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.

Page 53 of 189 · 20 per page

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Then, every evening around eight o’clock, he rose from the table and left the big parlour to go to his room where he would stand by the window, praying — ‘so earnestly and intently that we . . . keeping silent, often heard some words and were amazed’, according to his companions. Afterwards, he would turn from the window, happy, ‘as if he had put down a burden’, and talk to his associates for another quarter of an hour 400 MARTIN LUTHER before going to bed. Luther knew that he was facing death, and he talked about how ‘we old ones have to live so long that we see into the backside of the Devil, and experience so much evil, faithlessness and misery’. There was also talk at dinner about whether the dead would recognise one another, one of the very few occasions on which Luther speculated about the afterlife. He was sure that they would — just as, when Adam first met Eve, he knew at once that she was flesh of his flesh.” On the evening of 17 February, when he went to his room with his two younger sons to pray, he was suddenly taken ill once more, with chest pains and coldness. Jonas and the Mansfeld preacher Michael Coelius immediately rushed to his room, and he was again rubbed with hot cloths. Countess Anna of Mansfeld was summoned to provide unicorn horn — actually the tusk of a narwhal — believed to be a powerful restorative, and Count Albrecht himself grated some of it into a glass of wine. Conrad von Wolfframsdorf, one of Albrecht’s councillors, took a spoonful of it first — perhaps because Luther feared that he would be poisoned, perhaps because he mistrusted such medi- cine.“ At about 9 p.m., Luther lay down to nap, and slept peacefully for an hour. When he awoke, he asked those who had kept watch ‘Are you still sitting up?’, wondering if they wanted to go to bed themselves. He then walked into the next room, presumably the privy, and as he crossed the threshold, he spoke the words ‘Into your hand Icommend my spirit, You have redeemed me, God of truth.’ Returning to bed, he shook each person’s hand and wished them goodnight, telling them to pray for God and his gospel, ‘because the Council of Trent’ — the meeting of the council of the Catholic Church which initiated the Counter Reformation had finally begun in December 1545 — and the evil Pope fights bitterly with him’.® Jonas, Luther’s two sons Martin and Paul, his servant Ambrosius and other servants kept watch by the bed.

• From Satyricon (1)

  While we were studying the labels, Trimalchio clapped his hands and cried, “Ah me! To think that wine lives longer than poor little man. Let’s fill ‘em up! There’s life in wine and this is the real Opimian, you can take my word for that. I offered no such vintage yesterday, though my guests were far more respectable.” We were tippling away and extolling all these elegant devices, when a slave brought in a silver skeleton, so contrived that the joints and movable vertebra could be turned in any direction. He threw it down upon the table a time or two, and its mobile articulation caused it to assume grotesque attitudes, whereupon Trimalchio chimed in: “Poor man is nothing in the scheme of things And Orcus grips us and to Hades flings Our bones! This skeleton before us here Is as important as we ever were! Let’s live then while we may and life is dear.” CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FIFTH. The applause was followed by a course which, by its oddity, drew every eye, but it did not come up to our expectations. There was a circular tray around which were displayed the signs of the zodiac, and upon each sign the caterer had placed the food best in keeping with it. Ram’s vetches on Aries, a piece of beef on Taurus, kidneys and lamb’s fry on Gemini, a crown on Cancer, the womb of an unfarrowed sow on Virgo, an African fig on Leo, on Libra a balance, one pan of which held a tart and the other a cake, a small seafish on Scorpio, a bull’s eye on Sagittarius, a sea lobster on Capricornus, a goose on Aquarius and two mullets on Pisces. In the middle lay a piece of cut sod upon which rested a honeycomb with the grass arranged around it. An Egyptian slave passed bread around from a silver oven and in a most discordant voice twisted out a song in the manner of the mime in the musical farce called Laserpitium. Seeing that we were rather depressed at the prospect of busying ourselves with such vile fare, Trimalchio urged us to fall to: “Let us fall to, gentlemen, I beg of you, this is only the sauce!” CHAPTER THE THIRTY-SIXTH.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  With the wealth from the mines, three pocket-handkerchief-sized Renaissance castles—one painted red, one yellow, and one blue, with shared access to the chapel—were now rebuilt and restructured to form one of the best-fortified castle complexes in Germany. It was popularly believed that when one of the counts commissioned an altarpiece for the chapel depicting the Crucifixion, he had the thief on Christ’s right painted as his most hated co-ruler. True or not, the thief has the individualized features of a portrait and is unusually not naked but sports the outfit of an executioner, with garish parti-colored hose. Since executioners were shunned as dishonorable, this would have been a delicious insult. 19 2. The altarpiece at Mansfeld Castle. The Luder family lived well. 20 They particularly relished the tender meat of suckling pigs, a comparatively expensive food at a time when beef imported from central Europe was starting to become more common. They also ate songbirds that they trapped. At least one member of the family was a passionate bird-catcher, because several of the goose-bone whistles used to attract birds have survived in the midden outside the house. There was a well-stocked kitchen, amply furnished with simple green and yellow plates and crockery; there were drinking glasses, too, still a luxury in this period. 21 This was certainly a family who liked their food, enjoyed the pleasures of life, and did not have to watch the pennies. 3., 4., and 5. In the illustrations to Georg Agricola’s treatise on mining, De re metallica (1556), two buxom women pound the ore on the long tables, a method that would still be in use in the nineteenth century. Two other women sieve charcoal, while in the background of a view of the gigantic bellows, a short-skirted maid can be glimpsed going about her work. 22 In most sixteenth-century urban households, the master’s wife shared in the business of the workshop, bustling over the apprentices and journeymen, sometimes even doing the bookkeeping. But among the mine-owning class the realms of husband and wife were sharply distinct. The miners lived in their own cottages with their families and the smelter-master’s wife was not responsible for their food or upkeep. Hans Luder himself went out to work each day beyond the town walls, where he was immersed in that strange world of smoke, shafts, and tunnels, while Luther’s mother stayed at home with the servants and children. This was a separation of spheres much more like that of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie, and very different from what was then the norm in early-modern German towns and farmsteads where women raised the poultry, grew the herbs, undertook the dairy work, and trekked to market.

