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 John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Still, with all due respect, Jesus differed profoundly from John by proclaiming a paradigm shift within the standard expectations of their contemporary apocalyptic eschatology. I will proceed with three steps. I look first at the Baptist’s vision of God’s advent under three basic aspects. It is imminent; that is, it will happen very, very soon. It is interventionist; that is, it will involve transcendental divine power—alone. It is violent —not of course with human violence, but with the divine violence of an avenging God who comes punitively against any opposition, whether Jewish or Roman. Next, I note the various stories about the difference between John and Jesus in the gospel texts. In other words, similarities and differences, comparisons and contrasts between John and Jesus are not just my invention, but already there in the gospel tradition. Finally, I compare Jesus’s message with John’s under those same three aspects of the proclamation about God’s kingdom on earth. But with Jesus, as distinct from John, that divine advent will be present rather than imminent, collaborative rather than interventionist, and nonviolent rather than violent. I begin with John’s own message. What, asked John, was delaying God? Why did God not act immediately? Why not now? Because of the people’s sins, said John, in a not very original response—you will recall Deuteronomy 28 from Chapter 4. What, you can imagine those accused people asking, can we do? This is where John got very, very original by inventing a great symbolic or sacramental reenactment of the exodus from Egypt. Here is his program. First, they would go out into the desert east of the Jordan. Next, they would pass through the river, and as its waters washed their bodies, repentance would wash their souls. Finally, they would emerge into the promised land as a newly purified people and, then, surely then, God would act to clean up the mess of the world, because then, surely then, God would have no reason to delay any longer. God’s advent was imminent, an any-day-now affair. God’s imminent advent was also, of course, interventionist in that a purified and holy people could certainly prepare for it and maybe even hasten its coming, but it would still be an act of transcendental intervention by God alone. No wonder, therefore, that when “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins,…people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (Mark 1:4–5). John’s vision was interactive, operational, and very, very persuasive. Furthermore, John’s apocalypse/revelation was about the imminent intervention of the avenging God. Just listen to his invective: When he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  This case involves one of the nastiest threats ever placed on the lips of Jesus. Although it is not present in Mark, it appears once in the Q Gospel: I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the heirs of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matt. 8:11–12; Luke 13:28–29; from Q ) Matthew uses that single example from the Q Gospel not just once, but five times; it is escalated to a refrain that concludes five of the parables of Jesus: [1] Parable of the Weeds (13:24–30, 36–43): They will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (13:42) [2] Parable of the Net (13:47–50): Throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (13:50) [3] Parable of the Great Dinner (22:1–14): Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (22:13) [4] Parable of the Servants (24:45–51): He will cut him in pieces and put him with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (24:51) [5] Parable of the Master’s Money (25:14–30): Throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (25:30) That turns those parables into warnings or negative examples of impending punishment. We already saw that Mark severely criticized the leadership of the Christian community and exalted the nameless over the named within it. Yet the challenge in his parable to the Twelve never quite escalated to the level of rhetorical violence in Matthew. Those preceding three cases all concerned threatening invective and involved Matthew’s acceptance of the Q Gospel’s rhetorical violence on the lips of Jesus. I turn now to my third point’s second step to assess the ongoing importance of that escalatory invective throughout Matthew. I use a fourth case study, but it is not just one of rhetorical violence by Jesus. It is created directly by Matthew himself and placed not on the lips of Jesus, but of his opponents themselves. My fourth case study concerns the execution of Jesus. In recording what was said by Jesus, Matthew consistently escalates the level of verbal abuse. But something similar happens with things done to Jesus, especially in his trial and execution. I look here at only one example, but it is one that has had terrible results in subsequent history, results ranging from theological anti-Judaism to racial anti-Semitism. I begin with Mark’s version to see what was there for Matthew to change: [1] Now at the festival he used to release a prisoner for them, anyone for whom they asked. Now a man called Barabbas was in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  So it was in this doubtful frame of mind that Luther returned home to Mansfeld in June 1505. Exactly what he was thinking and hoping for during this time, we cannot know. He might simply have wanted time away from his studies and from the thoughts that had been affecting him. Or he might have been hoping to screw up the courage necessary to tell his father he had been thinking better of his life’s course. Or perhaps his father had been the one to initiate the trip, summoning his son home for a reason we do not know. Some have speculated that now that Luther was on the way to getting his law degree, it was time to plan a marriage to a suitable woman from Mansfeld, perhaps the daughter of one of his father’s business acquaintances. Of these things, we do not know, but we do know that Luther’s fifty-three-mile trip back to Erfurt would not be completed until his life had changed forever. CHAPTER TWOLightning StrikesI saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.1 —Jesus of Nazareth HARD BY SOME