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 385 of 529 · 20 per page

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  This is principally because the story is told in a way to emphasize the similarities of Polycarp’s death to the death of Jesus in many of its details. For example, Polycarp predicts his death, he is betrayed by one of his own, the officer opposed to him is named Herod, he rides into town ona donkey, and so on. C. Still, there is a historical kernel to this intriguing account, and it can be used to help us understand a bit more about why and how non-Christians opposed the followers of Christ in the early centuries of the church. 1. Zs The account stresses that others were tortured to death before Polycarp. It then goes on to detail the burning desire of the pagan crowds to have the leader of the Christians arrested and put on trial. The arresting officials try to persuade Polycarp to acknowledge the divinity of the Roman gods, but he refuses. When brought into the arena before the Roman proconsul, Polycarp is again urged to acknowledge the divinity of the emperor and to reject the “atheists” (that is, the Christians, who are “atheists” in that they do not accept the worship of the gods). When Polycarp steadfastly refuses, the proconsul urges him to persuade the masses. But Polycarp remains firm, despite threats of torture, because, as he says, the brief sufferings awaiting him pale in comparison with the eternal torments reserved for those who reject Christ. The crowds are incensed and urge his death. Polycarp is then burned at the stake. The narrator indicates that before his 179 death, God worked miracles to demonstrate the truth of the gospel and to validate Polycarp as a true witness to it. III. This account helps to illustrate several important historical facts about why the early Christians were persecuted. 180 A. The religion was not understood to be illegal per se. Polycarp could have been spared had he simply recanted (unlike other crimes, for which expressing regret does not relieve one from punishment). B. Persecutions occurred because the pagan mobs opposed the Christians. 1. Their opposition appears to be rooted in a fear of what the gods would do to communities that harbored their opponents (see 12:2). This coincides with other evidence from early sources, including the famous lines from the Christian apologist (“defender of the faith’) Tertullian: “They [the pagans] think the Christians the cause of every public disaster, of every affliction with which the people are visited. If the Tiber rises as high as the city walls, if the Nile does not send its waters up over the fields, if the heavens give no rain, if there is an earthquake, if there is famine or pestilence, straightway the cry is, ‘Away with the Christians to the lion!*” (Apology 40). This position makes considerable sense when one remembers that pagans saw the gods as their helpers and defenders against disaster; in exchange for their protection, the gods were to be worshipped in proper ways.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  Eusebius is an important source for most of our information about the first three centuries. He was writing soon after the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, and Eusebius gives an account of Christianity up to his own day. One of the things most valuable about Eusebius is that he would sometimes quote documents, letters, and reports in his history of early Christianity. He wrote a ten-volume history of the early church. This letter, then, the letter from the churches of Lyons and Vienne is incorporated into his account totally, so that we can extract it, and see what these second- century Christians were saying, even though the writing, now, is preserved in a fourth-century source. The account of the persecution of the Christians in Lyons and Vienne begins by indicating that the driving force behind the persecution was none other than the devil, who inspired the mobs to oppose Christians, and to deprive them of their public privileges and civil rights. Let me read just the very beginning of this letter, so you get a bit of a sense of how it works. It begins by saying: “The servants of Christ at Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, to our brothers in Asia and Phrygia. The severity of our trials here, the unbridled fury of the heathen against God’s people, the untold sufferings of the blessed martyrs, we are incapable of describing in detail. Indeed, no pen could do them justice,” they say. “The adversary swooped upon us with all his might, giving us, now, foretaste of his advent, which, undoubtedly is imminent.” This is referring to the devil, who has started this persecution against the Christians, and according to these authors, this is showing that they are living at the end of time. Remember, in apocalyptic thought, Jews and Christians who were apocalypticists maintained that the world had been given over to evil forces who were going to increase in power until the end of this age, when literally, all hell would break out, before God would intervene to overthrow the forces of evil. These Christians living in Lyons and Vienne were sensing that this persecution that had happened was a sign that the end was near, so that the devil was pulling out all stops now, and that was an indication that his own demise was imminent. They went on to indicate the devil had left no stone unturned in his efforts to gain adherents, and to equip them to attack the servants of God. Then, they went on to tell exactly what happened in the cities against the Christians: “We were debarred from houses, baths, and the forum. They actually forbade any of us to be seen in any place whatsoever,” meaning that the local pagan townspeople forbade Christians to appear in public. “These charged into the fight, standing up to every kind of abuse [They are referring now to the Christians who were being persecuted] and 168

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  I looked at Hayes. I looked back at Ito. I allowed myself to think: We might... just... get away with this. Then I realized that I hadn’t yet told him the bad part. “Be that as it may,” I said, “they did throw us out, Mr. Ito, they did, and the net-net is that I have no bank. And thus I have no money. And I need to make payroll. And I need to pay my other creditors. And if I can’t meet those obligations, I am out of business. Today. In

