Fear

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 184 of 529 · 20 per page

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I was looking for a woman from a stable intact family and I found her.” These adult children of divorce tend to cultivate close ties with their spouse’s family and distance themselves from their own parents so that their children can share the sense of stability and safety they find so reassuring. I was impressed by how many women in the study eventually found kind, caretaking husbands who truly loved them and were willing to put up with excitable behavior in their young wives. Several women said that their husbands were challenged by their moody restlessness and enjoyed setting boundaries in the marriage. Marie, who had been wild during her early-and mid-twenties, described this interaction in vivid detail. “He just wouldn’t be drawn into my stuff,” she said. “He wouldn’t let me manipulate him. He tolerated it but he remained himself. He was a center for me. I danced all around. He was on to my tricks. I tried everything I usually do with guys, but it didn’t work. He said ‘Forget it lady, I’m here for keeps.’ That was ten years ago. We’ve been married ever since.” The men, too, sought calm and kindness rather than passion in their wives. They valued the woman’s ability to create a comfortable home. They said that they wanted a woman on whom they could depend. Being older, they were much more aware of how to assess a woman’s moods and how to repair the relationship when necessary. Several spoke of their wives in romantic terms, describing their beauty and caring qualities. But they also mentioned their long work days and concern that their wives might be lonely. They worried they might lose their love and fidelity. While this ongoing, subsurface tension was more a residue of their parents’ divorce than a current reality, it made the men eager to be good husbands. They tried hard to please their wives and felt blessed by unusual good fortune when they felt loved. Waiting for the Other Shoe EVEN IN MARRIAGES as loving as Karen’s, there are residues from the divorce. We discussed her problem with handling conflict but now she described another: “Whenever Gavin’s late, when he has a faculty meeting, when he has to be out of town for a consulting job, my first thought—and I hate myself for this—is that he’s going to leave me. He doesn’t really love me.” “Is that what you mean by waiting for the other shoe to drop?” She smiled wryly. “If you’re asking me whether I’m still afraid, the answer is yes, even though I’m married to a man who truly loves me. I’ve finally come to accept that my fears won’t go away. It’s like they’re imprinted in my head.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  When Dad would walk in the door he’d give her a kiss on the cheek, head straight for the liquor cabinet, make the martinis, pour them, lift his glass, and say ‘cheers.’ It was usually after the first or second drink that the fighting started.” Carol hesitated, seeming unsure how to continue. “What did they fight about?” “About nothing. They’d get into heated debates about some strange point in art or maybe politics. The topic didn’t matter to either of them. They’d get so involved by the end of their second or third martini that Mom would forget all about dinner. My brother and sister and I would take turns being the one to remind them that we hadn’t eaten, but only if the argument they were having was not dangerous. Because I’m the oldest girl, I’d often help Mom put dinner on the table. It makes me cringe to remember how she’d stumble around the kitchen, banging pans and dropping things. Once we sat down, Dad would sober up and drill us on our understanding of a political situation and he’d taunt us when we didn’t know enough. He really picked on my brother, although he could turn his sarcasm just as easily on my little sister or me. Sometimes Steve would be driven to tears. If he tried to leave the table or argue back, Dad would lose his temper and roar at him—‘You are not excused!’” Carol sighed. “Those were the good days. That happened about half the time.” “Those were the good days?” “You haven’t heard anything yet. My brother and sister and I knew it was going to be bad if they started in on each other during the second drink. My parents would begin to taunt each other with hurtful names like stupid and worm. Dad usually took the lead but Mom could rise to the occasion. She’d whisper insults and end up screaming at Dad. He’d wait and goad her on. Mom was usually the first one to get violent. She’d throw a glass at him or kick him. He’d get this horrible grin on his face and say something like ‘Now you’ve got it coming.’ Mom would back away and he’d grab her and slap her and she’d scream. On the better nights she’d cry and it would end there. He’d back off and tell her to get dinner. I’d help her in the kitchen and then we’d all sit there and pretend nothing had happened. Mom would act very aloof and distant. Daddy’d ignore her but he’d be nicer than usual.” Carol shook her head. “But some nights they’d really go at it. There’d be a lot of screaming and yelling and hitting. That was a sort of once-a-month routine. It would end with them disappearing into their bedroom or with Daddy storming out of the house and staying away for the rest of the night.