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 Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  But what is the status of this line of reasoning? Let’s be quite clear: this does not, and was not intended to, constitute a rational proof for God’s existence. Perhaps C. S. Lewis’s idea of a ‘supposal’ might be helpful here – a provisional assumption, proposed as a possible explanation of puzzling observations or experiences, which requires testing. Suppose there is a God, such as that which Christianity proposes. Does not this fit in well with our experience of reality? And is not this resonance indicative of the truth of the supposal? The approach is clearly not compelling; it is rather suggestive , hinting that the best way of testing a worldview might not be to assess its individual components, but to step inside the larger vision of reality that it enfolds, and test its quality and depth. One of the most important functions of a worldview is to inform and give stability to notions of meaning and purpose. In the next section, we shall consider how beliefs undergird these two important themes, which are of considerable importance to personal and social existence. Meaning: On Finding Significance and Purpose While some philosophers, such as Susan Wolf, appreciate the importance of the question of meaning, the most significant engagement in recent years with the pervasive human desire to find ‘meaning in life’ has come from psychology, which has sought to establish both what people understand by ‘meaning’ and the difference that this makes to their lives. The psychologists Login George and Crystal Park concluded that whether life is perceived as ‘meaningful’ or not is shaped by ‘the extent to which one’s life is experienced as making sense, as being directed and motivated by valued goals, and as mattering in the world.’ 51 Detailed surveys persistently indicate that human beings consider it to be important to have a perception of coherence in life allowing us to make sense of the world and our own personal existence; a sense of purpose , in which we discern core aims and aspirations for life; and a conviction of significance , in which our lives matter and are seen to have value. 52 A helpful distinction can be drawn between ‘cognitive’ and ‘affective’ aspects of meaning. The former is about making sense of one’s experiences of life, while the latter concerns the feelings of satisfaction, fulfilment and happiness that result from our belief that we are living and acting meaningfully. 53 Is this human longing for meaning in life a ‘want’ or a ‘need’? 54 Is meaning something that some feel they would like, an optional extra that might add something to their existence? Or is it deeply rooted in our fundamental humanity, without which we cannot flourish – especially in the light of the ‘existential nihilism of the scientific worldview’? While this debate continues, an excellent case can be made that this is something integral and essential to human actualisation.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  him under the chin, they never touched the ground again. As night fell they would rise two or three miles in the air and glide there, banking now to one side, now to the other, and moving their outspread wings only occasionally, until they came back down to us at break of day.—Austerlitz had been so deeply immersed in his Welsh tale, and I in listening to him, that we did not notice how late it had grown. The last rounds had long since been poured, the last guests were gone except for the two of us. The barman had collected the glasses and ashtrays, wiped the tables with a cloth, and was now waiting to lock up after us with his hand on the light switch by the door. The way in which he wished us Good night, gentlemen, with his eyes clouded by weariness and his head tilted slightly to one side, struck me as an extraordinary mark of distinction, almost like an absolution or a blessing. And Pereira, the business manager of the Great Eastern, was equally civil and courteous when we entered the hotel foyer directly afterwards. He seemed positively expectant as he stood behind the reception desk in his starched white shirt and gray cloth waistcoat, with his hair immaculately parted, one of those rare and often rather mysterious people, as I thought on seeing him, who are infallibly to be found at their posts, and whom one cannot imagine ever feeling any need to go to bed. After I had made an appointment to meet Austerlitz the next day Pereira, having inquired after my wishes, led me upstairs to the first floor and showed me into a room containing a great deal of wine-red velvet, brocade, and dark mahogany furniture, where I sat until almost three in the morning at a secretaire faintly illuminated by the street lighting—the cast-iron radiator clicked quietly, and only occasionally did a black cab drive past outside in Liverpool Street—writing down, in the form of notes and disconnected sentences, as much as possible of what Austerlitz had told me that evening. Next morning I woke late, and after breakfast I sat for some time reading the newspapers, where I found not only the usual home and international news, but also the story of an ordinary man who was overcome by such deep grief after the death of his wife, for whom he had cared devotedly during her long and severe illness, that he decided to end his own life by means of a guillotine which he had built himself in the square concrete area containing the basement steps at the back of his house in Halifax. As a craftsman, and having taken careful stock of other possible methods, he thought the guillotine the most reliable way of carrying out his plan, and sure enough, as the short report said, he had finally been found lying with his head cut off by such an instrument of decapitation. It was of uncommonly sturdy construction, with every tiny detail neatly finished, and a slanting blade which, as the reporter remarked, two strong men could scarcely have lifted. The pincers with which he had cut through the wire operating it were still in his rigid hand. Austerlitz had come to fetch me

