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 The Vagina Bible (2019)

  • Pain with sex is not normal—tell your provider, and if they don’t listen get another provider. • There are ten common causes of pain with sex. It is possible to have more than one. • Of all the causes, muscle spasm is the most common because it can be the only cause or be triggered by any other condition that causes pain with sex. • You almost never need a painful exam to get started—an experienced provider can get a lot of information from very little. • If there is evidence of low estrogen, it is typically best to adequately treat that first and then see if any pain remains. CHAPTER 40 I Have Vaginitis VAGINITIS IS ONE OF THE MOST COMMON reasons women seek gynecological care, and in the U.S., more than a billion dollars are spent annually on the combination of self-treatment, office visits, and prescription medications. Before we go any further, let’s define vaginitis. It is one or more of the following symptoms: • Abnormal vaginal discharge • Odor • Itch • Burning • Irritation These are not just nuisance symptoms. Many of the causes of vaginitis are associated with disturbances in the vaginal ecosystem that increase the risk of acquiring a sexually transmitted infection (STI) if exposed. Despite the discomfort, medical risks, financial impact, and emotional drain of vaginitis, misdiagnosis is common. Diagnosing vaginitis by symptoms is very inaccurate—approximately 50–70 percent of women are incorrect in their self-diagnosis. Diagnosing over the phone is no better. For these reasons, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends against diagnosis without evaluation except in resource-poor settings. Misdiagnosis by a medical provider is unfortunately common as well. In one study, doctors correctly identified yeast and bacterial vaginosis (BV)—the two most common causes of vaginitis—less than 40 percent of the time. One glaring reason for this is about 50 percent of the time doctors make the diagnosis of vaginitis without doing the correct testing, and sometimes without any testing at all. Self-advocacy to ensure you are getting the appropriate tests is important. Understanding Normal Discharge There is a significant amount of confusion regarding the definition of normal discharge online. Women have even posted underwear challenges to brag about how little discharge they have, but remember that up to 3–4 ml of discharge in 24 hours can be normal. Checking internally for discharge is not needed. It is not discharge until it leaves your body. You will always find mucus or secretions. This is a very important part of the vaginal ecosystem and defense mechanisms. You may also see discharge on your partner’s penis or fingers after sexual activity. It may seem like a lot, as your discharge will be mixed with secretions from arousal and friction will rub cells off from the vaginal mucosa (skin). This is normal. If you partner with a man and do not use a condom, there will also be ejaculate.

• From Wild (2012)

  “I’m heading back to Seiad Valley,” she said, and explained that she was cold, her feet were blistered, and her down sleeping bag had gotten drenched the night before and she had no hope of drying it out before nightfall. “I’m taking a bus to Ashland,” she said. “Come find me at the hostel when you get there.” I hugged her before she walked away, the fog enveloping her again in seconds. The next morning I woke earlier than normal, the sky the palest gray. It had stopped raining and the air had warmed up. I felt excited as I strapped on Monster and walked away from my camp: these were my last miles in California. I was less than a mile away from the border when a branch that hung along the edge of the trail caught on my William J. Crockett bracelet and sent it flying off into the dense brush. I scanned the rocks and bushes and trees, panicky, knowing as I pushed into the weeds that it was a lost cause. I wouldn’t find the bracelet. I hadn’t seen where it had gone. It had only made the faintest ping as it flew away from me. It seemed absurd that I’d lose the bracelet at this very moment, a clear omen of trouble ahead. I tried to twist it around in my mind and make the loss represent something good—a symbol of things I didn’t need anymore, perhaps, of lightening the figurative load—but then that idea flattened out and I thought only of William J. Crockett himself, the man from Minnesota who’d been about my age when he died in Vietnam, whose remains had never been found, whose family no doubt still grieved him. My bracelet wasn’t anything but a symbol of the life he lost too young. The universe had simply taken it into its hungry, ruthless maw. There was nothing to do but go on. I reached the border only minutes later, stopping to take it in: California and Oregon, an end and a beginning pressed up against each other. For such a momentous spot, it didn’t look all that momentous. There was only a brown metal box that held a trail register and a sign that said WASHINGTON: 498 MILES—no mention of Oregon itself.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  Yet these obstinate examples of resistance cannot stop the march of history; the advent of the machine ruins landed property and brings about working-class emancipation and concomitantly that of woman. All forms of socialism, wresting woman from the family, favor her liberation: Plato, aspiring to a communal regime, promised women a similar autonomy to that enjoyed in Sparta. With the utopian socialism of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Cabet is born the utopia of the “free woman.” The Saint-Simonian idea of universal association demands the abolition of all slavery: that of the worker and that of the woman; and it is because women like men are human beings that Saint-Simon, and Leroux, Pecqueur, and Carnot after him, demand their freedom. Unfortunately, this reasonable theory has no credibility in the Saint-Simonian school. Instead, woman is exalted in the name of femininity, the surest way to disserve her. Under the pretext of considering the couple as the basis of social unity, Père Enfantin tries to introduce a woman into each “director-couple” called the priest-couple; he awaits a better world from a woman messiah, and the Compagnons de la Femme embark for the East in search of this female savior. He is influenced by Fourier, who confuses the liberation of woman with the restoration of the flesh; Fourier demands the right of all individuals to follow their passionate attractions; he wants to replace marriage with love; he considers the woman not as a person but only in her amorous functions. And Cabet promises that Icarian communism will bring about complete equality of the sexes, though he accords women a limited participation in politics. In fact, women hold second place in the Saint-Simonian movement: only Claire Bazard, founder and main support for a brief period of the magazine La Femme Nouvelle (The New Woman), plays a relatively important role. Many other minor publications appear later, but their claims are timid; they demand education rather than emancipation for women; Carnot, and later Legouvé, is committed to raising the level of education for women. The idea of the woman partner or the woman as a regenerating force persists throughout the nineteenth century in Victor Hugo. But woman’s cause is discredited by these doctrines that, instead of assimilating her, oppose her to man, emphasizing intuition and emotion instead of reason. The cause is also discredited by some of its partisans’ mistakes. In 1848 women founded clubs and journals; Eugénie Niboyet published La Voix des Femmes (Women’s Voice), a magazine that Cabet worked on. A female delegation went to the city hall to demand “women’s rights” but obtained nothing. In 1849, Jeanne Deroin ran for deputy, and her campaign foundered in ridicule. Ridicule also killed the “Vesuvians” movement and the Bloomerists, who paraded in extravagant costumes. The most intelligent women of the period took no part in these movements: Mme de Staël fought for her own cause rather than her sisters’; George Sand demanded the right for free love but refused to collaborate on La Voix des Femmes; her claims are primarily sentimental. Flora Tristan believed in the people’s redemption through woman; but she is more interested in the emancipation of the working class than that of her own sex. Daniel Stern and Mme de Girardin, however, joined the feminist movement.

