Grief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  77Lecture 8—Puritans, Kings, and Theology in Practice õBy the end of her church trial, Hutchinson had very few friends left, but one person stood up with her and walked by her side out of that church: Mary Dyer. People gossiped that her stillbirth represented God’s punishment for her “monstrous” religious ideas. õHutchinson and most of her family died just a few years later in New York during a brutal Indian massacre. Mary Dyer went on to become a Quaker, and she kept coming back to Boston, determined to preach her message, until the Puritans arrested her and ordered her hanged in 1660. PARADOXES õChristian theology is based on a set of paradoxes: God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but still one being; God is all-knowing and all- powerful, yet somehow isn’t to blame for sin or all the bad things in the world; Christ is both human and divine at the same time; people are saved through faith, but they also have to live the right way, too. Over the centuries theologians have worked very hard to keep these opposing ideas in balance and not let orthodoxy teeter too far in one direction or the other. õAcross the expanse of Christian history, almost all the people who have been labeled heretics let this delicate equilibrium slide too far in one direction or another. For example, early heretics argued that the members of the Trinity were actually separate, that God the Father was superior to the Son and Holy Spirit. õWilliams and Hutchinson disrupted the balance between grace and works. In Christianity, it seems people can’t really follow logic too far to its ultimate conclusion. People have to live with paradox and mystery, especially if they want to use this theology to govern a working Christian community. 78The History of Christianity II õThe Puritans had to make their terrifying vision of a wrathful, arbitrary God workable. In practice, they rationalized God. They made God just and logical with their ideas of the covenant. The heretics who outraged them most, who brought out the Puritans’ most savage inhumanity, were those who violated this delicate set of compromises. SUGGESTED READING Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire. Bradstock, Radical Religion in Cromwell’s England. Frasier, Cromwell. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER äCould King Charles I have avoided launching a civil war and losing his head? äHow did the radical dissenters’ religious ideas shape their politics? äWhich of these movements were “winners” and which were “losers”? By what measure? 79 LECTURE 9 RELIGIOUS DISSENT AND THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR T his lecture continues the story of the British Reformation in the 17 th

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  The storm has passed now. There is a pink glow of light on the horizon outside my window. I am remembering the nights I fucked you deep and slow until the sky was just this color. I cant think about you anymore, the pain is swallowing me up. | have to put your memory away, like a precious sepia photograph. There are still so many things I want to tell you, to share with you. Since I cant mail you this letter, IM send it to a place where they keep women’s memories safe. Maybe someday, passing through this big city, you will stop and read it. Maybe you wont. Good night, my love. I DIDN’T WANT TO BE different. I longed to be everything grownups wanted, so they would love me. I followed all their rules, tried my best to please. But there was something about me that made them knit their eyebrows and frown. No one ever offered a name for what was wrong with me. That’s what made me afraid it was really bad. I only came to recognize its melody through this constant refrain: “Is that a boy or a girl?” I was one more bad card life had dealt my parents. They were already bitterly disappointed people. My father had grown up determined he wasm't going to be stuck in a factory like his old man; my mother had no intention of being trapped in a marriage. When they met, they dreamed they were going on an exciting adventure together. When they awoke, my father was working in a factory and my mother had become a housewife. When my mother discovered she was pregnant with me, she told my dad she didn’t want to be tied down with a kid. My father insisted she’d be happy once she had the baby. Nature would see to that. My mother had me to prove him wrong. My patents were enraged that life had cheated them. They were furious that marriage blocked their last opportunity to escape. Then I came along and I was different. Now they were furious with me. I could hear it in the way they retold the story of my birth. Rain and wind had lashed the desert while my mother was in labor. That’s why she gave birth to me at home. The storm was too violent to be forded. My father was at work, and we had no phone. My mother said she wept so loudly in fear when she realized I was on the way that the Dineh grandmother from across the hall knocked on the door to see what was wrong, and then realizing my birth was imminent, brought three more women to help. The Dineh women sang as I was born. That’s what my mother told me. They washed me, fanned smoke across my tiny body, and offered me to my mother.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  he kept turning around to look for a sign from Walter. My whole hand was bound up in a red-soaked cloth. I felt so sorry for my finger that hot tears of grief ran down my face. I was thinking maybe I should bury it. I wondered who I should invite. Walter lifted my injured hand up high with one of his large, gentle hands, and held me tightly against him with the other. I shook violently. “It’s gonna be OK, honey,’ he crooned. “I see a lot of these things happen. It’s gonna be alright.” The next thing I knew I was lying on an operating table. I panicked. What if they took my clothes off? There was no one around. A fly buzzed around me and landed on my hand. My body lurched. The fly circled and landed again. This time as my 98 Leslie Feinberg injured hand jerked, my finger seemed to move in a different direction. I passed out. It was Duffy’s face I saw as I drifted back to consciousness. He was smiling, but he looked upset, too. “Duffy,” I whispered, “where’s my finger?” He winced. “It’s OK, Jess. They saved your finger.” I didn’t think it