Disappointment

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

  * Considering how instrumental Cluny Abbey had been in all the new developments of the Gregorian revolution, it is an irony that by 1100 the very reformism Cluny had stimulated was beginning to sideline the Cluniac Order. It is a characteristic of Western monasticism that its communities exhibit a recurrent dissatisfaction with existing standards of community life and make an effort to renew and do better. The Cluniacs went on expanding, not least in their control of the Compostela pilgrimage, but increasing numbers of those attracted to the monastic life felt that Cluny’s extreme elaboration of liturgy and architecture, and the extensive landed estates that underpinned Cluniac and Benedictine observance, were inappropriate for a life of self-denial and personal austerity. It was actually a Benedictine abbot, Robert of Molesme in Burgundy, who looked afresh at the Benedictine Rule and determined on a newly austere observance of it. When most of his community disagreed with him, he left with a handful of followers to create a new foundation at Cîteaux ( Cistercium ). Cîteaux gave its name to a connected organization that was a deliberate rejection of Cluny, but did take its cue from the Cluniacs in forming itself as head of an independent, centralized and international Order: Cistercians, a huge success story in the twelfth-century Church. The preacher of the Crusades, Bernard of Clairvaux, was a Cistercian, and, by 1143, one of his monks had been elected Pope as Eugenius III. A different initiative was to concentrate on reforming or founding communities of clergy who were not Benedictine monks, creating a structured communal life for them on a different pattern: an ancient series of statements and simple rules made by or attributed to Augustine of Hippo, for various newly founded religious communities under his control. [59] This was a useful way forward for some of the large churches that would have been known in Anglo-Saxon England as minsters, and occasionally for some cathedrals. Such clergy would not be enclosed monks but would continue going out from their communities into general pastoral ministry as ‘canons’ of their corporation. Because they nevertheless followed a Rule, not Benedictine but ‘Augustinian’, they emphasized their communal vocation by calling themselves ‘regular canons’; that was an implicit criticism of ‘secular’ clergy, who were more obviously placed out in the world. Such multiple discontents interacted with the passionate public preaching that was producing many different outcomes, from the Peace of God movement to the Patarine crisis in Milan to the Crusades. One such itinerant preacher was a former canon of a Rhineland church, Norbert of Xanten, who was more or less forced by the Church hierarchy in 1119 into structuring his most vocal followers as a monastic community at Prémontré in northern Francia – hence yet another monastic Order of austere Benedictine character, the Premonstratensians.

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

  That was what ‘enlightenment’ meant to Sir Isaac Newton, classic pioneer of a ‘Scientific Revolution’ who invested a large part of his intellectual powers in exploring the Book of Revelation. [6] The displacement of Graeco-Roman authority in scientific investigation left the Enlightenment world deliciously open to new discovery, which inevitably involved some embarrassing false starts. It is telling, for instance, that so many in Georgian England took seriously a bizarre hoax fostered in more than one sense by Mary Toft, a humble woman of Godalming in Surrey, who announced in 1726 that she had given birth to rabbits. In the fluid state of gynaecological knowledge even among Enlightenment doctors it was perfectly possible to argue, in a centuries-old fashion, that this was a case of maternal imagination producing an unusual but plausible result, and physicians of the Royal Household were among the experts hastening to examine Toft. Her imprisonment and conviction for fraud did not end her celebrity; controversy remained at her death nearly four decades later. [7] It is no exaggeration to say that the early Enlightenment was an enterprise of serious-minded Christians and Jews troubled by the uses traditionally made of their sacred scriptures. In a multitude of personal choices, they assessed their heritage of belief for what could be remoulded and what was too toxic to save. Much inspiration came from experiencing religious persecution. At the forefront of Europe’s religious refugees were Jews, Reformed Protestants and radical Anabaptist or anti-Trinitarian Christians, with a deep distrust of repressive dogmatism. Seeking personal and intellectual safety, many of them met

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  What exactly is ‘flourishing’? Although some treat this as equivalent to finding happiness or experiencing wellbeing, it is a much richer concept, which has come to play a major role in the Positive Psychology movement. 31 It is often described using the PERMA model which describes human flourishing in terms of positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement. Flourishing is about people growing as human beings through both good times and life struggles. This rests on seeing ourselves and reality in certain ways that go beyond observable facts. One of Charles Dickens’ more memorable literary creations is Mr Gradgrind, a schoolteacher whose educational philosophy is as simple as it is misguided: ‘What I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.’ 32 For Gradgrind, facts alone give rise to intellectual certainty. Yet Gradgrind’s philosophy simply leads to an overload of information and an absence of wisdom. Gradgrind’s vision of a rational paradise is a joyless world of factual fetishes and cold actualities which bypass the human imagination and emotions. Dickens adroitly brings out the utter lifelessness of this purely informational world through the lens of Gradgrind’s daughter, Louisa. She is portrayed as having a ‘starved imagination’, being inclined through her father’s influence to view everything from the standpoint of ‘reason and calculation’. 33 Sadly – but perhaps inevitably – having been indoctrinated into her father’s creed, Louisa finds herself trapped in a loveless world, unable to find happiness and security. She needs something deeper to bring stability and joy to her life. That’s the paradox which stands at the heart of this book. Facts are epistemically safe and reliable, yet frustratingly inadequate for engaging the serious issues of life. In going beyond them, we embark on a journey that is both risky and exciting, and to be fair, this is a journey of discovery which can indeed go wrong. It involves making choices and judgements that do not necessarily go against reason, but often go beyond reason. And sometimes we make bad choices, ending up trapping ourselves within intellectual prisons of our own making. But it doesn’t have to be like this. What we cannot do, however, is pretend that we exist in a purely factual, belief-free world. Christopher Hitchens clearly believed he occupied such a world, allowing him to deliver privileged thunderbolts of rationalist wisdom from on high to lesser mortals, whose failure to grasp the core ideas of the Enlightenment locked them into a superstitious darkness: ‘Our belief is not a belief.’ 34 Hitchens’ professed world is a world of certainties, from which beliefs are excluded.

