Despair

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 Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  He looked at her curiously, uneasily, half-suspiciously. And she felt he wasn't telling her the real truth; he wasn't telling himself the real truth, that was it. He disliked any suggestion of a really exceptional human being. People must be more or less at his level, or below it. Connie felt again the tightness, niggardliness of the men of her generation. They were so tight, so scared of life! CHAPTER VII When Connie went up to her bedroom she did what she had not done for a long time: took off all her clothes, and looked at herself naked in the huge mirror. She did not know what she was looking for, or at, very definitely, yet she moved the lamp till it shone full on her. And she thought, as she had thought so often ... what a frail, easily hurt, rather pathetic thing a human body is, naked; somehow a little unfinished, incomplete! She had been supposed to have rather a good figure, but now she was out of fashion: a little too female, not enough like an adolescent boy. She was not very tall, a bit Scottish and short; but she had a certain fluent, down-slipping grace that might have been beauty. Her skin was faintly tawny, her limbs had a certain stillness, her body should have had a full, down-slipping richness; but it lacked something. Instead of ripening its firm, down-running curves, her body was flattening and going a little harsh. It was as if it had not had enough sun and warmth; it was a little greyish and sapless. Disappointed of its real womanhood, it had not succeeded in becoming boyish, and unsubstantial, and transparent; instead it had gone opaque. Her breasts were rather small, and dropping pear-shaped. But they were unripe, a little bitter, without meaning hanging there. And her belly had lost the fresh, round gleam it had had when she was young, in the days of her German boy, who really loved her physically. Then it was young and expectant, with a real look of its own. Now it was going slack, and a little flat, thinner, but with a slack thinness. Her thighs, too, that used to look so quick and glimpsey in their female roundness, somehow they too were going flat, slack, meaningless. Her body was going meaningless, going dull and opaque, so much insignificant substance. It made her feel immensely depressed and hopeless. What hope was there? She was old, old at twenty-seven, with no gleam and sparkle in the flesh. Old through neglect and denial, yes denial. Fashionable women kept their bodies bright like delicate porcelain, by external attention. There was nothing inside the porcelain; but she was not even as bright as that. The mental life! Suddenly she hated it with a rushing fury, the swindle!

• From Story of O (1954)

  There was no question of using it that night. On the contrary, they wanted to hear her scream; and the sooner the better. The pride she mustered to resist and remain silent did not long endure: they even heard her beg them to untie her, to stop for a second, just for a second. So frantically did she writhe, trying to escape the bite of the lashes, that she turned almost completely around, on the near side of the pole, for the chain which held her was long and, although quite solid, was fairly slack. As a result, her belly and the front of her thighs were almost as marked as her backside. They made up their minds, after in fact having stopped for a moment, to begin again only after a rope had been attached first to her waist, then to the pole. Since they tied her tightly, to keep her waist snug to the pole, her torso was forced slightly to one side, and this in turn caused her buttocks to protrude in the opposite direction. From then on the blows landed on their target, unless aimed deliberately elsewhere. Given the way her lover had handed her over, had delivered her into this situation, O might have assumed that to beg him for mercy would have been the surest method for making him redouble his cruelty, so great was his pleasure in extracting, or having the others extract, from her this unquestionable proof of his power. And indeed he was the first to point out that the leather whip, the first they had used on her, left almost no marks (in contrast to the whip made of water-soaked cords, which marked almost upon contact, and the riding crop, which raised immediate welts), and thus allowed them to prolong the agony and follow their fancies in starting and stopping. He asked them to use only the leather whip. Meanwhile, the man who liked women only for what they had in common with men, seduced by the available behind which was straining at the bonds knotted just below the waist, a behind made all the more enticing by its efforts to dodge the blows, called for an intermission in order to take advantage of it. He spread the two parts, which burned beneath his hands, and penetrated—not without some difficulty—remarking as he did that the passage would have to be rendered more easily accessible. They all agreed that this could, and would, be done.

