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.

Page 39 of 189 · 20 per page

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “I thought I could find peace here, but since this wind has started it is as though it has stirred everything that I want to forget. “I was born in one of the most uninteresting of western towns in America. I spent my days reading about foreign countries and was determined to live abroad at all cost. I was in love with my husband even before I met him because I had heard that he lived in China. When he fell in love with me, I expected it, as if it had all been planned beforehand. I was marrying China. I could barely see him as an ordinary man. He was tall, lean, about thirty-five, but he looked older. His life in China had been hard. He was vague about his occupations—he had worked at many things to earn money. He wore glasses and looked like a student. Somehow I was in love with the idea of China, so much that it seemed to me that my husband was no longer a white but an Oriental. I thought he smelled different from other men. “We soon went to China. When I arrived there I found a lovely, delicate house full of servants. That the women were exceptionally beautiful did not seem strange to me. That is how I had pictured them. They waited on me slavishly, adoringly, I thought. They brushed my hair, taught me to arrange flowers, to sing and write and speak their language. “We slept in separate rooms but the partitions were like cardboard. The beds were hard, low, with thin mattresses, so that at first I did not sleep well at all. “My husband would stay a little while with me and then leave me. I began to notice sounds that came from the next room, like the wrestling of bodies. I could hear the rustle of the mats, occasionally a stifled murmur. At first I did not realize what it was. I got up noiselessly and opened the door. I saw then that my husband was lying there with two or three of the servant girls, caressing them. In the semidarkness their bodies were completely entangled. When I came in he chased them away. I wept. “My husband said to me, ‘I have lived so long in China I am used to them. I married you because I fell in love with you, but I cannot enjoy you as I do the other women . . . and I can’t tell you why.’ “But I pleaded with him to tell me the truth, pleaded and begged him. After a moment he said, ‘They are so small sexually, and you are larger . . .’ “‘What will I do now?’ I said. Are you going to send me home? I can’t live here with you making love to other women in the room next to mine.’ “He tried to console me, comfort me. He even caressed me, but I turned away and fell asleep weeping.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The world of intellectual equality between men and women that she had dared to imagine did not come to pass. She was derided by the university and mocked by men who thought her actions and behavior inappropriate to a woman. Pressure was put on her husband to control her. Grumbach stopped publishing in 1524, and her last offering was a poem that defended her standing as a wife and mother against a slanderous poem by one of her antagonists, who had alleged that she “forgot all female modesty.” “Paul himself,” her critic proclaimed, had said “you should not dispute, but govern the house at home and keep quiet in church. Look here, my dear Sibyl, you are like an impudent wild animal, and you think yourself so smart that you want to interpret Holy Scripture yourself.” 45 Although she was not easily cowed, the increasingly conservative environment after the defeat of the peasants in 1525 was inimical to women like her. She remained a pious Lutheran wife and mother, but in the new religion there was no role open to her as pastor, author, or religious authority. Albrecht Dürer, Johann Eberlin von Günzburg, and Argula von Grumbach stand for the many thousands of men and women whose lives were transformed by Luther’s ideas. What each of them understood by his message was different. For Dürer, it was a vision of a global union of religions; for Günzburg, it was about a new social order; for Grumbach, it was an issue of justice and fairness. It was Luther’s genius that he could appeal to them all, and that each could take different things from his words. All of them were so deeply moved by evangelical ideas, and by Luther as a person, that they did things that they would not otherwise have dreamed of, and overturned the expectations of their upbringing. — B Y the time Luther died, he had definitively accomplished a split in the Church. He had established a new Church, closely aligned with secular authorities, where monasticism was abolished. A new married clergy were creating dynasties of Protestant clerics who would dominate the intellectual culture of Germany for centuries to come. The shy monk had stood up to the forces of the Pope, Church, and empire, and had inspired others with a message of “freedom,” including peasants who risked all to rise against their feudal overlords. Luther’s political legacy was double-edged.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The conspirators seem to have made no plans for a coup, nor did they try to orchestrate a general uprising. The reason for this was probably their confidence in divine intervention after Muslims had taken the first step, by killing the president. Faraj appeared to take this for granted. Even though the conspirators knew that they were up against enormous odds, 57 Faraj considered it “stupid” to fear failure. A Muslim’s duty was to obey God’s commands. “We are not responsible for the results.” Once “the Rule of the Infidel has fallen, everything will be in the hands of the Muslims.” 