• From Educated (2018)

  I ran outside and saw Luke hobbling across the grass. He screamed for Mother, then collapsed. … The jeans on his left leg were gone, melted away. Parts of the leg were livid, red and bloody; others were bleached and dead. Papery ropes of skin wrapped delicately around his thigh and down his calf, like wax dripping from a cheap candle. … I dumped half the bottle between Luke’s twitching lips. … “Should I make you cold or make you hot?” I shouted. … I sprinted into the house and emptied [the garbage can] onto the linoleum … I helped Luke balance on one foot and lower his burned leg, now wrapped in black plastic, into the garbage can.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  One living thing being eaten by another? This was nature, wet in tooth and claw, and I couldn’t help wondering if it was also to be the story of Blue Ribbon and the Marlboro Man. We spent the rest of the evening sitting at Johnson’s kitchen table and going over the letter from his Long Island informant. He read it aloud, and then I read it silently, and then we debated what to do. “Get thee to Japan,” Johnson said. “What?” “You gotta go,” he said. “Tell them about the work we’ve done. Demand your rights. Kill this Marlboro Man once and for all. Once he starts selling running shoes, once he really gets going, there will be no stopping him. Either we draw a line in the sand, right now, or it’s over.” I’d just come back from Japan, I said, and I didn’t have the money to go again. I’d poured all my savings into Blue Ribbon, and I couldn’t possibly ask Wallace for another loan. The thought nauseated me. Also, I didn’t have time. Price Waterhouse allowed two weeks’ vacation a year—unless you needed that two weeks for the Reserves, which I did. Then they gave you one extra week. Which I’d already used. Above all, I told Johnson, “It’s no use. The Marlboro Man’s relationship with Onitsuka predates mine.” Undaunted, Johnson pulled out his typewriter, the one he’d been using to torture me, and began drafting notes, ideas, lists, which we could then turn into a manifesto for me to deliver to the executives at Onitsuka. While Stretch finished off the crab, we munched our pizza and guzzled beer and plotted late into the night. BACK IN OREGON the next afternoon, I went straight in to see the office manager at Price Waterhouse. “I’ve got to have two weeks off,” I said, “right now.” He looked up from the papers on his desk and glared at me, and for one hellishly long moment I thought I was going to be fired. Instead, he cleared his throat and mumbled something... odd. I couldn’t make out every word but he seemed to think... from my intensity, my vagueness... I’d gotten someone pregnant. I took a step back and started to protest, then shut my mouth. Let the man think what he wants. So long as he gives me the time. Running a hand through his thinning hair, he finally sighed and said: “Go. Good luck. Hope it all works out.” I PUT THE airfare on my credit card. Twelve months to pay. And unlike my last visit to Japan, this time I wired ahead. I told the executives at Onitsuka that I was coming, and that I wanted a meeting. They wired back: Come ahead. But their wire went on to say that I wouldn’t be meeting with Morimoto. He was either fired or dead. There was a new export manager, the wire said. His name was Kitami. KISHIKAN. Japanese for déjà vu.

• From City of Night (1963)

  And, man, what a weirdo that old guy is. Dig: he pays by the hour, and talks, talks, talks!—hes a teacher or something—laid up in bed from an accident. I used to fall asleep—I’d wear sunglasses—and he never knew the difference, just kept on talking....” At least once I regretted not listening to Pete’s advice. “See that one over there?” he said, pointing to a harmless-looking middle-aged man in a raincoat. “Stay away from him, spote, hes psycho.” But remembering what he had told everyone about the theater whose manager wouldnt let him in, and remembering what he’d done to the hustler whod taken his score in the park, I figured this may be some kind of revenge on the man for whatever reason. The man looked entirely harmless, and I went with him. After we had made a very ordinary scene—and I still hadnt got any money from him—his composure changed suddenly into savage rage. Before I knew it, he had pulled a knife on me. I dashed out, down the creaking steps. Like a demon—his shadow flung grotesquely down the stairs—he stands at the landing shouting: “God! Damn! You! God damn all of you!” 4 Then, one day—in the midst of that cold bitter winter, when the snow cut across the streets like an icy knife and the wind shrieked like something from Hell—one day, the memory of my Mother—accentuated by the long painfully written three-times-a-week letters without punctuation asking when I would be Back, asking me to promise not to get into trouble—that memory seized me with a racking violence—and I decided to put down Times Square again—a pattern of guilt which would recur periodically. I got a job, with a Foundation dedicated to Spreading The Greatness of The American Way of Life. And I kept away from The Streets. At night I would stay home or go to the movies—but not on 42nd Street or The Others. But—again—that job lasted only briefly, and impulsively, I quit. The cold air outside struck me like my lost freedom, regained. That very night I was back on Times Square. “Where you been, spote?” Pete said. “I thought you got busted or something, I looked around for you. Dont split like that again, hear?” For the first time since I had known him, we shook hands. After that, I saw him more and more often. Sometimes—having scored—we would meet afterwards and sit in the automat at 42nd and Park Avenue (this appealed to him as Classier). He told me he was staying in the room which the black-dressed Al rented to keep his motorcycle clothes in. “He dont dig anyone staying there,” Pete told me, “but I finally conned him into letting me.” Yet, although I saw Pete at least once a day now, there was still the urgency, on both our parts, to split abruptly—to get away from each other. Occasionally, we would go see “Mom.”

