Embarrassment

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 How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Remember Replace and Embrace from chapters 5 and 6? They’re not just a running start; you can use them as cleanup, too. Ask yourself how truly horrible was the experience? It feels cringe worthy now, but who will remember in a few days? (Probably no one besides you.) How often do things like this happen to people? (Probably often.) How many people has this happened to? (Lots—chalk one up for the human experience.) For example, for his Challenge List, Dante asked a question in class, but the professor didn’t understand what he meant. Dante tried to explain but tripped over his words. The professor looked perplexed and gave an answer that didn’t match the question. Dante felt embarrassed, but looking around, he saw none of the other students seemed to care. And a couple weeks later, when Dante went to office hours, the absentminded professor didn’t even seem to remember him. Clearly, it was no biggie. Finally, ask yourself a question that should sound familiar by now: How can I cope? For example, Winnie would always leave church as soon as it was over to avoid lingering and getting stuck in conversation. One Sunday, for her Challenge List, she stayed, determined to face her fears. But before she could say good morning to anyone, she got cornered by the church’s resident eccentric—a harmless but oddball elderly lady who smelled strongly of mothballs and sported dried toothpaste at the corners of her mouth. Winnie endured for twenty minutes before she excused herself and ran to her car. After calming down, she asked herself what she could do. How could she cope? She called her mother and told her the story. Instead of being horrified, she thought it was hysterical, and Winnie realized she had a good story to tell at work the next day. Now, you certainly don’t have to cope by sharing with your mother—you can cope in any healthy way that works for you. But Winnie discovered something: practice gone wrong is often great fodder for conversation. Everyone loves embarrassing stories; it humanizes you, shows you have a sense of humor, and you might even get an embarrassing story in return. And guess what? That’s part of how closeness develops, which I’ll cover in depth in chapter 16. So make your Challenge List. Then talk your way through with Replace and Embrace. Give yourself some structure—play a role that you choose. Be brave for the time it takes to get over the summit. Take on your challenges, a little at a time. And leave your life preservers at home. The mountain is all downhill from there. Slide down the hill and into your life. The more you practice, the easier it gets.

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

  The rich, he said, would never be as rich as they are nor the poor as poor if the latter were scattered as farmers over the land. It is their congregating in large numbers in the cities, he said, that makes possible the extensive industries and commercial enterprises which enslave them, and which build up the great fortunes of the rich. Belittled his own novels. "Have you read my book What To Do ?" he suddenly asked me. I was obliged to answer "No." I have read it since, and several times, and profitably, too, but, though I had read quite a number of his books before I met him, it was exceedingly embarrassing to be questioned concerning the particular book which I had not read. Not to appear altogether ignorant of his writings, I proceeded to tell him that I had read his "War and Peace," "Anna Karénina," etc., etc., and started telling him how much I admired them, when, with an impatient look and gesture, he interrupted me, saying "These works are all chaff, chaff, play-toys, amusing gilded youth and idle women. It is my serious writings which I want the world to read. I have ceased publishing novels because readers do not know the meaning of them. They look for entertainment and not instruction, and even though I write only for the uplift of man, for the purification of society, they, like the hawk, seek out only the carrion. They neither recognize themselves under the fictitious name I adopt, nor do they see their share in the wrongs and vices and injustices depicted, neither do they perceive that it is for their co-operation that the novelist appeals when he pleads for the kingdom of heaven on earth." Spoke of his book What To Do . Returning to his book What To Do , he said, "even if you have not read it, you have read the Prophets, and having read them, you know my teachings. The book is an appeal for pity for the submerged, for justice for the wronged, for liberation of the oppressed and persecuted, and for the application of the only remedy—a return to the simple life and labor on the soil. As our subsistence comes from the soil so can justice and right and happiness come from it alone. Help can never come from wealth, for wealth is the creator of poverty and inequality and injustice. It can not come from the government for that exists largely for the purpose of keeping up inequality and injustice. It cannot come from the church, for she fears the Czar more than she fears God. It cannot even come from the schools which tend to train a class of people who think themselves too good for manual labor." Saw solution of Jewish problem only in agriculture.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  “My father was in the C.I.A. He died of a heart attack when I was three. Well at least that’s the official story. He was 33, so who knows.” That was a good one. I had to pause and pretend to drink my latte. “33. That was jesus’ age.” I have no idea why I said that. Why in the world did I bring up jesus? Idiot. Then I said, “My father … my father …” “Your father what?” he asked. “My father was abusive.” “Oh,” he said. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What did he do?” To tell or not to tell. How did I get so quickly to the heart of my wounds? What had just happened? “Sexual,” is all I could manage. Then I wished I was a part of the shrubbery or tableware. Idiotidiotidiotidiot. Why don’t you just slit open your own belly like a caught steelhead and spill it out on the table, moron. “That sucks,” he said. And then, “I hope something karmically fucked happened to him?” Right answer. I laughed. I laughed kind of hard. “Kind of,” I said. And we were able to move past the blood clot I’d presented between us. “Excellent then,” he said. We switched from lattes to wine. It wasn’t just man thing that impressed me. It was his story. How he’d escaped Reno and moved to San Sebastian, Spain, where he briefly witnessed a series of ETA events - the armed Basque nationalist and separatist organization. How he later lived in Italy where he coached a not very good Italian American football team with guys named Mauro Sassaligo, Ugo Spera, and Giacamo Piredu. How he’d interview members of the Earth Liberation Front, how he’d cyber-pirated Bill Gates Microsoft.edu. How he came back to the states - the Northwest, to be exact - to be a writer. Then he said something remarkable. “In Italy I read about Ken Kesey teaching at U of O. So I applied to the university creative writing program and was accepted. We moved to Eugene. But the Kesey workshop had already happened. I did meet some cool writing teachers though.” “Really,” I said. No shit? I got kind of excited but played it smooth and nonchalant. This was my opening to impress. Ahem. “You know, I was in that Kesey year long workshop. Funny, huh.” “Yeah,” he said, “I know. I think I saw you in the creative writing department hall after that. Did you have one side of your head shaved back then?” “What?” I definitely needed more wine. “Did you have…a very unusual head back then?” He was staring at my hair. Man alive. What are the odds? “Well, yes. Yes I did.” I slugged what was left of my merlot. “If you don’t mind my asking, why the hell did you do that to your head?” “Suave,” I said, laughing. “No, I don’t mean to sound like asshole, your hair is beautiful. It’s just, it looked kind of…” “Severe?” I offered.