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

  The pattern in eastern Europe was different: the paranoia started later, lasted longer and climaxed in the eighteenth century. By then, in now strongly Catholic Poland, half of those charged with witchcraft ended up being burned, whereas the proportion had been around 4 per cent in the sixteenth century. Poland was increasingly belying its reputation as a tolerant ‘state without stakes’, in parallel to the decline in its embrace of religious diversity. Executions ended only with a Polish royal decree in 1776, by which time perhaps around a thousand people had died, a similar figure to Hungary and Transylvania over the same period. The eastern persecutions took place amid new political crises and social tensions in the lands where Habsburgs, Romanovs and Hohenzollerns were remaking the map; as in Poland it was imperial Enlightenment scepticism in Habsburg territories that eventually ended the alliance between popular fear and the law. It is notable that in eastern Europe the gender balance was reversed between male and female witches as western witchcraft beliefs interacted with regional fears of vampires, or the charismatic activity of males such as the northern shaman or the Hungarian táltos . [116] * From witches to Ursulines, via the pastor’s wife: a spectrum of new roles opened up for sixteenth-century women. How far could they extend? One might expect that the more generous or pluralist impulses of humanist scholarship would widen the possibilities open to all human beings: there was, after all, a strain of humanist opinion, following Erasmus, that exceptional women should be given access to all-round education. Humanists might also have recommended an end to the double standard in morality that punished female sexual transgressions more than male. Yet the problem was that humanist scholars were mostly men, and that the powerful lay and ecclesiastical rulers who picked and chose what they wanted to hear from their humanist clients were also mostly men. One female scholar of the 1970s having asked ‘Did women have a Renaissance?’ therefore came up with a resounding negative. [117] The same could be said of the Protestant Reformation, which deprived women of multiple possibilities offered by the celibate monastic life and the lives beyond it in Beguine or Ursuline communities. Crucially, women both Catholic and Protestant normally remained barred from that key to power, a classical education. Exceptions were found among women whom accidents of genealogy destined to hold positions of power, like the two daughters of Henry VIII of England; likewise in the early years of the Reformation, some gifted Protestant women with affectionate humanist fathers. But insofar as the Reformation was a war of ideas fought out in Latin books, it remained male. Otherwise, in both the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation, women typically experienced a period of self-assertion, followed by male

