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 396 of 529 · 20 per page

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Who you are today is also shaped by the third biological character that I want you to meet: your tenth cranial nerve. This key conduit connects your brain to your body and is also called your vagus nerve (sounds like Vegas, as in Las Vegas). It emerges from your brain stem deep within your skull and, although it makes multiple stops at your various internal organs, perhaps most significantly it connects your brain to your heart. You already know that your heart rate shoots up when you feel insulted or threatened—registering the ancestral fight-or-flight response—but you may not know that it’s your vagus nerve that eventually soothes your racing heart, by orchestrating (together with oxytocin) the equally ancestral calm-and-connect response. Keeping in mind that love is connection, you should know that your vagus nerve is a biological asset that supports and coordinates your experiences of love. Completely outside of your awareness, your vagus nerve stimulates tiny facial muscles that better enable you to make eye contact and synchronize your facial expressions with another person. It even adjusts the minuscule muscles of your middle ear so you can better track the other person’s voice against any background noise. In these exquisitely subtle yet consequential ways, your vagus nerve increases the odds that the two of you will connect, upping your chances for positivity resonance. Scientists can measure the strength of your vagus nerve—your biological aptitude for love—simply by tracking your heart rate in conjunction with your breathing rate. Specifically, I can look at the degree to which your heart rate, as tracked by sensors placed on your lowest ribs, is patterned by your breathing rate, as revealed by an expandable bellows that encircles your rib cage. This pattern is called vagal tone. Like muscle tone, the higher your vagal tone, the better.

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

  So ask yourself what you would be doing if you had faced down your fears and were on the other side. Not How would I feel? but What would I be doing? What would I be doing if I felt confident? For Brandon Stanton, the answer was: If I wasn’t uncomfortable, I’d be asking strangers if I could take their picture. For Albert Ellis, the answer was: If I wasn’t anxious, I’d be chatting with cute girls. For Jia, it was: If I was confident, I’d face rejection, dust myself off, and try again. How about you? Would you say yes to more invitations? Introduce yourself to more people? Show up even though you’re worried about blushing? Whatever your answer, haul out the concrete mixer and make your goals concrete. You’ll know you’re on the right track if you can check off your goal on a list: “Ask the professor a question after class.” Check. “Look at the audience the majority of the time while I give this presentation.” Check. “Call Customer Service without rehearsing what I want to say first.” Check. “Go to Jaime’s party and talk to two people.” Check. Why should your goals be so defined? With a vague, squishy goal like “Be confident,” “Make a good impression,” or “Act normal,” it’s impossible to know if you’ve achieved it. I know I could always be more confident, and my Inner Critic would snort with laughter if I asked it if I made a good impression or acted normal, no matter how things actually went. By contrast, with a concrete goal you’ll know when you’ve accomplished it. You get the payoff of The Moment. Dreaming about your post-social anxiety life is the start of your Challenge List. A Challenge List is similar to a bucket list in that it’s a list of things to conquer. When I introduce the Challenge List to my clients, I promise I’ll do their scary things right alongside them. I can’t in good conscience ask them to do something I’m not willing to do myself. In the service of conquering other people’s social anxiety, I’ve asked strangers for the time, pushed the wrong button in a crowded elevator on purpose, gone jogging with a client, spilled my coffee in public, knocked rolls of paper towels off a display (and picked them up; don’t worry—my mother raised me right), walked up and down a hallway with toilet paper deliberately stuck to my shoe, and done lots more. I can do these fairly easily because they’re not my little fears. But these are: 1. Go my normal speed when someone is waiting for my parking space, rather than getting all stressed and rushed 2. Join the conversation when my kids FaceTime relatives 3. Tell a story in a group of people where I don’t know everyone well 4. Initiate introducing myself to people I see all the time but don’t know by name

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

  When he first started roaming New York City with his camera, Brandon was broke and didn’t know a soul. Nevertheless, he hit the streets every single day, taking thousands of photographs. At first, Brandon photographed everything—buildings, fire hydrants, signage. He would photograph people, too, but candidly, surreptitiously. Over time, he noticed that in the albums he posted to social media for his friends and family photos of people got the most feedback. People were compelling in a way signage could never be. Therefore, never one to shirk from a challenge, Brandon set a goal to photograph ten thousand of his fellow New Yorkers and plot the results on an interactive map—a photographic census of the city. But once his plan was set, he realized, like a lightning bolt, that the project would require approaching ten thousand people. He was going to have to learn to talk to strangers. Now, even before approaching ten thousand strangers Brandon considered himself to be pretty good with people. Even so, he said, “Those first months that I was on the street stopping strangers, I was so scared every time I walked up to somebody. There’s something about approaching someone and the possibility of being rejected that inherently makes you nervous.” So how did Brandon get over it? How did he learn to approach total strangers as if they’d known each other for years? He said, “I just had to do it so many times. There were no longer any unknowns … there was nowhere for my imagination to go and create this kind of anxiety in me. I had seen it all