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.

Page 222 of 263 · 20 per page

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

  We entreat thee to persuade all that are coming to the feast of the Passover rightly concerning Jesus; for we all have confidence in thee. For we and all the people bear thee testimony that thou art just, and art no respecter of persons. Persuade therefore the people not to be led astray by Jesus, for we and all the people have great confidence in thee. Stand therefore upon the pinnacle of the temple, that thou mayest be conspicuous on high, and thy words may be easily heard by all the people; for all the tribes have come together on account of the Passover, with some of the Gentiles also. The aforesaid Scribes and Pharisees, therefore, placed James upon the pinnacle of the temple, and cried out to him: "O thou just man, whom we ought all to believe, since the people are led astray after Jesus that was crucified, declare to us what is the door of Jesus that was crucified." And he answered with a loud voice: "Why do ye ask me respecting Jesus the Son of Man? He is now sitting in the heavens, on the right hand of the great Power, and is about to come on the clouds of heaven." And as many were confirmed, and gloried in this testimony of James, and said:, "Hosanna to the Son of David," these same priests and Pharisees said to one another: "We have done badly in affording such testimony to Jesus, but let us go up and cast him down, that they may dread to believe in him." And they cried out: "Ho, ho, the Just himself is deceived." And they fulfilled that which is written in Isaiah, "Let us take away the Just, because he is offensive to us; wherefore they shall eat the fruit of their doings." [Comp. Is. 3:10.] And going up, they cast down the just man, saying to one another: "Let us stone James the Just." And they began to stone him, as he did not die immediately when cast down; but turning round, he knelt down, saying:, I entreat thee, O Lord God and Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Thus they were stoning him, when one of the priests of the sons of Rechab, a son of the Rechabites, spoken of by Jeremiah the prophet (Jer. 35:2), cried out, saying: "Cease, what are you doing? The Just is praying for you." And one of them, a fuller, beat out the brains of the Just with the club that he used to beat out clothes. Thus he suffered martyrdom, and they buried him on the spot where his tombstone is still remaining, by the temple. He became a faithful witness, both to the Jews and Greeks, that Jesus is the Christ. Immediately after this, Vespasian invaded and took Judaea.’ " "Such," adds Eusebius, "is the more ample testimony of Hegesippus, in which he fully coincides with Clement.

• From A Grief Observed (1961)

  C. S. Lewis, the writer of so much that is so clear and so right, the thinker whose acuity of mind and clarity of expression enabled us to understand so much, this strong and determined Christian, he too fell headlong into the vortex of whirling thoughts and feelings and dizzily groped for support and guidance deep in the dark chasm of grief. How I wish that he had been blessed with just such a book as this. If we find no comfort in the world around us, and no solace when we cry to God, if it does nothing else for us, at least this book will help us to face our grief, and to “misunderstand a little less completely.” For further reading, I recommend Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times by George Sayer (Harper & Row, 1988; Crossway Books) as the best available biography of C. S. Lewis; Lyle Dorsett’s biography of my mother, And God Came In (Macmillan, 1983); and also, somewhat immodestly perhaps, for an inside viewpoint of our family life, my own book, Lenten Lands (Macmillan, 1988; HarperSanFrancisco, 1994). Douglas H. Gresham Chapter OneNo one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me. There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don’t really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man’s life. I was happy before I ever met H. I’ve plenty of what are called ‘resources.’ People get over these things. Come, I shan’t do so badly. One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this ‘commonsense’ vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace.

• From A Grief Observed (1961)

  I kept on thinking, ‘Yes, of course, of course. I’d forgotten that he thought that—or disliked this, or knew so-and-so—or jerked his head back that way.’ I had known all these things once and I recognized them the moment I met them again. But they had all faded out of my mental picture of him, and when they were all replaced by his actual presence the total effect was quite astonishingly different from the image I had carried about with me for those ten years. How can I hope that this will not happen to my memory of H.? That it is not happening already? Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes—like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night—little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes—ten seconds—of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again. The rough, sharp, cleansing tang of her otherness is gone. What pitiable cant to say, ‘She will live forever in my memory!’ Live? That is exactly what she won’t do. You might as well think like the old Egyptians that you can keep the dead by embalming them. Will nothing persuade us that they are gone? What’s left? A corpse, a memory, and (in some versions) a ghost. All mockeries or horrors. Three more ways of spelling the word dead. It was H. I loved. As if I wanted to fall in love with my memory of her, an image in my own mind! It would be a sort of incest. I remember being rather horrified one summer morning long ago when a burly, cheerful labouring man, carrying a hoe and a watering pot came into our churchyard and, as he pulled the gate behind him, shouted over his shoulder to two friends, ‘See you later, I’m just going to visit Mum.’ He meant he was going to weed and water and generally tidy up her grave. It horrified me because this mode of sentiment, all this churchyard stuff, was and is simply hateful, even inconceivable, to me. But in the light of my recent thoughts I am beginning to wonder whether, if one could take that man’s line (I can’t), there isn’t a good deal to be said for it. A six-by-three-foot flower-bed had become Mum. That was his symbol for her, his link with her. Caring for it was visiting her. May this not be in one way better than preserving and caressing an image in one’s own memory?

