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.

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

  I don’t want to look like her or live my life that way.” “How did you meet Nick?” She sighed as she answered, “Well, we hardly knew each other in high school. We were never lovers or even friends. I think that he had a crush on me from afar. Then in my junior year I broke my ankle and during the six weeks that I was hobbling around, he was very kind to me, carrying my stuff and visiting me. He was the only one who took any care of me. He also comes from a divorced family with lots of troubles. When he dropped out of school, I felt very sorry for him.” “Then how did he come back into your life?” “I was having a real bad time. My brother was getting into serious trouble with the law and my dad wouldn’t do anything to help. I pleaded with him but he was totally indifferent. I was frantic and beginning to realize that all my efforts to hold my family together were wasted. So when Nick asked me to move in with him, I said yes. Anything to get away, even though I knew from the outset he had no plans for the future, no training, no formal education. After the first day, I said to myself, ‘Oh, my God, what did I do?’ But at least I know he won’t betray me. At least I’m safe from that.” “Karen, this fear of betrayal is pretty central to you. You keep mentioning it.” “It’s been central to my life,” she agreed. “Both my parents played around. I saw it all around me. They felt that if you are not getting what you want, you just look elsewhere.” (I’ve never heard anyone put the alternative morality of our divorce culture so succinctly.) Karen took her hands away from her face and silently ripped the tissue in half. “There’s another reason I moved in with him,” she whispered. “It will probably distress you.” Karen spoke hesitantly, clasped her hands in her lap, and elaborated slowly, as if every word were painful and she had to extract them one by one. “I figured that this is one man who will never leave me.” Silence. “Because he has no ambitions, he will always have fewer choices than me. So if I stay with him and even marry him someday, I won’t ever have to worry about his walking out.” Karen was right about my being distressed. Her statement was chilling. How utterly tragic that this lovely woman would begin her adult journey so burdened down with fears. What kind of life could she build on such fragile foundations? Like a good caregiver child, Karen reinstalled her troubled relationships with her mother and father into her early relationships with men.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  After classes, I ascertained that the magazine belonged to one of my best friends. I charged him with betrayal and mockery. In the ensuing fight, he crashed backward into a desk, catching his foot in a joint and breaking his ankle. He was laid up for a month, but gallantly concealed from his family and from our teachers my share in the matter. The pang of seeing him carried downstairs was lost in my general misery. For some reason or other, no car came to fetch me that day, and during the cold, dreary, incredibly slow drive home in a hired sleigh I had ample time to think matters over. Now I understood why, the day before, my mother had been so little with me and had not come down to dinner. I also understood what special coaching Thernant, a still finer maître d’armes than Loustalot, had of late been giving my father. What would his adversary choose, I kept asking myself—the blade or the bullet? Or had the choice already been made? Carefully, I took the beloved, the familiar, the richly alive image of my father at fencing and tried to transfer that image, minus the mask and the padding, to the dueling ground, in some barn or riding school. I visualized him and his adversary, both bare-chested, black-trousered, in furious battle, their energetic movements marked by that strange awkwardness which even the most elegant swordsmen cannot avoid in a real encounter. The picture was so repulsive, so vividly did I feel the ripeness and nakedness of a madly pulsating heart about to be pierced, that I found myself hoping for what seemed momentarily a more abstract weapon. But soon I was in even deeper distress. As the sleigh crept along Nevski Avenue, where blurry lights swam in the gathering dusk, I thought of the heavy black Browning my father kept in the upper right-hand drawer of his desk. I knew that pistol as well as I knew all the other, more salient, things in his study; the objets d’art of crystal or veined stone, fashionable in those days; the glinting family photographs; the huge, mellowly illumined Perugino; the small, honey-bright Dutch oils; and, right over the desk, the rose-and-haze pastel portrait of my mother by Bakst: the artist had drawn her face in three-quarter view, wonderfully bringing out its delicate features—the upward sweep of the ash-colored hair (it had grayed when she was in her twenties), the pure curve of the forehead, the dove-blue eyes, the graceful line of the neck.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  And I wonder what I will have to pay someday for that privilege, and in whose coin? Will those forces which serve non-life in the name of power and profit kill me too, or merely dismember me in the eyes of whoever can use what I do? When I stand in the radiance of a place like the Sapphire Sapphos dinner, with the elegant food and abundance of love and beautiful dark women, when I stand in that moment of sweetness, I sometimes become almost afraid. Afraid of their warmth and loving, as if that same loving warmth might doom me. I know this is not so, but it can feel like it. As if so long as I remained too different from my own time and surroundings I was safe, if terribly lonely. But now that I am becoming less lonely and more loved, I am also becoming more visible, and therefore more vulnerable. Malcolm saying to Martin in the film, “I love you, Martin, and we are both dead men.” February 9, 1984 New York City So. No doubt about where we are in the world’s story. It has just cost $32,000 to complete a government-commissioned study that purports to show there is no rampant hunger in the U.S.A. I wonder if they realize rampant means aggressive . So. The starving old women who used to sit in