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Larry’s family illustrates a finding that can emerge only from long-term studies of divorce—the fact that in high-conflict marriages, the fighting rarely stops with the divorce. On the contrary, unless one adult disappears from the scene, it continues and even escalates. In my experience with high-conflict marriages, the divorce is a way station rather than a termination point for serious conflict. Whether fought out in the courts or among themselves (and most anger is not litigated), the fury of one or both parents continues. This was the experience for both children in Larry’s family and in a great many others. Although the parents no longer live together, their psychological relationship rages on for many years until the mothers gradually find their independence and break free of their husbands’ hold on them. Children who live in an atmosphere of ongoing accusations and counteraccusations feel little relief with divorce. It’s not until adulthood, as Larry’s story will show, that they come to understand the dynamics and divorce themselves from the chaos. But why, when he was living at home, did the boy behave so badly? Why did he buy into his father’s seduction at the cost of losing his mother? Understanding Larry begins with understanding what it’s like for a seven-year-old boy when his parents’ marriage breaks up. At seven, children who have been raised in an intact family rely on having both of their parents around. The divorce terrified Larry and his sister. With irrefutable logic they figured that if one parent could leave the other, both parents could surely leave them. They were preoccupied with the fear of being abandoned. And since it was their understanding that daddies come with families, they feared that their own daddy would soon replace them with “another mommy, another dog, another little boy or little girl.” That was a prospect that broke their hearts. This fear is the key to understanding the initial changes in Larry’s behavior. Overnight Larry became a replica of the delinquent aspects of his father. He took on his father’s brutish role with his mother, and by donning articles of his father’s clothing as magical talismans, he set about representing his father in the family. As he said later, “I became my alcoholic father.” What was his behavior about? There is no question that he hoped single-handedly to restore the intact family. He said so many times. Like countless other children, he was on a serious mission, committing himself to what he viewed as a just and noble cause. He had no idea that what he portrayed was a caricature of his father’s worst attributes. Larry thought of himself as the emissary of the powerful hero he envisioned his father to be. But he was not the envoy that the courts and mental health professionals might presume.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I found the new race and poverty work extremely energizing. It closely connected to our work on criminal justice issues; I believe that so much of our worst thinking about justice is steeped in the myths of racial difference that still plague us. I believe that there are four institutions in American history that have shaped our approach to race and justice but remain poorly understood. The first, of course, is slavery. This was followed by the reign of terror that shaped the lives of people of color following the collapse of Reconstruction until World War II. Older people of color in the South would occasionally come up to me after speeches to complain about how antagonized they feel when they hear news commentators talking about how we were dealing with domestic terrorism for the first time in the United States after the 9/11 attacks. An older African American man once said to me, “You make them stop saying that! We grew up with terrorism all the time. The police, the Klan, anybody who was white could terrorize you. We had to worry about bombings and lynchings, racial violence of all kinds.” The racial terrorism of lynching in many ways created the modern death penalty. America’s embrace of speedy executions was, in part, an attempt to redirect the violent energies of lynching while assuring white southerners that black men would still pay the ultimate price. Convict leasing was introduced at the end of the nineteenth century to criminalize former slaves and convict them of nonsensical offenses so that freed men, women, and children could be “leased” to businesses and effectively forced back into slave labor. Private industries throughout the country made millions of dollars with free convict labor, while thousands of African Americans died in horrific work conditions. The practice of re-enslavement was so widespread in some states that it was characterized in a Pulitzer Prize–winning book by Douglas Blackmon as Slavery by Another Name. But the practice is not well known to most Americans. During the terror era there were hundreds of ways in which people of color could commit a social transgression or offend someone that might cost them their lives. Racial terror and the constant threat created by violently enforced racial hierarchy were profoundly traumatizing for African Americans. Absorbing these psychosocial realities created all kinds of distortions and difficulties that manifest themselves today in multiple ways.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I was reminded of a sketch Larry did for me at our first meeting, showing a little gunboat bristling with cannons. It had been prophetic but not, I’m happy to say, fated. DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS often alleged in divorce although real figures are hard to obtain. In 1991, Murray A. Strauss, a leading sociologist who studies family violence, reported that every year ten million children may witness abuse in their family—slapping, hitting, yelling, screaming, and other forms of recrimination. Half of these children may, along with their mothers, also be victims of outright physical abuse. 3 In my study described in this book, a quarter of the fathers were physically violent toward their spouses some or much of the time in the years leading up to the divorce. (Although women can be violent—giving as good as they get or taking the lead in abusive acts—none of the mothers from this group were violent. Very few of the children were hit by their fathers.) However, when the final crisis arrived and the parents decided to divorce, some form of physical violence erupted in over half of the families in this study. Such acts were an aberration, but every slap in the face or hurled object was meant, in the heat of the moment, to injure the other adult. At such times, children really do fear for themselves and for their mother’s safety. But here again is where the difference in the “child’s mind” comes into play and confuses adults. Using the skewed logic of an immature mind, children blame themselves for their father’s rage and for their inability to rescue their mother. Young children have a limited capacity to understand cause and effect. They try hard