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

  In 1384 D’Ailly was made head of the College of Navarre, where he had Gerson for a pupil, and in 1389 chancellor of the university. When Benedict XIII. was chosen successor to Clement VII., he was sent by the French king on a confidential mission to Avignon. Benedict won his allegiance and appointed him successively bishop of Puy, 1395, and bishop of Cambray, 1397. D’Ailly was with Benedict at Genoa, 1405, and Savona, 1407, but by that time seems to have come to the conclusion that Benedict was not sincere in his profession of readiness to resign, and returned to Cambray. In his absence Cambray had decided for the subtraction of its allegiance from Avignon. D’Ailly was seized and taken to Paris, but protected by the king, who was his friend. Thenceforth he favored the assemblage of a general council. At Pisa and at Constance, D’Ailly took the position that a general council is superior to the pope and may depose him. Made a cardinal by John XXIII., 1411, he attended the council held at Rome the following year and in vain tried to have a reform of the calendar put through. At Constance, he took the position that the Pisan council? though it was called by the Spirit and represented the Church universal, might have erred, as did other councils reputed to be general councils. He declared that the three synods of Pisa, Rome and Constance, though not one body, yet were virtually one, even as the stream of the Rhine at different points is one and the same. It was not necessary, so he held, for the Council of Constance to pass acts confirming the Council of Pisa, for the two were on a par.378 In the proceedings against John XXIII., the cardinal took sides against him. He was the head of the commission which tried Huss in matters of faith, June 7, 8, 1415, and was present when the sentence of death was passed upon that Reformer. At the close of the council he appears as one of the three candidates for the office of pope, and his defeat was a disappointment to the French.379 He was appointed legate by Martin V., with his residence at Avignon, and spent his last days there.

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  This can be accomplished most successfully by the rational reconditioning of attitudes on a higher neuro-psychic or intellectual symbolic plane to the facts of science, preferably through a free discussion with a minimum of propaganda. This is not an easy road to mental and social sanity but it appears to be the only one which arrives at the goal.” 3 Here a technique which works very well in individual relations, and in certain types of social conflict due to differences in culture, is made a general panacea. How is it to solve the problem between England and India? Through the Round-Table Conference? But how much would England have granted India at the conference if a non-co-operation campaign, a type of conflict, had not forced the issue? A favorite counsel of the social scientists is that of accommodation. If two parties are in a conflict, let them, by conferring together, moderate their demands and arrive at a modus vivendi . This is, among others, the advice of Professor Hornell Hart. 4 Undoubtedly there are innumerable conflicts which must be resolved in this fashion. But will a disinherited group, such as the Negroes for instance, ever win full justice in society in this fashion? Will not even its most minimum demands seem exorbitant to the dominant whites, among whom only a very small minority will regard the inter-racial problem from the perspective of objective justice? Or how are the industrial workers to follow Professor Hart’s advice in dealing with industrial owners, when the owners possess so much power that they can win the debate with the workers, no matter how unconvincing their arguments? Only a very few sociologists seem to have learned that an adjustment of a social conflict, caused by the disproportion of power in society, will hardly result in justice as long as the disproportion of power remains. Sometimes the sociologists are so completely oblivious to the real facts of an industrial civilisation that, as Floyd Allport for instance, they can suggest that the unrest of industrial workers is due not to economic injustice but to a sense of inferiority which will be overcome just as soon as benevolent social psychologists are able to teach the workers that “no one is charging them with inferiority except themselves.” 5 These omniscient social scientists will also teach the owners that “interests and profits must be tempered by regard for the worker.”