fields outside the village of Stotternheim, there is a humble red monolith set on end, standing as a memorial to what happened at that spot on the second day of July, 1505. It was on that humid summer day that Martin Luther, fatigued from the very long journey and only six miles from Erfurt, found himself overwhelmed by a sudden, tremendous thunderstorm. He had been riding a horse, but it seems that at this juncture he dismounted. The falling rivers of water and the moaning wind—and the deafening cracks of thunder and lightning around his head—caused him to tremble with the realization that at any moment, like so many others caught in storms like this, he might instantly be summoned from this life. In those moments, death and hell were suddenly horribly palpable, and the twenty-one-year-old Martin Luther did not meet these grim possibilities with equanimity. The raging electrical storm so frightened him that all of the worst phantasms of his demise and damnation were before him, as real as and more frightening than the raging storm, and the great weight of it all simply became unbearable. When an impossibly close blast of lightning struck, Luther collapsed to the wet ground in abject terror and cried out to Saint Anne. “Hilf du, Sankt Anna!” he shouted. “Help me, Saint Anne!” And then into the rain and wind he shrieked the words that would change his life and the future of the world, words none heard but him. “Ich will ein Mönch werden!” he shouted. “I will become a monk!” He shrieked them as a solemn vow, meaning that if Saint Anne helped him now, helped him to survive this terror, he would repay her great mercy by devoting the rest of his born days to being a man of God, to taking holy orders and forever leaving the world he had lived in until that time.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  He spat in a coffee can and pointed out my window, saying, Look at this cathedral we been give here. Sun was spattering the indigo water with silver sequins. Girls who seem to have stepped from chewing gum commercials jogged in bikinis along the shoreline. It was a lobster-salad-eating crowd. I said, They say it never rains here hardly at all. With two fingers, he stroked the edges of his thick mustache like some diminutive Chinese emperor about to sign a death order. He said, We’re not made to wallow in pleasure. Pleasure is joy’s assassin. He paused to spit in the coffee can. He said, I can see past this day to the time when these same waves will be made of blood. You believe that? Sounds like you know the Bible, I said. That I do. I’ve studied on it pretty good. You don’t mind, he said, brightening up—you don’t mind, I gotta make a quick stop by a friend’s house right this side of San Clemente. With that statement, his manner altered. He smiled, showing the pointy incisors of a gerbil. Which change hit my adrenal system like jumper cable voltage. He was suddenly trying to be charming. For the first time, I could see how wildly high he was. I must have had heatstroke to miss it. His eyes were tar pits, his body slick with sweat. This wasn’t cannabis sativa high, nor heroin nod-off high, nor John Lennon’s imagine-all-the-people-living-in-one-world high. This was eyeball-boiling, grind-your-teeth-to-bloody-stubs high. In short, crystal meth high. Sorry, I said. I gotta make my old man dinner. Why, I thought, why didn’t I just go to the midwestern college I’d weaseled my way into early admission, then chickened out of? A premed student I had a crush on went there. At the time school had seemed repellently conventional. Plus the education fund Mother and Daddy had—all our lives—reassured us we’d have turned out to be nonexistent. Mostly, though, I knew I’d fail in such a place, having once secured a D in art class—even, maybe not accidentally, given that Mother was a painter. Sam tucked his long black hair behind his ear, the smile still rigid on his face. He said, This is a cool scene. You’ll dig it. My friend used to jam with the Grateful Dead. (A claim ubiquitous among West Coast guitar players circa 1972.) Cars zipped by. I bent over and pretended to rummage through my big fringed purse as though I were a woman who clipped recipes. Lifting my knees to block my right hand from sight, I got a tight grip on the door handle. He said, This won’t be but a minute. We slowed down for a curve, and I scanned the empty road behind us before I hoisted the handle and hit the door. Nothing happened. The handle was floppy loose. It could have spun in a tractionless circle like a pinwheel, no connection to the mechanism.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  But in folklore—as with Princess Turandot’s story—they were often lethal contests in which failure to guess correctly could get you a coffin and success could gain you a kingdom. They were archetypal struggles between ignorance and knowledge and, as so often in life itself, ignorance could get you killed. FOUR QUESTIONS STRUCTURE THIS chapter, and each leads onward from the preceding one’s answer. First, did lethal riddle parables—like those in Turandot —exist in the Mediterranean world before Jesus. Second, are Jesus’s own stories best seen as such riddles with potentially profound consequences—either negative or positive? The answer to that question involves a close reading of Mark 4—as promised at the end of the Prologue—and Mark clearly answers it affirmatively. Third, why did Mark interpret Jesus’s parables as riddle parables. Finally, was that understanding actually the intention of Jesus or only the (mis)interpretation of Mark? THIS CHAPTER’S FIRST QUESTION is whether such potentially fatal linguistic contests as just seen in Turandot existed within Jesus’s own Greek and Roman environment or his own Jewish and biblical tradition. Two very famous cases answer that question with a very definite and very emphatic affirmative response. The first case is that of Oedipus and the Sphinx . Sophocles’s ninety-year life spanned the entire fifth century BCE at Athens. The greatest play of this great tragedian is—in Aristotle’s famous judgment—Oedipus the King, of 429 BCE . The great Oracle at Delphi warns King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes that their son will kill his father and marry his mother. Laius orders a servant to kill their newborn son, but the servant