Gratitude

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 Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I don’t remember the answer I gave to that Stanford student that day, but I do know that I’ve been attempting to answer his question ever since. I’m grateful for the uncertainty. The intervention I hope to make through my own scholarship is to articulate a politics of pleasure that positions pleasure not only as desirable goal and a social and political imperative, but also as an under-theorized resistance strategy for black women in the United States and the Caribbean. In doing so, I hope to make a contribution to black feminist thought that encourages recognition of black women’s pleasure (sexual and otherwise) as not only an integral part of fully realized humanity, but one that understands that a politics of pleasure is capable of intersecting, challenging, and redefining dominant narratives about race, beauty, health and sex in ways that are generative and necessary.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Dani. The parenting stuff is mostly on my mind, but there have been so many times before that as well. Bad breakups that were actually moments of profound transformation waiting to happen. You helped me see the opportunity. Helped me trust that it was all for the good. You’ve helped me get out of jobs that I’d outgrown. Jodie helping me move my entire apartment in a day and a half? With my daughter in tow? Adrienne whisking me off to Mexico to heal and find some pleasure after a heartbreak. I can’t imagine going through my aunt’s illness and subsequent death without you two. There are a lot of ways the woedom has been a lifeline. amb. Jodie moving me out of my apartment in Oakland when I was in total denial. She showed up and somehow organized the entire building and, within an hour, everything was packed, heading somewhere. I struggle with boundaries. My love is oceanic, I want to be everywhere. The woes are a place I can trust to ask, is this a mistake? Well … can I still make this mistake? No? Bet. It really is sisterhood. Dani has seen me through my depressions, through the times when I nearly got trapped in a bad life. Jodie has seen me through so much shame. Both of y’all save me over and over. I am tearing up writing this. But the woes keep me focused on my most excellent life. Jodie. When people ask me what my spiritual practice is, I include woes. This level of interdependence and co-evolution through woedom is a practice that changes you and creates greater possibility. Dani. The woedom gives me what I think a lot of people believe is possible only through romantic relationship: unconditional love and the feeling of being known. amb. Well, I am so grateful y’all were willing to share so vulnerably in this way, I know that’s more my thing. Thank you for the risk, I love y’all so, so, so much.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Seven years later, I have a much deeper understanding of the ways that my desires for partnership and intimacy have also been shaped by my childhood trauma. My desire for gender transition did serve as an important guide for my politics. That desire was powerful and unwavering in the face of oppression and violence on the institutional and individual levels. Additionally, that desire led me to learn about queer, antiracist, and anticolonial politics in an effort to better understand my own heritage as a mixed-race first-generation Colombian-American woman born in the United States. I see now how my long-term partners in relationships did provide me with a great deal of emotional support, and I am profoundly grateful for their care and patience. Often, being in a relationship with a trans woman can mean putting yourself into a small degree of the danger she is facing. On too many occasions to count, I had partners stand up for me verbally or even physically, putting themselves in harm’s way for my safety. Additionally, I had partners who provided emotional and financial stability through some of my most difficult times. I will never forget these kind acts of generosity. Today I am profoundly grateful for the healing I have found in the past few years. Once I was stable in my career, I was able to shift my focus to emotional healing. Thanks to a nonhierarchical, spiritual community of women that I encountered, I began to be able to see the connections between my childhood trauma, the violence I had experienced, and my own choices. I have, in recent years, finally been able to build a deep self-love and self-respect that I did not learn from queer communities or radical political communities, where I often felt further devalued, excluded, and objectified. I have found a refuge in people committed to healing, service, and sobriety, and this has given me the tools to question my desire and my part in putting myself in situations that caused me to feel devalued. By finding a supportive community, I have come to understand how my desires in intimate relationships have been shaped by trauma and have often re-created those traumas. I agreed to contribute to this anthology with the hope of sharing my experience and strength in finding new, healthy forms of desire and intimacy. Now I see that I have to actually love myself. Through devotion to self-care, meditation, and the practice of self-love and directing lovingkindness, or metta, toward myself, I am starting to feel a self-love that provides me a basis to feel love for others and receive love that is more than just validation. In her essay “Situated Knowledges,” Donna Haraway put it simply when she said “we are not immediately present to ourselves.”80 This is especially true for survivors of trauma and for people who have generations of trauma history, such as the traumas of alcoholism, abuse, war, and colonization.