58 Like so many other fundamentalists, Faraj was a literalist. He read the words of scripture as though they were factually true in every detail, and could be applied, simply and directly, to everyday life. This showed yet another danger of using the mythos of scripture as a blueprint for practical action. The old ideal had been to keep mythos and logos separate: political action was the preserve of reason. In their revolt against the hegemony of scientific rationalism, these Sunni fundamentalists were abandoning reason and had to learn the bitter truth that even though the assassins of Sadat had, as they thought, obeyed God to the letter, God did not intervene and establish an Islamic state. After Sadat’s death, Hosni Mubarak became president with the minimum of fuss, and the secularist regime remains in place to this day. It appears that the ideas outlined in The Neglected Duty were not confined to a tiny group of extremists, but were more widespread in Egyptian society than observers believed at the time. 59 Few Egyptians would have wanted actually to kill Sadat and most were shocked by the assassination, but their composure after his death was marked and chilling. The Shaykhs of al-Azhar, for example, condemned the assassination, but they did not seem to be heartbroken to have lost Sadat. In the first issue of the Azhari magazine immediately after the murder, there was no photograph of Sadat, and the killing was only obliquely mentioned on the second page. The one member of the religious establishment to come out strongly and unambiguously against The Neglected Duty was the Mufti, who gave a detailed answer to Faraj’s treatise. He declared that it was forbidden to call another practicing Muslim an apostate. The practice of takfir (excommunication) had never been common in Islam, since nobody but God could read a person’s heart. He discussed the Verses of the Sword in their historical context, showing them to have arisen in response to the particular circumstances of seventh-century Medina; they could not be applied verbatim to conditions in twentieth-century Egypt.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  This accorded ill with Sadat’s carefully cultivated religious image. In the Sunni tradition, a good Muslim ruler is commanded not to separate himself from the people, but to live simply and frugally, and to ensure that the wealth of society is distributed as fairly as possible. 26 By calling himself “the Pious President” in an attempt to align himself with the new religious mood in the country, and by encouraging the press to photograph him in the mosques, with a prominent “ash mark” on his forehead to show that he prostrated himself five times daily in prayer, Sadat inevitably invited Muslims to make unflattering comparisons between his own actual behavior and the ideal. Yet, on the surface, Sadat was good to religion. He needed to create an identity for his regime that was different from Nasser’s. Since the time of Muhammad Ali, Egyptians had repeatedly tried to enter the modern world and find their own niche there. They had imitated the West, adopted Western policies and ideologies, fought for independence, and tried to reform their culture along modern European lines. None of these attempts had been successful. Like the Iranians, many Egyptians felt that it was time to “return to themselves” and create a modern but distinctively Islamic identity. Sadat was happy to capitalize upon this. He was attempting to make Islam a civil religion on the Western model, firmly subservient to the state. Where Nasser had persecuted Islamist groups, Sadat appeared to be their liberator. Between 1971 and 1975, he gradually released the Muslim Brothers who had been languishing in the prisons and camps. He relaxed Nasser’s strict laws controlling religious groups, and allowed them to meet, preach, and publish. The Muslim Brotherhood was not allowed to reestablish itself as a fully functioning political society, but the Brothers could preach and establish their own journal, al-Dawah (“The Call”). There was much mosque-building and more air time was given over to Islam. Sadat also courted Islamic student groups, encouraging them to wrest control of the campuses from the socialists and Nasserites. Nasser had tried to suppress religion and found that this coercive policy was counterproductive. It had led to the rise of the more extreme religiosity promoted by Sayyid Qutb. Now Sadat was attempting to co-opt religion and use it for his own ends. This would also prove to be a tragic miscalculation. At first, however, Sadat’s policy seemed a success. The Muslim Brotherhood, for example, appeared to have learned its lesson. The older generation of leaders released from the jails seemed determined to disown Sayyid Qutb and the Secret Apparatus, and wished to return to the nonviolent, reforming policies of Hasan al-Banna.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  Khomeini tried to reason with them. The clergy, he said, “should in no way interfere in matters for which they are not qualified.” This “would be an unforgivable sin, because it will lead to the nation’s mistrust of the clergy.” 23 The clergy understood religion and fiqh, but not modern economics; the Islamic republic must be a modern state, which required specialists to work within the field of their expertise. But the deadlock continued. The Council of Guardians refused to budge on the issue, so Khomeini tried a more spiritual approach. In March 1981, he told a group of clerics: “One should not expect, without having been reformed himself, to attempt to reform another.” The clergy could not bring the people back to Islam if they were themselves crippled by selfishness and locked in futile power struggles. Every single one of the ulema must overcome this egotism that was impeding the Islamic development of the country. The solution was to “reach a stage where you ... overlook yourself.” “When there is no self to contend with,” Khomeini concluded, “there is no dispute, no quarrel.” 24 This sprang directly from Khomeini’s practice of mystical irfan; as the seeker approaches God, he gradually divests himself of his selfish desires until he is able to behold the transforming vision of God. But the dynamic of modern politics is very different from spiritual contemplation. The ulema of the Council of Guardians remained deaf to Khomeini’s plea. Politics usually attracts men and women with a heightened sense of self. Modern governmental institutions work by means of a balance of competing interests, not by this kind of self-effacement. When he had evolved his theory of Velayat-e Faqih, Khomeini had believed that the ulema on the Council of Guardians would assert the mystical, hidden (batin) values of the Unseen; instead, they seemed mired, like most ordinary mortals, in the materialism of the zahir. To break the deadlock with the Council of Guardians, the energetic Speaker of the Majlis, Hojjat ol-Islam Hashemi Rafsanjani, urged Khomeini to use his authority as Supreme Faqih to get the Land Bill passed. The constitution gave the Faqih final say on all Islamic matters, and he could overrule the decision of the Council of Guardians. Khomeini could, Rafsanjani suggested, cite the Islamic principle of maslahah (“public necessity”), which allowed a jurist to legislate “secondary ordinances” about issues not directly provided for in the Koran and the Sunnah, if the welfare of the people demanded it. But Khomeini did not wish to do this.