to understand what they see, but they tend to think in terms of blame—specifically who is to blame. By analogy, when a child is hurt or falls ill or disappears, parents tend to blame themselves for not protecting that child. Using the same logic in reverse, the young child feels that she is to blame if her mother or father is suffering and that it’s her responsibility to rescue that unhappy parent. She would much rather blame herself than get angry at her parents. And so, she says to herself, “I did it”—hoping in this confession to retain some measure of control by promising to be good. But if the omnipotent parent is evil, no place is safe. Mother and child are both in great danger. Paradoxically, the child who blames herself feels less helpless because it means she is not at the mercy of a powerful, capricious, and cruel parent. This is one reason that telling the child “you are not responsible” often falls on deaf ears. Children hold on to their first explanation because it’s less frightening.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Gary had gotten himself deeply involved with a woman who was tempestuous like his mother. She was exactly the kind of person he promised himself he would avoid in relationships. Many of the adults we interviewed from intact families reported similar episodes. They had love affairs with partners who were exciting but bad news. Most got terrified and escaped by the skin of their teeth. Later they credited these near mistakes as rites of passage that were important to their maturation. They then used these experiences to help define what they wanted in their life partner, so by the time they were ready to marry they had in their mind’s eye a fairly realistic portrait of what they wanted and needed. Even more important, they had found out what they did not want no matter how exciting it was and when to turn away. The portrait in their heads was a composite of their perspective on their parents’ marriage, lessons from their own earlier experiences, and their lifelong hopes and yearnings. In the process of searching for love and sexual intimacy, they had learned a lot about themselves as well. It was a journey of self-discovery as well as discovery. But children of divorce, as we saw in Karen and others, did not undertake a similar search for the kind of person they wanted. They lacked the self-confidence to think of the choice as theirs. Although some had many relationships, these did not lead to a better understanding of themselves or of the kind of partner that would be a suitable choice. They were too beset by fears of loneliness and too needy to reject an unsuitable lover and move on. They didn’t dare. Nor did they enter marriage or cohabitation with a portrait in mind. Rather, their ideas of an ideal mate were sketchy or very modest, built largely on fears rather than forethought. Mostly they wanted someone nice and caring who would not betray them. Instead of actively choosing, they settled for whatever was there. They moved in with lovers who had serious problems and got stuck for years with only a dim awareness of what had gone wrong.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  In fact, my body was afraid of me; continually now I was aware of the obscure presence of fear, of a feeling of constriction in my chest which was not yet pain, but the first step toward it. I had long been used to insomnia, but from this time on sleep was worse than vigil; hardly would I doze off before there were frightful awakenings. I was subject to headaches which Hermogenes attributed to the heat of the climate and the helmet's weight; by evening, after prolonged fatigue, I sank into a chair like one falling; rising to receive Rufus or Severus was an effort for which I had to prepare well in advance; when seated I leaned heavily on the arms of my chair, and my thigh muscles trembled like those of an exhausted runner. The slightest motion became actual labor, and of such labors life was now composed. An accident almost ridiculous, a mere childish indisposition, brought to light the true malady beneath that appalling fatigue. During a meeting of the general staff I had a nosebleed, but took little notice of it at first; it persisted, however, until time for the evening meal; I awoke at night to find myself drenched in blood. I called Celer, who slept in the next tent, and he in his turn roused Hermogenes, but the horid warm flood went on. With careful hands the young officer wiped away the liquid which smirched my face. At dawn I was seized with retching as are the condemned in Rome who open their veins in their bath. They warmed my chilled body the best they could with the aid of blankets and hot packs; to staunch the blood Hermogenes prescribed snow; it was not to be had in camp; coping with innumerable difficulties Celer had it brought from the summit of Mount Hermon. I learned later that they had despaired of my life, and I myself felt attached to it by no more than the merest thread, as imperceptible as the too rapid pulse which now dismayed my physician. But the sudden, inexplicable hemorrhage came to an end; I got up again and strove to live as before, but did not succeed. When, but poorly restored to health, I had imprudently attempted an evening ride, I received a second warning, more serious than the first. For the space of a second I felt my heartbeats quicken, then slow down, falter, and cease; I seemed to fall like a stone into some black well which is doubtless death. If death it was, it is a mistake to call it silent: I was swept down by cataracts, and deafened like a diver by the roaring of waters. I did not reach bottom, but came to the surface again, choking for breath.