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  I handled the gentle, slow-motion cantering of my kitchen floor well, I thought, for a landlubber, and when the time came, the steaks joined the potatoes in the reassuringly named Competence B-300 oven until medium rare. Soon, Nancy and I, in fluffy white ResidenSea bathrobes, were sitting at our dining room table, a towering floral arrangement dead-center, eating perfectly respectable Black Angus steaks and crispy-skinned potatoes, accompanied by an astonishingly affordable bottle of Brouilly. Emboldened by this early success, I rose early the next morning and confidently made omelettes aux fines herbes, chopping the fresh herb and parsley with the delightfully sharp knives provided. I'd seen a pretty impressive selection of stinky French cheeses at Fredy's and had over-optimistically ordered an Epoisse and an Alsatian Muenster. But when I went to fold a slice of the Muenster into my omelette, it became clear that this particular cheese had seen better days. My omelette tasted like a dead man's feet, with a dreadful ammonia aftertaste, and ended up in the food disposal (which worked like a charm). Nancy, however, was very pleased with her cheese-free omelette, happily poring over the day's Times. Later, in that happy, hazy, lazy, semisunstroked state that comes with too much time spent drinking banana daiquiris (made with real bananas) poolside, I was in no shape to cook much for lunch. I padded down to Fredy's for a fresh baguette and some cold cuts. Though dress during the day was casual (there is a dress code after six), passing a few silver-haired gentlemen in crisp khakis, handmade bespoke linen shirts, and thin timepieces, I felt like Gilligan, crashing a party for the Howells. Back in my apartment, I made sandwiches, soppressata and jambon blanc for me and sliced steak (leftover from the previous night) for Nancy. Suffering from an inferiority complex while shopping in my jeans and T- shirt, I'd overcompensated by buying a bottle of Roederer Cristal to wash the sandwiches down. I may not have been rich, but I was, after all, living as if I were—if only for a few days. Feeling on top of the world as only the drunk can feel, a here-today-gone-tomorrow-what-the-hell kinda rich, I finished my sandwich and the champagne and staggered through my living area, past the couches and armchairs and cocktail table, out onto my veranda and flopped into my Jacuzzi. The perfect end, I thought, to a perfect meal. Before dinner, Nancy and I watched a video from the ship's extensive library on our big-screen TV, the wretched, incomprehensibly awful Arabesque—the only positive effect of the film being that after eighty minutes with Sophia Loren, I was in the mood for Italian.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Schutz and eventually the repugnant Hitchcock were favored with regular tables of their choosing. Hitchcock was additionally favored with the offering of a free renovation of his kitchens in Bucks County, South Hampton, and Manhattan (supposedly from Rob but actually from a Schutz-controlled contractor). The restaurant was saved. The Puebla Posse soon ran the kitchen—even hiring additional friends and family members from their hometown of Atlixco. Though Rob continued to retain the title of chef, Manuel was given the day-to-day responsibility of running the kitchen and the title of chef de cuisine and a sizable raise to go with it. Needless to say, everyone got a generous Christmas bonus. No one got kicked out of their apartment. Credit card payments were made. Thousands of miles away, new satellite dishes appeared on rooftops in tiny Mexican towns. Best of all, Rob continued to cook now and again. On slow Sunday or Monday nights, his black Town Car would pull up outside and he'd walk briskly through the dining room as voices hushed and people pointed out that "the chef is here." He no longer ventured into the dining room. He never schmoozed. With his future secure, he gave up his dreams of television. Though he worked relatively little at Saint Germain—or anywhere else for that matter—content to golf and read and dream much of the time, to settle things with old wives and current girlfriends, he did drop by now and again. He'd put on a snap-front dishwasher shirt, some faded checks, his old clogs, and an apron. He'd tell Segundo, or whoever was working saute that night, to knock off early and he'd cook. He'd cook every order off his station, and off others besides. He'd stay till the very end, until the last order was gone. Then he'd dutifully clean and wipe down his station like he'd done when he'd been young and coming up. Afterward, he'd sit at the bar with his crew, who were now allowed to drink at Saint Germain, and they'd review the evening and tell stories and bust each other's balls. They'd tell stories, like the night of the Christmas Miracle, when the restaurant was saved. When they'd stayed, the whole crew, to drink the remainders of all those magnificent wines left over from their new benefactor's table and to congratulate themselves on their good fortune. A few days or weeks later, he'd return. And do it again. He'd cook. He'd cook like an angel. COMMENTARY SYSTEM D I wrote this piece shortly after Kitchen Confidential came out and was clearly feeling nostalgic for my kitchen and my cooks.