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  Jeanette was amazed to see Pierre grown suddenly limp in the very middle of his fervent caresses. She felt contempt. She was too inexperienced to think that this might happen to any man in certain circumstances, so she did nothing to revive their lovemaking. She lay back, sighed and looked at the ceiling. Then Pierre kissed her mouth, and this she enjoyed. He lifted the light dress, looked at her young legs, pulled down the round garters. The sight of the stocking beginning to roll down and the tiny white panties she wore, the smallness of the sex he felt under his fingers, aroused him again, giving him such a desire to take her and do violence to her, so yielding and moist. He pushed his powerful sex into her and felt the tightness. This enchanted him. Like a sheath, her sex closed around his penis, softly and caressingly. He felt his power coming back to him, his usual power and deftness. He knew by each move she made where she wanted to be touched. When she pressed against him, he covered her little round buttocks with his warm hands, and his finger touched the orifice. She leaped under his touch but made no sound. And Pierre was waiting for this sound, a sound of approval, encouragement. No sound came from Jeanette. Pierre listened for it while he continued to pound into her. Then he stopped, half withdrew his penis, and with the tip of it alone, he circled the opening of her little rosy sex. She smiled at him and abandoned herself, but she still did not utter a sound. Wasn’t she enjoying herself? What was it that Jean did to her that wrung such shrieks of pleasure from her? He tried all his positions. He raised her towards him by the middle of her body, brought her sex up to him, and he kneeled to better push into her, but she made no sound. He turned her over, and took her from behind. His hands were everywhere. She was panting and moist, but silent. Pierre touched her little ass, caressed her small breasts, bit into her lips, kissed her sex, thrust his sex into her violently and then softly turned and churned in her, but still she remained silent. In desperation he said, “Say when you want it, say when you want it.” “Come now,” she said immediately, as if she had been waiting for him to do it. “Do you want it?” he asked again, filled with doubts. “Yes,” she said, but her passivity made him uncertain. He lost all his desire to come, to enjoy her. His desire died inside of her. He saw an expression of disappointment in her face. It was she who said, “I suppose I’m not as attractive to you as other women.” Pierre was surprised. “Of course you are attractive to me, but you did not seem to be enjoying yourself and that stopped me.”

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  While he sat in jail, writing virulent letters to Muhammad Shah, the Qajar “usurper,” he was allowed to receive large gatherings of his disciples. Even after the authorities moved him to the remote fortress of Chihrig, outside Urumiyya, there was not enough room in the hall to receive all his visitors, and crowds of people were forced to stand outside in the street. When he visited the public baths, his devotees bought his bathwater. There was huge excitement when he was finally brought to trial in Tabriz in the summer of 1848. Hordes of people thronged to greet him, so that he entered the courtroom in triumph. A mass of supporters stood outside during the trial, expecting the Bab to demolish his enemies and inaugurate a new age of justice, productivity, and peace. But, as with Shabbetai, there ensued a shocking anticlimax. The Bab did not overcome his interrogators. In fact, he appears to have performed very badly. 65 His examiners revealed his deficiency in Arabic, theology, and Falsafah; he had no understanding of the new sciences. How could this man be the Imam, the repository of divine knowledge (ilm)? The court sent the Bab back to prison, gravely underestimating the threat he posed to the regime, for by this time, the Babi movement was no longer simply a call for moral and religious reform; it had become a demand for a new sociopolitical order. Just as Shabbateanism had appealed to all social classes, the Bab was able to attract the masses with his messianism, the philosophically or esoterically inclined with his mystical theology, and the more secularly minded revolutionaries with his social doctrines. As in the earlier Jewish movement, there was an intuitive sense that the old world was passing away and that traditional sanctities would no longer apply. In June 1848, the Babi leaders held a mass meeting in Budasht, Khurasan. The Koran was formally abrogated, and the Shariah was to remain in place only until the Bab was acknowledged by the world. For the time being, the faithful must follow their own consciences and learn to distinguish good from evil by themselves, instead of relying on the ulema . They must feel free to reject the laws of the Shariah if they chose. The charismatic woman preacher Qurrat al-Ain removed her veil as a symbol of the end of female subjection and the end of the old Muslim era. All “impure” objects were henceforth to be regarded as “pure.” Truth was not a doctrine revealed all at once, in one moment of time. God’s decrees were gradually revealed to the masses through the elect. Like Shabbetai himself, the Babis reached toward a new religious pluralism: in the new order, all previously revealed religions would unite as one. 66 Many of the Babis who attended the meeting at Budasht were appalled by this radical message, and fled in horror.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In June 1535, after a siege that lasted a little over a year, the city fell. Jan van Leiden and two other leaders were brutally tortured and executed in January 1536, their remains put in iron cages that were hung from the tower of St. Lambert’s Church, where the cages can still be seen. It is difficult to know exactly what happened in Münster, since all the reports we have were composed by the victors and are hostile, and the town records were largely destroyed. The episode is usually viewed as an aberration in the history of the Reformation, and this is certainly how Luther regarded it. Most shocking to contemporaries was its introduction of polygamy. Yet although Luther himself condemned the Anabaptists for their theological arrogance and their contempt for true doctrine, and though he condemned them as “Epicureans,”20 he had consistently pointed out that the Old Testament patriarchs had practiced polygamy. His attitude would later have important consequences. —IN