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 257 of 263 · 20 per page

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  Three weeks into our separation, I woke up with a patch of itchy welts on my torso, the size and hue of pencil erasers. Hives. By night the spray of pink dots had joined together, the way droplets of rain make a puddle: my entire chest was covered, and my groin, my arms, the backs of my hands. Hives streaked down my legs and marched across my scalp. When June tried to climb onto my lap, I yelped. My skin pulsed and crawled, like it wanted to get away from me. Are you allowed to grieve if you’ve caused the death? Is that something that can happen? I had ended my marriage, but I had also ended a life that I had, at one time, loved. What exactly was this grief? The loss of him, of us? I wanted it to be, but I wasn’t sure. We’d started to lose each other long before. I’d missed him for years. This lament was not that. June’s parents aren’t together anymore: the phrase came out of me as though someone else were speaking it, as though I were eavesdropping at the playground. I ended a life that had been not only mine, but ours. [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] Brandon gave me some dirt: an acquaintance had recently left his wife of two decades for another woman. We knew little of this couple and nothing of their marriage, but this feels great: the distraction of someone else’s drama. I pore over the acquaintance’s photos online, images and emoji-filled captions from a trip with his girlfriend. I know I am this husband, but I feel for his wife. I think of the public radio host—a woman in her fifties, an interviewer of philosophers and poets—the one whose show I’d listened to for a long time before I learned she was divorced. When I found out, I was disenchanted. How can she lead conversations about the meaning of human life when she doesn’t even have her shit together? She can’t even stay married! As though the ability to stay in a marriage were irrefutable evidence of character, the kind of trait you might boast in a job interview. As though staying married weren’t just as often motivated by fear, financial insecurity, religious codes, inertia. The ability to leave a marriage that no longer works: What kind of character is this evidence of?

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  A man named Oscar, no one she remembered, had died in 1984. A clipping about Katsu Tatami from 1986. Here was the bulletin for Terrence Robinson, Nico’s Terrence. How odd—she must have put this bulletin together herself, but she didn’t remember it. Jonathan Bird. Dwight Sumner. There were so many of them, so impossibly many. In her current life, it happened at least once a week that someone would wander into the store and then, when they discovered its mission, say something like “Oh, I remember that time!” Fiona had learned to check her temper, to push her toes into the floor so her face didn’t change. “I knew someone whose cousin had it!” they’d continue. “Did you ever see Philadelphia ?” And they’d shake their heads in dismay. And how could she answer? They meant well, all of them. How could she explain that this city was a graveyard? That they were walking every day through streets where there had been a holocaust, a mass murder of neglect and antipathy, that when they stepped through a pocket of cold air, didn’t they understand it was a ghost, it was a boy the world had spat out? Here, in her hand, a stack of ghosts. She looked through Terrence’s bulletin. They’d read a Psalm, apparently, although the book and verse numbers didn’t mean anything to her now. Asher Glass had sung. She remembered that. Asher would speak at ACT UP meetings with a voice like a politician from a black-and-white movie. He’d break into city council with his bloody handprint banner. He and his friend chained themselves to Governor Thompson’s fence one summer, got arrested for the millionth time. Asher was still around, Fiona knew, living in New York. She’d seen him in a documentary a while back, a “three decades of AIDS” thing. He looked as healthy as anyone, was so muscular you couldn’t believe he had the same virus she’d seen carve men into skeletons. His hair had grayed and he had jowls, and surely he was dealing with early osteoporosis or the other landmines of being HIV positive over age fifty, but in that movie he’d looked ready to jump through the screen into Fiona’s living room to help her lift boxes. It wasn’t true, what she’d said. They weren’t all dead. Not all of them. On October 13 she’d held her own quiet memorial, alone in her house, for Nico. Candles and music and too much wine. Thirty years. How could it possibly have been thirty years? But that was just the start of the worst time, when the entire city she’d known was turning into lesions and echoing coughs and the ropy fossils of limbs. And although it made no sense at all, she’d never fully been able to shake the ridiculous, narcissistic feeling that the whole epidemic was somehow her fault.