before, I knew that I could handle it, and so I got to the point where I could just approach people very comfortably without any worry or anxiety about what their reaction would be.” * * * Click-click-click. Brandon wraps up a final few shots and warmly thanks the three chefs. As he sets off to find his next subjects, let’s highlight two things he said: First, there was nowhere for my imagination to go. As we know, our brains are wired to jump to the worst-case scenario. The “what-ifs” start to bubble. “What if someone pulls a gun?” “What if someone tries to kidnap me?” Our brains tell us the worst is possible, but with experience we learn it’s not probable. This is why the first approaches are the hardest—we don’t have the experience to temper the warnings of our well-meaning but overprotective brains. In Brandon’s case, the experience of approaching ten thousand strangers allowed him to confirm that most people are friendly, even in a hardened city. Of course, sometimes he would get a rejection and sometimes he would get something rude, nonsensical, or even obscene. But nothing improbable. Experience tethered him to reality, which was that most people, when face-to-face with a fellow human, are happy to help.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  How do you handle stress and strain? Do you at times feel shattered by adversity? Crushed during hard times? After an emotional hurricane hits, do you wallow in negativity or stumble about to pick up the pieces of your former self? Or perhaps, based on past experience, you’ve tried to steel yourself against any future emotional disasters by increasing the heft of your defensive armor. Maybe you find the prospects of being shattered so disturbing that you’ve striven to be bulletproof. By and large, your protective armor works well. It shields you from routine emotional blows and keeps you from crumbling into self-pity or otherwise becoming devastated by negativity. Yet this sort of self-protection comes at a price. It can shield you from the especially good stuff as well. Sure enough, within your own walled-off cavern, you can and do readily experience genuine positive emotions, say, of interest, pride, inspiration, or peace. Yet your ability to share these good feelings with others is compromised. Put differently, in making yourself bulletproof you may also numb yourself to possibilities for true connection. Being less able to connect, in turn, shuts you and your body out from registering and creating opportunities for positivity resonance, which are both life-giving and health-conferring. To be sure, there are more ways to face emotional storms than to be flattened by or impervious to them. For more than a decade, my students and I have studied the psychological habits of resilient people. These are the ones who, when faced with emotional storms, bend without breaking and bounce back to weather the next storm even better equipped than they were for the last. Resilient people, our studies have shown, are emotionally agile. They neither steel themselves against negativity, nor wallow in it. Instead, they meet adversity with clear eyes, superbly attuned to the nuances of their ever-changing circumstances. This allows them to effortlessly calibrate their reactions to their circumstances, meeting them with a fitting emotional response, neither overblown nor insensitive. When the circumstances warrant, they can be moved to tears or shaken. They don’t defend themselves against bad feelings like these. Yet neither do they overly identify with them. Rather, their negative emotions rise up, like an ocean wave, and then dissolve. Strong emotions move through them, which allows them to move on in their wake. What allows resilient people to be so agile? As I detailed in Positivity, their agility stems from their steady diet of positive emotion. Each successive experience of positive emotion, after all, gives them a fresh experience of openness. Resilient people come to better register and appreciate the larger contexts of life, which allows them to respond to emotional upsets with more perspective, flexibility, and grace. Our data indeed show that life gets better and better for people who experience more positive emotions than others, not simply because positive emotions feel good, but because good feelings nourish resilience. Being better equipped to manage inevitable ups and downs is what makes life itself more satisfying.

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

  Maeve got more self-conscious when she went out herself. “Standing in line at the bank with her was the worst,” remembers Jim. “Because she was trapped; someone might see her and she couldn’t do anything about it. It was like being on display between those red velvet ropes leading to the teller window.” Over the years, her discomfort grew, and eventually Maeve took to staying home. She would make Jim and Ryan go to church, but she never went herself. Jim explains, “I think she was too scared to go to church and see people, so she sent us as stand-ins so the neighbors wouldn’t talk. Over the years, in trying to understand, I’ve tried to be generous, thinking maybe she was just proud, but I know it was fear.” * * * Anxiety is unquestionably genetic. If you have a first-degree relative—in Jim’s case, a parent—with an anxiety disorder, you have a four- to sixfold increased risk of having the same disorder. But psychological genetics is a puzzle, a maddening Rubik’s Cube for even the most dedicated scientist. Why? First, unlike Huntington’s disease or sickle-cell anemia, anxiety isn’t controlled by a single gene. But it’s unclear whether anxiety is a result of the large effects of a few genes or the small effects of many. There’s also another problem called phenotypic complexity, which means that anxiety is like the mythological hydra, with many different heads. Social anxiety qualifies as “anxiety,” to be sure, but so do manifestations as diverse as OCD, panic attacks, and even fear of spiders. It can be difficult to imagine how such different flowers can sprout from the same genetic seed. Next, anxiety isn’t an objective condition—at least not yet. There’s no lab test for anxiety. We can’t look at Jim’s or Maeve’s blood under a microscope and see anxiety. For now, it’s all based on self-report. Although our genes have expressed anxiety for millennia, Social Anxiety Disorder, the capital-S version of social anxiety, was first described in the literature in 1966 and has only been a distinctly defined disorder since 1980. As such, it’s unclear if our modern, man-made diagnoses would even match up with our ancient genomes. A final complication is the impossible-to-separate, coffee-and-cream swirl of genetics and experience. Our temperaments drive our day-to-day choices, but does a preference to stay in and read reflect a particular genetic constellation or do we like it because we’re well practiced? In short, whether anxiety is genetic is clear as day, but how anxiety is genetic is clear as mud. * * *