• From Satyricon (1)

  My companions laughed, but I plucked up my courage and did not hesitate, but went on and examined the entire wall. There was a scene in a slave market, the tablets hanging from the slaves’ necks, and Trimalchio himself, wearing his hair long, holding a caduceus in his hand, entering Rome, led by the hand of Minerva. Then again the painstaking artist had depicted him casting up accounts, and still again, being appointed steward; everything being explained by inscriptions. Where the walls gave way to the portico, Mercury was shown lifting him up by the chin, to a tribunal placed on high. Near by stood Fortune with her horn of plenty, and the three Fates, spinning golden flax. I also took note of a group of runners, in the portico, taking their exercise under the eye of an instructor, and in one corner was a large cabinet, in which was a very small shrine containing silver Lares, a marble Venus, and a golden casket by no means small, which held, so they told us, the first shavings of Trimalchio’s beard. I asked the hall-porter what pictures were in the middle hall. “The Iliad and the Odyssey,” he replied, “and the gladiatorial games given under Laenas.” There was no time in which to examine them all. CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH. We had now come to the dining-room, at the entrance to which sat a factor, receiving accounts, and, what gave me cause for astonishment, rods and axes were fixed to the door-posts, superimposed, as it were, upon the bronze beak of a ship, whereon was inscribed: TO GAIUS POMPEIUS TRIMALCHIO AUGUSTAL, SEVIR FROM CINNAMUS HIS STEWARD. A double lamp, suspended from the ceiling, hung beneath the inscription, and a tablet was fixed to each door-post; one, if my memory serves me, was inscribed, ON DECEMBER THIRTIETH AND THIRTY FIRST OUR GAIUS DINES OUT

• From Satyricon (1)

  Philosophic dogmas concerning the brevity and uncertainty of life were ancient even in the time of Herodotus. They have left their mark upon our language in the form of more than one proverb, but in none is this so patent as “the skeleton at the feast.” In chapter lxxviii of Euterpe, we have an admirable citation. In speaking of the Egyptians, he says: “At their convivial banquets, among the wealthy classes, when they have finished supper, a man carries round in a coffin the image of a dead body carved in wood, made as life-like as possible in color and workmanship, and in size generally about one or two cubits in length; and showing this to each of the company, he says: ‘Look upon this, then drink and enjoy yourself; for when dead you will be like this.’ This is the practice they have at their drinking parties.” According to Plutarch, (Isis and Osiris, chapter 17.) the Greeks adopted this Egyptian custom, and there is, of course, little doubt that the Romans took it from the Greeks. The aim of this custom was, according to Scaliger, to bring the diners to enjoy the sweets of life while they were able to feel enjoyment, and thus to abandon themselves to pleasure before death deprived them of everything. The verses which follow bring this out beautifully. In the Copa of Virgil we find the following: “Wine there! Wine and dice! Tomorrow’s fears shall fools alone benumb! By the ear Death pulls me. ‘Live!’ he whispers softly, ‘Live! I come.’” The practical philosophy of the indefatigable roues sums itself up in this sentence uttered by Trimalchio. The verb “vivere” has taken a meaning very much broader and less special, than that which it had at the time when it signified only the material fact of existence. The voluptuaries of old Rome were by no means convinced that life without license was life. The women of easy virtue, living within the circle of their friendships, after the fashion best suited to their desires, understood that verb only after their own interpretation, and the philologists soon reconciled themselves to the change. In this sense it was that Varro employed “vivere,” when he said: “Young women, make haste to live, you whom adolescence permits to enjoy, to eat, to love, and to occupy the chariot of Venus (Veneris tenere bigas).” But a still better example of the extension in the meaning of this word is to be found in an inscription on the tomb of a lady of pleasure. This inscription was composed by a voluptuary of the school of Petronius. ALIAE. RESTITVTAE. ANIMAE. DVLCISSIMAE. BELLATOR. AVG. LIB. CONIVGI. CARISSIMAE. AMICI. DVM. VIVIMVS. VIVAMUS.

