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 Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  This flies in the face of more than a hundred years of architectural practice. Our society wants to condense, distill, centralize, and giantize. But when this becomes a form—the form—of social engineering, whether in the form of upper-class residential neighborhoods with no stores and no working-class residences, whether in the form of business neighborhoods with no residences at all, or in the form of industrial neighborhoods with no white-collar businesses and no stores, the result is a social space that can do well only as long as money is poured constantly into it. Such locations have no way of producing the economic cushioning that holds things stable at the infrastructural level. While such neighborhoods may be, at their outset, provisionally convenient, or uncrowded, or even beautiful, they can never remain pleasant to move around in over any extended period. Without a web of social pleasantry, uncrowded soon becomes lonely; beautiful becomes artificial; and even the convenience of propinquity transforms into the oppressing necessity to be where one would rather not. Under such valuative shifts, all too quickly follow those material transformations wrought by time alone, where neat and well cared for become abandoned, dirty, filled with trash, and rundown, while another neighborhood, three times or five times or ten times as old, which has nevertheless been able to maintain that stabilizing web of lived social pleasantry and diversity, is perceived—however shabby it may be—as quaint and full of historical interest. What I and many other small voices are proposing is that we utilize consciously the same principles of socioeconomic diversity through which those pleasant, various, and stable neighborhoods that were never planned grew up naturally. Purposely we must reproduce those multiform and variegated social levels to achieve like neighborhoods as ends. If our ideal is to promote movement among the classes and the opportunity for such movement, we can do it only if we create greater propinquity among the different elements that make up the different classes. That is diversity. Today, however, diversity has to claw its way into our neighborhoods as an afterthought—often as much as a decade after the places have been built and thought out. (It is not just that there were once trees and public ashtrays on Forty-second Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. There were also an apartment house and grocery stores, an automat, a sporting goods store, clothing stores, bookstores, electronics stores, a cigar store and several newsstands, and half a dozen restaurants at various levels, all within a handful of meters of the Candler office tower—as well as the dozen movie theaters and amusement halls [Fascination, Herbert’s Flea Circus], massage parlors and sex shows for which the area was famous, for almost fifty years—fifty years that encompassed the heyday and height of the strip as the film and entertainment capital of the city, of the world.) Why not begin by designing for such variety?

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

  “You agreed that you owed the Welches an apology.” “Yes sir.” “You promised to apologize, Jack. You gave your word.” I said again that I wanted to but couldn’t. Mr. Bolger lost interest in me then. I saw it in his eyes. He told me that he and Mrs. Bolger had hoped I would be happy with them, happier than I’d apparently been with my stepfather, but it didn’t seem as if I was. All in all, he saw no point in my staying on. He said he would call my mother that night and make arrangements to have her come and get me. I didn’t argue. I knew that his mind was made up. So was mine. I had decided to join the army. MY MOTHER DROVE down the next day. She huddled with the Bolgers for a couple of hours, then took me for a drive. At first she didn’t speak. Her hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel; the muscles of her jaw were tensed. We went down the road a few miles, to a truck stop. My mother pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. “I had to beg them,” she said. Then she told me what her begging had accomplished. Mr. Bolger had agreed to let me stay on after all, if I would put things right with the Welches by working on their farm after school. I said I would rather not do that. She ignored me. Looking over the steering wheel, she said that Mr. Bolger also wanted Father Karl to have a talk with me. Mr. Bolger hoped that Father Karl’s brand of religion might reach me, being closer to the one I was raised in than his own. My mother said I had a couple of choices: I could either go along with Mr. Bolger or pack up. Today. And if I did paok up, I’d better have a plan, because I couldn’t come home with her—Dwight wouldn’t let me in the door. It looked like she might have a job lined up in Seattle but it would be a while until she knew for sure, and then she would need time to get started and find a place. “Why didn’t you apologize to those people?” she said. I told her I couldn’t.