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Serge was cooking for the journalist who was coming to dinner, a woman from Libération. Fiona volunteered to chop something, and Serge set her up at the cutting board with a knife and six small onions. He said, “Women always like no-good men. Why is this?” “Maybe there aren’t any good men,” Fiona said. And then she said, “I don’t mean that.” Serge asked if she was surprised Kurt had been arrested. She supposed she was. She said, “I’m happy, actually. Is that odd? It’s—maybe it’s gratifying. That he got in trouble.” Not that she cared if Kurt was unhappy, but she wanted Claire to see it, how she’d hitched herself to the wrong adult. Richard excused himself to nap, and Serge put on some Neil Diamond and poured Fiona a glass of red wine she hadn’t asked for. Fiona prided herself on never tearing up over onions. A Marcus family ability, according to her father, and indeed Claire had proved impervious as well. Maybe the only thing the entire family had in common. Nora always claimed there were two distinct genetic strains in the family—the artistic one and the analytic one—and that you got one set of genes or the other. It was true that Fiona’s father, who had probably wanted to hand down his orthodontic practice one day, had absolutely no idea what to do with Nico, even before his sexuality came into play. Lloyd Marcus tried to turn his son into a chess player, tried to teach him to keep score at baseball games. All Nico wanted was to trace the comics out of the Sunday paper, draw spaceships and animals. It was their mother who’d tried, in her ineffectual way, to remind Lloyd that his Aunt Nora was an artist after all, and hadn’t there been a poet on the Cuban side of the family tree? But it fell to Nora to send Nico a camera for Christmas, a set of fine-tipped artist pens, a book of André Kertész photos. Nora would look at his work and critique it. Fiona herself had no artistic skill—her strength was in the thousand logistical necessities of running the resale shop—but when Claire came along, when she started sketching realistic horses at age five, when she sat at nine to draw the downtown skyline from memory, Fiona understood she was that kind of Marcus. The problem was that Nora and Nico were gone, the alleged poet long forgotten. There was no one to send her to for a weekend drawing lesson. Fiona did her best, buying her charcoal pencils and gummy erasers, taking her to museums. But she couldn’t give her what Nico had gotten from Nora. If Richard had stayed in Chicago, maybe he’d have filled that role. Serge said, “Richard is glad you’re here. He thinks you’re good luck for the show.” Fiona scraped the chopped onions into the bowl by the stove.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Claire flipped the plate over as if she were checking the price. A thoughtful, resigned silence. “You might not resolve this all in the gift shop,” Julian said. Claire said, “I can’t control where you live. If you move here, you move here.” It was as good as Fiona could hope to get from her, for now. “Can I interject something,” Julian said, “as we head for the escalators? Because it’s probably time to head for the escalators.” Claire blinked and put the plate down, and they walked out across the broad lobby. He said, “Everyone knows how short life is. Fiona and I know it especially. But no one ever talks about how long it is. And it’s—does that make sense? Every life is too short, even the long ones, but some people’s lives are too long as well. I mean—maybe that won’t make sense till you’re older.” He stepped onto the escalator first, and he rode backward to face them. He said, “If we could just be on earth at the same place and same time as everyone we loved, if we could be born together and die together, it would be so simple. And it’s not. But listen: You two are on the planet at the same time. You’re in the same place now. That’s a miracle. I just want to say that.” Claire was behind her, so Fiona couldn’t see her face, but she could feel her energy—she’d had so much practice, and it was all coming back—and at the very least, she could feel that Claire wasn’t annoyed, wasn’t rolling her eyes and wondering who this asshole was with his motivational speech. As for herself, she was grateful. She hadn’t remembered Julian being this smart, but she hadn’t been smart back then either. Thirty years could do a lot. They were nearing the top. “Turn around,” she said, “before you trip.” F 1992 or the first time in three weeks, he could breathe. Not well, but well enough that he could get out whole strings of words, whole thoughts and sentences. When he’d been so certain, only yesterday, that this was it, that each breath had only one or two more behind it. Part of him thought he should hoard each breath, save it for tomorrow, but mostly he wanted to talk while he still could, say things he wouldn’t be able to say later. Fiona was in the chair beside the bed. Eight months pregnant, barely, and still so small—if she’d worn a baggy enough shirt, you wouldn’t have known. When she got to nine months, she’d promised him, she wouldn’t risk the drive from Madison.