• From Story of O (1954)

  O saw. She saw his ironic but attentive face, his eyes carefully watching Jeanne’s half-open mouth and her neck, which was thrown back, tightly circled by the leather collar. What pleasure was she giving him, yes she, that this girl or any other could not? “That hadn’t occurred to you?” he added. No, that had not occurred to her. She had collapsed against the wall, between the two doors, her arms hanging limp. There was no longer any need to tell her to keep quiet. How could she have spoken? Perhaps he was touched by her despair. He left Jeanne and took her in his arms, calling her his love and his life, saying over and over again that he loved her. The hand he was caressing her neck with was moist with the odor of Jeanne. And so? The despair which had overwhelmed her slowly ebbed: he loved her, ah he loved her. He was free to enjoy himself with Jeanne, or with others, he loved her. “I love you,” he had whispered in her ear, “I love you,” so softly it was scarcely audible. “I love you.” He did not leave until he saw that her eyes were clear and her expression calm, contented. Jeanne took O by the hand and led her out into the hallway. Their mules again made a resounding noise on the tile floor, and again they found a valet seated on a bench between the doors. He was dressed like Pierre, but it was not Pierre. This one was tall, dry, and had dark hair. He preceded them and showed them into an antechamber where, before a wrought-iron door which stood between two tall green drapes, two other valets were waiting, some white dogs with russet spots lying at their feet.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Within that story, “sin” becomes the refusal of humans to play their part in God’s purposes for creation as a whole. It is a vocational failure as much as what we call a moral failure. This vocational failure, choosing to worship the creature rather than the Creator, is the choice of death over life. This is why “sin” and “death” are so inextricably intertwined in biblical thinking. The former is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; the latter is not the inflicting of arbitrary punishment. To be sure, they can often be spoken of, not least in the prophets, as a legal code to which appropriate penalties are attached. That is a natural way, on the surface, to refer to the whole sorry state of affairs. But deep down underneath there is nothing arbitrary about sin or death. Choose the one, and you choose the other. Worship idols, and you’ll go into exile. Obey the serpent’s voice, and you will forfeit the right to the Tree of Life. You can’t have it both ways. When, therefore, the biblical writers see the story of Israel as Adam and Eve writ large, they are making the same point on a grand, historical scale. Despite repeated warnings, Israel as a whole commits apostasy, worships idols, and copies the lifestyles of the non-Israelite nations all around. The result, predicted in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, is exile. Genesis 3 is inscribed into the pages of history. Again and again Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel insist on the point: exile has come about because of sin, the sin that fundamentally consists in and then grows out of idolatry. The people’s sins have been stacked up higher and higher, and they have finally paid the price. Exile is therefore to be understood as a kind of corporate national death. Leaving the land is leaving the garden; leaving the ruined Temple means being debarred from the Tree of Life. Israel is, after all, no better than the pagan nations. This is made abundantly, embarrassingly clear in Deuteronomy 32, the great “Song of Moses,” predicting the ways in which Israel would spurn the covenant God and behave like the nations all around. (It is significant for understanding the first century that both the apostle Paul and the historian Josephus seem to have thought that Deuteronomy 32 was coming true in their own day.) If, therefore, exile is eventually undone—whatever precisely that will mean—this will be both a “forgiveness of sins” and a new life the other side of death—and the restoration of the life-giving divine Presence. A resurrection, in fact. Ezekiel 37 makes exactly this point, using resurrection as a glorious, if somewhat lurid, picture for Israel’s rescue from Babylon.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Intuition is an example of bottom-up processing. This is in contrast to the top-down processing reflected in Descartes’ “I think; therefore I am.” Bottom-up processing is more potent than top-down processing in altering our basic perceptions of the world. This potency derives from the fact that we are first and foremost motor creatures. Secondarily , we employ and engage our observing/perceiving/thinking minds. We think because we are, rather than existing because we think. When asked in a pub whether he wanted another beer, Descartes responded, “I think not.” But did he disappear? Descartes’ theorem might be updated to reflect bottom-up processing as follows: “I sense, I act, I feel, I perceive, I reflect, I think and I reason; therefore I know I am.” It has been implicitly assumed that psychological change occurs, primarily, through the vehicle of insight and understanding or through behavior modification. The study of mental processes has, however, proven to be of only limited value in helping people transform in the aftermath of trauma. Often people are left besieged with distressing symptoms for years. Lasting change, rather than being primarily a psychological, top-down process (i.e., starting from our rational thoughts, perceptions and disciplined behavior choices), occurs principally through bottom-up processing (where we learn to focus on physical/physiological sensations as they continuously evolve into perceptions, cognitions and decisions). Transformation occurs in the mutual relationship between top-down and bottom-up processing. As sentient beings, we own the latent capacity for a vital balance between instinct and reason. From this confluence, aliveness, flow, connection and self-determination come to pass. Trauma and Disembodiment Traumatized individuals are disembodied and “disemboweled.” They are either overwhelmed by their bodily sensations or massively shut down against them. In either case, they are unable to differentiate between various sensations, as well as unable to determine appropriate actions. Sensations are constricted and disorganized. When overwhelmed, they cannot discern nuances and generally overreact. When shut down, they are numb and become mired in inertia. With this habitual deadening, they chronically underreact even when actually threatened and are thus likely to be harmed multiple times. In addition, they may actually harm themselves in order to feel something—even if that something is pain. In the poignant 1965 film The Pawnbroker , Rod Steiger plays Sol Nazerman, an emotionally deadened Jewish Holocaust survivor who, despite his prejudice, develops affection for a young black man who works for him. When, in the last scene, the boy is killed, Sol impales his own hand on the sharp memo spindle that holds the bills so that he feels something, anything! § The constriction of sensation obliterates shades and textures in our feelings. It is the unspoken hell of traumatization. In order to intimately relate to others and to feel that we are vital, alive beings, these subtleties are essential.