• From Opening Up by Writing It Down (2016)

  Whatever your topic, it is critical to explore both the objective experience (i.e., what happened) and your feelings about it. Really let go and write about your very deepest emotions. What do you feel about it and why do you feel that way? How does it influence your life? Your relationships? Your goals and dreams? When and Where Should You Write? Write whenever you want or whenever you feel you need to. The evidence suggests that writing about significant experiences does not need to be done that frequently. Although many people write every day in diaries, most of the entries do not grapple with fundamental psychological issues. Also be attentive to too much writing. Don’t use writing as a substitute for action or as some other type of avoidance strategy. Moderation in all things includes putting your thoughts and feelings onto paper. Where you write depends on your circumstances. Some studies suggest that a more unusual or unique setting may be better. Most important is to try to find a room where you will not be interrupted or bothered by unwanted sounds, sights, or smells. What Should You Do with What You Have Written? Anonymity is important in our experiments, and we generally advocate it for your own writing as well. In many cases, it is wise to plan to keep what you have written to yourself—this will help you be completely honest with yourself in your writing. You might even destroy it when you’re finished (although many people find this hard to do). Planning to show your writing to someone can change your mind-set while writing. For example, if you would secretly like your lover to read your deepest thoughts and feelings, you will orient your writing to your lover rather than to yourself. From a health perspective, you will be better off making yourself the audience. In that way, you won’t have to rationalize or justify yourself in writing to suit the perspective of another person. Some people keep their samples and edit them over time, gradually changing their writing from day to day. Others simply keep them and return to reread them over and over again to see how they have changed over time. What If You Hate to Write—Is There a Substitute?

• From The Sex-Starved Marriage: Boosting Your Marriage Libido: A Couple's Guide (2003)

