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 Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I stood frozen by the door until they had settled Hudson onto the examining table, and then cautiously approached the doctor who seemed to be in charge, asking her to please check his legs right away, that I hadn’t seen him move them yet. I held my breath waiting, and when his toes started moving, I collapsed in the chair next to Georgia. Hours later, after a series of X-rays and MRIs, a brain bleed was ruled out and we were reassured it was just a concussion. Shakily but gratefully, we left the hospital. It was 9pm and I wanted to start the drive back home. I mapped out two hours on local roads and saw we could stop at a motel for the night at that point. The skies and roads had cleared and we set off. Within an hour, both kids were sound asleep and thus could not hear the stream of curses emerge from my mouth as a sudden blizzard blew snow in every direction. The roads were pitch-black and curvy, snow coming down in white twisting sheets. I drove 25mph, leaning forward in my seat as far as I could. Georgia woke up and started asking a litany of questions: where are we, is this safe, can we stop for the night, are there any snacks in here? “Georgia!” I yelled. “Stop talking. I have to focus.” I saw a sign indicating that in ten miles there was a gas station and a motel. Hallelujah , I thought, and crept along the road, counting down every mile. When we at last pulled off the highway, the gas station was closed and the only difference I could see between this motel and the one in Psycho was that this one was called Lee’s. There was no sign of life, just a few dim lightbulbs over weathered doors and broken screens. “Mommy, do you want to stay here?” Georgia asked with trepidation. “No, we can’t stay here. It’s creepy and it looks deserted anyway.” Back on the road, slipping along in a blaze of white, it was now 1am and my eyes were fluttering. I was exhausted, terrified, and saw no end to this journey from hell. Every twenty minutes my mother would call, demanding an update on our whereabouts, and I would calm her down only to panic myself. On and on we went this way as I searched my GPS for the nearest motel and reassured Georgia with a false cheerfulness that we would be at a warm, clean motel very soon. When we pulled off the highway thirty minutes later into the motel parking lot, I laughed bitterly when I saw that it was not just closed but actually boarded up. I put my head down on the steering wheel and started pounding it with my fists. “Mommy, do you wish now that we had stayed at Lee’s Motel?” Georgia asked so sincerely that I started laughing, possibly a tad maniacally.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Only one of Paul’s authentic letters is addressed to an individual person rather than a collective assembly. But that letter to Philemon concerns precisely our present subject. It concerns Philemon’s slave Onesimus, who fled to Paul for refuge, and Paul’s advice to Philemon on what to do in that situation. It is not, therefore, an abstract treatise on slavery in general, but a practical response to one slave in particular. Paul himself is in prison, but he is still able to write to his convert Philemon about the slave Onesimus. What is absolutely important, here and hereafter, is the Christian principle presumed by Paul in asking for or even demanding the slave’s freedom. ONESIMUS. What exactly was Onesimus’s status? Was he a fugitive seeking freedom or a supplicant seeking asylum? If he were a runaway slave intending never to return, a terrible punishment would have followed his capture—flogging or branding, the mines or the galleys, the arena or the cross. If he were such a fugitive, it would have been suicidally dangerous to have gone anywhere near official Roman authority, let alone a Roman prisoner like Paul. Such an act would have endangered them both. It is much more likely that he was a supplicant seeking not permanent escape, but temporary asylum. There were two accepted options within that rubric, and in both cases the slave’s intention was crucial under Roman law. One option was flight to a god’s temple. Writing On Mercy in the mid-50s C.E. to the new emperor Nero at around the same time that Paul was writing to Philemon on love, Seneca the Younger noted that “slaves have the right to seek refuge at a god’s statue.” They could be seeking a temporary cooling-off period from an angry owner or absolute repossession from a clearly unjust one. It is in that context that he mentioned the notorious Vedius Pollio “for fattening his lampreys with human blood and ordering those who offended him to be cast into his fishpond—or should I say, his snake pit?” (1.18.2). Another option was flight to an owner’s friend. The classical example here is the anecdote about Augustus and his friend, that just-mentioned Vedius Pollio. The story is clearly an extreme case of mercy against cruelty, moral authority against physical power, might and right against might and wrong. It was told by that same Seneca the Younger in the late 40s and repeated by the historian Cassius Dio in the early 200s. Here is the incident from Seneca’s On Anger, an essay dedicated to his elder brother Novatus, better known to us as the Gallio of Acts 18:12–17, where Luke claims that Paul was tried before him. Later, of course, Seneca, Gallio, and Paul would all die at Nero’s command. The anecdote concerns what “our deified Augustus did when dining with Vedius Pollio.”

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Until Thursday maybe?” He was silent. I kissed him on the forehead. “You can’t tell anyone you’re going,” he said, pulling away from me. “They will think you’re crazy and lock you up.” “I know. I won’t tell them anything,” I said. “Good,” he said. “In the meantime, how about you come stay at the house with me for a little while? As I’m preparing. The dog is asleep. I’ve been making him sleep every day now just in case you were here so I could bring you home with me.” “No,” he said. “I’m finished with the land.” “Oh,” I said. “This is as far as I can go. I hope you understand why.” I didn’t want to understand, but I did. He had sacrificed for me. The thought of him dragging himself back across the beach that night, the danger he put himself in, was scary. Now he wanted me to sacrifice for him. But hadn’t I done that? What had this whole week been? “I’ll meet you here each night until Thursday,” he said. “And you can tell me whether you are still coming.” He looked different to me now, more bloated in the face and jaded. His eyes looked darker. I didn’t know