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “Pm having dinner with Cody tomorrow night,” said Harry, suddenly remembering. He’d planned the dinner with his son the week before, immediately after he and Laura had come from the steakhouse. The tablecloths there were green, and rough like a seasoned whore. Laura had pretended not to notice him curling an edge around his pole. However, when he came, he came hard, and the table shook, inviting the curious eyes of patrons and waitstaff. Laura had nearly choked on her ribeye then, but Harry was too bent in his swoon to notice. “Good,” she said. “You can explain to him that we’re separated. Pll tell Heather.” “Separated?” asked Harry. “You don’t want a divorce?” Truth be told, nothing less than divorce was what Harry had expected, and the fact that he was okay with this notion made the idea of a separation a bit of a disappointment. It’s not that he didn’t love Laura anymore, but he just... “No,” sighed Laura. “I don’t want a divorce. Not yet.” Then her face went slack, eyes drooping. “But look at yourself, Harry. You The Hamper Affair 489 fuck our dirty laundry. You fuck our clean laundry. Why? Have you become so disinterested in sex with a real person that you’d rather roll around with a shit-stained towel?” The image made Harry’s rod pulse, and Laura shook her head disgustedly. “Never mind,” she said. “Don’t answer that.” She leaned toward the door, and Harry could tell she was waiting for something, but what, he wasn’t sure. “Tm sorry?” he offered, but the words immediately fell flat, both knowing they were devoid of sincerity. Harry just wasn’t ready. Laura cried, but she cried proudly, still strong and feminine. “Tt’s not all my fault,” said Harry, and Laura hardened like dried mud on sweatpants. “What the fuck do you mean, Harry, it’s not all your fault?” Harry recognized the tactlessness of his words, and melted. “I’m sorry,’ he repeated, this time with real emotion. “But ever since your ‘change’, Laura, you’ve grown distant. And I know I’ve had my... fetish for years, but...” “But nothing, Harry. I’ve tried to enter into your world, I really have. Remember when I wore the same panties for a week? I asked if you wanted to play libertine? No, of course you don’t remember. You were too busy humping the mattress cover to notice me. And I know I’m still sexy. Men hit on me all the time. But .. .” Laura took a step toward Harry. “.. . I still love you.” Then she took a step back. “But you don’t see that anymore.” Harry put his face in his hands, trying to ignore the scent of flowery detergent. “Laura,” he began, an exasperated breath filling and then leaving his lungs. “It’s .. .”

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

  111 Unlike the tyrant-bishops who vied for the emperor’s backing, Maximus became a victim, not a perpetrator, of imperial violence. Having fled to North Africa during the Persian wars, in 661 he was forcibly brought to Constantinople, where he was imprisoned, condemned as a heretic, and mutilated; he died shortly afterward in exile. But he was vindicated at the third Council of Constantinople in 680 and would become known as the father of Byzantine theology. The doctrine of deification celebrates the transfiguration of the entire human being in the here and now, not merely in a future state, and this has indeed been the living experience of individual Christians. But this spiritual triumph hardly resembles the “realized eschatology” promoted by emperors and tyrant bishops. After Constantine’s conversion, they had convinced themselves that the empire was the Kingdom of God and a second manifestation of Christ. Not even the catastrophe of the Second Council of Ephesus or the military vulnerability of their empire could shake their belief that Rome would become intrinsically Christian and win the world for Christ. In other traditions people had tried to create a challenging alternative to the systemic violence of the state, but right up to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, Byzantines continued to believe that the Pax Romana was compatible with the Pax Christiana. The enthusiasm with which they had greeted imperial patronage was never accompanied by a sustained critique of the role and nature of the state, or its ineluctable violence and oppression. 112 By the early seventh century, both Persia and Byzantium had been ruined by their wars for imperial dominance. Syria, already weakened by a devastating plague, had become an impoverished region, and Persia had succumbed to anarchy, its frontier fatally compromised. Yet while Persians and Byzantines eyed each other nervously, real danger emerged elsewhere. Both empires had forgotten their Arab clients and failed to notice that the Arabian Peninsula had experienced a commercial revolution. Arabs had been watching the wars between the great powers very closely and knew that both empires were fatally weakened; they were about to undergo an astonishing spiritual and political awakening. 3 China: Warriors and Gentlemen T he Chinese believed that at the beginning of time, human beings had been indistinguishable from animals. Creatures that would eventually become human had “snake bodies with human faces or the heads of oxen with tiger noses,” while future animals could speak and had human skills.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Still shaking her head she had said to Stephen: ‘Needs must when the Bodies get busy, Miss Gordon! Have an eye to her, will you? She may stick it all right, but between you and me I very much doubt it. You might try her out as your second driver.’ And so far Mary Llewellyn had stuck it. Stephen looked away again, closing her eyes, and after a while forgot about Mary. The events that had preceded her own coming to France, began to pass through her brain in procession. Her chief in The London Ambulance Column, through whom she had first met Mrs. Claude Breakspeare—a good sort, the chief, she had been a staunch friend. The great news that she, Stephen, had been accepted and would go to the front as an ambulance driver. Then Puddle’s grave face: ‘I must write to your mother, this means that you will be in real danger.’ Her mother’s brief letter: ‘Before you leave I should very much like you to come and see me,’ the rest of the letter mere polite empty phrases. The impulse to resist, the longing to go, culminating in that hurried visit to Morton. Morton so changed and yet so changeless. Changed because of those blue-clad figures, the lame, the halt and the partially blinded who had sought its peace and its kindly protection. Changeless because that protection and peace belonged to the very spirit of Morton. Mrs. Williams a widow; her niece melancholic ever since the groom Jim had been wounded and missing—they had married while he had been home on leave, and quite soon the poor soul was expecting a baby. Williams now dead of his third and last stroke, after having survived pneumonia. The swan called Peter no longer gliding across the lake on his white reflection, and in his stead an unmannerly offspring who struck out with his wings and tried to bite Stephen. The family vault where her father lay buried—the vault was in urgent need of repair—‘No men left, Miss Stephen, we’re that short of stonemasons; her ladyship’s bin complainin’ already, but it don’t be no use complainin’ these times.’ Raftery’s grave—a slab of rough granite: ‘In memory of a gentle and courageous friend, whose name was Raftery, after the poet.’ Moss on the granite half effacing the words; the thick hedge growing wild for the want of clipping. And her mother—a woman with snow-white hair and a face that was worn almost down to the spirit; a woman of quiet but uncertain movements, with a new trick of twisting the rings on her fingers. ‘It was good of you to come.’ ‘You sent for me, Mother.’ Long silences filled with the realization that all they dared hope for was peace between them—too late to go back—they could not retrace their steps even though there was now peace between them. Then those last poignant moments in the study together—memory, the old room was haunted by it—a man dying with love in his eyes that was deathless—a woman holding him in her arms, speaking words such as lovers will speak to each other. Memory—they’re the one perfect thing about me. ‘Stephen, promise to write when you’re out in France, I shall want to hear from you.’ ‘I promise, Mother.’ The return to London; Puddle’s anxious voice: ‘Well, how was she?’ ‘Very frail, you must go to Morton.’ Puddle’s sudden and almost fierce rebellion: ‘I would rather not go, I’ve made my choice, Stephen.’ ‘But I ask this for my sake, I’m worried about her—even if I weren’t going away, I couldn’t go back now and live at Morton—our living together would make us remember.’ ‘I remember too, Stephen, and what I remember is hard to forgive. It’s hard to forgive an injury done to some one one loves. . . .’ Puddle’s face, very white, very stern—strange to hear such words as these on the kind lips of Puddle. ‘I know, I know, but she’s terribly alone, and I can’t forget that my father loved her.’ A long silence, and then: ‘I’ve never yet failed you—and you’re right—I must go to Morton.’