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  Counter argument, showing that those whose stand- ing is fixed by law are by the logic of the legalists under the curse of the law 310-14, . Argument from the irrevocableness of a covenant and the priority of the covenant made with Abraham to the law, to the effect that the coven- ant is still in force 3448, . Answer to the objection that the preceding argu- ment leaves the law without a reason for being eee . Characterisation of the condition under law and, in contrast with it, the condition since faith came: then we were held in custody under law; now we are all sons of God, heirs of the promise 37-”. . Continuation of the argument for the inferiority of the condition under law, with the use of the illus- tration of guardianship 41-7. . Description of the former condition of the Galatians as one of bondage to gods not really such, and exhortation to them not to return to that state 8-11 yeh . Affectionate appeal to the Galatians to enter fully into their freedom from law, referring to their Ixxiv INTRODUCTION former enthusiastic reception of the apostle and affection for him 4!?-?°, ro. A supplementary argument, based on an allegorical use of the story of the two sons of Abraham, and intended to convince the Galatians that they are joining the wrong branch of the family 471-1. IV. Hortatory Portion OF THE LETTER. 5}-61 1. Exhortations directly connected with the doctrine of the letter 51-6°. a. Appeal to the Galatians to stand fast in their free- dom in Christ 51-2. 6. Exhortation not to convert their liberty in Christ into an occasion for yielding to the impulse of the flesh 513-26, c. Exhortation to restore those who fall, and to bear one another’s burdens 6!-, 2. Exhortations having a less direct relation to the principal subject of the epistle 6&1, V. CONCLUSION OF THE LETTER. 611-18 1. Final warning against the judaisers 6-16, 2. Appeal enforced by reference to his own sufferings 617. 3. Final benediction 618, Vill. THE TEXT. Accepting in general the principles of Westcott and Hort, the author of this commentary has diligently examined the available evidence for the text of Galatians in the light of those principles. The result has naturally been the acceptance for the most part of the Westcott and Hort text; yet in a few cases the evidence has seemed to require the adoption of a different reading from that preferred by those eminent scholars. The evidence has been gained almost wholly from Tischen- dorf, Novum Testamentum Grace, ed. oct. crit. maj. Leipzig, 1872. Use has also been made of Souter, Novum Testamentum Grece, Oxford, 1910, and, for the ms. H., of the reproductions INTRODUCTION lxxv of it by Omont, Robinson, and Lake. See below, p. Ixxvi.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  As he stroked her, he said, “One day I watched two dogs playing. The one dog was busy eating a bone she had found, and the other took advantage of the situation to approach her from behind. I was fourteen. I felt the wildest excitement from watching them. It was the first sexual scene I witnessed, and I discovered the first sexual excitement in myself. From then on, only a woman leaning over as you are can arouse my desire.” His hand continued to stroke her. He pressed a little against her and, seeing her pliant, began to move behind her so as to cover her with his body. Bijou was suddenly afraid and sought to escape from his embrace. But the man was powerful. She was already under him, and all he had to do was bend her body over even more. He forced her head and shoulders down on the wall and raised her skirt. Bijou was again without underclothes. The man gasped. He began to murmur words of desire that soothed her, but at the same time he held her down, entirely at his mercy. She felt him against her back, but he was not taking her. He was merely pressing against her as tightly as he could. She felt the strength of his two legs, and she heard his voice enveloping her, but that was all. Then she felt something soft and warm against her, something that did not penetrate her. In a moment she was covered with warm sperm. The man abandoned her and ran away. LEILA TOOK Bijou horseback riding in the Bois. Leila looked very beautiful on horseback, slim, masculine and haughty. Bijou looked more luxuriant but less poised. Riding in the Bois was a lovely experience. They passed elegant people, then rode through long stretches of isolated, wooded paths. Every now and then they came across a café, where one could rest and eat. It was spring. Bijou had taken several riding lessons and was now on her own for the first time. They rode slowly, talking all the while. Then Leila set off at a gallop and Bijou followed. After they had galloped for a time, they slowed down. Their faces were flushed. Bijou felt a pleasurable irritation between her legs and a warmth over her buttocks. She wondered if Leila felt the same. After another half an hour of riding, her excitation was growing. Her eyes were brilliant, her lips moist. Leila looked at her with admiration. “Horseback riding becomes you,” she said. Her hand held a whip with regal assurance. Her gloves fitted her long fingers tightly. She wore a man’s shirt and cuff links. Her riding habit showed the shapeliness of her waist and breast and buttocks. Bijou filled her clothes more abundantly. Her breasts were high and pointed provocatively upwards. Her hair hung loose in the wind.