the meantime Martin Bucer had not given up trying to come to an agreement with the Wittenbergers. He had visited a grumpy Luther in Coburg Castle in late September 1530 on his way back from the Diet of Augsburg, and he finally persuaded him to begin negotiations with the sacramentarians.21 As Luther put it in early 1531, he had begun to see “how necessary your fellowship is for us….I have become so much aware of this that I am convinced that all the gates of hell, the whole papacy, all of Turkey, the whole world, all the flesh, and whatever evils there are could not harm the gospel at all, if only we were of one mind.”22 This struck a different tone from his usual conviction that his very isolation in his struggle against the forces of Satan proved Christ was on his side, and it was not one he sustained for long.23 He continued to be wary of Bucer, who traveled tirelessly in Switzerland and among the cities of Upper Germany to try to produce a formula all parties could approve. The effort took him nearly four years, but when he did finally arrive at a formula Luther would accept, the Swiss then rejected it out of hand.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The local Lutheran Urbanus Rhegius preached to barely two hundred listeners, but Michael Keller, the Zwinglian whom Jonas thought both uneducated and a gossip, regularly attracted crowds of six thousand to his rousing sermons in the huge Church of St. Ulrich. When Agricola dared to preach vigorously against the Zwinglians, he stirred up a “wasps’ nest” of criticism in return. 23 When Charles finally did arrive on June 15, the Feast of the Ascension, he entered Augsburg in a stunning pageant, which heightened expectations after all the weeks of waiting. The procession lasted until eight in the evening and Jonas described it in loving detail to Luther, even though he knew how little store “you set by such things.” The emperor, who had been crowned by the Pope in Bologna just a few months before, was dressed in gold, carried a golden sword, and sat astride a bejeweled white horse under a golden canopy. The Elector of Saxony rode close by, followed by Charles’s brother, King Ferdinand. The papal legate Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio, Jonas noted gleefully, at least did not precede the emperor, entering the city by his side. 24 For the Lutherans, the extravaganza would have driven home the sheer power of the forces lined up against them. For many years Charles had been preoccupied with affairs in Italy, so it had been possible almost to forget just how strong imperial might was. Now it was on show, for all to see. And yet this spectacle, designed to parade the magnificence of the empire, also displayed its divisions. On his arrival, Charles spoke to the Catholic and Lutheran princes separately, and lost no time in warning the evangelicals that he would not tolerate their preaching. 25 The day after his formal entry, he celebrated the feast of Corpus Christi, during which a procession ceremonially circled the boundaries of the city, with the Host held high. Charles had deliberately timed his arrival for the feast, and the ritual honoring of Christ’s body was intended to celebrate the unity of the empire as the princes, cardinals, and bishops all processed as one, showing secular and religious authorities in harmony. But the evangelical princes and most of the townsfolk ostentatiously declined to take part; what had been planned as a display of unity and reconciliation in fact highlighted the existence of separate factions, as the Catholics paraded through sullen crowds of Augsburgers and the evangelicals went straight to their lodgings.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The overcrowding was especially difficult for women students, many of whom had come from a traditional background and found it intolerable to be crammed up against young men on the benches or in the buses that conveyed the students back to their equally crowded halls of residence. Learning was by rote and success in the examinations required the mechanical regurgitation of the lecture notes and manuals issued by the professors. The humanities, law, and the social sciences were known as “garbage faculties,” and virtually written off. Whatever their personal inclinations, able students would be forced to study medicine, pharmacology, odontology, engineering, or economics, or else resign themselves to being taught by the worst professors and to having even less chance of a reasonable job after graduation. In this setting, the students were not trained to think creatively about the problems of humanity or of society. Instead, they were required to absorb information passively and soullessly. Their introduction to modern culture was chronically superficial, therefore, and left their religious beliefs and practices entirely untouched. 37 The jamaat produced few books or pamphlets, but an article written for al-Dawah in 1980 by Isam al-Din al-Aryan sums up their main ideas. Sayyid Qutb was clearly an inspiration; the jamaat believed that it was time for Egyptians to shake off the Western and Soviet ideologies that had dominated the country for so long, and return to Islam. Egypt was still in effect controlled by infidels, and there could be no true independence unless there was a great religious awakening. 38 The jamaat did not confine themselves to the discussion of ideas, but applied the Islamic ideology creatively and practically to their own circumstances. In 1973, the students began to set up summer camps in the major universities. 39 They studied the Koran, prayed together at night, and listened to sermons about the Golden Age of Islam, the career of the Prophet, and the four rashidun . By day, there were sporting activities and classes in self-defense. For a few weeks, the students lived, thought, and played in a wholly Islamic setting. It was, in a sense, a temporary hijrah , a migration from mainstream society to a world where they could live out the Koran and experience for themselves its impact on their lives. They learned what it was like to live in an environment which really did endorse the teachings of scripture. The camps gave them a taste of an Islamic utopia, in marked contrast to the inauthentically Muslim life of the regime. Preachers and speakers discussed the bitter disappointment of the modern experiment, which may have worked beautifully in Europe or America, but which only worked to the advantage of the rich in Egypt. When they returned to university life, students tried to reproduce some of this experience on campus.