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

  Additional Literature.—Letters of Urban IV. in Mansi, vol. XXIII. Potthast: Regesta, 1161–1650.—Les Registres of Alexander IV., Recueil des bulles de ce pape d’après les MSS. originaux des archives du Vatican, Paris, 1886, of Urban IV., Paris, 1892, of Clement IV., Paris, 1893–1904.—*Döllinger: Der Uebergang des Papstthums an die Franzosen, in Akademische Vorträge, III. pp. 212–222, Munich, 1891. Lives of the popes in Muratori and Platina. The death of Frederick did not satisfy the papacy. It had decreed the ruin of the house of the Hohenstaufen. The popes denounced its surviving representatives as "the viperous brood" and, "the poisonous brood of a dragon of poisonous race." In his will, Frederick bade his son Conrad accord to the Church her just rights and to restore any he himself might have unjustly seized but on condition that she, as a merciful and pious mother, acknowledge the rights of the empire. His illegitimate son, the brilliant and princely Manfred, he appointed his representative in Italy during Conrad’s absence. Innocent broke up from Lyons in 1251, little dreaming that, a half century later, the papacy would remove there to pass an exile of seventy years.279 After an absence of six years, he entered Rome, 1253. The war against Frederick he continued by offering the crown of Sicily to Edmund, son of the English Henry III. Conrad descended to Italy and entered Naples, making good his claim to his ancestral crown. But the pope met him with the sentence of excommunication. Death, which seemed to be in league with the papacy against the ill-fated German house, claimed Conrad in 1254 at the age of 26. He left an only son, Conradin, then two years old.280 Conrad was soon followed by Innocent to the grave, 1254. Innocent lies buried in Naples. He was the last of the great popes of an era that was hastening to its end. During the reign, perhaps, of no other pope had the exactions of Rome upon England been so exorbitant and brazen. Matthew Paris charged him with making the Church a slave and turning the papal court into a money changer’s table. To his relatives, weeping around his death-bed, he is reported to have exclaimed. "Why do you weep, wretched creatures? Do I not leave you all rich?" Under the mild reign of Alexander IV., 1254–1261, Manfred made himself master of Sicily and was crowned king at Palermo, 1258.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  “You know why. Don’t act innocent.” I shove the hammer and stake at his chest but he won’t take them and steps away, blundering backwards. “Why don’t you kill me now? Right here?” “T can’t! But somebody should.” Oh this hurts. I didn’t expect that he would say it. “Why somebody?” “Nordchen, I love you with all my soul and I always will. But. But, . .You need to be put down.” “Put down?” To hear it said that way. It shocks me. “Why put . That is. Somebody needs . . you need . down? I’m not some mad dog, Daniel.” “Jesus, Nixie—” “Stop! Don’t say his name in vain.” “Oh now, now you're getting ali religious on me, is that it? Its not that simple, honey.” ; “Why is it not that simple! Have faith in me. I love you. Love me “I do.” “T’m saved, Daniel. I’m saved by the blood of Jesus. The holy man has removed the demon from me, did you see it? I’m just a girl now like any girl. We can have a baby. I want a baby for you. We will have a home. My sins, all my sins, they’re forgiven. We'll begin again. Make a baby with me.” |? “T don’t think it works like that, sweet pea,” he says. The fear in him is changing to rage, and ‘I can’t help but smell it. He’s getting out of my control. “Tell me something. And damn you, tell me the truth.” I know already what it is. “There’s this thing on the TV news,” he says. “No!” I say. “Don’t you keep bringing that up again.” “You listen to this. Four bodies behind the railroad yard.” “No!” _“They were torn to little pieces. Jesus.” “Shut up!” “No fucking heads! Does that mean anything to you? No heads.” “So?” It is all I can do now not to throw the hammer and wood at : him and run away crying like a little girl. 516 C. Sanchez-Garcia “T ast week I found you with blood all over you.” O02 “Blood all over you?” “T told you already — I told you. It was pig’s blood.” “Pig’s blood? Four guys, ripped to fucking little pieces. Somebody saw you. They’re calling you “The Ripper’.” Now he’s pulling at his hair. “Oh God. Oh God,” he says. “Pig’s blood! Pig’s blood?” “They were pigs!” What’s the use. “Jesus! Nixie! Je-zus!” Feebly I hold out the hammer and stake. “So do it if that’s what you want. You were afraid I’d be pissed at you, and maybe pull your head off. Is that what you think of me? I won’t fight you. Where do you want me to lie down?” “No!” He is in agony. Sweet prince. “I can’t. I won’t. I can’t stand the thought of hurting you.”