• From Story of O (1954)

  This was true to such a degree that when René relaxed his grip upon her—or when she imagined he had—when he seemed distracted, when he left her in a mood which she took to be indifference or let some time go by without seeing her or replying to her letters and she assumed that he no longer cared to see her and was on the verge of ceasing to love her, then everything was choked and smothered within her. The grass turned black, day was no longer day nor night any longer night, but both merely infernal machines which alternately provided, as part of her torture, periods of light and darkness. Cool water made her nauseous. She felt as though she were a statue of ashes—bitter, useless, damned—like the salt statues of Gomorrah. For she was guilty. Those who love God, and by Him are abandoned in the dark of night, are guilty, because they are abandoned. They cast back into their memories, searching for their sins. She looked back, hunting for hers. All she found were insignificant acts of kindness or self-indulgence, which were not so much acts as an innate part of her personality, such as arousing the desires of men other than René, men she noticed only to the extent that the love René gave her, the certainty of belonging to René, made her happy and filled her cup of happiness to overflowing, and insofar as her total submission to René rendered her vulnerable, irresponsible, and all her trifling acts—but what acts? For all she had to reproach herself with were thoughts and fleeting temptations. Yet, he was certain that she was guilty and, without really wanting to, René was punishing her for a sin he knew nothing about (since it remained completely internal), although Sir Stephen had immediately detected it: her wantonness.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Pierre fastened the chain to the ring in her collar and invited her to follow him. She got up, felt herself being pulled forward, and walked. Her bare feet were icy cold on the tiles, and she gathered she was following the hallway of the red wing; then the ground which was still as cold, became rough underfoot: she was walking on a stone floor, made of sandstone or granite. Twice the valet made her stop, she heard the sound of a key in a lock, of a lock being turned and opened, then locked again. “Careful of the steps,” said Pierre, and she went down a staircase, and once she stumbled. Pierre caught her around the waist. He had never touched her except to chain or beat her, but here he was now forcing her down onto the cold steps, which she tried to grasp with her bound hands to keep from slipping, and he was taking her breasts. His mouth moved from one to the other, and as he pressed against her, she could feel him slowly rising. He did not help her up until he had taken his pleasure with her. Damp and trembling with cold, she finally descended the last steps and heard another door open, which she went through and immediately felt a thick rug beneath her feet. There was another slight tug on the chain, then Pierre’s hands were loosing her hands and untying her blindfold: she was in a round, vaulted room, which was very small and low: the walls and arches were of unplastered stone, and the joints in the masonry were visible. The chain which was attached to her collar was fastened to the wall by an eye-bolt opposite the door, which was set about three feet above the floor and allowed her to move no more than two steps forward. There was neither a bed nor anything that might have served as a bed, nor was there any blanket, only three or four Moroccan-type cushions, but they were out of reach and clearly not intended for her. Within reach, however, in a niche from which emanated the little light which lighted the room, was a wooden tray on which were some water, fruit, and bread. The heat from the radiators, which had been installed along the base of the walls and set into the walls themselves to form around the entire room a sort of burning plinth, was none the less insufficient to overcome the odor of earth and mud which is the odor of ancient prisons and, in old châteaux, of uninhabited dungeons. In that hot semi-darkness, into which no sound intruded, O soon lost all track of time. There was no longer any day or night, the light never went out. Pierre, or some other valet—it hardly mattered which—replaced the water, fruit, and bread on the tray whenever it was gone, and took her to bathe in a nearby dungeon. She never saw the men who came in, for each time a valet preceded them to blindfold her eyes, and removed it only after they had left. She also lost track of them, of who they were and how many there were, and neither her soft hands nor her lips blindly caressing were ever able to identify who they were touching. At times there were several, more often only one, but each time, before they came near her, she was made to kneel down facing the wall, the ring of her collar fastened to the same eye-bolt to which the chain was attached, and whipped. She placed her palms against the wall and pressed her face against the back of her hands, to keep from scratching it against the stones; but she scraped her knees and her breasts on them. Thus she lost track of the tortures and screams which were smothered by the vault. She waited. Suddenly time no longer stood still. In her velvet night her chain was unfastened. She had been waiting for three months, three days, or ten days, or ten years. She felt herself being wrapped in a heavy cloth, and someone taking her by the shoulders and knees, lifting and carrying her. She found herself in her cell, lying under the black fur cover, it was early afternoon, her eyes were open, her hands free, and René was sitting beside her, stroking her hair.