broken-down rooming houses waiting for a welfare check now lie under park benches and eat out of garbage bins. “I only eat fruit,” she mumbled, rummaging through the refuse bin behind Gristedes supermarket, while her gnarled Black hands carefully cut away the rotted parts of a cantaloupe with a plastic Burger King knife. February 18, 1984 Ohio How does it feel , Ms. L., to be a fifty-year-old Black woman who is still bleeding! Cheers to the years! Doing what I like to do best. Last night I gave a talk to the Black students at the university about coming to see ourselves as part of an international community of people of Color, how we must train ourselves to question what our Blackness—our Africanness—can mean on the world stage. And how as members of that international community, we must assume responsibility for our actions, or lack of action, as americans. Otherwise, no matter how relative that power might be, we are yielding it up to the opposition to be used against us, and against the forces for liberation around the world. For instance, what are our responsibilities as educated Black women toward the land-rights struggles of other people of Color here and abroad? I want to write down everything I know about being afraid, but I’d probably never have enough time to write anything else. Afraid is a country where they issue us passports at birth and hope we never seek citizenship in any other country.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  But in England the rule was Rhadamanthine; the fags’ names on duty were put up on a blackboard, and if you were not on time, ay, and servile to boot, you’d get a dozen from an ash plant on your behind and not laid on perfunctorily and with distaste, as the Doctor did it, but with vim so that I had painful weals on my backside and couldn’t sit down for days without a smart. The fags too, being young and weak, were very often brutally treated just for fun. On Sunday mornings in summer, for instance, we had an hour longer in bed. I was one of the half dozen juniors in the big bedroom; there were two older boys in it, one at each end, presumably to keep order; but in reality to teach lechery and corrupt their younger favorites. If the mothers of England knew what goes on in the dormitories of these boarding-schools throughout England, they would all be closed, from Eton and Harrow upwards or downwards, in a day. If English fathers even had brains enough to understand that the fires of sex need no stoking in boyhood, they too would protect their sons from the foul abuse. But I shall come back to this. Now I wish to speak of the cruelty. Every form of cruelty was practiced on the younger, weaker and more nervous boys. I remember one Sunday morning, the half dozen older boys pulled one bed along the wall and forced all the seven younger boys underneath it, beating with sticks any hand or foot that showed. One little fellow cried that he couldn’t breathe and at once the gang of tormentors began stuffing up all the apertures, saying that they would make a “Black Hole” of it. There were soon cries and strugglings under the bed and at length one of the youngest began shrieking so that the torturers ran away from the prison, fearing lest some master should hear. One wet Sunday afternoon in midwinter, a little nervous “Mother’s darling” from the West Indies who always had a cold and was always sneaking near the fire in the big schoolroom, was caught by two of the Fifth and held near the flames. Two more brutes pulled his trowsers tight over his bottom, and the more he squirmed and begged to be let go, the tighter they held the trowsers and the nearer the flames he was pushed, till suddenly the trowsers split apart scorched through, and as the little fellow tumbled forward screaming, the torturers realized that they had gone too far. The little “Nigger” as he was called, didn’t tell how he came to be so scorched but took his fortnight in sick bay as a respite.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Talking it over we came to the conclusion that one man should ride to Fort Dodge for help and I was selected as the lightest save Bob and altogether the worst shot besides being the only man who would certainly find his way. Accordingly I brought up Blue Devil at once, took some pounds of jerked beef with me and a goat-water skin I had bought in Taos; a girth and stirrups quickly turned a blanket into a makeshift, light saddle and I was ready. It was Bob’s uncanny knowledge both of the Trail and of Indian ways that gave me my chance. All the rest advised me to go North out of our bay and then ride for it. He advised me to go south where the large body of Indians had stationed themselves. “They’ll not look for you there”, he said and “you may get through unseen; half an hour’s riding more will take you round them; then you have one hundred and fifty miles north on the Trail—you may pick up a herd—and then one hundred and twenty miles straight west. You ought to be in Dodge in five days and back here in five more; you’ll find us”, he added significantly. The little man padded Blue Devil’s hooves with some old garments he cut up and insisted on leading her away round the bight and far to the south, and I verily believe beyond the Indian camp. There he took off the mare’s pads, while I tightened the girths and started to walk keeping the mare between me and the Indians and my ears cocked for the slightest sound. But I heard nothing and saw nothing and in an hour more had made the round and was on the Trail for the north determined in my own mind to do the two or three hundred miles in four days at most.... On the fourth day I got twenty troopers from the Fort with Lieutenant Winder and was leading them in a bee-line to our Refuge. We got there in six days; but in the mean time the Indians had been busy. They cut a way through the scrub-oak brush that we regarded as impassable and stampeded the cattle one morning just at dawn and our men were only able to herd off about six or seven hundred head and protect them in the extreme north corner of the bend. The Indians had all drawn off the day before I arrived with the U. S. Cavalry troopers.... Next morning we began the march northwards and I had no difficulty in persuading Lieutenant Winder to give us his escort for the next four or five days....