was true. ’d seen lots of movies where they lie to injured people like that. I lifted my head slightly to look at my hand. It was covered with layers of gauze and there was some kind of metal device running from my forearm into the gauze and then emerging at the tip of where my finger would be. Duffy nodded. “Your finger’s OK, Jess. The bone wasn’t completely severed.” He turned away as he said it. I thought maybe he was going to throw up. I was still dressed in my bloody work clothes. “Get me out of here, Duffy.” He stopped at the pharmacy to fill my prescriptions and drove me home. When I awoke he was gone. There was a note on the nightstand explaining when I should take the pills. He also left his phone number and said I should call when I woke up. I was relieved to find I was still in my work clothes. I called him later that night and he raced over. “Jack set you up, Jess.” Duffy paced around my kitchen. “Just before he put you on that machine one of the guys saw Kevin removing the safety device. Jack could claim he took it off because the hose was on the blink, but ordering someone to put their hand in it was an out-and-out contract violation.” I had trouble following what Duffy was saying. It wasn’t just that my mind was hazy with painkillers, I didn’t want to understand. “But get this, Jess,” Duffy bent over the kitchen table and pounded it. “After we took you to the hospital Jack reinstalled the safety device and swears it was on all the time. The bastard set you up, Jess.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  In short, he soon found himself almost completely isolated. That must have cut him to the quick, for before very many weeks had passed, he became deathly ill and a consultation was held. He recovered a bit, enough to get out of bed and walk about, but still a very sick man. He was supposed to be suffering from ulcers of the stomach, though nobody was quite sure exactly what ailed him. Everybody understood, however, that he had made a mistake in swearing off so abruptly. It was too late, however, to return to a temperate mode of living. His stomach was so weak that it wouldn’t even hold a plate of soup. In a couple of months he was almost a skeleton. And old. He looked like Lazarus raised from the grave. One day my mother took me aside and with tears in her eyes begged me to go visit the family doctor and learn the truth about my father’s condition. Dr. Rausch had been the family physician for years. He was a typical “Dutchman” of the old school, rather weary and crochety now after years of practicing and yet unable to tear himself completely away from his patients. In his stupid Teutonic way he tried to scare the less serious patients away, tried to argue them into health, as it were. When you walked into his office he didn’t even bother to look up at you, but kept on writing or whatever it might be that he was doing while firing random questions at you in a perfunctory and insulting manner. He behaved so rudely, so suspiciously, that ridiculous as it may sound, it almost appeared as though he expected his patients to bring with them not only their ailments, but the proof of their ailments. He made one feel that there was not only something wrong physically but that there was also something wrong mentally. “You only imagine it” was his favorite phrase, which he flung out with a nasty, leering gibe. Knowing him as I did, and detesting him heartily, I came prepared, that is, with the laboratory analysis of my father’s stool. I had also an analysis of his urine in my overcoat pocket, should he demand further proofs.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  My mom rang the bell and confronted the mom. “Look, this is our dog.” This lady lied to my mom’s face. “This is not your dog. We bought this dog.” “You didn’t buy the dog. It’s our dog.” They went back and forth. This woman wasn’t budging, so we went home to get evidence: pictures of us with the dogs, certificates from the vet. I was crying the whole time, and my mom was losing her patience with me. “Stop crying! We’ll get the dog! Calm down!” We gathered up our documentation and went back to the house. This time we brought Panther with us, as part of the proof. My mom showed this lady the pictures and the information from the vet. She still wouldn’t give us Fufi. My mom threatened to call the police. It turned into a whole thing. Finally my mom said, “Okay, I’ll give you a hundred rand.” “Fine,” the lady said. My mom gave her some money and she brought Fufi out. The other kid, who thought Fufi was Spotty, had to watch his mother sell the dog he thought was his. Now he started crying. “Spotty! No! Mom, you can’t sell Spotty!” I didn’t care. I just wanted Fufi back. Once Fufi saw Panther she came right away. The dogs left with us and we walked. I sobbed the whole way home, still heartbroken. My mom had no time for my whining. “Why are you crying?!” “Because Fufi loves another boy.” “So? Why would that hurt you? It didn’t cost you anything. Fufi’s here. She still loves you. She’s still your dog. So get over it.” Fufi was my first heartbreak. No one has ever betrayed me more than Fufi. It was a valuable lesson to me. The hard thing was understanding that Fufi wasn’t cheating on me with another boy. She was merely living her life to the fullest. Until I knew that she was going out on her own during the day, her other relationship hadn’t affected me at all. Fufi had no malicious intent. I believed that Fufi was my dog, but of course that wasn’t true. Fufi was a dog. I was a boy. We got along well. She happened to live in my house. That experience shaped what I’ve felt about relationships for the rest of my life: You do not own the thing that you love. I was lucky to learn that lesson at such a young age. I have so many friends who still, as adults, wrestle with feelings of betrayal. They’ll come to me angry and crying and talking about how they’ve been cheated on and lied to, and I feel for them. I understand what they’re going through. I sit with them and buy them a drink and I say, “Friend, let me tell you the story of Fufi.” When I was twenty-four years old, one day out of the blue my mother said to me, “You need to find your father.” “Why?”