how I felt about the fact that he needed me as much as I needed him. It scared me to be needed. “I’m coming,” I said. “Good.” We brought our faces together and kissed gently on the mouth. He put one of his hands at the base of my neck, under my chin, and tightened it—not enough to cut off my air supply, but just so I could feel him pressing a bit into my larynx. My throat felt full of pleasure and emotion. I opened my mouth wider on his and made an “ohhh” sound. We kissed wetly. “I wish we could live the rest of our lives on these rocks,” I said. “Why isn’t it possible to just live at the edge of both, the ocean and the land?” Of course I knew why. The edge was an uncomfortable and dangerous place for both of us. The rocks were nowhere to live. I had wanted him to come to my world for that same reason. “One day these rocks won’t be here,” he said. “The ocean will waste them away.” “Then we could find new rocks,” I said. “Eventually you have to choose,” he said. “That’s how the story has always been and that’s the way it will be forever.” “But why?” I asked. “Well,” he said, thinking, “I guess because the choice is always there.” 54. When I got back to the house, Dominic didn’t bark. This was odd, because he always smelled Theo on me. I went into the pantry to check on him.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Why was he pacing backwards and forwards, and why was she always afraid to ask him? Why was the hand she stretched out to the door always fearful when it came to turning the handle? Oh, but it was strong, this thing that stood between them, strong with the strength of their united bodies. It had drawn its own life from their youth, their passion, from the splendid and purposeful meaning of their passion—that was how it had leapt full of power into life, and now it had thrust in between them. They were ageing, they had little left but their loving—that gentler loving, perhaps the more perfect—and their faith in each other, which was part of that loving, and their peace, which was part of the peace of Morton. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards! Those incessant and desolate sounding footsteps. Peace? There was surely no peace in that study, but rather some affliction, menacing, prophetic! Yet prophetic of what? She dared not ask him, she dared not so much as turn the door-handle, a haunting premonition of disaster would make her creep away with her question unasked. Then something would draw her, not back to her bedroom, but on up the stairs to the room of their daughter. She would open that door very gently—by inches. She would hold her hand so that it shaded the candle, and would stand looking down at the sleeping Stephen as she and her husband had done long ago. But now there would be no little child to look down on, no small helplessness to arouse mother-pity. Stephen would be lying very straight, very large, very long, underneath the neatly drawn covers. Quite often an arm would be outside the bedspread, the sleeve having fallen away as it lay there, and that arm would look firm and strong and possessive, and so would the face by the light of the candle. She slept deeply. Her breathing would be even and placid. Her body would be drinking in its fill of refreshment. It would rise up clean and refreshed in the morning; it would eat, speak, move—it would move about Morton. In the stables, in the gardens, in the neighbouring paddocks, in the study—it would move about Morton. Intolerable dispensation of nature, Anna would stare at that splendid young body, and would feel, as she did so, that she looked on a stranger. She would scourge her heart and her anxious spirit with memories drawn from this stranger’s beginnings: ‘Little—you were so very little!’ she would whisper, ‘and you sucked from my breast because you were hungry—little and always so terribly hungry—a good baby though, a contented little baby—’ And Stephen would sometimes stir in her sleep as though she were vaguely conscious of Anna.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Several critics refer the seventh head to Nero, and ascribe to the seer the silly expectation of the return of Nero as Antichrist.1261 In this way they understand the passage 17:11: "The beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth and is of the seven." But John makes a clear distinction between the heads of the beast, of whom Nero was one, and the beast itself, which is the Roman empire. I consider it simply impossible that John could have shared in the heathen delusion of Nero redivivus, which would deprive him of all credit as an inspired prophet. He may have regarded Nero as a fit type and forerunner of Antichrist, but only in the figurative sense in which Babylon of old was the type of heathen Rome. 3. The early date is best suited for the nature and object of the Apocalypse, and facilitates its historical understanding. Christ pointed in his eschatological discourses to the destruction of Jerusalem and the preceding tribulation as the great crisis in the history of the theocracy and the type of the judgment of the world. And there never was a more alarming state of society. The horrors of the French Revolution were confined to one country, but the tribulation of the six years preceding the destruction of Jerusalem extended over the whole Roman empire and embraced wars and rebellions, frequent and unusual conflagrations, earthquakes and famines and plagues, and all sorts of public calamities and miseries untold. It seemed, indeed, that the world, shaken to its very centre, was coming to a close, and every Christian must have felt that the prophecies of Christ were being fulfilled before his eyes.1262 It was at this unique juncture in the history of mankind that St. John, with the consuming fire in Rome and the infernal spectacle of the Neronian persecution behind him, the terrors of the Jewish war and the Roman interregnum around him, and the catastrophe of Jerusalem and the Jewish theocracy before him, received those wonderful visions of the impending conflicts and final triumphs of the Christian church. His was truly a book of the times and for the times, and administered to the persecuted brethren the one but all-sufficient consolation: Maran atha! Maran atha! Interpretation. The different interpretations are reduced by English writers to three systems according as the fulfilment of the prophecy is found in the past, present, or future.1263 1. The Preterist system applies the Revelation to the destruction of Jerusalem and heathen Rome. So among Roman Catholics: Alcasar (1614), Bossuet (1690). Among Protestants: Hugo Grotius (1644), Hammond (1653), Clericus (1698), Wetstein (1752), Abauzit, Herder, Eichhorn, Ewald, Lücke, Bleek, DeWette, Reuss, Renan, F. D. Maurice, Samuel Davidson, Moses Stuart Cowles, Desprez, etc. Some1264 refer it chiefly to the overthrow of the Jewish theocracy, others chiefly to the conflict with the Roman empire, still others to both.