  Now that you know more about having constructive conversations, it’s time to talk about sex. If you’d prefer having a root canal than talking openly about sex, you’re not alone. In the years I’ve been a marriage therapist, it never ceases to amaze me how many people avoid talking about this intimate subject. I’ve told you before that I’ve seen couples who’ve been married for decades, and the thought of discussing their sexual preferences sends shivers up their spines. They don’t share what they like about sex. They don’t talk about their disappointments. They don’t offer instructions or coach each other. And they don’t give feedback when their spouses hit the spot. Some people don’t even get louder or moan when their spouses are “getting warmer.” They never share their fantasies. People shy away from discussing sex for lots of different reasons. Many are embarrassed, even mortified. It feels far too personal. No one taught us to talk about sex when we were kids. Although sex education is an integral part of most children’s education these days, that’s not so for many of us who are now adults. When we were kids, schools thought talking about the birds and the bees was our parents’ responsibility. But who taught our parents? Certainly not their parents. So for the vast majority of people, the word on sex was mum. Another reason couples don’t discuss sex is that we have this crazy notion that our spouses are just supposed to know what pleases us. We shouldn’t have to talk about having good sex; it should just happen. But good sex doesn’t just happen. Since no two people are alike, no single formula works for everybody. What one person finds arousing and exciting is a pure turn-off to another. If you want your spouse to know how you feel and what you enjoy, you have to tell him or her. Leave mind reading to the soothsayers. But perhaps you don’t feel comfortable guiding your spouse because you’re afraid you’ll hurt his or her feelings. If you continue to keep your sexual turn-ons a secret, you’ll be miserable, and your marriage will falter. But there’s no bigger hurt than hearing your spouse say, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore.” If you don’t keep your passion alive, it will be hard to stay in love over the long haul. So, don’t hold back. But use the tips you’ll learn in this chapter. They’ll really help.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  Was this due to modesty? Possibly. For, as much as we like to credit the Greeks with a great liberty of morals, the representation of sexual acts that they suggest in their written works—and even in their erotic literature—seems to have been characterized by a good deal of reserve,* despite the impression one gets from the entertainments they staged or from certain iconographic representations that have been rediscovered.3 In any case, one does sense that Xenophon, Aristotle, and later Plutarch would not have thought it decent to dispense the sort of presumptive and pragmatic advice on sexual relations with one’s lawful wife that the Christian authors lavishly distributed on the subject of conjugal pleasures. They were not prepared, as the directors of conscience would be, to regulate the process of demands and refusals, of first caresses, of the modalities of union, of the pleasures one experienced and the conclusion they should properly be given. But there was a positive reason for this attitude that we may perceive retrospectively as “reticence” or “reserve.” It was due to their conception of the aphrodisia, to the kind of questioning they directed to them, which was not oriented in the least toward the search for their profound nature, their canonical forms, or their secret potential.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  5 It’s All in Her Head [image file=Image00010.jpg] My legs dangling into the Tiger Pit, I couldn’t resist the urge to give Nancy a little smooch. Even now that my mother was home all the time, getting a private audience with her was next to impossible. If I was going to find a way to be alone with her, I’d need to employ any means possible. My big break came when I was in fourth grade, and I got a paper cut in my left eye so deep that I had to see an eye specialist. He prescribed some ointment and an eye patch and instructed my mother to bring me back in a few weeks. Some kids might have been embarrassed to wear a black eye patch. Not me. I loved it. Anything for a little easy attention. I wasn’t the smartest or the prettiest or the most athletic kid in my class, but I was the only one with an eye patch that year. I’d seen how medical equipment of any kind—crutches, slings, back braces—could elicit a bit of sympathy, even from the nuns. The year before, I’d taken to wearing Nancy’s old, pink eyeglasses to school, hoping they’d afford me a little more gravitas. Margaret would do a lot better in school if she wore her glasses regularly, Sister Mary David told my mother at the parent-teacher conference that spring. This was the same semester that I got mostly Ds on my report card. Terrified of how these grades would be received at home, I had changed them to look like Bs with my fountain pen. I think Bs are pretty good grades for her, my mother said as she showed Sister the report card. The old nun, with the jowls of a bulldog, leaned in for a closer inspection and spotted the forgery immediately. She took out her own fountain pen and, with my mother standing there sheepishly, changed the grades back to Ds. So humiliating, my mother said to me when she got home. And quit wearing your sister’s glasses. But this paper cut was the real deal. On the day of my follow-up exam, my mother picked me up at school in her wood-paneled station wagon, and when I opened the door, I was amazed to see that it was just the two of us. No babies. No dog. Just my mom and me. The radio was on, so we drove in near silence for the fifteen minutes that it took for us to get to the doctor’s office in downtown Evanston. I felt very grown-up being allowed to push the elevator button. The doctor leaned toward me and shined a penlight in my eyes. Looks good, he said. No need for further treatment. Oh, good, I said, smiling slightly as I slid off the chair. Secretly, I was crushed. What would I do for attention now? We headed toward the elevator. Then something strange happened once we reached the lobby.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  So the paramoun tcy of order excl udes miraculous interventions. But it also marginalizes hi story . The 'historical ' nature of Juda ism, Chri stianity , Islam- that is, the fact that allegiance and piety are focussed on key hist orical events: Sinai, the Incarnation, the giving of the Qur an-is intrinsically connected with their recognition of the extra dimen sion. These events are the eruptions of God 's affirming power in huma n life, and its continued force in our lives requir es that we maintain unbr oken continuity with these moments through traditio n. Once the notion of order becomes paramou nt, it makes no more sense to give them a crucial status in religious life. It becomes an emb arrassmen t to religion that it shou ld be bou nd to belief in particula r events which divide one gr.oup from another and are in any case open to cavil . The great tru ths of religion are all un iversal. Reason extracts these from the general cou rse of things . A gap separates these realities of universal import from the particulat e facts of his tory. These latter cannot supp ort the former. 274 • THE AFFIR MAT IO N OF OR DI NAR Y LI FE "Z ufallige Geschichts wahrheiten konnen der Beweis von notwendigen Ver nunftwahrheiten nie werden,, (" Contingent historical truths can never serve as proof for necess ary truths of reason"), as Lessing put it. 18 Sho rt of jettisoning these beliefs altogether, one could still give them some ju stification as part of a pedagogy of the human race, which in its earliest ph ases prob ably needed such stories to get it to accept the high spiritual outlook wh ich a more philo soph ical age can understand directly . Such was Lessing's view. 19 But the mature religion which eventually emerges is stripped dow n to the bare essent ials . In its most general formul ation, it can be reduced to three propositions : the existence of a Creator God , his Providence, and the fact of an afterlife wi th rewards and pu nishments. 20 Revelation, whi ch was intrin sically connected to hist orical religion, becomes unnecessary, because these "truths" were held available to reason alone. True religio n was ultimat ely natural religion . I hope the preceding discussi on wi ll have made clearer the appeal of this Deis m. One facet-wh ich I discus sed in Ch apter 9-is the force of the ideal of self-responsible reason . Here was a fully rational religion, which made no appeals to hist orically grounded authority.