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Now man is required to offer sacrifice for three reasons. First, for the remission of sin, by which he is turned away from God. Hence the Apostle says (Heb. 5:1) that it appertains to the priest “to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.” Secondly, that man may be preserved in a state of grace, by ever adhering to God, wherein his peace and salvation consist. Wherefore under the old Law the sacrifice of peace-offerings was offered up for the salvation of the offerers, as is prescribed in the third chapter of Leviticus. Thirdly, in order that the spirit of man be perfectly united to God: which will be most perfectly realized in glory. Hence, under the Old Law, the holocaust was offered, so called because the victim was wholly burnt, as we read in the first chapter of Leviticus. Now these effects were conferred on us by the humanity of Christ. For, in the first place, our sins were blotted out, according to Rom. 4:25: “Who was delivered up for our sins.” Secondly, through Him we received the grace of salvation, according to Heb. 5:9: “He became to all that obey Him the cause of eternal salvation.” Thirdly, through Him we have acquired the perfection of glory, according to Heb. 10:19: “We have [Vulg.: ‘Having’] a confidence in the entering into the Holies” (i.e. the heavenly glory) “through His Blood.” Therefore Christ Himself, as man, was not only priest, but also a perfect victim, being at the same time victim for sin, victim for a peace-offering, and a holocaust. Reply to Objection 1: Christ did not slay Himself, but of His own free-will He exposed Himself to death, according to Is. 53:7: “He was offered because it was His own will.” Thus He is said to have offered Himself. Reply to Objection 2: The slaying of the Man Christ may be referred to a twofold will. First, to the will of those who slew Him: and in this respect He was not a victim: for the slayers of Christ are not accounted as offering a sacrifice to God, but as guilty of a great crime: a similitude of which was borne by the wicked sacrifices of the Gentiles, in which they offered up men to idols. Secondly, the slaying of Christ may be considered in reference to the will of the Sufferer, Who freely offered Himself to suffering. In this respect He is a victim, and in this He differs from the sacrifices of the Gentiles. (The reply to the third objection is wanting in the original manuscripts, but it may be gathered from the above.—Ed.) [*Some editions, however, give the following reply:

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Ruth sighed. “It was a patchwork quilt.” She leaned over and kissed my cheek. I felt my color rise. “It’s nice to remember where you come from. But now I’m ready to go home,” she said. Ruth squeezed my hand. “C’mon, Jess. Let’s go home.” 322 = Leslie Feinberg THE MOMENT I CLIMBED THE subway stairs at Christopher Street I heard an amplified voice say the words lesbian and gay. When I emerged to street level, I found myself in the midst of a crowd of hundreds of people listening to speakers at a rally. I'd seen gay demonstrations in the streets before. I had always paused to watch from across the street, proud this young movement was not beaten back into the closets. But I always walked away feeling outside of that movement and alone. This time one voice stopped me in my tracks. It was a young man who took the mike and in a strong voice, trembling with emotion, described being restrained and forced to watch his lover being beaten to death with baseball bats by a gang, “I watched him die there on the sidewalk,” he cried, “and I couldn’t save him. We have to do something. This can’t keep going on.” He handed the microphone to a woman whose hair was wrapped in bright African fabric. She urged others to come up and speak. A young woman from the crowd climbed up on the stage. “There were these guys in my neighborhood in Queens.” Her voice could hardly be heard, even with the microphone. “They used to yell things at me and my lover. One night, I heard them behind me. I was alone. They pulled me into the parking lot behind the hardware store and raped me. I couldn’t stop them.” Tears streamed down my face. The man next to me put his hand on my shoulder. His eyes were filled with tears, too. “T never told my lover what happened,” she whispered into the microphone. “T felt like we’d have both been raped if I told her.” As she climbed down from the stage I thought: This is what courage is. It’s not just living through the nightmare, it’s doing something with it afterward. It’s being brave enough to talk about it to other people. It’s trying to organize to change things. And suddenly I felt so sick to death of my own silence that I needed to speak too. It wasn’t that there was something in particular I was burning to say. I didn’t even know what it would be. I just needed to open my throat for once and hear my own voice. And I was afraid if I let this moment pass, I might never be brave enough to try again. I moved closer to the stage, nearer to finding my voice. The woman who was chairing looked at me. “Did you want to speake” I nodded, dizzy with anxiety. “C’mon up, brother,” she urged me.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 6: Further, it is written (Mat. 27:55,56): “There were there”—that is, by the cross of Christ—“many women afar off, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto Him; among whom was Mary Magdalen, and Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.” Now this Mary who is called “the mother of James and Joseph” seems to have been also the Mother of Christ; for it is written (Jn. 19:25) that “there stood by the cross of Jesus, Mary His Mother.” Therefore it seems that Christ’s Mother did not remain a virgin after His Birth. On the contrary, It is written (Ezech. 