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  e connections between fatalism, astronomy, and romance continue right through to the latest of the novels, the Ethiopian Tale. In the novel of Heliodorus, the possibilities of astral science and the mysterious benevolence of Destiny receive their loftiest formulation. One of the main characters of the story is Kalasiris, an Egyptian priest who wanders to Greece and becomes the protector of the novel’s hero and heroine. Kalasiris relates how he came to leave his home of Memphis where he was high priest. Th e “stars in heaven turned the circle of destiny” and brought misfortune on his house. His knowledge of the stars gave him foreknowledge but not escape from his calamities. Th ough the decrees of fate were immutable, foreknowledge of them could alleviate their tortures. Th e sentiment is precisely the one expressed by both Ptolemy and Achilles Tatius, but in Th e Ethiopian Tale, the power of foreknowledge has been removed from dreams and vested once again in the arts of astrology. Kalasiris, as a priest, would make a likely adept in astrology, as temples were the center of astrological knowledge in Roman Egypt. But the affl iction that Kalasiris was destined to suf- fer is perhaps surprising. An irresistible courtesan, named Rhodopis, had arrived in Memphis. Afraid he will be unable to resist her erotic energy, Kalasiris exiles himself, a punishment for his sins, “not of commission but of desire.” By leaving, Kalasiris was “resigning to the necessities of the fates,” lest the “ruling star” prevail over him and compel him into “the more shameful sin of commission.” Heliodorus fi rmly believes in the possibility of virtue, rooted in intention, and in the overwhelming power of a benevolent destiny. As his beautifully complex narrative resolves itself, the author makes sure the reader is aware of the gods’ ultimate solicitude for mankind. When the heroine’s father recognizes his daughter, he marvels at “fate’s stage management” of the story; in the end, Charicleia and Th eagenes are joined in marriage “by decree of the gods” who arranged  F R O M S H A M E TO S I N their conjunction. Heliodorus off ers a sort of high pagan fatalism, in which human destiny is closely overseen by the numinous management of the gods, a fact that does nothing to dim human moral responsibility.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  34 The History of Christianity II õ In the summer of 1535, two traitors let the bishop’s forces into the town, and they conquered quickly. They captured John and two of his lieutenants. Executioners bound each man to a pole with a spiked collar, heated iron pinchers until they were red-hot, and used these to rip their bodies apart for an hour. They used the tongs to pull out each man’s tongue, then finally—if they weren’t dead already—drove a burning-hot knife through his heart. The point of this sadism was to send a clear message about what would happen if anyone defied the bishop’s authority again. õ The bishop and Lutheran princes thought this social experiment in Münster was dangerous because it showed that radical new theology might lead to a radical challenge to existing political authority. THE ANABAPTISTS õ The radicals of Münster were Anabaptists. The word means “re- baptizer”; they believed that if you were baptized as an infant, it didn’t count, and you must be baptized again as an adult who makes the decision to join the true church. Their questioning of Catholic and Protestant views on community organization, political power, and ultimate salvation made them a protest movement that spread throughout Europe. õ The Münster radicals were not the first Anabaptists. They originally spawned from a dispute between the Swiss Protestant reformer Huldrych Zwingli and some of his followers about a decade earlier. One follower in particular, Conrad Grebel, thought Zwingli was way too patient and diplomatic with the Zurich city council. õ Particular points of contention were baptism and Zwingli’s decision to let the people of Zurich continue to celebrate Mass in the Catholic way until they were ready for reform. Grebel came to the conclusion that Zwingli obeyed man rather than God. 35Lecture 4—The Anabaptist Radicals õ In the winter of 1524–1525, Grebel and some other Anabaptists challenged Zwingli to a debate. When the city council took Zwingli’s side and ordered the radicals to get in line, they met in secret and decided to form a new church that would follow the Bible and break away from the powers of the sinful world. õ In 1527, some Anabaptists got together to write a statement of faith called the Schleitheim Confession. Grebel wasn’t there—he died in 1526. He would have approved, though. The Schleitheim Confession insisted that Anabaptists would not serve in the military, swear any political oath, or even file a lawsuit in a secular court. They wanted complete “separation from Abomination,” as they put it. And they knew they would suffer for these decisions. To them, suffering was part of following Christ’s example.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  “No dogs in the house.” “But we’ve always had the dogs in the house.” “Not anymore. In an African home, dogs sleep outside. People sleep inside.” Putting the dogs in the yard was Abel’s way of saying, “We’re going to do things around here the way they’re supposed to be done.” When they were just dating, my mother was still the free spirit, doing what she wanted, going where she wanted. Slowly, those things got reined in. I could feel that he was trying to rein in our independence. He even got upset about church. “You cannot be at church the whole day,” he’d say. “My wife is gone all day, and what will people say? ‘Why is his wife not around? Where is she? Who goes to church for the whole day?’ No, no, no. This brings disrespect to me.” He tried to stop her from spending so much time at church, and one of the most effective tools he used was to stop fixing my mother’s car. It would break down, and he’d purposefully let it sit. My mom couldn’t afford another car, and she couldn’t get the car fixed somewhere else. You’re married to a mechanic and you’re going to get your car fixed by another mechanic? That’s worse than cheating. So Abel became our only transport, and he would refuse to take us places. Ever defiant, my mother would take minibuses to get to church. Losing the car also meant losing access to my dad. We had to ask Abel for rides into town, and he didn’t like what they were for. It was an insult to his manhood. “We need to go to Yeoville.” “Why are you going to Yeoville?” “To see Trevor’s dad.” “What? No, no. How can I take my wife and her child and drop you off there? You’re insulting me. What do I tell my friends? What do I tell my family? My wife is at another man’s house? The man who made that child with her? No, no, no.” I saw my father less and less. Not long after, he moved down to Cape Town. Abel wanted a traditional marriage with a traditional wife. For a long time I wondered why he ever married a woman like my mom in the first place, as she was the opposite of that in every way. If he wanted a woman to bow to him, there were plenty of girls back in Tzaneen being raised solely for that purpose. The way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with subservient women. He’s attracted to independent women. “He’s like an exotic bird collector,” she said. “He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage.” —