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The strain of the sudden complete rupture with Morton had told on the faithful little grey woman. She would scarcely have known how to counsel Stephen had the girl come to her and asked for her counsel. Sometimes she would lie awake now at nights thinking of that ageing and unhappy mother in the great silent house, and then would come pity, the old pity that had come in the past for Anna—she would pity until she remembered Stephen. Then Puddle would try to think very calmly, to keep the brave heart that had never failed her, to keep her strong faith in Stephen’s future—only now there were days when she felt almost old, when she realized that indeed she was ageing. When Anna would write her a calm, friendly letter, but with never so much as a mention of Stephen, she would feel afraid, yes, afraid of this woman, and at moments almost afraid of Stephen. For none might know from those guarded letters what emotions lay in the heart of their writer; and none might know from Stephen’s set face when she recognized the writing, what lay in her heart. She would turn away, asking no questions about Morton. Oh, yes, Puddle felt old and actually frightened, both of which sensations she deeply resented; so being what she was, an indomitable fighter, she thrust out her chin and ordered a tonic. She struggled along through the labyrinths of Paris beside the untiring Stephen and Brockett; through the galleries of the Luxembourg and the Louvre; up the Eiffel Tower—in a lift, thank heaven; down the Rue de la Paix, up the hill to Montmartre—sometimes in the car but quite often on foot, for Brockett wished Stephen to learn her Paris—and as likely as not, ending up with rich food that disagreed badly with the tired Puddle. In the restaurants people would stare at Stephen, and although the girl would pretend not to notice, Puddle would know that in spite of her calm, Stephen was inwardly feeling resentful, was inwardly feeling embarrassed and awkward. And then because she was tired, Puddle too would feel awkward when she noticed those people staring. Sometimes Puddle must really give up and rest, in spite of the aggressive chin and the tonic. Then all alone in the Paris hotel, she would suddenly grow very homesick for England—absurd of course and yet there it was, she would feel the sharp tug of England. At such moments she would long for ridiculous things; a penny bun in the train at Dover; the good red faces of English porters—the old ones with little stubby side-whiskers; Harrods Stores; a properly upholstered arm-chair; bacon and eggs; the sea front at Brighton. All alone and via these ridiculous things, Puddle would feel the sharp tug of England.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  The kind of behavior that was alarming to Rome is what we usually associate with a shaman, an ecstatic or charismatic holy individual. It subverted the proper Roman control of civic religion. It negated the absolute integration of politics and religion. It threatened Caesar both as ruler, or imperator, and as chief priest, or pontifex maximus (not to speak of both as divine). Remember that in addition to the many gods and goddesses, the Romans believed very strongly in the paranormal, the mystical, the magical. They used Etruscan haruspices to divine the future, read the livers of sacrifices, and explain the flights of birds. They consulted the oral prophecies of Apollo’s priestesses and the written prophecies of the Sibylline Oracles. Horoscopes and astrology were an integral part of their scientific world. But the ambiguity of those forms made them each malleable to political control, and there was an almost theatrical procedure in incorporating them ceremonially in senatorial debates or imperial political decisions. Mary Beard, in “The Roman and the Foreign” in Shamanism, History, and the State, notes that what was perhaps most disturbing to Romans about these two preceding cases was that they threatened the “sole guardians of access to the gods” and “were effectively challenging the wider authority of that elite and the social and cultural norms they [had] long guaranteed” (178). Another set of stories narrated by both the Jewish historian Josephus and various pagan writers relates Rome’s interest in patrolling unacceptable religious behavior and particularly in controlling meetings that were or could be in some ways subversive. We allow, once again, considerable literary license on the historical details as authors tell their tales, but emphasize the very absolute reality of that underlying imperial distrust for meetings and practices hidden from the open civic arena and therefore beyond Caesar’s ordinary control. The incidents each show an underlying fear of meetings and a certain amount of xenophobia.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Physical fires could threaten property and life, of course, but could not threaten imperial rule’s integration of politics and religion into a single smoothly operating power. But there were other fires that could threaten or even subvert that collaboration, and those should not even be risked. Better no firefighters than ones who might get ideas, ask questions, and imagine remedies. The control of fire could be negotiated; the control of empire could not. Violent Pornography in Sex and War The emperor controlled the empire’s religio-politics first on the supreme level of imperial theology, next on the intermediate level of foreign religions, local cults, and all groups meeting privately for whatever reason, and finally on the individual level of marital morality and sexual privacy. Remember from Chapter 2 how Augustus tried to restore piety and morality in the most private realm of family life, and to extend his control into areas like procreation and sex with the Julian Law on Marriage and the Julian Law on Adultery. Those family values were drawn from Rome’s traditionally conservative farmer-warrior society and were later idealized as the mos maiorum, “the way of our ancestors.” Augustus’s legislation was part of the religio-political theology in which success and control abroad depended upon piety and morality at home, in which martial victory depended on sexual purity. Our present discussion, however, is not about Augustus’s moral rearmament on sex and marriage, or about agreement