44:2): “This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall pass through it; because the Lord the God of Israel hath entered in by it.” Expounding these words, Augustine says in a sermon (De Annunt. Dom. iii): “What means this closed gate in the House of the Lord, except that Mary is to be ever inviolate? What does it mean that ‘no man shall pass through it,’ save that Joseph shall not know her? And what is this—‘The Lord alone enters in and goeth out by it’—except that the Holy Ghost shall impregnate her, and that the Lord of angels shall be born of her? And what means this—‘it shall be shut for evermore’—but that Mary is a virgin before His Birth, a virgin in His Birth, and a virgin after His Birth?” I answer that, Without any hesitation we must abhor the error of Helvidius, who dared to assert that Christ’s Mother, after His Birth, was carnally known by Joseph, and bore other children. For, in the first place, this is derogatory to Christ’s perfection: for as He is in His Godhead the Only-Begotten of the Father, being thus His Son in every respect perfect, so it was becoming that He should be the Only-begotten son of His Mother, as being her perfect offspring. Secondly, this error is an insult to the Holy Ghost, whose “shrine” was the virginal womb [*”Sacrarium Spiritus Sancti” (Office of B. M. V., Ant. ad Benedictus, T. P.)], wherein He had formed the flesh of Christ: wherefore it was unbecoming that it should be desecrated by intercourse with man. Thirdly, this is derogatory to the dignity and holiness of God’s Mother: for thus she would seem to be most ungrateful, were she not content with such a Son; and were she, of her own accord, by carnal intercourse to forfeit that virginity which had been miraculously preserved in her. Fourthly, it would be tantamount to an imputation of extreme presumption in Joseph, to assume that he attempted to violate her whom by the angel’s revelation he knew to have conceived by the Holy Ghost. We must therefore simply assert that the Mother of God, as she was a virgin in conceiving Him and a virgin in giving Him birth, did she remain a virgin ever afterwards.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  When he said that, my body just let go. I remember the exact traffic light I was at. For a moment there was a complete vacuum of sound, and then I cried tears like I had never cried before. I collapsed in heaving sobs and moans. I cried as if every other thing I’d cried for in my life had been a waste of crying. I cried so hard that if my present crying self could go back in time and see my other crying selves, it would slap them and say, “That shit’s not worth crying for.” My cry was not a cry of sadness. It was not catharsis. It wasn’t me feeling sorry for myself. It was an expression of raw pain that came from an inability of my body to express that pain in any other way, shape, or form. She was my mom. She was my teammate. It had always been me and her together, me and her against the world. When Andrew said, “shot her in the head,” I broke in two. The light changed. I couldn’t even see the road, but I drove through the tears, thinking, Just get there, just get there, just get there. We pulled up to the hospital, and I jumped out of the car. There was an outdoor sitting area by the entrance to the emergency room. Andrew was standing there waiting for me, alone, his clothes smeared with blood. He still looked perfectly calm, completely stoic. Then the moment he looked up and saw me he broke down and started bawling. It was like he’d been holding it together the whole morning and then everything broke loose at once and he lost it. I ran to him and hugged him and he cried and cried. His cry was different from mine, though. My cry was one of pain and anger. His cry was one of helplessness. I turned and ran into the emergency room. My mom was there in triage on a gurney. The doctors were stabilizing her. Her whole body was soaked in blood. There was a hole in her face, a gaping wound above her lip, part of her nose gone. She was as calm and serene as I’d ever seen her. She could still open one eye, and she turned and looked up at me and saw the look of horror on my face. “It’s okay, baby,” she whispered, barely able to speak with the blood in her throat. “It’s not okay.” “No, no, I’m okay, I’m okay. Where’s Andrew? Where’s your brother?” “He’s outside.” “Go to Andrew.” “But Mom—” “Shh. It’s okay, baby. I’m fine.” “You’re not fine, you’re—” “Shhhhhh. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. Go to your brother. Your brother needs you.” The doctors kept working, and there was nothing I could do to help her. I went back outside to be with Andrew. We sat down together, and he told me the story.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, Habit comes between power and act: and since the removal of what precedes entails the removal of what follows, but not conversely, the removal of the habit ensues from the removal of the power to act, but not from the removal of the act. And because removal of the matter entails the removal of the act, since there can be no act without the matter into which it passes, hence the habit of a virtue is possible in one for whom the matter is not available, for the reason that it can be available, so that the habit can proceed to its act—thus a poor man can have the habit of magnificence, but not the act, because he is not possessed of great wealth which is the matter of magnificence, but he can be possessed thereof. Reply to Objection 1: Although the innocent have committed no sin, nevertheless they can, so that they are competent to have the habit of penance. Yet this habit can never proceed to its act, except perhaps with regard to their venial sins, because mortal sins destroy the habit. Nevertheless it is not without its purpose, because it is a perfection of the natural power. Reply to Objection 2: Although they deserve no punishment actually, yet it is possible for something to be in them for which they would deserve to be punished. Reply to Objection 3: So long as the power to sin remains, there would be room for vindictive justice as to the habit, though not as to the act, if there were no actual sins. Whether the saints in glory have penance?Objection 1: It would seem that the saints in glory have not penance. For, as Gregory says (Moral. iv), “the blessed remember their sins, even as we, without grief, remember our griefs after we have been healed.” But penance is grief of the heart. Therefore the saints in heaven have not penance. Objection 2: Further, the saints in heaven are conformed to Christ. But there was no penance in Christ, since there was no faith which is the principle of penance. Therefore there will be no penance in the saints in heaven. Objection 3: Further, a habit is useless if it is not reduced to its act. But the saints in heaven will not repent actually, because, if they did, there would be something in them against their wish. Therefore the habit of penance will not be in them. Objection 4: On the other hand, penance is a part of justice. But justice is “perpetual and immortal” (Wis. 1:15), and will remain in heaven. Therefore penance will also.