• From Satyricon (1)

  It was not long before Stychus brought a white shroud and a purple-bordered toga into the dining-room, and Trimalchio requested us to feel them and see if they were pure wool. Then, with a smile, “Take care, Stychus, that the mice don’t get at these things and gnaw them, or the moths either. I’ll burn you alive if they do. I want to be carried out in all my glory so all the people will wish me well.” Then, opening a jar of nard, he had us all anointed. “I hope I’ll enjoy this as well when I’m dead,” he remarked, “as I do while I’m alive.” He then ordered wine to be poured into the punch-bowl. “Pretend,” said he, “that you’re invited to my funeral feast.” The thing had grown positively nauseating, when Trimalchio, beastly drunk by now, bethought himself of a new and singular diversion and ordered some horn-blowers brought into the dining-room. Then, propped up by many cushions, he stretched himself out upon the couch. “Let on that I’m dead,” said he, “and say something nice about me.” The horn-blowers sounded off a loud funeral march together, and one in particular, a slave belonging to an undertaker, made such a fanfare that he roused the whole neighborhood, and the watch, which was patrolling the vicinity, thinking Trimalchio’s house was afire, suddenly smashed in the door and rushed in with their water and axes, as is their right, raising a rumpus all their own. We availed ourselves of this happy circumstance and, leaving Agamemnon in the lurch, we took to our heels, as though we were running away from a real conflagration. ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: Affairs start to go wrong, your friends will stand from under Doctor’s not good for anything except for a consolation Everybody’s business is nobody’s business He can teach you more than he knows himself Learning’s a fine thing, and a trade won’t starve Men are lions at home and foxes abroad No one can show a dead man a good time The loser’s always the winner in arguments Too many doctors did away with him We know that you’re only a fool with a lot of learning Whenever you learn a thing, it’s yours Believes, on the spot, every tale You can spot a louse on someone else VOLUME 3.--FURTHER ADVENTURES OF ENCOLPIUS AND HIS COMPANIONS CHAPTER THE SEVENTY-NINTH.

• From Shunned (2018)