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  Only whores possessed sexual organs. Miguel had seen such women very early when his older brothers had dragged him to the whorehouses. While his brothers took the women, he caressed their breasts. He filled his mouth with them, hungrily. But he was frightened by what he saw between their legs. To him it looked like a huge, wet, hungry mouth. He felt that he could never satisfy it. He was frightened by the luring crevice, the lips rigid under the stroking finger, the liquid that came like the saliva of a hungry person. He imagined this hunger of woman as tremendous, ravenous, insatiable. It seemed to him that his penis would be swallowed forever. The whores he happened to see had big sexes, big, leathery sex lips, big buttocks. What was there left for Miguel to turn to with his desires? Boys, boys without the gluttonous openings, boys with sexes like his, that did not frighten him, whose desires he could satisfy. So on the very evening that Elena experienced this dart of desire and warmth in her body, Miguel had discovered the intermediate solution, a boy who aroused him without taboos, fears and doubts. Elena, completely innocent of the love between boys, went home and sobbed all night because of Miguel’s remoteness. She had never been more beautiful; she felt his love, his worship. Then why did he not touch her? The dance had brought them together, but he was not inflamed. What did this mean? What mystery was this? Why was he jealous when others approached her? Why had he watched the other boys who were so eager to dance with her? Why did he not touch even her hand? Yet he haunted her, and was haunted by her. Her image predominated over all women. His poetry was for her, his creations, his inventions, his soul. The sexual act alone took place away from her. How much suffering would have been spared her had she known, understood. She was too delicate to overtly question him, and he too ashamed to reveal himself. And now Miguel was here, with his past life known to all, a long train of love affairs with boys, never lasting. He was always in quest, always unsatisfied—Miguel, with the same charm, only enhanced, stronger. Again she sensed his remoteness, the distance between them. He would not even take her arm, shining brown in the Parisian summer sun. He admired all she wore, her rings, her tinkling bracelets, her dress, her sandals, but without touching her. Miguel was being analyzed by a famous French doctor. Every time he moved, loved, took someone, it seemed the knots of his life drew closer around his throat. He wanted liberation, liberation to live out his abnormality. This he did not have. Each time he loved a boy, he did so with a sense of crime. The aftermath was guilt. And then he sought to atone with suffering.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  Rom. 14" etc.) is against this latter view, while the former is more in accordance with the context, which refers not so much to conformity to the truth of the gospel as to an attitude (of straightforwardness or crookedness) towards it. The interpretation of meéc¢ in the sense of (motion) towards, making the truth of the gospel the goal of their action, involves a sense possible to moéc, but out of harmony with the context. The phrase, ‘‘the truth of the gospel,” is doubtless used here in the same sense as in v. 5, q. 2. elrrov T@ Kna éurpoobev ravrwv “I said to Cephas in the presence of everybody.”’ The omission of the article before mavrwv makes the statement very general, not simply before those who have just been mentioned (t@v 7avTwv) but when all the members of the church were present. Cf. 1 Cor. 1118 14”, and esp. 1 Tim. 5° How much of what follows was actually uttered on this occa- sion it is impossible to say with certainty. Only the first sen- tence (v. “>) contains unmistakable evidence of having been addressed to Peter, and the absence of any direct address in the remainder of the chapter makes it unlikely that through the whole of it Paul is still quoting what he said to Peter. Yet on the other hand it is improbable that he intends to limit his report of his words on that occasion to a single sentence. He passes imperceptibly from the report of his former words into argument on the theme itself, and the line between the two can not be detected. Ei od “Iovdaios trrdpywov eOuKds Kal ovyl lovdaixas Sys, mas Ta €Ovn avayKaves lovdaifew; “If thou, though a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not after that of the Jews, how is it that thou dost constrain the Gentiles to live after the Jewish manner?” The terms €O@m«és and “lovdaixds manifestly refer to the living according to Gentile and Jewish customs respectively, especially in the matter of foods. The ele? GALATIANS conditional clause evidently refers, as is often the case with a simple present supposition, to an admitted fact. (BMT 244.) It is an overpressing of the present tense to maintain that it must refer to an act at that very time in progress, which is plainly excluded by the preceding narrative. Grammatically it is doubtless to be taken not as a present for an imperfect, but as a general present, describing a habit or mental attitude which, being illustrated by a recent act, may itself be assumed to be still in force (cf. Mk. 27 Mt. 1276#- Acts 227» 8 233 4 Ps, 894 4). The use of it implies that Peter had not really in principle aban- doned the Gentile way of life, though temporarily from fear returning to the Jewish way of living.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “Yes, really,” Caitlin answered. Then she looked hard at Vix. “Why are we having this conversation? Why are we acting as if we’re angry. Are we angry?” “I’m not angry,” Vix said. “Good … because neither am I.” “Maybe we’re scared,” Vix said. “Scared?” “Of being apart. Of losing each other.” “We’re never going to lose each other,” Caitlin said, holding Vix in her arms. [image file=Image00006.jpg] It was strange staying at the house without Caitlin. Their bedroom, with all its memories of past summers, felt empty. Vix played a tape they’d made singing “Dancing Queen” … and laughed at how young they sounded. She lay awake on her bed running through the details of every summer, but she could feel the panic of her last morning in this room, too, the morning she’d packed and left at sunrise a year ago, never to return. “Would you rather stay in the boys’ room?” Abby asked when she’d arrived, anticipating her feelings. Neither Sharkey nor the Chicago Boys were coming back that summer. They were off doing their own things. She