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

  Thus European society was shaking itself clear of long-established customs and dogmas based upon the infallibility of the Church visible, and at the same time it held fast to some of the most noxious beliefs and practices the Church had allowed herself to accept and propagate. It had not the original genius or the conviction to produce a new system of theology. The great Schoolmen continued to rule doctrinal thought. It established no new ecclesiastical institution of an abiding character like the canon law. It exhibited no consuming passion such as went out in the preceding period in the crusades and the activity of the Mendicant Orders. It had no transcendent ecclesiastical characters like St. Bernard and Innocent III. The last period of the Middle Ages was a period of intellectual discontent, of self-introspection, a period of intimation and of preparation for an order which it was itself not capable of begetting. CHAPTER I.THE DECLINE OF THE PAPACY AND THE AVIGNON EXILE.A.D. 1294–1377. § 2. Sources and Literature. For works covering the entire period, see V. 1. 1–3, such as the collections of Mansi, Muratori, and the Rolls Series; Friedberg’s Decretum Gratiani, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1879–1881; Hefele-Knöpfler: Conciliengeschichte; Mirbt: Quellen zur Geschichte des Papstthums, 2d ed., 1901; the works of Gregorovius and Bryce, the General Church and Doctrinal Histories of Gieseler, Hefele, Funk, Hergenröther-Kirsch, Karl Müller, Harnack Loofs, and Seeberg; the Encyclopaedias of Herzog, Wetzer-Welte, Leslie Stephen, Potthast, and Chévalier; the Atlases of F. W. Putzger, Leipzig, Heussi and Mulert, Tübingen, 1905, and Labberton, New York. L. Pastor: Geschichte der Papste, etc., 4 vols., 4th ed., 1901–1906, and Mandell Creighton: History of the Papacy, etc., London, 1882–1894, also cover the entire period in the body of their works and their Introductory Chapters. There is no general collection of ecclesiastical author far this period corresponding to Migne’s Latin Patrology.

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

  The conclave met in Perugia, where Benedict died, and was torn by factions. After an interval of nearly eleven months, the French party won a complete triumph by the choice of Bertrand de Got, archbishop of Bordeaux, who took the name of Clement V. At the time of his election, Bertrand was in France. He never crossed the Alps. After holding his court at Bordeaux, Poictiers, and Toulouse, he chose, in 1309, Avignon as his residence. Thus began the so-called Babylonian captivity, or Avignon exile, of the papacy, which lasted more than seventy years and included seven popes, all Frenchmen, Clement V., 1305–1314; John XXII., 1316–1334; Benedict XII., 1334–1342; Clement VI., 1342–1352; Innocent VI., 1352–1362; Urban V., 1362–1370; Gregory XI., 1370–1378. This prolonged absence from Rome was a great shock to the papal system. Transplanted from its maternal soil, the papacy was cut loose from the hallowed and historical associations of thirteen centuries. It no longer spake as from the centre of the Christian world. The way had been prepared for the abandonment of the Eternal City and removal to French territory. Innocent II. and other popes had found refuge in France. During the last half of the thirteenth century the Apostolic See, in its struggle with the empire, had leaned upon France for aid. To avoid Frederick II., Innocent IV. had fled to Lyons, 1245. If Boniface VIII. represents a turning-point in the history of the papacy, the Avignon residence shook the reverence of Christendom for it. It was in danger of becoming a French institution. Not only were the popes all Frenchmen, but the large majority of the cardinals were of French birth. Both were reduced to a station little above that of court prelates subject to the nod of the French sovereign. At the same time, the popes continued to exercise their prerogatives over the other nations of Western Christendom, and freely hurled anathemas at the German emperor and laid the interdict upon Italian cities. The word might be passed around, "where the pope is, there is Rome," but the wonder is that the grave hurt done to his oecumenical character was not irreparable.85