• From How the Bible Actually Works (2019)

  is actually supposed to be able to see God. The Greek translation shifts the focus (literally): they saw the place where the God of Israel stood . Likewise, after instructions for building the mercy seat atop the ark of the covenant, God says, There I will meet with you (Exod. 25:22). In the Septuagint God says, I will make myself known to you , which avoids the possibility of God’s physically appearing to Moses. And in Numbers 3:16, where the Hebrew refers to God’s very humanlike mouth , the Greek translation replaces mouth with God’s voice . Yes, humans have voices too, but at least now God doesn’t have a body. The Septuagint really wants to make God seem more, well, godlike. In Genesis 6:6, which still troubles some readers today, Yahweh says he was sorry he created humans; it grieved him to his heart (because they kept sinning, which led God to drown everyone). How can someone the Jews claim to be the true God seem so indecisive, not to mention prone to reactive humanlike emotions? So the Greek translation simply gets rid of that idea altogether. Instead of being sorry , the Lord thought deeply ; instead of grieving , he pondered . Now God is in very Greeklike rational control of the whole process. God isn’t taken off guard and doesn’t change his mind. Just to make a point, apparently the ancient Israelites weren’t bothered by Genesis 6:6—but we are. We should let that sink in. Christians today perhaps have more in common with Jews living in a Greek world than we would with the Israelites of the time of David and Solomon. We expect certain things of God and are bothered when we don’t see them in the Bible. Likewise, according to Exodus 4:24, Yahweh is waiting for Moses by the side of the road to—somewhat shockingly—kill him, when he had just gotten done convincing Moses to go back to Egypt and deliver the Israelite slaves. The Greek translation, clearly concerned with such a painful ungodlike about-face, says that the angel of the L ORD was waiting for Moses. Sure, that doesn’t solve the problem entirely, but at least God has a buffer. These examples illustrate a vital concept for us—Jews at the time changed their sacred text to “clarify” in their time and place what God is like . They changed the Bible to accommodate their culture. All this reminds me of a recent controversy among some Christians, namely, whether Bible translations today should use gender-inclusive language. Talk about a food fight. Whatever one might think of it, the argument that gender- inclusive language is simply “compromising” the Bible for the sake of culture rings rather hollow when we look at what Jews were doing about twenty-three hundred years ago: they produced a culturally influenced Bible translation, the translation that—oh, sweet irony—became the Bible of the New Testament writers.

• From Jesus to Constantine (Great Courses) (2004)

  After the baptism, there was a welcome into the community that involved a liturgical kiss. Well, you know, taking a bath in the nude and then kissing 329 sounds a little bit odd to outsiders, if it leaks out that that is what is happening. Moreover, the Eucharist involved “eating the flesh” and “drinking the blood” of the Son of God. There, you get the infanticide and the cannibalism again. Naturally, as word leaked out about what was going on, Christians were slandered for these kinds of “heinous” activities. In order to defend Christians against these charges, some of the apologists, like Justin Martyr and Tertullian, two people whom we have met already, went to some lengths to show that the rituals were both innocent and wholesome. Therefore, as it turns out, because there were slanders against Christians for these practices, we have some writings that survive that explain in greater detail what actually happened. If they had not been slandered, Justin Martyr and Tertullian would not have spilled the beans, but because they spilled the beans, we do know, and have a better sense of, what exactly was going on during these liturgical practices, because Justin Martyr and Tertullian tried to show that it was all completely innocent. For example, Justin Martyr, in his First Apology, explained to the outsiders why there was nothing untoward in these practices, and he laid out, in what took him about seven chapters, exactly what happened during these practices. He talked about how the baptism took place, how they had to fast in advance before the baptism, and to get baptized in water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then, he explained how they went and had this ritual kiss, and then celebrated the Eucharist meal. He described the thanks that was given for this Eucharist meal, and went ahead and gave a full description of it. Eventually, these practices of Eucharist and baptism became more complex, as church leaders tried to spell out exactly how they were to be performed. Just as the doctrine had to correctly be laid out, and you had to be correct in all the things you said, all the ins and outs of the doctrine, so, too, in your liturgical services. There was a right way to do a liturgical act, and a wrong way. Thus, these church fathers gave indications of both. One place that is found with particular clarity is in Hippolytus’ work, the Apostolic Tradition, mentioned in the previous lecture. In the Apostolic Tradition, we have a lengthy account of what one must do in preparation for the baptism, and so, he spelled out how many days in advance one needed instruction. There was actually a three-year waiting period before you could be baptized, a period of instruction, in which you learned the rudiments of the faith. Then, there was a complex set of preparatory rituals that involved 330

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Indeed, there are levels. Social anxiety falls along a wide range. The first and most common occurrence along the social anxiety spectrum is socially awkward moments. Even the smoothest among us feel awkward or embarrassed at least sometimes. These are the moments we say, “You, too!” when the waiter says, “Enjoy your meal.” Or we accidentally end up with a handful of breast while hugging a woman. Or we say a heartfelt good-bye to a friend, only to realize we’re both walking the same direction. I’ve done all three of these things more than once. These moments may be cringe worthy, but they’re inescapable, plus they make for a good story and a laugh later. The next level is what is often called shy. I call this everyday social anxiety. If you felt a spark of recognition at the word “shy,” How to Be Yourself is for you. So many of us can relate: we stick tight to our partner or best friend at parties; we eat lunch at our desk; we don’t raise our hand even if we know the answer. We all have the thing we hate doing: making small talk, sharing an elevator with the boss, or asking someone to continue his cell phone conversation outside the movie theater. Left to our own devices or with a few familiar people, we feel totally fine, but our heart pounds when all eyes in the conference room focus on us, we suddenly lose the ability to calculate the tip while our friends finish their drinks and watch, we get sweaty and flustered when we attempt to parallel park outside a crowded sidewalk cafe. We worry we’ll come off as inappropriate or incompetent, and then get frustrated at our own worry: This is stupid! Why can’t I be more confident? What’s wrong with me?