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

  He has not attended to it as a visual object; he has not handled it with his fingers; nor have its normal organic sensations or contacts yet become interesting enough to be discriminated from the whole massive feeling of the foot, or even of the leg to which it belongs. In short, the toe is neither a member of the babe's optical space, of his hand-movement space, nor an independent member of his leg-and-foot space. It has actually no mental existence yet save as this little pain-space. What wonder then, if the pains seems a little space-world all by itself? But let the pain once associate itself with these other space-worlds, and its space will become part of their space. Let the baby feel the nurse stroking the limb and awakening the pain every time her finger on the toe every time the pain shoots up; let him handle his foot himself and get the whenever the toe comes into his fingers or his mouth; let moving the leg exacerbate the pain—and all is changed. The space of the pain becomes identified with that part of each of the other spaces which gets felt when it awakens; and by their identity with it these parts are identified with each other, and grow systematically connected as members of a larger extensive whole.[194] Pourquoi les Sensations visuelles sont elles étendues? In Revue Philosophique, iv. 167.—As the proofs of this chapter are being corrected, I receive the third 'Heft' of Münsterberg's Beiträge zur Experimentellen Psychologie, in which that vigorous young psychologist reaffirms (if I understand him after so hasty a glance) more radically than ever the doctrine that muscular sensation proper is our one means of measuring extension. Unable to reopen the discussion here, I am in duty bound to call the attention of the reader to Herr M.'s work.[195] Even if the figure be drawn on a board instead of in the air, the variations of contact on the finger's surface will be much simpler than the peculiarities of the traced figure itself.[196] See for example Duchenne, Electrisation localisée, pp. 727, 770; Leyden; Virchow's Archiv, Ed. xlvii. (1869).[197] E.g., Eulenburg, Lehrb. d. Nervenkrankheiten (Berlin), 1878, i. 3.[198] 'Ueber den Kraftsinn,' Virchow's archiv, Ed. lxxvii. 134.[199] Archiv f. (Anat. u) Physiologie (1889), pp. 369, 540.[200] Direction in its 'first intention,' of course; direction with which so far we merely become acquainted, and about which we know nothing save perhaps it difference from another direction a moment ago experienced in the same way![201] I have said hardly anything about associations with visual space in the foregoing account, because I wished to represent a process which the blind and the seeing man might equally share. It is to be noticed that the space suggested to the imagination when the joint moves, and projected to the distance of the finger-tip, is not represented as any specific skin-tract.

• From A Way of Being (1980)

  cold, and you’ve cut me off twice. I keep calling you Betty [another participant] —I don’t know why—and when I came to you to tell you how sorry I felt about that, you just said that was my problem, and turned away.” Natalie replied that her perception was very different: “I realized you were quite upset because you called me by the wrong name, but I said that though I could see it troubled you, it didn’t bother me at all. I realize I haven’t reached out to you, and I think you do want contact with me, but I don’t feel I have rebuffed you.” It seemed that Nancy felt more and more strongly about all this, and that she had not heard, or certainly had not accepted, Natalie’s response. She said that she had observed the close relationship Natalie had with Teresa, a Chicana, and that perhaps Natalie could relate only with minority persons, rather than with persons like her—tall, blonde, and middle-class. This led to an angry outburst from Teresa about being stereotyped, and about five minutes was spent rebuilding the relationship between Nancy and Teresa. The group brought Nancy back to the issue between herself and Natalie. It seemed quite obvious that her feelings were so strong that they could not come simply from the incident she mentioned. Joyce said she had noticed that she, Nancy, and Natalie were all similar—tall, slim, blonde—and that perhaps Nancy was feeling that Natalie should at least relate to someone so like her, rather than to Teresa who was short and dark. Nancy considered this, wondered if there might be something to it, but clearly was not deeply touched by the idea. At least two other possible bases for her strong feelings were caringly and tentatively suggested to her. To the first she said, “I’m trying on that hat, but it doesn’t seem to fit.” To the second she said, “That doesn’t seem to fit either.” Carl sat there “. . . feeling completely mystified. I wanted to understand just what it was she was troubled about, but I couldn’t get any clue to follow. I believe many others were feeling the same way. Here she was with tears in her eyes, feeling something far beyond some possible imaginary rebuff, but what was it?” Then Ann said, “This may be inappropriate, but I’m going to say it anyway. When you arrived, Nancy, I thought you were Natalie, you looked so much alike. I feel envious when I watch the beautiful open relationship between Natalie and her father. I had that kind of relationship with my father. I wonder if there is any connection between you and your father and Carl?” “That’s it!” Nancy sobbed, acting as though she had been struck by a bolt of lightning. She collapsed into herself, weeping her heart out. Between sobs she said, “I didn’t really cry at all at my father’s death. . . . He really died for me long before his death. . . . What can I do?” People responded that he was still part of her, and she