• From The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women: How to Become Orgasmic for a Lifetime (2011)

  I cannot separate sex and my spirituality. My spirituality involves acting at all times with an inner integrity. To connect with and truly respect a lover, and first of all you must feel this within yourself, is to honor the sacred, the goddess, the higher self, whatever we choose to name it. Be assured that if there are lots of things going wrong in your life, Tantric sex is not going to make them miraculously better. If the reason you are not having good sex is because you keep choosing lousy partners, or you have no partner at all, or you have no idea how to communicate, learning about Tantric sex will only help you insofar as any path of healing will help you to get to the root of what is wrong. Don’t get sucked in by promises of a lifetime of sexual ecstasy from one weekend. We all have difficult issues around our sexuality. One weekend workshop may help you begin to delve into some of the very painful places in your life that need healing. But just as you start to get into them, the weekend is over and you are dumped back into your life with gaping wounds and nowhere to go to get help. On the other hand, such workshops may help you help your partner, and be of little or no use to you. I have attended two Tantra classes. So far they have only helped me with pleasing my partner. Tantric sex is one of many paths of healing available to us, and it may or may not be suited to you. It is not a quick fix. Needing to experience sex as spiritual (in the sense of its being “more” than merely physical) may be just as limiting as needing for sex not to be spiritual. Sex is what it is, spiritual or otherwise. Some people may choose the Tantric path because they are afraid of messy animal passions, and they think that sex dressed up in the saffron robes of spirituality will be clean and nice and pure. In reality, what they may be looking for is a way of avoiding the intense feelings that come up for them when they are sexual. Some women have been so damaged by sex that they are afraid of it. Women who feel this way need to confront and attend to those very feelings they are trying to avoid and embark on the process of healing. So much abuse, sexual and otherwise, has hurt many women, so that trusting and experiencing sex as a spiritual act may not be possible or appropriate.

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  also letters IV, 4; XVII, 2.54.Tertullian, De pudicitia, III, 5.55.Ibid., XIII, 7.56.Saint Jerome, letter 77, 4–5.57.Saint Ambrose, De paenitentia, II, X (91).58.Ibid., II, VIII (69).59.Saint Irenaeus, Adversus haereses [I, 6, 3; III, 4, 3].60.Tertullian, De paenitentia, XII.61.Tertullian, De paenitentia, IX, 3–6.62.“[…]ut probent lapsus sui dolorem, ut ostendant verecundiam, ut monstrent humilitatem, ut exhibeant modestiam,” letter to Cyprian, XXXVI, 3.63.“Quaeso vos, fratres, aequiescite salubribus remediis, consiliis obedite melioribus; cum lacrymis nostris vestras lacrymas jungite, cum nostro gemitu vestros gemitus copulate” [“Je vous en prie, mes frères, suivez nos conseils, profitez du remède salutaire. Unissez vos larmes à nos larmes, vos gémissements à nos gémissements,” trans. abbé Thibaut.] [“I beseech you, my brothers, follow our counsel, take advantage of the remedy of salvation. Join your tears to our tears, add your sorrow to our sorrow.”] Saint Cyprian, De lapsis, XXXII, 2.64.Saint Ambrose, De paenitentia, I, V, 22.65.“Confitentur gemitibus, confitentur ejulationibus, confitentur fletibus, confitentur liberis, non coactis vocibus,” ibid., I, V, 24.66.“Sacco corpus involvere, cinere perfundere, macerare jejunio, moerore conficere, multorum precibus adjuvari” [“s’envelopper le corps d’un sac, le couvrir de cendre, le consumer par le jeûne, l’accabler de chagrin, et se faire aider par les prières de beaucoup,” trans. C. Épitalon and M. Lestienne.] [“to clothe the body with sackcloth, to sprinkle it with ashes, to macerate yourselves by fasting, to wear yourselves out with sorrow, to gain the aid of the prayers of many.”] Pacian, Paraenesis, XXIV.67.[Tertullian, De paenitentia, X, 1.]68.On the double meaning of the penitential manifestation, cf. Tertullian: “In humbling a man it exalts him. When it defiles him, he is cleansed. In accusing, it excuses. In condemning, it absolves,” De paenitentia, IX, 6; Saint Cyprian: “let faithful tears be shed from the eyes, that those very eyes which have looked evilly upon idols may wipe out with tears pleasing to God that which they had unlawfully committed,” letter XXXI, 7; Saint Jerome: “What sins would such a penance fail to purge away? What ingrained stains would such tears be unable to wash out?,” letter 77, 4.69.When Saint Cyprian talks about those who have simply “thought” of sacrificing, he mentions the need for them to confess to the priest, then to do an “exomologesis conscientiae” (De lapsis, XXVIII). It seems that this involves an admission and a manifestation of repentance addressed, in private and in secret, directly to God.70.In the middle of the fifth century, Saint Leo condemns the custom of reading in public the list of sins committed by the faithful (letter 168).71.[Saint Ambrose, letter XXXVII, 45.]72.Saint John Chrysostom, [2nd Homily on penance, 1].73.Saint Ambrose, De paradiso, XIV, 71: “non tam majori crimine parricidi […] quam sacrilegii.” Cf. also Saint John Chrysostom, 19th Homily on Genesis.74.Saint Ambrose, Apologia de propheta David, [VIII, 36–39].75.Saint John Chrysostom, 17th Homily on Genesis.76.Cf.