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

  Hugh de Wells created several hundred vicarages and Grosseteste continued the policy and provided for their maintenance out of the revenues of the older churches. Chantries were endowed where mass was said for the repose of the souls of the dead, and in time these were often united to constitute independent vicarages or parishes. The synod of Westminster, 1102, provided for a more just treatment of the ill-paid vicars. The Constitutions of Otho forbade the tearing down of old historic buildings and the erection of new ones without the consent of the bishop. The Normans also introduced a new era of clerical education. Before their arrival, so William of Malmesbury says,1985 the clergy were content with a slight degree of learning and could scarcely stammer the words of the sacraments. A satisfactory idea of the extent and dispersion of learning among the clergy it is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. A high authority, Dr. Stubbs,1986 makes the doubtful statement that every one admitted even to minor orders must have been able to read and write. It happened, however, that bishops were rejected for failing in their examinations and others were admitted to their sees though they were unable to read.1987 As for preaching, a sermon from an English parochial priest in the Middle Ages was probably a rare thing. There were at all times some men of literary ability among the English clergy as is attested by the chronicles that have come down to us, by such writers as John of Salisbury, Walter Map, and Peter of Blois (who was imported from France), and by the Schoolmen who filled the chairs at Oxford in its early history. In spite of the measures of Anselm and other prelates, clerical marriage and concubinage continued in England. Writing to Anselm, Pascal II. spoke of the majority of the English priests as married. Laws were enacted forbidding the people to attend mass said by an offending priest; and women who did not quit priestly houses were to be treated as adulteresses and denied burial in sacred ground. An English priest in the time of Adrian IV. named his daughter Hadriana, a reminder to the pope that he himself was the son of a priest.1988 Some relief was attempted by the introduction of the Augustinian rule, requiring priests to live together; but it was adopted in the single English cathedral of Carlisle and in a few Scotch cathedrals. The records of the courts leave no doubt of the coarse vice which prevailed in clerical groups. Even after the twelfth century, many of the bishops were married or had semi-legitimated families. According to Matthew Paris, Grosseteste was on the point of resigning his see on account of the low morals of his clergy.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  So I started to yell and I called the kid I-don’t-know-what, told him I’d personally separate him from his manhood if I ever caught him with her again and that sort of thing. Wendy came home peacefully. Another laugh. A party laugh, trailing off precipitously. Elena watched him in the bathroom now, straightening the ascot. She waited awhile before asking. She let it hang in the air with the menace of a grave diagnosis. —So what were you doing in the basement anyway? Only a slight hesitation: —Just dropping off a coffee cup. Jim left it, last time he was over. It was on the dash of the car. You were, you know, reading. I was just dropping off the cup. Benjamin emerged from the bathroom. Smiled. Spread wide his arms to announce his arrival. —Let’s eat, babe. I am cool. I am ready. She lifted herself, as though it were the greatest chore, from within the fold of the comforter at the end of the bed. It diapered her. And this was a great chore, too. Being lied to required such work. —Oh, right, she said. The mustache coffee cup. The one that was sitting on the dash. —Yeah, sure, he said. That’s the one. —That one. Benjamin nodded vigorously. —That one. Her husband simply laughed. As if the flimsiness of his deceits wouldn’t adhere to him. So they were back in the kitchen. Disappointment in the room like a sullen dinner guest. The peas bobbed in their sulfurous oil slick. All was ready. Wendy appeared behind Elena, wearing another pink turtleneck and corduroys. Without prompting, Wendy searched the long, narrow drawer by the range for a wooden spoon with which to disembowel the turkey of its stuffing. She set the spoon at the edge of the serving platter. Then, in the cupboard by the refrigerator, Wendy found three glasses, the ones with the decorative blueberries painted on them. The really good holiday finery would wait. In the den, Ben had vanished to fix himself another drink. Absences of this sort Elena knew intimately. Soon, according to habit, there would be the sound of ice hitting the bottom of a tumbler and the sudden swelling of show tunes from their new high-fidelity stereo system. Richard Kiley was going to dream that impossible dream again. Elena spooned the peas onto the plates Wendy provided and then went to help her daughter fold the napkins and arrange the cutlery, turning a knife here so that the sharp side faced in, adjusting the glasses so that each was at the right-hand corner of the plastic place mats. The dog trotted in from the den, decelerating as he rounded the sink, spinning in circles before settling under the center of the table. And behind him came his master, whose beverage—its tinkling melody—announced his entrance. They each stood around the remains of the turkey, spooning carbohydrates onto their plates beside the peas. The order of it was impeccable.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  A. Leo Oppenheim; ANET, 564. The End of the Kingdom of Judah The “good” King Hezekiah is followed in 2 Kings 21 by Manasseh, who reigns for fifty-five years and does “more wicked things than all the Amorites did, who were before him” (21:11). Manasseh does everything of which the Deuteronomists disapprove, restoring the high places that Hezekiah had torn down, erecting altars for Baal, and even making his son “pass through fire” as a burnt offering. He is also said to have practiced soothsaying and dealt with mediums. How far these practices were traditional in Judah and how far they were introduced by Manasseh under Assyrian influence, is disputed. At least the high places and the worship of Baal were traditional, although the cult of Baal was not as widespread in Judah as it was in northern Israel. The Deuteronomists paint Manasseh in lurid colors, in part to explain why there were so many abuses when Josiah came to the throne, and in part to explain the fate that ultimately befell Judah, despite the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah. According to 21:10-15, it is because of the sins of Manasseh that the Lord resolves to destroy Jerusalem. We have already discussed the reforms of Josiah in connection with the book of Deuteronomy. The account indirectly gives a vivid picture of religion in Judah before the reform, with widespread worship of Baal and Asherah. The reforms represent the climax of the Deuteronomistic History. The first edition of the work was probably promulgated during the reign of Josiah. We might expect that the reform would earn Judah a reprieve in the eyes of the Lord, but this is not what happens. When the pharaoh goes to meet the king of Assyria at the Euphrates, Josiah goes to meet him at Megiddo, and, we are told, the pharaoh killed him. The parallel account in 2 Chron 35:20-24 makes clear that Josiah went to fight the pharaoh, although it is not at all clear why he should have done so. Chronicles explains that Josiah was killed by archers in battle. The account in Kings is ambiguous. The pharaoh may have had Josiah executed for whatever reason. In any case, the premature death of the reforming king confounds the expectations of Deuteronomic theology. The editors, however, provide an explanation. In 2 Kgs 22:20 the Lord tells Josiah: “I will gather you to your ancestors, and you shall be gathered to your grave in peace; your eyes shall not see all the disaster that I will bring on this place.” Josiah is to be spared the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. The problem with this explanation is that death at the hands of the pharaoh was hardly a peaceful demise.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  Each gives him a piece of money and a gold ring. Job’s wealth is doubled, and he is given a new family to replace the old one, with the nice touch that the daughters are now given an inheritance with their brothers. (Even the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27 were allowed to inherit only because they had no brothers.) We might think, initially, that Job was restored to his original state, with some enhancement. But he ought to have learned something from the experience. No great confidence could be placed in people who professed their friendship when he was restored, when they had been absent in his time of need. And he should know from experience that all the newfound wealth and family that he is given at the end could be lost again in one bad day. Never again should Job be so confident that he would grow old in his own nest, or that other people were not worthy to be put with the dogs of his flock. The book of Job has more than one lesson. As between Job and his friends, Job is vindicated. He was not being punished for any sins, as the reader knew from the beginning. Moreover, his near-blasphemous candor is preferred to the piety of those who would lie for God. His honesty, however, is not tantamount to wisdom. He has to live with the fact that the universe does not revolve around humanity, let alone around Job. The justice of God, if that be the proper term, cannot be measured by human standards. The Wisdom Poem (Chapter 28) The latter point is reinforced by the great poem on wisdom that is inserted at chapter 28, and that serves as a commentary on the drama in the manner of a Greek chorus. In sharp contrast to Proverbs 8, where Wisdom cries out in the street, this poem emphasizes the elusiveness of Wisdom. Humanity knows all kinds of wonderful things and can extract precious metals from the bowels of the earth, “but where shall wisdom be found?” (28:12). Even Abaddon and Death, the underworld personified, do not know where Wisdom is hidden. Only God knows its place, because he established it at creation. It should be noted here that Job 28 does not say that God created Wisdom (although the point is unclear). It may be that Wisdom is something primeval. Neither does it say that God used Wisdom to create the world, in the manner of Proverbs 8. Rather, Wisdom is something jealously guarded by God: “And he said to humankind, ‘Truly, the fear of the L ord , that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding’ ” (Job 28:28).