• From Cultish (2021)

  To my wonderful editors, Karen Rinaldi and Rebecca Raskin, for your continual belief and investment in me. And to the rest of my fabulous, enthusiastic Harper Wave team: Yelena Nesbit, Sophia Lauriello and Penny Makras. To my literary agent, Rachel Vogel, who actually belongs to the next evolutionary level above human. I feel so lucky to have you as a representative and friend. Big thanks as well to Olivia Blaustein, for your constant championing. And to my book launch guru Dan Blank, for “just adding the water.” To my inspiring, supportive family, to whom I owe everything: my parents, Craig and Denise, and my brother, Brandon. Thank you for passing on the curiosity and skepticism. Special thanks to you, Mom, for helping with the title. To you, Brandon, for reading and nitpicking. And to you, Dad, for the many riveting cult stories. As always, I wait on the edge of my seat for your memoir. To my sweet, encouraging friends, mentors, and creative collaborators, especially Racheli Alkobey, Isa Medina, Amanda Kohr, Koa Beck, Camille Perri, Keely Weiss, Azadeh Ghafari, Joey Soloway, and Rachel Wiegand. Rae Mae, can you believe that creepy conversation we had at Pioneer Cemetery in early 2018 actually became a book? Wild. To my wonderfully engaged community of Instagram “followers”: You make the internet feel like a decent place to be. To Katie Neuhof for the killer author photo, and to Lacausa Clothing and Sargeant PR for the incredible dress. To my right-hand woman, Kaitlyn McLintock—this book could not have happened without your dedication, reliability, and sunshiny mettle. To my faithful canine and feline assistants: Fiddle, Claire, and especially my buddy David. I couldn’t have gotten through this year without you, my coccolone. And finally, to Casey Kolb. My soul mate, best friend, duet partner, sounding board, quarantine-mate, and one-man fan club. If there were a cult of CK, I’d join in a heartbeat. NotesPart 1: Repeat After Me . . . i. head of all Western Sikhs : Steven Hassan, “The Disturbing Mainstream Connections of Yogi Bhajan,” Huffington Post , May 25, 2011, http://huffpost.com/entry/the-disturbing-mainstream_b_667026. their shopping bags : Chloe Metzger, “People Are Freaking Out Over This Shady Hidden Message on Lululemon Bags,” Marie Claire , October 11, 2017, https://www.marieclaire.com/beauty/a28684/lululemon-tote-bag-sunscreen/. ii. rubbernecking : SBG-TV, “Can’t Look Away from a Car Crash? Here’s Why (and How to Stop),” WTOV9, May 1, 2019, https://wtov9.com/features/drive-safe/cant-look-away-from-a-car-crash-heres-why-and-how-to-stop. iii. Civic engagement is at a record-breaking low” : Alain Sylvain, “Why Buying Into Pop Culture and Joining a Cult Is Basically the Same Thing,” Quartz, March 10, 2020, https://qz.com/1811751/the-psychology-behind-why-were-so-obsessed-with-pop-culture/. loneliness an “epidemic” : Neil Howe, “Millennials and the Loneliness Epidemic,” Forbes , May 3, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilhowe/2019/05/03/millennials-and-the-loneliness-epidemic/?sh=74c901d57676. since the time of ancient humans : M. Shermer and S. J. Gould, Why People Believe Weird Things (New York: A. W. H. Freeman/Owl Book, 2007). feel-good chemicals : Jason R. Keeler et al., “The Neurochemistry and Social Flow of Singing: Bonding and Oxytocin,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9 (September 23, 2015): 518, DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00518.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  The principles of harm reduction shaped my own substance use in ways I believe have kept me functional, moderate, and intentional in spite of my inherited legacy of, and tendency toward, addiction. They’ve also shaped the way I think of inviting other people into change and transformation. Here are some of the key principles of harm reduction from the Harm Reduction Coalition, which shaped my thinking: Accepts for better and or worse, that licit and illicit drug use is part of our world and chooses to work to minimize its harmful effects rather than simply ignore or condemn them.… Calls for the non-judgmental, non-coercive provision of services and resources to people who use drugs and the communities in which they live in order to assist them in reducing attendant harm.… Affirms drugs users themselves as the primary agents of reducing the harms of their drug use, and seeks to empower users to share information and support each other in strategies which meet their actual conditions of use. Recognizes that the realities of poverty, class, racism, social isolation, past trauma, sex-based discrimination and other social inequalities affect both people’s vulnerability to and capacity for effectively dealing with drug-related harm.71 I want to acknowledge early and often that pleasure is that “I’m alive” feeling that can intersect with addiction, control, coping, escape, trauma, and so many other experiences of harm. In my twenties, I lived in the grip of a stealthy depression that hid itself well. I did too much of everything and hid my true intake of drugs, alcohol, sugar, and tobacco. Even when I couldn’t find the right Alice in Wonderland cocktail, even when I was paranoid or lonely in my high, I was grateful for the options.72 I was and am so deeply moved by the Harm Reduction Coalition’s approach of nonjudgement, of dignifying humans responding to the harmful choices of our species, and the understanding that each person has to determine their own power and choose their own harm-reduction practices. Harm reduction is personal and can include active use or twelve-step abstinence. One time when I was high, as a young pothead, a new friend noticed the terror in my face and helped me break with the paranoia I used to experience by reciting this quote popularly attributed to Mark Twain: “I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” They told me to put my thoughts on what I wanted to happen. Since then, most of my high experiences have been amazing. If I notice paranoia or anxiety creeping in, I remind myself that my mind is not the world and the future hasn’t happened yet. I notice if I need to step away from others and recalibrate. I smoke much-higher-quality weed. And if all of that doesn’t work, I turn and ask the paranoia what it needs me to attend to.