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

  Churches were in the position of the Church of the East under Sasanian or Muslim rule more than a millennium before; all they could do was to police their own communities as best they could and assert monogamy as an ideal for Christian identity, against considerable alternative social pressures. Such was the case in imperial and early Republican China, where, just as in early medieval Europe, Christian Churches faced a legally established social institution of concubinage, only abolished by the Republic in 1929. Some missionaries took a lenient view: in the 1920s, Bishop Frederick Graves of Shanghai emphasized that he was not going to insist on a man ending his relationship with a woman who under Chinese law was a concubine, but ‘innocent of wrongdoing’; all three parties in the relationship would suffer. It was enough that the Church should postpone the man’s baptism till either the wife or the concubine died. In a masterly piece of analogous pragmatism, his contemporaries as Anglican bishops in China generally allowed baptism to the women involved, since the Lambeth Conference of worldwide Anglicanism in its pronouncements on polygamy had said nothing specific prohibiting the baptism of family members of polygynous men. [52] In Ethiopia, Africa retained one ancient indigenous Christian culture, whose Christian monarchy rode out Western colonialism throughout the nineteenth century, crushing an invading Italian army at Adwa in 1896. Over the centuries the Ethiopian Orthodox Church had come to an uneasy understanding with polygamy. This marital custom was general in African cultures to the south but, more importantly, it reflected the peculiarly strong identification of Ethiopian Christianity with Judaism that steadily grew between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. Ethiopian Christians reached back to the Hebrew Bible and adopted Jewish customs that the rest of Christianity had dispensed with, including circumcision and abstention from pork: likewise, polygyny. King Solomon was a role model for Christian kings of Ethiopia (from the thirteenth century the dynasty claimed Solomonic lineage), and that included his impressive array of wives. The habitual royal enthusiasm for multiple marriage was one of several long-term bones of contention between Ethiopian monarchy and clergy. The foundational compilation of local Christian literature, the medieval Kebra Nagast (‘Book of the Glory of Kings’, actually regarded as part of the canon of Scripture in Ethiopia), proclaims Ethiopian royal descent from Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, while tartly pointing out that ‘after Christ, it was given to live with one woman under the law of marriage’. Monarchs ignored this pronouncement, as did very many of their subjects. Ethiopia’s compromise remains that lay polygynists reverently refrain from becoming communicants, and instead centre their devotion on a rigorous programme of fasting. [53] In Africa beyond the Sahara, marriage was a universal institution, but also very remote from the nuclear family systems of nineteenth-century Europe.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  I will cook what is here. It recognizes the incomparable joys of eating wild strawberries or white asparagus in France, fresh baby eels in Portugal, tomatoes in Italy. The Bloods, in my experience, rooted as they are to place and time, are more likely than not to cook with real, heartfelt soulfulness and integrity, seeking to nurture, sooth, comfort, and evoke, rather than dazzle. I always liked to think of myself as a Blood. Having recently traveled the world, often to very poor countries where being a Crip is not an option, I was enchanted again and again by cooks making fresh, vibrant, hearty, and soulful meals, often with very little in the way of resources. Like with the early culinary pioneers of France and Italy, the engine driving great cooking in Vietnam and Mexico, for instance, seems to be the grim necessity of dealing with what's available when it's available—and making the most of it. I've yammered endlessly, tiresomely, on the desirability of food coming from somewhere, that the sort of regional, seasonal fare that so many French and Italians grew up with is what is missing from much of American and British culinary culture. But now I don't know. There is more than a whiff of dogma in the Blood argument. The French "Group of Eight" chefs who decried the introduction of "foreign" spices and ingredients into haute cuisine strike me as the same crowd who want every movie to be a bloated, government-funded costume drama starring the inevitable Gerard Depardieu. I once heard a Parisian chef, while watching a comrade from Alsace make choucroute garnis, comment, "Thees is not French." An element of jingoism hangs in the air when some chefs decry "outside" and "foreign" influences on cooking—a scary overlap between those decrying foreign- influenced food and those decrying foreigners. And the organics mob, so fervent in their recitations of the dangers of pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, and genetic manipulation, often sound as if their agendas are driven by concerns far from taste or pleasure. The "slow food" lobby, arguing for sustainable sources of food, organic and free-range products, cruelty-free meat, and a return to a photogenic but never-to-be-realized agrarian wonderland, seem to overlook the fact that the stuff is expensive, and that much of the world goes to bed hungry at night—that most of us can't hop in the SUV with Sting and drive down to the organic greenmarket to pay twice the going rate. Don't get me wrong. I like free-range; it's almost always better tasting. Wild salmon is better than farmed salmon, and yes, the farmed stuff is a threat to overall quality. Free-range chickens taste better, and are less likely to contain E. coli bacteria. Free-range is no doubt nicer as well; whenever possible we should, by all means, let Bambi run free (before slitting his throat and yanking out his entrails). Since I serve mostly neurotic rich people in my restaurant, I can often afford to buy free-range and organic.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Next time I'm asked the question, I'll be ready with a very respectable answer. From Tian Tian, I wandered down to stall number five, an establishment called, appropriately enough, simply "Oyster Cake." The woman proprietor proudly told me she's been serving the same dish, and only that dish, for forty- five years. I figured, correctly, that after all that time she had to be pretty good at it. A throng of local customers, lining up for the deep-fried, Foochow-style beignet of oysters, minced pork, prawns, and batter, seemed to support this conclusion. I sat down at a center table (all the businesses share and jointly maintain the bare, bolted-down center tables), poked a squeeze bottle of spicy pepper sauce into the center of my cake, and gave it a good squirt. Pure goodness, washed down with a tall cup of sugarcane juice from an adjoining stall. Once I got started, it was hard to stop. At a business advertising "Pig Organ Soup," a brightly colored sign offered the appetizing-looking Malay specialty, ba ku the. I sat down once again and was presented with a brightly colored bowl of tender boiled pork ribs in a bowl lined with greens and clear, piping-hot broth. I ordered a freshly made mango juice and happily gnawed bones and slurped broth until full. It was tough to leave. Left untried were dozens of specialties, including an entire halal section set apart from the other stands; fried mee suah, sporting a tempting-sounding combination of mussels, pig's stomach, prawns, chicken gizzards, liver, and squid; and laksa, a spicy broth of seafood, noodles, and coconut milk. There was an enormous line of people waiting for a congee-style porridge—as in Taiwan and Thailand—and everywhere I looked, there seemed to be good, fresh, brightly colored stuff, brimming from crowded stalls with proud-looking proprietors. The place was clean, organized, friendly, and informal. Each business prominently displayed its grade from the health department. At the end of the day, in keeping with Singapore's stringent food- handling requirements, all leftovers would be disposed of—every business starting the next day from scratch with all new ingredients. This is what a food court should be, I thought, as I waddled toward the door. Imagine if there were a food court near you, at the mall, for instance, where instead of the soul-destroying mediocrity and sameness of American fast food, a wide spectrum of ethnically diverse lone proprietors—all of whom had been perfecting their craft for decades—offered up their very best. Imagine independently owned and operated businesses next door to each other, each serving one specialty as far from and different from the adjacent offering as each individual culture.