• From City of Night (1963)

  He told me this without selfpity, merely as the recitation of his life. And I found that I was revealing myself to him, letting slide off more than ever before the mask I had protectively cultivated for the streets and bars. At times, I felt he knew even more about me than I told him, which alternately pleased and disturbed me. “Why do you hustle?” he asked me once. It was the first overt reference he had made to that, and it was the kind of statement that, from almost anyone else, I would quickly have put down. I was tempted to point out that I hadnt asked him for anything. Instead, I merely said. “I have to.” “Thats not true,” he challenged. “Youve told me youve worked.” Annoyed far beyond his question, I said: “Okay, then, I prefer to.” More and more, I was now in the bars or on the hustling streets only when I had to score. I avoided Main Street altogether. The craving for the sexual anarchy began to diminish for the first time since I had begun that journey through nightlives. I felt a great friendship for Dave (and an amount of pity for the paradoxical fact of him in a world of furtive contacts; he should be married, the father of adored children).... But all this, I told myself, was merely a welcome friendship in a period of ennui with the turbulence of the chosen world. Still, there were those times when a different kind of fear began to seize me. Im sitting with Dave in the outside arena of Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica, watching the animal circus. It’s a bright breezeless afternoon, when, miraculously, the usually hazy Los Angeles sky is purely clear, like a childhood-remembered Texas sky. “Miss Pinky! The Graceful Elephant!” The announcer, who has just introduced the next animal performer—“Miss Pinky”—leads a small elephant into the arena. Painted a garish purplish pink, the elephant wears a small, multicolored, flowered hat perched absurdly on the giant head, slightly bowed as if in shame. The liveried trainer puts the pink elephant through a series of dance routines, accompanied by music. The elephant with the ridiculously flowered hat goes doggedly through the motions of a hula, a mambo, a waltz. The trunk sways clumsily, enormous legs execute the steps ponderously. The flowered hat fell over one eye, and the trainer coaxed the elephant to push the hat back on with its trunk. The audience rocked with laughter. As the elephant lurched from side to side, the great ears as if rejecting the hat, the announcer says: “Miss Pinky isnt really a dainty young girl, Folks!

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  we. They were able to provide us with what we needed in order to thrive in this world: rain, health, prosperity, love, and peace. One of the motivating factors in ancient religion was the fear of the gods. Gods did not actively involve themselves in human affairs very often, or all the time, but gods were to be feared because they could bring calamity if things didn’t go well between the humans and the divine in their cultic experiences. If the gods were not worshipped in the way they were supposed to be worshipped, then, in fact, their wrath could be manifested against humans: earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, famine, drought, disease. These were things that the gods could bring if they were not worshipped properly. Religion, therefore, sought the peace of the gods. This was a technical term in ancient religion, the pax deorum, the “peace of the gods.” If the gods were at peace both among themselves and with people, then things would go well, and so you wanted to make sure that the gods were on your side. Religion was a way of making sure that that happened. The gods did not demand a lot, in fact. The gods did not demand exclusive devotion. The gods did not insist that you spent all of your time concerned about them, but there were ritual practices that the gods had asked humans to follow, and when humans did this, then things went well. You maintained the peace of the gods. What were these ritual acts? Well, the gods were worshipped principally through acts of prayer, and especially, sacrifice, sacrifice of animals. Pagans had temples throughout their world. Some were majestic temples to the great gods, some were just small local temples. Even within the home, there might be a small sanctuary, a place dedicated to a god. Sacrifices to the gods were performed in the temples, in the sacred places that had been set up for the purpose. Often, in local city religion, there would be a particular day set aside for a particular sacrifice, and this was a time of celebration for ancient pagans. Most people in the ancient world didn’t eat meat very regularly. Meat would be eaten only during a time of sacrifice, and so this would be a party time. Suppose a city had a particular god, and they had a particular day in which they worshipped this particular god. They would perform a sacrifice in the temple. You would bring an animal to the temple. The priest sacrificed the animal. Then, they didn’t destroy the animal. This was how you got your meat. They might have burned some of the inedible portions. Those would be the portions for the god, but then they would cook the meat 29