simply abandons him on a hillside. He is saved and reared by some shepherds and later adopted by the king and queen of Corinth. When he eventually discovers that they are not his real parents, he consults that ever helpful Delphic Oracle, who gives him the same warning about killing his father and marrying his mother. He accordingly decides not to return to Corinth, but heads instead—you got it—for Thebes. On the way there he has a row with another man and kills him. All unknown to him, he has just murdered his father, Laius. And so, halfway into his terrible destiny, he arrives at the gates of Thebes. The entrance is protected by the Sphinx, a human-headed lioness, who poses a riddle to every traveler wishing to enter the city. The penalty for incomprehension is to be eaten alive by the monster. That was clearly bad for trade, so the city grew lean as the Sphinx grew fat. Here is that lethal contest: Sphinx’s riddle: “What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night?” Oedipus’s response: “Human beings: as infants, they crawl on all fours, as adults, they walk on two legs, and, in old age, they rely on a walking stick.” He is, of course, correct, and the Sphinx immediately kills herself.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Violent resisters often won the first round against the local trip-wire troops, but massacre ensued when imperial reinforcements arrived. But, I insist once again, for both Israel and Ireland nonviolent and violent resistance were both in play. I knew that from Ireland, and it helped me to recognize it—but not to invent it—for Israel. I certainly look, therefore, at Jesus and his first-century Jewish context with Irish eyes unsmiling, and I do so in these three narrowing circles of context. In the wider context, Jesus lived in the lull between two violent rebellions against imperial oppression in his Jewish homeland. The first one was under Augustus at the start of the Julio-Claudian imperial dynasty in 4 BCE . The second was under Nero at its dismal end in 66 CE. In the narrower context, Jesus lived in the midst of a series of nonviolent reactions to Roman control. Those involved the census for taxation in 6 CE, the provocative actions of Pilate in 26 CE, and the attempt by Caligula to have his divine statue erected in Jerusalem’s Temple in 40 CE. In the narrowest context of all, we are back where this chapter started. Jesus was born around 4 BCE and grew up in Nazareth, a village that would have “survived” the legionary attack on its adjacent city, Sepphoris. The Roman Empire, with its military power, was not some distant quasi-mythical entity as Jesus grew up in Nazareth. I cannot imagine that Rome’s legionary incursion was not the main topic of song and story, legend and interpretation among the villagers. That is, of course, beyond proof or disproof, but I would wager my sense of history on its accuracy. I imagine that legionary attack as establishing a terribly clear date in reference to which all other events were labeled “before,” “during,” or “after” in a world that did not run by our ticking clocks and turning calendars. I imagine—that is to say, I cannot not imagine —those villagers speaking about the “Year of the Romans” and Jesus listening and learning. I propose, therefore, that Jesus, growing up in the years after that military incursion around Nazareth in 4 BCE , would have heard over and over again about the year the Romans came . From all that talk, what did the young Jesus decide about God and Rome, homeland and empire, rebellion and resistance, violence and nonviolence? Where was Israel’s God on the day of Rome’s revenge? Was the biblical and covenantal God of Israel violent or nonviolent? In Chapter 5 I asked you to hear the word “sin” and see what content came exclusively, primarily, or just especially to your mind. If “sin” meant for you a list of “sins,” what was your list and were there priorities within it? I now ask you to do the same with the word “temptation.” When you hear it, what content comes immediately to mind?

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Once again, in considering the life of a late medieval man, we must set our modern, materialistic prejudices aside, and not only those prejudices but the equally anachronistic idea that if God is to be considered, it is always as a benevolent and loving figure. In Luther’s day, far more emphasis was put on God as an eternal judge, one whose holiness was almost always offended by us, so that if we were especially lucky, we might find ourselves in purgatory instead of hell. But even if we found ourselves in purgatory, we might face a steep and painful climb of literally thousands or perhaps even millions of years until we were properly purged of our deep-rooted sinfulness. Who knew what steep and half-infinite climb one might face? We know that Luther was too smart not to consider these things deeply and soberly and too sensitive not to have been bothered by them, often to the point of debilitating depression, which he called Anfechtungen. In fact, the word Anfechtung really has no English equivalent. It has as its root the verb fechten, which means “to fence with” or “to duel with.” Fecht is also obviously etymologically related to the word “fight.” So Luther’s Anfechtungen meant to do battle with one’s own thoughts and with the devil. But for him this was something so horrible that it’s difficult for us to fully comprehend.