• From Satyricon (1)

  HIS FATE WAS UNAVOIDABLE NO ROCK-HEWN TOMB NOR SCULPTURED MARBLE HIS, HIS NOBLE CORPSE FIVE FEET OF EARTH RECEIVED, HE RESTS IN PEACE BENEATH THIS HUMBLE MOUND. CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEENTH. We set out upon our intended journey, after this last office had been wholeheartedly performed, and, in a little while, arrived, sweating, at the top of a mountain, from which we made out, at no great distance, a town, perched upon the summit of a lofty eminence. Wanderers as we were, we had no idea what town it could be, until we learned from a caretaker that it was Crotona, a very ancient city, and once the first in Italy. When we earnestly inquired, upon learning this, what men inhabited such historic ground, and the nature of the business in which they were principally engaged, now that their wealth had been dissipated by the oft recurring wars, “My friends,” replied he, “if you are men of business, change your plans and seek out some other conservative road to a livelihood, but if you can play the part of men of great culture, always ready with a lie, you are on the straight road to riches: The study of literature is held in no estimation in that city, eloquence has no niche there, economy and decent standards of morality come into no reward of honor there; you must know that every man whom you will meet in that city belongs to one of two factions; they either ‘take-in,’ or else they are ‘taken-in.’ No one brings up children in that city, for the reason that no one who has heirs is invited to dinner or admitted to the games; such an one is deprived of all enjoyments and must lurk with the rabble. On the other hand, those who have never married a wife, or those who have no near relatives, attain to the very highest honors; in other words, they are the only ones who are considered soldierly, or the bravest of the brave, or even good. You will see a town which resembles the fields in time of pestilence,” he continued, “in which there is nothing but carcasses to be torn at and carrion crows tearing at them.” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEENTH.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I’m staying at the Hilton near O’Hare.” I cringed at the idea of her staying near the airport, when the heart of the city had so many great hotel options with class and character. If only she’d called me, I could have guided her to them. “I was beginning to wonder when I would hear from you.” “I wasn’t sure if Saturdays were a day you liked to sleep in, but I decided to take time off this morning. I’ve been racing around all week. I’m not used to business travel, and it’s worn me out.” “I was so excited to see you that I woke up hours ago,” I said. “I’m ready to go whenever you are.” “How far is my hotel from the city?” she asked. “It’s about a thirty-minute cab ride. All you need to do is give my address to the driver and then sit back and relax. The driver will see that you get here safe and sound.” This is going well . I was about to tell her some of the fun activities I had in mind for the day so she could contemplate the options on her ride over. If we ended up on a sailboat, I thought she might want to bring a change of clothes or something warm to wrap around her shoulders. “Oh, Lindy, I’m sorry, dear, but I’m just not comfortable coming over to your house.” She sounded determined and prepared for this part of the conversation. I put down the watering can and stiffened in place. “One day, after you return to Jehovah, I look forward to having a big party to celebrate, but until then it just wouldn’t be right.” Wouldn’t be right? Right, you say? What is right about this whole ridiculous situation? “Is there a nearby restaurant where I can meet you for lunch?” Well, of course—there are a bazillion restaurants in Chicago. The idea of meeting in a restaurant was appalling, though, because I wasn’t sure how I would react upon seeing her. I might break down into hot tears or loud, baleful sobs. The possibility of her declining to come to my home had not even entered my mind. I felt foolish for indulging in fantasies of a weekend armistice. I sat down slowly in the lawn chair. “Yeah. I guess so. There are lots of restaurant options.” My mind was pounding through the shock. “You won’t even pop in for a few minutes and see where I live?” My voice was feeble and thin. “I don’t have to ‘entertain’ you or anything.” “No, Lindy. I’m sorry, but I just wouldn’t feel right about that.” Now up from the lawn chair, I began pacing, hoping the movement would stimulate some rational thought, understanding that I needed to choose a venue where I would be comfortable. “Fine, Mother,” I said in a flinty voice. “Tell the cab driver to bring you to Bistro Zinc on Southport, just North of Roscoe.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  It is impossible to tell what Luther really thought at the time. He certainly did not see the city through the eyes of a reformer, but rather through those of a pious Augustinian monk. His determination to secure indulgences for his paternal grandfather suggests how much these meant to him. He even remembered wishing that his parents were already dead so that he could exploit this lifetime opportunity to gain indulgences for them. The rather pat theological message of his later reminiscences suggests that hindsight had blotted out everything he might then have found compelling. 45 Despite his critical memories, however, his Rome visit must have been deeply significant to him. He would not otherwise have linked it so closely to his key theological discoveries, or to his lifelong identity as being a “German,” hostile to all things Italian. There are some things Luther does not mention. We do not know the identity of the man who went with him, nor do we hear about their companionship on the way. The negotiations with the papacy, the entire point of the journey, are also completely missing from the story. As a junior member of the order, Luther would not have been the chief negotiator—he knew nothing of how the Curia functioned, and such a serious mission would not have been entrusted to someone so inexperienced. It is possible, as Johannes Cochlaeus later stated, that the monk whom Luther accompanied to Rome was Anton Kress, a patrician from Nuremberg, although it is more likely to have again been his former teacher Johannes Nathin. Nathin was highly experienced, having saved the Augustinian monastery at Tübingen in 1493 by reforming it in accordance with the wishes of the duke of Württemberg. He was a senior academic, a proven negotiator, and he would have had a sure grasp of how the Curia worked. We do know, however, that the negotiations in Rome were a comprehensive failure. The two monks did not secure an exemption for the Erfurt monastery that would have permitted them to continue their observant practices, and they were instead ordered to obey the policy of the vicar of the order, Staupitz. It seems likely that Luther soon embraced Staupitz’s view of the matter, rejecting Nathin’s and the Erfurt monastery’s attempt to safeguard the traditions of the observants. All this must have put him in an uncomfortable position: He had to represent a line that was designed to wreck his confessor’s long-standing plan for the order, a matter very close to Staupitz’s heart. On the way back, the two Augustinians stopped at Augsburg, where, Luther recalled, he was taken to meet the holy Anna “Laminit,” or “leave me not.” The daughter of simple craftspeople, she was believed to live miraculously without eating.