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  The landlady had all this while officiously provided, and seen that I wanted for nothing: and as soon as she saw me retrieved into a condition of answering her purpose, one day, after we had dined together, she congratulated me on my recovery, the merit of which she took entirely to herself, and all this by way of introduction to a most terrible, and scurvy epilogue: “You are now,” says she, “Miss Fanny, tolerably well, and you are very welcome to stay in these lodgings as; long as you please! you see I have asked you for nothing this long time, but truly I have a call to make up a sum of money, which must be answered.” And, with that, presents me with a bill of arrears for rent, diet, apothecaries’ charges, nurse, etc., sum total twenty-three pounds, seventeen and six-pence: towards discharging of which I had not in the world (which she well knew) more than seven guineas, left by chance, of my dear Charles’s common stock, with me. At the same time, she desired me to tell her what course I would take for payment. I burst out into a flood of tears, and told her my condition: that I would sell what few clothes I had, and that, for the rest, would pay her as soon as possible. But my distress, being favourable to her view, only stiffened her the more. She told me, very cooly, that “she was indeed sorry for my misfortunes, but that she must do herself justice, though it would go to the very heart of her to send such a tender young creature to prison....” At the word “prison!” every drop of my blood chilled, and my fright acted so strongly upon me, that, turning as pale and faint as a criminal at the first sight of his place of execution, I was on the point of swooning. My landlady, who wanted only to terrify me to a certain point, and not to throw me into a state of body inconsistent with her designs upon it, began to sooth me again, and told me, in a tone composed to more pity and gentleness, that “it would be my own fault, if she was forced to proceed to such extremities; but she believed there was a friend to be found in the world, who would make up matters to both our satisfactions, and that she would bring him to drink tea with us that very afternoon, when she hoped we would come to a right understanding in our affairs.” To all this, not a word of answer; I sat mute, confounded, terrified. Mrs. Jones, however, judging rightly that it was time to strike while the impressions were so strong upon me, left me to myself and to all the terrors of an imagination, wounded to death by the idea of going to prison, and, from a principle of self-preservation, snatching at every glimpse of redemption from it.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  33 Gregory knew that many Christians were confused by the Nicaean statement. How could the Son have the same nature as the Father without becoming a second God? No longer familiar with traditional Jewish terminology, they were also puzzled about the identity of the Holy Spirit. Gregory’s older brother Basil, bishop of Caesarea (c. 330–79), took time out from his diocese to find a solution. Christians must stop thinking about God as a mere being, a larger and more powerful version of themselves. That was not what God was. The new doctrine of creation had made it clear that God was unknowable; our minds could think only about beings in the universe; we could not imagine the “nothingness” out of which our world was formed, because we could think only about things that had some kind of spatial extension or qualities. It was impossible for us to understand what had happened before our world was created, because we could think only in terms of time. This was what Saint John meant when he wrote “In the beginning was the Word.” For thought cannot travel outside was , nor imagination beyond beginning . Let your thought travel ever so far backward you cannot get beyond the was , and however you may strain and strive to see what is beyond the Son, you will find it impossible to get back further than the beginning? 34 What lies behind or beyond the universe is inconceivable to us. When we try to think of its “Creator” our minds simply seize up. But we could see signs and traces of God in our world. Reviving Philo’s distinction between God’s essential nature (ousia ) and his “activities” (energeiai ) in the world, Basil insisted that we could never know God’s ousia; indeed, we should not even speak of it. Silence alone is appropriate for what lies beyond words. But we could form an idea about the divine “energies” that have, as it were, translated the ineffable God into a human idiom: the incarnate Word and the immanent divine presence within us that scripture calls the Holy Spirit. 35 To show Christians that Father, Son, and Spirit were not three distinct “Gods,” Basil formulated the doctrine of the Trinity. At first Christians thought that Jesus, the incarnate Logos, and the Holy Spirit were two separate divine beings. But Paul had explained that they were one and the same: “This Lord is the Spirit.” 36 Because they were divine forces, Logos and Spirit were not finite or discrete like the beings of our ordinary experience. Over time Christians realized that because the divine energies they experienced in the rituals and practices of the church were indefinable and illimitable, “Logos” and “Spirit” must refer to the same divine power. God was not the sort of being that was defined by number or extension, so Father, Son, and Spirit were not three separate “gods.”