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  So she’d yell “Thief!” knowing it would bring the whole neighborhood out against me, and then I’d have strangers trying to grab me and tackle me, and I’d have to duck and dive and dodge them as well, all the while screaming, “I’m not a thief! I’m her son!” The last thing I wanted to do that Sunday morning was climb into some crowded minibus, but the second I heard my mom say sun’qhela I knew my fate was sealed. She gathered up Andrew and we climbed out of the Volkswagen and went out to try to catch a ride. — I was five years old, nearly six, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. I remember seeing it on TV and everyone being happy. I didn’t know why we were happy, just that we were. I was aware of the fact that there was a thing called apartheid and it was ending and that was a big deal, but I didn’t understand the intricacies of it. What I do remember, what I will never forget, is the violence that followed. The triumph of democracy over apartheid is sometimes called the Bloodless Revolution. It is called that because very little white blood was spilled. Black blood ran in the streets. As the apartheid regime fell, we knew that the black man was now going to rule. The question was, which black man? Spates of violence broke out between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the ANC, the African National Congress, as they jockeyed for power. The political dynamic between these two groups was very complicated, but the simplest way to understand it is as a proxy war between Zulu and Xhosa. The Inkatha was predominantly Zulu, very militant and very nationalistic. The ANC was a broad coalition encompassing many different tribes, but its leaders at the time were primarily Xhosa. Instead of uniting for peace they turned on one another, committing acts of unbelievable savagery. Massive riots broke out. Thousands of people were killed. Necklacing was common. That’s where people would hold someone down and put a rubber tire over his torso, pinning his arms. Then they’d douse him with petrol and set him on fire and burn him alive. The ANC did it to Inkatha. Inkatha did it to the ANC. I saw one of those charred bodies on the side of the road one day on my way to school. In the evenings my mom and I would turn on our little black-and-white TV and watch the news. A dozen people killed. Fifty people killed. A hundred people killed. Eden Park sat not far from the sprawling townships of the East Rand, Thokoza and Katlehong, which were the sites of some of the most horrific Inkatha–ANC clashes. Once a month at least we’d drive home and the neighborhood would be on fire.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Title : The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25 Year Landmark Study Author: Blakeslee, Sandra,Lewis, Julia M. [image file=image_rsrc3BB.jpg] The UNEXPECTED LEGACY of DIVORCE A 25 YEAR LANDMARK STUDY Judith Wallerstein, Julia Lewis, and Sandra Blakeslee [image file=image_rsrc3BC.jpg] This book is dedicated with gratitude, admiration, and affection to the women and men in this book who are the vanguard of an entire generation of young Americans raised in divorced families. We thank you for sharing your lives with all of us over twenty-five years and for helping millions of other children and young adults to understand that they are not alone. ProloguePUBLISHED ONE YEAR ago, our book hit a raw nerve in America. It broke through an almost conspiratorial silence about the true nature of our divorce culture and how much growing up in America has changed in recent decades. The major contribution of this book has been to recognize, for the first time, that when children of divorce become adults, they are badly frightened that their relationships will fail, just like the most important relationship in their parents’ lives failed. They mature with a keen sense that their growing-up experiences did not prepare them for love, commitment, trust, marriage, or even for the nitty-gritty of handling and resolving conflicts. In the book they say, “I never saw a man and a woman on the same beam.” Their decisions about whether or not to marry are shadowed by the experience of growing up in a home where their parents could not hold it together. They are no less eager than their peers who grew up in intact families for passionate love, sexual intimacy, and commitment. But they are haunted by powerful ghosts from their childhoods that tell them that they, like their parents, will not succeed. On the positive side, many young adults who weathered their parents’ divorce are extremely successful in their chosen careers, having learned how to be independent, resourceful, and flexible. Having invented their own moral path, they are decent, caring adults who managed to build good marriages in spite of their fears. Many are excellent parents. In the book they say, “I never want to let happen to my children what happened to me.” Others turned their lives around by dint of their own courage, insight, and compassion. The response to our book was phenomenal. Oprah Winfrey invited me to be on her show twice. Realizing she had tapped into concerns that deeply affect millions of young adults in her audience, she invited them to speak out. And they did. With tears and anger, they said: “This book is talking about me. This is what happened to me. This is what I am feeling today.” “I’m still angry that my parents never explained the divorce to me.”