• From Shunned (2018)

  The possibility of her declining to come to my home had not even entered my mind. I felt foolish for indulging in fantasies of a weekend armistice. I sat down slowly in the lawn chair. “Yeah. I guess so. There are lots of restaurant options.” My mind was pounding through the shock. “You won’t even pop in for a few minutes and see where I live?” My voice was feeble and thin. “I don’t have to ‘entertain’ you or anything.” “No, Lindy. I’m sorry, but I just wouldn’t feel right about that.” Now up from the lawn chair, I began pacing, hoping the movement would stimulate some rational thought, understanding that I needed to choose a venue where I would be comfortable. “Fine, Mother,” I said in a flinty voice. “Tell the cab driver to bring you to Bistro Zinc on Southport, just North of Roscoe. Does eleven thirty work for you?” “Yes, but don’t I need the address?” “No, Mother. Just tell him Bistro Zinc, on Southport at Roscoe. That’s all you need to say.” I could hear the edge in my voice and feel my throat gripping. “This is Chicago. The big city. The cab drivers know what they’re doing.” Do you? I wanted to add, but refrained. When I hung up, my breath was labored, tears came to my eyes, and I started to perspire. Pacing the floors, I looked desperately for something to throw. Leo crouched in the corner as I stormed past him to my room. Landing in a belly flop on my bed, I buried my head in the pillows and screamed. And screamed again. Grabbing a pillow, I pounded it against the bed, over and over, like a petulant child. Dread overcame me, and I lay on the bed, breathing deeply. This lunch was now something to be endured. How long did it take for red, puffy eyes to recede? Not more than an hour, I hoped, because that was all the time I had. Fortunately, it was a bright, sunny day in Chicago, the kind that invites hope and desire. As I walked through the streets from my apartment to the restaurant, a fresh conviction emerged. This was a rare chance to spend time with my mother. I’d need to keep my guard up—who knew what other surprises were in store?—but I decided I didn’t want to waste this precious time mired in offense. All I could do was show up and eke out whatever I could from the encounter. I’d chosen Bistro Zinc for its ambience and familiarity. It was a regular weekend lunch spot for Carol, Kathy, and me. We’d hang out there and get caught up on each other’s weeks, sharing war stories from the office, laughing or crying over the men in our lives. As I turned the corner to Southport, I saw they had opened the French doors, unfurled the awning, and set tables on the sidewalk.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther, who scarcely left Wittenberg in his last years, lived inside these protective circles of friends and allies just as his Saxon Church existed within the safety of the Elector’s lands. The friendships mixed private interaction with an overriding sense of duty to the new Church, in Wittenberg and beyond. In Wittenberg, surrounded by students and people from all over the empire eager to study with Luther and Melanchthon, it was easy to forget just how precarious the Reformation outside the town still was, and how chaotic the situation created by Luther’s assault upon the time-honored customs, beliefs, and practices of Catholicism. Men who had once been Catholic priests or monks did not always succeed in becoming exemplary evangelical pastors. The pastor of Sausedlitz went around with a rifle, which he delighted in firing in the village. He hung out in the tavern and maltreated his wife, starting a suspicious liaison with a local widow.5 Those who copied Luther and excoriated the failings of the elite from the pulpit could soon find themselves isolated. No fewer than fifteen individuals, including the mayor, were happy to testify against the preacher of Werdau, who had insulted the councilors as “Herods” and “Caiaphases.”6 Johannes Heine, the pastor at Elssnig, near Torgau, had a sideline in herbal and magical healing, claiming that his cures were not magical but accomplished “through God’s grace, which was given to him.” His unworthy conduct was reported during a Church Visitation and he was thrown into prison.7 Even Lutheran loyalists were not immune to the attractions of such quasi-magical practice. Luther had to write a long letter to Jonas’s wife telling her that while it might seem like a good idea to read a gospel passage aloud as a cure, the fact that it had to be done at a certain place and time suggested that it was not pious but superstitious. One pastor refused to allow warm water for baptism because, he argued, it was a mixture of the elements of fire and water and therefore was not pure water—Luther made short shrift of this, telling him he should consult those who knew their philosophy.8 The new pastors were meant to be theologically trained, but there were not enough of them, and in rural Saxony, local tradition and magical belief would not simply melt away in the face of university knowledge.