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Finding that entreaties, arguments, and tears were useless, Florida had recourse to what she feared as much as the loss of life, and screamed out as loudly as she could to her mother. The countess, on hearing her cries, at once suspected the truth, and hastened to her with the utmost promptitude. Amadour, who was not so near dying as he said, let go his hold so quickly that the countess, on opening the cabinet, found him at the door, and Florida far enough away from him. " What is the matter, Amadour .'' " said the countess. "Tell me the truth." Amadour, who was prepared beforehand, and was never at a loss for an expedient at need, answered, with a pale and woebegone countenance, "Alas ! madam, I no longer recognize Florida. Never was man more surprised than I am. I thought, as I told you, that I had some share in her goodwill, but now I see plainly I have no longer any. Methinks, madarn, that whilst she lived with you she was neither less discreet nor less vir- tuous than she is now ; but she had no squeams of con- science to hinder her from talking to people and looking them in the face. I wanted to look at her, but she would not allow it. Seeing this, I thought I must be in a dream or a trance, and I asked leave to kiss her hand, according to the custom of the country, but she abso- lutely refused it. It is true, madam, I have done wrong, and I crave your pardon for it, in taking her hand and kissing it in a manner by force. I asked nothing more of her, but I see plainly that she is resolved upon my death, and that, I believe, is why she called you. Per- haps she was afraid I had some other design upon her. Be that as it may, madam, I acknowledge I was wrong ; for though she ought to love all your good servants, such is my ill-luck, that I have no part in her goodwill. My heart will not change for all that, with regard either ta 1 First day\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. 99 her or to you ; and I entreat you, madam, to let me re- tain your goodwill, since I have lost hers without deserv- nig it.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The next time I went down to bathe with Vernon, instead of going on the beach in the shallow water and wading out, I went with him to the end of the pier and when he dived in, I went down the steps and as soon as he came up to the surface I cried, “Look! I can swim too”, and I boldly threw myself forward and, after a moment’s dreadful sinking and spluttering, did in fact swim. When I wanted to get back I had a moment of appalling fear: “Could I turn round!” The next moment I found it quite easy to turn and I was soon safely back on the steps again. “When did you learn to swim?”, asked Vernon coming out beside me. “This minute”, I replied and as he was surprised, I told him I had read it all in his book and made up my mind to venture the very next time I bathed. A little time afterwards I heard him tell this to some of his men friends in Armagh, and they all agreed that it showed extraordinary courage, for I was small for my age and always appeared even younger than I was. Looking back, I see that many causes combined to strengthen the vanity in me which had already become inordinate and in the future was destined, to shape my life and direct its purposes. Here in Armagh everything conspired to foster my besetting sin. I was put among boys of my age, I think in the lower Fourth, and the form-master finding that I knew no Latin, showed me a Latin grammar and told me I’d have to learn it as quickly as possible, for the class had already begun to read Caesar: he showed me the first declension mensa, as the example, and asked me if I could learn it by the next day. I said I would, and as luck would have it, the Mathematical master passing at the moment, the form-master told him I was backward and should be in a lower form. “He’s very good indeed at figures”, the Mathematical master rejoined, “he might be in the Upper Division.” “Really!” exclaimed the Form-master. “See what you can do,” he said to me, “you may find it possible to catch up. Here’s a Caesar too, you may as well take it with you. We have done only two or three pages.”