  He embraced the magic and mystery of life and had a very tender and reverential spiritual life that showed up in his love of nature, poetry, philosophy, and art. When you combine that with his mental prowess and generous spirit, you have a very elegant man. Stories of his generosity with time and resources are legion. Becoming a stepmother was challenging for me. I was over forty and had conceded that I would not have my own children in this lifetime, a decision made easier by Bob, who did not want more kids. It took a while for me to get my bearings. Will and I warmed to each other right away. At first, Christine was not sure she liked having me in the picture, and I found her adolescent moods a bore. My stepkids were raised in privileged circumstances: private schools, tutors, music lessons, a swimming pool in the backyard, Hawaiian vacations. It was a far cry from my own upbringing and sometimes triggered judgments and resentments that I needed to let go of in order to deepen my relationship with them and their father. It was a deliberate choice that I did not assume any parenting responsibilities—these children already had two engaged parents, so that base was covered. Over the years, I assumed the role of a steady and supportive adult who loved them. We made our home in Marin County, surrounded by redwoods in a tri-story house tucked into a canyon on Mount Tam. Raven families nest in the boughs of my favorite tree while a pair of turquoise hummingbirds sustain themselves on our lavender and Mexican sage. Life and work unfolded in rich and surprising ways as I entered a period of deep peace, joy, and productivity. Like everyone, I had my share of garden-variety life challenges, but I could always find much to be grateful for. [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] One evening I was home alone, reading a fine book. The telephone rang, and it was my dad. I’d been married two years, but we had not spoken in over eight years. His age—now seventy— came through the receiver; his voice, scratchy from the flu, sounded dull as a used pencil. He got right to the details, like someone pressed for time. His mother, my ninety-four-year-old grandmother, had been in decline for many months, he said, and had just been admitted to a hospice home. She was in and out—but mostly out—of consciousness, and no one expected her to live more than a week or two. “It’s been a long haul,” said Dad. “Your mom is over there every day, checking in with the hospice staff. It’s starting to take its toll on all of us. We’re ready for this to be over. Grandma just needs to die.” He seemed resigned to the waiting. Growing up, I never felt a sustained closeness with Grandma T., a nickname she encouraged.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Norman took the evening shift, and Demetri was there each morning, seven days a week, as sure as the sunrise. Norman was a round and jolly soul with skin as black as the darkest shadow. He lived on the South Side and insisted on calling me Miss Linda. He often read a crumpled copy of the King James Bible as he sat behind the marbled desk, wearing a black suit and tie. Demetri liked to brag about his Sicilian heritage. His hair was sleek and shiny, like a raven, and the shaved skin of his neck bulged over the edge of his white collar. Straight-faced he looked imposing, but when he smiled, an unexpected humanity pushed through the lines on his face and he would light up, eager to break away from his Tribune and thermos of coffee to greet the residents passing through. It was all so urban . The first month of my new job, I devoted time to educating myself and getting the lay of the land. I reviewed the list of area banks and bank presidents and investigated their backgrounds. I was swimming in new waters and wanted to understand the customer experience of what I’d be selling. My days were filled with internal meetings, making the rounds to coworkers, seeing all the areas that would interact and support the client. There was a whole team of salespeople like me, and another group of managers and customer service people to handle the clients once our work was done. The other salespeople took me on calls, and the managers invited me to join them on client progress meetings. I rode along as a passenger throughout Chicagoland, further grounding myself in the territory inside and outside the city. The financial analyst helped me understand the complex pricing model, so that I’d be able to explain the revenue strategy on all proposals with an executive management committee and get their approval. All the numbers and variables were intimidating, and my head seized with information overload as I sat through my first monthly staff meeting. About twenty people, gathered around a long, rectangular table, filled a large conference room. Our chief product officer was explaining the newest iteration of pricing interchange, followed by a long question-and-answer period. The bankcard industry is a very esoteric branch of financial services that has its own unique language. The acronyms were flying left and right. “Will I ever learn all this?” I whispered to the person seated next to me. “No,” he said frankly. “I’ve been doing this for years, and trust me, it’s impossible to know it all. And it keeps changing with updates in technology. Each deal will teach you something new, you’ll see.” Despite my overwhelm, it was a very liberating time for me personally. New friends and coworkers knew only the “present” me—the single, thirty-three-year-old executive type—and whatever else I chose to reveal. Here there was no “past” of religious rules, unstudied Watchtower and Awake! magazines, or dejected family.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  As a result the history of the Reformation was profoundly distorted. Biographies were largely written with no sense of the social and cultural world of Saxony or of Wittenberg, and thus tended to reinforce the view of Luther as a lone theological hero, who stands above time and space. Even so, there have been some subversive moments. By a fine irony, the best scholarly study of Wittenberg, unmatched since, testifies to the legacy of the early women’s movement: the 1927 work by the economic and social historian Edith Eschenhagen in which she analyzed Wittenberg’s tax records. 19 All these works had a strong influence on me when I began work on this book in 2006, and reinforced my view that a sense of place was essential to understanding Luther’s reformation. I spent as much time as I could in the archives at Wittenberg, which are housed in Friedrich the Wise’s castle. During the lunch hour I wandered around the town. I visited all the places where Luther had lived before going to Wittenberg, and I often read in the archives, not so much to find out about Luther as to get a sense of the local economy and power structure. I read accounts of Luther by his contemporaries, foes as well as friends—and I discovered that his antagonists often proved surprisingly shrewd about his psychology and motivations. But it was reading his letters that gave me the greatest pleasure and the richest encounter with the man. I read them not to corroborate or date Reformation events, but as literary sources that conveyed his emotions and illuminated his relationships with others. Luther’s letters were designed to make things happen. His mistakes, slips, self-justifications, and fondness for particular words reveal much about what moved him. In the early years of the Reformation, for example, he talked constantly of invidia, or envy, attributing it to his opponents—although it is hardly likely that they would have envied a penniless, powerless monk, while he, on the other hand, had every reason to be preoccupied with those he envied. I began to reflect that many of his theological concerns were closely related to the strong conflicts that shaped his psychology. Luther’s letter-writing habits offered perhaps the most intriguing insights. Although he had had secretaries since his days as a monk, he wrote his letters himself, except when severe illness prevented him. His hand—small, neat, and well shaped—moves confidently across the page, and Luther almost always knew what size paper he would need, suggesting a remarkable ability to judge in advance how much he was going to write. Over the years his handwriting remained largely unchanged except for a tendency to become slightly smaller and more angular, the hand muscles evidently becoming more tense. Extraordinarily, in an age when letters were routinely passed from person to person, were forged or intercepted, and when every chancellery filed drafts, Luther kept no copies.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  This is one of Luther’s most creative insights. His positive attitude toward the body represented a major rupture from the asceticism of late medieval Christianity, which had marked him deeply. As he looked back twenty years later, and talked with his friends at table, being a monk was all about controlling one’s diet and sleep, castigating the flesh, and fighting sexual urges. Luther’s original insight had been into the nature of sin and penance: Human beings could not make themselves perfect and win acceptance with God because of their good deeds—they had to accept their sinfulness, and recognize that God in his justice accepts sinners. Thus they were at one and the same time sinners and saved. Luther’s radical Augustinianism had enabled him to come to terms with his own sinfulness. But it now also made him accept human physicality, along with emotional constitutions (which in humoral thought were allied), and here Luther went well beyond Augustine and perhaps also beyond Staupitz’s cheerful acceptance of human imperfection. It was one of the gigantic leaps that Luther made between 1519 and 1520, and it was as much a personal transformation as it was intellectual. Calvin’s later solution to the dilemma of the Eucharist would be to say that Jesus was speaking symbolically, and so language did not refer to the actual thing. Such an interpretation was anathema to Luther, for whom it was vitally important that the miracle of the Mass was exactly that—a miracle. It did not need to make logical sense. This was why Luther liked to cast himself as a “fool,” whose foolishness was God’s wisdom—a conventional trope but one whose appeal was very deep. In theology, Luther believed, philosophy was just a distraction from the meaning of Scripture, and one must give up on attempting to find God through “the whore” of reason, for the point of faith is that it exceeds rationality and reveals the distance between God and man.51 —THE most beautiful writing from this period is Luther’s On the Freedom of a Christian, which appeared in November 1520. Written in German, it is barely thirty pages long. With delicious irony, Luther wrote it at the same time as a letter of “apology” to Pope Leo, and presented the essay as a gift to the Pope along with the letter. Although the treatise is divided into thirty points—the numerals are usually omitted from modern editions in English—it is not so much a sermon as a comforting devotional tract.52 There is no polemic or aggression. It is deeply musical, and one can almost hear Luther’s voice conversing with the reader. He begins by stating a paradox: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”53 [image "32. Martin Luther, Von der freyheyt eynes Christenmenschen, 1520." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_036_r1.jpg] [image "32. Martin Luther, Von der freyheyt eynes Christenmenschen, 1520." file=images/Rope_9780812996203_epub3_036_r1.jpg] 32. Martin Luther, Von der freyheyt eynes Christenmenschen, 1520.