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  My very first memory reveals how my brain is wired: I’m three and at preschool, resting alongside fifteen or so other kids on mats on the floor. It is the early 1980s and my teacher, Mrs. Fish, has long, center-parted brown hair and plays the guitar—quiet songs like “You Are My Sunshine” and “Hush, Little Baby”—to lull us into a few moments of stillness. This is what I remember: I open my eyes to Mrs. Fish leaning over her guitar, looking intently at me with a smile on her face. She had clearly been watching me for a while. “There she is!” she says. “Good morning, sweetheart!” As I sit up and rub my eyes, I realize with a shot of adrenaline that every single kid is looking at me. I freeze like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Some of the kids laugh—none in a mocking way, but still, to a sensitive three-year-old it is a Tinkertoy through the heart. I am still dazed from my accidental nap, which just makes the humiliating feeling of being laughed at that much worse. I want the eyes off me, so I squeeze shut my own, mortified in the darkness behind my own eyelids. It is striking, I think, that this is my first memory, and not, say, feeding my little brother’s popcorn to the ducks at the local lake or the knock-on-doors-equals-candy revelation of my first time trick-or-treating. Instead, my anxious brain decides to remember feeling humiliated by a friendly teacher and amused classmates after an innocent snooze. It goes on from there. In first grade, I remember going to bed with a stomachache and a gnawing feeling “that I was forgetting something,” not having the vocabulary to label feeling overwhelmed by a busy classroom day in and day out. In third grade, I knew my multiplication tables by heart but put off reciting them to my teacher until I was the very last in the class to do so. Middle school—that perfect storm of profound self-consciousness and desperation for peer acceptance—was the deepest pit in social anxiety hell, but that’s no surprise. In high school, I came into my own with a solid circle of friends and some leadership roles, but then came the shock of college. While other students attended the infamous Naked Party and argued with intellectual luminaries in seminars, I avoided eye contact at fully clothed parties and raised my hand a single-digit number of times in four years.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I am not quite sure of the reason for what happened next. It may have been that part of my mind was absent, still grappling with my essay, or that I was disoriented by the contrast between the convent scene I had been envisaging and the cheerful profanity of the spectacle in front of me. But instead of bowing briefly to the principal in mute apology for my lateness, as college etiquette demanded, I found to my horror that I had knelt down and kissed the floor. This was the scene with which I opened Beginning the World, my first attempt to tell the story of my return to secular life. I realize that it presents me in a ridiculous and undignified light, but it still seems a good place to start, because it was a stark illustration of my plight. Outwardly I probably looked like any other student in the late 1960s, but I continued to behave like a nun. Unless I exerted constant vigilance, my mind, heart, and body betrayed me. Without giving it a second’s thought, I had instinctively knelt in the customary attitude of contrition and abasement. We always kissed the floor when we entered a room late and disturbed a community duty. This had seemed strange at first, but after a few weeks it had become second nature. Yet a quick glance at the girls seated at the tables next to the door, who were staring at me incredulously, reminded me that what was normal behavior in the convent was little short of deranged out here. As I rose to my feet, cold with embarrassment, I realized that my reactions were entirely different from those of most of my contemporaries in this strange new world. Perhaps they always would be.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “Oh, please, don’t let this be about money, Ana. Elliot said it’s very unusual for Christian to date anyone.” “Did he?” My voice hitches up several octaves. Too obvious, Steele! My subconscious glares at me, wagging her long, skinny finger, then morphs into the scales of justice to remind me he could sue if I disclose too much. Ha, what’s he going to do—take all my money? I must remember to Google “penalties for breaching a nondisclosure agreement” while I’m doing the rest of my “research.” It’s like I’ve been given a school assignment. Maybe I’ll be graded. I flush, remembering my A for this morning’s bath experiment. “Ana, what is it?” “I’m just remembering something Christian said.” “You look different,” Kate says fondly. “I feel different. Sore,” I confess. “Sore?” “A little.” I flush. “Me, too. Men,” she says in mock disgust. “They’re animals.” We both laugh. “You’re sore?” I exclaim. “Yes…overuse.” I giggle. “Tell me about Elliot the overuser,” I ask when I’ve stopped giggling. Oh, I can feel myself relaxing for the first time since I was in line at the bar, before the phone call that started all this—when I was admiring Mr. Grey from afar. Happy, uncomplicated days. Kate blushes. Oh my… Katherine Agnes Kavanagh goes all Anastasia Rose Steele on me. She gives me a dewy-eyed look. I’ve never seen her react this way to a man before. My jaw drops to the floor. Where’s Kate? What have you done with her? “Oh, Ana,” she gushes. “He’s just so…everything. And when we…oh…really good.” She can hardly string a sentence together, she’s got it so bad. “I think you’re trying to tell me that you like him.” She nods, grinning like a lunatic. “And I’m seeing him on Saturday. He’s going to help us move.” She clasps her hands together, leaps up off the couch, and pirouettes to the window. Moving. Crap—I’d forgotten all about that, even with the packing cases surrounding us. “That’s helpful of him,” I say appreciatively. I can get to know him, too. Perhaps he can give me more insight into his strange, disturbing brother. “So what did you do last night?” I ask. She cocks her head at me and raises her eyebrows in a what-do-you-think-stupid look. “Pretty much what you did, though we had dinner first.” She grins at me. “Are you okay really? You look kind of overwhelmed.” “I feel overwhelmed. Christian is very intense.” “Yeah, I could see how he could be. But he was good to you?” “Yes,” I reassure her. “I’m really hungry. Shall I cook?” She nods and picks up two more books to pack. “What do you want to do with the $14,000 books?” she asks. “I’m going to return them to him.” “Really?” “It’s a completely over-the-top gift. I can’t accept it, especially now.” I grin at Kate, and she nods.