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  Thank you to my agent Julia Kardon for being my first supporter. You told me during our first phone call that we’d be team Year of the Tiger, and I’m so grateful to have you rooting for me. Thank you to my editors, Victory Matsui and Nicole Counts. Victory: Thank you for leading me to the tail and the holes, and for being the best reader I could possibly imagine. You asked me what my characters desired, and in writing those desires, I learned what I wanted, too. Nicole: Thank you for midwifing this story into the world, and for being the most incredible advocate. Your enthusiasm, generosity, and support mean everything to me. Whenever I doubt myself, I think about your comments in the margins of my manuscript. Thank you to everyone on the One World team for their support and brilliance: Chris Jackson, Cecil Flores, and so many others. Thank you to Dennis Ambrose for his copyediting expertise. And my deepest gratitude to Andrea Lau for designing the inside of the book, and to Michael Morris for giving me the cover of my dreams. Thank you to Rachel Rokicki, Claire Strickland, Jess Bonet, and the entire publicity and marketing team—your enthusiasm and creativity are an inspiration to me. Thank you to Mikaela Pedlow for your passion and support—I’m so grateful to the Harvill Secker team for their warm reception. Thank you to Deborah Sun De La Cruz and the Hamish Hamilton team—your enthusiasm for this book has buoyed me. My deep gratitude to Mei Lum and the entire W.O.W. family for welcoming me and for showing me the power of storytelling and intergenerational community. Thank you to Rattawut Lapcharoensap for your advice, support, and for all of our conversations, literary and otherwise—you saw things in my work that I didn’t even know were there. Thank you to Jennifer Tseng for reading a very messy early draft and seeing so much in it. Many, many thanks to Rachel Eliza Griffiths for reading my very first essay and telling me to write a whole book. I did, and it’s all because you believed I could. Thank you to Marilyn Chin, whose book made this one possible. And to Maxine Hong Kingston, Jessica Hagedorn, Toni Morrison, Dorothy Allison, Larissa Lai, Helen Oyeyemi, and so many more. Thank you to my Agong. You deserve everything. Thank you for your smile and the way you held your hands behind your back. I miss the paper pinwheels and the garden with the tree and the chili bushes. Wherever you are, I hope your pigeons are with you and that they’ve finally made it home. ABOUT THE AUTHOR K - M ING C HANG was born in the Year of the Tiger. She is a Kundiman Fellow.

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

  The idea of a religious year, in distinction from the natural and from the civil year, appears also in Judaism, and to some extent in the heathen world. It has its origin in the natural necessity of keeping alive and bringing to bear upon the people by public festivals the memory of great and good men and of prominent events. The Jewish ecclesiastical year was, like the whole Mosaic cultus, symbolical and typical. The Sabbath commemorated the creation and the typical redemption, and pointed forward to the resurrection and the true redemption, and thus to the Christian Sunday. The passover pointed to Easter, and the feast of harvest to the Christian Pentecost. The Jewish observance of these festivals originally bore an earnest, dignified, and significant character, but in the hands of Pharisaism it degenerated very largely into slavish Sabbatism and heartless ceremony, and provoked the denunciation of Christ and the apostles. The heathen festivals of the gods ran to the opposite extreme of excessive sensual indulgence and public vice.707 The peculiarity of the Christian year is, that it centres in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and is intended to minister to His glory. In its original idea it is a yearly representation of the leading events of the gospel history; a celebration of the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ, and of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, to revive gratitude and devotion. This is the festival part, the semestre Domini. The other half, not festal, the semestre ecclesiae, is devoted to the exhibition of the life of the Christian church, its founding, its growth, and its consummation, both is a whole, and in its individual members, from the regeneration to the resurrection of the dead. The church year is, so to speak, a chronological confession of faith; a moving panorama of the great events of salvation; a dramatic exhibition of the gospel for the Christian people. It secures to every important article of faith its place in the cultus of the church, and conduces to wholeness and soundness of Christian doctrine, as against all unbalanced and erratic ideas.708 It serves to interweave religion with the, life of the people by continually recalling to the popular mind the most important events upon which our salvation rests, and by connecting them with the vicissitudes of the natural and the civil year. Yet, on the other hand, the gradual overloading of the church year, and the multiplication of saints’ days, greatly encouraged superstition and idleness, crowded the Sabbath and the leading festivals into the background, and subordinated the merits of Christ to the patronage of saints. The purification and simplification aimed at by the Reformation became an absolute necessity.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Dani. I’m an only child, so my daughter doesn’t have biological aunties or uncles on my side. She has a fabulous aunt on her dad’s side. She also has you two, and that is incredibly important to me and to her. In January, when we all made the trek to Jodie’s home, adrienne came to me in Cincinnati to make it easier to take a long plane ride west with my daughter. That’s love. Jodie had toddler-proofed her home to make it easy for the little one to roam around and feel immediately comfortable, which she did. Because you both have been coming around since she was first born, she knows and loves you. So I was able to leave her with you two while I did work interviews. I can’t stress how huge this was, what a gift it was to me. amb. Your child is the gift. She is so smart and unique and self-determined and interesting. And watching the two of you together, the connection between you is palpable; this is how every child should be loved. Dani. And I love that you two just invite yourselves to come to Cincinnati to be with us. I may forget to issue a formal invitation, but without fail you’ll say, “Hey, how do these dates look for you?” And then you come and slide right into our rhythms and help me and love up on her. It has made parenting so much more joyful and doable. You’re a central part of the community that is encircling us with love and care, and I deeply appreciate that. AMB. I feel like each of us have said at different points that woeship has saved our lives—I know it’s saved mine. Could you share a story of how this connection has saved your life? Jodie. We create harm reduction spells around each other. Being able to intervene with trust and care for that person’s well-being. We have each other’s backs so hard. I text my woes to celebrate all the things, but I can also trust my woes’ judgment when I know I am struggling for perspective. I can share it, doesn’t matter what, and we can reflect on it. I told my woes about some of the bravest, and possibly pettiest, things I have ever done. I can forget that, but they will always remind me who I am. I am my best bio/chosen family member, ED, auntie, and lover because I work hard with my woes to be one.