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

  In fact, I confined my investigations exclusively to the coast, beach-hopping from Copacabana with its tourist hordes, big hotels, nightclubs, and family beaches, to the slightly more segmented Ipanema. In Ipa, there are beaches for surfers, beaches for gays, beaches for aging leftists and artists, a beach with a band shell for live music. The surf is stronger, and the social strata more intricate. A few blocks back from the beach, it's like Sutton Place. Ten blocks beyond? Slums that make the South Bronx of the 1970s look like Club Med. I traveled down the coast, through mountain tunnels to Barra (another one), a Montauk-esque beach community with even wilder waves and a less crowded beach—a sort of dress-down-if-you're-stinking-rich enclave strip of cafes and shops and modest but well-kept homes, a few full-bore pleasure palaces. I ate caldo verde (Portuguese kale soup), fried fresh sardines, and grilled chorizos and onions; drank cachaga and chopp; and looked out for good places to return for dinner. When the whole group was briefly reconstituted at the hotel, we set out for dinner at a churrascaria, a highly recommended place in Copa with an extensive buffet. But the minute we sat down, we knew it was a mistake. The meal was awful, pointless, and touristy. The Argentine beef was bland, chewy, and uninteresting. I felt like a carnival mark watching the bolero-jacketed waiters carving slices off indifferently grilled meat. There was only sirloin, filet, and round—no skirt or hanger or kidneys or interesting bits. I hate all-you-can-eat concepts to start with. Few foodstuffs, in my experience, are actually better festering under heat lamps, or growing oxidized on a buffet. A late-night sushi snack the next night was equally dreary. Taka's face, previously filled with enthusiasm as he discussed the films of Werner Herzog, went slack as he laid eyes on the limp graying tuna, the insipid California rolls. The bastards didn't even have Japanese beer! What was sensational was my first experience of feijoada, the national dish of Brazil. Feijoada is traditionally eaten on Saturday afternoon, in gargantuan, gut-busting portions, the idea being that after a full experience of this hearty mix of hooves, snouts, tails, and other meats stewed in black beans, one need not eat again for the rest of the weekend. Eager to find the best available, I strolled down the main drag of Copacabana, eyes peeled for locals, until I found a particularly busy cafe packed with cariocas happily digging in. Major score. My feijoada arrived baked in a massive earthenware crock, accompanied by plates of white rice, sauteed kale, and pork cracklins. It was breathtakingly good. Like so many truly great dishes, feijoada derives from desperate and humble circumstances. It's said originally to have been thrown together in impromptu fashion by African slaves, with leftovers pilfered or passed along from their cruel masters' plates.

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

  We refer to this process as “pornifying” someone. It involves looking at people in a sexual way and essentially turning them into a character in a live ongoing porn production. Pornifying is a form of sexual objectification that tries to turn real life and real people into the same kind of fantasy that is portrayed in pornography. The more we look at porn and get sexually aroused by it, the more likely we are to experience the consequence of pornifying people in real life. Martha, a middle-aged artist, told us that she became concerned with how her porn use was affecting her when she realized how much she was pornifying the people in her life. “It’s more than merely noticing attractive people,” she said. “I’d go for a run in the park and reflexively scrutinize everyone I saw as to how sexually stimulating they were to me. I felt like an alcoholic who couldn’t go to a sports game, enter a restaurant, or a grocery store without sampling the booze. A guy might be praying in church, and I’d wonder how exciting he would be without his clothes on. I’d do it even when I didn’t want to be thinking of someone this way.” Not only can pornifying distract you from your real life, it can also turn you off to potential intimate partners. The dating pool becomes really limited when you’re only willing to relate with someone who looks and acts like a porn star. Zane, a college senior, said, “The girls on the computer are so hot. Their bodies are perfect. I’ve spent many hours fantasizing about being with them. But lately, it seems like I can’t accept imperfection in the women I meet. I’ll start talking with a really nice girl at a bar. She’s cute and has a great sense of humor, but my interest only goes so far. She’s not a ‘ten.’ She has flaws. Her boobs are too small, her waist too thick, or her thighs too wide. I know it’s wrong to be rejecting women because they don’t look like the image of the supermodel girls I find sexy. Porn has created a huge gap between the kind of woman I enjoy being with and the kind of woman I actually desire sexually.”

• From The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2007)