• From Satyricon (1)

  Trimalchio was hugely tickled at this challenge. “Slaves are men, my friends,” he observed, “but that’s not all, they sucked the same milk that we did, even if hard luck has kept them down; and they’ll drink the water of freedom if I live: to make a long story short, I’m freeing all of them in my will. To Philargyrus, I’m leaving a farm, and his bedfellow, too. Carrio will get a tenement house and his twentieth, and a bed and bedclothes to boot. I’m making Fortunata my heir and I commend her to all my friends. I announce all this in public so that my household will love me as well now as they will when I’m dead.” They all commenced to pay tribute to the generosity of their master, when he, putting aside his trifling, ordered a copy of his will brought in, which same he read aloud from beginning to end, to the groaning accompaniment of the whole household. Then, looking at Habinnas, “What say you, my dearest friend,” he entreated; “you’ll construct my monument in keeping with the plans I’ve given you, won’t you? I earnestly beg that you carve a little bitch at the feet of my statue, some wreaths and some jars of perfume, and all of the fights of Petraites. Then I’ll be able to live even after I’m dead, thanks to your kindness. See to it that it has a frontage of one hundred feet and a depth of two hundred. I want fruit trees of every kind planted around my ashes; and plenty of vines, too, for it’s all wrong for a man to deck out his house when he’s alive, and then have no pains taken with the one he must stay in for a longer time, and that’s the reason I particularly desire that this notice be added: --THIS MONUMENT DOES NOT-- --DESCEND TO AN HEIR--