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

  On Eighth Avenue, once called "The Minnesota Strip" as it was prime recruiting for pimps who'd catch impressionable young victims fresh off the bus at Port Authority, the blight continues: The Haymarket Bar, a vicious hustler hotspot where young male entrepreneurs would pick up older Johns—so they could rob them at knifepoint—is gone. Lady Anne's Full Moon Saloon, called by Paper magazine's well-traveled bar reporter "The Worst Bar in the World," where the smell of Lysol and vomit distracted one from the recently released convict population playing pool on a warped table in the rear, is now the Collins Bar, with a smart Art Deco facade. You can walk from Fiftieth Street to Forty- second without once hearing the comforting refrain of "Smoke, smoke" or "Crack it up, got it good . . ." The legendary Terminal Cafe, across from the bus station, where at eight a.m. you could enjoy a shot of rye and a draft beer, pulling it to your mouth with a dirty bar towel, is now a parking lot. The Hollywood Twin Cinema, immortalized in Taxi Driver, is now the home to Big Apple Tours, and the terrifying peep show/bookstore downstairs is now a Burger King. In the convenience stores and shops where once were rows of dildos, crack pipes, bongs, and nunchuks, there are only rows of Pringles. The Lower East Side is worse. At one time a superstore of heroin and cocaine, where customers would line up in the streets for admission to a vast underground empire of abandoned, burned-out tenements converted into fortified rabbit warrens of booby-trapped passageways (the dark, candlelit peepholes manned by gun-toting guards)—it's now a neighborhood for the Starbucks generation. And an expensive one. Once the air smelled of burning candles, piss, and desperation. Now it smells of CKl. The old name brands (of heroin) proudly shouted out over the ever-present salsa music—Toilet, Laredo, Try-It-Again, Check-Mate, 357— have been replaced by Prada, Comme des Gar^ons, and Tommy Hilfiger. The meat district? Crisco Disco, the Anvil, the Mineshaft—a former world of unsafe sex, amyl nitrite, Quaaludes, and leather, sandwiched between meat wholesalers—is now the hottest restaurant district in town. Tribeca? A former no-man's-land of warehouses where mob-run after-hours clubs thrived, and you could pass out on a stack of empty beer crates in a rear "VIP" room and wake up near a nodding Johnny Thunders or a gibbering Belushi, greet the cold gray dawn with a shot of Wolfschmidts vodka poured from a Stoli bottle. Robert DeNiro seems to own it all now. You'd think that that might make it interesting. It doesn't. One swank restaurant after another, offices for the cell-phone set.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  They now planned to fulfill Azzam’s dream of reconquering all the lost Muslim lands. Throughout the world at this time, political Islam seemed in the ascendant. Hamas had become a serious challenge to Fatah. In Algeria, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) had won a decisive victory over the secular National Liberation Front (FLN) in the municipal polls of 1990, and the Islamist ideologue Hassan Al-Turabi had come to power in the Sudan. After the Soviet withdrawal, Bin Laden founded al-Qaeda, which began humbly as an alumni organization for those Arab-Afghans who wanted to take the jihad forward. At this point the entity, whose name simply means “the Base,” had no coherent ideology or clear goal. And so some of its affiliates returned home as freelances with the aim of deposing corrupt secularist regimes and replacing them with an Islamic government. Others, still committed to Azzam’s classical jihadism, joined local Muslims in their struggle against the Russians in Chechnya and Tajikistan and the Serbs in Bosnia. Yet to their dismay, they found that they were unable to transform these national conflicts into what they considered a true jihad. Indeed, in Bosnia they were not only de trop but a positive liability. The Bosnian War (1992–95) saw one of the last genocides of the twentieth century. Unlike the two preceding it, the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, this mass killing was conducted on the basis of religious rather than ethnic identity. Despite the widespread assumption in the West that the divisions in the Balkans were ancient and ingrained and that the violence was ineradicable because of its strong “religious” element, this communal intolerance was relatively new. Jews, Christians, and Muslims had lived together peacefully under Ottoman rule for five hundred years and continued doing so after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, when Serbs, Slovenians, Slavic Muslims, and Croats had formed the multireligious federation of Yugoslavia (“Land of the South Slavs”). Yugoslavia was dismantled by Nazi Germany in 1941 but was revived after the Second World War by the communist leader Josip Broz Tito (r. 1945–80) under the slogan “Brotherhood and Unity.” After his death, however, the radical Serbian nationalism of Slobodan Milosevic and the equally assertive Croatian nationalism of Franjo Tudjman pulled the country apart, with Bosnia caught in the middle. Slavic nationalism had a strongly Christian flavor—Serbs were Orthodox and Croatians Roman Catholic—but Bosnia, with a Muslim majority and Serbian, Croatian, Jewish, and Gypsy communities, opted for a secular state that respected all religions. Lacking the military capacity to defend themselves, Bosnian Muslims knew they would be persecuted if they remained part of Serbia, and so in April 1992 they declared independence. The United States and the European Union recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina as a sovereign state.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She did not look at the girl as she said it—that she could not do, perhaps out of something that, for her, was the nearest she would ever come to pity. There ensued a long, almost breathless silence, while Angela waited with her eyes turned away. A leaf dropped, and she heard its minute, soft falling, heard the creak of the branch that had let fall its leaf as a breeze passed over the garden. Then the silence was broken by a quiet, dull voice, that sounded to her like the voice of a stranger: ‘No—’ it said very slowly, ‘no—I couldn’t marry you, Angela.’ And when Angela at last gained the courage to look up, she found that she was sitting there alone. CHAPTER 201F or three weeks they kept away from each other, neither writing nor making any effort to meet. Angela’s prudence forbade her to write: ‘Litera scripta manet’—a good motto, and one to which it was wise to adhere when dealing with a firebrand like Stephen. Stephen had given her a pretty bad scare, she realized the necessity for caution; still, thinking over that incredible scene, she found the memory rather exciting. Deprived of her anodyne against boredom, she looked upon Ralph with unfriendly eyes; while he, poor, inadequate, irritable devil, with his vague suspicions and his chronic dyspepsia, did little enough to divert his wife—his days, and a fairly large part of his nights as well, were now spent in nagging. He nagged about Tony who, as ill luck would have it, had decided that the garden was rampant with moles: ‘If you can’t keep that bloody dog in order, he goes. I won’t have him digging craters round my roses!’ Then would come a long list of Tony’s misdeeds from the time he had left the litter. He nagged about the large population of green-fly, deploring the existence of their sexual organs: ‘Nature’s a fool! Fancy procreation being extended to that sort of vermin!’ And then he would grow somewhat coarse as he dwelt on the frequent conjugal excesses of green-fly. But most of all he nagged about Stephen, because this as he knew, irritated his wife: ‘How’s your freak getting on? I haven’t seen her just lately; have you quarrelled or what? Damned good thing if you have. She’s appalling; never saw such a girl in my life; comes swaggering round here with her legs in breeches. Why can’t she ride like an ordinary woman? Good Lord, it’s enough to make any man see red; that sort of thing wants putting down at birth, I’d like to institute state lethal chambers!’

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

  The Greek amphitheater at Taormina, in which we'd planned a scene extolling the glories of antiquity, was booked with a film festival, meaning that it was jammed with modern festival seating, a spanking new stage, and a JumboTron screen. Mount Etna was socked in with clouds. Zero visibility. The "squid fishing scene," in which I was to head out at night with a local fisherman to later triumphantly haul my still-wriggling catch onto the heaving deck for the cameras, ended with me desperately pinning a dead stunt-squid to a hook and feigning a catch. After two hours of waiting futilely aboard a violently pitching scum-boat, the entire crew was green and engaged in projectile vomiting. Poor Tracey, though heroically still shooting, looked ready to die. Dario: "The moon. She no good for squid tonight . . ." No shit. My on-camera subjects were equally disastrous. In Trepani, at the salt flats, the only drama was whether my dining companion would die of old age before the scene was over. He could barely eat without drooling, and appeared ready to nod off halfway through. The "adorable squid fisherman's family" with whom I was to share my "catch" of the night before in a "rustic, home-cooked Sicilian meal" hated my guts on sight. We were two hours late (after waiting futilely for the turtles) and they just sat there throughout the meal, glaring at me. All these disasters left our increasingly desperate shooters with no alternative but to try and squeeze entertainment out of my every embittered, drunken utterance, my every nap, walk, and private moment: "C'mon, Tony! This is a scene! The 'I'm stuck in the airport and can't find the bathroom' scene! It's comedy gold!" Sicily was stunningly beautiful. But as is becoming a recurring theme in my life, so much useless beauty unspooled in front of my eyes like a half-observed, half-felt movie. Just out of reach. Can't stop. No time to really look or breathe it in. Pantelleria, a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Tunisia: black lava petrified mid-flow into wild, jagged, majestic shapes; crystal-blue sea; green vineyards; olive trees; my house a thousand-year-old Arab-style damoussa with white- domed roof; the sirocco from Africa blowing constantly but gently. You can smell the continent, the spices, feel the Sahara in the air—and I was off all day making fucking television. Yet, I learned something important about myself in Sicily. (And I'm not being melodramatic here. Really . . . Okay, maybe I am.) One afternoon, Dario, the useless "fixer," took us for an impromptu cruise on his yacht. It was intended as a quick substitute scene to make up for the ultralight that couldn't land. ("Too much-a wind. Sea.