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  That sounded like an invitation—not to substitution by Jesus for them, but to participation with Jesus by them . That sounded initially like a challenge to come to Jerusalem and get crucified alongside Jesus. But, by the end of Mark’s triple sequence, that fellowship in the horror of Roman crucifixion was reinterpreted for the Twelve as a fellowship in the paradox of servant-style leadership. There were, for Mark, other ways of dying to imperial normalcy than by execution. No doubt “taking the cross” might still mean martyrdom for them as leaders of the kingdom movement. But what Jesus emphasized now was less about how they were to die as criminal leaders than how they were to live as servant leaders. In its two-thousand-year history, by the way, Christianity has always had more of the former than the latter among its leadership. Jesus’s challenge still holds true for us today. I turn now to the second point in this chapter’s third section. It concerns Mark’s positive challenge, set over against that preceding sequence of three negatives. If those named “apostles” or “disciples” all fail seriously, are there any ideal or even successful Christians—and Christian leaders—in Mark’s story? If all the named leaders—Peter, James, and John—fail dismally, is the author of the gospel the only proper, correct, adequate leader? In what follows, watch the dialectic between the named and the nameless, between failure and success, between rejection and reception, and, evenhandedly, between female and male. Also remember, of course, that “Mark” is the name tradition gave to the anonymous author of the first gospel. That author is also nameless. The last major section in Mark’s gospel is framed by deliberately similar, but very surprising language. Each frame starts with Jesus “going ahead” of the disciples and ends with “they were afraid”: Galilee to Jerusalem: They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid . (10:32a) Jerusalem to Galilee: “Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid . (16:7–8) The opening frame involves twelve named males, while the closing frame involves three named females . The latter are specified like this: There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matt. 3:7–10) Luke, for example, had two serious problems with that account of John’s message. First of all, he found it so negative that he added his own more positive message after it: The crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” (3:10–14) But that was only Luke’s first problem. His second problem was even more serious. In our present New Testament, John’s message about the advent of God was turned into one about the advent of Christ. But Christ did not act like an avenging presence, did not look like the wrath to come. Metaphors of cutting down trees and burning chaff with fire did not seem appropriate for him. So, once again, Luke created a conversation to remedy the discrepancy. John’s disciples reported to him in prison that Jesus had just healed the Capernaum centurion’s slave and raised the Nain widow’s son (7:1–18). So John sent them to Jesus with this question: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (7:19). Jesus tells them: “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (7:22–23). John was an apocalyptic eschatologist, that is, a prophet with a revelation of the imminence of God’s avenging advent, God’s punitive intervention to transform a world grown old in evil. I emphasize once more that John did not advocate human violence or armed rebellion. Any eschatological violence was the prerogative of God. John’s own nonviolent resistance is certified by Herod Antipas, who both executed John—because he was rebellious—and refrained from rounding up his followers—because he was nonviolent. That was how Romans or Romanizers handled nonviolent resistance to imperial law and order. We must, however, start with—and always remember—this: John’s prophetic vision was as incorrect as it was persuasive. For what intervened was not an avenging God, but an avenging tetrarch; what came was not the kingdom of God, but the cavalry of Antipas.

• From The John Dominic Crossan Essential Set (Jesus; The Birth of Christianity; The Power of Parable; The Greatest Prayer) (2004)

  But very soon he had to lead two other legions to its aid. That meant twelve thousand more elite troops accompanied by two thousand auxiliary cavalry and fifteen hundred auxiliary infantry. He was also accompanied by “Aretas of Petra,” from the Transjordanian Nabateans, “who, in his hatred of Herod, also sent a considerable force of infantry and cavalry” (Jewish Antiquities 17.287). When Varus reached his staging area at Ptolemais on the Mediterranean coast near modern Haifa, he divided his command. He himself led the main force southward to Jerusalem, where “the number of those who were crucified on the charge of revolt was two thousand” (Jewish Antiquities 17.295). But, for my present purpose, Varus had first “turned over part of his army to his son and to one of his friends, and sent them out to fight against the Galileans who inhabit the region adjoining Ptolemais. His son attacked all who opposed him and routed them, and after capturing Sepphoris, he reduced its inhabitants to slavery and burnt the city” (17.288–89). From the tiny hamlet of Nazareth you went first up over the ridge and then around ancient swamps on the valley floor four or five miles to reach the city of Sepphoris. Josephus does not tell us what happened to Nazareth when that legion destroyed nearby Sepphoris in 4 BCE . But we can easily imagine it from the account in his Jewish War of what happened to other small villages as the Roman legions and their Arab allies continued south toward Jerusalem: They encamped near a village called Arous [in Samaria, which was] sacked by the Arabs. Thence Varus advanced to Sappho [in Judea], another fortified village, which they likewise sacked, as well as the neighboring villages which they encountered on their march. The whole district became a scene of fire and blood and nothing was safe against the ravages of the Arabs. Emmaus, the inhabitants of which had fled, was burnt to the ground by the orders of Varus. (2.69–70) That is what would have happened to Nazareth and to any of Sepphoris’s adjacent villages in 4 BCE . Grain, produce, and livestock would have been taken, and farms, houses, and trees destroyed. Those unable to hide successfully would have been killed if male, raped if female, and enslaved if young. In a review of one of my books, a fellow scholar said: “The model that seems always to have been in Crossan’s mind when discussing Jesus is that of Ireland, his own country, which the British conquered and colonized, exploiting the indigenous population.”1 I freely admit that I am unable not to see certain parallels between the attempts of those two small battered peoples—Israel in the first century and Ireland in the nineteenth—to maintain dignity and identity against those great empires that attempted to control them. Here is one such fundamental parallel. Both peoples resisted nonviolently as well as violently. Nonviolent resisters often died as unarmed martyrs.