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  And so, while black people occupy a complex and precarious position in relation to transgression, this relationship is far more vexed and complicated when compounded by gender. In her gendered analysis, Katharine Kittredge observes that transgression is accompanied by terror and danger, and "[w]omen, especially, understand that once they have moved outside of society's behavioral/sexual boundaries, there will be no return and no alternative place of safety."23 Furthermore, "the alienation that follows transgression gains power because it cannot be clearly seen: the boundaries of acceptable behavior shift over time, place, and circumstance; and the dangers that lie `beyond' are un-spoken."24 Her analysis, while important, necessitates far greater problematization and begs a racialized gendered analysis. While neither acceptable behavior nor transgression is transhistorical, black women have long experienced having no place of safety, let alone "alternative" spaces; moreover, the association of black womanhood with hypersexuality, excess, and as being outside behavioral, moral and sexual convention has certainly transcended shifts in time, place, and circumstance, accounting, in part, for the exclusion of black women from constructions of femininity and "true" womanhood. Rather, black women have been cast as embodying the polarized opposite of an idealized white womanhood in order to sustain such a construction as a model, if even illusory and contrived, of "normative" womanhood. Black women, as "other" and outside the parameters of acceptability and protection, became associated with "illicit" and "overt" sexuality, which in turn subjected them to discursive and corporeal sexualized violence, abuse, and attacks on, as well as defamation of, their bodies and character." Such circumstances surrounding black womanhood, particularly the correlation between and conflation of black women's bodies as sexually degenerate and pathological, are not, however, limited to particular historical moments, nor are they restricted to particular (con)texts. Instead, this phenomenon is a transhistorical occurrence, as a number of relatively contemporary events illumine. In his highly criticized (and later repudiated) remarks, radio personality Don Imus referred to the almost exclusively black Rutgers women's basketball team during their 2007 NCAA championship game against Tennessee as "some rough girls" and "nappy-headed hos"; whereas "the girls from Tennessee," a more visibly white female team, in Imus's estimation, "all look cute." Imus's invectives evoked vicious stereotypes at the heart of which were racialized and sexualized conceptualizations of black women's bodies, as well as their character, that render them always already transgressive and, even within a twenty-first-century context, vulnerable. His comments expose the systematic defamation of black women as both licentious and invariably linked with "illicit" sexuality, regardless of their status, as well as the persistent attack on black women and their bodies contemporaneously. Moreover, his references to them as "rough," in juxtaposition to the designation "cute" he used to describe the Tennessee players, represent deeply racist/sexist conceptualizations of black women ideologically and aesthetically as largely outside the beauty status quo and realm of femininity as less-than-female-as practically "female-masculine" bordering masculinity-and, thereby, ineligible for protection.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  THE CAPTAIN ADDRESSED the passengers in rapid-fire Japanese, and I started to sweat. I looked out the window at the blazing red circle on the wing. Mom Hatfield was right, I thought. We were just at war with these people. Corregidor, the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking—and now I was going there on some sort of business venture? Crazy Idea? Maybe I was, in fact, crazy. If so, it was too late to seek professional help. The plane was screeching down the runway, roaring above Hawaii’s cornstarch beaches. I looked down at the massive volcanoes growing smaller and smaller. No turning back. Since it was Thanksgiving, the in-flight meal was turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Since we were bound for Japan, there was also raw tuna, miso soup, and hot sake. I ate it all, while reading the paperbacks I’d stuffed into my backpack. The Catcher in the Rye and Naked Lunch. I identified with Holden Caulfield, the teenage introvert seeking his place in the world, but Burroughs went right over my head. The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. Too rich for my blood. I passed out. When I woke we were in a steep, rapid descent. Below us lay a startlingly bright Tokyo. The Ginza in particular was like a Christmas tree. Driving to my hotel, however, I saw only darkness. Vast sections of the city were total liquid black. “War,” the cabdriver said. “Many building still bomb.” American B-29s. Superfortresses. Over a span of several nights in the summer of 1944, waves of them dropped 750,000 pounds of bombs, most filled with gasoline and flammable jelly. One of the world’s oldest cities, Tokyo was made largely of wood, so the bombs set off a hurricane of fire. Some three hundred thousand people were burned alive, instantly, four times the number who died in Hiroshima. More than a million were gruesomely injured. And nearly 80 percent of the buildings were vaporized. For long, solemn stretches the cabdriver and I said nothing. There was nothing to say. Finally the driver stopped at the address written in my notebook. A dingy hostel. Beyond dingy. I’d made the reservation through American Express, sight unseen, a mistake, I now realized. I crossed the pitted sidewalk and entered a building that seemed about to implode. An old Japanese woman behind the front desk bowed to me. I realized she wasn’t bowing, she was bent by age, like a tree that’s weathered many storms. Slowly she led me to my room, which was more a box. Tatami mat, lopsided table, nothing else. I didn’t care. I barely noticed that the tatami mat was wafer thin. I bowed to the bent old woman, bidding her good night. Oyasumi nasai. I curled up on the mat and passed out. HOURS LATER I woke in a room flooded with light. I crawled to the window.