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  Festinger realised that there were some excellent reasons for supposing that on 22 December, the members of this group – which he called ‘The Seekers’ – would have to cope with the realisation that their belief system had spectacularly failed. The world ought to have come to an end the previous day; the Seekers would have to come up with an explanation for still being alive on earth. Festinger reckoned that the dissonance caused by this devastating disconfirmation of their belief would motivate them either to change their beliefs or seek strategies to reconfirm them. Festinger arranged for one of his research group to infiltrate the Seekers, and report on how the group responded to what he confidently expected to be a cosmic non-event. As instructed, the Seekers gathered at midnight to await the spacecraft that would carry them to safety on the planet Clarion, making sure they removed all metal objects. As the hours passed, nothing happened – until one of the group suddenly received an additional message from Clarion by automatic writing at four in the morning. Because of their faithfulness to their instructions, the destruction of earth had been averted! 18 Festinger and his colleagues developed a theory of ‘cognitive dissonance’ which held that individuals experience mental discomfort when there is a tension between their beliefs and behaviour. The phenomenon is well known – think, for example, of animal lovers who eat meat, yet feel intense discomfort when they think about the processes by which this meat is produced. Unsurprisingly, they tend to avoid thinking about where meat comes from. How might this work out for someone who is convinced that people are fundamentally good, but is confronted with evidence of atrocities committed by human beings – such as genocides and other war crimes, often carried out by ordinary citizens? 19 Or the sexual and physical abuse of local populations in Africa by United Nation peacekeeping forces, who were supposed to protect them? One option is to see these atrocities as an atypical response to a traumatic situation – the onset of war – which will cease to be a troubling issue when the situation has passed, and normal life resumes. C. S. Lewis, an atheist scholar of Renaissance English literature at Oxford University who converted to Christianity in 1931, argued that while optimistic views of human nature had been dealt a death blow by the horrors of the Second World War, humanity’s capacity for self-deception and selective memory was so great that such lessons, learned at such cost, would simply be suppressed and forgotten once the war was over.

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

  Protestant liberals did their best. They reconsidered sexual activity among young people by applying criteria of reason and love, part of what was soon to be termed ‘the New Morality’ – a term first given publicity in 1959 and taken up on both sides of the Atlantic: its first exponent, the Episcopalian priest Joseph Fletcher, pursued the theme in his book Situation Ethics (1966). A five-day conference at Green Lake, Wisconsin, in 1961 on ‘Church and the Family’ managed to push its agenda beyond the relatively uncontroversial discussion of sexual intercourse in marriage into sexual and ‘New Morality’ matters generally: the Quaker Mary Steichen Calderone, a former Director of Planned Parenthood, in a speech that left a lasting impact, inter alia afforded various male delegates their first viewing of selected female hygiene products. [8] 27. The Quaker campaigner Mary Steichen Calderone displays useful pamphlets on sexual matters, 1969. * None of this was calculated to impress conservative Christians, and in the 1970s the already fragile nexus between liberal and conservative Protestants withered away. A century of mainstream Protestant dominance in American sex education was coming to an end; as gradually became apparent, so was the expansion of American churchgoing. One factor might be that liberal Protestants, mindful and approving of artificial contraception, were now planning smaller families than their conservative neighbours. Around the anglophone world, in a considerable irony, the family unit that had triumphed in the Protestant Reformation against centuries of celibate ascendancy now steadily undermined churchgoing. The rhetoric of the twentieth-century family emphasized affectionate companionship – ‘Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage’, in the words of a popular song of my early boyhood – and that family was smaller than in the past, inviting the prospect of a new intimacy. First the radio and then the television became fixtures to gather family members together in the evening, and on Sundays, the leisure day from work, they might all enjoy going out somewhere together in the newly acquired family car. From the eighteenth century, anglophone parents (possibly with a sense of relief at having some time to themselves) had sent their children off to Sunday School, one of the chief success stories of the Evangelical Revival. From the late 1960s, they stopped doing so. British statistics tell the tale: in 1900, 55% of British children attended Sunday School, 24% in 1960, 9% in 1980, and 4% in 2000. Traditional Christian literacy, handed down the generations across the UK by such means, began to erode, and the habit of churchgoing along with it. [9] Such consequences were not immediately apparent, and Protestantism’s general mood of optimism and hospitality to a variety of changes in the Christian message seemed to be paralleled in Catholicism in the wake of the second Vatican Council, which generated unprecedented ecumenical warmth between Western Churches. This was particularly perceptible in Dutch Catholicism, right up to its leading figure, Cardinal Bernardus Alfrink, who attended the Council following a recent joyful swerve away from his previous conservatism. The Dutch clergy proposed changes to canon law easing the way for those who entered ‘mixed’ or cross-confessional marriages, already becoming more frequent in the Netherlands as traditional confessional ‘silos’ in Dutch society broke down. They also voted overwhelmingly for an end to eight centuries of compulsory clerical celibacy. Pope Paul VI had been loyal to the agenda rather surprisingly set by progressives at the second Vatican Council with the encouragement of Pope John XXIII – liturgy in the vernacular, affirmation of lay ministry in the Church, openness to other Christian bodies and, indeed, to the world in general. But on issues of gender, family and sexuality, Paul VI found the limits of his progressive instincts: a year before his disastrous decision on artificial contraception, he reaffirmed the celibacy rule for the priesthood, and discouraged any further debate on the issue. The angry reaction to this among many clergy anticipated the more general fury and disappointment at Humanae Vitae. Worldwide, priests renounced their public ministry to marry; in the West, numbers offering themselves for ordination began an inexorable decline. Among Catholics in many parts of Africa, where marriage was considered de rigueur for everyone regardless of clerical status, the reaction was simply to carry on as usual and to look benevolently on Catholic priests who cherished their spouses and offspring: a pattern with a precedent in many parts of medieval Europe (above, Chapters 12 and 13). In Africa, significantly, vocations to the priesthood continued to flourish. [10] *