• From Come As You Are (2015)

  I think that’s right. If women’s sexuality is a garden, I think of love as the rain and stress as the sun, drawing the garden upward, nourishing and challenging at once. It wouldn’t do to have too much of either, but in the right balance—when we are “just safe enough”—the garden thrives. Some plants want lots of water, some want less; some gardens are shady, while others are full of bright sun all day. Olivia, with her sensitive accelerator, has a sunny garden full of plants that delight in the sun—she’s practically a desert, with Joshua trees and blackfoot daisies thriving under a hot, cloudless sky. But even for her, too much of a good thing can cause her garden to wilt and fade. Camilla, by contrast, with her relatively insensitive accelerator, has a montane forest of broadleaf ferns and mosses that require less light and more time to grow lush. Meanwhile, Merritt’s sensitive brakes make her garden wilt in the mildest drought, and Laurie’s garden feels like it’s been subjected to global warming, stripped of its native climate faster than she and her plants can adapt, and she fears the whole garden is dying. And she’s afraid that if she loses her garden, she might lose her partner. Listening to and respecting the fundamental messages that your body is trying to send you—“I am at risk,” “I am broken,” “I am lost”—is essential to creating the right context for sexual pleasure to thrive. Allowing time and space for your body to move all the way through the cycle, to discharge stress and to connect wholly with your partner, is an essential part of creating a context that grants maximum access to pleasure. Western culture does not make this easy; it builds walls of shame and doubt between us and our essential selves, between “at risk” and “safe,” between “broken” and “whole,” between “lost” and “home.” In the garden metaphor, the cultural messages about women’s sexuality are very often the weeds, encroaching in ways no one chose but that everyone has to manage. And that’s what chapter 5 is about. tl;drStress reduces sexual interest in 80–90 percent of people and reduces sexual pleasure in everyone—even the 10–20 percent of people for whom it increases interest. The way to deal with stress is to allow your body to complete the stress response cycle. Trauma survivors’ brains sometimes learn to treat “sex-related” stimuli as threats, so that whenever the accelerator is activated, the brakes are hit, too. Practicing mindfulness is an evidence- based strategy for decoupling the brakes and accelerator. In the right context, sex can attach us emotionally to new partners or reinforce emotional bonds in unstable relationships. In other words, sex and love are closely linked in our brains—but only in the right context.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Now I knew why he’d been Sir Galahad with the door. He downshifted, and the car’s loose hull rattled around us. His solvent breath was so strong, one match and he’d belch out dragon flames. He said, It’s the truth that saves us, but some people’s truth is bitter gall. You’re a woman, Mary, with the curse of Eve on you. I wondered where were the ubiquitous squad cars that had plagued my friends and me. The doughnut-munching bastards. You wanna see my truth? Sam asked. I firmly doubted I had a choice. I said of course I’d be honored to see his truth, wise in the arcana as he seemed to be. Then I waited for him to raise up the hatchet or samurai sword with which he would surely split my skull to the gizzard. With some ceremony, Sam drew from under his shirt a suede pouch on a leather cord slung around his neck. Opening it, he drew out a thin object a few inches long and wrapped in red silk with tiny Chinese ideograms on it. On his lap, he unfolded it with one hand— a small brownish-black burnt-looking thing like an umbilicus. A root or charm, I thought. That’s my twin brother’s finger, he said. I looked at him, white stuff at the sides of his mouth, flecks of tobacco on his bottom lip. I felt my right hand on the floppy door handle. Sam had been on a tarmac bagging bodies unloaded from a helicopter fresh from the carnage of the Tet Offensive. He’d peeled back one tarp and looked down into his own face. Which was his brother’s, of course. Mary, he said, pray the Lord you never see a face like that. One half was like the inside of a roast you left outside. Just blown slap off. His ear had stayed perfect, though. I wanted something of my brother’s power. And I’d had a vision before I got shipped in-country. In a big cathedral, he was, wearing his dress blues. He was praying over my casket. That’s what was supposed to of happened. Instead, he got his face shot off. The wind eked in the window seals, and the car shook. What scared me most was the crying part of Sam had been cauterized already. He was a living scar. All my life I’d met people bearing wounds far deeper than my own. I’d thought California would change me, heal me, free me from attracting all that. And now I’d flagged it down and climbed in a car with it. We rounded the curve into Dana Point. The car lunged up to a light. It shuddered and died. I jammed my skinny arm through the window slot, slick as a length of licorice, and yanked the door open. I didn’t so much jump from the car as eject myself out on the roadside slope. The effort launched me downward, sliding. Over gravel and scrub oak, rocks scraping my shins.