• From Best Erotic Romance

  We’d been family, bonded through history we couldn’t begin to describe to people who hadn’t been through it. Not that we were allowed to talk about much of anything. There had been days I’d wondered if our grocery lists would end up classified. When the guys were gone, we helped each other cope with morning sickness and colic, with repairs for our POS cars and day care that never stayed open late enough, and always, with the bone-deep loneliness and fear. I’d been part of a band of sisters who understood the occasional need for immediate overnight babysitting when the guys were home and one of them put his hands on his wife’s or girlfriend’s hips, looked into her eyes, and they shared a look that let you know they wouldn’t be coming up for air until morning. God, we were so young back then. So naïve and certain we were immortal. Eight months after Saddam invaded Kuwait, the quick, ferocious first Gulf War was over. Jerry was dead, I was moving out of base housing as a widow with two small children, and the guys were just getting back. Eric came straight to the house, his hair still wet from his shower. He took me in his arms and held me close, the low murmur of his, “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” vibrating through my ears. I clung to him, inhaling the scent of his warm strong body, and knowing in that moment that while I’d survive losing Jerry, I’d never survive going through that kind of loss again. The Special Operations community is small and insular, and the women who’ve been part of it know the score. Eventually, Eric or others like him would be coming by my civilian apartment, wanting me to be part of their world again. They’d wait, quietly, until I was ready to rejoin them. I knew I’d never be ready. I packed up the car, hauled the kids and the dog to my hometown in Minnesota, got a business degree, and threw myself into my career and motherhood. And I never looked back. I cut my ties so completely, the only person I kept in contact with was my best friend, Janelle, and even that wasn’t by choice. She simply refused to accept my silence, and she had my parents’ address. The year Melissa started middle school, I started sending Christmas and birthday cards in return. Eventually, after a tearful phone reunion, Janelle and I started calling each other. By then, we were both online, so we emailed as well. We rarely discussed her husband, Chris, and by unspoken agreement, she never brought up anybody else from the past.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (lib. lxxxiii. Quæst. q. 65) Well may she say, He hath been dead four days. For the earth is the last of the elements. It signifies the pit of earthly sins, i. e. carnal lusts. AUGUSTINE. (Tract. in Joan. xlix. 19) The Lord groaned, wept, cried with a loud voice. It is hard for Him to arise, who is bowed down with the weight of evil habits. Christ troubleth Himself, to signify to thee that thou shouldest be troubled, when thou art pressed and weighed down with such a mass of sin. Faith groaneth, he that is displeased with himself groaneth, and accuseth his own evil deeds; that so the habit of sin may yield to the violence of repentance. When thou sayest, I have done such a thing, and God has spared me; I have heard the Gospel, and despised it; what shall I do? then Christ groaneth, because faith groaneth; and in the voice of thy groaning appeareth the hope of thy rising again. GREGORY. (xxii. Moral.) Lazarus is bid to come forth, i. e. to come forth and condemn himself with his own mouth, without excuse or reservation: that so he that lies buried in a guilty conscience, may come forth out of himself by confession. AUGUSTINE. (lib. lxxxiii. Quæst. q. 65) That Lazarus came forth from the grave, signifies the soul’s deliverance from carnal sins. That he came bound up in grave clothes means, that even we who are delivered from carnal things, and serve with the mind the law of God, yet cannot, so long as we are in the body, be free from the besetments of the flesh. That his face was bound about with a napkin means, that we do not attain to full knowledge in this life. And when our Lord says, Loose him, and let him go, we learn that in another world all veils will be removed, and that we shall see face to face. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xlix) Or thus: When thou despisest, thou liest dead; when thou confessest, thou comest forth. For what is to come forth, but to go out, as it were, of thy hiding place, and shew thyself? But thou canst not make this confession, except God move thee to it, by crying with a loud voice, i. e. calling thee with great grace. But even after the dead man has come forth, he remains bound for some time, i. e. is as yet only a penitent. Then our Lord says to His ministers, Loose him, and let him go, i. e. remit his sins: Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. (Matt. 18:18) ALCUIN. Christ awakes, because His power it is which quickens us inwardly: the disciples loose, because by the ministry of the priesthood, they who are quickened are absolved.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I called Edwin’s house. Wee sorry, I listened to the recording in shock, but the number you dialed has been disconnected. I rang her sister’s house. In a quavering voice Edwin’s sister said, “She shot herself—weeks ago.” I put the receiver down gently, trying not to disturb Ed’s memory. “Edwin, Ed,” I whispered as though she was asleep in my arms and I could wake het. I went back to the bedroom and lost consciousness. When I woke, I hoped Edwin’s death was just a dream. I called my foreman. “Where the hell you been, boy?” he shouted. “T’ve been sick. Real sick.” “Can you get a doctor’s note?” I stopped and thought for a moment. “No,” I said. Stone Butch Blues 191 “You're fired,” he growled and hung up. I slept on and off for several days. A nagging pain woke me up, but it was emotional, not a result of the surgery. I changed my bandages in the bathroom. Just two surgical lines crossed my chest. Together with the stitches they looked like railroad tracks. After a little more than a week it looked like it was healing pretty well. I pulled on a clean white T-shirt. Something propelled me into the kitchen to get a beer. As I snapped off the cap I located the source of the pain: Edwin’s suicide. It couldn’t be true that Ed no longer existed in the world. How could she be gone? Hadn’t I known she was seething inside? I remembered she said she’d marked a page in the book she gave me that summed up what she was struggling with. I tore through the books on my shelf, but I couldn’t find the slim volume she’d given me. I finally discovered it in an unpacked box in my hall closet and sat down on the floor to leaf through the book. She’d matked the page in blue ink: It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others ... Avo souls, two thoughts, tyvo unreconciled strivings; hyo warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. 