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

  The restaurant itself looks, from the exterior, like an over- designed coffee shop; only a layer of slightly tinted glass separates the light, modern, vaguely Southwestern dining room from the killing floor. As we took our seats in the dining room, Ruhlman pointed out an old woman in a wheelchair being pulled reluctantly away from a slot machine on the other side of the glass. "That's not putting me in the mood." Over an open kitchen, a satellite-size rotisserie twirled chickens in slow rotation. "First night they opened, that thing was roaring red at like . . . nine hundred degrees," said Ruhlman. "Would have looked cool if it was red. Or if you could see flames now. But the thing was so hot it would have cooked the customers if they'd kept it cranked. They had to turn it way down, or they would have had customers bursting into flames, running across the casino floor with their hair on fire." "That wouldn't be good for business," I said. "You think that would stop these people from gambling?" Perhaps sensing the general mood of skepticism at our table, a wary-looking flack from the casino's food and beverage department quickly—and sensibly— plied us with novelty margaritas. "Just let the kitchen cook for us," suggested Ruhlman. "Do what you're good at. Nothing that's not on the menu." Our very competent server began to lay on the food, making frequent mention of the Maximum Leader. "Bobby Flay's Spicy Tuna Tartare" tasted like everybody else's tuna tartare these days, which is to say, perfectly respectable, in a south-of-the-border kinda way. A "Smoked Chicken and Black Bean Quesadilla" was a gussied-up smoked chicken and black bean quesadilla. Our margaritas were replenished. Our server presented "Bobby Flay's Tiger Shrimp and Roasted Garlic Corn Tamale" as if repeating the name would add something to the experience—and, in fact, it was the best of the offerings: pretty, in its artfully opened pocket of corn husk, and flavorful. A very well-conceived dish which, unlike the quesadilla, compared well to the more rustic Mexican versions. "This is as good as any tamale on earth," I offered. "This is great. You could go looking for the perfect tamale in any mercado in Mexico and not find one as good as this. Unimprovable." "The kitchen does a good job," said Ruhlman, begrudgingly. "Just don't look out the window." A "Northeast Lobster Out of the Shell with Red Chile Coconut Sauce" masked a perfectly cooked lobster with a fairly insipid and cloyingly sweet sauce, and the Brussels sprouts (which I liked) made absolutely no sense in its proximity.

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

  In 1289 Tripoli was lost, and the bitter rivalry between the Military Orders hastened the surrender of Acre, 1291,481 and with it all Christian rule in Syria was brought to an end. The Templars and Hospitallers escaped. The population of sixty thousand was reduced to slavery or put to the sword. For one hundred and fifty years Acre had been the metropolis of Latin life in the East. It had furnished a camp for army after army, and witnessed the entry and departure of kings and queens from the chief states of Europe. But the city was also a byword for turbulence and vice. Nicolas IV. had sent ships to aid the besieged, and again called upon the princes of Europe for help; but his call fell on closed ears. As the Crusades progressed, a voice was lifted here and there calling in question the religious propriety of such movements and their ultimate value. At the close of the twelfth century, the abbot Joachim complained that the popes were making them a pretext for their own aggrandizement, and upon the basis of Joshua 6:26; 1 Kings 16:24, he predicted a curse upon an attempt to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. "Let the popes," he said, "mourn over their own Jerusalem—that is, the universal Church not built with hands and purchased by divine blood, and not over the fallen Jerusalem."482 Humbert de Romanis, general of the Dominicans, in making out a list of matters to be handled at the Council of Lyons, 1274, felt obliged to refute no less than seven objections to the Crusades. They were such as these. It was contrary to the precepts of the New Testament to advance religion by the sword; Christians may defend themselves, but have no right to invade the lands of another; it is wrong to shed the blood of unbelievers and Saracens; and the disasters of the Crusades proved they were contrary to the will of God.483 Raymundus Lullus, after returning from his mission to North Africa, in 1308, declared484 "that the conquest of the Holy Land should be attempted in no other way than as Christ and the Apostles undertook to accomplish it—by prayers, tears, and the offering up of our own lives. Many are the princes and knights that have gone to the Promised Land with a view to conquer it, but if this mode had been pleasing to the Lord, they would assuredly have wrested it from the Saracens before this. Thus it is manifest to pious monks that Thou art daily waiting for them to do for love to Thee what Thou hast done from love to them."

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Pilate said that he had looked into the case of Yeshua Ha-Nozri and confirmed the death sentence. Thus, three robbers—Dysmas, Gestas and Bar-Rabban—and this Yeshua Ha-Nozri besides, were condemned to be executed, and it was to be done that day. The first two, who had ventured to incite the people to rebel against Caesar, had been taken in armed struggle by the Roman authorities, were accounted to the procurator, and, consequently, would not be talked about here. But the second two, Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri, had been seized by the local authorities and condemned by the Sanhedrin. According to the law, according to custom, one of these two criminals had to be released in honour of the great feast of Passover, which would begin that day. And so the procurator wished to know which of the two criminals the Sanhedrin intended to set free: Bar-Rabban or Ha-Nozri? 27 Kaifa inclined his head to signify that the question was clear to him, and replied: ‘The Sanhedrin asks that Bar-Rabban be released.’ The procurator knew very well that the high priest would give precisely that answer, but his task consisted in showing that this answer provoked his astonishment. This Pilate did with great artfulness. The eyebrows on the arrogant face rose, the procurator looked with amazement straight into the high priest’s eyes. ‘I confess, this answer shocks me,’ the procurator began softly, ‘I’m afraid there may be some misunderstanding here.’ Pilate explained himself. Roman authority does not encroach in the least upon the rights of the local spiritual authorities, the high priest knows that very well, but in the present case we are faced with an obvious error. And this error Roman authority is, of course, interested in correcting. In fact, the crimes of Bar-Rabban and Ha-Nozri are quite incomparable in their gravity. If the latter, obviously an insane person, is guilty of uttering preposterous things in Yershalaim and some other places, the former’s burden of guilt is more considerable. Not only did he allow himself to call directly for rebellion, but he also killed a guard during the attempt to arrest him. Bar-Rabban is incomparably more dangerous than Ha-Nozri. On the strength of all the foregoing, the procurator asks the high priest to reconsider the decision and release the less harmful of the two condemned men, and that is without doubt Ha-Nozri. And so? . . . Kaifa said in a quiet but firm voice that the Sanhedrin had thoroughly familiarized itself with the case and informed him a second time that it intended to free Bar-Rabban. ‘What? Even after my intercession? The intercession of him through whose person Roman power speaks? Repeat it a third time, High Priest.’ ‘And a third time I repeat that we are setting Bar-Rabban free,’ Kaifa said softly. It was all over, and there was nothing more to talk about.