• From Educated (2018)

  Luke had forgotten all about the gasoline … when he jammed the torch into his hip and struck flint to steel, flames burst from the tiny spark and engulfed his leg. … Luke was unable to get out of his gasoline-soaked jeans. … His footwear didn’t help, either … Luke might have severed the twine and hacked through the boots in a matter of seconds, but he went mad with panic and took off, dashing like a marked buck, spreading fire through the sagebrush and wheat grass …

• From The Case for God (2009)

  8 She had borne Zeus a beautiful daughter called Persephone. Even though he knew that Demeter would never agree to the match, Zeus had betrothed the girl to his brother Hades, lord of the underworld, and helped him to abduct her. Distraught with rage, Demeter left Olympus and withdrew all her gifts from humanity. Without corn, the people began to starve, so the Olympians arranged for Persephone’s return on condition that she spend four months each year with her husband. When Persephone was reunited with her mother, the earth burst into flower, but when she returned to Hades during the winter, it seemed to die in sympathy. Thesmophoria compelled the Greeks to imagine what might have happened if Demeter’s favors had been permanently withdrawn. Married women left their husbands and, like the goddess, disappeared from the polis. Together they fasted, slept on the ground as people had done in primitive times, and ritually cursed the male sex. The festival forced the Greeks to contemplate the destruction of civilization, which depended upon the institution of marriage, and to appreciate the real antagonism that existed between the sexes. They also meditated on the catastrophe that would ensue if the crops ceased to grow. At the end of the festival, the women went home and life returned to normal, but everybody knew that the alternative was a lurking, fearful possibility. As the concept of the individual developed in the polis, however, Greeks wanted a more personal spirituality alongside the public cult and developed the Mystery Cult. The word “mystery” needs clarification. The musterion was neither a hazy abandonment of rationality nor a self-indulgent wallowing in mumbo jumbo. In fact, the Mysteries would have a profound effect on the new philosophical rationalism. Musterion was closely related to myesis , “initiation;” it was not something that you thought (or failed to think!) but something that you did. 9 The Mysteries that developed during the sixth century were carefully constructed psychodramas in which mystai (“initiates”) had a direct and overwhelming experience of the sacred that, in many cases, entirely transformed their perception of life and death. The most famous of the Mysteries was celebrated annually at Eleusis, some twenty miles west of Athens. When Demeter had stormed off Mount Olympus after Persephone’s abduction, she wandered all over the earth, disguised as an old woman, searching for her daughter. Metaneira, queen of Eleusis, had taken her into the royal household as a nurse for her son Demophon, and to repay her kindness, Demeter decided to make the child divine by burning away his mortal parts each night in the fire.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  "I Got Started Like Everyone Else Does [...] I Opened My Legs": Sexual Politics, Violence, and Desire in Eva's Man In Eva's Man, Jones illustrates these very notions regarding sexuality as an apparatus that has historically and systematically been used to subjugate, violate, and oppress. Just as sexuality has the ability to restrict and suppress, if it is to be liberated (and liberating), it necessitates rescue, and indeed transformation, especially where gender dynamics are concerned. This is, in part, what Jones attempts to illumine in Eva's Man. In this regard, the treatment of sexuality, as well as its function, in Jones's text is incomparable to the other novels in this study given the extent to which it is extremely overt and violent-not representative of black sexuality but more a commentary on its potential state. In Eva's Man, sexuality, perverse eroticism, and sexualized violence are ubiquitous, as sexual tension pervades and always escalates into violence; and, Eva, unlike most other characters, is always already confronted with it as if it is inevitable. Even as a child, full sexual disclosure is not precluded, as she learns at an early age about the precariousness of sex(uality). As an only child growing up in her two-parent home, one of her earliest recollections is that of her family and its unconventional dynamics. Such memories are not so much of its nuclear structure, but rather an infringement upon it, as evidenced by her mother's lover, Tyrone, and her extramarital affair: What I remember about the musician [Tyrone] was that he was ten years younger than my mother. [...] When my mother and the musician started going together, my father said nothing. He knew what was going on, but didn't say anything at all. My mother knew he knew, but she would bring the musician home when my father wasn't there. My father would know he'd been there, though, because the musician used to open his packets of cigarettes upside down. [...] And so when my father came home, whenever he'd been there, there'd always be an empty packet of cigarettes in the house, opened upside down. After a while it got so every day there was that packet of cigarettes. (25) While Eva's memory of this is unquestionable, as it is not characterized by a stream of consciousness, the passage is as suggestive and telling as it is rife with symbolism of the sexual. Eva never names Tyrone-consistently referring to him as "the musician," which is, in and of itself, somewhat detached and distancing-in the same fashion that her father, John, while aware of the affair and its intrusion upon his marriage, does not express anything: at least nothing verbally, in a way that evades and makes it appear as if they are "normalized" behaviors/circumstances.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  1974 I sat in the federal courthouse in downtown Portland, at a little wooden table, alongside Strasser and Cousin Houser, staring at the high ceiling. I tried to take deep breaths. I tried not to look to my left, at the opposing table, at the five raptor-eyed lawyers representing Onitsuka and four other distributors, all of whom wanted to see me ruined. It was April 14, 1974. We’d tried one last time to avoid this nightmare. In the moments before the trial began we’d offered to settle. We’d told Onitsuka: Pay us eight hundred thousand dollars in damages, withdraw your suit in Japan, we’ll withdraw ours, and we’ll all walk away. I didn’t think there was much chance of acceptance, but Cousin Houser thought it worth a try. Onitsuka rejected the offer instantly. And made no counter. They were out for blood. Now the bailiff shouted, “Court is in session!” The judge swooped into the courtroom and banged his gavel and my heart jumped. This is it, I told myself. The head lawyer for Onitsuka’s side, Wayne Hilliard, gave his opening statement first. He was a man who enjoyed his work, who knew he was good at it. “These men... have unclean hands!” he cried, pointing at our table. “Unclean... hands,” he repeated. This was a standard legal term, but Hilliard made it sound lurid, almost pornographic. (Everything Hilliard said sounded somewhat sinister to me, because he was short and had a pointy nose and looked like the Penguin.) Blue Ribbon “conned” Onitsuka into this partnership, he bellowed. Phil Knight went to Japan in 1962 and pretended there was a company called Blue Ribbon, and thereafter he employed subterfuge, theft, spies, whatever necessary, to perpetuate this con. By the time Hilliard was done, by the time he’d taken his seat next to his four fellow lawyers, I was ready to find in favor of Onitsuka. I looked into my lap and asked myself, How could you have done all those terrible things to those poor Japanese businessmen? Cousin Houser stood. Right away it was clear that he didn’t have Hilliard’s fire. It just wasn’t in his nature. Cousin Houser was organized, prepared, but he wasn’t fiery. At first I was disappointed. Then I looked more closely at Cousin Houser, and listened to what he was saying, and thought about his life. As a boy he’d suffered a severe speech impediment. Every “r” and “l” had been a hurdle. Even into his teens he’d sounded like a cartoon character. Now, though he retained slight traces of the impediment, he’d largely overcome it, and as he addressed the packed courtroom that day, I was filled with admiration, and filial loyalty. What a journey he’d made. We’d made. I was proud of him, proud he was on our side. Moreover, he’d taken our case on contingency because he’d thought it would come to trial in months. Two years later he hadn’t seen a dime. And his costs were astronomical.