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

  "The son whom the Lord had lent you for a season, He has taken away. There is no ground, therefore, for those silly and wicked complaints of foolish men: O blind death! O hard fate! O implacable daughters of Destiny! O cruel fortune! The Lord who had lodged him here for a season, at this stage of his career has called him away. What the Lord has done, we must, at the same time, consider has not been done rashly, nor by chance, neither from having been impelled from without, but by that determinate counsel, whereby He not only foresees, decrees, and executes nothing but what is just and upright in itself, but also nothing but what is good and wholesome for us. Where justice and good judgment reign paramount, there it is impious to remonstrate. When, however, our advantage is bound up with that goodness, how great would be the degree of ingratitude not to acquiesce, with a calm and well-ordered temper of mind, in whatever is the wish of our Father .... "It is God who has sought back from you your son, whom He had committed to you to be educated, on the condition that he might always be His own. And, therefore, He took him away, because it was both of advantage to him to leave this world, and by this bereavement to humble you, or to make trial of your patience. If you do not understand the advantage of this, without delay, first of all, setting aside every other object of consideration, ask of God that He may show you. Should it be His will to exercise you still farther, by concealing it from you, submit to that will, that you may become wiser than the weakness of thine own understanding can ever attain to.

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

  "When I first received the intelligence of the death of Claude and of your son Louis, I was so utterly overpowered (tout esperdu et confus en mon esprit) that for many days I was fit for nothing but to weep; and although I was somehow upheld before the Lord by those aids wherewith He sustains our souls in affliction, yet among men I was almost a nonentity; so far at least as regards my discharge of duty, I appeared to myself quite as unfit for it as if I had been half dead (un homme demi-mort). On the one hand, I was sadly grieved that a most excellent and faithful friend [Claude Féray] had been snatched away from me—a friend with whom I was so familiar, that none could be more closely united than we were; on the other hand, there arose another cause of grief, when I saw the young man, your son, taken away in the very flower of his age, a youth of most excellent promise, whom I loved as a son, because, on his part, he showed that respectful affection toward me as he would to another father. "To this grievous sorrow was still added the heavy and distressing anxiety we experienced about those whom the Lord had spared to us. I heard that the whole household were scattered here and there. The danger of Malherbe601 caused me very great misery, as well as the cause of it, and warned me also as to the rest. I considered that it could not be otherwise but that my wife must be very much dismayed. Your Charles,602 I assure you, was continually recurring to my thoughts; for in proportion as he was endowed with that goodness of disposition which had always appeared in him towards his brother as well as his preceptor, it never occurred to me to doubt but that he would be steeped in sorrow and soaked in tears. One single consideration somewhat relieved me, that he had my brother along with him, who, I hoped, would prove no small comfort in this calamity; even that, however, I could not reckon upon, when at the same time I recollected that both were in jeopardy, and neither of them were yet beyond the reach of danger. Thus, until the letter arrived which informed me that Malherbe was out of danger, and that Charles and my brother, together with my wife and the others, were safe,603 I would have been all but utterly cast down, unless, as I have already mentioned, my heart was refreshed in prayer and private meditations, which are suggested by His Word ....