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

  6 From Jewish Sect to Christian Churches ( c .70– c .200) The imperial authorities executed Paul of Tarsus in Rome around 65 CE , and early though not conclusive tradition suggests that Peter, his fellow missionary and Apostle, died there about the same time. [1] This was on the eve of a catastrophe for Jerusalem and its Temple: the Roman repression of four years of rebellion in Judaea, culminating in 70 CE with massacres of those besieged and in the burning of the Temple, this time never to be rebuilt. Complementing that dark event in history was an equally important missing event for the infant Christian assemblies: by the end of the first century CE , it was apparent that their Lord Jesus had not returned in triumph from the heavens, to scroll up the passage of earthly time. That was the first Great Disappointment of many in Christian history, and we know very little about it because, historically, Christians have been much less inclined than Jews to speak of disappointment. Set between event and non-event, conditions for the future of both Judaism and Christianity radically changed: a turning point in both their stories. Roman armies crushed further rebellions in Judaea in the 130s, and after more than a thousand years of dominance, Jewish presence in the Promised Land steadily declined. Out of previous entanglement, two separate new clusters of religious identity eventually emerged, each with its own sacred literature, devotional practice and structures of authority. The process of separation was hesitant, piecemeal and took much longer than the histories of either side cared to admit. [2] Perhaps it was only complete in the fourth century CE , and a single Christianity never emerged from the end of the process, more a family of identities that have continued to proliferate up to our own era, even while some have faded from history. For a long time, developments within Judaism would have seemed more significant than those within the Christian groupings: they ensured the maintenance of Jewish life in a myriad of synagogue communities around the whole Mediterranean and west Asia. With the governing elite in Jerusalem eliminated along with the Temple, leadership was increasingly dependent on the rabbis: male teachers dedicated to the preservation, standardization and an industry of detailed interpretation of the Hebrew Bible as a basis for shared Jewish identity. Moreover, the rabbis concentrated on refining Hebrew versions of their sacred writings, and on instruction and commentary in Hebrew around the scriptural text. Greek-speaking Judaism took a long time to decline, but it was never part of the future dominated by the rabbis. As a result, the rich culture of the Septuagint and of Philo, the greatest representative of Alexandrian Jewish thinking, faded from Judaism; ironically their influence remained far stronger on Christians than on Jews. One could argue indeed that Mediterranean Christianity was essentially a rebranding of Hellenistic Judaism, and eventually so successful that it is not surprising that its parent culture atrophied.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  "for the good of the service." Obviously he had once been very good looking in a crew-cut, college boy way, but his face had sagged and formed lumps under the chin like melting paraffin. He was getting heavy around the hips. Leif The Unlucky was a tall, thin Norwegian, with a patch over one eye, his face congealed in a permanent, ingratiating smirk. Behind him lay an epic saga of unsuccessful enterprises. He had failed at raising frogs, chinchilla, Siamese fighting fish, rami and culture pearls. He had attempted, variously and without success, to promote a Love Bird Two-in-a-coffin Cemetery, to corner the condom market during the rubber shortage, to run a mail order whore house, to issue penicillin as a patent medicine. He had followed disastrous betting systems in the casinos of Europe and the race tracks of the U.S. His reverses in business were matched by the incredible mischances of his personal life. His front teeth had been stomped out by bestial American sailors in Brooklyn. Vultures had eaten out an eye when he drank a pint of paregoric and passed out in a Panama City park. He had been trapped between floors in an elevator for five days with an oil-burning junk habit and sustained an attack of D.T.s while stowing away in a foot locker. Then there was the time he collapsed with strangulated intestines, perforated ulcers and peritonitis in Cairo and the hospital was so crowded they bedded him in the latrine, and the Greek surgeon goofed and sewed up a live monkey in him, and he was gangfucked by the Arab attendants, and one of the orderlies stole the penicillin substituting Saniflush; and the time he got clap in his ass and a self-righteous English doctor cured him with an enema of hot, sulphuric acid, and the German practitioner of Technological Medicine who removed his appendix with a rusty can opener and a pair of tin snips (he considered the germ theory "a nonsense.") Flushed with success he then began snipping and cutting out everything in sight: "The human body is filled up vit unnecessitated parts. You can get by vit one kidney. Vy have two? Yes dot is a kidney.... The inside parts should not be so close in together crowded. They need lebensraum like the Vaterland." The Expeditor had not yet been paid, and Marvie was faced by the prospect of stalling him for eleven months until the check cleared. The Expeditor was said to have been born on the Ferry between the Zone and the Island. His profession was to expedite the delivery of merchandise. No one knew for sure whether his services were of any use or not, and to mention his name always precipitated an argument. Cases were cited to prove his miraculous efficiency and utter worthlessness. The Island was a British Military and Naval station directly opposite the Zone.