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

  All this puzzled and embarrassed later generations of Christians, who would have to face the fact that the courtesies in Paul’s letters include greetings to a great many women, some clearly in positions of authority alongside men, and even given the same titles. Phoebe is one of these: Paul refers to her as a diakonos (in the Greek male form) of the assembly in Cenchreae, a little port near Corinth. Modern translations relegating her office or function to a specialized role of ‘deaconess’ tell us more about the translator than about the original text.[9] Most notorious and cavalier is the subsequent Christian treatment of the lady Junia in Rome, whom Paul describes as ‘of note among the apostles’ (Rom. 16.7), alongside another ‘apostle’ with the male name Andronicus. In later recopying of biblical manuscripts, Junia’s name was frequently changed to a male form, or simply treated (without any justification) as a man’s name. Early biblical commentators and liturgists, led by the highly respected fourth-century preaching Bishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom, were honourably prepared to acknowledge Junia’s surprising femininity, but the thirteenth century saw a sudden turn in the writings of the Western theologian Giles of Rome, which was only rectified during the twentieth century.[10] In all this we should see Paul as being descriptive rather than prescriptive; he was working within the situation he found. It is noticeable that, unlike the Gospel writers some decades later, he does not number any women among those who first bore witness to the risen Christ (1 Cor. 15.5–6). His own opinions on the place of women are revealed in 1 Cor. 11.2–16, where he creates a layered hierarchy of comparisons by gender: ‘the head of every man is Christ, the head of every woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.’[11] One notices that Paul’s hierarchical definition is innocent of the next four centuries of furious theological battles that would determine the Church’s affirmation of co-equality of Father, Son and Holy Spirit within the Trinity, but it also bases its structure on a family model already prominent in the thought of Jesus, who so frequently referred to God as his Father (above, Chapter 4). And in traditional Jewish fashion, it also reaffirms that a woman’s nature is not fully in the image of God, unlike a man’s, and that she is dependent on her relationship to a man to define her relationship to God.

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

  To begin with, the developing Christian hierarchy was not certain how to react to this zeal for castration; should it be commended as demonstrating Christian self-control? Thus the Athenian convert and philosopher Athenagoras, addressing his Plea for the Christians to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in the mid-170s, emphasized that ‘remaining in virginity and in the state of a eunuch brings one nearer to God.’[8] At what point did rhetoric shade into practice? Justin Martyr, pioneer among the second-century literary defenders of Christianity now known as apologists, sympathetically described the disappointment of a young man in Alexandria who petitioned the Roman governor in the city for permission to seek castration from surgeons, to show to the world how far Christians were from indulging in free love. The governor rejected the proposal, leaving him to be ‘satisfied with his own approving conscience, and the approval of those who thought as he did’.[9] The Emperor Antoninus Pius was the notional reader of this apology, so Justin must have believed that elite Romans would have found the tale impressive rather than risible. In a slightly later generation in Alexandria, the brilliant speculative theologian and biblical commentator Origen is said actually to have undergone castration through similar youthful enthusiasm. Yet during the course of the third century Christian official mood-music on voluntary castration changed, and the fourth-century Church historian Eusebios (Eusebius), author of an admiring biography of Origen, reports the story with a mixture of embarrassment and defiant commendation – a confusion that probably indicates its genuineness.[10] Among Syrian ascetics, the loudest encratite voice was Tatian, who had been a student in Rome with Justin Martyr. His conversion to Christianity after an immersion in Hellenistic philosophy and thought involved his dismissing the Graeco-Roman divine pantheon not as fictional, but as active current enemies of the Christian God. The combat was most dramatically expressed in Tatian’s rejection of the whole Graeco-Roman construction of sexuality that we have surveyed (above, Chapter 3), for among the worst of all the Gods of Olympus was Aphrodite, promoter of sexual attraction throughout creation. Caught up in Tatian’s loathing of Aphrodite was the ancient Greek poet Sappho, not for any understanding of her as lesbian, but because of the general eroticism of her verse. ‘Sappho, the sex-mad and cheap little whore, sings licentiousness about herself,’ he snarled.[11] Accordingly, Tatian radically developed his reading of Paul of Tarsus into statements that all those indulging in sexual acts, even in marriage, are ‘enslaved…to sexual fornication and to the devil’. Adam’s disobedience to God was a direct result of his sexual coupling with Eve.[12] [image file=image_rsrcC2S.jpg] 7. Adding later preoccupations to Origen’s story, a late fifteenth-century French MS of the Roman de la Rose satirically depicts him emasculating himself to share a bed with nuns without arousing suspicion. In the background, the pre-Christian Greek philosopher Empedocles prepares to throw himself into flames in an unsuccessful effort to prove his immortality to his disciples.