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

  I made her put the money away and promise me she wouldn’t spend a cent of her money while we were together and then I told her how I wished to dress her when we got to Denver, for I wanted to stop there for a couple of days to see Smith who had written approving of everything I did and adding, to my heart’s joy, that he was much better. On the Monday morning Sophy and I started westwards: she had had the tact to go to the depot first so that no one in Lawrence ever coupled our names. Sommerfeld and Judge Bassett saw me off at the depot and wished me “all luck!” And so the second stage of my life came to an end. Sophy was a lively sweet companion; after leaving Topeka, she came boldly into my compartment and did not leave me again. May I confess it? I’d rather she had stayed in Lawrence; I wanted the adventure of being alone and there was a girl in the train whose long eyes held mine as I passed her seat, and I passed it often: I’d have spoken to her if Sophy had not been with me. When we got to Denver, I called on Smith, leaving Sophy in the hotel. I found him better, but divined that the cursed disease was only taking breath, so to speak, before the final assault. He came back with me to my hotel and as soon as he saw Sophy, he declared I must go back with him, he had forgotten to give me something I must have. I smiled at Sophy to whom Smith was very courteous-kind and accompanied him. As soon as we were in the street, Smith began in horror: “Frank, she’s a colored girl: you must leave her at once or you’ll make dreadful trouble for yourself later.” “How did you know she was colored?” I asked. “Look at her nails!” he cried, “and her eyes: no Southerner would be in doubt for a moment. You must leave her at once, please!” “We are going to part at Frisco”, I said. And when he pressed me to send her back at once, I refused. I would not put such shame upon her and even now I’m sure I was right in that resolve. Smith was sorry but kind to me and so we parted forever. He had done more for me than any other man and now after fifty years I can only confess my incommensurable debt to him and the hot tears come into my eyes now as they came when our hands met for the last time: he was the dearest, sweetest, noblest spirit of a man I have met in this earthly pilgrimage. _Ave atque vale._

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

  Next day I led Reece and the Boss straight to the farmer’s place, but to my surprise he told me that I had agreed to give him two dollars a head, whereas I had bargained with him for only one dollar. His son backed up the farmer’s statement and the Irish helper declared that he was sorry to disagree with me, but I was mistaken; it was two dollars I had said. They little knew the sort of men they had to deal with. “Where are the cattle?” Ford asked, and we went down to the pasture where they were penned. “Count them, Harris,” said Ford, and I counted six hundred and twenty head. Fifty odd had disappeared, but the farmer wanted to persuade me that I had counted wrongly. Ford went about and soon found a rough lean-to stable where there were thirty more head of Texan cattle. These were driven up and soon disappeared in the herd; Reece and I began to move the herd towards the entrance. The farmer declared he would not let us go, but Ford looked at him a little while and then said very quietly, “You have stolen enough cattle to pay you. If you bother with us, I will make meat of you—see!—cold meat”, and the farmer moved aside and kept quiet. That night we had a great feast and the day after Ford announced that he had sold the whole of the cattle to two hotel proprietors and got nearly as much money as if we had not lost a hoof. My five thousand dollars became six thousand, five hundred. The courage shown by the common people in the fire, the wild humor coupled with the consideration for the women, had won my heart. This is the greatest people in the world, I said to myself, and was proud to feel at one with them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ON THE TRAIL! Chapter VIII. Prompted by Dell, before leaving Chicago I bought some books for the winter evenings, notably Mill’s “Political Economy”; Carlyle’s “Heroes and Hero Worship” and “Latter Day Pamphlets”; Col. Hay’s “Dialect Poems”, too and three medical books, and took them down with me to the ranch. We had six weeks of fine weather, during which I broke in horses under Reece’s supervision, and found out that gentleness and especially carrots and pieces of sugar were the direct way to the heart of the horse; discovered, too, that a horse’s bad temper and obstinacy were nearly always due to fear. A remark of Dell that a horse’s eye had a magnifying power and that the poor, timid creatures saw men as trees walking, gave me the clue and soon I was gratified by Reece saying that I could “gentle” horses as well as anyone on the ranch, excepting Bob.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Chrysostom’s argument teetered dangerously close to common Classical assumptions that close relationships between males were more ‘natural’ than those between males and females, but his trump card was to ridicule men embarking on syneisactism as feminizing themselves: sitting beside women as they spun and wove, absorbing their various little feminine ways, running errands for them. All that was a Graeco-Roman man’s worst nightmare. [33] Yet not everyone listened even to Chrysostom. From his own time, and so two generations after Macrina, comes the vivid literary life-story of the Roman aristocrat Melania the Younger; the work of a fifth-century ascetic, it has been described as ‘the most vivid and animated biography of a woman to have survived from antiquity’. [34] Melania was married as a teenager to the slightly older teenager Pinian, who was sympathetic to her pleas on their wedding night to live as brother and sister, but felt a sense of duty to produce heirs for his consular family. After two successive children died in infancy, Pinian decided that he had done his best, and the relationship was free to develop as they wished, far away from family pressures back in Rome. Inherited wealth financed a life of suitably austere comfort in Jerusalem, and Pinian was buried in the grounds of the community of monks and nuns that Melania had devoted her energies to creating. [35] This tradition continued to fascinate couples in the eastern Mediterranean; at least three saints’ Lives variously dating between the sixth and the tenth centuries discuss outright celibate marriages with warm approval. The most complicated was that of Andronikos and Athanasia, where a sadly recognizable family tragedy expands into a miniature Greek romantic novel with echoes of the story of Melania and Pinian: the husband and wife, a golden couple from wealthy families in Antioch, separate in grief over the deaths of their two children. Later they are reunited in twelve years of monastic companionship, but without Andronikos recognizing his lost wife, for (in classic transvestite ascetic style) she is disguised as a man – as an Ethiopian, no less – and she does not enlighten him about her real identity before their edifying deaths. The other two stories are from Syria and Egypt, backdated to the time of pre- Constantinian persecution: from the outset of their marriages the couples portrayed pledge to live together without any sexual contact. [36] If it is argued that Lives of saints are just Lives of saints, literary constructions, one has to reckon with an extraordinary fifth-century tomb inscription to a couple at Aosta in Italy, which claims that, in the course of a long marriage, ‘the wife relinquished her husband and lived for more than twenty years in perpetual chastity.’ [37] Structurally chaste marriages lasted in the minds and conversation of Christians and were esteemed and practised for more than a millennium.