would finally have her chance to be an only child, the focus of Abby’s and Lamb’s attention, not that she wanted it now that she had Bru. She was grateful when Abby began to fill the house with guests—her college roommate, who lived in San Francisco; her parents, whom Vix had never met; old friends from Chicago; new friends from Cambridge. They’d eat dinner late and Vix was invited to join them anytime she wished, but after work she’d head for Bru’s cabin in Gay Head. He’d moved in mid-July—one room, woodstove, no plumbing or electricity, but cozy, with a real bed and curtains made by his aunt. Sometimes, as she slept in his arms after making love, she’d dream of Nathan. One night Nathan, his body straight and tall, was pushing her through the woods in a baby carriage. When they reached their destination, a beautiful vista at the top of a mountain, he tilted the stroller so she could see. But she wasn’t strapped in and she slid out, then down, tumbling through space, her arms and legs splayed, a look of terror on her face. She cried out in her sleep, waking herself and Bru. “What?” he asked. “Bad dream,” she said, burrowing into his chest. “It’s okay,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “I’m here … I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” She never allowed herself to spend the night in his cabin. She forced herself to climb out of bed, night after night, throw on her clothes, and drive home along Old County Road, the road where Lamb’s parents were killed. The phone rang late one night at the house, rousing all of them. Lamb or Abby must have picked up and Vix fell back asleep until Lamb knocked on her door and called, “Vix … if you’re awake, it’s Caitlin.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  3.925, 5.497; Plut. Marius, 14"; here only aN 0s IDL, tara Tog knowledge which they cloaked under a mask of worse, the usual type of hypocrisy which proceeds from fear. By the charac- terisation of this conduct as hypocrisy Paul implies that there had been no real change of conviction on the part of Peter and the rest, but only conduct which belied their real convictions. “The rest of the Jews” are manifestly the other Jewish Chris- tians in Antioch, from which it is evident that it was not Peter only who had eaten with the Gentile Christians but the Jewish Christians generally. That even Barnabas, who shared with Paul the apostleship to the Gentiles, yielded to the pressure exerted by the brethren from Jerusalem shows again how strong was the influence exerted by the latter. Kat (after ait@) is the reading of SACDFGHKLP al. pler. d g Syr. (psh. harcl.) Arm. Aeth. Victorin. Ambrst. Hier. Or. It is omitted by B f Vg. Boh. Goth. Or. (Sout.). Neither external nor internal evidence is decisive; but its omission from the small number of authorities which do not contain it, either from pure inadvertence or from a feeling that it was superfluous, seems somewhat more prob- able than its addition to the great body of authorities. Th Sroxotcer may be either a dative of accompaniment—“ swept along with their hypocrisy”—dependent on the oy in composition (of. Eph. 51! Phil. 414 Rom. 1216 ef freq.) or perhaps, a little more prob- ably, a dative of agent, “by their hypocrisy,” ‘with them” being im- plied in céy. On the use of the verb cuvanéyw, found also in Xen. and Exosichespy 2 Pets 317: 14, aA Gre cidov bre ov« dpOoTrododaww pds THY aAnOELvav Tov evayyediov, “But when I saw that they were not pursuing a straightforward course in relation to the truth of the gospel.” The natural implication of this sentence and indeed of the pre- ceding narrative is that all the events thus far related, the com- ing of the emissaries of James, the retreat of Peter from his first position, the like action of the rest of the Jewish Christians and even of Barnabas, took place before Paul himself took a position of open opposition to Peter. Had Paul, then, been in Antioch all this time, either holding his peace while the whole Jewish element in the church took a position which he judged to be wrong, or unable, without open opposition to IIo GALATIANS Peter, to stem the tide, and reluctant to resort to this? The latter alternative is the more probable, if he was actually present. But the most probable explanation of the facts, neither directly supported nor opposed by anything in the pas- sage itself, is that Paul was absent during the early part of Peter’s stay in Antioch.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  BBut at that time, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to the gods that are not such by nature. 9But now having come to know God, or rather having become known . by God, how is it that ye are turning back again to the weak and beggarly rudiments, to which ye wish to be in bondage again? ™Ye are observing days and months and seasons and years. nl fear that in vain have I spent my labour on you. 8, 'AXXo, rore JJLGV OVK clSo're? 0eoi> eSovXevcrare rof? fyixrti ju?) over i dtols* "But at that time, not knowing God, ye were in bondage to the gods that are not such by nature." Doub- ling, so to speak, upon his course, the apostle reverts to the condition of the Galatians before they received his message, and in antithesis (aXXa) to the description of them in v.7 as heirs through God, describes them as having been in that former time ignorant of God who is in reality such, and in bondage to the gods that by nature are not gods. The purpose of this v. appears in v,9, where he again dissuades them from returning to the state of bondage. That Paul conceived of the deities whom the Galatians formerly worshipped as real existences, is neither proved nor disproved by this sentence, in which he denies to them deity, (?€w/r^<?, but neither affirms nor denies 228 GALATIANS existence; nor by the phrase eircr pdirot,? Kal oiKovoikois in v. 2, since that may be used only by way of rhetorical personification of the law and have no reference to the gods of the Gentiles (cf. on TO, (rrot^cta rov /coVjuou, v.3) ; but that he did so conceive of them is rendered probable by the evidence of i Cor. 85' 6 iol»« 20 Col. 21S. Cf. also Deut. 419 and see literature cited in special note on TA crrotjfela rov Koo-fjiov, p. 510. refers to the past time implied in ofoc&ce (v.7), when Ae Gala- tian Christians were still SouXot; note the ISouXe6uaTs of this sen- tence. E&taes is a perfect participle of existing state, ^ e(86Te<; meaning "not possessing knowledge." How this state of ignorance came about is not here discussed, or whether it was partial or absolute. Cf. Rom. jiwf.