on its potential virtues, or even about agreement on its absolute failure. We leave aside, for here and now, the arguable good or arguable bad points of those Julian Laws to probe instead two much deeper and more deadly levels. Those laws were grounded in the standard presuppositions of broader Mediterranean or even generally universal patriarchy, in which women, as the possession of men, were to be held under male control. In Chapter 2 we spoke of Pauline equality for Christian females and Christian males in family, assembly, and apostolate. We also saw there how the post-Pauline or even anti-Pauline tradition muted that radicality back inside the normalcy of Roman patriarchy. We now look at the implications of that patriarchy in the less public and more private realm of sexuality and family. We emphatically stress that, then as now, patriarchal sexuality had and has less to do with bodily views or divine imperatives and much more to do with male manipulation, paternal control, and imperial power.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Focusing on sympathizers would not only provoke full Jews against him; it would also annoy pure pagans. Pagans might have disliked the idea of pagan sympathizers with Judaism, but they would have disliked even more the idea of pagan converts to Christianity. Judaism as “superstitious atheistic misanthropy” with an ancient country was bad enough, but Christianity as “superstitious atheistic misanthropy” without any country was surely worse. No wonder, therefore, that Paul was attacked on both sides, by both Jews and pagans, and that, as he himself admits, he was officially punished by both Jewish and pagan authorities: “Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten [by the Romans] with rods…[in] danger from my own people, [in] danger from Gentiles” (2 Cor. 11:24–26). PAUL’S CONVERTS. The emphasis on God-worshipers as Paul’s primary converts makes it unnecessary to postulate opponents following Paul from Galatia to Macedonia as a Christian-Jewish countermovement. In any given city, God-worshipers converted to Christianity would be told correctly by both other God-fearers and Jewish friends that it was theologically wiser and socially safer to convert fully, if such were their wish, but to Judaism rather than to Christianity. It was far better, God-worshiping males would have been told, to be full Jews than full Christians. As Jews they would be recognized, accepted, and protected by Rome, but as Christians they were followers of a leader executed by those same Romans. It is not necessary to have Paul followed by a countermission. His God-worshiping converts would have been inevitably pulled by their newer Pauline community in one direction and by their older synagogal contacts in another. Minor Hypothesis The second and minor working hypothesis concerns Luke and how to read Luke’s Acts on Paul. Luke’s emphasis on that sympathizer class may well explain why he himself was at the same time so familiar with Judaism, and yet opposed to it, as well as so conversant with Romanism, and yet reconciled with it. He was, most likely, originally a God-worshiper himself, and that is why he spends almost equal time insisting that Christianity is, on the one hand, the only valid heir and continuation of Judaism and, on the other, in no way a threat to Roman law and order. Luke and his family were typical wealthy sympathizers ripe for conversion from semi-Judaism to full Christianity.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Is there any chance the ground will open and swallow me whole right now, teleporting me from the faux pas I seem to have committed? “Is this too much?” I finally break the silence and ask more timidly than I intend to, eyes wide, eyebrows raised – and, I realize, somewhat ridiculously for a woman who has just brazenly undressed for a man she met an hour ago. He matches my look with eyes just as wide and eyebrows equally raised and says, to my great relief, “Definitely not too much,” while picking me up like a newlywed and half placing, half tossing me on the bed. To say this moment feels dreamlike is an understatement of epic proportion. For 27 years, since I was little more than a teenager, I have had sex with only one man and expected that I would continue to have sex with this one man for the rest of my life. Since that first night with Michael, I have given birth three times, nursed three babies, fought gravity with only middling success and just – frankly – aged. I am terrified of what Jack – who has clearly been living a full life with his Cadillac Margaritas and his motorcycle and condoms in his wallet – will find when he gets closer to my body, but I’m expecting nothing less than horror, perhaps even some pity. Within seconds he has worked his way down my body and it is no small surprise when he whispers up to me, “You have a really nice pussy.” A sound bursts out of me that I pray is more laugh than cackle, prompting him to ask what’s funny. For starters, I hadn’t known this was a word men actually used outside of lewd conversations with their friends. Second, I can’t believe he thinks this line will work on me – am I supposed to believe that one so-called middle-aged “pussy” looks qualitatively different from another? But the well-mannered girl in me rushes to apologize, “No, it’s not funny, I’m sorry, it’s so nice, thank you, it just surprised me as no one has ever told me that before.” “Really?” he asks. “Come on. No one? I don’t believe that.” “I swear,” I insist. “Don’t they all kind of look the same? I mean, more or less?” “No, not at all. They all look different, smell different, taste different. Don’t you ever take a close look at your own to know how good it looks?” “Um no, I never have,” I say, thinking the last time I got a good look was probably when I caught an accidental, horrified glimpse in a mirror when I gave birth to Georgia seven years ago. “But now I’m intrigued.” And I truly am, making a mental note to take a look later and try to see what he’s seeing – I have so much to learn. “Please be gentle,” I say, hesitating to admit the truth of this situation.