  Their value is utilitarian, for they allow Jesus to emerge as a unique ethical teacher who is able to cut through whatever hampers anyone from living life to the fullest. This religious need is what, to a great extent, prompts the current description of first-century Judaism as mired in legal minutiae that trampled on individual needs, promulgating a warlike theology that had no place for peace, and obsessed with a purity system that marginalized women and promoted hatred of foreigners. Within this context, Jesus then emerges as a member of the ACLU, Greenpeace, the National Organization for Women, and the United Nations (on a good day). The social-justice Jesus who promotes a healthy interpretation of the Torah, peaceful response to oppression, the healing of women’s bodies, and the recognition that the God of Israel is the God of the Gentiles as well is enormously appealing, and enormously useful. The image may also be substantially true. The problem emerges, however, when these observations are enhanced by the depiction of Judaism as rejecting such concerns. Jesus was not the only Jew to care about these issues; his social-justice interests make him a Jew rather than distinguishing him from Judaism. Today, alas, given the general ignorance about first-century Judaism, there are few means by which the pastor or the priest would ever know this. The Educational Failure Departments of religion, seminaries, and university-based divinity schools are substantially to blame, through sins of both commission and omission, for the perpetuation of anti-Jewish teachings. Christian clergy and professors of seminary subjects ranging from Old and New Testaments through church history, theology, ethics, and pastoral care are not typically trained in Judaica. What they know about “Judaism” thus becomes an often intuitive sense derived from select readings of the Old and New Testaments. The situation is a particular problem for New Testament or early Christianity Ph.D. programs. Not all such programs require degree candidates to read such Jewish sources as the writings of Josephus and Philo, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the pseudepigraphical works (books dating to ca. 300 BCE –100 CE , usually written under the names of ancient worthies, such as 2 Baruch or 1 Enoch ), or the rabbinic texts. Instead, popular today are required readings in methods. Rather than introducing students to the primary sources, faculty train their acolytes on “how” to read them. The result is a Ph.D. candidate who can apply any type of critical theory (from poststructural, postmodern, postcolonial, feminist, womanist, mujerista, Min-Jung, queer readings, and autobiographical critique to whatever is of greatest interest at this year’s Modern Language Association meetings). There is much worth in these reading strategies and others, but there is no value to them if the student has no clue as to the content of the Letter to the Ephesians, let alone Philo’s Special Laws, Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews, or tractate Sanhedrin in the Mishnah.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  The letter from Northwestern’s admissions office arrived on a Friday afternoon, and, judging from how thin the envelope was, I knew before I ripped it open that I had been rejected. My shoulders started to shake as I scanned the page and the words began to sink in: “We regret that we are not able to offer you admission.” This can’t be, I thought. I have to go there. I need to go there. My friends were getting into their dream schools. Do these jerks in admissions not know how hard I work? I marched upstairs and put on my mother’s best Diane von Furstenberg dress, a string of pearls, and a pair of espadrilles and, with Patty at the wheel, took off in the family station wagon for the admissions office. This isn’t a good idea, Patty said. But I had never been shy about taking matters into my own hands. The year before, when the orthodontist had yet to remove my braces, despite several promises to do so and junior prom fast approaching, I took some wire cutters and a pair of pliers and did the job myself. The orthodontist stared at my mouth in disbelief on my next visit. In forty years of practice, he’d never seen a kid take off her own braces. Get in here, he called to his assistant. Then the two of them put a new set of braces right back on and adjusted the bill accordingly. If I could take off my own braces, I could sweet-talk my way into Northwestern. Sorry, the admissions officer said. This is a world-class school, highly competitive, and your grades and test scores just aren’t good enough. Not good enough. I stood up to leave, those words ringing in my ears. Patty was waiting for me in the parking lot when I stormed out. I jumped in the car and slammed the door so hard we both thought it might fall off. Now what? I had to get out of that house. At the same time, I was terrified of what might become of me if I left home. Look what had happened to each of my older siblings when they came back from college. Mary Kay grew distant. Nancy and Jake dropped out and were now so confused and depressed that they could barely get out of bed. Would that happen to me, too? I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my fears. I had alienated most of my friends by being so irritable and angry. Mary Kay had moved out of the house into an apartment in the city after she graduated. My parents certainly weren’t any help. As far as I was concerned, they were a major part of the problem. Even Patty seemed to be of little use to me anymore. Our Tiger Pit adventures were long over, and the space between our beds was more of a gulf. We barely spoke.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  The best thing that could happen to the theater district is that, on the eventual breakup of the organizations, the theaters are sold off to a number of smaller and competing organizations. A number of the city’s many theatrical experimental groups—La Mama, the Manhattan Theater Club, the Theater for the New City, Westbeth, CBA in Brooklyn, the LAB—should be given Broadway outlets, among precisely those theaters that Rich noted as too small to produce megaprofits. I do not think there is anything nostalgic or any yearning for authenticity in my suggestion that what is far more likely to happen, however, is that the remnants of the organizations will be bought up by a single megacorporation, and the “throwaway” theaters will go the way of the old Helen Hayes and the Morosco, torn down to make way for more office buildings and hotels. (For all this love for the theater, under pressure from the Forty-second Street Development Project or its avatars, since 1980, at least five theater buildings in the area have already been pulled down [the old Helen Hayes, the Morosco, the Adonis, the Circus, and one on the south side of Forty-second between Sixth and Seventh, whose name I cannot find out] and five more [including the Capri, the Eros I, the Cameo, the Venus, and two on the north side of Forty-second Street between Sixth and Seventh] have been totally remodeled into something that can never be used as theatrical space again. Nor does this count any of the nine theaters on Forty-second Street that stand closed and awaiting demolition. Since that time, one theater has been built—the New Victory children’s theater—and one, the New Amsterdam, has been renovated. This should give the lie to any protestations of serious concern with theater in New York made by any spokesperson of the Forty-second Street Development Project. What the project wants to do is exactly what its managers wanted to do in the 1970s when this plan got under way: build its office towers and its mall—and preserve a handful of theaters as museum pieces . . . only because they don’t think they can get away with destroying them all.) The remaining theaters will be, at best, theatrical museums for more glitzy productions of Guys and Dolls, Grease, and The King and I, and, at their worst, new and bigger and more gorgeous productions referring to less and less of the social and material world around us. The amount and variety of Broadway theater will be drastically reduced—and with it will go the aura of theatricality that Mr. Stern has cited as one of our city’s most valuable assets.