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Therefore the Holy Spirit through the pope is kind to us insofar as the pope in his decrees always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.Those priests act ignorantly and wickedly who, in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penalties for purgatory.Those tares of changing the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory were evidently sown while the bishops slept (Mt 13:25).In former times canonical penalties were imposed, not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.The dying are freed by death from all penalties, are already dead as far as the canon laws are concerned, and have a right to be released from them.Imperfect piety or love on the part of the dying person necessarily brings with it great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater the fear.This fear or horror is sufficient in itself, to say nothing of other things, to constitute the penalty of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.Hell, purgatory, and heaven seem to differ the same as despair, fear, and assurance of salvation.It seems as though for the souls in purgatory fear should necessarily decrease and love increase.Furthermore, it does not seem proved, either by reason or by Scripture, that souls in purgatory are outside the state of merit, that is, unable to grow in love.Nor does it seem proved that souls in purgatory, at least not all of them, are certain and assured of their own salvation, even if we ourselves may be entirely certain of it.* Therefore the pope, when he uses the words “plenary remission of all penalties,” does not actually mean “all penalties,” but only those imposed by himself.Thus those indulgence preachers are in error who say that a man is absolved from every penalty and saved by papal indulgences.As a matter of fact, the pope remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which, according to canon law, they should have paid in this life.If remission of all penalties whatsoever could be granted to anyone at all, certainly it would be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to very few.For this reason most people are necessarily deceived by that indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of release from penalty.That power which the pope has in general over purgatory corresponds to the power which any bishop or curate has in a particular way in his own diocese and parish.The pope does very well when he grants remission to souls in purgatory, not by the power of the keys, which he does not have, but by way of intercession for them.* They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.*

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Luther had intended to stay at the Wartburg and finish this monumental work, along with a number of sermons—or postils—that he had been working on. In fact, even when he planned to return at Easter, he was not expecting to resume his pastoral duties, but rather hoped to hide away in or near Wittenberg so that he could finish polishing the German New Testament with the help of his linguistic superior Melanchthon—and after that to leap into taking on the Old Testament, with the help of Melanchthon and numerous others. But the news from home stirred his pastor’s heart and made him think that an earlier return must be considered. He saw that the church in Wittenberg sorely needed him in this official capacity. The city council included his dear friend Lucas Cranach and the goldsmith Christian Döring, and when they summoned him, he saw it as nothing less than a call from God himself. For Luther, of course, that was everything. He would not fear what man could do, neither Duke George nor the emperor nor the pope. If God called, God would protect him, and if God did not protect him, that would be God’s business. His business was to obey. On February 24, he wrote to Frederick. In his inimitably jolly way, Luther joked that with all of these new troubles the elector—who was so extremely enamored of relics—was to be congratulated on now getting the biggest relic of them all, and at no cost whatsoever. It was “the whole cross, together with nails, spears, and scourges.”18 Ha-ha. It was Luther’s firm belief that those who supported the Gospel would suffer and be attacked and would in their way be crucified. It is not clear whether the elector appreciated the joke. And he certainly did not think it safe or wise for Luther to return. On February 28, a bailiff was dispatched to the Wartburg, to apprise Luther of Frederick’s sincere request that he not return to Wittenberg. Frederick did not think Luther deserved to be turned over to the imperial or papal authorities, despite the Edict of Worms, because Frederick felt that Luther had not yet gotten the fair hearing and disputation that his honest concerns merited. But if Luther returned, Frederick would feel pressure to hand him over. Frederick hoped to avoid these political problems for some time yet. And no matter what, Luther’s life would be endangered if he left his redoubt “among the birds.” But by now Luther had made up his mind that God wished him to return, and he could not be dissuaded. CHAPTER FOURTEENLuther ReturnsMen can go wrong with wine and women. Shall we then prohibit wine and abolish women? The sun, the moon, and stars have been worshiped. Shall we then pluck them out of the sky? —Martin Luther

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Appearance at Augsburg, 1518, Aetatis 34Luther was grateful not to be on his way to Rome, but the threat of what might happen to him in Augsburg was no less grave. It was every bit as important as any meeting in Rome could be, because at Augsburg Luther would at last face the very representative of the Holy Father himself, a cardinal who had all of the power of the pope in his hands to do what he liked with this monk who had brought shame to the church far and wide. Luther well knew that he might in a few days be condemned to death. His faith was strong, but from time to time deeply troubling thoughts coursed through his mind too. Years later he recalled his thoughts as he walked on the road to what might have been his own execution. “Now I must die,” he had thought. “What a disgrace I shall be to my parents!”2 Cardinal Cajetan, who represented the pope at the diet, was a brilliant and illustrious theologian of that time. He was born Jacopo de Vio in the then-Neapolitan city of Gaeta, but as so often is the case with figures from this period, the nomenclature referring to him is complicated. When at the age of fifteen he took holy orders, Jacopo took the name Tommaso and was thenceforth known as Tommaso de Vio. But because people were often referred to by their place of origin, he was also known as Gaetanus—or by a version of that, Cajetan. So he is now mainly remembered as Thomas Cajetan or Cardinal Cajetan. What makes him particularly interesting as the figure chosen to deal with Luther at Augsburg is that during the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17), Cajetan played a leading role and was the one to bring about a decree claiming that the pope’s authority was indeed superior to that of church councils. After this, Pope Leo X made him a cardinal, and he remained a powerful and important figure in the church for many years.