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  3In August 1910, my brother and I were in Bad Kissingen with our parents and tutor (Lenski); after that my father and mother traveled to Munich and Paris, and back to St. Petersburg, and then to Berlin where we boys, with Lenski, were spending the autumn and the beginning of the winter, having our teeth fixed. An American dentist—Lowell or Lowen, I do not remember his name exactly—ripped some of our teeth out and trussed up others with twine before disfiguring us with braces. Even more hellish than the action of the rubber pear pumping hot pain into a cavity were the cotton pads—I could not endure their dry contact and squeak—which used to be thrust between gum and tongue for the operator’s convenience; and there would be, in the windowpane before one’s helpless eyes, a transparency, some dismal seascape or gray grapes, shuddering with the dull reverberations of distant trams under dull skies. “In den Zelten achtzehn A”— the address comes back to me dancing trochaically, immediately followed by the whispery motion of the cream-colored electric taxi that took us there. We expected every possible compensation in atonement for those dreadful mornings. My brother loved the museum of wax figures in the Arcade off the Unter den Linden—Friedrich’s grenadiers, Bonaparte communing with a mummy, young Liszt, who composed a rhapsody in his sleep, and Marat, who died in a shoe; and for me (who did not know yet that Marat had been an ardent lepidopterist) there was, at the corner of that Arcade, Gruber’s famous butterfly shop, a camphoraceous paradise at the top of a steep, narrow staircase which I climbed every other day to inquire if Chapman’s new Hairstreak or Mann’s recently rediscovered White had been obtained for me at last. We tried tennis on a public court; but a wintry gale kept chasing dead leaves across it, and, besides, Lenski could not really play, although insisting on joining us, without removing his overcoat, in a lopsided threesome. Subsequently, most of our afternoons were spent at a roller-skating rink in the Kurfürstendamm. I remember Lenski rolling inexorably toward a pillar which he attempted to embrace while collapsing with a dreadful clatter; and after persevering awhile he would content himself with sitting in one of the loges that flanked the plush parapet and consuming there wedges of slightly salty mokka torte with whipped cream, while I kept self-sufficiently overtaking poor gamely stumbling Sergey, one of those galling little pictures that revolve on and on in one’s mind. A military band (Germany, at the time, was the land of music), manned by an uncommonly jerky conductor, came to life every ten minutes or so but could hardly drown the ceaseless, sweeping rumble of wheels.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  The great danger of this heresy is that it comes from what can only be called a mistaken reverence. It is afraid to ascribe to Jesus full humanity. It regards it as irreverent to think that he had a truly physical body. It is a heresy which is by no means dead but is still held today, usually quite unconsciously, by many devout Christians. But it must be remembered, as John so clearly saw, that our salvation was dependent on the full identification of Jesus Christ with us. As one of the great early Church fathers unforgettably put it, `He became what we are to make us what he is.' This Gnostic belief had certain practical consequences in the lives of those who held it. (i) The Gnostic attitude to matter and to all created things produced a certain attitude to the body and the things to do with the body. That attitude might take any one of three different forms. (a) It might take the form of self-denial, with fasting and celibacy and rigid control, even deliberate ill-treatment, of the body. The view that celibacy is better than marriage and that sex is sinful goes back to Gnostic influence and belief - and this is a view which still lingers on in certain quarters. There is no trace of that view in this letter. (b) It might take the form of an assertion that the body did not matter and that, therefore, its appetites might be satisfied without restraint. Since the body was in any event evil, it made no difference what was done with it. There are echoes of this in this letter. John condemns as liars all who say that they know God and yet do not keep God's commandments; those who say that they abide in Christ ought to walk as Christ walked (i John r:6, 2:4-6). There were clearly Gnostics in these communities who claimed special knowledge of God but whose conduct was a long way from the demands of the Christian ethic.