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  We ride in a rickety yellow schoolbus to a location twenty minutes away from the shack, where we pick up our tubes. There are no guides on this adventure – I’ve already signed my life away on a stack of waivers – so when the bus dumps us at a spot upriver, I know that we are expected to make our way back on our own in individual tubes that look like old tires. I see people walking along the road, having emerged from the river shivering and muddy, and the guys next to us on the bus are talking about people who have died in rapids. I don’t realize that my breathing has become shallow until Hudson whispers, “Are you sure you want to do this, Mom?” “Oh yes, I’m fine, it’ll be great,” I say through gritted teeth, and he laughs because we both know that I am petrified. We collect our equipment and head toward the water, where he patiently suggests that I step to the side and let everyone else go ahead of us since it will take a long time for me to take all the baby steps I need to become immersed. Smiling, I set my tube in the water and hop right in, immediately drifting away while he stands on the river bank watching me, stunned. I am freezing, scared and uncomfortable, but I want him to see that I am strong and brave too. I am far from fearless. In fact, I have many, many fears, lists I could stay up all night writing, classifying those that are paralytic (ziplines, mice, getting water up my nose), to those that just freak me out (mayonnaise), to those I could work up the courage to face down if I was so inspired to (like this very moment). I may proceed with a whimper, not boldly like he does and like I wish I could, but I am doing it all the same. I am emboldened by the fact that I am already living through some of my worst fears and surviving, sometimes even with grace, so stepping out of my comfort zone? That’s my home now. It was easy to bow out of activities that daunted me while I was married because I felt then that I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone, but now, I am first and foremost proving to myself, and secondarily to my kids, that I am tougher and have a stronger backbone than it may have previously appeared. While Hudson watches me and I gloat in the glory of my lionheart, I crash into a pile of rocks. My tube tips over, my leg scrapes against the rough edge of the rocks and I flip under the icy water. It pierces me like nothing I have ever felt before – bracing and bone-chilling – but I understand immediately that that’s all it is, cold. I have bigger fish to fry, as I emerge sputtering and coughing.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  the basis and only support of the Christian mission to Denmark. King Gorm himself was a grim heathen; but his queen, Thyra Danabod, had embraced Christianity, and both under Rimbert and his successor, Adalgar, 888–909, the Christian missionaries were allowed to work undisturbed. A new church, the third in Denmark, was built at Aarhus. But under Adalgar’s successor, Unni, 909–936, King Gorm’s fury, half political and half religious, suddenly burst forth. The churches were burnt, the missionaries were killed or expelled, and nothing but the decisive victory of Henry the Fowler, king of Germany, over the Danish king saved the Christians in Denmark from complete extermination. By the peace it was agreed that King Gorm should allow the preaching of Christianity in his realm, and Unni took up the cause again with great energy. Between Unni’s successor, Adaldag, 936–988, and King Harald Blue Tooth, a son of Gorm the Old, there grew up a relation which almost might be called a co-operation. Around the three churches in Jutland: Schleswig, Ribe and Aarhus, and a fourth in Fünen: Odense, bishoprics were formed, and Adaldag consecrated four native bishops. The church obtained right to accept and hold donations, and instances of very large endowments occurred. The war between King Harald and the German king, Otto II., arose from merely political causes, but led to the baptism of the former, and soon after the royal residence was moved from Leire, one of the chief centres of Scandinavian heathendom, to Roeskilde, where a Christian church was built. Among the Danes, however, there was a large party which was very ill-pleased at this turn of affairs. They were heathens because heathenism was the only religion which suited their passions. They clung to Thor, not from conviction, but from pride. They looked down with indignation and dismay upon the transformation which Christianity everywhere effected both of the character and the life of the people. Finally they left the country and settled under the leadership of Palnatoke, at the mouth of the Oder, where they founded a kind of republic, Jomsborg. From this place they waged a continuous war upon Christianity in Denmark for more than a decade, and with dreadful effect. The names of the martyrs would fill a whole volume, says Adam of Bremen. The church in Roeskilde was burnt. The bishopric of Fünen was abolished. The king’s own son, Swen, was one of the leaders, and the king himself was finally shot by Palnatoke, 991. Swen, however, soon fell out with the Joms vikings, and his invasion of England gave the warlike passions of the nation another direction. From the conquest of that country and its union with Denmark, the Danish mission received a vigorous impulse. King Swen himself was converted, and showed great zeal for Christianity.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  solemn ceremonies. The Council of Nicaea, 335, anathematized the Arians, and the Council of Trent, 1563, closed with three anathemas on all heretics. 3. The Interdict398 extended over a whole town or diocese or district or country, and involved the innocent with the guilty. It was a suspension of religion in public exercise, including even the rites of marriage and burial; only baptism and extreme unction could be performed, and they only with closed doors. It cast the gloom of a funeral over a country, and made people tremble in expectation of the last judgment. This exceptional punishment began in a small way in the fifth century. St. Augustin justly reproved Auxilius, a brother bishop, who abused his power by excommunicating a whole family for the offence of the head, and Pope Leo the Great forbade to enforce the penalty on any who was not a partner in the crime.399 But the bishops and popes of the middle ages, from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, thought otherwise, and resorted repeatedly to this extreme remedy of enforcing obedience. They had some basis for it in the custom of the barbarians to hold the family or tribe responsible for crimes committed by individual members. The first conspicuous examples of inflicting the Interdict occurred in France. Bishop Leudovald of Bayeux, after consulting with his brother bishops, closed in 586 all the churches of Rouen and deprived the people of the consolations of religion until the murderer of Pretextatus, Bishop of Rouen, who was slain at the altar by a hireling of the savage queen Fredegunda, should be discovered.400 Hincmar of Laon inflicted the interdict