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  And only someone with a sense of humor, a stubborn realism, and a remarkable ability to engage the deepest loyalties of others could have avoided the martyrdom that threatened. The Reformation is often lauded as heralding the arrival of modernity, the freedom of the individual, or, alternatively, the growth of a confessional world that yoked religious to political identity. I hope to have shown that none of these views do justice to Luther or to the movement he started. Luther was not “modern,” and unless we appreciate his thought in its own unfamiliar and often uncomfortable terms, we will not see what it might have to offer us today. What Luther meant by “freedom” and by “conscience” were not what we mean by these words now. It had nothing to do with allowing people to follow their conscience; it meant our capacity to know with God, a knowledge he believed to be objective truth. Luther split the Church and ushered in the denominational era, but he was always a maverick thinker who did not believe in following rules or in devising courts to impose morality. He was a man who retained a healthy mistrust of Reason, “the whore.” B OTH M ÜNTZER AND Luther interpreted the events of the Peasants’ War as a sacred drama and drew upon apocalyptic rhetoric: The Devil was raging, presaging the Last Days. But whereas Müntzer believed that the Last Days were imminent and must be ushered in with the sword, Luther never predicted a specific date. His apocalyptic language was more of a rhetorical intensifier than a literal prediction. He imbued his own times with significance as he identified the Pope as the Antichrist, but such language paradoxically also helped make the present seem less important compared with the divine drama of the coming end of the world. It never, however, led Luther to retreat from engagement with the present, nor did it lead him to attempt to overthrow the existing order. 1 Equally, while Müntzer, at least at first, seems to have believed that the seriousness of these exceptional times demanded sexual abstinence from the godly and complete dedication to the divine, Luther drew the opposite conclusion. He decided to annoy the Devil by committing a particularly large sin: He got married. Moreover, his choice of wife was the most provocative possible, which he knew would enrage the Devil—and the Catholics—most. He married a nun. From 1523, groups of nuns, convinced by evangelical teachings against monasticism, had begun leaving their convents and arrived in Wittenberg, where it fell to Luther to find lodgings for them and even provide them with new clothes. 2 He was not entirely innocent in all this. That year, Leonhard Koppe, a businessman and a relation of his friend Amsdorf, smuggled a group of nuns out of the Nimbschen convent in Duke Georg’s territory and over the border to Wittenberg, hiding them among barrels of herrings.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I lay behind the bench and didn’t get up until Otto went out to wrestle. Still, the gym seemed to spin when I stood up. We were down 24–20 going into Otto’s match. If he hadn’t pinned his man we’d have lost. The pressure was really on, but pressure doesn’t bother Otto. He’d led us out for our exercises yelling, “Corega! Coreeega!” He’s been fascinated with the word ever since he discovered I use that stuff instead of regular toothpaste. Coach made him captain for both the Custer and Battleground matches. Both teams have big tough heavyweights. The worst is over for us now, though. Custer is the tougher of the two, so tomorrow night should be easier. Coach is going to have Doug Bowden wrestle in my place tomorrow night. That will give Doug some tournament experience and it will give me a little rest. Coach and I talked about it and decided missing one match wouldn’t make me lose my edge. Shute is only four days away. Otto’s down behind the Lewis and Clark bench talking to Romaine. They’ve just finished their exercises and Battleground is out on the mat. The gym’s been full all day. Most people come and go, but the really interested ones bring something to eat so they can see all the matches. I met the folks I’ll be staying with. Their kid, Chris Carpenter, drew with Schmooz in a tremendous match this afternoon. Otto stops to say hello to Romaine’s folks on his way back up to where we’re sitting. They go to all of Romaine’s matches, even road trips. Rayette smiles up at Otto and I’ll bet half the gym bristles with hard-ons. * * * I’m curled up in my sleeping bag in the Carpenter’s basement under the pool table. Rance Prokoff from L.C. is asleep on the davenport. He lost pretty bad to a state champ from Battleground tonight. We shot a game of eight-ball to see who got the davenport and Rance won. Actually, it’s pretty cozy under here. I’ve got a little desk lamp hooked up and I’m reading a book Cindy got me for Christmas. It’s called Another Roadside Attraction and it’s by a guy named Tom Robbins who lives over around Seattle. It’s funny and sexy, but the thing that blows me away the furthest about it is how it fits into the stuff I’m talking about in my senior thesis. I don’t know if I’m becoming monomaniacal or what, but everywhere I look I keep seeing things that fit. Robbins’s characters don’t believe the purpose of life is to die and be resurrected in a Christian heaven, so they aren’t terribly surprised when one of them finds the mummified body of Christ where it’s been stashed in the Vatican basement all these years. For a lot of people that knowledge would knock all the meaning or purpose out of living. But these Robbins people create their own meaning in the way they live.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  How can this be? Luther argues that we have a spiritual and a physical nature, but he does not make this distinction in order to denigrate the flesh. Rather, he argues that the inner man should have faith in God, and we cannot arrive at faith through works of the outer man. What clothes we wear, what regulations we observe—none of it matters and it cannot make us acceptable to God. We are free from doing works. Faith concerns the inner man and—using the simile he had employed to explain the Real Presence—just as the iron becomes red hot, uniting with the flame, so our inner self becomes united with faith and with God. As he continues to describe faith, Luther makes a uniquely sixteenth-century comparison. To believe someone is to consider them to be a pious, truthful person, whose word will always be pious and truthful, “which is the greatest honor which one man can do another.” In the kind of honor society in which Luther lived, and in which one’s word was binding and contracts depended on trust, honor was a fundamental value, an economic as well as a moral quality. The biblical law teaches the outer man just how sinful he is, and this recognition is essential before we can arrive at faith. Nothing, no human act, can be free of what Luther calls sin; we cannot, for example, avoid “evil desires.” This is why good deeds cannot make us pleasing to God. As externals, they cannot enter into the realm of “faith.” Luther’s gloomy assessment of human nature actually leads to an uplifting conclusion: If everything we do is tainted with sin, then it also doesn’t matter; that is just how we are, and we cannot make ourselves godly by trying to pile up good deeds.54 Throughout the tract Luther uses seemingly simple but powerful words—freedom, faith, honor. The directness of the language allows them to resonate, but they could be understood in a variety of different ways. His use of “freedom,” alongside the idea that the Christian is both lord and servant, was dynamite. By addressing all Christians as equals, be they princes or commoners, and by insisting on their freedom, he broke with social deference. Addressing his reader repeatedly with the informal du, he speaks to “alle” (“all”) and “yderman” (“everyone”). Moreover, he argues that “everyone” is entitled to make up their own mind on spiritual matters: “From what has been said, everyone can pass a safe judgment on all works and laws and make a trustworthy distinction between them and know who are the blind and ignorant pastors and who are the good and true.”55 This gave ordinary Christians the ability to decide who was preaching true Christian doctrine, rather than blindly accepting the word of the priest set over them. Scripture was clear, Luther argued, and its meaning apparent to all.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I’ve seen plenty of deer and I was pretty sleepy, so I didn’t pay as much attention as Carla. I mostly just wanted to relax. I was dancing my toes to a quiet Don McLean tune called “Winterwood” when Carla said softly, “Here come some more.” Sure enough, four more deer stood at the edge of the trees. “Are those mule deer?” Carla asked. “I can’t tell,” I said. “I’d have to see their tails.” You’re supposed to be able to tell mule deer by their big ears, but I never can. They’re also supposed to be stockier than whitetails. “I think they’re mule deer,” Carla said. I sat with my eyes closed, very comfortably tucked in my corner of the DeSoto, wondering why you see more falling stars in summer than in winter. I opened my eyes and looked at Carla and then closed them again and stretched my leg until my foot found her thermal crotch. Her hand rubbed across my big wool boot sock and patted my foot. Then I felt some woolly toes pad along my inner thigh and then a warm squirrelly foot tried to make off with my acorns before I trapped it. Feeling each other’s pressure was all we were after. “They are mule deer,” Carla whispered. “They have very big ears compared to the others.” And her toes gave me a prod that said “I told you so.” It also made me instantly horny. Carla felt it with her foot and responded with more pressure. To which my cock responded with increased turgidity. “You’re supposed to relax for tomorrow,” she said. “I think it would be relaxing,” I replied. “And don’t forget,” Carla said on her way over to my side of the seat, “you said it burns up two hundred calories.” “We have a secret from these deer” was the last thing I remember hearing before Carla woke me in the garage this morning. She said I was sleeping so soundly when we got home from seeing the deer that she didn’t want to wake me to come to bed. XVII decided to walk home from Dr. Livengood’s office. I weigh 149.5 on his scale, so I need all the exercise I can get. It turned out that getting his permission to drop the weight was no sweat at all. He just listened to my story, then to my chest, then pushed me on the scale. He read off 50, but it was really 49.5. “Shouldn’t be any problem. A little jogging and a healthy shit ought to do it now,” he said, and smiled. “Flush out that Christmas turkey.” “Wouldn’t have seemed like Christmas without a little white meat and turkey gravy.” I smiled sheepishly. I nearly lost control at the dinner table yesterday. Dr. Livengood smiled again and patted me on the shoulder as though I were a little kid and then took my weight-loss form over to his desk and signed it.