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  a nun who saw the Empress Theophano pleading for forgiveness in shame for her sins, which he obligingly went on to specify as excessive luxury in clothing and customs, so corrupting to women of the West. Behind such misogyny lurked much greater differences between the Christian practice and belief of East and West. The fact that the Western Roman Empire continued to exist at all was a symbol that the two cultures had begun to take decisively different directions. There was steadily less understanding between the two sides, because communication between them was irregular, haphazard and often bad-tempered, and that meant that differences of theological outlook could fester: principally Charlemagne’s addition of the Filioque to the Nicene Creed (see p. 350). Successive popes proved remarkably obstinate in resisting Carolingian pressure about the Filioque, showing that they were aware of the gravity with which Constantinople regarded the issue. Rome was one of the last places to adopt the Filioque into its liturgy, and eventually only did so in the early eleventh century, under pressure from the last Ottonian emperor, Henry II, who was campaigning against the Byzantines in Italy. This was a sign that papal relations with the East were reaching a low ebb.86 A formal break between Rome and Constantinople in 1054 (see p. 374), not seen as significant at the time, signalled not simply a new era in relations between the two, but the culmination of a process in which the papacy made its claim to a primacy in the whole Church ever more formal. This could not have been predicted when, a thousand years before, Peter had been killed in the imperial capital. After the new millennium in 1000, three centuries followed in which the dream of a universal Christian monarchy became central to the shape of Western Christianity, and almost seemed to be capable of becoming reality.

• From The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography (2008)

  Following his relapse back into porn, Corey scheduled a session with his therapist to try to understand how and why it had happened. After all the pain he had been through because of porn—his unhappy marriage, the sexual offense he committed, time in jail—he couldn’t believe he would slip back into using it again. “I knew if I didn’t figure out how I got there, I’d just go there again,” he said. With his therapist’s help, Corey created a timeline covering the period shortly before his relapse until after it was over. In his timeline he identified how he was feeling, what he was thinking, and what he was doing at each point in time. He wanted to identify what made him vulnerable to relapsing and might in the future indicate that he had entered Trigger Territory and was slipping into the Relapse Zone. Corey figured out that his relapse had begun when he started playing mind games with himself when he was feeling lonely and sexually frustrated. “First I convinced myself that I was only looking at swimsuit ads,” he said. “Then I began to look at catalogs that included lingerie. I tricked myself into believing all of it was safe and allowable. By the time I got to the porn sites, my sexual excitement had kicked in and I was already so caught up, it didn’t matter to me what I was doing.” Corey learned that even though lingerie and swimsuit ads are not technically porn, they gave him the same rush he used to get from porn. He didn’t even have to masturbate or have an orgasm, just searching for those pictures and thinking of searching brought on feelings of euphoria. It became clear that it wasn’t what he was looking at, but why and how he was involved that mattered in terms of triggering his relapse. Analyzing her most recent relapses for clues to prevent future occurrences, Marie discovered that what triggered her relapse back into using porn was feeling emotionally vulnerable and looking for something to soothe her feelings. “When I get really stressed out and feel like a failure in life, it’s like a little movie projector in my brain kicks on and starts showing the porn I’ve already seen to make me feel better. Then I get triggered into wanting to go buy and look at more porn. I’ve learned to pay attention to when I get stressed out and shift immediately into reducing stress and taking care of myself emotionally so that I feel better inside.”