on his diocese (869), but Hincmar of Rheims disapproved of it and removed it. The synod of Limoges (Limoisin), in 1031, enforced the Peace of God by the interdict in these words which were read in the church: "We excommunicate all those noblemen (milites) in the bishopric of Limoges who disobey the exhortations of their bishop to hold the Peace. Let them and their helpers be accursed, and let their weapons and horses be accursed! Let their lot be with Cain, Dathan, and Abiram! And as now the lights are extinguished, so their joy in the presence of angels shall be destroyed, unless they repent and make satisfaction before dying." The Synod ordered that public worship be closed, the altars laid bare, crosses and ornaments removed, marriages forbidden; only clergymen, beggars, strangers and children under two years could be buried, and only the dying receive the communion; no clergyman or layman should be shaved till the nobles submit. A signal in the church on the third hour of the day should call all to fall on their knees to pray. All should be dressed in mourning. The whole period of the interdict should be observed as a continued fast and humiliation.401 The popes employed this fearful weapon against disobedient kings, and sacrificed the spiritual comforts of whole nations to their hierarchical ambition. Gregory VII.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  So there it was. She hadn’t so much recovered as she was stopped by the law. I pictured her like a marionette, a marionette of obsessive love, with a judge pulling the strings. She was running in place, like a boxer, but could not move toward what she thought she loved. “But what if you could be with him? If you could be with him again, wouldn’t you do it in a heartbeat?” “No, I wouldn’t,” she said quickly. “Come on. What if he was standing right here on the sidewalk?” She thought about it for a second and the corners of her mouth twitched downward. “Do I still miss him? Yes, I do. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But I don’t miss what being with him took away from me.” “Like what?” “Everything,” she said. “Dignity, sanity. My life.” “What was the restraining order for anyway?” I said. “It’s embarrassing.” “Come on. I’m in child’s pose on the sidewalk.” She laughed. I’d never seen her laugh before. “Fine,” she said. “One day I saw his wife out walking. I’d never met her, only stalked her on the Internet. But there she was, power walking down Montana right in front of me. And I thought about how unfair it was that I knew so much about her, from the stalking, and she didn’t even know I existed. I just felt livid about it. And I sort of chased her down…with my Prius.” “No!” “It’s true.” “You chased her down! Like tried to run her over?” “I wouldn’t have said that at the time. But yes, that’s what I was doing.” “My God, that’s amazing.” I laughed. “It’s not,” she said. “It’s pretty disgusting.” “I suddenly like you so much more,” I said. “You shouldn’t. None of it was her fault. It was her husband’s fault. Really it was my fault.” “Huh,” I said. We were silent for a little while. “Do you want to come back inside?” she asked. “I’ll be back in a minute. I just need a little more air.” But I didn’t have the strength to go back in. And I knew that if I tried to walk home I wouldn’t make it. Laughing had given me vertigo and now the sidewalk was spinning. I felt the cement with my palm and it was cooler than the afternoon air. I wondered if perhaps I should just lie down right there. Should I just lie down with my cheek against the sidewalk, just lie down and go to sleep? If I die in that sleep I think I would be okay. But I didn’t want to die there in public in front of whoever could walk by. Suddenly I was afraid again. I took out my phone and pressed the buttons to get a car to take me home. This was just what people did now. We went from emotion to phone. This was how you didn’t die in the twenty-first century.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Courtenay’s elevation to the see of Canterbury boded no good to the Reformer. In 1382, he convoked the synod which is known in English history as the Earthquake synod, from the shock felt during its meetings. The primate was supported by 9 bishops, and when the earth began to tremble, he showed admirable courage by interpreting it as a favorable omen. The earth, in trying to rid itself of its winds and humors, was manifesting its sympathy with the body ecclesiastic.566 Wyclif, who was not present, made another use of the occurrence, and declared that the Lord sent the earthquake "because the friars had put heresy upon Christ in the matter of the sacrament, and the earth trembled as it did when Christ was damned to bodily death."567 The council condemned 24 articles, ascribed to the Reformer, 10 of which were pronounced heretical, and the remainder to be against the decisions of the Church.568 The 4 main subjects condemned as heresy were that Christ is not corporally present in the sacrament, that oral confession is not necessary for a soul prepared to die, that after Urban VI.’s death the English Church should acknowledge no pope but, like the Greeks, govern itself, and that it is contrary to Scripture for ecclesiastics to hold temporal possessions. Courtenay followed up the synod’s decisions by summoning Rygge, then chancellor of Oxford, to suppress the heretical teachings and teachers. Ignoring the summons, Rygge appointed Repyngdon, another of Wyclif’s supporters, to preach, and when Peter Stokys, "a professor of the sacred page," armed with a letter from the archbishop, attempted to silence him, the students and tutors at Oxford threatened the Carmelite with their drawn swords. But Courtenay would permit no trifling and, summoning Rygge and the proctors to Lambeth, made them promise on their knees to take the action indicated. Parliament supported the primate. The new preaching was suppressed, but Wyclif stood undaunted. He sent a Complaint of 4 articles to the king and parliament, in which he pleaded for the supremacy of English law in matters of ecclesiastical property, for the liberty for the friars to abandon the rules of their orders and follow the rule of Christ, and for the view that on the Lord’s table the real bread and wine are present, and not merely the accidents.569 The court was no longer ready to support the Reformer, and Richard II. sent peremptory orders to Rygge to suppress the new teachings. Courtenay himself went to Oxford, and there is some authority for the view that Wyclif again met the prelate face to face at St. Frideswides. Rigid inquisition was made for copies of the condemned teacher’s writings and those of Hereford. Wyclif was inhibited from preaching, and retired to his rectory at Lutterworth. Hereford, Repyngdon, Aston and Bedeman, his supporters, recanted. The whole party received a staggering blow and with it liberty of teaching at Oxford.570