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

  The struggle with Lewis the Bavarian was a little afterplay compared with the imposing conflicts between the Hohenstaufen and the notable popes of preceding centuries. Europe looked on with slight interest at the long-protracted dispute, which was more adapted to show the petulance and weakness of both emperor and pope than to settle permanently any great principle. At Henry VII.’s death, 1313, five of the electors gave their votes for Lewis of the house of Wittelsbach, and two for Frederick of Hapsburg. Both appealed to the new pope, about to be elected. Frederick was crowned by the archbishop of Treves at Bonn, and Lewis by the archbishop of Mainz at Aachen. In 1317 John declared that the pope was the lawful vicar of the empire so long as the throne was vacant, and denied Lewis recognition as king of the Romans on the ground of his having neglected to submit his election to him. The battle at Mühldorf, 1322, left Frederick a prisoner in his rival’s hands. This turn of affairs forced John to take more decisive action, and in 1323 was issued against Lewis the first of a wearisome and repetitious series of complaints and punishments from Avignon. The pope threatened him with the ban, claiming authority to approve or set aside an emperor’s election.119 A year later he excommunicated Lewis and all his supporters. In answer to this first complaint of 1323, Lewis made a formal declaration at Nürnberg in the presence of a notary and other witnesses that he regarded the empire as independent of the pope, charged John with heresy, and appealed to a general council. The charge of heresy was based on the pope’s treatment of the Spiritual party among the Franciscans. Condemned by John, prominent Spirituals, Michael of Cesena, Ockam and Bonagratia, espoused Lewis’ cause, took refuge at his court, and defended him with their pens. The political conflict was thus complicated by a recondite ecclesiastical problem. In 1324 Lewis issued a second appeal, written in the chapel of the Teutonic Order in Sachsenhausen, which again renewed the demand for a general council and repeated the charge of heresy against the pope. The next year, 1325, Lewis suffered a severe defeat from Leopold of Austria, who had entered into a compact to put Charles IV. of France on the German throne. He went so far as to express his readiness, in the compact of Ulm, 1326, to surrender the German crown to Frederick, provided he himself was confirmed in his right to Italy and the imperial dignity. At this juncture Leopold died.

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

  accused of wasting money and Works Progress Administration man-hours. A reporter for the Saturday Evening Post argued that the community was not even functioning as an organ of relief because the screening process was geared toward accepting only those applicants whose success seemed assured, rather than bringing in the folks who most needed government assistance. In the end, Congress ensured the failure of Arthurdale by refusing to support a factory that would have produced furniture for the U.S. Post Office while providing the community with a steady source of employment. 39 Arthurdale cast a long shadow. The bad publicity it received colored the reception of other planned communities, as the FSA director testified before Congress in 1943. But the deeper problem of Arthurdale was rooted in its emphasis on home ownership. Even successful communities such as those outside Birmingham and Jasper, Alabama, failed in their mission to help the poorest, ultimately retaining only middle-class residents. Without subsidies, poorer families were not a worthy credit risk. A resident of Palmerdale who worked at the Birmingham News-Age Herald explained that he actually had two jobs instead of one: he worked at the newspaper from 9 p.m. until early morning, and then went home to care for his fields. True, he freed his family from debt and fed his four children with canned goods, but the homestead model only served to double the labor of families like his, rather than to ease their burdens. 40 The publicity generated by the RA and FSA contributed to unrealistic expectations and time-mangled appearances. Some photographs of Palmerdale, and Penderlea in North Carolina, showed sharp-looking homes, ornamented with children on bicycles; another showed a man with a mule-drawn stone-boat (or it might have been a plow)—an apt scene in an 1840s daguerreotype, perhaps, but out of place in depicting a modern home. Barely hanging on to his symbolic existence, the yeoman had become a quaint (and contrived) artifact of a once- pristine American life. 41 Penderlea Homesteads in North Carolina was showcased as the government’s solution to tenancy. The residents were not wealthy, but they were happy amid “pleasant, congenial, and beautiful surroundings.” But perfect homes did not make perfect communities. Sabotage emerged from within the ranks of residents. Cliques formed in Penderlea, leading some to refuse to participate in community activities and to ridicule those who tried to do things “by the book.” Tensions flared as residents failed—or refused—to adjust to a middle-class environment: detailed records had to be kept, parliamentary rules had to be used at meetings, and household conveniences that wives had never seen before were included in