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  awful compound like life in Georgia.” Blount’s Cracker President would have “a richer voice, and a less dismissable smile.” 31 There was probably more redneck in Jimmy than Blount realized. When speechwriter Bob Shrum resigned from the Carter team in 1976, he exposed a less compassionate candidate. The man who publicly advocated for miners when he spoke before a labor audience told Shrum privately that “he opposed increased black-lung benefits for miners, because ‘they chose to be miners.’” Seemingly lacking an understanding of class conditions, Carter right then revealed a mean streak a mile wide. Should miners suffer because they accepted the dangers of the job? He showed his mean side again in 1977 when he endorsed the Hyde Amendment for restricting Medicaid payments to poor women seeking abortions. In answer to a question from Judy Woodruff of NBC, the president did not defend his position on strictly moral grounds, but made a class argument instead: “Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people can’t. But I don’t believe that the federal government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, when there is a moral factor involved.” He basically held that the federal government should be able to deny poor women benefits because they were poor. The wealthy could do as they please, and the poor had to be disciplined. Carter was prone to the fatalistic view: poor women deserve their destiny, and coal miners must endure black-lung disease. In effect, the message was: don’t expect equality or compassion if you can’t help yourself. 32 America’s love affair with Jimmy Carter of Plains, Georgia, faded fairly rapidly. By 1979, his declining popularity was summed up in the parable of the swamp rabbit. It was a story the media refused to let go of, in part because the president’s staff refused to release images of the encounter until pressed. Carter told his own tale of the swamp adventure. Paddling a canoe, he saw a wild rabbit chasing his small craft and “baring his teeth.” He thought it was curious, and also funny. Reporters turned it into a modern version of the frontiersman’s vaunted boasting session. Instead of “Daniel Boone wrestling with bears,” one journalist chided, Carter was taking on “Peter Rabbit.” Others had the president sparring with Banzai Bunny, or the killer rabbit of Monty Python fame. It became a metaphor for a wimpy presidential leadership style, feeding the legend of the country boy who turned coward in what should have been familiar terrain —the marshy wilds of the Georgia backcountry. Jimmy Carter was not the hero of Deliverance; he was closer to Jimmy Stewart of Harvey, a feebleminded man

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

  "If the chastity of the heathen," he objects to Augustine’s view of the corrupt nature of heathen virtue, "were no chastity, then it might be said with the same propriety that the bodies of unbelievers are no bodies; that the eyes of the heathen could not see; that grain which grew in their fields was no grain." Augustine justly ascribed the value of a moral act to the inward disposition or the direction of the will, and judged it from the unity of the whole life and according to the standard of love to God, which is the soul of all true virtue, and is bestowed upon us only through grace. He did not deny altogether the existence of natural virtues, such as moderation, lenity, benevolence, generosity, which proceed from the Creator, and also constitute a certain merit among men; but he drew a broad line of distinction between them and the specific Christian graces, which alone are good in the proper sense of the word, and alone have value before God. The Holy Scriptures, history, and Christian experience, by no means warrant such a favorable view of the natural moral condition of man as the Pelagian system teaches. On the contrary, they draw a most gloomy picture of fearful corruption and universal inclination to all evil, which can only be overcome by the intervention of divine grace. Yet Augustine also touches an extreme, when, on a false application of the passage of St. Paul: "Whatsoever is not of faith, is sin" (Rom. xiv. 23), he ascribes all the virtues of the heathen to ambition and love of honor, and so stigmatizes them as vices.1767 And in fact he is in this inconsistent with himself. For, according to his view, the nature which God created, remains, as to its substance, good; the divine image is not wholly lost, but only defaced; and even man’s sorrow in his loss reveals a remaining trace of good.1768 Pelagius distinguishes three elements in the idea of good: . Power, will, and act (posse, velle, and esse). The first appertains to man’s nature, the second to his free will, the third to his conduct. The power or ability to do good, the ethical constitution, is grace, and comes therefore from God, as an original endowment of the nature of man. It is the condition of volition and action, though it does not necessarily produce them. Willing and acting belong exclusively to man himself.1769 The power of speech, of thought, of sight, is God’s, gift; but whether we shall really think, speak, or see, and whether we shall think, speak, or see well or ill, depends upon ourselves.1770 Here the nature of man is mechanically sundered from his will and act; and the one is referred exclusively to God, the others to man. Moral ability does not exist over and above the will and its acts, but in them, and is increased by exercise; and thus its growth depends upon man himself.