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

  Yet here we need to face an uncomfortable truth. As Lisa’s story shows, parents who cooperate fully with each other are not necessarily in touch with the feelings and needs of their child. Efforts to settle differences amicably do not automatically bring parents closer to understanding a child’s concerns or make them more responsive to a child’s distress. There’s a good deal more to helping children than declaring a cease-fire. The prevailing divorce nostrum in this country—don’t fight—does not, as so many lawyers, judges, and mental health professionals hope it will, protect children from experiencing the same sorts of difficulties in adulthood as we’ve seen in those raised in less cooperative families. Lisa represents a very large number of children in America’s divorce culture. Her experience is instructive for us all. Conflict and Suffering in the Midst of CooperationI FIRST MET Lisa when she was in nursery school—a charming four-year-old girl decked out in a raspberry red pantsuit with bright yellow ribbons in her hair. Her parents were successful professionals— her mom a lawyer at the National Resources Defense Counsel office in Los Angeles and her dad a journalist who later went into public relations for several Silicon Valley corporations in Menlo Park. I asked Lisa what was going on in her family. She explained soberly, in a very grown-up way, “Daddy does not like Mommy so he’s living in the city and Mommy likes Daddy and wants him back.” “That’s an awful lot of changes,” I said, with soberness to match hers. “What do you think is going to happen?” Lisa shook her head silently and refused to say any more. But her play revealed all that she couldn’t express in words. It had two acts. Each vividly portrayed her inner world. In the first episode, she placed the father, the mother, and the children dolls in the dollhouse living room where they all sat in a row watching television. Then they all lay in one big bed, hugging one another like puppies in a basket. Next they were all squashed together in the bathtub. Finally, they were perched precariously on the steep roof, holding on to each other to keep from falling. The togetherness wrought by little Lisa was overpowering. In the second act, the tiger, crocodile, giraffe, and bear all went mad with aggression, wildly biting each other. They snarled and leapt at one another’s throats. Finally, carried away by her powerful feelings, Lisa bit the giraffe savagely and pummeled the tiger with her tiny fists. The message was clear. Lisa wanted desperately for her family to stay together but knew that it was coming apart. Underneath her composed, ladylike manner, fierce angers threatened to explode.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  with which I formerly believed your heart was animated, at least to hear me before you do ine violence. What can possess you, Amadour," she said, seeing that he listened to her, " to desire a thing that can give you no pleasure, and would overwhelm me with grief ? You have so well known my sentiments during my youth and my prime, which might have served as an excuse for your passion, that I wonder how, at my present age, and ugly as you see I am, you seek for that which you know you cannot find. I am sure you do not doubt that my sen- timents are still the same, and, consequently, that nothing but violence can enable you to obtain your wishes. Look at the state of my face, forget the beauty you have seen in it, and you will lose all desire to ap- proach me. If there is any remnant of love in your heart, it is impossible but that pity shall prevail over your rage. It is to your pity, and to the virtue of which you have given me so many proofs, that I appeal for mercy. Do not destroy my peace of mind, and make no attempt upon my honour, which, in accordance with your counsel, I am resolved to preserve. If the love you had for me has degenerated into hate, and you design from vindictiveness rather than affection to make me the most miserable woman on earth, I declare to you that it shall not be so, and that you will force me to complain openly of your vicious conduct to her who is so prejudiced in your favour. If you reduce me to this extremity, consider that your life is not safe." " If I must die," replied Amadour, " a moment will put an end to all my troubles ; but the disfigurement of your face, which I believe is your own work, shall not hinder me from doing what I am resolved ; for though I could have nothing of you but your bones, I would have them dose to me." y gS THE HEPTAMERON OF THE [Mnvl la

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  All apocalyptic literature deals with these events - the sin of the present age, the terrors of the time between, and the blessings of the time to come. It is entirely composed of dreams and visions of the end. That means that all apocalyptic literature is inevitably cryptic. It is continually attempting to describe the indescribable, to say the unsayable and to paint the unpaintable. This is further complicated by another fact. It was only natural that these apocalyptic visions should flame the more brightly in the minds of people living under tyranny and oppression. The more some alien power held them down, the more they dreamed of the destruction of that power and of their own recognition and restoration. But it would only have worsened the situation if the oppressing power could have understood these dreams. Such writings would have seemed the works of rebellious revolutionaries. These books, therefore, were frequently written in code, deliberately couched in language which was unintelligible to the outsider; and inevitably there are many cases in which they remain unintelligible because the key to the code no longer exists. But the more we know about the historical background of such books, the better we can interpret them. The Book of Revelation All this is the precise picture of our Revelation. There are any number of Jewish apocalypses - Enoch, the Sibylline Oracles, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Assumption of Moses, the Apocalypse of Baruch, 4 Ezra. Our Revelation is a Christian apocalypse. It is the only one in the New Testament, although there were many other similar writings which did not gain admission. It is written exactly on the Jewish pattern and follows the basic idea of the two ages. The only difference is that, for the day of the Lord, it substitutes the coming in power of Jesus Christ. Not only the pattern but also the details are the same. The Jewish apocalypses had a standard sequence of events which were to happen at the last time; these events all have their place in Revelation. Before we go on to outline that pattern of events, another question arises. Both apocalyptic and prophecy deal with the events which are to come. What, then, is the difference between them? Apocalyptic and Prophecy The difference between the prophets and the writers of apocalyptic was very real. There were two main differences - one of message and one of method.