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

  “So tied up that you couldn’t even call and let me know what was good. I’m not blind, Chocolate. I’ve seen you and your girl spinning around town. You could’ve told me you were involved.” “You didn’t ask,” I said, sarcastically. “Chocolate, you broke my heart when you played me to the left. I don’t just go around fucking niggaz I meet on the highway.” I raised a mocking eyebrow. “Don’t play ya’self, a’ight? I thought we had some kind of connection?” “We did. That was one of the best shots I ever had,” I admitted. “So that’s all it was, a fuck thing?” she asked, trying to hide the hurt in her voice. “Nah, baby, I was really digging you, but you know how it goes. It was the heat of the moment.” Harmony’s green eyes flared. “I don’t believe this shit. You know, I prayed that if I ever ran into you again that you’d have a good reason for not calling. I hoped that the stories that these girls tell about you weren’t true, but I see they are. You ain’t nothing but an egotistical whore.” “If that ain’t the pot calling the fucking kettle black.” My gaze went to her engagement ring. “It wasn’t that long ago that you were sucking my dick in the park, and I know that engagement didn’t happen overnight. Right after you gave me head you probably went and kissed that nigga in his mouth, so don’t try to hang no fucking labels, dig it? Granted, yours was some of the best pussy I ever had, but the fact of the matter is, we both had someone we were going home to. It was a brilliant fuck, but don’t try and make it more than that.” A lone tear ran down Harmony’s cheek, and her jaw muscles tightened. “I fucking hate you, Chocolate!” “Good, then that’s one less bitch I gotta worry about trying to get in my space. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some people waiting on me,” I said, brushing past her. I never even bothered to look back at Harmony, but I could feel the heat on my back. If looks could kill, I’d have probably dropped dead on the spot. I didn’t give a fuck though. It was my show and my way. • • • By the time I got to the table where my partners were sitting, I was greeted by hearty laughter. Apparently they had watched the whole exchange between Harmony and myself and gotten a kick out of it. Though we were all pushing thirty or had recently passed the mark, we were just big kids at heart. “That chick sure looked pissed,” Max said, slapping me five. Max was a high-yellow cat who still wore his hair in a fade. He and I had played on the same JV team in high school and been friends for years.

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

  I sighed heavily. Fuck him! I stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. My pussy was still tingling and craving some dick, but that was all right. I could handle mines. I dropped my pink slip to the floor and gazed at my reflection in the mirror. I was petite with silky skin and shaped like the letter S. My hair was long and black, and men always told me I had some beautiful hazel eyes. All of that and my niggah didn’t wanna fuck me this morning? What the hell was wrong with him? I opened the bathroom door and shouted to him, “Tears, are you on the down low?” “What you say?” he shouted back from the bedroom. I said, “Do you like to take dick in your ass?” “Bitch, what you say?” he shouted again. He must have been distracted by something, otherwise he would have heard me just fine. I sighed and closed the bathroom door. His ass was out there. As I stood in the shower trying to cool off, I thought about Tears and how we first met. We’d been together for two years and I was starting to wonder what was happening to us. Yeah, I loved the shit out of him, but lately he ain’t been giving it to me right. I thought maybe he was fuckin’ the next bitch, but why would he? Tears knows I’m a freak—shit the niggah met me in a strip club and fucked me that same night. I was dancing topless at this club on Hillside Avenue called Dreams, and trying to get my Bachelor’s degree at York College. I grew up in the Baisley Projects over on Guy R. Brewer and Foch. I’d always dated thugs and drug dealers, and Tears was no different. I knew he was hustling. He made frequent trips back and forth from New York to B-More, moving product with his boy Rondo. It was after midnight, and I was onstage twirling myself around the pole with a dozen or so men screaming and waving dollar bills. I was glistening with baby oil and clad only in a baby blue thong and six-inch stilettos. I made about three hundred that night, and was looking to make much more by the time I retired and went home. I knew that I was the sexiest bitch in the club, ’cause I got countless requests for lap dances after my segment, and niggahs wanted to take me into the VIP room and feel me up, and some were willing to pay a little extra just to fuck me. But I wasn’t trying to fuck any of these dirty-dick niggahs in the club. My song, “Honey Love” by R. Kelly played loudly in the backdrop, and I rolled around onstage, gleaming, moving around like I was making love to the floor.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘Of course not. Why should I hate you?’ ‘Very well then, listen.’ And now his voice was so grave that Puddle put down her embroidery. ‘You listen to me, you, Stephen Gordon. Your last book was quite inexcusably bad. It was no more like what we all expected, had a right to expect of you after The Furrow, than that plant I sent Puddle is like an oak tree—I won’t even compare it to that little plant, for the plant’s alive; your book isn’t. Oh, I don’t mean to say that it’s not well written; it’s well written because you’re just a born writer—you feel words, you’ve a perfect ear for balance, and a very good all-round knowledge of English. But that’s not enough, not nearly enough; all that’s a mere suitable dress for a body. And this time you’ve hung the dress on a dummy—a dummy can’t stir our emotions, Stephen. I was talking to Ogilvy only last night. He gave you a good review, he told me, because he’s got such a respect for your talent that he didn’t want to put on the damper. He’s like that—too merciful I always think—they’ve all been too merciful to you, my dear. They ought to have literally skinned you alive—that might have helped to show you your danger. My God! and you wrote a thing like The Furrow! What’s happened? What’s undermining your work? Because whatever it is, it’s deadly! it must be some kind of horrid dry rot. Ah, no, it’s too bad and it mustn’t go on—we’ve got to do something, quickly.’ He paused, and she stared at him in amazement. Until now she had never seen this side of Brockett, the side of the man that belonged to his art, to all art—the one thing in life he respected. She said: ‘Do you really mean what you’re saying?’ ‘I mean every word,’ he told her. Then she asked him quite humbly: ‘What must I do to save my work?’ for she realized that he had been speaking the stark, bitter truth; that indeed she had needed no one to tell her that her last book had been altogether unworthy—a poor, lifeless thing, having no health in it. He considered. ‘It’s a difficult question, Stephen. Your own temperament is so much against you. You’re so strong in some ways and yet so timid—such a mixture—and you’re terribly frightened of life. Now why? You must try to stop being frightened, to stop hiding your head. You need life, you need people. People are the food that we writers live on; get out and devour them, squeeze them dry, Stephen!’ ‘My father once told me something like that—not quite in those words—but something very like it.’