• From The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica Volume 10 (2011)

  Two fast chops with the knife in the neck and I let the fountains “spray over me. I stab him over and over in his face and his eyes and his mouth and his neck and his chest. Ah! Ah! Ah! Like tenderizing a beef roast — oh God! 528 C. Sanchez-Garcia Oh God. I never made a pot roast for my man. Oh my love, forgive your Nordchen. You would have loved my sauerbraten. You would have. I want my tears. Why are there no tears? Give me my tears! I shower in his warm blood. The useless prey did not know how to cut himself good with this knife — but I do! The smell of the blood fills my senses and I want to kill every living thing in all the world one by one. I want everything to stop and be quiet. ’m so confused. The stars are falling. I want to be alone! What if the people find me here — leave me alone! Time to think about the years all gone, all lost. But I hear the echo of voices drifting through the trees, are they the people? Is it the Unicorn come to call for me? No —I don’t think. Do ghosts smell? I don’t know. Why? Why don’t they all fade away? Leave me alone. Alone! Alone! Alone! Why don’t they leave me alone? “Harold?” A young woman’s voice, high and thin. “Harold? Are you over here? Are you done?” She is coming, waving a flashlight. She comes close and she is carrying something wrapped in her arms in a blanket. I stand up to greet her and to be polite to her. ’ve seen this girl. “Harold ... ?” The flashlight shines in my eyes. “So — youre that whore he’s been fucking!” She swings the flashlight at my face and I dance back from it. She can’t move well because of something in her arms that smells like Harzer cheese. We are alone. I show her the knife, but the flashlight is shining on my body and she sees my glory. I am the dragon. I am the lamb of salvation, washed in the blood of a fool. I spread my arms wide and I feel them turning into huge feathered wings to sweep me up to Heaven to be with kuschelbaer. She sees the prey and her scream stops in her throat. “What happened?” Why do people ask stupid things? I am filled with the Holy Ghost but she is not looking at me, she asks stupid things instead of worshiping my glory. I must speak in her language so she can understand instead of using the Holy Ghost language. I point the knife at her commanding as I did before to the prey. ““Thou shalt not give false hope to the damned!”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  In Florence, then, there once lived a noble youth named Tedaldo degli Elisei, who, having fallen passionately in love with the wife of a certain Aldobrandino Palermini,1 a lady of impeccable breeding called Monna Ermellina, duly earned the reward of his persistent devotion. But Fortune, the enemy of those who prosper, undermined his happiness, inasmuch as the lady, having already begun to grant her favours to Tedaldo, suddenly decided for no apparent reason to withhold them from him entirely. Not only would she not listen to any of the messages he caused her to receive, but she absolutely refused to acknowledge his existence, thus casting him into a state of profound and excruciating melancholy. Since, however, he had carefully concealed this love-affair of his, no one guessed the reason for his sorrow. Feeling that he had lost the lady’s favours through no fault of his own, he tried in every possible way to retrieve them, only to discover that all his efforts were unavailing. And because he had no wish to allow her the satisfaction of seeing him suffer on her account, he resolved to vanish from the scene. Having scraped together all the money he could obtain, he departed in secret without informing any of his friends or relatives except for one companion of his who knew all about the affair, and went to Ancona, assuming the name of Filippo di Sanlodeccio. In Ancona, he made the acquaintance of a wealthy merchant with whom he obtained employment, travelling with him to Cyprus on one of his ships, and the merchant was so impressed by his character and abilities that he not only paid him a handsome salary but gave him a share in the business and placed him in charge of a sizeable portion of his affairs. To these, he devoted so much skill and diligence that within a few years he had made a name for himself as an able and prosperous merchant. And whilst his thoughts frequently returned to his cruel mistress and he still experienced sharp pangs of love and longed to see her again, he was so strong-willed that for seven years he succeeded in conquering his feelings.