• From Educated (2018)

  “That will do.” She was a short, plump woman in her late forties, with eleven children and a russet-colored wart on her chin. She had the longest hair I’d ever seen, a cascade the color of field mice that fell to her knees when she took it out of its tight bun. Her features were heavy, her voice thick with authority. She had no license, no certificates. She was a midwife entirely by the power of her own say-so, which was more than enough. Mother was to be her assistant. I remember watching them that first day, comparing them. Mother with her rose-petal skin and her hair curled into soft waves that bounced about her shoulders. Her eyelids shimmered. Mother did her makeup every morning, but if she didn’t have time she’d apologize all day, as if by not doing it, she had inconvenienced everyone. The midwife looked as though she hadn’t given a thought to her appearance in a decade, and the way she carried herself made you feel foolish for having noticed. The midwife nodded goodbye, her arms full of Mother’s herbs. The next time the midwife came she brought her daughter Maria, who stood next to her mother, imitating her movements, with a baby wedged against her wiry nine-year-old frame. I stared hopefully at her. I hadn’t met many other girls like me, who didn’t go to school. I edged closer, trying to draw her attention, but she was wholly absorbed in listening to her mother, who was explaining how cramp bark and motherwort should be administered to treat post-birth contractions. Maria’s head bobbed in agreement; her eyes never left her mother’s face. I trudged down the hall to my room, alone, but when I turned to shut the door she was standing in it, still toting the baby on her hip. He was a meaty box of flesh, and her torso bent sharply at the waist to offset his bulk. “Are you going?” she said. I didn’t understand the question. “I always go,” she said. “Have you seen a baby get born?” “No.” “I have, lots of times. Do you know what it means when a baby comes breech?” “No.” I said it like an apology. —THE FIRST TIME MOTHER assisted with a birth she was gone for two days. Then she wafted through the back door, so pale she seemed translucent, and drifted to the couch, where she stayed, trembling. “It was awful,” she whispered. “Even Judy said she was scared.” Mother closed her eyes. “She didn’t look scared.” Mother rested for several minutes, until she regained some color, then she told the story. The labor had been long, grueling, and when the baby finally came the mother had torn, and badly. There was blood everywhere. The hemorrhage wouldn’t stop. That’s when Mother realized the umbilical cord had wrapped around the baby’s throat. He was purple, so still Mother thought he was dead.