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  The simple plan of total extermination which had worked for Dacia was not the right thing in this country of much more abundant and settled population, upon which, besides, the wealth of the world depended. Beyond the Euphrates began for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one helplessly sank, and the roads which ended in nothing. The slightest reversal would have resulted in a jolt to our prestige giving rise to all kinds of catastrophe; the problem was not only to conquer but to conquer again and again, perpetually; our forces would be drained off in the attempt. We had tried it already: I thought with horror of the head of Crassus, tossed from hand to hand like a ball in the course of a performance of Euripides' Bacchantes which a barbarian king with a smattering of Greek learning had presented on the afternoon of a victory over Rome. Trajan thought to avenge this ancient defeat; I hoped chiefly to keep it from happening again. I could foretell the future with some accuracy, a thing quite possible, after all, when one is informed on a fair number of the elements which make up the present: a few meaningless victories would draw our armies too far on, leaving other frontiers perilously exposed; the dying emperor would cover himself with glory, and we who must go on living would have to resolve all the problems and remedy all the evils. Caesar was right to prefer the first place in a village to the second in Rome. Not by ambition, nor by vain glory, but because a man in second place has only the choice between the dangers of obedience and those of revolt, or those still more serious dangers of compromise. I was not even second in Rome. The emperor, though about to set forth upon a hazardous expedition, had not yet designated his successor; each step taken to advance his projects offered some opportunity to the chiefs of the general staff. This man, though almost naïve, seemed to me now more complicated than myself. Only his rough manner reassured me; in his gruffness he treated me like a son.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 3: Even in natural things power remains inactive on account of a supervening obstacle, for instance the act of sight ceases through an affliction of the eye. So neither is it unreasonable if, through the occurrence of some obstacle from without, the episcopal power remain without the exercise of its act. Whether it is lawful for a bishop on account of bodily persecution to abandon the flock committed to his care?Objection 1: It would seem that it is unlawful for a bishop, on account of some temporal persecution, to withdraw his bodily presence from the flock committed to his care. For our Lord said (Jn. 10:12) that he is a hireling and no true shepherd, who “seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and flieth”: and Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ev.) that “the wolf comes upon the sheep when any man by his injustice and robbery oppresses the faithful and the humble.” Therefore if, on account of the persecution of a tyrant, a bishop withdraws his bodily presence from the flock entrusted to his care, it would seem that he is a hireling and not a shepherd. Objection 2: Further, it is written (Prov. 6:1): “My son, if thou be surety for thy friend, thou hast engaged fast thy hand to a stranger,” and afterwards (Prov. 6:3): “Run about, make haste, stir up thy friend.” Gregory expounds these words and says (Pastor. iii, 4): “To be surety for a friend, is to vouch for his good conduct by engaging oneself to a stranger. And whoever is put forward as an example to the lives of others, is warned not only to watch but even to rouse his friend.” Now he cannot do this if he withdraw his bodily presence from his flock. Therefore it would seem that a bishop should not on account of persecution withdraw his bodily presence from his flock. Objection 3: Further, it belongs to the perfection of the bishop’s state that he devote himself to the care of his neighbor. Now it is unlawful for one who has professed the state of perfection to forsake altogether the things that pertain to perfection. Therefore it would seem unlawful for a bishop to withdraw his bodily presence from the execution of his office, except perhaps for the purpose of devoting himself to works of perfection in a monastery. On the contrary, our Lord commanded the apostles, whose successors bishops are (Mat. 10:23): “When they shall persecute you in this city, flee into another.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  A common pattern in the marriages and divorces that I have seen is for a man to hit his wife while desperately needing her and despising her and himself at the same time. These dynamics are more visible during times of unemployment, when violence, alcoholism, and divorce typically rise. The man’s threatening stance and raised fists often reflect his own underlying insecurity and almost childish dependence on the woman to hold him together. Many a woman becomes trapped by the vain and foolish hope that she can rescue the man from himself and uncover the prince in the frog’s skin. Some women are able to escape this trap when they divorce. It may take them many years to extricate themselves from their rescue fantasy as they gradually and reluctantly give up the hope of changing the man. It often takes them years after divorce to regain their perspective and to overcome the stark fear and humiliation they lived with. Their daughters, however, are at risk for remaining trapped in relationships that echo the violent marriage. Tragically, toxic elements in the marriage endure after the breakup. Larry’s father did not hesitate to make abundantly clear to his little daughter his views about the inferiority of women. He insulted her openly on visits, calling her “little bitch” and “stupid.” There’s almost no way a little girl hearing this can escape internalizing the view that she’s an inferior being. Moreover, the violent father is often a seductive and charming man who doesn’t hesitate to court his sons and daughters in the hope of enlisting their support. This combination of power and helplessness is very appealing to a child. It has strong erotic overtones. The child internalizes the image of a man who is overpowering, needy, and appealing. She buys into and internalizes a view of herself as an inferior being who needs a strong man to hang on to because, as several of these sad young women said to me, “Without a man I am nothing.” As she matures, this image is built into her expectations of men and her relationships with men. The man is supposed to hurt her and she is to remain the helpless victim. Her job is to rescue him. When he fails to respond, it is her fault. Unfortunately, the mother’s transformation from victim to independent woman often comes too slowly and too late to be built into the psyche of her daughters. It may be years before the child is able to see her mother as a person worth emulating, with the strength to stand up for herself. The view of the mother as weak and helpless is a lasting and powerful one.