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Among other reflections it has been fascinating to see how, once various initial preparations had been put in position “just in case,” it was almost impossible to prevent war breaking out: a massive buildup of troops here, a total breakdown of trust there. As with Mammon and Aphrodite, once people hand over their human responsibility to the dark forces of military violence, something seems to take over whose consequences cannot be foreseen, let alone controlled. Shakespeare’s warning, “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war,” comes true again and again, as previously hidden lusts and drives, let off the normally restraining moral leash, wreak all kinds of violent wickedness, producing a chaos that only exhaustion, human or financial, can stop. As long as societies do with Mars what we seem to have done with Mammon and Aphrodite, giving them unquestioning worship and obedience, this pattern will continue, and the human disaster that results—millions of refugees, orphans, ruined cities—will be seen simply as another “problem” to be solved by politicians rather than as the telltale signs of an idolatry of which we should repent. Part of believing in Jesus’s victory on the cross is believing that he there overcame those idols, so that it is now possible—despite what many say and most believe—to resist them and find radically different ways of addressing global difficulties. Not for nothing did Jesus invoke God’s blessing on the peacemakers. These idolatries will not be avoided and their power will not be broken by moral effort alone. In the New Testament moral effort—which is enjoined on all Jesus followers—takes place in the context of the initial victory won on the cross. Moral effort needs mental effort, and the mental effort needs to be focused on that victory and turned into prayer for the victory to be applied today and tomorrow. The sacraments will help here, but spiritual guidance and counsel will help a great deal too. So too moral failure needs to be seen for what it is. Nobody imagined that Christians would be perfect, just like that! When a Christian sins, in this or any area of life, what is happening is a radical inconsistency, like a musician playing music from the wrong symphony or a host at a dinner party pouring out vinegar instead of wine. This relates to the problem I highlighted earlier: if we see the human vocation simply as the “works contract,” then we are likely to regard moral failures as merely the breaking of particular rules. They are much more than that. They are a refusal to follow the script for the great new drama in which we have been given our parts to learn.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  We might not like it, but we can at least make sense of it. But what are we to make of the father who can no longer eroticize the mother of his children? This story, though just as common, is admitted far less frequently. When Carla and Leo came to see me, she was at her wit’s end. They’d been together seventeen years: the first six a frenzy of the flesh, the next four the chaos of babyhood, the last seven a sexual desert. She went from talking to pleading to screaming to compensating. She had a number of flings and then a serious affair. He found out, she threatened divorce, he suggested therapy, and here they are. She says, “I am so sick of the excuses. It’s his work, it’s the stress, it’s his dying father, he has to get up early, he hasn’t been to the gym and so he doesn’t have the energy, his back hurts, it’s my breath, it’s my weight, it’s his weight. I took it personally for so long, but now I’m done. I love this man, I’m prepared to stay, but I can’t live like this.” He says, “I always considered myself to be very competent sexually. We kid around that we broke furniture when we first started dating; there was a lot of passion. I never looked at the kids as a defining moment in my life sexually, but obviously something switched somewhere deep inside.” I learn that Leo had begun to withdraw physically when Carla became pregnant with their first son, and they had no sexual contact at all during the last trimester. Leo just came home later and later from work. Carla knew something was up, though they never discussed it openly. “What changed for you when she became a mother?” I ask. “Her significance,” he answers. “Her whole being turned from being my lover, my partner, and my wife to being the mother of my son. And then the mother of my other son. For a while they needed her completely, and that was really OK with me. I thought it was the most awesome thing in the world to have our babies sleeping next to us, for her to nurse them through the night. I wasn’t jealous at all. I’m a very loving, nurturing father myself.” “What’s it like to suck the breast of a woman who’s been nursing a baby?”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Every day in my work I am confronted with the detailed realities that hide behind statistics. I see people who are such good friends that they cannot sustain being lovers. I see lovers who hold so tenaciously to the idea that sex must be spontaneous that they never have it at all. I see couples who view seduction as too much work, something they shouldn’t have to do now that they’re committed. I see others who believe that intimacy means knowing everything about each other. They abdicate any sense of separateness, then are left wondering where the mystery has gone. I see wives who would rather carry the label “low sexual desire” for the rest of their lives than suffer explaining to their husbands that foreplay needs to be more than a prelude to the real thing. I see people so desperate to beat back a feeling of deadness in their partnerships that they’re willing to risk everything for a few moments of forbidden excitement with someone else. I see couples whose sex lives are rekindled by an affair, and others for whom an affair effectively ends what little connection remained. I see older men who feel betrayed by their newly unresponsive penises, who rush for Viagra to soften the anxiety of the hard facts; I see their wives made uncomfortable by the sudden challenge to their own passivity. I see new parents whose erotic energy has been sapped by caring for an infant—so consumed by their child that they don’t remember to close the bedroom door once in a while. I see the man who looks at porn online not because he doesn’t find his wife attractive but because her lack of enthusiasm leaves him feeling that there’s something wrong with him for wanting sex. I see people so ashamed of their sexuality that they spare the one they love the ordeal. I see people who know they are loved, but who long to be desired. They all come to see me because they yearn for erotic vitality. Sometimes they come sheepishly; sometimes they arrive desperate, dejected, enraged. They don’t just miss sex, the act; they miss the feeling of connection, playfulness, and renewal that sex allows them. I invite you to join me in my conversations with these questers as we work toward opening up and coming a step closer to transcendence. For those who aspire to accelerate their heartbeat periodically, I give them the score: excitement is interwoven with uncertainty, and with our willingness to embrace the unknown rather than to shield ourselves from it. But this very tension leaves us feeling vulnerable. I caution my patients that there is no such thing as “safe sex.”