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

  [86] Equally interesting is Anne’s characteristic iconography, for she is generally shown as teaching her daughter to read, or at least as armed with a book, a motif unknown to the apocryphal Gospels and apparently first attested in the ninth century in a Byzantine source unlikely to have been on the radar of English theologians or artists (see Plate 22). Evidently the pious fifteenth-century Western public regarded it as perfectly natural for a girl to be instructed in basic literacy, enough at least for her to be able to say her prayers. [87] Problem aunts are also a feature of family cliché, and that role was filled for Mary and the Holy Family by a reconstructed Mary Magdalen. The reconstruction had begun quite early for the Latin West by Pope Gregory I, who, in 591, preached an unusually influential sermon that audaciously gathered into a single person three of the spare Marys in the New Testament, all as Mary Magdalen. As a result, she became a sinner from whom seven devils had been cast out, but also penitential in washing Jesus’s feet with her tears and listening to him rapt in her home in Bethany while her sister Martha bustled around with practical tasks, plus in the end becoming ‘Apostle to the Apostles’ as the first witness to the Resurrection. It was a rich mixture that in the next few centuries also annexed to itself the story of that hugely popular Eastern ex-prostitute Mary of Egypt. It also produced two successive and never wholly reconciled sets of relics of Mary Magdalen in eastern France, first at Vézelay, where they became a major prop of the Cluniac pilgrimage industry, and later at Saint-Maximin near Aix-en-Provence, watched over by the Dominicans. [88] The Magdalen was thus readily available to take her place in the construction of the Holy Family, aided by the fascinated speculations of celibate authors who added to her backstory. Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend dismissed the idea that she had embraced her life of excess after being left abandoned on her wedding day, but evidently some readers felt that he was being a spoilsport. England’s early printer William Caxton expanded the story without qualification in his English translation of Voragine’s work, adding for good measure that some laid the finger of blame on no less a figure than John the Evangelist, who had jilted her to go off and become Jesus’s Beloved Disciple. At least she had been a well-born demi-mondaine , and thus a worthy patron of all those Magdalen homes for the prostitutes of Europe’s cities. In any case, it was comforting to know that within Jesus’s inner circle there was a spectacular but beloved sinner who had suitably repented, a model for all those feeling wretched about their own sins and a little wary of Our Lady’s sinlessness. Accordingly, the Magdalen’s iconography varied between showing her in her alluring finery to extreme gaunt misery worthy of the desert years of Mary of Egypt (see Plates 13–15).

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Detailed surveys persistently indicate that human beings consider it to be important to have a perception of coherence in life allowing us to make sense of the world and our own personal existence; a sense of purpose, in which we discern core aims and aspirations for life; and a conviction of significance, in which our lives matter and are seen to have value.52 A helpful distinction can be drawn between ‘cognitive’ and ‘affective’ aspects of meaning. The former is about making sense of one’s experiences of life, while the latter concerns the feelings of satisfaction, fulfilment and happiness that result from our belief that we are living and acting meaningfully.53 Is this human longing for meaning in life a ‘want’ or a ‘need’?54 Is meaning something that some feel they would like, an optional extra that might add something to their existence? Or is it deeply rooted in our fundamental humanity, without which we cannot flourish – especially in the light of the ‘existential nihilism of the scientific worldview’? While this debate continues, an excellent case can be made that this is something integral and essential to human actualisation. Beliefs are important in grounding our frameworks of meaning – those complex webs of opinion that let us determine ‘how things are in the world’. I experienced this when I was drawn to Marxism as a teenager. Looking back on that distant and bygone cultural world of the 1960s, I can now see that I was tuning into the three elements of meaning – comprehension, purpose and mattering – proposed by George and Park, without consciously framing my response to Marxism with those specific terms. Marxism seemed to make sense of the complex and seemingly random flux of history; it gave me a sense of purpose as an agent of change who could end the oppression of the working classes, allowing me to feel I had significance in the grand scheme of history. I experienced both the ‘cognitive’ and ‘affective’ aspects of meaning, taking pleasure in being able to make intellectual sense of the world, and experiencing a sense of peace or fulfilment resulting from this perception of meaning and personal mattering. How does this work in a religious context? How does the threefold account of meaning set out by George and Park work out in practice? Given the diversity of religious beliefs, I shall explore how a Christian might respond to this, and leave space for others to make their own connections.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  the treetops, mainly of cedars and parasol pines and resembling a green, hilly landscape going down from the road below the house to the riverbank, I saw the dark folds of the mountain range on the other side of the river, and I spent hours looking out at the Irish Sea that was always changing with the time of day and the weather. How often I stood by the open window, unable to think coherently in the face of this spectacle, which was never the same twice. In the morning you saw the shadowy half of the world outside, the gray of the air lying in layers above the water. In the afternoon cumulus clouds often rose on the southwest horizon, their snow-white slopes and steep precipices displacing one another, towering above each other, reaching higher and higher, as high, Gerald once commented, said Austerlitz, as the peaks of the Andes or the Karakorum mountains. Or you might see rain falling in the distance, drawn inland from the sea like heavy curtains drawn in a theater, and on autumn evenings mist would roll on to the beach, accumulating by the mountainsides and forcing its way up the valley. But on bright summer days, in particular, so evenly disposed a luster lay over the whole of Barmouth Bay that the separate surfaces of sand and water, sea and land, earth and sky could no longer be distinguished. All forms and colors were dissolved in a pearl-gray haze; there were no contrasts, no shading anymore, only flowing transitions with the light throbbing through them, a single blur from which only the most fleeting of visions emerged, and strangely—I remember this well—it was the very evanescence of those visions that gave me, at the time, something like a sense of eternity. One evening, after we had done some shopping in Barmouth, Adela, Gerald, the dog Toby and I went out on the long footbridge running beside the railway line which, as I mentioned before, said Austerlitz, crosses the estuary of the Mawddach at this point, where it is over a mile wide. For a halfpenny each you could sit there on one of the seats protected on three sides, like little cabins, from wind and weather, with your back to the land and looking out to sea. It was the end of a fine day in late summer, the fresh salty air blew around us, and in the evening light the tide came in, gleaming like a dense shoal of mackerel, flowing under the bridge and up the river, so swift and strong that you might have thought you were going the other way, out to the open sea in a boat. We all four sat there together in silence until the sun had set. Even the usually restless Toby, who had the same odd ruff of hair around his face as the little dog belonging to the girl in the Vyrnwy photograph, did not move at our feet, but looked up, rapt, at the heights where the light still lingered and large numbers of swallows were swooping through the air. After a while, when the dark dots had become tinier and tinier in their arching flight, Gerald asked whether we knew that these voyagers never slept on the earth. Once they had left their nests, he said, picking up Toby and tickling