• From The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)

  And with the misery of knowing half of the poems, published ones, weren’t any longer, or in two years would definitely not be, passable in myself because of their bland ladylike archness or slightness. And I become linked to the damn book again, weeding it out like an overgrown garden: once the weeds were scenic, but not anymore. And if [Adrienne] Rich wasn’t so dull, and Donald Hall so dull, and they putting in a hundred pages of dull published poems, I wouldn’t feel so lousy. It would have backed me up at Smith in my work, given me that toehold on my adult work instead of making me go on from a five year gap, and only 16 poems published in the last year. Worst: it gets me feeling so sorry for myself that I get concerned about Ted: Ted’s success, which I must cope with this fall with my job, loving it, and him to have it, but feeling so wishfully that I could make both of us feel better by having it with him. I’d rather have it this way, if either of us was successful: that’s why I could marry him, knowing he was a better poet than I and that I would never have to restrain my little gift, but could push it and work it to the utmost, and still feel him ahead. I must work for a state in myself which is stoic: the old state of working & waiting. I have had the most unfortunate hap: the bright glittery youth from 17 to 20 and then the breakup and the dead lull while I fight to make the experience of my early maturity available to my typewriter. Yesterday: I faced another fact square on: I have not only been grossly spoiled: I haven’t worked at all . Not one tenth hard enough. This I know now: it was outlined by our visit to the two young writers Mrs. Cantor sent over: they are both through with the first drafts of novels, 350 pages of typing: now that’s, simply mechanically, a hell of a lot of typing not to mention writing & rewriting. They have had six months to our six weeks. So what. I haven’t used six weeks. I haven’t written a poem for six months until this long exercise in freer speech and extended subject, and haven’t written a story since October except for one, “The Trouble-Making Mother,” which is a slick story, but one I consider good, which was rejected without a word from The Sat Eve Post , and a flashy light one about a mother’s helper which I consider artificial and not worth rewriting and which will, in a week, no doubt come back from The Ladies’ Home Journal along with the little “Laundromat Affair.” So what have I written: bad conscience about Mademoiselle and Harper’s and The Atlantic plagues me: they’d print anything I wrote that was good enough. So all I have to do is work.

• From The New Naked: The Ultimate Sex Education for Grown-Ups (2014)

  They had sex as often as five to six times a week when they were engaged and during their first year as a married couple, but it’s gradually been diminishing to something that’s more routine than exciting. It bothers them both. But they admit that they never talked about their sexual needs or desires when they were courting, or even after the wedding. They just did it. They need to get the spark and desire back into their sex life, pronto. Lewis: My emotional connection to sex has diminished. So has how often we do it. Carmen: I noticed it, too, starting around our first wedding anniversary. Lewis: We weren’t as spontaneous. Carmen: I didn’t want to have it as much, either. Lewis: Then she got pregnant, and her morning sickness was so bad that our sex life practically disappeared. Carmen: And when the baby was born, we were so tired we didn’t think about it. Lewis: Yeah, and nothing much changed after we had the second baby. Carmen: So here we are. Lewis: For me, it’s more like a biological urge that needs to be taken care of, and for women it’s much more connected to their emotions. Carmen: Sometimes I feel that Lewis just wants to do it and get it over with, so he forgets to connect with me first. That just makes me feel like he’s not interested in me or my body or my needs. Their pattern: Like many married couples, what was once a wholly satisfying sex life has dwindled to infrequent forays that leave both partners dissatisfied and frustrated. But instead of talking frankly to each other, Lewis and Carmen remained silent. Their love was clear, but their communication skills were not. My advice: I can tell they have a strong and loving marriage because they literally finish each other’s thoughts. They might be having a rough patch sexually, but they are in complete emotional sync, and that is a terrific sign for them being able to work this out. Also, they both know that sexual intimacy is one of the most important aspects of a healthy sexual relationship. So is being able to express their sexual needs and desires, and that’s what’s tripping them up right now. What I suggest they both do is be honest about what they want sexually. Use the “Five Things I Desire” list on page 238 to tell each other what they love about each other—and what they’d like to do and have done to each other. They can compare notes and take it from there. A certain amount of compromising might be needed at first—if, for example, Lewis wants sex four times a week and Carmen wants it less while they’re working things through, perhaps they can settle on twice a week—but they should be able to come up with a mutually satisfying solution.