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  Carpenter brings the small, thin broiled steaks on a platter. The smell elicits a growl of yearning from my stomach. I smile over my Nutrament. Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter and Chris’s younger brother and sister have a leisurely go at their pancakes and eggs. Chris’s little brother, Craig, wrestled at 103 yesterday for the Custer JVs. “Look like you’ll be able to hold that weight, Louden?” Mr. Carpenter asks. “Looks like it, sir,” I reply. My stomach growls again. “May not sound like it, though,” I add. We all laugh. “We read that article about you and Gary Shute in Sports Illustrated ,” Mrs. Carpenter says. It wasn’t really an “article.” It was just a couple lines and pictures of Shute and me in that “Faces in the Crowd” section they have. “Half our team’s driving over to Spokane to see you guys wrestle,” Chris says. “You better get there early,” says Rance through a mouthful of steak. We change the subject to snowmobiles. The Carpenters have two on a trailer at the side of the house. Some family strife erupts when Chris’s sister, Andie, says she’d rather go snowmobiling than see Chris wrestle. Argument on the subject is short. The Carpenters are a wrestling family. I don’t feel uncomfortable this morning. It feels good to be here in the Carpenters’ house. They make you feel at home. I feel the same way about the Baldosiers, although they’re a very different kind of people. They invited me for dinner about a month before they left for Brazil. Jean-Pierre and I got to know each other in physics class last year. He’s the best-educated kid I know. His dad is an engineer who designs nuclear power plants. Jean-Pierre was born in France, went to grade school in Brazil, junior high is Pasco, Washington, where he got into wrestling while his dad was doing something at the Hanford Atomic Works, then high school in Spokane because his dad got a teaching job at Gonzagua U. The family left this fall to go back to Brazil so Mr. Baldosier could work on a nuclear power plant somewhere down there. Jean-Pierre is staying with the Raskas so he can finish up at David Thompson. Then he’s going to college in France, where his real mother lives. That’s why he isn’t doing his senior thesis, the lucky bastard. He says a French college won’t care whether he graduates with honors from an American high school. In fact, I think he has to take one whole year of prep courses before he can even start at college there. It was a cultural experience to have dinner with the Baldosiers. They eat like Brazilians and speak French and English and Portuguese all at once. I never get to hear many foreign languages, so it was a treat for me. I learned to say “beans” and “rice” in Portuguese and “please” and “thank you” in French.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  The JVs pulled it out, 22–19. He tells us, like he always does, that we’ll have a minute of silence before we head out. Schmoozler turns off his James Taylor tape. Jerry and Mike Konigi, who are Buddhists, pray. So do Seeley and Williamson and Smith and Raska, who are what they call “born-again” Christians. I really like that none of the religious guys on the team evangelizes anymore. Coach, who is a Christian, gives a talk at the start of the season about peoples’ rights to their views of life. He had to start doing it in my sophomore year because there got to be so much conflict among born-agains and heads and guys who just wanted to be left alone to wrestle that it wasn’t hardly any fun to come to practice. Once I asked Coach what he prayed about in our minute of silence and he said he thanked God for the gift of life and prayed that nobody got hurt too bad. Sausage, I’m sure, usually spends his silent minute dreaming of at least a hand job after the match. I doubt his thoughts are on his cock this evening, though. He and Kuch are huddled in the corner and Kuch is whispering softly. I know exactly what he’s saying: “Even if my people must eventually pass from the face of the earth, they will live on in whatever men are fierce and strong, so that when women see a man who is proud and brave and vengeful, even if he has a white face, they will cry: ‘That is a Human Being!’ ” I never know what Balldozer is thinking. I really like him, but with his French and Brazilian backgrounds, we have some kind of cultural gap. Schmooz is pillowed upon his warm-up jacket, singing softly, “In my mind I’m gone to Carolina. . . .” I can see his lips move. Otto’s got his feet up on the wall and behind his closed eyes he’s watching films on the ceiling. He’s only thinking of the way to win. Before a wrestling match or a football game Otto becomes cybernetic. Name a move and he tells you the counter. Name a play and he tells you his assignment. “Guy goes for a single leg, I go for a whizzer. Thirty-four-trap: I pull and rip their tackle at the line, then look for the linebacker.” I’m not thinking much of anything. * * * Lewis and Clark is about finished with their exercises. They’re the only team that doesn’t run out on the mat. They walk out real slow, swaying druidically in their black hooded warm-up suits. Their hoods come down so far you can’t see their faces. Mash leads the way. They look like mean lumps of coal, except for Romaine Lewis. He’s tall and slim and his hood won’t fit over his hair. He wears it in dreadlocks and looks like a mean black male Medusa. And L.C. doesn’t shout out their exercises.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  The old lawyer had once been in love with the lady, but after ten years of courtship had not been able to win her. Now there was always a certain tone of flirtation in their voices, but an imposing, dignified flirtation, more like ancient gallantry. The meeting took place in the lady’s country house. It was warm and all the doors were open. One could see the hills. The Indian servants were carrying on some celebration. They had surrounded the house with torches. Perhaps frightened by this and unable to escape the circle of fire, a certain small animal scurried along and into the house. Two minutes later the grand old lady was screaming and contorting herself in her chair, with an attack of hysterics. The servants were called. The witch doctor was called. The witch doctor and the lady locked themselves in her room together. When the witch doctor came out, he was carrying the chanchiquito in his arms, and the chanchiquito looked worn, as though his expedition had almost cost him his life. This story had frightened Laura—the idea of an animal burrowing his head between her legs. She was afraid even to insert her finger. But at the same time the story revealed to her that between a woman’s legs there was room for an animal’s long snout. Then one day during vacation, when she was playing on the lawn with other friends, and had thrown herself back to laugh at some story or other, a big police dog was immediately upon her, sniffing and smelling at her clothes, and he stuck his nose between her legs. Laura screamed and pushed him off. The sensation had frightened and excited her at the same time. AND NOW Laura was lying on a wide, low bed, with her skirts wrinkled, her hair loose, and rouge spread unevenly around her lips. By her side lay a man twice her weight and size who was dressed like a workman, with corduroy trousers and a leather jacket, which he had opened, showing his bare neck, not confined by a shirt collar. She shifted slightly to study him. She could see the high cheekbone shaped in such a way that he seemed to be always laughing, and his eyes turned upwards at the corners with perpetual humor. His hair looked uncombed, and his gestures were easy as he smoked. Jan was an artist who laughed at hunger, at work, at slavery, at everything. He preferred to be a tramp rather than lose his freedom to sleep as late as he liked, to eat what he could find at the time he wanted it, to paint only when the passion for work took him.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Chapter 14 [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] I was born into the Hebrew persuasion, but then I converted to narcissism. —Woody Allen T he next week, temperatures plunged back to single digits and a blizzard canceled out all views from my balcony. There was possibility in the fresh and consuming whiteness. Brio and bounce had returned to my countenance. More than ever, work took center stage, as I immersed myself in the conversion phase that comes with each sale. I kept appointments with David’s staff and held internal meetings with Cindy and others following through on the promises I’d made. I learned as much about the practical side of the industry in those four or five weeks as I’d learned in the previous eight months. It was unusual for the salesperson to be so involved in a conversion, but I wanted to understand the practical aspects of our “back room” operation. It was very satisfying to see it all come together and provide David with regular updates of our progress. We were both happy with the end result. My focus was split between the conversion and ongoing sales efforts in Chicago and beyond. I started flying to Houston every other week, where I had to establish relationships from scratch through cold calling. This was much different from being in the close-knit Chicago banking community, where I could rely on Harris Bank’s regional dominance and reputation to open doors. One early spring day I was enjoying lunch at an outdoor café in Houston’s Galleria area, basking in sunshine and seventy-degree temperatures as bleak weather persisted at home. It was a nice break; I was often overwhelmed with the scope of intention and diligence needed to get things off the ground: learning my way around yet another new city, identifying the people of influence there, crafting a compelling enough story to get a foot in the door. As the waitress set down my sandwich plate, I thought about how much I dined solo. When I wasn’t at work, I spent a lot of time in my own company, traipsing through airports, using the treadmill in some vacuous hotel fitness center, reading a novel, or gazing out the window of an airplane. Munching on my potato salad, I felt oddly assured about my new capacity for self-sufficiency. I was standing on my own two feet in every way; emotionally, financially, spiritually, physically. It was lonely at times, but even that opened the way for richly textured thoughts and ideas about life to bubble up and nourish me. My days had become so full of people and problem-solving that I welcomed quiet moments like these, free to reflect, uninterested or unable to muster energy for socializing. About that time, another Chicago bank I’d pursued for months decided to go with us, requiring me to negotiate a second contract. I greeted the news with glee and gratitude on the inside but a lack of fanfare on the outside, attempting to project the persona of an old-hand salesperson.