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " I regret," replied Oisille, " that I cannot relate anything to you so profitable as what you heard this morning. What I shall tell you, however, will be con- formable to the precepts of the Scriptures, which warn us not to put our trust in princes, or in any sons of man, who cannot save us. For fear you should forget this truth for want of an example, T will give you one that is quite true, and so recent that those who beheld the sad spectacle have hardly yet dried away their tears." iixth day.} QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 42^ NOVEL LI. Perfidy and cruelty of an Italian duke. The Duke of Urbino, surnamed the Prefect, who married the sister of the first Duke of Mantua, had a son about eighteen or twenty years of age, who was in love with a girl of good family. Not being free to con- verse with her as he wished, in consequence of the cus- tom of the country, he had recourse to a gentleman who was in his service, and who was in love with a handsome, virtuous young damsel in the service of the duchess. The cavalier employed this damsel to make known his passion to his mistress, and the poor girl took pleasure in rendering him service, believing that his intentions were good, and that she might with honour take upon her to be his ambassadress. But the duke, who looked more to the interest of his house than to his son's pure affection, was afraid that this correspondence would end in marriage ; and he set so many spies on the watch that at last he was informed that the girl had meddled v/ith carrying letters from his son to her of whom he was so passionately enamoured. Burning with rage, he resolved to put it out of his power to do so any more ; but as he was not sufficiently careful to conceal his re- sentment, the girl was warned of it in time She knew the prince to be malicious and without conscience, and was so terrified that she went to the duchess and implored permission to retire until the fit of anger had passed away. The duchess told her that before she gave her ^28 THE IIEPTAMERON OF THE INovel 51. leave she would try to find how her husband took the matter. She did so, and found that the duke spoke of it with great bitterness, whereupon she not only gave her young lady permission, but even advised her to retire into a convent until the storm should have blown over ; and this she did as secretly as possible.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Though the butcher talked of his pigs, which he called Cordeliers, the two poor friars, hearing this, set it all down to their own account, and awaited daylight with great terror. One of them was very fat, the other very lean ; and the fat one set about confessing himself to his companion, alleging that a butcher, having lost the love and fear of God, would make no more of slaughtering them than an o.x or any other beast. As they were shut up in their chamber, from which there was no issue but through their host's, they gave them- selves up for dead men, and earnestly commended their souls to God. The young man, who was not so over- come by fear as the elder, said to him, that since they FoHrth day:\ Q VEEN OF NA VA RRS. 3 1 1 could not get out at the door, they must try to escape through the window ; at the worst they could only be killed in the attempt, and death one way or the other was the same thing in the end. The fat friar consented to the expedient. The young one opened the window, and, as it was not very high, dropped lightly to the ground, and ran away as fast and as far as he could, without waiting for his companion, who was not so lucky, for, being very bulky, he fell so heavily that he hurt one leg severely, and was unable to rise from the ground. Deserted by his companion and unable to fol- low him, he looked about for some place where he might hide, and saw nothing but a pigsty, into which he dragged himself the best way he could. When he opened the door, two big porkers which were inside rushed out, and left the place free to the Cordelier, who shut himself in, hoping that he might hear people pass- ing by, to whom he would call and obtain help. As soon as daylight appeared, the butcher got ready his big knives, and told his wife to come and help him to kill the two pigs. Going to the sty, he opened the little door, and cried out, " Come, turn out here, my Cordelier. I'll have your chitterlings for my dinner to-day." The Cordelier, who could not stand on his leg, crawled out on his hands and knees, roaring for mercy. If he was in a great fright, the butcher and his wife were no less so. The first idea that came into their heads was that St. Francis was angry with them because they had called pigs Cordeliers, and under that notion they fell on their knees before the poor friar, begging pardon of St. Fran- cis and his order. On the one side was the Cordelier bawling for mercy to the butcher, on the other side the butcher making the same appeal to the Cordelier. At last the Cordelier, finding that the butcher had no inten-