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

  It is better to go out of the body and to raise one’s self to the Lord, than to leave Cappadocia to journey to Palestine." He did not succeed in making peace, and he returned to Cappadocia lamenting that there were in Jerusalem men "who showed a hatred towards their brethren, such as they ought to have only towards the devil, towards sin, and towards the avowed enemies of the Saviour." Of his later life we know very little. He was in Constantinople thrice afterwards, in 383, 385, and 394, and he died about the year 395. The wealth of his intellectual life he deposited in his numerous writings, above all in his controversial doctrinal works: Against Eunomius; Against Apollinaris; On the Deity of the Son and the Holy Ghost; On the difference between ousia and hypostasis in God; and in his catechetical compend of the Christian faith.1962 The beautiful dialogue with his sister Macrina on the soul and the resurrection has been already mentioned. Besides these he wrote many Homilies, especially on the creation of the world, and of man,1963 on the life of Moses, on the Psalms, on Ecclesiastes, on the Song of Solomon, on the Lord’s Prayer, on the Beatitudes; Eulogies on eminent martyrs and saints (St. Stephen, the Forty Martyrs, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Ephrem, Meletius, his brother Basil); various valuable ascetic tracts; and a biography of his sister Macrina, addressed to the monk Olympios. Gregory was more a man of thought than of action. He had a fine metaphysical head, and did lasting service in the vindication of the mystery of the Trinity and the incarnation, and in the accurate distinction between essence and hypostasis. Of all the church teachers of the Nicene age he is the nearest to Origen. He not only follows his sometimes utterly extravagant allegorical method of interpretation, but even to a great extent falls in with his dogmatic views.1964 With him, as with Origen, human freedom plays a great part. Both are idealistic, and sometimes, without intending it or knowing it, fall into contradiction with the church doctrine, especially in eschatology. Gregory adopts, for example, the doctrine of the final restoration of all things. The plan of redemption is in his view absolutely universal, and embraces all spiritual beings. Good is the only positive reality; evil is the negative, the non-existent, and must finally abolish itself, because it is not of God. Unbelievers must indeed pass through a second death, in order to be purged from the filthiness of the flesh. But God does not give them up, for they are his property, spiritual natures allied to him. His love, which draws pure souls easily and without pain to itself, becomes a purifying fire to all who cleave to the earthly, till the impure element is driven off. As all comes forth from God, so must all return into him at last. § 166. Gregory Nazianzen. I. S. Gregorius Theologus, vulgo Nazianzenus: Opera omnia, Gr. et Lat. opera et studio monachorum S.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part 4 (300 – 1300, Rome) (2009)

  gradual end to the wave of invasions of non-Christian peoples from north and east which had been a constant source of insecurity during the ninth and tenth centuries. 10. Cluny and the Santiago Pilgrimage Nevertheless, most people would not have experienced the new system as a deliverance; it was characterized by new forms of exploitation. In a search for new sources of wealth, and with the prospect of greater stability in their territories, the nobility turned to squeezing revenues out of the lands which they controlled through more productive farming. Some of their enterprise was directed to expansion of cultivation – draining marshes, clearing forest – but whether in old or new farming communities, they regulated their land and the people on it ever more closely. From the tenth century many areas of Europe witnessed the purposeful creation of a network of new village settlements, with many more legal obligations on their newly gathered inhabitants. A large proportion of the rural population was reduced to serfdom: farmers became the property of their lords, with obligations to work on the newly intensive agricultural production.4 Economic productivity dramatically rose as a result. There were better food supplies and more wealth. Surplus wealth and the need for ready exchange in

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

  Mark’s after the trials which followed Charles’ advent in Italy had begun, went away impressed with the friar’s piety and candor, and declared that he predicted with certainty to him and to the king, "things which no one believed at the time and which have all been fulfilled since."1183 On the other hand, such solemn prognostications failed of fulfilment, as the extension of Florentine dominion even to the recovery of Pisa, made May 28, 1495, and the speedy conversion of the Turks and Moors, made May 3, 1495. The latter purported to be a revelation from the Virgin on his visit to paradise. Where a certain number of solemn, prophetic announcements remained unfulfilled, it is fair to suspect that the remainder were merely the predictions of a shrewd observer watching the progress of events. Many people trusted the friar as a prophet but, as conditions became more and more involved, they demanded with increasing insistence that he should substantiate his prophetic claim by a miracle. Even the predictions which came true in part, such as the coming of Charles VIII. across the Alps, received no fulfilment in the way of a permanent improvement of conditions, such as Savonarola expected. The statement of Prof. Bonet-Maury expresses the case well. Savonarola’s prophetic gift, so-called, was nothing more than political and religious intuition.1184 Some of his predictions were not in the line of what Christian prophecies might be expected to be, such as the rehumiliation of Pisa. The Florentines felt flattered by the high honor which the prophet paid to their city, and his predictions of her earthly dominion as well as heavenly glory. In his Manual of Revelations he exclaims, "Whereas Florence is placed in the midst of Italy, like the heart in the midst of the body, God has chosen to select her, that she may be the centre from which this prophetic announcement should be spread abroad throughout all Italy." No scene in Savonarola’s career excels in moral grandeur and dramatic interest his appearance at the death-bed of Lorenzo the Magnificent, in 1492. History has few such scenes to offer. When it became apparent to the brilliant ruler of the Florentine state that his days were numbered, he felt unwilling to face the mysteries of death and the future without the absolution priestly prerogative pretends to be competent to confer. Savonarola and Lorenzo loved Florence with an equal love, though the one sought its glory through a career of righteousness and the other through a career of worldly dominion and glittering culture. The two leaders found no terms of agreement. Lorenzo had sought to win the preacher by personal attention and blandishments. He attended mass at St. Mark’s. Savonarola held himself back as from an elegant worldling and the enemy of the liberties of Florence.