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  The quarrel itself is what they find exciting and pleasurable. Karen’s parents had similar interchanges, but their fights were not used to keep the marriage going. Carol’s parents were different in that they fought for the erotic excitement generated while they drank martinis. Again, many people including professionals are often under the impression that quarreling reflects conflict or that it can be resolved rationally, if only the two people would come to the table. But in families like Carol’s, no table would work. For children, this kind of family is disastrous. First, they grow up fearing that they or a parent will be hurt. They are hypnotized by the continual portrayal of a man-woman relationship in which intimacy and pain are intertwined. And they internalize a lasting view of adult love as lacking in kindness, tenderness, friendship, gentleness, and a sense of morality. The template of intimacy that they carry to adulthood is uniting to hurt one another, albeit without inflicting serious injury. The passion is in the danger. In these families, the children hardly matter to their parents. Instead of existing as real people separate from the parents’ wishes or sudden whims, the children are shadowy figures who hover on the periphery of their parents’ lives like courtiers or slaves in the sultan’s palace waiting to be summoned. In Carol’s family the parents are themselves the children. They are astonishingly self-absorbed, acting out their own impulses while being completely unaware of their children’s suffering. They don’t understand or care that their immoral behavior will warp the developing conscience of their children and harm the children’s future relationships. It’s fashionable in some circles to claim that people who divorce are more selfish or, as the saying goes, more “narcissistic” than those who stay married. But it would be hard to think of any couple more self-centered than Carol’s parents and others in this group of very troubled intact marriages. L EIGHT Our Failure to Intervene arry entered adolescence like a hungry tiger. He became involved in every drug known to teenagers and went to school every day stoned. He stayed out late and came home sick from drinking booze. With a vengeance, he violated every rule that his mother or the school laid down. Finally, in despair, his mother called her ex-husband and asked if he would take the boy because she could not control him. She reminded Larry’s father that he had offered many times to take his son into his life and that this was the time to follow through on his promises. The next day, Larry was in his room packing his clothes when the phone rang. It was his dad who hemmed and hawed and finally said, “This is not a good time for you to come live with me.” Instantly Larry understood the deeper message: there will never be a good time. Feeling totally betrayed, he turned on his mother and began beating her with his fists.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  She felt it was morally wrong to divorce and to deprive her children of a proper family, so she stayed and got abused and beaten down until she couldn’t take it anymore. It took me a long time to see it this way but I absolutely think she made the right choice in leaving.” Larry sighed and went on. “But out of that I formed in myself a promise never to get a divorce. You remembered when you called me that I had told you, ‘When I decide to get married, it will be to the day I die.’ That was exactly my view. But the result was that I just avoided the whole issue because it seemed too much. To be truthful, it was terrifying. I asked myself, How can anyone be sure? There’s no way for that. Anyway, I was working so hard that women had no place.” “You mean you didn’t date at all?” “Sort of. I wasn’t too interested in wasting my time. Young, ditzy women with no goals or focus never attracted me. I remember that what impressed me about Grace was her serious manner when I first met her.” “What was she like?” Larry’s eyes grew bright as he described meeting the woman who would be his wife. “I met her at Kinks where we both worked through the night. She was a psychology major at San Francisco State and was putting herself through college, just like me. After I got to know her a little, I found out she worked two jobs and went to school. She’d had an early marriage that had been a disaster. After that she hadn’t dated much. In fact, she was kind of shy with men.” “How did you get to know each other?” “One night I gave her a ride home and we began to talk. We liked each other and we got into the habit of stopping for coffee a couple of days a week on the way to work. Then we started making dinner together at her place. Well, she did all the cooking and I’d do the chopping. I remember one night she brought out an apple pie for dessert. I told her she shouldn’t have bought a pie and she said, ‘I didn’t buy it, I made it because I remember you said apple pie was your favorite dessert.’ That’s how she is—just really thoughtful and giving and going the extra mile for you.” I thought to myself how much this consideration, that so many would have taken for granted, must have meant to this lonely man. “Our relationship started as a friendship over those dinners,” Larry said. “We shared things about our lives. She told me about her marriage—how she left when he wouldn’t quit smoking pot and he got violent. I told her about my parents and my dad’s violence.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  I thought of the proscriptions of Octavius, which had forever stained the memory of Augustus; of the first crimes of Nero, which had been followed by other crimes. I recalled the last years of Domitian, of that merely average man, no worse than another, whom fear had gradually destroyed (his own fear and the fears he caused), dying in his palace like a beast tracked down in the woods. My public life was already getting out of hand: the first line of the inscription bore in letters deeply incised a few words which I could no longer erase. The Senate, that great, weak body, powerful only when persecuted, would never forget that four of its members had been summarily executed by my order; three intriguing scoundrels and a brute would thus live on as martyrs. I notified Attianus at once that he was to meet me at Brundisium to answer for his action. He was awaiting me near the harbor in one of the rooms of that inn facing toward the East where Virgil died long ago. He came limping to receive me on the threshold, for he was suffering from an attack of gout. The moment that I was alone with him, I burst into upbraiding: a reign which I intended to be moderate, and even exemplary, was beginning with four executions, only one of which was indispensable and for all of