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Standing on a modern and insubstantial hammock-style desk chair, he tied the end of the rope around a nail he had already pounded into the top of the closet frame. —This knot’s called a bowline, he said. He let the noose swing free now, and in the meager light of Sandy’s swivel desk lamp its shadow swung with it, its ominous double. —Mayday! Mayday! —Not gonna give him a chance to share any last words, huh? Wendy said. She pulled the tags again. —Get this message back to base! Back to base! To base! —Won’t do any good, Sandy said. I’ve tried everything. His tone was so woeful that Wendy was certain it was true. Disappointment about G. I. Joe with Lifelike Hair weighed heavily on Sandy Williams. —Mayday! Mayday! Get this message back to base! Sandy slid the chair back under the desk and stilled the noose, that awful pendulum. —Okay, bring the prisoner here, he said. —One more chance. She couldn’t let it go. Wendy climbed off the bed and carried G. I. Joe toward his executioner. —Girls are always sticking up for the criminal. But I’m afraid, Sandy said thoughtfully, it’s not gonna do any good. Wendy yanked the dog tag one last time. And behold: —Major, incoming copter! Joe said. —Far out! —It’s just chance, Sandy said. Maybe one time every fifty or so he says that, even though it’s usually a different one. Something about a medic. He folded his arms. Together they stood over the prone body of G. I. Joe with Lifelike Hair, now supine on the folded comforter at the foot of Sandy’s bed. Somehow the idea of trying him again, of going back to the well one more time, felt pointless to Wendy. She recognized a moment here in which she saw the machinations of chance in the universe, and she didn’t want to ruin it. Sandy was adorable in this light. He couldn’t wait. He wanted to dispatch Joe, because he had some dignity wrapped up in the notion of inferior goods and dumb culture and stupid America. He was one of those kids who spent hours in front of the television shouting That would never happen . Sandy Williams expected to be cheated. He was ready for it. And it came to pass almost every time, and in this way the world seemed good and true. When he seized his doll, therefore, he pulled the elastic that connected the dog tag to its interior machinery as though he were going to strangle Joe with it. He seized it as though his certainty about being ripped off was the one thing he knew. —We’ll attack north at the next pass! Joe said. Wendy noticed again how silent everything was, how silent the house was, now that the storm had settled in to do its worst for a while. Sandy was stunned by Joe’s loquaciousness. Absently he scratched his testicles.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  For the first time, I began to see that we couldn’t just buy everything we wanted on a whim. Old habits are hard to break. Holmer started hiding his new suits under their bed, and I began signing Nancy’s name on the charge slips for my new hauls. From what I could tell by listening outside my parents’ bedroom door, Holmer’s business was not going well. After he sued his former business partner, he got a job as the national sales manager for the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, where his name appeared on the masthead. That was great for a while, until he got fired, for what I do not know. Before long, he landed another job, overseeing publications for the American College of Chest Physicians. But he got fired from that job, too, and then he developed a bleeding ulcer. Was it his erratic behavior? His drinking? Both? Whatever the cause, as Holmer approached his midforties, the trajectory of his career was heading in the wrong direction. He had once been such a high roller that he had his own room at the Waldorf Astoria. His cousins came to him for loans. Now he was the one scrambling to pay bills, sharing an office next to the copy machine. One of his cousins hired him to work at his Michigan Avenue advertising agency, a gesture that we suspected was an act of charity, confirmed after one of his kids loudly and derisively announced to Danny on the St. Francis playground, “Our dad had to give your dad a job.” Now we were quitting the Michigan Shores Club. No more swim lessons. No more cheeseburgers and fries at the Chatterbox, the little diner inside the club. I tried sneaking in anyway one day after school and ordered a chocolate milkshake. A charge to number sixty-three, please, I told the waitress, looking around nervously. Brain freeze be damned, I sucked down the ice cream drink as fast as I could before she discovered what a little grifter I was. THE CROWD CLAPPED AND cheered, but I wept as Mary Kay and her Regina Dominican High School classmates promenaded down the aisle in their white caps and gowns that evening in June 1970. She’s graduating, not dying, my mother leaned over and whispered to me. It felt like something was being lost forever in that existential moment. Our cozy family life—crazy to many from the outside looking in but comfortable and familiar to me—was about to end. Our oldest sister would be heading off to St. Louis for college in late August. The ten of us would never live together again. If I had my way, I would have preserved us all in amber at that sweet spot of 1970 with the jazz of our family life thumping throughout the house: moppy-headed high school boys in their shiny Camaros and Corvettes racing up the street to pick up my glamorous older sisters, Mungo Jerry blaring from their car stereos.

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

  It’s also way past time for you to address your issues directly, especially your depression. Taking drugs is no way to deal with feelings of inadequacy and unhappiness, and will only lead to more serious problems down the road. All that does is help you avoid dealing with what you know needs to be dealt with, or worse (like ruining your health or getting you arrested). It’s vital that you focus now on getting a job and getting out of the house to lift your spirits and give you some clarity and direction in your life. I also recommend you explore why you feel you need to have a sexual relationship with someone who is so much younger than you. I talk to lots of men your age who have very young girlfriends or mistresses, but for most of them, the relationship is predicated on how much money and “security” the man can offer the younger woman. Clearly that’s not the case for you. The real issue here may be that your relationship has run its course, and now it’s time for both of you to move on. Neither one of you sounds happy with your current situation, so sit down with Vicky and have a reality-check conversation. If a relationship isn’t working, trying to force it won’t fix things. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be friends or support each other anymore. In fact, you might find that your age difference will make you better friends than lovers in the long run, which can be a healthy and satisfying relationship. So you both need to take an adult step toward a life that makes both of you happy, even if this means parting ways. EPILOGUENOW THAT YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING…Now that you’ve finished your sex education course and know what can go wrong and how to fix it, you can refer to this handy cheat sheet, which covers what your guy needs to know. It’s perfect for his short attention span and perfect for you to catch any problems on the run and solve them quickly. Part IIf he has any of these common sexual dysfunctions, explain to him that he needs to get help for them. Resolving them will spice up your sex life. Ask him gently: □ Are you overweight, especially with a big belly? Is your height more than double your waist size? Can you see your penis? □ Are your testicles small, like the size of small cherries? □ Are you getting less than six hours of sleep every night? □ Are you drinking too much alcohol, more than two drinks per day? □ Are you feeling depressed or unusually stressed? □ Do you have trouble with regular erections, especially getting or maintaining them? □ Are you ejaculating too quickly? □ Or are you having problems ejaculating at all? (Tell him you’ll love him no matter what the answer!) □ Are you having sex less than your wife wants you to?