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile, the kinsmen and kinswomen of the young man, hearing the news, had flocked thither, and with them well nigh all the men and women in the city. Therewith, the body, being laid out amiddleward the courtyard upon Andrevuola's silken cloth and strewn, with all her roses, was there not only bewept by her and his kinsfolk, but publicly mourned by well nigh all the ladies of the city and by many men, and being brought forth of the courtyard of the Seignory, not as that of a plebeian, but as that of a nobleman, it was with the utmost honour borne to the sepulchre upon the shoulders of the most noble citizens. Some days thereafterward, the Provost ensuing that which he had demanded, Messer Negro propounded it to his daughter, who would hear nought thereof, but, her father being willing to comply with her in this, she and her maid made themselves nuns in a convent very famous for sanctity and there lived honourably a great while after." THE SEVENTH STORY [Day the Fourth] SIMONA LOVETH PASQUINO AND THEY BEING TOGETHER IN A GARDEN, THE LATTER RUBBETH A LEAF OF SAGE AGAINST HIS TEETH AND DIETH. SHE, BEING TAKEN AND THINKING TO SHOW THE JUDGE HOW HER LOVER DIED, RUBBETH ONE OF THE SAME LEAVES AGAINST HER TEETH AND DIETH ON LIKE WISE Pamfilo having delivered himself of his story, the king, showing no compassion for Andrevuola, looked at Emilia and signed to her that it was his pleasure she should with a story follow on those who had already told; whereupon she, without delay, began as follows: "Dear companions, the story told by Pamfilo putteth me in mind to tell you one in nothing like unto his save that like as Andrevuola lost her beloved in a garden, even so did she of whom I have to tell, and being taken in like manner as was Andrevuola, freed herself from the court, not by dint of fortitude nor constancy, but by an unlooked-for death. And as hath otherwhile been said amongst us, albeit Love liefer inhabiteth the houses of the great, yet not therefor doth he decline the empery of those of the poor; nay, whiles in these latter he so manifesteth his power that he maketh himself feared, as a most puissant seignior, of the richer sort. This, if not in all, yet in great part, will appear from my story, with which it pleaseth me to re-enter our own city, wherefrom this day, discoursing diversely of divers things and ranging over various parts of the world, we have so far departed.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But at night, when the child lay lonely and wakeful, these acts that had proved a consolation in the morning, having sprung from a desperate kind of loyalty to Collins—these acts would seem trivial and silly and useless, since Collins could neither know of them nor see them, and the tears that had been held in check through the day would well under Stephen’s eyelids. Nor could she, in those lonely watches of the night-time, pluck up courage enough to reproach the Lord Jesus, who, she felt, could have helped her quite well had He chosen to accord her a housemaid’s knee. She would think: ‘He loves neither me nor Collins—He wants all the pain for Himself; He won’t share it!’ And then she would feel contrite: ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Lord Jesus, ’cause I do know You love all miserable sinners!’ And the thought that perhaps she had been unjust to Jesus would reduce her to still further tears. Very dreadful indeed were those nights spent in weeping, spent in doubting the Lord and His servant Collins. The hours would drag by in intolerable blackness, that in passing seemed to envelop Stephen’s body, making her feel now hot and now cold. The grandfather clock on the stairs ticked so loudly that her head ached to hear its unnatural ticking—when it chimed, which it did at the hours and the half-hours, its voice seemed to shake the whole house with terror, until Stephen would creep down under the bed-clothes to hide from she knew not what. But presently, huddled beneath the blankets, the child would be soothed by a warm sense of safety, and her nerves would relax, while her body grew limp with the drowsy softness of bed. Then suddenly a big and most comforting yawn, and another, and another, until darkness and Collins and tall clocks that menaced, and Stephen herself, were all blended and merged into something quite friendly, a harmonious whole, neither fearful nor doubting—the blessèd illusion we call sleep. 2In the weeks that followed on Collins’ departure, Anna tried to be very gentle with her daughter, having the child more frequently with her, more diligently fondling Stephen. Mother and daughter would walk in the garden, or wander about together through the meadows, and Anna would remember the son of her dreams, who had played with her in those meadows. A great sadness would cloud her eyes for a moment, an infinite regret as she looked down at Stephen; and Stephen, quick to discern that sadness, would press Anna’s hand with small, anxious fingers; she would long to inquire what troubled her mother, but would be held speechless through shyness. The scents of the meadows would move those two strangely—the queer, pungent smell from the hearts of dog-daisies; the buttercup smell, faintly green like the grass; and then meadowsweet that grew close by the hedges. Sometimes Stephen must tug at her mother’s sleeve sharply—intolerable to bear that thick fragrance alone!