• From Story of O (1954)

  This is how they lift the fish at the market, O was thinking, by the gills, and how they pry open the mouths of horses. She also recalled that the valet Pierre, during her first evening at Roissy, had done the same to her after having fastened her in chains. After all, she was no longer mistress of her own fate, and that part of her of which she was least in control was most assuredly that half of her body which could, so to speak, be put to use independently of the rest. Why, each time that she realized this, was she—surprised was not really the right word—once again persuaded, why was she paralyzed each time by the same feeling of profound distress, a sentiment which tended to deliver her not so much into the hands of the person she was with as into the hands of him who had turned her over to alien hands, a sentiment which drew her closer to René when others were possessing her and which, here, was tending to draw her closer to whom? To René or to Sir Stephen? She no longer knew.… But that was because she did not want to know, for it was clear that she had belonged to Sir Stephen now for … how long had it been? … Anne-Marie had her stand up and put her clothes back on. “You can bring her to me whenever you like,” she said to Sir Stephen. “I’ll be at Samois (Samois … O had expected: Roissy. But it did not mean Roissy; then what did it mean?) in two days’ time. That will be fine.” (What would be fine?) “In ten days, if that suits you,” Sir Stephen said, “at the beginning of July.” In the car which was driving back home, Sir Stephen having remained behind at Anne-Marie’s, she remembered the statue she had seen as a child in the Luxembourg Gardens: a woman whose waist had been similarly constricted and seemed so slim between her full breasts and plump behind—she was leaning over limpid waters, a spring which, like her, was carefully sculptured in marble, looking at her reflection—so slim and frail that she had been afraid the marble waist would snap. But if that was what Sir Stephen wanted …

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  swamped with applications that year, and recommended that I apply to some other schools. His list was familiar. In a handwritten postscript he added that he remembered my father, and wished me all the best. I fixed on this cordial nod as a signal of favor. When the forms were all in, I sat down to fill them out and ran into a wall. I could see from the questions they asked that to get into one of these schools, let alone win a scholarship, I had to be at least the boy I’d described to my brother and probably something more. Geoffrey was willing to take me at my word; the schools were not. Each of the applications required supporting letters. They wanted letters from teachers, coaches, counselors, and, if possible, their own alumni. They asked for an account of my Community Service, and left a space of disheartening length for the answer. Likewise Athletic Achievements, likewise Foreign Travel, and Languages. I understood that these claims were to be confirmed in the letters of recommendation. They wanted my grades sent by Concrete High on its official transcript form. Finally, they required that I take a prep-school version of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, to be administered in January at the Lakeside School in Seattle. I was stumped. Whenever I looked at the forms I felt despair. Their whiteness seemed hostile and vast, Saharan. I had nothing to get me across. During the day I composed high-flown circumlocutions, but at night, when it came to writing them down, I balked at their silliness. The forms stayed clean. When my mother pressed me to send them off, I transferred them to my locker at school and told her everything was taken care of. I did not trouble my teachers for praise they could not give me, or bother to have my collection of C’s sent out. I was giving up— being realistic, as people liked to say, meaning the same thing. Being realistic made me feel bitter. It was a new feeling, and one I didn’t like, but I saw no way out. MY FATHER CALLED. He called on a night when both Dwight and Pearl were out of the house, and that was a lucky thing, because my mother took the call and everything about her immediately changed. She became girlish. I realized who it was and stood beside her, straining to hear words in the rumble of my father’s voice. He did most of the talking. My mother smiled and shook her head. Now and then she laughed skeptically and said, “We’ll have to see,” and “I don’t know about that.” Finally she said, “He’s right here,” and handed the receiver over to me.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Sexual desire does not obey the laws that maintain peace and contentment between partners. Reason, understanding, compassion, and camaraderie are the handmaidens of a close, harmonious relationship. But sex often evokes unreasoning obsession rather than thoughtful judgment, and selfish desire rather than altruistic consideration. Aggression, objectification, and power all exist in the shadow of desire, components of passion that do not necessarily nurture intimacy. Desire operates along its own trajectory. The Flannel Nightgown My first meeting with Jimmy and Candace was a powerful illustration of this all too common story. Jimmy and Candace are young musicians in their early thirties who’ve been married for seven years. They are a biracial couple: she is African-American; he is of Irish descent. She exudes confidence in her boy jeans and aquamarine nails; he has the Quiksilver signature all over him. They’re attractive, spunky, and on the go—and they are in despair over what’s happening to them. “We’re not having sex, and this has been going on for years,” Candace explains. “We are terrified about it and so upset. And I think we each have a deep-rooted fear that we’re going to find out it’s unfixable.” Like John, Candace has experienced what feels like an inescapable loss of desire in every relationship she has been in; and what emerges from our conversation is that she understands her pattern. “My problem, my side of it, doesn’t have to do with Jimmy,” she explains. “When I’m intimate with someone, when I’m in love and he loves me, I suddenly lose interest sexually. I feel like there’s something missing and I can’t get close to my partner on a sexual level. I had a number of long-term relationships before I met Jimmy, and it happened each time.” Candace knows who Jimmy is for her. He’s reliable, thoughtful, and intelligent. They share a rich partnership. And while she wants these characteristics in a man, their collateral consequences are counter-erotic for her. Faced with Jimmy’s kindness, she isn’t able to experience her own sexual energy. “What I can tell you,” she says, “is that his kindness makes me feel safe, but when I think about who I want to sleep with, safe is not what I look for.” “Because it’s not what?” I ask her. “It’s not transgressive enough? It’s not aggressive enough?” “It’s not aggressive enough.” “And he is in some way too much of a conscientious lover?” “Yeah.” “And he’s constantly paying attention to you?” “Which is very thoughtful.” “Very thoughtful indeed, but not exciting.” I add. “It’s all very affectionate, very cozy; it’s just not sexual. You’ve replaced sensual love with something else. It’s what the sex therapist Dagmar O’Connor calls comfort love.” Candace nods, “Like a flannel nightgown.”