• From The Art of Memoir

  Acknowledgments Wild gratitude to agent extraordinaire, Amanda Urban; HarperCollins publisher, Jonathan Burnham; and my incomparable editrix, Jennifer Barth, who steered me out of so many fogs. Final readers Mark Costello, Larissa MacFarquhar, and Geoffrey Wolff also kept me rowing when I was weary. All honor to your names. Appendix | Required Reading—Mostly Memoirs and Some Hybrids The asterisked memoirs are books I’ve taught. Does this mean they’re better written? Absolutely. *Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams and Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres. *Allende, Isabel. The Sum of Our Days. *Als, Hilton. The Women. Amis, Martin. Experience. *Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Antrim, Donald. The Afterlife. *Arenas, Reinaldo. Before Night Falls. Ayer, Pico. Falling Off the Map. *Saint Augustine. Confessions. Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. *Batuman, Elif. The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them. *Beah, Ishmael. A Long Way Gone. Beck, Edward. God Underneath: Spiritual Memoirs of a Catholic Priest. *Bernhard, Thomas. Gathering Evidence. *Black Elk. Black Elk Speaks. Blow, Charles M. Fire Shut Up in My Bones. Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential. Boyett, Micha. Found: A Story of Questions, Grace, and Everyday Prayer. Brave Bird, Mary. Lakota Woman. Brickhouse, Jamie. Dangerous When Wet. *Brown, Claude. Manchild in the Promised Land. *Buford, Bill. Among the Thugs and Heat. Burgess, Anthony. Little Wilson and Big God: Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess. Busch, Benjamin. Dust to Dust. Cairns, Scott. Short Trip to the Edge. Carr, David. The Night of the Gun. Carroll, James. Practicing Catholic. *Chaudhuri, Nirad C. The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. *Chatwin, Bruce. In Patagonia. Chast, Roz. Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? *Cheever, Susan. Home Before Dark.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  There was a major ecstasy drug bust in the city, after which other things were packaged and sold as ecstasy, but it was speedy miserable stuff, so that was the end of that era. But by then I had found an amazing therapist who was ready to catch me when I jumped, and I began to talk. Later, I found somatics, authentic relationships, bodywork—I began to shake off the demons that trauma had left on me, in me. And the more I felt, the more I could see the numbness I had been living in, the majority of myself dormant, with just patches of bright. And I am so grateful for those patches, when I look back and see how they lit the way to this moment, this functional self, this growing sense of agency, this high that can be boosted with pills or drugs but exists outside of any alteration in my state: this pleasure. section five: Pleasure as Political Practice We are what we practice. We become what we do over and over again. In this chapter, we will look at practices beyond the realm of sex and drugs that are crucial for living into a pleasure politic. First we look at a series of practices for healing toward pleasure, how we practice intentional resilience and recover access to pleasure once harm has happened, or during illness. Then we will look at wholeness in movement spaces—how we bring to our justice work all of our fullness, our pleasures, our bodies, humor, fashion, music, everything we are. Finally we will look at how we craft liberated relationships. We can learn to fight for freedom and transformation with and for our romantic partners, our friends, our families. And we can bring that intention, and those practices, to everyone we meet, to every relationship, political, organizational, and intergenerational. 75 I often think about how fun it would be to be high with Rihanna. She gives me the impression that her head is on straight, that she prioritizes pleasure and fun and knowing her body, loving up her body. I also like how she stays in dignity, in her independence, in her hard work. Basically, I love Rihanna. #fentyforever #neverafailurealwaysalessonSub-section: The Politics of Healing Toward PleasureFor oppressed people to intentionally cultivate pleasure is an act of resistance. —Ingrid LaFleur Feeling from WithinA Life of Somatics For the past nine years, I have been learning to feel, to connect with others while feeling, and to begin to understand what is possible when a collective of humans is not afraid to feel life together.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Nenna. I have done many things, but what I am most focused on is continuing to cultivate a unique space called Feelmore Adult Gallery. The idea of opening an adult store came to me in a dream. Feelmore gives me a unique platform to stand upon in order to be a verified source when I point out opportunities in my community. No one really listens unless you have a stake in the game. Being the founder has given me compassion, understanding, and a responsibility to inform so many others in so many ways that help my community. Feelmore’s motto, “It’s More Than Just Sex,” is honest and real. There are so many issues that come up because of sex and intimacy in the world that I wanted to create a place that just lets others reset and educate themselves on their own desires. It was a challenge to have a unique sex shop, aka sacred space, in Oakland that is truly welcoming to all. Second, I am just myself. I had to work on loving all that I am in order to encourage and empower others. amb. Can you tell us how you came to be on this path? Nenna. Life is truly an adventure. The path came to me by simply looking at the industry and viewing it through a gap analysis lens. It was missing me … my ideas, my freshness. For now, this is what I have desired to put my everything into. It isn’t easy, and days are long, but I am grateful. But I want more. amb. You say the idea came to you in a dream—were you already in the practice of pleasure or adult films? When did you know this was a calling? Nenna. When I had the dream, that was day zero for me. I had never been “in the practice of pleasure or adult films.” My producing adult films came after. It isn’t a calling, per se. I am just maximizing my time and doing good things with my gifts and talents while in this industry. amb. What are some of the challenges you have run into on this path? (Family, financial, societal opinion, gentrification, homophobia?) Nenna. Most of the challenges have been financial. Given that I am Black and female, there is already a great deal that America can help you unpack given its historical policies on financial lending. Other than financial challenges, another has been zoning, as adult stores have to be in certain areas. I have always wanted Feelmore to be a part of a community, and am grateful that so many are believing in Oakland and helping to bring new customers to our area. amb. Why is it important that you are specifically creating erotic material? Nenna. Material of any kind is what people can hold onto … what they can interpret … what they can critique. If it doesn’t exist, it isn’t real.