• From Shunned (2018)

  For following my heart? For moving away from fearing the world to see instead a world of vibrant possibility? For this I must ask for forgiveness? It was too big to take on then and there. The weekend was just beginning, and I had an appointment to keep. This didn’t lessen my resolve, but it did make me dread my moment of truth, as I realized anew the full force of disappointment awaiting my mother. Ross was already seated at the table of my favorite breakfast spot in the city. I’d suggested this diner, an enclave for local writers and actors, because it was unlikely that we’d run into anyone we knew. I caught his eye and walked over to greet him. He smiled and stood, kissing me formally on the cheek. He looked as though he’d dropped a few pounds. “You look like you’ve lost weight,” he said. “I was just thinking the same thing about you,” I said, settling into the seat opposite his. “I owe it all to stress,” he said. “Me too.” “I already ordered you a latte,” he said, still familiar with some of my habits. The conversation was very ordinary, like one between two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while. I asked about his job, his boss, his mom, and certain friends of ours. Things were easy between us. We ordered our usual meals, and then I pulled out a manila envelope stuffed with old photographs. “I thought you should have these,” I said. In the stress and confusion of our separation, I’d ended up with nine years’ worth of photos from our time together. In preparation for seeing him this last time, I’d gone through them all and pulled out things I knew Ross would like to have, pictures that were more his memories than mine. There were pictures of him at work, another of him with Ellen Kyte on the day of his baptism, another of he and his mom at the Portland Rose Garden. “I’d forgotten all about these,” he said, sifting through the pictures. “Thanks. I’ll take a closer look at them later.” He stuffed the photos back in the envelope, pushed it aside, and sipped his coffee. “Enough about me. How are you doing?” It was my opening, but I couldn’t bear to ruffle his feathers before our food had even arrived. I started by telling him more about Chicago—where I lived, how city living compared to the suburbs, and how worried I was to make my first sale. Our food was served, and I became aware of how hungry I was, slathering my biscuits with butter as I rattled on about the weather, midwestern sensibilities, and the Cubs cult of the North Side.

• From Shunned (2018)

  That evening I stayed home, just in case Mom called. She did not call. Had I not been disfellowshipped, she would be sitting there with me on the couch, sipping chamomile tea and giving my spare bedroom some use. Curious about where she was, I started phoning hotels that cater to the business traveler but gave up after a few tries. Mom did not want to connect until the morning, and that was that. The phone rang at ten o’clock sharp. I’d been carrying a cordless phone around the house and was on the deck, watering the flowers. I answered the call. “Hi, Lindy. How are you, my dear?” It was my mother. “Are you actually here, in my city?” “Sort of. I’m staying at the Hilton near O’Hare.” I cringed at the idea of her staying near the airport, when the heart of the city had so many great hotel options with class and character. If only she’d called me, I could have guided her to them. “I was beginning to wonder when I would hear from you.” “I wasn’t sure if Saturdays were a day you liked to sleep in, but I decided to take time off this morning. I’ve been racing around all week. I’m not used to business travel, and it’s worn me out.” “I was so excited to see you that I woke up hours ago,” I said. “I’m ready to go whenever you are.” “How far is my hotel from the city?” she asked. “It’s about a thirty-minute cab ride. All you need to do is give my address to the driver and then sit back and relax. The driver will see that you get here safe and sound.” This is going well. I was about to tell her some of the fun activities I had in mind for the day so she could contemplate the options on her ride over. If we ended up on a sailboat, I thought she might want to bring a change of clothes or something warm to wrap around her shoulders. “Oh, Lindy, I’m sorry, dear, but I’m just not comfortable coming over to your house.” She sounded determined and prepared for this part of the conversation. I put down the watering can and stiffened in place. “One day, after you return to Jehovah, I look forward to having a big party to celebrate, but until then it just wouldn’t be right.” Wouldn’t be right? Right, you say? What is right about this whole ridiculous situation? “Is there a nearby restaurant where I can meet you for lunch?” Well, of course—there are a bazillion restaurants in Chicago. The idea of meeting in a restaurant was appalling, though, because I wasn’t sure how I would react upon seeing her. I might break down into hot tears or loud, baleful sobs.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I could have told her about my first ride in a corporate jet sent to take our team of executives to New York, all part of our due diligence with a new vendor. After a few years in sales, I found it fun to be on the receiving side of a business courtship. But I was brief in my answer. Other parents might take pride in these accomplishments. She wanted to hear only that I was doing well, and might find these developments more disturbing than impressive. “What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon? Would you like to go for a walk along the lake or do some shopping?” I was hopeful that we could salvage some good times from the day. “I have a friend standing by who has offered to take us sailing.” “That is very generous, but my hotel has an outdoor pool I want to take advantage of,” she said, swirling her wine by the stem of her glass. “I never get a chance at home to while away the afternoon with a good book. It’s been a full week, and I’d like to rest.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I fought an urge to plead with her, the way I used to beg for more ice cream as a child. It was a perfect day to play tourist. Within a month, snow could be falling to the ground. Was she seriously going to sit around an airport pool, 747s flying overhead, when she could be basking in the skyline of a grand city, a city other people clamor to visit? Yes, she was. We paid and left, and as I walked out to the street with her, I felt the sidewalk underfoot giving like a cushion, either from the growing heat or from my state of mind. All passersby faded into the distance. I hailed a cab and turned to her as it pulled alongside the curb. “Stay healthy, and be sure to allow yourself enough time to rest,” she said. “Yes, Mom.” We hugged goodbye. “Have a safe flight home, and give Dad a hug for me.” It was all very civilized, but I was crumbling inside. As her cab disappeared into northbound traffic, I pulled out my cell phone and made a quick call. “There will be no sailing today,” I said. Then I walked home and collapsed on the couch to stew in anger and sorrow. PART THREE The Death Exemption, 2006Chapter 21 [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. . . . Our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness. —His Holiness the Dalai Lama T en years passed, during which I had little contact from my family. In the early years of my newfound freedom, they were never far from my thoughts.