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Samba music was playing faintly in the background; beachgoers covered themselves with simple wraps and waited for the busses that would take them home, or strolled down the boulevard looking for friends and drinks and music. Lovers held each other by the waist wordlessly, friends chatted, hookers posed, food arrived at other tables, disappeared, was replenished. Bossa nova insinuated itself from the cafe next door, the chopps flowed, older couples sipped strong Brazilian coffee and stared blissfully out to sea. I sat for hours, perfectly content for a brief time at the center of the world. THE OLD, GOOD STUFF I was standing on East Sixtieth Street in front of the uninspiring facade of Le Veau d'Or, one of those places you walk by without a glance (hell, you've already walked by it a million times), where faded, framed reviews from likely long-dead restaurant critics still hang in the window. I was having a last cigarette before going inside to meet a friend for lunch, when a stranger approached me. "You're going to lunch here?" she demanded. "Uh . . . yes," I replied warily, a little afraid of what she might say next. "You're going to love it\" she squealed. "I adore this place! It's so hilariously, wonderfully old school!" Then, her face took on a suddenly serious expression as she considered something she hadn't thought of before. "Just don't tell anyone about it, okay?" A few minutes later, the ancient proprietor-waiter of Le Veau d'Or threw my coat over an unused table and ushered me across a small, mostly empty dining room to join my friend. A couple sat at a corner table, side by side on an aged red banquette. A few lone diners, regulars from the look of them, ate silently by themselves, concentrating on their food. At forty-seven years of age, I was the youngest person in the room. I was in The Restaurant That Time Forgot, an observation reinforced by one look at the menu, a historical document as untouched by the decades as the dining room. Reading down the list of menu items and the day's specials was like a blast from the past, a dizzying drop into a time warp. Even the typeface and logo looked like a 1940s film prop. As I read, I felt myself repeatedly catching my breath, inhaling sharply with each defiantly out-of-fashion offering: Celeri remoulade, saucisson chaud, poireaux vinaigrette, hareng a la creme, vichyssoise, endives roquefort . . . "Oh my god!" I spluttered idiotically, my face breaking into a big grin. "I can't believe this!" Trout meuniere, navarin d'agneau, sauteed chicken tarragon, poussin en cocotte "Bonne Femme," rognons de veau Dijon-naise, coq au vin, tripes a la mode de Caen . . . one forgotten French bistro classic after another. And the desserts! The desserts! Okay, creme caramel and tarte aux pommes—still obligatory.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Flourishing in an Uncertain WorldThe poet John Keats coined the term ‘negative capability’ to refer to a willingness to accept and embrace ‘being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts. While some might hastily draw firm conclusions about the significance of an idea or event, Keats encouraged remaining in a state of openness, continuing to probe and reflect on a complex reality to gain a more comprehensive understanding of it. Keats grasped the importance of a respectful contemplative musing on an object – such as a Grecian urn – without feeling compelled to arrive at a definitive and conclusive interpretation of its meaning or prematurely shutting down the process of reflection. He was willing to inhabit a realm of uncertainties, mysteries and doubts, affirming and experiencing the complexity and depth of the world rather than trying to subjugate it with the precision of logical analysis.13 This book leaves readers in a similar position. My concern has been to describe the epistemic dilemma in which we find ourselves, and to caution against prematurely dismissing some of the most significant beliefs that have shaped human culture and civilization throughout history. We can prove shallow truths, but not the profound existential, moral and spiritual beliefs that bestow dignity and significance upon human life. Some individuals may find this profoundly uncomfortable and may wish to eliminate the category of belief, or convert their own beliefs into certainties. Yet for reasons that we have explored in this book, I do not consider this to be a defensible position. Recognising that we live in a world of uncertainties, mysteries and doubts may be unsettling; however, this is surely preferable to constructing a world of imagined self-evident truths in response to our aversion to uncertainty. Though we live in a world that is existentially ambivalent and morally uninformative, beliefs make this is a profoundly habitable place by allowing us to see it (and ourselves) in a new way. Beliefs involve us, giving us the capacity to discern or create human meaning, purpose and significance, and live this out in community with others. So why believe? Because we’re human. Because it’s normal. Because it’s realistic. Belief is as natural to human beings as it is necessary for their wellbeing. We have to deal with humanity as it is, as ‘moral believing animals’,14 shaped in ways we do not fully understand by our evolutionary past and cultural present, rather than as the universalised logical or rational calculating machines envisaged by the Age of Reason, which held what turned out to be a forlorn hope of clear and certain answers to our deepest questions.