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  amb: I was texting a babysitting friend while working on this book. He sent me this message: “Finally got the kids quiet and lights out when the older one comes and says ‘It’s so hot in the room, and I need to masturbate.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, knock yourself out, son, that’s normal.’ But he’s like, ‘but I’m too hot, is there a fan?’ So I turn on the ceiling fan to facilitate my nephew’s pleasure and sleep going, and, wow, for parenting with a sexual liberation lens.” I was so impressed by this that I had to interview the parent/s who created this result. It turns out it’s Zahra Ala, who I have known and admired for over a decade. Here is what Zahra had to say: Being a parent who is in touch with one’s own pleasure is vital to raising children toward pleasure: mind, body, spirit pleasure. Inquire about what makes them feel good, mind, body, spirit. Encourage what brings them pleasure. Talk about it, inquire about it, laugh about it. Have age-appropriate anatomy conversation on an ongoing basis. Normalize the conversation about pleasure. Have it with people who are a part of our tribe to demonstrate that everyone is talking about it, particularly sexual pleasure. Have conversations about age-appropriate ways to show love and care. Exclaim that we all deserve to feel good in our bodies and always check in about consent: is anyone is inappropriately touching their body, et cetera? I also do not hide anything from them. I am affectionate in front of them. They know that I openly relate to and love many people; they meet my loves, I chat with them before I enter a relationship, et cetera. Sub-sectionThe Politics of Liberated Relationships Chile, we need all the small shared pleasures. —Kiese Laymon Radical Gratitude Spella spell to cast upon meeting a stranger, comrade, or friend working for social and/or environmental justice and liberation: you are a miracle walking i greet you with wonder in a world which seeks to own your joy and your imagination you have chosen to be free, every day, as a practice. i can never know the struggles you went through to get here, but i know you have swum upstream and at times it has been lonely i want you to know i honor the choices you made in solitude and i honor the work you have done to belong i honor your commitment to that which is larger than yourself and your journey to love the particular container of life that is you you are enough your work is enough you are needed your work is sacred you are here and i am grateful Liberated Relationships, ExpandedIn my previous book, Emergent Strategy, I offered some principles in development for liberated relationships, relationships that center the freedom and transformation of all partners, romantic, platonic, political, familial, or some combination of these. Here they are, as a reminder:

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

  “He looked like a great man, and not like a bad one. A person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it indicated deference to the Court, indicated also habitual self-possession and self-respect. A high and intellectual forehead; a brow pensive but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible decision, a face on which was written as legibly as under the great picture in the Council Chamber of Calcutta, _Mens aequa in arduis_: such was the aspect with which the great proconsul presented himself to his judges.” “Have you learned all this by heart?” cried the Doctor laughing. “I don’t have to learn stuff like that”, I replied, “one reading is enough.” He stared at me. “I was surely right in bringing you down here”, he began, “I wanted to get you a berth in the Intermediate; but there’s no room: if you could put up with that sofa, I’d have the steward make up a bed for you on it.” “Oh, would you!” I cried, “how kind of you, and you’ll let me read your books?” “Everyone of ’em”, he replied, adding, “I only wish I could make as good use of them.” The upshot of it was that in an hour he had drawn some of my story from me and we were great friends. His name was Keogh. “Of course he’s Irish”, I said to myself, as I went to sleep that night: “no one else would have been so kind.” The ordinary man will think I am bragging here about my memory. He’s mistaken. Swinburne’s memory especially for poetry was far, far better than mine, and I have always regretted the fact that a good memory often prevents one thinking for oneself. I shall come back to this belief of mine when I later explain how want of books gave me whatever originality I possess. A good memory and books at command are two of the greatest dangers of youth and form by themselves a terrible handicap, but like all gifts a good memory is apt to make you friends among the unthinking, especially when you are very young. As a matter of fact, Doctor Keogh went about bragging of my memory and power of reciting, until some of the Cabin passengers became interested in the extraordinary schoolboy. The outcome was that I was asked to recite one evening in the First Cabin and afterwards a collection was taken up for me and a first-class passage paid and about twenty dollars over and above was given to me. Besides, an old gentleman offered to adopt me and play second father to me, but I had not got rid of one father to take on another, so I kept as far away from him as I decently could.