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Yet we balk at the idea of establishing distance within the relationship itself—the very place that grants us the delicious togetherness in the first place. We can tolerate space anywhere but there. Sexual desire does not obey the laws that maintain peace and contentment between partners. Reason, understanding, compassion, and camaraderie are the handmaidens of a close, harmonious relationship. But sex often evokes unreasoning obsession rather than thoughtful judgment, and selfish desire rather than altruistic consideration. Aggression, objectification, and power all exist in the shadow of desire, components of passion that do not necessarily nurture intimacy. Desire operates along its own trajectory. The Flannel Nightgown My first meeting with Jimmy and Candace was a powerful illustration of this all too common story. Jimmy and Candace are young musicians in their early thirties who’ve been married for seven years. They are a biracial couple: she is African-American; he is of Irish descent. She exudes confidence in her boy jeans and aquamarine nails; he has the Quiksilver signature all over him. They’re attractive, spunky, and on the go—and they are in despair over what’s happening to them. “We’re not having sex, and this has been going on for years,” Candace explains. “We are terrified about it and so upset. And I think we each have a deep-rooted fear that we’re going to find out it’s unfixable.” Like John, Candace has experienced what feels like an inescapable loss of desire in every relationship she has been in; and what emerges from our conversation is that she understands her pattern. “My problem, my side of it, doesn’t have to do with Jimmy,” she explains. “When I’m intimate with someone, when I’m in love and he loves me, I suddenly lose interest sexually. I feel like there’s something missing and I can’t get close to my partner on a sexual level. I had a number of long-term relationships before I met Jimmy, and it happened each time.” Candace knows who Jimmy is for her. He’s reliable, thoughtful, and intelligent. They share a rich partnership. And while she wants these characteristics in a man, their collateral consequences are counter-erotic for her. Faced with Jimmy’s kindness, she isn’t able to experience her own sexual energy. “What I can tell you,” she says, “is that his kindness makes me feel safe, but when I think about who I want to sleep with, safe is not what I look for.” “Because it’s not what?” I ask her. “It’s not transgressive enough? It’s not aggressive enough?” “It’s not aggressive enough.” “And he is in some way too much of a conscientious lover?” “Yeah.” “And he’s constantly paying attention to you?” “Which is very thoughtful.” “Very thoughtful indeed, but not exciting.” I add. “It’s all very affectionate, very cozy; it’s just not sexual.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  The result was the same as on our previous trial two years before. Three different drugs were not only ineffective but resulted in unpleasant side effects: severe somnolence; alien and frightening dreams; loss of all sexuality and sensuality; a frightening sense of nothing mattering, of being removed from herself and her concerns. When I suggested that she consult a psychopharmacologist, she flatly refused. Desperate, I finally laid down an ultimatum: “You must see the consultant and follow his recommendations or I will not continue to work with you.” Irene looked at me unblinkingly. As usual, precise and constrained, she gave nothing extra in speech or movement. “I’ll consider it and give you my answer next session,” she said. But at our next meeting she did not respond directly to the ultimatum. Instead she handed me an issue of the New Yorker, open to an article by the Russian poet Joseph Brodsky titled “On Grief and Reason.” “In this,” she said, “you’ll find the key to what’s gone wrong in therapy. If not, if you read it and find no answer, then I’ll see your consultant.” Patients often ask me to read something of interest to them—some self-help book, an article about a new treatment or theory, a piece of literature that strikes close to their own situation. More than one writer-patient has handed me a long manuscript, saying, “You’ll learn a great deal about me by reading this.” This proposition has never proved valid: the patient could always have delivered the material verbally in far less time. Nor do they want an honest opinion of the writing from me—I generally loom too important to the patient to have the freedom to offer an objective commentary. Obviously they seek something else—my approval and admiration—and a therapist has far more direct and effective ways of dealing with that need than spending long hours reading a manuscript. I generally search for a gracious way to decline such requests—or at most agree to a quick skim. I value and protect my personal reading time. Yet I did not feel burdened as I began reading the article Irene had given me. I had great respect not only for her taste but for her clarity of mind, and if she believed this article contained the key to our impasse, I was confident that the time invested would be well spent. Of course, I would have preferred more direct communication, but I was learning to be receptive to Irene’s oblique and often poetic mode of discourse—a language she had learned from her mother. Unlike her father, a paragon of lucid rationality who had taught science in a small Midwestern high school, her mother, an artist, had communicated subtly.