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

  Leo’s Novella decided the shape of marriage in the Orthodox world thereafter; from the tenth century, Orthodoxy finally developed its own wedding ritual to the full. One awkward consequence that the Church of the Mediterranean had up to now avoided was that Orthodox clergy became responsible for all marriages within their jurisdiction. The untidiness of marriage in human society, perhaps tolerable in the ‘creation ordinance’ face of marriage, was hardly the model for the believer’s eternal relationship with Christ, as set out by Paul of Tarsus and the writer to the Ephesians. Previously any discrepancy, such as divorce or remarriage, could simply be left outside the bounds of the Church in the hands of civil law. The fact that this was no longer the case was embarrassingly demonstrated by Emperor Leo VI himself when, in 906, he compelled the Church authorities to recognize his fourth marriage, way beyond anything that the Church authorities ought to have considered theologically acceptable, following the principles of Basil the Great (Chapter 9). It took the Emperor’s forceful replacement of Patriarch Nicholas Mystikos by a marginally more compliant Patriarch to bring the Church reluctantly to heel.[30] The Novella of Leo VI appeared two centuries after the Dyophysite Patriarch George had launched his bid for monopoly of marriages among his own flock at the Synod of Dayrin. Why now? Imperial politics was one factor. An earlier sensational crisis over an imperial marriage in 796 had centred on the Emperor Constantine VI’s ruthless insistence on gaining the blessing of the Church for his own eccentric marital arrangements, after he had divorced his wife and married a lady of the Court, thereby jeopardizing the imperial succession. The Patriarch Tarasios’s inept though understandable lenience in imposing a light penance led to a crisis in the Church, and eventually to a political coup in which Constantine’s own mother, Irene, removed the Emperor from power by having him blinded. This messy affair was certainly an incentive for clarity in marital legislation. The very determination of Constantine VI to get ecclesiastical approval was witness to the fact that, by the late eighth century, the Byzantine elite were coming to expect the security provided by the Church blessing marriages.[31] Yet to sum up a complicated story, it was the tenth century before this became the norm in the Byzantine East, much later in northern Orthodoxy, and, as we will see, in the West no earlier than the twelfth century (below, Chapter 12).

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

  Some of the reality is to be gleaned elsewhere in the Gospels, which make clear that Jesus had brothers and sisters. Once the Church began developing the idea of Mary as virgin, indeed as perpetual virgin, this scriptural testimony of a large family became an embarrassment. At the turn of the second and third centuries it was still not a problem for the North African theologian Tertullian, who looked at Matt. 13.55 and Mark 6.3 in matter-of-fact fashion to find four named brothers of Jesus (let alone at least a couple of unnamed sisters, whom he could also have encountered in some scribal versions of Mark 3.32). Tertullian, who was intent on combating contemporary Christians who were denying any true humanity in Jesus, as well as in his own fashion defending the value of family and marriage, viewed these as younger siblings to the Saviour, born of Mary by Joseph; and, rather startlingly to later ears, when he considered Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7.14, he commented that, in bearing Jesus, Mary was ‘a virgin as regards her husband, not a virgin as regards child-bearing’. He was not alone among his theologian contemporaries.[20] One can see why later theologians were desperate to avoid such conclusions, many finding it impossible to stomach even the saving possibility (still the official view in Orthodox Christianity) that Joseph had had a wife before Mary to produce such a substantial family. It all involved just too much sexual intercourse, even for Joseph. In the fourth century, Jerome, the Latin theologian whom we will repeatedly encounter busily decoupling sex from holiness, suggested that ‘brothers’ really meant ‘cousins’, and that these had been interchangeable terms in Hebrew and Greek. This argument is still promulgated in conservative Christian circles. In the case of Greek, as Jerome surely knew, it was nonsense: Greek was a language with a very precise and extensive set of words to describe particular degrees of cousinage, and Greek-speakers would be unlikely to confuse any of it with ‘brothers’. The Apostle Paul, who was writing plain down-to-earth Greek and not translating from some earlier Aramaic, unselfconsciously (and, in context, crossly) referred to his fellow Apostle James in Jerusalem as the brother of the Lord.[21] Altogether, the Holy Family, so apparently familiar from Christmas cards, makes an uneasy fit with the many different views of family that Christian Churches have constructed over the centuries. Irreverently to adapt a famous remark of the late Princess Diana, there were three of them in that marriage, so it was a bit theologically crowded. From the matrix of this family in Nazareth, nevertheless, Jesus embarked on his public ministry throughout Galilee and Judaea. Amid these events, we move from dealing with purposeful and resonant myth to retrieving a number of the Lord’s concrete propositions about sex, family and relationships.