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  I was just recently watching the old Slick Rick “Children’s Story” music video and found it so interesting that in a moment when the lyrics were talking about the horrors of police violence, the visual story was one in which Slick Rick was outwitting the cops and getting free, and I was so grateful to watch him do that, I needed to see him win. That didn’t negate the reality he was speaking to, but, paired with the reality, [it] gave this feeling of power and comedy and slickness that the cops literally couldn’t even handle. Una. Yeah, totally! So, what current burlesque/organizing projects are you excited about that we’re working on? Michi. That feels like a leading question. Una. We spend so much time working on it, I thought we should mention it here … Michi. True, fine. COMPOST BIN! Una. COMPOST BIN!, the sexiest name we could think of for a monthly burlesque/cabaret show! Why do you think it’s important? Michi. Well, I think, as people living in a world with so much injustice, in a city where we spend so much of our energy working to afford to live, many of us compartmentalize to be able to hold the pain and contradictions, to be able to keep going. As queer people, as people of color, as activists and organizers, we face the injustice and work day after day holding the pain, anger, and stress of these realities. So, as artists, we have created COMPOST BIN! as a space for our communities to both dream and create the world we wish to live in. While in COMPOST BIN!, our minds are opened to ideas and visions of liberation, and our bodies feel what it is to live in a world where we are all loved, valued, and free. Leaving the show, our bodies have the physical memory of existing in a world that holds all the contradictions with fierce love, reminding us of the world we work for. In COMPOST BIN!, storytelling is a cathartic transformation shared between incredible artists and inspiring audience members, each working outside of that space as teachers and organizers. Una. Yes! See, that’s exactly why I wanted you to talk about it!

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  Alexis’s note: I have read and written about the work of Toni Cade Bambara for decades. I have sifted through her archival papers at Spelman College (which, by the way, consist of ideas written on napkins, candy wrappers, coupons, and receipts). But when I thought about what I knew about Toni Cade Bambara and pleasure, I realized I knew it best through my own lived experience, my own incredible fortune of having been loved, mentored, and taught by five Black women who create joy and clarity in the tradition of Toni Cade Bambara. So this offering is gratitude and celebration for the lessons of Toni Cade Bambara, not through her texts but through my personal witness of the impact of her self-identified students, loved ones, mentees, and collaborators: scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin, filmmaker and activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons, artist and abolitionist Kai Lumumba Barrow, healer and organizer Cara Page, and editor and intellectual activist Cheryll Y. Greene. With love. Alexis. The Gift for Farah Jasmine Griffin Those of us that have been taught by Farah Griffin have felt cherished. Not precious. Not perfect. Not without growing to do. But necessary. And dreamt of. And held. And when she helps us. When she reads our work. When she writes us recommendations. When we turn back to thank her, she says: “Oh, it’s my pleasure.” And we believe her. Farah Griffin is grace. Gifted from the practiced mouths and lungs, the practiced muscles and lines of Black women who believed in freedom diligently enough to call out for it. Farah Jasmine Griffin writes about Black women, in relation, connected to generations of other Black women, connected to multi-gendered communities of possibility. Connected to her own self in a way that has space for critique but is never expendable. For Toni Cade Bambara, Farah Jasmine Griffin is a daughter of Philadelphia, one of the several Black cities in which Bambara lived and loved. In the tradition of Toni Cade Bambara, Farah Griffin is a daydreamer and nightdreamer of Harlem. A celebrant, curator, and critical participant in the Black culture of sound, spirit, and word happening in Harlem now, documenting a legacy of generations. For Toni Cade Bambara, Farah Griffin is a disciple willing to follow her not only to Cuba but also to the dangerous and hopeful places of Black girl possibility, perspective, and precarity.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Thus was I then to lose my faithful preceptress, as did the philosophers of the town the white crow of her profession. For besides that she never ransacked her customers, whose tastes too she ever studiously consulted, she never racked her pupils with unconscionable extortions, nor ever put their hard earnings, as she called them, under the contribution of poundage. She was a severe enemy to the seduction for innocence, and confined her acquisitions solely to those unfortunate young women, who, having lost it, were but the juster objects of compassion: among these, indeed, she picked out such as suited her views and taking them under her protection, rescued them from the danger of the public sinks of ruin and misery, to place, or for them, well or ill, in the manner you have seen. Having then settled her affairs, she set out on her journey, after taking the most tender leave of me, and at the end of some excellent instructions, recommending me to myself, with an anxiety perfectly maternal. In short, she affected me so much, that I was not presently reconciled to myself for suffering her at any rate to go without me; but fate had, it seems, otherwise disposed of me. I had, on my separation from Mrs. Cole, taken a pleasant convenient house at Marylebone, but easy to rent and manage from its smallness, which I furnished neatly and modestly. There, with a reserve of eight hundred pounds, the fruit of my deference to Mrs. Cole’s counsels, exclusive of clothes, some jewels, and some plate, I saw myself in purse for a long time, to wait without impatience for what the chapter of accidents might produce in my favour. Here, under the new character of a young gentlewoman whose husband was gone to sea, I had marked me out such lines of life and conduct, as leaving me a competent liberty to pursue my views either out of pleasure or fortune, bounded me nevertheless strictly within the rules of decency and discretion: a disposition, in which you cannot escape observing a true pupil of Mrs. Cole.