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  I have still two young brothers, they alone are left and I give them to France. Bon Dieu! It is terrible being a woman, one gives all!’ But Stephen knew from her voice that Pauline felt proud of being a woman. Adèle said: ‘Jean is certain to get promotion, he says so, he will not long remain a Poilu. When he comes back he may be a captain—that will be fine, I shall marry a captain! War, he says, is better than piano-tuning, though I tell him he has a fine ear for music. But Mademoiselle should just see him now in his uniform! We all think he looks splendid.’ Puddle said: ‘Of course England was bound to come in, and thank God we didn’t take too long about it!’ Stephen said: ‘All the young men from Morton will go—every decent man in the country will go.’ Then she put away her unfinished novel and sat staring dumbly at Puddle. 2 England, the land of bountiful pastures, of peace, of mothering hills, of home. England was fighting for her right to existence. Face to face with dreadful reality at last, England was pouring her men into battle, her army was even now marching across France. Tramp, tramp; tramp, tramp; the tread of England whose men would defend her right to existence. Anna wrote from Morton. She wrote to Puddle, but now Stephen took those letters and read them. The agent had enlisted and so had the bailiff. Old Mr. Percival, agent in Sir Philip’s lifetime, had come back to help with Morton. Jim the groom, who had stayed on under the coachman after Raftery’s death, was now talking of going; he wanted to get into the cavalry, of course, and Anna was using her influence for him. Six of the gardeners had joined up already, but Hopkins was past the prescribed age limit; he must do his small bit by looking after his grape vines—the grapes would be sent to the wounded in London. There were now no men-servants left in the house, and the home farm was short of a couple of hands. Anna wrote that she was proud of her people, and intended to pay those who had enlisted half wages. They would fight for England, but she could not help feeling that in a way they would be fighting for Morton. She had offered Morton to the Red Cross at once, and they had promised to send her convalescent cases. It was rather isolated for a hospital, it seemed, but would be just the place for convalescents.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  “I have a confession to make: this is my first time having sex with a man since I’ve separated from my husband. I’m very nervous.” My unabashed act falls away at that moment despite my best efforts to keep up the façade. I am here and I am determined to stay here, but I can no longer pretend not to feel afraid. The idea of another man being inside me, a man who is not my husband, flat out terrifies me. “I understand, it’s OK. This is my first time too since breaking up with my girlfriend. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t make this getaway weekend about a woman,” he says. I am relieved by his sharing his own ambivalent feelings, impressed and grateful that he isn’t shying away from my vulnerability, but staying with me in this moment. Within seconds I am a bundle of contradictions as I tell him that what I really want is to be fucked. I’ve never used these words before and I’m fairly certain that according to how I would define what it means to be fucked – the vulgarity of the word, the lack of love and warmth and intimacy that comes with the transactional nature of it, the idea that something is literally being banged out of you – I never have been. If the opposite of being fucked is being made love to – a phrase that always makes me recoil with its cheesy evocation of ’70s love songs, giving me an image of a couple pouring enduring love and tenderness into each against the backdrop of a setting sun – I’m not certain I’ve ever been made love to either. I’ve simply had sex, the safest, most banal term I can think of; slightly clinical, devoid of all emotion, whether loving or intense, middle of the road. He hesitates and says, “First, you asked me to be gentle and now you’re telling me you want to be fucked. I’m confused by what you want.” “You and me both,” I say, attempting a light-hearted tone, trying to get back the bravado I felt a few minutes earlier when I undressed. “How about you proceed without me giving further directions and I’ll let you know if it’s too much?” It occurs to me for a fleeting moment that I don’t know this man and no one knows I’m here. I don’t even know if Jack is his real name. I’ve spent more time worrying about how this will all play out and the state of what I now know is called my pussy and maybe not enough time worrying about who this stranger is and if he reels women in by claiming to be a lonely widower. But, against my nature, I’ve boldly jumped into the deep end and I’m damned if I’m not going to swim. I may have lost my virginity thirty years earlier, but this experience feels remarkably similar.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  No doubt Livy’s account is more story and slander than history and reality, as those charges of mingling classes and sexes, of ritual murders, and of nocturnal debauchery are similar to the later and equally unbelievable charges against the Christians. But Livy’s worry about out-of-control religion was real, was widely shared among Rome’s ruling elite, and was not fabricated. There is even some archaeological confirmation that the Bacchanalia was suppressed in the early second century B.C.E. A bronze tablet was found in southern Italy displaying a senatorial decree that strictly controlled even if it did not completely forbid Bacchanalian activities. Adherents had to register any cult with the local authorities under sanction of capital punishment. It further restricted their numbers and the extent to which sexes mixed: “No man…shall seek to be present among the female Bacchants unless presented to the urban praetor and he gives permission with a senatorial decree.” In addition, “No one shall seek to perform rites in secret,” and finally, “No more than five men and women are gathered together, nor shall more than two men or more than three women seek to be present there, except by permission of the urban praetor and the senate” (ILS 18.2, 10, 19; translation from Beard, North, and Price, Vol. 2, 290–91). Another piece of