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  But the writer to the Hebrews also had a Jewish background. To the Jews, it was always dangerous to come too near to God. `No one', said God to Moses, `shall see me and live' (Exodus 33:20). It was Jacob's astonished exclamation at Peniel: `I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved' (Genesis 32:30). When Manoah realized who his visitor had been, he said in terror to his wife: `We shall surely die, for we have seen God' (Judges 13:23). The great day of Jewish worship was the Day of Atonement. That was the one day of the whole year when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies where the very presence of God was held to dwell. No one ever entered in except the high priest, and he only on that day. When he did, the law laid it down that he must not linger in the Holy Place for long `lest he put Israel in terror'. It was dangerous to enter the presence of God; and, if anyone stayed there too long, that person might be struck dead. In view of this, the idea of a covenant entered into Jewish thought. God, in his grace and in a way that was quite unmerited, approached the nation of Israel and offered them a special relationship with himself. But this unique access to God was conditional on the observance by the people of the law that he gave to them. We can see this relationship being entered into and this law being accepted in the dramatic scene in Exodus 24:3-8. So, Israel had access to God, but only if the people kept the law. To break the law was sin, and sin put up a barrier which stopped the way to God. It was to take away that barrier that the system of the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices was constructed. The law was given; the people sinned; the barrier was up; the sacrifice was made; and the sacrifice was designed to open the way to God that had been closed. But the experience of life was that this was precisely what sacrifice could not do. It was proof of the ineffectiveness of the whole system that sacrifice had to go on and on and on. It was a losing and ineffective battle to remove the barrier that sin had erected between men and women and God. The Perfect Priest and the Perfect Sacrifice

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  I. This princess being at Bois, where she was delivered of a son, the muleteer went thither to receive his quar- terly payment, and left his wife at Amboise, where they lived, in a house beyond the bridges. There lived with them for a long time one of the muleteer's men, who had felt such a passion for her that at last he could not help declaring it ; but she, being a virtuous woman, re- proved him so sharply, threatening to have him beaten and dismissed by her husband, that he never afterwards durst address her with such language. Nevertheless, the fire of his love, though smothered, was not extin- guished. His master then being at Blois, and his mis- tress at vespers at St. Florentin, which is the church of the castle, very remote from the muleteer's house, in which he was left alone, he resolved to have by force what he could not obtain either by prayers or services. To this end he broke an opening through the boarded partition between his mistress's chamber and that in which he himself slept. This was not perceived, being covered by the curtains of the master's bed on one side, and by those of the men's bed on the other. When the poor woman had gone to bed with a little girl of twelve years old, and was sleeping soundly, as one usually does in the first sleep, the man entered the room through the opening, in his shirt, with his sword in his hand, and got into the bed with her. The moment she felt him she sprang out of bed, and addressed such remonstrances to him as would occur to any woman of honour in the like case. He, whose love was but brutal- ity, and who would better have understood the language of his mules than such virtuous pleadings, appeared more insensible to reason than the brutes with which he had long associated. Seeing that she ran so fast round a table that he could not catch her, and that, although iie 24 THE IIEPTAMERON OF THE \Ncrvel 3

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

  Many people, including lawyers, judges, and mediators, don’t understand how often in divorce seemingly rational complaints cloak powerful, irrational feelings. Or they assume that the complaints always reflect anger at the spouse and not some other deep sadness. However familiar Mrs. James’s marital troubles sounded to her attorney, her anger did not arise from the marriage per se but from a secondary loss that fueled her rage. Ideally, her grief over her mother’s sudden death and her inability to mourn should have been addressed before she moved ahead to make thoughtful decisions about her divorce and her children. This is the kind of rage that can last for decades after divorce and it is the kind of anger that leaves lasting residue on a child’s personality. As an adult, Karen is terrified of conflict because it’s so dangerous. But we’re getting ahead of our story. Becoming a Caregiver Child SIX MONTHS AFTER the divorce, Dr. James married a much younger woman whom the children liked very much. She was lively, funny, and did not try to intrude into their lives as a rule-making stepmother but rather befriended them and treated them warmly. Unfortunately, Dr. James carried some baggage into his second marriage and it, too, was stormy, featuring many unexplained weekend departures by the second wife. Three years later, she kissed the children good-bye and left to marry another man. “I was a basket case,” Dr. James told me during one of our follow-up interviews. The children were stunned, bereft of explanation for the second loss in their family life. Nor did Mrs. James find much happiness in the years after her divorce. She had several love affairs followed by a second marriage. The new husband, who ran a landscape business, could not tolerate the children and soon grew bored with his pretty wife. The marriage lasted less than five years, throwing the mother into continued turmoil. For Karen, the legacy of divorce was that she moved into the role of substitute parent for her younger siblings and of confidante and adviser to her troubled mother and father. It was an entirely new role for this child who, like many others before the divorce, had been leading a fairly protected life. Yet Karen undertook the classic role of caregiver or “parentified” child with aplomb and grace. In fact, she was a model parent. “My brother is scared of a lot of things,” she once warned me. “What is he scared of?” “Of the dark. Of going upstairs. Of being alone. I try to take care of him. I go into his room every night, so he won’t cry.” Many young girls voluntarily move to fill the vacuum created by parents who collapse emotionally, and sometimes physically, after divorce. The caregiver child’s job, as she defines it, is to keep the parent going by acting in whatever capacity is needed—mentor, adviser, nurse, confidante. The range is wide depending on the parent’s need and the child’s perception.