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

  [9] As a result, a great change in attitudes appeared in 1930, when the Lambeth Conference acknowledged in cautious Anglican-speak that there would be occasions when ‘a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood’, and ‘a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence’ would justify contraception in the light of Christian principles. The decision to use contraceptives should thus be up to the consciences of individual couples. More importantly, a majority among the bishops no longer considered birth control sinful by its nature. Some even argued that there was no real moral difference between sexual abstinence and artificial contraception, since both set out deliberately to prevent conception. [10] All through this discussion, eugenics remained significant; it was the chosen emphasis of the Church’s self-appointed expert on birth control, Theodore Woods, the Bishop of Winchester, who noted the alarming decline in birth rate among the middle and upper classes and considered that the lesser orders needed encouraging to limit their families so that the British population would be rebalanced towards the leaders of society and Empire. That argument swayed many doubters, though other speakers did say more about individual morality, and also equity for women. [11] The Anglican Communion had by whatever route become the first major Church grouping in the world to accept contraception as legitimate. The triumph of contraception in Anglicanism was sealed at the Lambeth Conference of 1958, where over three hundred bishops from forty-six countries unanimously decided that family planning was a ‘right and important factor in Christian family life’ – and it seems that where Anglicans lead, the world follows: in 2012 the United Nations declared access to family planning a universal human right. [12] Opposition to this momentous step had been still loud in the Lambeth debates in 1930. Anglo-Catholics were split, the final direction of the Conference being set from among their ranks by the moral theologian and later Bishop of Oxford Kenneth Kirk, while others in opposition echoed nineteenth-century Roman Catholic moral theology, chief among them being the veteran Anglo-Catholic leader and monk, Bishop Charles Gore of Oxford. Gore was an exceptionally clear-sighted theologian, austerely ready to call a spade a spade. He was prepared to spell out the inescapable link between contraception and homosexual sex: ‘what we used to call unnatural vice…appears to be very prevalent now.’ He insisted in classic Alexandrian fashion that there must be a connection between sex and reproduction: to separate sexual pleasure from procreation ‘justifies the philosophy of homosexuality’. Gore was of course perfectly correct, and prophetic of later developments in liberal Protestantism, as we will see. [13]

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  ‘Belief’ is now seen as relevant for both secular and religious domains, encompassing a rich spectrum of possibilities. Religious belief may be distinct in certain ways, but all human beings are ‘believers’ in some sense of the term. Both atheists and religious people can have ‘crises of meaning’ in their lives.8 The study of the process of believing is of wide and general interest, especially in understanding human flourishing. So why do we believe? The anthropologist Agustín Fuentes suggests that it is a bit like asking why human beings have five fingers. We just do. It is the way we are. It is part of the human condition, and it needs to be affirmed and embraced. We believe because we are human. Just like our large and complex brains, our ability to walk on our hind legs, our nimble fingers and hands, and our ability to make tools, the capacity for belief is part of our distinctive evolutionary history. To be human is to be able to believe.9 While nobody is really sure, we can certainly explore how both the act of believing and specific beliefs help to shape and influence the distinctive ways in which individual human beings engage with each other and the wider world. Belief is an ability to make connections that are not directly given in our observations, which open up a grander vision of our world, or to learn to see through the eyes of others, and thus extend the range of possibilities at our disposal. It is important to make a distinction between believing and beliefs. Believing is a human mental process; beliefs are the outcome of this process, often developing and changing over time, through interaction with others and exploration of our surroundings. Although we can ‘articulate’ – to use Charles Taylor’s helpful term – the intellectual content of our beliefs, they are not restricted to the realm of human reason. Beliefs actively shape the way in which we see and experience the world, and the way in which we enact our lives.10 Once a belief is acquired, a process of reflection and adjustment sets in, as the believer explores how this belief shapes their lives, often in dialogue with others who already share this belief, and have acquired a settled understanding of its implications and consequences. Let’s begin to explore the difference that belief makes to our understanding of reality, our modes of experiencing reality, and our way of living. We start by considering an aspect of believing highlighted in Colin McGinn’s stimulating study of ‘mindsight’ – the ability of certain beliefs to refocus the ‘mind’s eye’, enabling us to see the world in a new way.11

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  It's my favorite bar on earth; it has a great jukebox of obscure mid-seventies punk classics, and no matter how badly you behave at night, no one will remember the next day. The crowd is dodgy and unpredictable. You never know who's going to be draped over couches upstairs, or listening to live bands in the dungeonlike cellar; rock and rollers, off-duty cops, drunken tabloid journalists, cast and crew from Saturday Night Live, slumming fashionistas, smelly post-work chefs and cooks and floor staff, kinky politicos, out-of-work bone-breakers, or nodding strippers. It's heaven. If I gotta put on a tie or a jacket, the food better be damn good—and the food at Scott Bryan's Veritas on East Twentieth Street is always worth struggling into a shirt with buttons. It's also got the best wine list and one of the most knowledgeable sommeliers in New York. (Not that it matters to me; I usually drink vodka.) Scott's a friend, so I often sit at the bar and snack off the appetizer menu, but his braised dishes and seafood mains are always exceptionally good. Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin on West Fifty-first Street is, in my opinion, the best restaurant in New York, but then Eric is also a pal, so don't trust me. (The Zagats, Michelin, and the New York Times, however, are similarly enthusiastic.) Le Bernardin is my default special-event destination—even though Eric busts my balls fiercely every time I dine there: "What are you doing here? You sell- out! This ees not your kind of place! What ees happening to you? You've changed, man. You used to be cool!" The ultimate New York dining experience, however, may not be in a restaurant at all. For me, it's a rainy, lazy night at home in my apartment. I'll smoke a fat spliff, lay out some old newspapers on the bed, and call out for Chinese. I'll eat directly out of that classic New York vessel, the white cardboard takeout container, and watch a rented movie from nearby Kim's Video. Kim's specializes in hard-to-find exploitation, genre, cult, and art-house favorites, organized by director, so I can say, give me a Dario Argento, an early John Woo, Evil Dead II, The Conformist, or that Truffaut film where the two guys are both fucking Jeanne Moreau. Food never tastes better. HARD-CORE Gabrielle Hamilton, at thirty-eight, with no expression on her face, gazes out the open French doors of Prune, her restaurant on New York's Lower East Side, and considers my question: "How has kitchen culture changed since you got in the business?" "No one has sex with each other anymore," she replies, almost wistfully. "It's no longer 'Mom and Dad divorce and you have to wash dishes.' Now, it's 'Mom and Dad sent me to cooking school.'