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

  The verdict of history, after the most thorough investigation from all sides and by all parties remains unshaken. The whole church, East and West, as represented by the official acts of oecumenical Councils and Popes, for several hundred years believed that a Roman bishop may err ex cathedra in a question of faith, and that one of them at least had so erred in fact. The Vatican Council of 1870 decreed papal infallibility in the face of this fact, thus overruling history by dogmatic authority. The Protestant historian can in conscience only follow the opposite principle: If dogma contradicts facts, all the worse for the dogma. Notes. Bishop Hefele, one of the most learned and impartial Roman Catholic historians, thus states, after a lengthy discussion, his present view on the case of Honorius (Conciliengesch., vol. III. 175, revised ed. 1877), which differs considerably from the one he had published before the Vatican decree of papal infallibility (in the first ed. of his Conciliengesch., vol. III. 1858, p. 145 sqq., and in big pamphlet on Honorius, 1870). It should be remembered that Bishop Hefele, like all his anti-infallibilist colleagues, submitted to the decree of the Vatican Council for the sake of unity and peace.

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

  But if we start imbibing regularly, we may start to notice that drinking alcohol produces some unpleasant side effects. One too many and our speech may start to slur or we may say something stupid in a conversation. Our judgment may become impaired and we may lose motor control, causing us to forget things, stumble when we try to walk, and be unable to drive our own car. Chronic alcohol abuse can negatively affect our ability to follow through on family, job, or social responsibilities, and it can tear apart an intimate relationship. In extreme cases, when someone becomes a hardened drinker, they may find themselves with serious physical problems such as liver disease, sexual problems, or addiction-related chemical dependency. They may also find themselves in jail for driving while under the influence. But that cold bottle of beer or glass of wine can be hard to give up when we’ve become accustomed to it. Many people have built drinking into their daily routines and menu choices—a cocktail every day after work, and a beer with a slice of pizza or a hot dog. When we are faced with the realization that alcohol is causing problems, it’s easy and natural to rationalize our use and deny the problem. Eventually, however, if we continue to ignore what’s really going on, the problems compound and become increasingly difficult to tune out. When you’re a porn user, you’re likely to have similar experiences of ignoring the problem and then rationalizing your use and denying the consequences. At first all you may see are the positive things porn brings to your life. Subconsciously, you may have an inkling that your behavior might cause trouble down the road, but when you’re having fun right here right now, it’s hard to consider what could be waiting for you around the bend. But as with alcohol, eventually porn use can cause problems and get out of hand. At that point, it becomes more difficult to hide our problems from ourselves or anyone close to us, no matter how hard we try. For most porn users we’ve talked to, eventually things get out of control. Unfortunately, most porn users are unaware of how destructive their behavior really is until they’re already deep into the porn trap. By then the damage is done. Rob, forty-three years old, had masturbated to porn every day since he was fourteen. He provides a good example of how oblivious we can be about the consequences of our porn actions. He told us, “Porn didn’t appear dangerous like other ‘bad habits.’ With gambling, you eventually run out of money. With drug use you eventually degenerate, can’t function, and become physically ill. Porn didn’t impair my driving or do things like that. I didn’t see it as consequential. There were limited physical side effects. So porn didn’t concern me. I wasn’t worried about it. When my life began to fall apart because of my porn habit, no one saw it coming—least of all me.”

• From The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (2007)