• From Little Women (1868)

  You shall trudge away, and do your errands in the rain, and if you catch your death and ruin your bonnet, it's no more than you deserve. Now then!" With that she rushed across the street so impetuously that she narrowly escaped annihilation from a passing truck, and precipitated herself into the arms of a stately old gentleman, who said, "I beg pardon, ma'am," and looked mortally offended. Somewhat daunted, Jo righted herself, spread her handkerchief over the devoted ribbons, and putting temptation behind her, hurried on, with increasing dampness about the ankles, and much clashing of umbrellas overhead. The fact that a somewhat dilapidated blue one remained stationary above the unprotected bonnet attracted her attention, and looking up, she saw Mr. Bhaer looking down. "I feel to know the strong-minded lady who goes so bravely under many horse noses, and so fast through much mud. What do you down here, my friend?" "I'm shopping." Mr. Bhaer smiled, as he glanced from the pickle factory on one side to the wholesale hide and leather concern on the other, but he only said politely, "You haf no umbrella. May I go also, and take for you the bundles?" "Yes, thank you." Jo's cheeks were as red as her ribbon, and she wondered what he thought of her, but she didn't care, for in a minute she found herself walking away arm in arm with her Professor, feeling as if the sun had suddenly burst out with uncommon brilliancy, that the world was all right again, and that one thoroughly happy woman was paddling through the wet that day. "We thought you had gone," said Jo hastily, for she knew he was looking at her. Her bonnet wasn't big enough to hide her face, and she feared he might think the joy it betrayed unmaidenly. "Did you believe that I should go with no farewell to those who haf been so heavenly kind to me?" he asked so reproachfully that she felt as if she had insulted him by the suggestion, and answered heartily... "No, I didn't. I knew you were busy about your own affairs, but we rather missed you, Father and Mother especially." "And you?" "I'm always glad to see you, sir." In her anxiety to keep her voice quite calm, Jo made it rather cool, and the frosty little monosyllable at the end seemed to chill the Professor, for his smile vanished, as he said gravely... "I thank you, and come one more time before I go." "You are going, then?" "I haf no longer any business here, it is done." "Successfully, I hope?" said Jo, for the bitterness of disappointment was in that short reply of his. "I ought to think so, for I haf a way opened to me by which I can make my bread and gif my Junglings much help." "Tell me, please!

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

  Evangelical embarrassments continued. In 1780, Christian advocacy of polygyny made one of its periodic historic appearances in a publication by Dr Martin Madan, an Evangelical whose prominent London ministry hovered between Methodism, Calvinist Evangelicalism and the Church of England. Madan’s book sparked public horror, including an interestingly forward-looking critique from the leading Evangelical clergyman Thomas Haweis that the masculine privilege in Madan’s advocacy of polygyny demeaned women. Even after Wesley’s death, the Wesleyan Connexion had to cope with the public-relations disaster of the popular female itinerant preacher Jane Davison, who in 1794 was unmasked as a man when one of her/his young lady devotees became pregnant.[50] Georgian satirists naturally had a field day with all this, and, in the manner of William Hogarth’s bitingly grotesque satirical cartoon Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism, created a collage of Evangelical irrationality and general sexual licence that was grossly exaggerated, but carried with it a powerful message that Evangelical revival betrayed everything that decorous Enlightenment Protestantism stood for. In the wider world around embattled Evangelicals, there were even more profound reasons to pull up the drawbridge against anything new. In the 1790s, a global crisis was unleashed in France, bringing fundamental and irreversible transformation to the institutions of Western Christendom. The trauma has made it easy for Christians over subsequent centuries to view those changes as a fundamental challenge to the whole Christian enterprise. [image "http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/400082" file=image_rsrcC39.jpg] 24. William Hogarth’s print Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism (1762) is often described as an attack on Methodism, but it satirizes all irrational religion; it is set in a parish church with three-decker pulpit, whose occupant is revealed as tonsured and so a secret Papist using the rhetoric of Protestant fanaticism. At the front of the besotted congregation Mary Toft, ‘The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder’, gives birth to her leporine brood. 16Revolution and Catholicism Rebuilt (1789–1914)During the eighteenth century, the Enlightenment seemed the ally of princes and even of popes. The Society of Jesus until its dissolution in 1773 was at the centre of scientific discussion and curiosity about the natural world, just as was the Royal Society in Protestant London. As an ‘Enlightened Despot’ the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II attempted large-scale dissolutions of monasteries in his dominions, but his thoroughly rational Enlightenment plans included redeploying confiscated assets for Catholic reform from a Religious Fund under his control, with such measures as endowing new parishes to meet modern needs. The Emperor was taken aback by the popular fury that he met, particularly in the Catholic Netherlands, where full-scale popular revolt broke out in 1789, derailing his schemes.[1]