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Though he likes, on occasion, to go out to listen to blues at Buddy Guy's or House of Blues, and says that, when cooking at home he listens to "Frank Sinatra when cooking Italian, rock and roll—like Van Halen and Eric Clapton—when making Asian food," most of the time after work he says he listens to "contemporary Christian or gospel music." It should be pointed out that chefs' hours are similar to musicians'. Marcus Samuelsson of New York's Aquavit says that not only is music "definitely an inspiration and helps [his] creativity on many levels" but that he listens to music "all the time. I go to listen to friends who play in bands. It's part of my social scene as well as my professional life." There are those chefs who are inspired by music and claim their after-work hours as a time conducive to a fertile imagination, and then there are those (like me) who seek only escape and distraction. Tom Colicchio of Craft says that after work he goes out to New York's Alphabet Lounge when Toke Squealy, the band of his guitar teacher, Alan Cohen, plays, or to Arlene's Grocery "to check out [his] friend Becca's band, Thin Wild Mercury." But, he adds, "I don't think it has any effect on what or how I cook. But it does provide time away from thinking about food or my restaurants." The more you're chained to the stove, the less likely you are, it seems, to claim music as an inspiration. WD-50's wildly creative chef-owner, Wylie Dufresne, who is still in nearly constant attendance at his sole operation, does allow music in his kitchen. "All day long," he says. The playlist is determined by "whoever gets to the radio or CD player first. It's a democracy in the kitchen. It can be anything from hip-hop, the Grateful Dead, Wilco, reggae, lots of mixes made by those in the kitchen and friends." But after work, he confesses, "I don't get out to see live music as I once did. But we do enjoy the jukebox at Doc Holliday's [a neighborhood saloon] after a long day." Maybe Norman Van Aken of Norman's in Coral Gables best captures the enduring spirit of what music, and after-hours music-related activity, mean to chefs. Though he too plays in a band (with fellow chefs Dean Fearing and Robert Del Grande) when he can, in his hours away from his restaurant he says he likes to "go down to Key West and look around for stuff that happens off Duval Street, back in the alleys. I love jukeboxes, roadhouses, or dives. Doesn't matter." He sums things up simply. "After family, two things saved my life. And cooking was one of them."

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Who can deny the desirability of experiencing pure flavor, texture, and culinary technique free from the constraints and intrusions of restrictive modern garb? It's an insult to the chef, isn't it? Like trying to eat in a straitjacket or fuck through a shower curtain. I don't know. Maybe I'd better pack one pair of Hush Puppies. Just in case. THE LOVE BOAT Tomorrow, there will be blender drinks and citron presses and fluffy towels by the pool. Smiling attendants will cool us with chilled white washcloths and spray our overheated, sun-browned flesh with refrigerated mist. The New York Times —or the newspaper of our choice—will be waiting in our mailboxes when we wake, our names printed on each page, and if we like, there will be tea and cakes, aromatherapy, a massage. We will glance at each other briefly, wordlessly, across the cigar room or the library or the whirlpool and know that we have made it, that we have put aside the cares of the world, that we have only to rest, to read, to play, to sleep—and that when we wake, we shall be in another time zone, another country. But tonight, seventy-six very rich people are pressed deep deep deep into their custom-made Italian sheets, squeezed down into their mattresses by the rise and fall of the rooms around them—then lifted, as if weightless, momentarily above their beds—then pressed down again. The vast living rooms, dining areas, foyers, bedrooms, and marble-appointed bathrooms that surround them tilt and sway, climb and dive as their floating condominiums negotiate force-seven near- gale-force winds and high seas of eighteen-to-twenty-seven-foot swells. Mashed and elevated ever so gently in their beds, most surely sleep. The ship does not protest. No groans or squeaks or creaking beams. She handles like a brand new Mercedes 600—large, yes, but solid, and smelling of new wood and new money. Through the airtight, soundproof sliding doors to our long outdoor private verandas, the wind and surf, the crash of waves against the hull are barely audible. The rat-tat-tat of raindrops on our outdoor Jacuzzis goes unheard. I'm making osso buco and wild mushroom-black truffle risotto. I'm chopping orange gremolata for garnish in my spacious and well-equipped kitchen as the floor pitches and rolls and threatens to deposit me face-first in the simmering pot of veal shanks on my spanking new, four-burner range top. A load of laundry hums behind me. The dishwasher does its business beneath a long expanse of counter, and when I toss a few herb stems, orange scraps, and vegetable trippings into the food disposal, it devours them without complaint. Tasteful but efficient railings keep my saucepots, plates, and glassware in place while I pick and weave unsteadily to the refrigerator, where a vichyssoise cools beside a constantly restocked supply of imported beer and juices. In the sleek, comfortable Danish Modern bedroom, my wife watches a film from the double bed.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  Rather than living behind high walls on the Riviera, or in some faux agrarian-wonderland compound in Napa, or getting their faces and buttocks stretched taut in LA, here they relax, read, spend time with a few select loved ones, looking comfortably untaut and unattractive in their swimwear by the pool: a little mist, a blender drink, a nice nap, some frozen fish for dinner, remaining in contact with their faraway empires via Internet and satellite phone. I will always remember an elegant, silver-haired Frenchman who, during lifeboat drill, looked warily at the rather extravagantly appointed emergency launches and wanted to know only if there was plenty of red wine stored among the provisions. I liked him for that. We ate the osso buco after the ship tied up at Puerto Limon, Costa Rica. And it was delicious. My risotto was perfect. SOUR IS CELEBRITY KILLING THE GREAT CHEFS? There has always been an element of the hustler/showman in the great chef. From Careme's extravagant pieces montees, best-selling books, and careful career management through Escof-fier's shrewd partnership with Cesar Ritz and on into the television age, smart chefs have known that simply cooking well is not enough. The chef in the dining room, mingling with the guests in an impeccably white starched jacket and toque, is a different man than the chef his cooks see. All chefs know and accept how much of the business of fine dining is artifice: The mood lighting, interior decoration, uniformed service staff, the napkins and silver, background music, and erotically descriptive menu text all conspire to create an environment for customers not much different than a stage set. Chefs have always written books, multiplatformed, and performed—to one extent or another—for their public. Whether coddling their customers or snarling at them, a chef caters to expectations, creating an image, hopefully one that will sell more food and attract more public. With the advent of the Food Network and expanded media interest in chefs worldwide, however, the bar has been raised considerably. Speaking well and being good on television, giving good interview—these skills now seem almost as important as knife work. Even the Culinary Institute of America, the prestigious professional cooking school, now offers media training as part of its curriculum. Perhaps, then, they should teach the cautionary tale of Rocco DiSpirito as an example of A Chef Who Went Too Far, one who went over the line—messed with the bitch goddess celebrity and got burned. Before television, Rocco was the well-respected chef of the three-star Union Pacific, a bright, charismatic guy with the world on a string. He was known for his skill in the kitchen, his innovative style, and his insistence on quality. As he became more recognized, he began expanding the "brand," consulting to other restaurants, signing multiple endorsement deals, showing up at openings and promo parties.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  She gagged. Rode his toe for all it was worth. She reached another high. Beautiful Tiffany clenched her pussy and the white bitch gagged. He lost sight. Everything was black. Her mouth professed her love for his meat with moans. His dick tightened in its skin. It expanded and he could feel the pressure. He grabbed her ears and brought himself closer. He invaded her throat. She allowed him. “Fucking dumb bitch,” he yelled. She was a good bitch, the way she joined him. They both had threesomes. She forgot about the pain in her back, the pulling of her hair, the stubby stabbing of her pussy, and the vile names he called her. It all meshed. His grip reached her throat and went to her shoulders. She allowed this. “Shit!” was screamed by both. He pumped and released. He held her head still. She quit stroking his digit and allowed him to coat her mouth. He tasted sweet. Almost beautiful. When he was done, so was she. She had mastered the art of the quiet come. She lifted herself and cleaned his toe with her panties. She never looked his way. Servants weren’t supposed to give eye contact. The movie wasn’t over. She would get her supporting actress role later. She stuffed her panties in her bag and walked to the door. He sat in the middle of the blue hue like a weathered saxophone player after a long set. He never looked her way. She opened the door. Her smile was absent. “I’ll be waiting by the bodega on the corner whenever you’re ready, sir.” He looked up and smiled. “Watch the Rodriguezes’ dog.” He paused. “Bitch.” HOMEY, LOVER, FRIEND Thomas Long “Wake ya tired ass up, girl,” Chastity yelled into the phone. “I ain’t sleep, fool. I’m just sitting up in here chillin’. Waiting on nothing. What’s up with you?” her friend Mikala asked. “I’m ain’t doing nothing special. What you getting into tomorrow?” “I’m probably going out to Arundel Mills Mall to do some shopping. Why? Are you tryin’ to tag along?” “Hell, yeah! The one thing I like best—next to gettin’ some dick—is spending money on new clothes!” “Girl, you crazy like a fox. Let’s hook up around one o’clock. I need to get outta this house just to clear my head, ya know what I’m sayin’?” “Is that nigga still trippin’? You need to get rid of his ass before it’s too late. Jamel ain’t the only fish in the sea. You can find you another man who knows how to twirk that thing,” Chastity said, putting her nose into Mikala’s personal business.