• From Philosophy and Religion in the West (1999)

  # Great Course - Philosophy and Religion in the West # Source: sources/books-inbox/Great Course - Philosophy and Religion in the West.pdf # Extracted via pypdf (ASN-512, 2026-04-22) # Pages: 208 (empty: 0) Course Guidebook Religion & Theology T opic Christianity Subtopic Philosophy and Religion in the West Professor Phillip Cary Eastern University PUBLISHED BY: THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151-2299 Phone: 1-800-832-2412 Fax: 703-378-3819 www.thegreatcourses.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 1999 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. Phillip Cary, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy, Eastern College Prof. Phillip Cary is Director of the Philosophy Program at Eastern College, as well as Scholar in Residence at the Templeton Honors College at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate training in Philosophy at Washington University (MO) and earned his Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Religion at Yale University, where he studied under Professor George Lindbeck. He has previously taught at Yale University, the University of Hartford and the University of Connecticut. He was the George Ennis Post-Doctoral Fellow at Villanova University, where he taught in Villanova’s nationally acclaimed Core Humanities program. He has published several scholarly articles on Augustine, the doctrine of the Trinity and interpersonal knowledge. His book, Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self is due to be published by Oxford University Press in 2000. Professor Cary produced the popular Teaching Company course, Augustine: Philosopher and Saint. Prof. Cary would like to express his gratitude to his colleagues at Villanova for years of stimulating conversations about the history of Christian thought, and to his colleagues at Eastern (especially Prof. Raymond Van Leeuwen) for instructive discussions about the relation between Biblical and philosophical traditions of wisdom. ©1999 The Teaching Company. i Table of Contents Philosophy and Religion in the West

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Umar also invited Jews, who had been forbidden permanent residence in Judea since the Bar Kokhba revolt, to return to the City of the Prophet Daud (David). 48 In the eleventh century, a Jerusalem rabbi still recalled with gratitude the mercy God had shown his people when he allowed the “Kingdom of Ishmael” to conquer Palestine. 49 “They did not inquire about the profession of faith,” wrote the twelfth-century historian Michael the Syrian, “nor did they persecute anybody because of his profession, as did the Greeks, a heretical and wicked nation.” 50 The Muslim conquerors tried at first to resist the systemic oppression and violence of empire. Umar did not allow his officers to displace the local peoples or establish estates in the rich land of Mesopotamia. Instead, Muslim soldiers lived in new “garrison towns” (amsar, singular: misr) built in strategic locations: Kufah in Iraq, Basra in Syria, Qum in Iran, and Fustat in Egypt; Damascus was the only old city to become a misr. Umar believed that the ummah, still in its infancy, could retain its integrity only by living apart from the more sophisticated cultures. The Muslims’ ability to establish and maintain a stable, centralized empire was even more surprising than their military success. Both the Persians and the Byzantines imagined that after their initial victories, the Arabs would simply ask to settle in the empires they had conquered. This, after all, was what the barbarians had done in the western provinces, and they now ruled according to Roman law and spoke Latin dialects. 51 Yet when their wars of expansion finally ceased in 750, the Muslims ruled an empire extending from the Himalayas to the Pyrenees, the largest the world had yet seen, and most of the conquered peoples would convert to Islam and speak Arabic. 52 This extraordinary achievement seemed to endorse the message of the Quran, which taught that a society founded on the Quranic principles of justice would always prosper. Later generations would idealize the Conquest Era, but it was a difficult time. The failure to defeat Constantinople was a bitter blow. By the time Uthman, the Prophet’s son-in-law, became the third caliph (r. 644–56), Muslim troops had become mutinous and discontented. The distances were now so vast that campaigning was exhausting, and they were taking less plunder. Far from home, living perpetually in strange surroundings, soldiers had no stable family life. 53 This disquiet is reflected in the hadith (plural: ahadith) literature, in which the classical doctrine of jihad began to take shape. 54 The ahadith (“reports”) recorded sayings and stories of the Prophet not included in the Quran.