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

  But two hours passed, and there was no sign of him. I started to get discouraged. I sighed, trying to do my work and get my mind off his dick. Maybe it was only meant to be a one-time thing with him, I thought. I was going over a few spreadsheets for my boss, when I heard, “You busy?” I looked up and it was Raheem smiling down at me, looking so fine in his suit and wearing a pair of sunglasses. “Hey you,” I cheerfully greeted him, feeling my pussy throbbing just at the sight of him. “When’s your next break?” “I can take fifteen minutes right now,” I told him. “C’mon, then.” He gestured. I looked around, then told my friend Carol that I was taking my morning break. She nodded and I walked off with Raheem. I followed him toward the men’s bathroom. “I’ll wait for you,” I said. He gave me a sinful grin and said, “Inside, you and me.” “Are you crazy? I can’t walk into the men’s bathroom.” “Why not? We only got fifteen minutes. And besides, I already checked and no one’s inside.” It was tempting, and my hot pussy was telling me to go ahead and get myself a quickie at work. Raheem gently pulled me into the men’s bathroom, which was empty and—thank God—clean. I followed him down to the handicapped stall at the end of the row. “I love what you have on, Ayeesha,” he said, his hands sliding up my skirt and gripping my ass. “You look real good.” I rammed my tongue down his throat as I unbuckled his pants and pulled out his huge erection. I stroked him gracefully as I backed him against the wall. I wanted to taste him, and feel his big dick sliding in and out my mouth. I squatted down with his dick still in my grip. I peeked up at him and he looked content already. I leaned forward and slowly sucked on the tip of his dick. He let out a slight moan. I bobbed my head back and forth as Raheem moaned with pleasure. I tried to deep-throat it, but I was only able to push about eight inches into my mouth without gagging. But no lie, his shit felt so good in my mouth. A moment later I stood up and he sat down on the toilet seat with his pants and boxers around his ankles, and his hard-on looking like a flagpole. “Come ride this dick,” he said, stroking himself. “Ssshhhh,” I whispered, placing my index finger near my mouth. “We gotta keep quiet and listen out for the door.” “My badddd.”

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

  The Crusades also furnish the perpetual reminder that not in localities is the Church to seek its holiest satisfaction and not by the sword is the Church to win its way; but by the message of peace, by appeals to the heart and conscience, and by teaching the ministries of prayer and devout worship is she to accomplish her mission. The Crusader kneeling in the church of the Holy Sepulchre learned the meaning of the words, "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, He is risen." And all succeeding generations know the meaning of these words better for his pilgrimage and his mistake. Approaching the Crusades in enthusiasm, but differing from them as widely as the East is from the West in methods and also in results, has been the movement of modern Protestant missions to the heathen world which has witnessed no shedding of blood, save the blood of its own Christian emissaries, men and women, whose aims have been not the conquest of territory, but the redemption of the race.493 § 60. The Military Orders. Literature.—The sources are the Rules of the orders and the scattered notices of contemporary chroniclers. No attempt is made to give an exhaustive list of the literature.—P. H. Helyot: Histoire des ordres monastiques, religieux et militaires, 8 vols. Paris, 1719.—Perrot. Coll. Hist. des ordres de chivalrie, etc., 4 vols. Paris, 1819. Supplementary vol. by Fayolle, 1846.—Bielenfeld: Gesch. und Verfassung aller geistlichen und weltlichen Ritterorden, 2 vols. Weimar, 1841.—F. C. Woodhouse: The Military Religious Orders of the Middle Ages, London, 1879.—G. Uhlhorn: Die christliche Liebesthätigkeit im Mittelalter, Stuttgart, 1884.—Hurter: Life of Innocent III., vol. IV. 313 sqq.—The general Histories of the Crusades.—Stubbs: Const. Hist. of England. For the Knights of St. John: Abbe Vertot: Hist. des chevaliers hospitaliers de S. Jean de Jérusalem, etc., 4 vols. Paris, 1726, and since.—Taafe: History of the Knights of Malta, 4 vols. London, 1852.—L. B. Larking: The Knights Hospitallers in England, London, 1857.—A. Winterfeld: Gesch. des Ordens St. Johannis vom Spital zu Jerusalem, Berlin, 1859.—H. Von Ortenburg: Der Ritterorden des hl. Johannis zu Jerusalem, 2 vols. Regensb. 1866.—Genl. Porter: Hist. of the Knights of Malta of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, London, 1883.—Von Finck: Uebersicht über die Gesch. des ritterlichen Ordens St. Johannis, Berlin, 1890.—G. Hönnicke: Studien zur Gesch. des Hospitalordens, 1099–1162, 1897.—*J. D. Le Roulx: De prima origine Hospitaliorum Hierosol., Paris, 1885; Cartulaire général de l’Ordre des Hospitaliers St. Jean de Jérusalem, 3 vols., Paris, 1894; Les Hospitaliers en Terre Sainte et à Chypre, 1100–1310, Paris, 1904, pp. 440.—J. Von Pflugk-Harttung: Die Anfänge des Johanniterordens in Deutschland, Berlin, 1899, and Der Johanniter und der Deutsche Orden im Kampfe Ludwigs des Baiern mit der Kirche, Leipzig, 1900. Knöpfler: Johanniter in Weltzer-Welte, VI. 1719–1803. For other Lit. see Le Roulx: Les Hospitaliers, pp. v-xiii.