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  They mean something different as a result. So what happens if we understand the human vocation as bearing God’s image, of reflecting God’s wise authority into the world and the glad praises of creation back to God? What happens if we see “sin” in that context? Within that story, “sin” becomes the refusal of humans to play their part in God’s purposes for creation as a whole. It is a vocational failure as much as what we call a moral failure. This vocational failure, choosing to worship the creature rather than the Creator, is the choice of death over life. This is why “sin” and “death” are so inextricably intertwined in biblical thinking. The former is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; the latter is not the inflicting of arbitrary punishment. To be sure, they can often be spoken of, not least in the prophets, as a legal code to which appropriate penalties are attached. That is a natural way, on the surface, to refer to the whole sorry state of affairs. But deep down underneath there is nothing arbitrary about sin or death. Choose the one, and you choose the other. Worship idols, and you’ll go into exile. Obey the serpent’s voice, and you will forfeit the right to the Tree of Life. You can’t have it both ways. When, therefore, the biblical writers see the story of Israel as Adam and Eve writ large, they are making the same point on a grand, historical scale. Despite repeated warnings, Israel as a whole commits apostasy, worships idols, and copies the lifestyles of the non-Israelite nations all around. The result, predicted in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, is exile. Genesis 3 is inscribed into the pages of history. Again and again Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel insist on the point: exile has come about because of sin , the sin that fundamentally consists in and then grows out of idolatry. The people’s sins have been stacked up higher and higher, and they have finally paid the price. Exile is therefore to be understood as a kind of corporate national death . Leaving the land is leaving the garden; leaving the ruined Temple means being debarred from the Tree of Life. Israel is, after all, no better than the pagan nations. This is made abundantly, embarrassingly clear in Deuteronomy 32, the great “Song of Moses,” predicting the ways in which Israel would spurn the covenant God and behave like the nations all around. (It is significant for understanding the first century that both the apostle Paul and the historian Josephus seem to have thought that Deuteronomy 32 was coming true in their own day.) If, therefore, exile is eventually undone—whatever precisely that will mean—this will be both a “forgiveness of sins” and a new life the other side of death —and the restoration of the life-giving divine Presence. A resurrection, in fact. Ezekiel 37 makes exactly this point, using resurrection as a glorious, if somewhat lurid, picture for Israel’s rescue from Babylon.

• From Story of O (1954)

  The scene had taken place in the little oval room with the inlaid floor, in which the only piece of furniture was a table encrusted with mother-of-pearl, the room adjoining the yellow and gray living room. René remained only long enough to betray O and hear Sir Stephen’s reply. Then he shook hands with him, smiled at O, and left. Through the window, O saw him crossing the courtyard; he did not turn around; she heard the car door slam shut, the roar of the motor, and in a little mirror imbedded in the wall she caught a glimpse of her own image: she was white with fear and despair. Then, mechanically, when she walked past Sir Stephen, who opened the living-room door for her and stood back for her to pass, she looked at him: he was as pale as she. In a flash, she was absolutely certain that he loved her, but it was a fleeting certainty that vanished as fast as it had come. Although she did not believe it and chided herself for having thought of it, she was comforted by it and undressed meekly, on a mere signal from him. Then, and for the first time since he had been making her come two or three times a week, and using her slowly, sometimes making her wait for an hour naked without coming near her, listening to her entreaties without ever replying, for there were times when she did beg and beseech, enjoining her to do the same things always at the same moments, as in a ritual, so that she knew when her mouth was supposed to caress him and when, on her knees, her head buried in the silken sofa, she should offer him only her back, which he now possessed without hurting her, for the first time, for in spite of the fear which convulsed her—or perhaps because of that fear—she opened to him, in spite of the chagrin she felt at René’s betrayal, but perhaps too because of it, she surrendered herself completely. And for the first time, so gentle were her yielding eyes when they fastened on Sir Stephen’s pale, burning gaze, that he suddenly spoke to her in French, employing the familiar tu form with her: “I’m going to put a gag in your mouth, O, because I’d like to whip you till I draw blood. Do I have your permission?” “I’m yours,” O said.