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

  To Viret he wrote a few days later, April 7, 1549, as follows: — "Although the death of my wife has been exceedingly painful to me, yet I subdue my grief as well as I can. Friends, also, are earnest in their duty to me. It might be wished, indeed, that they could profit me and themselves more; yet one can scarcely say how much I am supported by their attentions. But you know well enough how tender, or rather soft, my mind is. Had not a powerful self-control, therefore, been vouchsafed to me, I could not have borne up so long. And truly mine is no common source of grief. I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life, of one who, had it been so ordered, would not only have been the willing sharer of my exile and poverty, but even of my death.597 During her life she was the faithful helper of my ministry. "From her I never experienced the slightest hindrance. She was never troublesome to me throughout the entire course of her illness; she was more anxious about her children than about herself. As I feared these private cares might annoy her to no purpose, I took occasion, on the third day before her death to mention that I would not fail in discharging my duty to her children. Taking up the matter immediately, she said, ’I have already committed them to God.’ When I said that that was not to prevent me from caring for them, she replied, ’I know you will not neglect what you know has been committed to God.’ Lately, also, when a certain woman insisted that she should talk with me regarding these matters, I, for the first time, heard her give the following brief answer: ’Assuredly the principal thing is that they live a pious and holy life. My husband is not to be urged to instruct them in religious knowledge and in the fear of God. If they be pious, I am sure he will gladly be a father to them; but if not, they do not deserve that I should ask for aught in their behalf.’ This nobleness of mind will weigh more with me than a hundred recommendations. Many thanks for your friendly consolation. "Adieu, most excellent and honest brother. May the Lord Jesus watch over and direct yourself and your wife. Present my best wishes to her and to the brethren." In reply to this letter, Viret wrote to Calvin, April 10, 1549: —

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

  "It is at present far otherwise with me. So little does my present grief aid me in speaking, that it rather renders me almost entirely speechless .... I would have you suppose me to be groaning rather than speaking. It is too well known, from their mocking and jests, how much the enemies of Christ were rejoicing over your contests with the theologians of Magdeburg.571 ... If no blame attaches to you in this matter, my dear Philip, it would be but the dictate of prudence and justice to devise means of curing, or at least mitigating, the evil. Yet, forgive me if I do not consider you altogether free from blame .... In openly admonishing you, I am discharging the duty of a true friend; and if I employ a little more severity than usual, do not think that it is owing to any diminution of my old affection and esteem for you .... I know that nothing gives you greater pleasure than open candor .... This is the sum of your defence: that, provided purity of doctrine be retained, externals should not be pertinaciously contended for .... But you extend the distinction of non-essentials too far. You are aware that the Papists have corrupted the worship of God in a thousand ways. Several of those things which you consider indifferent are obviously repugnant to the Word of God .... You ought not to have made such large concessions to the Papists .... At the time when circumcision was yet lawful, do you not see that Paul, because crafty and malicious fowlers were laying snares for the liberty of believers, pertinaciously refused to concede to them a ceremony at the first instituted by God? He boasts that he did not yield to them,—no, not for an hour,—that the truth of God might remain intact among the Gentiles (Gal. 2:5) .... I remind you of what I once said to you, that we consider our ink too precious if we hesitate to bear testimony in writing to those things which so many of the flock are daily sealing with their blood .... The trepidation of a general is more dishonorable than the flight of a whole herd of private soldiers .... You alone, by only giving way a little, will cause more complaints and sighs than would a hundred ordinary individuals by open desertion. And, although I am fully persuaded that the fear of death never compelled you in the very least to swerve from the right path, yet I am apprehensive that it is just possible that another species of fear may have proved too much for your courage. For I know how much you are horrified at the charge of rude severity. But we should remember that reputation must not be accounted by the servants of Christ as of more value than life. We are no better than Paul was, who remained fearlessly on his way through ’evil and good report.’ ... You know why I am so vehement. I had rather die with you a hundred times than see you survive the doctrines surrendered by you ....

• From Confessions of the Flesh (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 4) (2021)