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  who is mutilated in this way; Vulg. eunuchus attritis vel amputatis testiculis. njf y nn? [Lxx diuoxsxoti^voc] is one whose sexual mem- ber was cut off; Vulg. abscissa veretro. According to Mishnah Jebam. VI 2, 'contusus njn est omnis, cuius testiculi vulnerati sunt, vel certe unus eorum; exsectus (n-ns), cujus membrum virile praecisum est/ In the modern East emasculation is generally performed in this way. (See Tournefort, Reise, ii, p. 259 [The Levant, 1718, ii. 7] and Burckhardt, Nubien, pp. 450, 45**)" (b) Exhortation not to convert their liberty in Christ into an occasion for yielding to the impulse of the flesh (s18-26). In this paragraph the apostle deals with a new phase of the subject, connected, indeed, with the main theme of the letter, but not previously touched upon. Aware that on the one side it will probably be urged against his doctrine of freedom from law that it removes the restraints that keep men from im- morality, and certainly on the other that those who accept it are in danger of misinterpreting it as if this were the case, he fervently exhorts the Galatians not to fall into this error, but, instead^ through love to serve one another. This exhortation he enforces by the assurance that thus they will fulfil the full requirement of the law, that they will not fulfil the desire of the flesh, nor be under law, and by impressive lists, on the one hand of the works of the flesh, and on the other of the products of the Spirit in the souL ™por ye wer.e called for freedom, brethren. Only convert not your freedom into an opportunity for the ftesh, but through love be servants one of another. uFor the whole law is fulfilled in one wordj even in this} Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. ™But if ye are biting and devouring one another, take heed lest ye be con- sumed by one another. uJ5ut I sayy Walk by the Spirit and ye will not fulfil the desire of the flesh. l7For the desire of the flesh is against that of the Spirit, and the desire of the Spirit against that of the flesh; for these are opposed to one another , that whatsoever ye will ye may not do. ^JBut if ye are led by the Spirit , ye are not under law. l9Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are formcationj uncleanness, wantonness; ^idolatry, witchcraft; enml- v, I2-I3 291

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  The fact that xXTQpov6n,ot here means heirs of God, and the deduc- tion of heirship from sonship, itself inferred from an act of adoption, , gives a certain colour of support to Ramsay's view that the of 315^: is not a covenant but a will, and specifically a will in- volving the adoption of a son. If the language of 316|E- were harmonious with these suggestions of the present passage, the latter would fall in with that passage as part of an illustration consistently carried through the whole passage. But (i) the possibility of interpreting this phrase in the way above suggested is not sufficient ground for setting aside the strong counter-evidence that by SiaO^xtj he means not a will, but a covenant. Even if the expression here employed could be shown to involve the idea of adoption by will and inheritance as an adopted son, this would only show that the apostle is now illustrating the spiritual relations which are the real subject of his thought by a different group of facts of common life from those which he employed in 31(^- But (2) it is improbable that it is specifically an adoptive sonship that the apostle has in mind in e( %k v\b<;« For, though he represents the son- ship of the Galatians in common with other believers as acquired by adoption, yet the fact of adoption is nowhere emphasised, and in the actual spiritual realm that which is illustratively called adoption car- ries with it, as a consequence, the bestowal of the Spirit of God's Son, by which, it is implied, those who are sons come into like relation to rv, 7~"8 227 God with that which the Son himself sustains. The conception of adoption, accordingly, falls into the background, leaving simply that of sonship. 8. Description of the former condition of the Galatians as one of bondage to gods not really such, and ex- hortation to them not to return to that state (48~n)« Again directly addressing the Galatians as iri 31, and as in v.1 characterising their former condition as one of enslavement, the apostle describes them as in bondage to gods that were not in reality such, and appeals to them, now that they have come into fellowship with God, not, as they threaten to do by their adoption of the Jewish cycle of feasts and fasts, to return to those weak and beggarly rudimentary teachings under which they formerly were, and expresses his fear that he has laboured over them to no purpose.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  The verbs Bdbtv<t>, xaTe<j6fe>, dcvaTJcrxw (all of common use in classical writers, the first two from Homer down, the third from Pindar down) suggest wild animals engaged in deadly struggle. The order is cli- mactic, the first and second by virtue of their respective meanings, the third in relation to the other two by virtue of their tenses, SdbcvsTg and xorceaOfeTe being amative presents and dvaXcoOijTe a resultative aorist. 