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  During dinner on that night—in what would be his last meal—the conversation rather macabrely and presciently turned to whether friends would be able to recognize each other in the next life. Luther held that they would. Following dinner, he retired to his chamber to pray at the window and this time brought his two younger sons to join him. But very soon thereafter, he experienced serious chest pains and coldness. Pastor Coeleus and Jonas quickly went to him and, knowing this was serious, rubbed him with hot towels. Meanwhile, Aurifaber went to find Count Albrecht and his wife, Anna, who arrived quickly, bearing what was believed to be a unicorn’s horn, which at that time was associated with divine salvation and with the purity of Mary. In fact, it was the horn of a narwhal, which in those days was still taken for the actual horn of a unicorn. Count Albrecht grated some of the horn into a glass of wine, for it was thought to be a particularly powerful restorative, and one of his councillors, Conrad von Wolfframsdorf, took a spoonful of it, perhaps to allay Luther’s fears that it did not contain poison, for his fears of being poisoned were now with him always. The wine and narwhal horn were administered to him, and then Luther rested, sleeping for an hour or so on a daybed in the sitting room. When he awoke, he was surprised to see that he was not alone and that others were still sitting up, although of course they were doing so only because of their concern for him. He arose and walked unaided to the bathroom, saying, “Into your hands I commit my spirit. You have redeemed me, God of truth.” This prayer from Psalm 31:5 was often spoken by those who believed themselves to be dying, not least because these were the last words Jesus himself spoke from the cross before he died (Luke 23:46). After this he shook everyone’s hands and bade them goodnight, returning to his bedchamber. But Jonas and Luther’s sons Martin and Paul sat in the room with him, as did his servant Ambrosius Rutfelt.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  And the further Luther looked into this specific issue of papal primacy in preparation for the debate, the more horrified he became. In March 1519, he focused especially on the subject, tracing it carefully in canon law and church history, and the more he uncovered, the more convinced he was that he must pull this pernicious lie out root and branch. Because during this time he wasn’t yet sure that Duke George would allow him to debate, he published his Resolution on the Thirteenth Thesis Concerning the Power of the Pope. He was sure the papacy was not against God’s will, but neither did he think it was ordained by God, as the church now maintained. All he read made it clearer and clearer that it was a human institution. It was not possible from Scripture to find any evidence that it had been divinely ordained. This was the issue, and by declaring otherwise, the current pope—and such as Cajetan and Eck—had put the papacy on impossibly rotten foundations. If one loved the church, one must fix this, and Luther would do so. That month seems to have been a turning point for Luther. It was on March 13 that he whispered to Spalatin, “I know not whether the pope is the Antichrist himself or whether he is his apostle, so miserably is Christ (that is, the truth) corrupted and crucified by the pope in the decretals.”7 It is clear that the fire of this growing crisis and now the specific pressure to prepare for this debate were forcing Luther theologically forward into places he had never intended to go. But in it all, he somehow understood that the Lord’s hand was pushing him along. And Luther’s years of teaching the Bible gave him an unwavering confidence as he proceeded. He had started with indulgences but was now confronting the thorniest of all issues, that of papal authority itself. He came to see that the Roman church, while certainly an institution of God, could not plausibly claim utter authority as it had been doing for four hundred years. And certainly not from Scripture. For Luther, it was faith (pace Romans 1:7) that created the Christian and the body of Christians, called the church. Wherever faith existed in Christ, all followed, including beyond the Roman church, which is to say in the Eastern Greek church as well.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Their journey next took them through Thuringia to Luther’s beloved Eisenach. But that evening, Luther suddenly became very ill, with a high fever. It seemed so serious that his friends were concerned for his life. A doctor was called and did what doctors often did in those days when they had no real idea of what malady they were treating: he bled Luther and then prescribed a hearty dose of schnapps. Evidently, however, these things did the trick, and eventually Luther felt at least well enough to continue the journey. But he was convinced that all of these things were the work of the enemy of mankind and truth who was raging against God’s purposes, and these disturbances only confirmed to him that nothing must prevent him from getting to Worms. Myconius, who wrote a chronicle of Luther’s journey in 1541, said that Luther roared defiantly that even if the fires against him should reach from Wittenberg and Rome up to heaven itself, he would still answer the summons and appear at Worms, and once there he would not fail to “kick the Behemoth in the mouth between his big teeth.”2 He was well aware that he was a man on a mission. When they arrived at Frankfurt, Luther was feeling rather well again, and played