the devil. The Third Lateran, 1179, bears witness to the popularity of the conventual life among the higher classes, and the tendency to restrict it to them, when it forbade the practice of receiving motley as a price of admission to the vow.543 The monk proved to be stronger than the knight and the institution of chivalry decayed before the institution of monasticism which still survives.