16. Aeyw Se, TrvevfJ,an TrcptTrareire /cal eTnOvpfav crapKos ov fjirj T€\ecr<r)T€. "But I say, Walk by the Spirit and ye will not fulfil the desire of the flesh." The use of the phrase X^yo) W, not strictly necessary to the expression of the thought, throws emphasis upon the statement thus introduced. Cf. 317 41 s2 Rom. iols» 19 n1* n is8 i Cor. io29 2 Cor. n16. By irvevnari Paul undoubtedly refers to the Spirit of God as in v.5. So also crc£p£ manifestly has the same ethical meaning as in v.18. (See detached note on D>et>/m, III B. i. (c), p. 491, and 2ap£ 7, p. 493.) TrepiTra/mre is a true imperative in force, while also serving as a protasis to the apodosis ov nrj reX^cr^re. BA£T 269. The tense of the imperative denoting action in progress is appropriately used of that which the Galatians were already doing; cf. 33 s5. Over against the danger spoken of in v.16 and the possible suggestion of the judaisers to the Gala- 298 GALATIANS tians, or the fear of the Galatians themselves, that without the pressure of the law constraining them to do right they would fall into sinful living, Paul enjoins them to continue to govern their conduct by the inward impulse of the Spirit, and emphati- cally assures them that so doing they will not yield to the power within them that makes for evil. The type of life which he thus commends to them is evidently the same which in vv.5' 6 he has described in the words, "For we by the Spirit, by faith, wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love"; in 220 in the words, "It is no longer I that live but Christ that liveth in me, and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith, faith upon the Son of God"; and which is described below in v.18in the words, "If ye are led by the Spirit," and in v.25, "If we live by the Spirit." On the identity experientially of life by the Spirit, and the life of Christ within, see p. 222.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  following a statement of fact suffices, however, "to show that In this case the clause expresses primarily an object of apprehension. The objection of Sief. to this interpretation, that Paul certainly could not have implied that his fear of his past work being rendered fruitless was actually realised, rests upon a misunderstanding of the force of a past tense in such cases. This implies not that the fear has been realised — in this case one would not express fear at all, but regret — but that the event is past, and the outcome, which is the real object of fear, as yet unknown or undetermined. Cf. GMT 369; ~BM T 227, and see chap. 4n, where the object clause refers to a past fact, the outcome of which is, however, not only as yet unknown to him, but quite possibly yet to be determined by the course which the Galatians should pursue in response to the letter he was then writing. 3. aXX* o£S£ T/T05 6 <rvv e/W, "EXX??^ &vy yvarytcdarBi) wept* TfjLTjd'rjvai,' "But not even Titus, who was with me, and was a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised." In antithesis to the possibility of his work proving fruitless (by reason of the opposi- tion of the Jerusalem church and apostles) Paul here sets forth the fact that on this very occasion and in a test-case his view prevailed. For aXXa introducing the evidence disproving a pre- viously suggested hypothesis, see Rom. 4* i Cor. 29. The fact of the presence of Titus with the apostle had already been men- tioned in the preceding sentence. Its repetition here in o <rvv €fjio( is evidently, therefore, for an argumentative purpose, and doubtless as emphasising the significance of the fact that he was not circumcised. It is upon this element of the sentence especially that ouoY "not even" throws its emphasis. The opponents of Paul, the "false brethren" desired, of course, the circumcision of ail Gentile Christians. But so far were they from carrying through their demand that not even Titus, who was there on the ground at the time, and to whom the demand would first of all apply, was circumcised. The non-circumcision of Titus, therefore, was in reality a decision of the principle* The phrase <J <?w <f/w/ is thus concessive in effect. See "BM T 428. The participial phrase, ^EXX^i/ &>> adds a fact, probably like <S <nb> <F/*°l> known to the readers, but necessary to be borne in mind in order to appreciate the significance of the fact about to be stated. Like the preceding phrase it also is concessive 76 GALATIANS

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Pike ha estado trabajando en mi auto, y en un esfuerzo por suavizar las cosas, estoy segura que Cole realmente ayudó hoy. Sin embargo, no estoy segura cómo voy a pagarle a su papá, porque sé que está gastando dinero, a pesar que actúa como si compró el nuevo tubo de escape a buen precio o simplemente tenía esas llantas nuevas guardadas. He estado tratando de ir más allá en la casa, haciendo cosas como preparar el desayuno para todos esta mañana y limpiar debajo de los cojines del sofá. Incluso planté algunas flores en el patio trasero, alrededor del borde, para la estética, lo que Pike aceptó siempre y cuando no lleve flores a la casa. Me río, pensando en lo gruñón que puede ser a veces. Es bastante gracioso. Horas más tarde, exhausta y con los pies adoloridos, no puedo esperar para regresar a casa. A casa y a la cama. Estoy tan cansada. Atando mi cabello en una coleta, cuento el efectivo, lo vuelvo a colocar en la caja y deslizo la bandeja en la caja fuerte. Después de tapar las botellas de licor, guardar los platos y apagar las luces, miro por la ventana y veo el auto de Cole junto a la acera. Sonrío, encantada porque llegue a tiempo. Soplo las velas restantes en la barra, cerrando los ojos y respirando hondo cada vez. Espero que mañana sea mejor que hoy. Es mi deseo de siempre, cuando no tengo nada más en mente, y cada día que pasa, intento acercarme a hacerlo realidad. Agarro mi bolso, deslizo las propinas en mi bolsillo y salgo por la puerta, cerrándola tras de mí. El aire fresco se siente bien en mis pulmones, y lanzo mi bolso por la ventana abierta antes de abrir la puerta del lado del pasajero. Me deslizo en el asiento delantero, girando mi cansada pero agradecida sonrisa hacia Cole. —Hola… —Me detengo, y mi sonrisa cae de inmediato. Jay, mi ex, está sentado en el asiento del conductor. Miro por encima de mi hombro, asegurándome que Cole no esté desmayado en el asiento trasero, pero está vacío. Mis manos tiemblan. —¿Dónde está Cole? Jay ladea la cabeza, como disculpándose. —Está borracho, cariño. Los muchachos no querían dejarlo conducir. —Su brazo descansa sobre el respaldo de mi asiento, su mano a centímetros de mi cabello y cuello—. Está durmiendo en la casa de Bentley. Le dijeron que alguien se aseguraría de que llegaras a salvo a casa. Me ofrecí. No. Claro que no. De ninguna manera. No lo dudo. Tirando de la manija, abro la puerta y salgo, alcanzo el asiento trasero y recupero mi bolso. —Está bien —le digo—. Puede llevarme Shel. Todavía está adentro. —No, no está. Acabas de cerrar. Sabía que me desafiaría. Nada se le escapa. Una extraña calma se une a su voz, pero sé que es solo superficial. —Vamos, ya estoy aquí —presiona—. No quieres que haya venido aquí por nada, ¿cierto?