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

  There is a poetic as well as religious charm in the home of a Protestant country pastor who moves among his flock as a father, friend, and comforter, and enforces his teaching of domestic virtues and affections by his example, speaking louder than words. The beauty of this relation has often been the theme of secular poets. Everybody knows Oliver Goldsmith’s "Vicar of Wakefield," which describes with charming simplicity and harmless humor the trials and patience, the domestic, social, and professional virtues of a country pastor, and begins with the characteristic sentence: "I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married, and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population; from this motive I had scarcely taken orders a year, before I chose my wife, as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy face, but for such qualities as would wear well." Herder read this English classic four times, and commended it to his bride as one of the best books in any language. Goethe, who himself tasted the charm of a pastoral home in the days of his purest and strongest love to Friederike of Sesenheim, praises the "Vicar of Wakefield," as "one of the best novels, with the additional advantage of being thoroughly moral, yea in a genuine sense Christian," and makes the general assertion: "A Protestant country pastor is perhaps the most beautiful topic for a modern idyl; he appears like Melchizedek, as priest and king in one person. He is usually associated by occupation and outward condition with the most innocent conceivable estate on earth, that of the farmer; he is father, master of his house, and thoroughly identified with his congregation. On this pure, beautiful earthly foundation, rests his higher vocation: to introduce men into life, to care for their spiritual education, to bless, to instruct, to strengthen, to comfort them in all the epochs of life, and, if the comfort for the present is not sufficient, to cheer them with the assured hope of a more happy future."624 In his idyl "Hermann und Dorothea," he introduces a clergyman as an ornament and benefactor of the community. It is to the credit of this greatest and most cultured of modern poets, that he, like Shakespeare and Schiller, never disparaged the clerical profession. In his "Deserted Village," Goldsmith gives another picture of the village preacher as "A man who was to all the country dear, And passing rich on forty pounds a year. ... At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorned the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools who came to scoff remained to pray." From a higher spiritual plane William Wordsworth, the brother of an Anglican clergyman and uncle of two bishops, describes the character of a Protestant pastor in his "Ecclesiastical Sonnets." "A genial hearth, a hospitable board, And a refined rusticity, belong To the neat mansion, where, his flock among,