which too little precaution had been taken in the way of legal formalities. Such abuse of power would be cause for the more reproach to me whenever I strove thereafter to be clement, scrupulous, and just; it would serve as pretext for proving that my so-called virtues were only a series of masks, and for building about me a trite legend of tyranny which would cling to me perhaps to the end of history. I admitted my fear; I felt no more exempt from cruelty than from any other human fault; I accepted the commonplace that crime breeds crime, and the example of the animal which has once tasted blood. An old friend whose loyalty had seemed wholly assured was already taking liberties, profiting by the weaknesses which he thought that he saw in me; under the guise of serving me he had arranged to settle a personal score against Nigrinus and Palma. He was compromising my work of pacification, and was preparing for me a grim return to Rome, indeed. The old man asked leave to sit down, and rested his leg, swathed in flannel, upon a stool. While speaking I arranged the coverlet over his ailing foot. He let me run on, smiling meanwhile like a grammarian who listens to his pupil making his way through a difficult recitation. When I had finished, he asked me calmly what I had planned to do with the enemies of the regime.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Even a single episode of violence is long remembered in detail. In fact, there is accumulating scientific evidence that witnessing violence or being abused physically or verbally literally alters brain development, resulting in a hyperactive emotional system. 2 But on the hopeful side, Larry’s experience shows that even the worst kinds of marriages and divorces do not condemn children to a life of everlasting misery. Dramatic turnarounds happen, especially in the latter part of the third decade of life, among youngsters who appear for many years to have been failing in their schooling and social adjustment. Larry’s struggles with the long-lasting effects of both the marriage and postdivorce family take us to the heart of the challenges that the child faces in growing up. Perhaps most strikingly, Larry’s experiences reveal that divorce is not the quick solution to a bad marriage that many people understand it to be. High-conflict marriages often lead to high-conflict families after divorce. Postbreakup, the children are not better protected and the bitter fighting continues. Ironically, despite the recent proliferation of legal and mental health experts, the divorce has the effect of leaving the child to find his own way in a treacherous labyrinth in which he can easily become lost and harmed. Of the 131 children in this study of children from educated middle-class homes, 32 heard or saw evidence of violence during the marriage or breakup. Although there are homes where women are violent or where both parents hit each other, in these families the women were victims. The typical pattern was for the woman to sue for divorce and for the father to protest, deny the violence, or admit to only one episode. It is also common for such men to sue for joint custody. At age thirty, Joy still has nightmares twice weekly in which she sees her father enter the house with a loaded gun. He aims the gun at her mother and fires, but fortunately he is drunk and the bullet hits the sofa. The police come and take him away. She had just turned four years old when this happened. The memory remains so powerful that although she has no conscious memory of it during the day, it continues to terrorize her dreams. John told me how, at age six, he sobbed and banged his head against the wall while hearing his mother being beaten in the next room. Marsha cannot forget screaming over and over, “Daddy don’t! Daddy, please stop!” when her father pinned her mother to the floor and put bobby pins up her nose. Marsha was eight at the time. Many others say that they were mute in terror and recall being too frightened to feel anything. Twenty-five years later, the children who saw or overheard such attacks say that they felt someone—their mom, their siblings, themselves—might be maimed or killed at any given moment.

• From Sin: The Early History of an Idea (2012)

  19. But what about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols: does that not constitute worshiping the gods? On this point Paul is surprisingly flexible. People who partake in a sacrificial meal, he says, repeating a Mediterranean commonplace, become coparticipants not only with each other but also with the divinity being so honored: true of the “people of Israel,” who thereby become “partners in [God’s] altar”; true of pagans who, though they think that they are worshiping gods, are actually sacrificing to lesser and malevolent powers, daimones, “demons.” “I do not want you to be partners with demons,” Paul tells his community in Corinth. “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons” (1 Cor 10.18–21). So: no participation in public ritual. What about the meat in the marketplace? “Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the grounds of conscience,” he advises. What about eating dinner at a pagan’s house? “Eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience.” Idols are nugatory, the gods that they represent are lowly powers, the produce of the earth is the Lord’s—all reasons, says Paul, to go ahead and eat (10.25–27. For all we know, what Paul repeats here is the modus vivendi of many diaspora Jews). The only reason not to eat is if a fellow Christian hesitates out of scruple. (“But if someone says to you, ‘This has been offered in sacrifice,’ then do not eat it, out of consideration for the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—not yours, but his”; 10.28–29.) He makes the same point, more succinctly, in Romans 14.20: “Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God.”20. In antiquity, cult was an ethnic designation, and ethnicity was a cult designation. What we think of as “conversion” meant, in antiquity, assuming the ancestral practices of another group, tantamount to changing ethnicity. Pagans who complain about fellow pagans’ “becoming” Jews present this as a choice between “Roman custom” and “the customs of the Jews.”The problem with refusing to honor one’s own gods—a consequence of “conversion” to Judaism—was that lack of cult made gods angry, and angry gods might subvert the well-being of the entire larger pagan community. This was a real concern and a perceived danger. As Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 39, notes, From Britain to Syria, pagan cults aimed to honor the gods and avert the misfortunes which might result from the gods’ own anger at their neglect. Any account of pagan worship which minimizes the gods’ uncertain anger and mortals’ fear of it is an empty account. Paul’s people, whom he attempts to render ex-pagan pagans, would be perceived by their larger urban community to present a similar danger.