192 Leslie Feinberg I looked at the inscription, the way she’d dotted the 7in her name with an inky heart. Pain roared through my body like a fire whipped by the wind. “Ed,” I cried out loud. “Please come back. Give me another chance to understand. I'll be a better friend if you'll just come back.” Silence. One beer followed another; I got pretty drunk. And then I broke down and cried for the loss of Edwin and for all the tears ’'d suppressed since I’d lost Theresa.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Theresa punched me hard in the shoulder. I grabbed her wrists. We struggled until we fell wearily against each other. We sat down next to each other on the couch. “T don’t know how else you'll survive,” Theresa said. “I just can’t do it.” My throat tightened. I hoped I could change her mind. “Don’t try to change my mind,” she added. She always could read mine. “And I won’t try to change yours, OK?” I looked at her incredulously. “Please, honey, don’t leave me now. Pm scared. It’s too hard. Please!” Theresa jumped to her feet. “Stop it,” she demanded. It hurt her too much. I pulled myself back in. I went over to her and gently turned her to face me. “What do you want me to do?” I asked her. She said it simply: “You'd better leave.” It was strange the way I loved her so much and yet felt so far away. “You’re serious?” She nodded and walked over to the window, as if she could see out into the darkness. “I'll pack up the things you need. Your friends will help you.” I kept feeling this couldn’t be happening. “Please,” I said. “Can’t we try? I need you!” “T don’t know what to do either.” Theresa told me. “I just have to find my own way now. I feel like I’m going under, too. This time we can’t rescue each other.” I looked down at the floor. “What if I don’t take the hormones and pass?” “Then you'll probably be killed on the street or take your own life out of madness, I don’t know.” We stood in silence. “When do you want me to leave?” “Tonight,” Theresa said, and she broke down and sobbed. I held her tightly in my arms, for the last time. She was right. Once we both understood that we couldn’t continue, I had to leave. The pain was already unbearable. Theresa stroked my face and repeated, “I love you so much.” I nodded as tears streamed down my face. I knew it was true, but part of me raged against her for not loving me enough to stay together. I went in the bedroom and stuffed some clothing in a backpack. I knew she would pack up my other things with care. Theresa walked me to our door. We couldn’t hold back our tears, but we were trying not to sob. “Part of me wants to go with you,” she said. “But if I did, I’d be living your life, not mine. Pd end up resenting you for my decision.” She stroked my face as she spoke. Her fingertips felt so good against my skin. I looked at the floor again. ““There’s so many things I wish I had told you. I never could find the words.” She smiled and nodded. “Write me a letter someday.” “T won’t know where to send it.” Stone Butch Blues 165 “Write it anyway,” she said.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  The summer of 1905 in Vyra had not yet evolved lepidoptera. The village schoolmaster took us for instructive walks (“What you hear is the sound of a scythe being sharpened”; “That field there will be given a rest next season”; “Oh, just a small bird—no special name”; “If that peasant is drunk, it is because he is poor”). Autumn carpeted the park with varicolored leaves, and Miss Robinson showed us the beautiful device—which the Ambassador’s Boy, a familiar character in her small world, had enjoyed so much the preceding autumn—of choosing on the ground and arranging on a big sheet of paper such maple leaves as would form an almost complete spectrum (minus the blue—a big disappointment!), green shading into lemon, lemon into orange and so on through the reds to purples, purplish browns, reddish again and back through lemon to green (which was getting quite hard to find except as a part, a last brave edge). The first frosts hit the asters and still we did not move to town. That winter of 1905–1906, when Mademoiselle arrived from Switzerland, was the only one of my childhood that I spent in the country. It was a year of strikes, riots and police-inspired massacres, and I suppose my father wished to keep his family away from the city, in our quiet country place, where his popularity with the peasants might mitigate, as he correctly surmised, the risks of unrest. It was also a particularly severe winter, producing as much snow as Mademoiselle might have expected to find in the hyperborean gloom of remote Muscovy. When she alighted at the little Siverski station, from which she still had to travel half-a-dozen miles by sleigh to Vyra, I was not there to greet her; but I do so now as I try to imagine what she saw and felt at that last stage of her fabulous and ill-timed journey. Her Russian vocabulary consisted, I know, of one short word, the same solitary word that years later she was to take back to Switzerland. This word, which in her pronunciation may be phonetically rendered as “giddy-eh” (actually it is gde with e as in “yet”), meant “Where?” And that was a good deal. Uttered by her like the raucous cry of some lost bird, it accumulated such interrogatory force that it sufficed for all her needs. “Giddy-eh? Giddy-eh?” she would wail, not only to find out her whereabouts but also to express supreme misery: the fact that she was a stranger, shipwrecked, penniless, ailing, in search of the blessed land where at last she would be understood.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  10:21–2221. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child; and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. 22. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm.) Having placed the comfort first, He adds the more alarming perils; Brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father the son; children shall rise against parents, to put them to death. GREGORY. (Hom. in Ev. xxxv. 3.) Wrongs which we suffer from strangers, pain us less than those we suffer from men on whose affections we had counted; for besides the bodily affliction, there is then the pain of lost affection. JEROME. This we see often happen in persecutions, nor is there any true affection between those whose faith is different. CHRYSOSTOM. What follows is yet more dreadful, Ye shall be hated of all men; they sought to exterminate them as common enemies of all the world. To this again is added the consolation, For my name’s sake; and yet further to cheer them, Whosoever shall endure to the end, he shall be saved. For many are hot and zealous in the beginning, but afterwards grow cool, for these, He says, I look at the end. For where is the profit of seeds that only sprout at first? wherefore He requires a sufficient endurance from them. JEROME. For virtue is not to begin but to complete. REMIGIUS. And the reward is not for those that begin, but for those that bring to an end. CHRYSOSTOM. But that no man should say, that Christ wrought all things in His Apostles, and therefore it is nothing wonderful that they were made such as they were, since they did not bear the burden of these things, therefore He says, that perseverance was their work. For though they were rescued from their first perils; they are preserved for still harder trials, which again shall be followed by others, and they shall be in danger of snares as long as they live. This He covertly intimates when he says, Whosoever shall endure to the end, he shall be saved. REMIGIUS. That is, He who shall not let go the commands of the faith, nor fall away in persecution, shall be saved; he shall receive the reward of the heavenly kingdom for his earthly persecutions. And note that ‘the end’ does not always mean destruction, but sometimes perfection, as in that, Christ is the end of the Law. (Rom. 10:4.) So the sense here may be, Whosoever shall endure to the end, that is, in Christ. AUGUSTINE. (De Civ. Dei, xxi. 25.) To endure in Christ, is to abide in His faith which worketh by love.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  GREGORY. (Hom. 39. in Ev.) The merciful Redeemer wept then over the fall of the false city, which that city itself knew not was about to come upon it. As it is added, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou (we may here understand) wouldest weep. Thou who now rejoicest, for thou knowest not what is at hand. It follows, at least in this thy day. For when she gave herself up to carnal pleasures, she had the things which in her day might be her peace. But why she had present goods for her peace, is explained by what follows, But now they are hidden from thy eyes. For if the eyes of her heart had not been hidden from the future evils which were hanging over her, she would not have been joyful in the prosperity of the present. Therefore He shortly added the punishment which was near at hand, saying, For the days shall come upon thee. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. If thou hadst known, even thou. The Jews were not worthy to receive the divinely inspired Scriptures, which relate the mystery of Christ. For as often as Moses is read, a veil overshadows their heart that they should not see what has been accomplished in Christ, who being the truth puts to flight the shadow. And because they regarded not the truth, they rendered themselves unworthy of the salvation which flows from Christ. EUSEBIUS. He here declares that His coming was to bring peace to the whole world. For unto this He came, that He should preach both to them that were near, and those that were afar off. But as they did not wish to receive the peace that was announced to them, it was hid from them. And therefore the siege which was shortly to come upon them He most expressly foretells, adding, For the days shall come upon thee, &c. GREGORY. (ut sup.) By these words the Roman leaders are pointed out. For that overthrow of Jerusalem is described, which was made by the Roman emperors Vespasian and Titus. EUSEBIUS. But how these things were fulfilled we may gather from what is delivered to us by Josephus, who though he was a Jew, related each event as it toot place, in exact accordance with Christ’s prophecies. GREGORY. This too which is added, namely, They shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, is now witnessed in the altered situation of the same city, which is now built in that place where Christ was crucified without the gate, whereas the former Jerusalem, as it is called, was rooted up from the very foundation. And the crime for which this punishment of overthrow was inflicted is added, Because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Mrs. Rodriguez?” I asked incredulously. The super nodded. The young woman stopped screaming when she heard me say her grandmother’s name. Our eyes and our lives connected in one timeless moment. She began to sob uncontrollably. Friends led her away. I turned and looked at the waves of flame sweeping each floor and I wondered, Where do my tears £0? Why is it that I can’t cry now when I need to? Yet I knew that later my tears would be unexpectedly triggered by the scent of lilacs, or the low hum of a cello. Eventually the black sky lightened over the East River. I sat on the curb, my back to the smoldering building. A fine mist fell on me from the tiny punctures in the fire-hoses, still pumping water into out homes. I sat very still, not knowing where to go from this spot. I was starting all over. I sat on a bench in Washington Square Park and inventoried my possessions: a pait of sweatpants, a T-shirt, and twenty dollars in my pocket. All my money had been hidden in the apartment. Back to double shifts. Back to sleeping in the 42"¢ Street movie theaters on weekends. I had no energy; I had no choice. My mind couldn’t fully accept the loss. I bought a hot dog and soda pop for one dollar and walked around the park, hunery for diversion. I was drawn toward a large crowd watching a young man in a top hat and tails juggling fiery torches. This was the silly part of the life of this city that I grudgingly loved, no matter how excruciatingly hard it was to survive here. “Who would ever want to be a juggler?” the woman next to me