  Perhaps it is John, not the synagogue, who is seeking to separate the communities and force those who confess Jesus to dissociate with “the Jews.” Given these enormous historical problems in understanding the causes of John’s rhetoric, the audience to which it was addressed, and the ways that audience understood the Gospel, the solution to the question of anti-Judaism in the Gospel of John specifically, and by extension in any passage in the New Testament generally, cannot be, or at least cannot solely be, a historical one. Historical investigation lacks the data needed to answer the question. The response to the matter of the text’s anti-Jewish potential therefore must be a theological one: Christians must denounce anti-Jewish readings (however defined) because they are counter to the “good news” of Jesus. Only the theologian can firmly pronounce a New Testament text not anti-Jewish. More Than a Prophet When discussion moves from individual verses to the Gospels as a whole, additional explanations (if one agrees with them) or excuses (if one is looking for apologetic) for potentially anti-Jewish New Testament passages appear.10 Some scholars conclude that the Jesus of the Gospels is to be compared to Israel’s prophets, whose level of excoriation of the people was just as high as, if not higher than, Jesus’s invectives against the scribes and Pharisees. Others insist that the New Testament is a Jewish book written by Jews, and therefore it cannot be anti-Jewish. Both arguments have merit, but neither ultimately convinces. Jesus does sound like a prophet. Like Jeremiah, he predicts the destruction of the Temple (chapter 25); like Hosea, he “desires steadfast love and not sacrifice” (6:6). He condemns the leadership for not following in the ways of the Lord—that is what prophets have always done. Had Amos been alive in the first century, he might well have made several of the pronouncements beginning “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees” (Matt. 23). However, although Jesus himself may be perceived as heir to the legacy of Amos and Jeremiah, the Gospels present him as more than a prophet. He is, according to the Evangelists, the Son of God, who adds something new to the prophetic concern for justice. He goes well beyond the role of Isaiah and Micah, who seek what is called in Hebrew t’shuvah, return and repentance. Jesus of the Gospels seeks something new, specifically, following him. He is important not only because of what he says, but also because of who he is. Narrative context also disrupts the prophetic analogy. The prophets as well as the objects of their invectives all recognized themselves as members of the same community; the Jewish community preserved the words of the prophets and recognized itself as the recipients of the prophets’ messages. The prophetic pronouncements are still read in the synagogues and understood as having meaning to present-day Jews. This is not the case with the narratives of Matthew or John.

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

  In this he proceeded with extraordinary sagacity. He abstained from bloody persecution, because he would not forego the credit of philosophical toleration, nor give the church the glory of a new martyrdom. A history of three centuries also had proved that violent measures were fruitless. According to Libanius it was a principle with him, that fire and sword cannot change a man’s faith, and that persecution only begets hypocrites and martyrs. Finally, he doubtless perceived that the Christians were too numerous to be assailed by a general persecution without danger of a bloody civil war. Hence he oppressed the church "gently,"69 under show of equity and universal toleration. He persecuted not so much the Christians as Christianity, by endeavoring to draw off its confessors. He thought to gain the result of persecution without incurring the personal reproach and the public danger of persecution itself. His disappointments, however, increased his bitterness, and had he returned victorious from the Persian war, he would probably have resorted to open violence. In fact, Gregory Nazianzen and Sozomen, and some heathen writers also, tell of local persecutions in the provinces, particularly at Anthusa and Alexandria, with which the emperor is, at least indirectly, to be charged. His officials acted in those cases, not under public orders indeed, but according to the secret wish of Julian, who ignored their illegal proceedings as long as he could, and then discovered his real views by lenient censure and substantial acquittal of the offending magistrates.

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

  But on the other hand, a regular and general system of clerical education was still entirely wanting. The steady decay of the classic literature, the gradual cessation of philosophical and artistic production, the growth of monastic prejudice against secular learning and culture, the great want of ministers in the suddenly expanded field of the church, the uneasy state of the empire, and the barbarian invasions, were so many hinderances to thorough theological preparation. Many candidates trusted to the magical virtue of ordination. Others, without inward call, were attracted to the holy office by the wealth and power of the church. Others had no time or opportunity for preparation, and passed, at the instance of the popular voice or of circumstances, immediately from the service of the state to that of the church, even to the episcopal office; though several councils prescribed a previous test of their capacity in the lower degrees of reader, deacon, and presbyter. Often, however, this irregularity turned to the advantage of the church, and gave her a highly gifted man, like Ambrose, whom the acclamation of the people called to the episcopal see of Milan even before he was baptized. Gregory Nazianzen laments that many priests and bishops came in fresh from the counting house, sunburnt from the plow, from the oar, from the army, or even from the theatre, so that the most holy order of all was in danger of becoming the most ridiculous. "Only he can be a physician," says he, "who knows the nature of diseases; he, a painter, who has gone through much practice in mixing colors and in drawing forms; but a clergyman may be found with perfect ease, not thoroughly wrought, of course, but fresh made, sown and full blown in a moment, as the legend says of the giants.410 We form the saints in a day, and enjoin them to be wise, though they possess no wisdom at all, and bring nothing to their spiritual office, except at best a good will."411 If such complaints were raised so early as the end of the Nicene age, while the theological activity of the Greek church was in its bloom, there was far more reason for them after the middle of the fifth century and in the sixth, especially in the Latin church, where, even among the most eminent clergymen, a knowledge of the original languages of the Holy Scriptures was a rare exception. The opportunities which this period offered for literary and theological preparation for the ministry, were the following: 1. The East had four or five theological schools, which, however, were far from supplying its wants.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  It turns out that everything which has been done by the men who comprehended Christ's teaching in a direct manner and lived in conformity with such a comprehension, everything which all true Christians, all Christian champions, have done, everything which now transforms the world under the guise of socialism and communism,—is exaggeration, of which it is not worth while to speak. Men who have been educated in Christianity for eighteen centuries have convinced themselves in the persons of their foremost men, the scholars, that the Christian teaching is a teaching of dogmas, that the vital teaching is a misconception, an exaggeration, which violates the true legitimate demands of morality, which correspond to man's nature, and that the doctrine of justice, which Christ rejected and in the place of which he put his own teaching, is much more profitable for us. The learned consider the commandment of non-resistance to evil an exaggeration and even madness. If it be rejected, it would be much better, they think, without observing that they are not talking of Christ's teaching at all, but of what presents itself to them as such. They do not notice that to say that Christ's commandment about non-resistance to evil is an exaggeration is the same as saying that in the theory of the circle the statement about the equality of the radii of a circle is an exaggeration. And those who say so do precisely what a man, who did not have any conception as to what a circle is, would do if he asserted that the demand that all the points on the circumference should be equally distant from the centre is an exaggeration. To advise that the statement concerning the equality of the radii in a circle be rejected or moderated is the same as not understanding what a circle is. To advise that the commandment about non-resistance to evil in the vital teaching of Christ be rejected or moderated means not to understand the teaching. And those who do so actually do not understand it at all. They do not understand that this teaching is the establishment of a new comprehension of life, which corresponds to the new condition into which men have been entering for these eighteen hundred years, and the determination of the new activity which results from it. They do not believe that Christ wanted to say what he did; or it seems to them that what he said in the Sermon on the Mount and in other passages He said from infatuation, from lack of comprehension, from insufficient development. [10] Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.