• From The Battle for God (2000)

  The Second Great Awakening shows the sort of solutions that many people find attractive when their society is going through the wrenching upheaval of modernization. Like modern fundamentalists, the prophets of the Second Great Awakening mounted a rebellion against the learned rationalism of the ruling classes and insisted on a more religious identity. At the same time, they made the modern ethos accessible to people who had not had the opportunity to study the writings of Descartes, Newton, or John Locke. The prophetic rebellion of these American prophets was both successful and enduring in the United States, and this means that we should not expect modern fundamentalist movements in societies that are currently modernizing to be ephemeral and a passing “madness.” The new American sects may have seemed bizarre to the establishment, but they were essentially modern and an integral part of the new world. This was certainly true of the millennial movement founded by the New York farmer William Miller (1782–1849), who pored over the biblical prophecies, and, in a series of careful calculations, “proved” in a pamphlet published in 1831 that the Second Coming of Christ would occur in the year 1843. Miller was reading his Bible in an essentially modern way. Instead of seeing it as a mythical, symbolic account of eternal realities, Miller assumed that such narratives as the Book of Revelation were accurate predictions of imminent events, which could be worked out with scientific and mathematical precision. People now read texts for information. Truth must be capable of logical, scientific demonstration. Miller was treating the mythos of Scripture as though it were logos, and he and his assistant Joshua Hines constantly stressed the systematic and scientific nature of Miller’s investigations.77 The movement was also democratic: anybody could interpret the Bible for him or herself, and Miller encouraged his followers to challenge his calculations and come up with theories of their own.78 Improbable and bizarre as the movement seemed, Millerism had instant appeal. Some 50,000 Americans became confirmed “Millerites,” while thousands more sympathized without actually joining up.79 Inevitably, however, Millerism turned into an object lesson in the danger of interpreting the mythos of the Bible literally. Christ failed to return, as promised, in 1843, and Millerites were devastated. Nonetheless, this failure did not mean the end of millennialism, which became and has continued to be a major passion in the United States. Out of the “Great Disappointment” of 1843, other sects, such as the Seventh-Day Adventists, appeared, adjusted the eschatological timetable, and, by eschewing precise predictions, enabled new generations of Americans to look forward to an imminent End of history.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  —A DIET at Augsburg had been called for 1530, which the emperor would himself attend. Here Charles was going to allow the evangelicals to set out their position in a confession of faith, in a final attempt to restore religious concord in the empire and create a united front against the Turkish threat. Meetings were held at Torgau to devise a Saxon strategy, and Melanchthon, ever the systematizer, was entrusted with the task of finalizing the confession.10 It was decided that Luther himself should travel only so far as Coburg, still within Saxon territory, and not attend the Diet itself, to avoid provocation. There could hardly have been a greater contrast with his heroic appearance at the Diet of Worms nine years earlier, and he chafed at the prospect of being sidelined. How he would have liked to be there, Luther now wrote, alongside Melanchthon, Spalatin, Jonas, and Johann Agricola, who made up the Saxon delegation. But he would only be told, like the poor chorister, “Be quiet! You have a bad voice!”11 Once the band of Wittenbergers arrived in Augsburg, they initially wrote regularly to Luther, who was marooned in the castle at Coburg, some 125 miles to the north. Here, Luther joked, he had his own Diet, a parliament of birds: “You people, of course, go to Augsburg, [but] you are uncertain when you will see the beginning [of your Diet]; we came here right into the midst of a Diet….All are equally black, all have dark blue eyes, all make the same music in unison. I have not yet seen nor heard their emperor.” He regularly signed his letters as from “the kingdom of the winged jackdaws.”12 Nor was Luther the only one to talk about birds. Soon Agricola wrote from Augsburg, describing a dream of Melanchthon’s. An eagle had appeared, which was magically transformed into a cat. Immediately the cat had been stuffed into a sack. But then Luther arrived, and had called for the screaming cat to be let out; it was freed. The evangelicals were agog with possible interpretations. One of their number was called Caspar Aquila, or “eagle,” so perhaps the dream foretold disaster for his house. Others were convinced the eagle represented the emperor, and the practice of sorcery meant the evil machinations of the godless sophists and cardinals, who were preventing the emperor from understanding the truth. Only Luther’s arrival could “let the cat out of the bag” and allow Charles V to hear the true gospel.13