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  One can make a mess of one’s childhood or of one’s whole life. Slowly, painfully, I understood that I had made a mess of my own birth by choosing the wrong city. Bissor was a strong boy, all muscles and big bones, like a ploughhorse. Healthy as a peasant, robust, vigorous, thickset — he was a miracle within the ghetto’s rotten heart. A mop of jungle-wild red hair stressed his primitive appearance. Yet, for all this, he had within him the fears, humiliations, and resentments of all those born and still living in the ghetto. At the age of eleven, he had begun to deliver evening newspapers after school and had thus come to know the city. I was not self-conscious in his presence, and once I even told him about my father’s terrors and hatreds. But he interrupted me at once: “Your father’s right. You don’t yet know what it’s like.” His own father’s store, he explained, had been burned in a pogrom, and his old man had then died of grief. Although Bissor’s schooling was paid for by the community, he worried constantly about his mother and sisters, fearing that they might not be able to support themselves without his help. (He was right about this, for even though he left school before graduating, he was unable to prevent one of his sisters from becoming a prostitute.) He used to describe to me his daily rounds: the distrust and innuendoes, the perfect imperviousness of others. In Bissor, I caught echoes of my father’s despair, but I still refused to accept it. Constantly, I heard him talk of his hatred of the city, of his horror of having been born there, of the impossibility of ever finding normal opportunities there. I was ironical when the city seemed to stir but he would then race home, put up a supply of food, and barricade the doors and windows, terrified by the unpredictable. Other people’s misfortunes could force me to retreat, but could never convince me; they had bungled the situation, I thought, through awkwardness or prejudice. If the same thing happened to me, I was sure I would come out better.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Furthermore, when Paul says that “a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart—it is spiritual and not literal” (2:29), a contemporary Jew like Philo of Alexandria would have responded, “Of course, but you should have both circumcisions, with the inward manifested by the outward.” All in all, 1:16–3:18 is a fairly shallow indictment of universal sinfulness, but rather than dismissing it as superficial we might ponder its deeper accuracy. There seems to be something profoundly wrong and seriously askew, if not with human nature then at least with the normalcy of human civilization, with what Paul and we have also called the “wisdom of this world.” It is true, as Paul says, that we have laws and declarations that we do not follow and that thereby bear witness to our insincerity, if not hypocrisy. Think, for example, of a great nation that pledges “liberty and justice for all,” but seems somewhat unmoved by its failure to achieve it. Or, even worse, think about how humanity has, in a horrible evolution, moved from nineteenth-century imperialism through twentieth-century totalitarianism into twenty-first-century terrorism. We are now forced to wonder about the normalcy of civilization itself, and that makes us reread Paul’s accusation of global sin today on a deeper level than when he first wrote it. Maybe, of course, he just saw the same global flaw, but expressed it in the only language available to him from his past and present tradition, while we must do the same now in the more radical language of our past and present experience. THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD HAS BEEN DISCLOSED What, then, is the solution to the global failure, cosmic sinfulness, or universal human chasm between the declared ideal and its actual accomplishment? Here is Paul’s answer—and his first three foundational terms: the righteousness of God is granted for the justification of humanity through the sacrifice of Christ (3:25–26). Each of those terms has been profoundly misunderstood and has thereby rendered Paul’s theology incomprehensible. Righteousness: distribution, not retribution. Recall, from above, that God’s righteousness means exactly the same as God’s justice. But, unfortunately, for us, justice has come to mean primarily retributive justice, that is, punishment. Not, however, for Paul—and that is where we start to misunderstand him. For Paul, first, God’s justice is distributive rather than retributive; second, distributive justice is the very nature, essence, and character of God; and, third, divine distributive justice is above all else God’s very being as distributed freely to us to transform God’s world into a place of that same justice. If, however, you misread Paul as announcing that God is a God of retributive justice, you will need theological contortions to explain how that could possibly be “good news” (gospel), especially for that universal human sinfulness described in Romans 1–3. Paul’s actual good news, however, is that God’s own character of distributive justice is available for anyone willing to accept it—without prior merits or conditions.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  Is that final consummation to come as peace through violent victory and pacification or as peace through nonviolent justice and justification? We ourselves might not consider the distinction between Gentiles and Jews the or even a major division of the global family. We might think of the haves and the have-nots, of the First World and the Third World, of those who have more than they need and those who can barely survive. But, in any case, it is and always will be about the world. So Paul concludes this section with a magnificent hymn not just to our freedom but to that of creation itself: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Rom. 8:19–23) Paul mentions “creation” five times in those five verses. Hear, then, the voices of God and Bible, Jesus and Paul as they whisper insistently against the chorus of our narcissistic individualism: “It’s about the world, dummy. It’s about the world.” THE UNITY OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS Paul moves next to a narrower division within that world separated into Gentiles and Jews. He focuses on the division within Judaism between non-Christian Jews and Christian Jews, between Jews who have not accepted Jesus as their Messiah and those who have. Paul had originally hoped that a unified community of non-Christian Jews and Christian Jews would be the future of Judaism. God would create that unity “not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (9:24) so that “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him” (10:12). But by the mid-50s when he wrote to the Romans, he already knew that something had gone seriously wrong with that expected unity. It was not happening and already looked like it would not happen. Hence this stricken cry: “I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh” (9:2–3). For Paul, however, this was not just a human problem to be solved, but a divine “mystery” (11:25) to be pondered. So his first focus is on God and how or why God has permitted this to occur. Divine purpose.