• From Shunned (2018)

  “And what a joy it is to have teenagers, right, especially when they’re old enough to drive?” Asking after Sheena, I learned she was feeling the weight of her pregnancy and having mini-contractions. She was home obeying doctors’ orders to avoid crowds and stay off her feet. “We’re going to check on her after this,” Tyler said. “She lives about a half hour from here.” The crowd had thinned here, near the front. We had not moved from our rows of seats. Most people had gathered in back, near the fireplace and seating area. A rotating crowd gathered to watch the looping slide show of Grandma’s life, having ordinary and congenial conversation, but eventually we all stood mute, looking at one another. “Shall we join everyone else?” Bob asked, raising one arm in that direction. Everyone nodded and disbanded as we made our way back down the center aisle. I was reluctant to leave my brother, but I expected we would have plenty of time to visit at dinner. Everything hinged on dinner. It would be for immediate family only. Mom explained that bringing all the aunts, uncles, and cousins together would require renting a large room at a restaurant, and no one had the wallet or energy for that. Now that I knew everyone in my immediate family was speaking to me, at least for that day, I was looking forward to going to Mom and Dad’s house for dinner. Sipping syrupy pink punch from a paper cup, I carried on introducing Bob to my relatives. My intention was to stay long enough to be polite and say hello to all of these distant relatives I hadn’t seen in years. Occasionally one of the “good friends of the family” stood at a distance and smiled at me but rebuffed my attempts to engage in conversation. Others walked past without acknowledging me. This included people who’d watched me grow from infancy through school and onto marriage, friends who had always been close to my family and remained so. One of these was a buxom brunette with spindly legs who used to babysit me when she was a teenager. Years later, I watched over her twins and took them out in field service during their summer vacations. She smiled as she passed, grabbed my hand to squeeze it, and, without saying a word, disappeared through the exit. In contrast, a few of the friends did approach me, friendly as could be, seemingly genuine in their delight at seeing me, eager to meet Bob, nothing amiss. Part of me was crying, and another was laughing at the absurdity of it. None of these people could possibly know anything about my life now, and I saw no reason to take offense, whether they approached me or not. For the moment, I found enough room in my heart for all of it.