archaeological evidence makes clear that the repression was real. In the Etruscan city of Volsinii, a third-century-B.C.E. grotto has been discovered that was once used for the worship of Dionysos. It was then in a publicly visible area, not concealed as in Livy, but that sanctuary was nevertheless shut down and a terra-cotta throne with Dionysiac features was smashed to pieces in the early second century B.C.E., around the time of that senatorial decree and Livy’s story. Rome restricted religious practices as it saw fit, and in particular sought to control women, the mixing of men and women, and the mingling of men and women from different classes. It was never about theological orthodoxy, but always about social control. Castration and Men As Hannibal advanced toward Rome during the Second Punic War of 218–202 B.C.E., the Sibylline Oracles were said to recommend what the Delphic oracle confirmed, namely that a sanctuary and games for the mother goddess, the Magna Mater, should be established in Rome. Rome was never averse to including foreign deities into its pantheon as a way of adding to its power and incorporating others into its empire, a process that, to stress again, also redefined what it meant to be Roman. An embassy went to Asia Minor’s Pergamum, secured the Magna Mater’s black meteorite stone from the Phrygian sanctuary at Pessinus, and brought it and its cult to Rome, but that initial attraction soon turned to rejection.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  I got on top of him. We kissed each other with open mouths, sucking at each other like we were eating mussels. Then we kissed slow and gentle. I noticed that Dominic had stopped barking. How long could Theo stay with me? Would we be able to bend time in any direction we wanted, or would reality have to come snapping back? As long as we still had one more moment I felt safely enshrouded by a womb of light, protecting me from the nothingness. But as I lost myself in his kissing, I felt a strange darkness creep through that barrier and overwhelm me. I was part of him again, twins again, and I felt the surge of the ocean—the real one or maybe the ocean of consciousness—but this time the ocean was scary and dark, and I couldn’t breathe. I felt nervous, responsible for him, like I needed to pretend I was fine. He flipped me over. Now I was trapped under a strange fish. He stopped kissing me. “Are you okay?” he asked. I was the one who was supposed to feel comfortable, in this home, on land. It had been so brave of him to come, to do something so risky, but it was me who was suddenly afraid. I lied and said I was good. My sister’s home looked like a strange submarine to me, spinning in a vast ocean. There was nowhere for it to land. We kissed some more, but I was being consumed by terror and scared that I would float away or drown. Just let yourself go, I said to myself. I wondered if the darkness and sadness were coming from him or from me. I stopped kissing him again. “You have experienced great sadness,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “But I suppose we all have.” “But you’re so intuitive. I can really feel you, I can feel the way you feel. You feel other people’s pain, don’t you?” “I guess I do,” said Theo. I wondered if he could feel what I was feeling. Did he know that if I stayed there any longer I might choke on this new darkness? “Let me check on Dominic to make sure he’s okay,” I said. Dominic was asleep on the floor of the pantry. Everything was peaceful in there, as though there were a halo of okayness. Suddenly I wished it were just me and Dominic. Now the dog seemed like less responsibility than the merman. Why had I been so urgent to get Theo back here? Perhaps it was only because I thought that I couldn’t. Maybe this was my way: now that he was here, that I knew I could get him here, I didn’t want it. Maybe the group was right. I was intimacy-averse. I took a deep breath and gathered myself. I couldn’t just leave Theo in the other room. “Do you want something to eat?” I called. “No, just come back in here.”

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “Maybe we should just break up.” As soon as I said it, I knew it was an empty threat, something I tossed out. It was how I felt, but it was only a bit of it—a percentage. Maybe 22 percent. That 22 percent was loud right now. It wanted to punctuate the heavy evening ennui, the waiting-to-be-rescued. I wanted drama if only to sever the nothingness of things breaking, the heaviness of having to live in the world, dependent on things, dependent on others, waiting for roadside assistance with a talking chin. I wanted to have him try to stop me, to intervene. Maybe I wanted to hurt him a little bit. Mostly I wanted to hear him say no. But he didn’t say no. He didn’t say no at all. He looked at me, sighed, and said calmly, “I think you might be right.” And with that the chins disappeared. And all I saw now were his strong shoulders, his deep blue eyes. So many times when we were fucking, his belly bouncing off me, I tried to look only at his eyes—to conjure the attraction I had felt when we first met. Now, suddenly, it was all I could see. “Or at least,” he said, “maybe we can try a separation for a little while.” Now my words had had the opposite effect of my intentions. Or maybe not opposite, exactly. With Jamie taking the bait, but running with it in a completely unexpected direction, he had certainly put a pin in my boredom and annoyance. Fear is a great intoxicant in its own way. Anyone hooked on its adrenaline can tell you that. But in taking this risk, this angry set of words, one sentence, I had lost control of my own narrative. Now he owned the power. I was at his mercy. I thought the only way to get it back would be to continue testing him. Play it cool, don’t panic. “Okay,” I said. “If that’s what you want.” He didn’t want that, he said. But he wasn’t sure what to do. He said he felt that he had not been able to satisfy me in the relationship for a long time. “Satisfy me or satisfy yourself?” “Well, maybe a little of both,” he said. The AAA man arrived. Jamie did most of the talking. I could hear what the man was saying but I couldn’t really take it in because I was processing what had just happened. I should have kept my mouth shut, I thought. But in another way, I felt that I had been true to myself, I just wasn’t sure to which self. The self that wanted to shake things up so as to receive attention and doting? The self that needed to be shaken up, because the ache of living in a body was so fucking dull? Some higher self that said he wasn’t right for me? The 22 percent of me that was an asshole?