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Se queda allí, pareciendo casi divertida, y finalmente camina hacia mí. —Sí —dice, a punto de irse, pero se da vuelta y se burla de mí por encima de su hombro—. Porque tu casa es la única parte de tu vida de la que puedes sacarme. Y luego sus ojos se deslizan por las escaleras y vuelven a mí, una sonrisa enfermiza se curva en sus labios. Se va, y me quedo quieto, mientras todo lo que sentí en mi habitación hace unos minutos desaparece por completo. Cole está en una espiral y ahora me necesita más que nunca. Y Lindsay sabe sobre Jordan. Puede que no sepa nada con certeza, pero sus sospechas serán suficientes. Destrozará a Jordan. No hay forma de que la haga pasar eso. Solo desearía haberla tenido por más de siete horas. Presiono las piedras en el escalón con mi pico y tomo el pegamento, echándolo en las grietas para unir las piezas del modelo. Siento la urgencia de mirar de nuevo el reloj del microondas pero me retengo, sabiendo que no han pasado más de dos minutos desde la última vez que lo miré. Son pasadas las seis y Pike llega tarde. Rara vez llega tarde. Aunque, mientras pasan los minutos siento mi temperamento bullir, porque tampoco ha llamado y específicamente me pidió que estuviera en casa. Esto no se parece a él, pero sí muy parecido a cada tipo que he conocido. Soy la chica que pueden tratar como basura y hacerla esperar porque lo acepto. Por un tiempo, de todos modos. La pizza que pedí, mitad de pepperoni y mitad de taco, llegó hace una hora y se está conservando caliente en el horno mientras mi ensalada está en el refrigerador manteniéndose fría. The Lost Boys, continuando con nuestro maratón de películas de terror de los 80, está en la televisión, preparada para reproducir, y estoy sola. De nuevo. Está bien. Puede que esté a mitad de algo, todavía en el trabajo. Entendible y soy un adulto. No necesito que me tomen de la mano. También pudo haber tenido un accidente, pero eso es extremo, y tampoco quiero ser esa chica que llama. Pensará que… me estoy encariñando o algo así. Pego las bolas de cristal de lo que pronto será el río, dejando que los minutos le quiten sus oportunidades mientras me siento ahí, esperando y enfadándome. El día había sido tan genial. Me desperté dolorida pero difícilmente notándolo, porque los recuerdos de la noche anterior me hicieron sonrojarme constantemente. No estaba fuera de práctica en lo absoluto, y no pude evitar sonreír mientras limpiaba la lámpara rota y arreglaba la mesita de noche de nuevo. Y limpié lo que quedaba delvaso A&W del lavavajillas cuando eché el helado flotante anoche. Gracias a Dios él no lo averiguó, o habría cambiado su opinión sobre si era una adulta o no.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  Once he asked one of the painters for his warm pipe. The man handed it to him. He slipped the pipe up Bijou’s skirt and laid it against her sex. “It’s warm,” he said. “Warm and smooth.” Bijou moved away from the pipe because she did not want them to know that all the Basque’s fondlings had wetted her. But the pipe came out revealing this, as if it had been dipped in peach juice. The Basque handed it back to its owner, who was thus given a little of Bijou’s sexual odor. Bijou was afraid of what the Basque would invent next. She tightened her legs. The Basque was smoking. The three friends sat around the bed, talking disconnectedly as if the gestures which were taking place had nothing to do with their conversation. One of them was talking about the woman painter who was filling the galleries with giant flowers in rainbow colors. “They’re not flowers,” said the pipe smoker, “they’re vulvas. Anyone can see that. It is an obsession with her. She paints a vulva the size of a full-grown woman. At first it looks like petals, the heart of a flower, then one sees the two uneven lips, the fine center line, the wavelike edge of the lips, when they are spread open. What kind of a woman can she be, always exhibiting this giant vulva, suggestively vanishing into a tunnel-like repetition, growing from a large one to a smaller, the shadow of it, as if one were actually entering into it. It makes you feel as though you were standing before those sea plants which open only to suck in whatever food they can catch, open with the same wavering edges.” At this moment the Basque had an idea. He asked Bijou to bring the shaving brush and razor. Bijou obeyed. She was glad for a chance to move about and shake off the erotic lethargy his hands had woven around her. His mind was on something else now. He took the brush and soap from her and began to mix a lather. He placed a new blade in the razor. Then he said to her, “Lie on the bed.” “What are you going to do?” she said. “I have no hairs on my legs.” “I know you haven’t. Show them.” She extended them. They were indeed so smooth that they looked as if they had been polished. They shone like some pale precious wood, highly burnished, not a hair showing, no veins, no roughness, no scars, no defects. The three men bent over her legs. As she shook them, the Basque caught them against his trousers. Then he raised her skirt while she fought to bring it down. “What are you going to do?” she asked again.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  You do, of course, need to keep your wits about you as you tune in to positivity’s navigation system. Sure enough, peddlers are forever standing by to tempt you to find your bliss in commercial goods and services, both legal and illegal. Such commerce is often carefully engineered to set off the emotional fireworks that create brand loyalty, and even addictions. With conscious effort, you can override these impulses. If you couldn’t, you’d be a hapless product of past conditioning. Yet overriding hedonist impulses isn’t always a wise move. Discerning which pleasure-seeking urges actually represent healthy pursuits, like the age-old cellular cry to connect, is foundational to emotional intelligence. All it may take is to step out of the marketplace, and to trust the wisdom inherent in your body to draw you to connect with others in meaningful ways. Infants and toddlers follow their positivity instincts as a matter of course. Yet once impulse control becomes possible, all bets are off as to when and whether people of any age will tune in to and prioritize their own good feelings. Evidence suggests that it isn’t until midlife or beyond that people develop true wisdom about positivity’s quiet cues. This delay may well reflect the strong supporting role that families and educational institutions play in the lives of younger people. Many families and schools are organized around ways to help younger people find ready sources of positivity resonance. Parents and teachers, coaches and resident assistants, provide scaffolding to support positive connections between and among young people. When you were growing up, for instance, far beyond providing you shelter, meals, and clothing, your parents likely stoked your opportunities to share positivity-laced moments with them and others. At first it was simply through tickles and grins, and later it was through setting up playdates and creating family rituals around mealtime, bedtime, weekends, and holidays. Many schools, colleges, and universities strive to provide similar structural support. Through icebreakers and other experiential activities, both within and outside classrooms, through sporting and artistic events, these places create entire webs of people, institutional practices, and rituals that may have provided additional external support for the positivity resonance that nourished you through your youth. Jeremy, whose story I told in chapter 8, likened all this structural support to an external navigation system. As he put it, “Your path up through college is kind of decided for you and then it is like the navigation system turns off and you have to pilot yourself and that’s when it gets scary.” Being released into the so-called real world, absent the scaffolding to support ready connection, can leave recent graduates wondering why their life suddenly seems less sparkly, their days more life-draining than life-giving.