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

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

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  Unless his consciousness were something more than cognitive, unless it experienced a partiality for certain of the objects, which, in succession, occupy its ken, it could not long maintain itself in existence; for, by an inscrutable necessity, each human mind's appearance on this earth is conditioned upon the integrity of the body with which it belongs, upon the treatment which that body gets from others, and upon the spiritual dispositions which use it as their tool, and lead it either towards longevity or to destruction. Its own body, then, first of all, its friends next, and finally its spiritual dispositions, must be the supremely interesting objects for each human mind. Each mind, to begin with, must have a certain minimum of selfishness in the shape of instincts of bodily self-seeking in order to exist. This minimum must be there as a basis for all farther conscious acts, whether of self-negation or of a selfishness more subtle still. All minds must have come, by the way of survival of the fittest, if by no director path, to take an intense interest in the bodies to which they are yoked, altogether apart from any interest in the pure Ego which they also possess. And similarly with the images of their person in the minds of others. I should not be extant now had I not become sensitive to looks of approval or disapproval on the faces among which my life is cast. Looks of contempt cast on other persons need affect me in no such peculiar way. Were my mental life dependent exclusively on some other person's welfare, either directly or in an indirect way, then natural selection would unquestionably have brought it about that I should be as sensitive to the social vicissitudes of that other person as I now am to my own. Instead of being egoistic I should be spontaneously altruistic, then. But in this case, only partially realized in actual human conditions, though the self I empirically love would have changed, my pure Ego or Thinker would have to remain just what it is now. My spiritual powers, again, must interest me more than those of other people, and for the same reason. I should not be here at all unless I had cultivated them and kept them from decay. And the same law which made me once care for them makes me care for them still. My own body and what ministers to its needs are thus the primitive object, instinctively determined, of my egoistic interests. Other objects may become interesting derivatively through association with any of these things, either as means or as habitual concomitants; and so in a thousand ways the primitive sphere of the egoistic emotions may enlarge and change its boundaries.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  So slight an emotion as that produced by the entrance of Professor Ludwig into the laboratory was instantly followed by a shrinkage of the arms. [125] The brain itself is an excessively vascular organ, a sponge full of blood, in fact; and another of Mosso's inventions showed that when less blood went to the arms, more went to the head. The subject to be observed lay on a delicately balanced table which could tip downward either at the head or at the foot if the weight of either end were increased. The moment emotional or intellectual activity began in the subject, down went the balance at the head-end, in consequence of the redistribution of blood in his system. But the best proof of the immediate afflux of blood to the brain during mental activity is due to Mosso's observations on three persons whose brain had been laid bare by lesion of the skull. By means of apparatus described in his book, [126] this physiologist was enabled to let the brain-pulse record itself directly by a tracing. The intra-cranial blood-pressure rose immediately whenever the subject was spoken to, or when he began to think actively, as in solving a problem in mental arithmetic. Mosso gives in his work a large number of reproductions of tracings which show the instantaneity of the change of blood-supply, whenever the mental activity was quickened by any cause whatever, intellectual or emotional. He relates of his female subject that one day whilst tracing her brain-pulse he observed a sudden rise with no apparent outer or inner cause. She however confessed to him afterwards that at that moment she had caught sight of a skull on top of a piece of furniture in the room, and that this had given her a slight emotion. The fluctuations of the blood-supply to the brain were independent of respiratory changes, [127] and followed the quickening of mental activity almost immediately. We must suppose a very delicate adjustment whereby the circulation follows the needs of the cerebral activity. Blood very likely may rush to each region of the cortex according as it is most active, but of this we know nothing. I need hardly say that the activity of the nervous matter is the primary phenomenon, and the afflux of blood its secondary consequence. Many popular writers talk as if it were the other way about, and as if mental activity were due to the afflux of blood. But, as Professor H.N. Martin has well said, "that belief has no physiological foundation whatever; it is even directly opposed to all that we know of cell life." [128] A chronic pathological congestion may, it is true, have secondary consequences, but the primary congestions which we have been considering follow the activity of the brain-cells by an adaptive reflex vaso-motor mechanism doubtless as elaborate as that which harmonizes blood-supply with cell-action in any muscle or gland.