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

  Britain, though her people are politically more intelligent than those of any modern nation, did not yield in Ireland in time to prevent the formation of a virus which is still poisoning Anglo-Irish relations. And while the American Civil War taught her a lesson, which she applied in preserving her colonial empire, there is as yet no proof that she will be wise enough to admit India into partnership, before the vehemence of Indian reaction to British imperialism will make partnership upon even a minimum basis impossible. So runs the sad story of the social ignorance of nations. There is always, in every nation, a body of citizens more intelligent than the average, who see the issues between their own and other nations more clearly than the ignorant patriot, and more disinterestedly than the dominant classes who seek special advantages in international relations. The size of this group varies in different nations. Although it may at times place a check upon the more extreme types of national self-seeking, it is usually not powerful enough to affect national attitudes in a crisis. The British liberals could not prevent the Boer War; American economists have recently inveighed against a suicidal tariff policy in vain, and German liberals were unable to check the aggressive policy of imperial Germany. Sometimes the humanitarian impulses and the sentiment of justice, developed in these groups, serve the policy of official governments and seem to affect their actions. Thus the agitation of E. D. Morel against the atrocities in the Belgian Congo was supported by the British Government as long as it desired, for other reasons, to bring political pressure upon the Belgian King. Once this purpose was satisfied the British Cabinet dropped Mr. Morel’s campaign as quickly as it had espoused it. 4 It is of course possible that the rational interest in international justice may become, on occasion, so widespread and influential that it will affect the diplomacy of states. But this is not usual. In other words the mind, which places a restraint upon impulses in individual life, exists only in a very inchoate form in the nation.

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

  The only qualification I admit is that the country we desire to annex or take under our protection should be calculated to confer a tangible advantage upon the British Empire.” 2 National ambitions are not always avowed as honestly as this, as we shall see later, but that is a fair statement of the actual facts, which need hardly to be elaborated for any student of history. What is the basis and reason for the selfishness of nations? If we begin with what is least important or least distinctive of national attitudes, it must be noted that nations do not have direct contact with other national communities, with which they must form some kind of international community. They know the problems of other peoples only indirectly and at second hand. Since both sympathy and justice depend to a large degree upon the perception of need, which makes sympathy flow, and upon the understanding of competing interests, which must be resolved, it is obvious that human communities have greater difficulty than individuals in achieving ethical relationships. While rapid means of communication have increased the breadth of knowledge about world affairs among citizens of various nations, and the general advance of education has ostensibly promoted the capacity to think rationally and justly upon the inevitable conflicts of interest between nations, there is nevertheless little hope of arriving at a perceptible increase of international morality through the growth of intelligence and the perfection of means of communication. The development of international commerce, the increased economic interdependence among the nations, and the whole apparatus of a technological civilisation, increase the problems and issues between nations much more rapidly than the intelligence to solve them can be created. The silk trade between America and Japan did not give American citizens an appreciation of the real feelings of the Japanese toward the American Exclusion Act. Co-operation between America and the Allies during the war did not help American citizens to recognise, and deal sympathetically with, the issues of inter-allied debts and reparations; nor were the Allies able to do justice to either themselves or their fallen foe in settling the problem of reparations. Such is the social ignorance of peoples, that, far from doing justice to a foe or neighbor, they are as yet unable to conserve their own interests wisely. Since their ultimate interests are always protected best, by at least a measure of fairness toward their neighbors, the desire to gain an immediate selfish advantage always imperils their ultimate interests. 3 If they recognise this fact, they usually recognise it too late. Thus France, after years of intransigence, has finally accepted a sensible reparations settlement. Significantly and tragically, the settlement is almost synchronous with the victory of an extreme nationalism in Germany, which her unrelenting policies begot. America pursued a selfish and foolhardy tariff policy until it, together with other imbecilities in international life, contributed to the ruin of prosperity in the whole world.