asked her companion. “I mean, what’s the point?” They both shook their heads and walked away. The joy Vd felt watching the juggler drained from my face. At the moment she’d spoken, I was thinking how wonderful it would be to learn a skill that could be practiced alone, simply for the pleasure of self-amazement. The man standing near my right elbow looked me in the eyes and cocked his head. His gaze made me uncomfortable. I wanted to turn away from him. It was as though he could see the play of emotions I was feeling. But somehow he drew me to look at him more closely. I saw a gentle man whose own feelings rippled across his face. It was as though we were carrying on an emotional dialogue without words. He raised his eyebrows in question. I shrugged. “Cynics.” I smiled. He shook his head and executed graceful motions with his hands—Deaf. He saw on my face that I understood. I smiled. He smiled. Then I was stuck. I looked at my hands, inarticulate at my sides. Once again I was bereft of words, left longing for language that could speak from heart to heart. Stone Butch Blues 267

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I smiled. “I’m gonna be forty in a couple of years, if I play my cards right.” Al nodded and turned back to the window. “We’re from the old days.” She did remember! An emotional storm cloud passed over her face. She turned to me angrily. “Leave the old days alone. Don’t bring me back, I’m dead.” I pulled away from her and then forced myself to lean forward again. “You're not dead, Al. You just got hurt real bad. You fought long and hard, but they hurt you bad. You did real good.” She turned her head toward me and let it droop. Her hand grasped for my arm, “I just couldn’t, I just ... es My voice dropped low, like a lover’s. “It’s OK now, it’s alright. You did so good that now you get to rest. It’s alright, Al.” She rested one hand on my head. The weight of her hand made me feel like a child. “Did Jackie give you that haircut?” I missed a beat, then I smiled and nodded. Al squeezed my arm. “Kid, tell her Pm sorry.” I put my hand over hers. “Jackie told me she’s not mad, Al.” She searched my face for confirmation it was true. “It’s true,” I lied, “she said don’t worry. She loves you, Al. There isn’t a day goes by she doesn’t think about you, and so do I.” Al smiled and patted my cheek. Stone Butch Blues 315 “Al,” I said, but her spirit had left like wind slamming a door shut. “Al?” She was staring out the window. Her body temperature dropped several degrees. “She’s gone,” said the Oracle. “Al,” I said, jiggling her arm. “Al, please, don’t go. Not yet, please, just give me another minute.” I hated myself for doing that. Only moments before I had sworn I would let her go back to her peace and now I was trying to drag her back again. My lip started to quiver and then my whole chin. My jaw ached. I had a second chance in life to tell her I loved her and then I blew it, just like I did as a teenager. And, like a kid, I didn’t want to leave until she reassured me that she loved me too. I leaned forward and put both my arms around her neck. “Pm sorry,” I said. “Dll leave you, Al.” The tears wouldn’t stop. “It’s just that I came all this way, across all these years, to tell you how much I love you, and now it’s too late. “T wanted to thank you. If it wasn’t for you, ’'d never have known I had a right to be me. You taught me enough to keep me alive all these years. There isn’t a day goes by that I’m not grateful for everything you gave me. You’ve meant so much in my life, Al. I always wanted to grow up in a way that would make 316 = Leslie Feinberg

• From Best Erotic Romance

  He’d capture one of her taut nipples—puckered and dark from the cold swim—between his lips. God yes. Her back would arch; she’d be arching her hips from the moment he started suckling and grazing with his teeth. She’d get so wet, so hot and slick, but he’d linger there, entranced by how hard her nipples would get, how ripe and juicy (he would murmur against her flesh, as if he were drunk, drunk on the lust of her). A teasing tongue in her navel, flicking out the water there, and then he’d move farther down. A quick nip on her hip bone, a nuzzle against her inner thigh. Her fingers would take the place of his mouth—seeing her pleasure herself always drove him a little mad—and then he’d find the true source of moisture, like Galahad succeeding in his quest for the Grail. He’d taste her, with a low groan that sent more shivers through her, before parting her folds and taking mercy on her. Strokes of his tongue against her clit, so knowing and true. He knew just how to touch her, urging her higher and higher, keeping her on edge until… Overhead the stars would wheel and blur as she surrendered to the sensations. She whirled through space on the spasms of her climax, tethered to the earth only by Ethan’s hands and mouth and touch on her. Lying on the sofa (where, yes, they’d also made love—there wasn’t a spot in the cabin where they hadn’t succumbed to heady, freeing passion), Bella slid her hand under her skirt and found her slick lips, her engorged clit. Riding on the memories, she brought herself to orgasm. Moisture stained her fingers even as tears stained her face. She hadn’t known, the last time they’d made love here, that it would be the last time. And now the cabin was for sale. Memories for sale: cheap. Bella hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the sofa, clutching a pillow and dampening another with her tears. But then, she probably hadn’t meant half of what she’d said (or even more than that) in the crimson heat of anger in their last days together. The bitter, nasty arguments in which they’d both used the intimate knowledge they had of each other to wound and cut. The vicious arguments, which had preceded the period of bone-chilling silence, which had preceded the taut, death-knell conversation ending their marriage. “I suppose we’d be better off apart.” “I suppose we would.” Bella couldn’t remember who’d said which sentence. It no longer mattered, anyway. She woke when she heard a noise. Disoriented, she blinked in the almost-darkness of twilight, unsure where she was, what she heard. The pillow clutched against her chest was damp. She fumbled for a lamp and clicked it on to remember the cabin, the memories. The door opened, and adrenalin surged. She stood, abruptly, to face the danger. Her heart twisted, betraying her. Ethan.