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Church institutions everywhere found it difficult to formulate a coherent reaction to these sudden incursions of lesbian and gay activism within Christianity; they could not be ignored or simply othered, as might at first have seemed possible in response to the sudden eruption of secular gay anger against public repression that famously produced a week of rioting against the New York police around the Stonewall gay bar in 1969. In England, many gay Anglo-Catholics were particularly disconcerted by an eruption of Christian lesbian and gay openness that paid little respect to their carefully bounded historic sub-culture (unsympathetically summed up by one informed observer as ‘gin, lace and backbiting’). [13] The dilemma was wider than that: one phenomenon of the 1980s was the embarrassment of gay Anglican bishops when their silence about their sexuality was challenged as hypocrisy by those who were no longer silent. Was it a Christian act to ‘out’ them without their consent? The tabloid press was gleeful. The problem of double standards has continued to challenge numerous conservative gay politicians and clergy in the public eye across the world. [14] A decade or more of indecision among Western Churches as gay equality was asserted more in Western society generally, as well as in the Church, was terminated by a new brutal reality. From 1981 reports made clear the emergence across the world of a sexually transmitted disease as devastating in its effects as syphilis had been in the sixteenth century, but more rapid in its transmission thanks to the global interlinking of modern society: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). From the early 1980s till now, AIDS may have brought premature death to more than 30 million people, and a greater number are currently living with the virus that causes it, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). It gradually became apparent as this new medical terminology was hastily forced into precision that the origins of the pandemic appeared to have been in Africa, but by 1981 HIV and consequent deaths were already widely dispersed, and in the United States one of the worst affected categories were sexually active gay men. The virus had capitalized on a gay culture that had revelled in its new sexual freedom and acted accordingly, so that infection was sexually transmitted via bodily fluids. Young, healthy males were prominent among those dying, at first with little hope of survival. Grief was mixed with terror of the unknown, and commentators who had hated the permissive society and the ‘New Morality’ exhibited a good deal of Schadenfreude masquerading as old morality. A widespread conservative reaction was that AIDS was God’s wrath on homosexuality; it was not explained why God did not seem so wrathful against lesbians, who turned out to be among those least affected by the epidemic, while he was instead showing a great deal of wrath towards male and female Africans generally, despite the mushroom growth of Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  The Greeks came to the plays in order to weep together, convinced that the sharing of grief strengthened the bond of citizenship and reminded each member of the audience that he was not alone in his personal sorrow. In his trilogy Oresteia , Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) showed that suffering was not only built into human experience but indispensable to the quest for wisdom. The three tragedies depict a seemingly unstoppable cycle of revenge killing. In the first play, Clytemnestra murders her husband, King Agamemnon, to avenge the death of their daughter; then the saga continues with the story of their son, Orestes, who slays his mother to avenge his father; the trilogy concludes with Orestes’ headlong flight from the Erinyes (also known as the Furies), the terrifying gods of the underworld who would hound a transgressor like a pack of wild dogs until he atoned for his sin with a horrible death. Suffering was a law of life, the chorus reminds the audience, but it was also the path to wisdom : Zeus has led us on to know, the Helmsman lays it down as law that we must suffer, suffer into truth. We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart the pain of pain remembered comes again, and we resist, but ripeness comes as well. From the gods enthroned on the awesome rowing-bench there comes a violent love . 1 Zeus has taught human beings to think about their predicament: we cannot forget our pain; even in sleep, the memory of past sorrow drips ceaselessly into our hearts. Men and women may try to resist the law of suffering, but the gods have ordained that their reflective powers will set them on the path to wisdom, ripeness, and blessing. In Eumenides , the last play of the trilogy, Aeschylus shows us humanity’s passage from the brutal violence of a tribal, kin-based society, with its inexorable, self-destructive ethic of revenge, to life in a civilized city (polis), where crime is judged by the rational process of law. Still in flight from the Furies, Orestes arrives in Athens and flings himself at the feet of its patronal deity Athena. She convenes the city council to decide his fate by the due process of law. The Furies argue that Orestes must pay for his crime, but the jury is split and Athena has the casting vote. She acquits Orestes but placates the Furies by offering them a shrine in the city, decreeing that henceforth they will be known as the Eumenides, “the Compassionate Ones.” The polis can be seen as a symbol of the rational new brain that enables us to hold aloof from the instinctive drives of the old brain and take responsibility for them. In their long-term effects, the dark deeds of the past live on in the polis, so Athenians must acknowledge them and make a place for them in their minds and hearts; they can then transform these primitive passions into a force for compassion.

• From The Fixed Stars: A Memoir (2020)

  As a child and a young adult, I had watched my mother grieve many deaths. I’d felt panicked when she cried, when she had “sad attacks.” But I got to see real human feeling in grown-ups, got to practice that kind of discomfort, got to see that we would survive. When my turn came to be a grown-up with feelings, I had not forgotten. I don’t think I ever fell apart in front of June, not apart-apart, but I was grouchy, weepy, tired. When I had the energy, we talked about it, and I tried to explain what she was seeing in me, to put words to my emotions and actions. I wanted to metabolize the grief for both of us, to offer her what she needed—no more and no less—to comprehend what she might feel. I hope she’d understand, as I was coming to understand it, that things might feel groundless, but she was safe. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] The weekend of the Fourth of July we went on a camping trip to Lake Wenatchee—me, Ash, and June, with a couple of the Thursday-night dinner families. We didn’t have our own tent or sleeping bags, so we borrowed them, and when we arrived at the site, I saw that we were out of our league. The other families had fancy tents and cots, bins full of dedicated cooking equipment for camping, and comfortable, well-designed chairs that folded into stuff sacks. I knew they’d been camping multiple times a summer for years, but it didn’t help; they also had intact marriages, which was even worse. I woke up in the night, pinned between June and the nylon wall of the tent, and started to cry. I tried not to make any noise, but Ash reached over and touched my shoulder. You okay? they asked. I hate all of this, I squeaked. All their perfect lives. Shhhhhhhhhh, they whispered, rubbing my arm. We’ll get through this. We will. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] I wrote this down in a notebook. Happiness : joy :: sadness : suffering. The difference is in intensity and duration. I went around and around: Could I have done this all, all these months, differently? But really, could I? The merry-go-round was more palatable than what I’d started to suspect: that I would suffer, and that I’d probably make other people suffer too, because I couldn’t avoid it. The best-case scenario, then, might be a safe place to do the suffering, and a witness to keep me company. But Jesus, who would agree to that? Who would possibly accompany me? Because if someone agrees to be my witness, then I will have to be theirs too.