• From Memoirs of Fanny Hill (1749)

  My gentleman had now put on his clothes and recomposed himself, when giving me a kiss, and placing me by him, he sat himself down as gingerly as possible, with one side off the cushion, which was too sore for him to bear resting any part of his weight on. Here he thanked me for the extreme pleasure I had procured him, and seeing, perhaps, some marks in my countenance of terror and apprehension of retaliation on my own skin, for what I had been the instrument of his suffering in his, he assured me, “he was ready to give up to me any engagement I might deem myself under to stand him, as he had done me, but that if I proceeding in my consent to it, he would consider the difference of my sex, its greater delicacy and incapacity to undergo pain.” Reheartened at which, and piqued in honour, as I thought, not to flinch so near the trial, especially as I well knew Mrs. Cole was an eye-witness, from her stand of espial, to the whole of our transaction, I was now less afraid of my skin, than of his not furnishing me with an opportunity of signalizing my resolution. Consonant to this disposition was my answer, but my courage was still more in my head, than in my heart; and as cowards rush into danger they fear, in order to be the sooner rid of the pain of that sensation, I was entirely pleased with his hastening matters into execution. He had then little to do, but to unloose the strings of my petticoats, and lift them, together with my shift, navel-high, where he just tucked them up loosely, and might be slipt up higher at pleasure. Then viewing me round with great seeming delight, he laid me at length on my face upon the bench, and when I expected he would tie me, as I had done him, and held out my hands, not without fear and a little trembling, he told me, “he would by no means terrify me unnecessarily with such a confinement; for that though he meant to put my constancy to a trial, the standing it was to be completely voluntary on my side, and therefore I might be at full liberty to get up whenever I found the pain too much for me.” You cannot imagine how much I thought myself bound, by being thus allowed to remain loose, and how much spirit this confidence in me gave me, so that I was even from my heart careless how much my flesh might suffer in honour of it.

• From Educated (2018)

  “Now the bitch cries,” Shawn said. … “You pretend to be saintly and churchish. But I see you. … in town I was a lying whore.” … He grabbed my wrist and my body slipped into the familiar posture, head thrust forward, arm coiled around my lower back, wrist folded absurdly onto itself. Like a dance step, my muscles remembered and raced to get ahead of the music. … There were now so many pink and yellow specks in my vision, it was as if I were inside a snow globe. That was good. It meant I was close to passing out. I was looking forward to it.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  punishment, and they made light of their heavy load as they hastened to Christ, proving without a doubt that the sufferings of the present are not to be compared with the glory that is in store for them.” It went on to indicate that the crowd surged against them, heaping blows upon them. They were marched into the forum, and were interrogated by the tribune, and by city authorities, and they ended up being arrested, then, for being Christian. The cost, the persecution began by forbidding Christians to appear in public places, and then, it turned out that there was a hunt for the Christians authorized by the authorities, and they ended up, then, being arrested. The general unacceptability of the Christians was to the populace at large. It was heightened by the claims of some of the slaves of the Christians, who were taken, and accused the Christians of engaging in highly immoral and illegal activities. Some of those who were arrested, we’re told in the letter, “are heathen domestics.” Christians, like other well-to-do people in the ancient world had slaves, domestics who took care of their household affairs, and in this case, these Christians had slaves who were pagan. These pagan slaves who were arrested were afraid of being tortured under interrogation. In the ancient world, the idea was that if you wanted to get the truth out of somebody under interrogation, you would torture him or her. This isa very different point of view from our point of view, where we think that if you torture somebody, they’ll simply say anything they can to get off the hook. In the ancient world, the idea was that pain took somebody so close to the edge that it forced them to tell the truth, and so these domestics, these slaves who were arrested, were afraid of being tortured, and so before the torture began, they actually told the people what they wanted to hear, which is not at all what their Christian owners would have wanted them to hear. “These pagan slaves falsely accused us of Thyestean banquets and Oedipean incest, and things we ought never to think or speak about, or even believe that such things ever happened among human beings.” What does this mean, that they were accused of “Oedipean incest” and “Thyestean banquets’? As we will see in the next lecture, two of the common charges against Christians were that they engaged in incestuous orgies and that they performed acts of cannibalism. Christians met secretly so that outsiders couldn’t actually see what was happening in their midst, and rumors floated around that these were the kinds of activities that Christians were engaging in, because why keep meetings secret? Why weren’t they open? What are you doing in there that we don’t know about? 169