the lute for his companions. Spalatin was by this time already in Worms, and having taken in the atmosphere there, he was gravely concerned for Luther. So he wrote to his friend advising him not to come, saying that condemnation and then death seemed the only possible outcome. But Luther was resolute. He had set his face toward Worms; replying to Spalatin from Frankfurt, he defiantly wrote, I am coming, my Spalatin, although Satan has done everything to hinder me with more than one disease. All the way from Eisenach to here I have been sick; I am still sick in a way which previously has been unknown to me. Of course I realize that the mandate of Charles has also been published to frighten me. But Christ lives and we shall enter Worms in spite of all the gates of hell and the powers in the air. I enclose copies of the Emperor’s letters. It is not wise to write further letters until I first see in person what has to be done, so that we may not encourage Satan, whom I have made up my mind to frighten and despise. So prepare the lodging. Farewell.3 Spalatin later wrote, “He wants to come to Worms. Even if there be as many Devils there as tiles on the roof!”4

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  15 Journey of the Magi Who is there? I. Who is I? Thou. And that is the awakening—the Thou and the I. —Paul Valéry Women in my bloodline don’t pop out babies like pieces of toast. We’re narrow-hipped. Birthing tends to drag on—long days of false labor followed by a good twenty hours of exorcism-quality dismay. We’re less known for patience than drive, and being flat on our back is anathema. Lecia’s own son took so long to find daylight that his father—during a grisly period called transition that involves much howling—excused himself, sending Mother into the room as backup. Lecia had been cursing him and God and most of the nurses. Mother stood bedside a few minutes, then—as Lecia huffed for air—held up her handbag, saying, Look at this cute little purse I bought. At which, my sister screamed, Get her the fuck out of here! Mother, later outraged at Lecia’s overreaction, said, I was just trying to take her mind off it. In my case, delivery takes a full twenty-two hours—forty-four if you count the false labor that kept me manically rocking in a chair all night like some bulbous figure in a horror movie. At the hospital, they inject various mickeys into my IV, telling me I’ll be asleep in a minute, but that’s only one of many lies—like banning the word pain in favor of discomfort, conveniently reducing the hospital’s need to deal with it while treating the mother like a piece of furniture. In natural childbirth classes, with women sprawled around the room on wrestling mats, the men had seemed mystified by the process. One night in the car going home, Warren said, When are we supposed to learn the stuff that stops the pain? We already have, I said. That’s what the breathing exercises are. My God, he said, that won’t accomplish anything. Almost two days into my own marathon, I enter the half-drugged, hallucinogenic state that causes the room I lie in to bulge like a fishbowl around me. Staring at the calico curtains hung against the vomit-green walls to make the birthing room look homey, I keep echoing Oscar Wilde’s last words: Either this wallpaper goes, or I do. The big disappointment? The needle painfully jabbed into my spine to block pain quote-unquote didn’t take. This is the breezy parlance of the anesthesia dude. He stands in the door with clip-on sunglasses flipped up from his specs. He’s clearly on his way out. Whaddayou mean, I roar at him, whaddayou MEAN it didn’t take! I’m incapable of speaking without exclamation points and italics and any available typographical inflation. In between cogent sentences, the nurse with the tiny white head and gargantuan blue eyes—real crocodile-sized peepers—leans over me, saying, Breathe... Warren’s head appears alongside hers, his face bulging forward like a drop of water squeezed from a turkey baster. Breathe... I holler, DO IT AGAIN! The nurse is telling me it’s too late. You didn’t say it might not take, I say.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Before Lightning StrikesAfter taking his master’s degree, Luther was prepared to begin the study of law. Until this juncture in his life, he had been precisely fulfilling his father’s expectations, and now, by entering the study of law, he would take the final step toward becoming a lawyer. But perhaps something about having arrived at this point gave him pause. Perhaps the finality of it struck him. But whether the idea to enter a monastery had ever been in his head, as we guess it must have been, it must have been jarred loose to swim into his ken at this juncture. In any case, the mythic notion that his idea of entering the monastery was exclusively delivered by a lightning bolt from the sky near Stotternheim can hardly be the whole story. Like much else in the more fanciful and idealized versions of his life, it is far more folk legend than fact. That one day he was fear stricken and blurted a vow, and by some powerful sense of obligation decided to see it through, can hardly be the whole truth. Luther had been planning on studying the law and becoming a lawyer and had now at last stepped through this final door. He had purchased his Corpus Juris—the expensive book every law student must have to study—and was now seemingly incorrigibly on his way. But in addition to Luther’s apprehending the finality of his life’s course at this time, we may imagine that other things affected him now too. It is easy for the modern mind to forget that at all times in history before our own the imminence of sudden death loomed heavily, especially for anyone thoughtful or sensitive, and Luther was both. Already at Erfurt the Anfechtungen* that would famously affect him as a monk began to rear its hopeless head, causing him to wonder disturbingly about his own eternal fate and whether, were he to die suddenly, he would be welcomed into the loving arms of God or, more likely, be condemned to fall everlastingly into the taloned clutches of grotesque devils.