  On the general meaning and the exact meaning of “paenitentiam agere” cf. J. Grotz, Die Entwicklung des Busstufenwesens in der vornizänischen Kirche, Fribourg, 1955, pp. 75–77.27.Pacian distinguishes between catechumens, penitents, and Christians in good standing.28.Cf., for example, Saint Cyprian, letters XV and XVI.29.On the role of the bishop in these incitements to penance, cf. Pacian [letter III, 16]: the bishop “ad paenitentiam cogit, objurgat, crimen ostendit, vulnera aperit, supplicia aeterna commemorate” [“…contraint à la pénitence, réprimande, montre le crime, met à nu les blessures, rappelle les supplices éternels,” trans. C. Épitalon and M. Lestienne] [“…constrains him to penance, rebukes him, shows him his crime, lays bare his wounds, tells him of eternal punishments”].30.On all these points, cf. R. Gryson, “Introduction” to De paenitentia de Saint Ambroise (Paris, 1971, p. 37 et seq.) and Le Prêtre selon saint Ambroise (Louvain, 1968).31.Cf. Saint Leo, letter 167.32.Pacian, letter III, 18: “Baptismus enim sacramentum est dominicae passionis: paenitentium venia meritum confitentis. Illud omnes adipisci possunt, quia gratiae Dei donum est; id est, gratuita donatio; labor vero iste paucorum est qui post casum resurgunt, qui post vulnera convalescunt, qui lacrymosis vocibus adjuvantur, qui carnis interitu reviviscunt.” [“Le baptême, en effet, est le sacrement de la passion du Seigneur: le pardon des pénitents, le salaire de l’aveu. Celui-là, tous peuvent l’obtenir, car c’est un don gratuit de Dieu, c’est-à-dire un pardon gratuit; mais celui-ci est le fruit de l’effort du petit nombre de ceux qui se relèvent après la chute, qui reprennent force après les blessures, qui se font aider par des cris pleins de larmes, qui revivent par la destruction de la chair,” trans. C. Épitalon and M. Lestienne.] [“Baptism is the Sacrament of the Lord’s Passion: the pardon of penitents is the earning of him that confesseth. The former all can obtain, because it is the gift of the grace of God, that is, a free gift; but penitence is the toil of the few, who after falling arise, who after wounds recover, who are helped by tearful prayers, who recover life through the destruction of the flesh.”]33.On this point cf. K. Rahner, [“La doctrine d’Origène sur la pénitence”], in Recherches de science religieuse (vol. 38, 1950), p. 86.34.[Gregory of Nazianzus, Discourses XXXIX, 17 (P.G., vol. 36, col. 356a).]35.“Cor scrutari et mentem perspicere non possumus,” Saint Cyprian, letter LVII, 3.36.Ibid., letter LIX, 15 and 16.37.Ibid.38.Ibid., letter LV, 18; cf. also LVII, 3.39.“[Libellus] ubi singula placitorum capita conscripta sunt,” ibid., letter LV, 6.40.Ibid., letter LV, 13.41.In letter XXVII, Cyprian refers to a missive of Lucianus concerning “those whose conduct since their transgression was examined.” It’s also to this examination that letter LXVI, 5, refers: “communicatio nostra examinatione concessa.”42.Ibid., letter XXX, 6, addressed by the priests of Rome to Cyprian.43.Ibid., letter LV, 23.44.Ibid., letter XXX, 5, addressed to Cyprian.45.“Is actus, qui magis graeco vocabulo exprimitur et frequentatur, exomologesis est” [“Cet acte, que nous nommons le plus ordinairement par un mot grec, c’est l’exomologèse,” trans. E.-A.

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  Having spent the better part of the week bedridden, with the cancer progressing, I had grown noticeably weaker. My body, and the identity tied to it, had radically changed. No longer was getting in and out of bed to go to the bathroom an automated subcortical motor program; it took effort and planning. The physical therapists left a list of items to ease my transition home: a cane, a modified toilet seat, foam blocks for leg support while resting. A bevy of new pain medications was prescribed. As I hobbled out of the hospital, I wondered how, just six days ago, I had spent nearly thirty-six straight hours in the operating room. Had I grown that much sicker in a week? Yes, in part. But I had also used a number of tricks and help from co-surgeons to get through those thirty-six hours—and, even so, I had suffered excruciating pain. Had the confirmation of my fears—in the CT scan, in the lab results, both showing not merely cancer but a body overwhelmed, nearing death—released me from the duty to serve, from my duty to patients, to neurosurgery, to the pursuit of goodness? Yes, I thought, and therein was the paradox: like a runner crossing the finish line only to collapse, without that duty to care for the ill pushing me forward, I became an invalid. Usually when I had a patient with a strange condition, I consulted the relevant specialist and spent time reading about it. This seemed no different, but as I started reading about chemo, which included a whole variety of agents, and a raft of more modern novel treatments that targeted specific mutations, the sheer number of questions I had prevented any useful directed study. (Alexander Pope: “A little learning is a dangerous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”) Without appropriate medical experience, I couldn’t place myself in this new world of information, couldn’t find my spot on the Kaplan-Meier curve. I waited, expectantly, for my clinic visit. But mostly, I rested. I sat, staring at a photo of Lucy and me from medical school, dancing and laughing; it was so sad, those two, planning a life together, unaware, never suspecting their own fragility. My friend Laurie had had a fiancé when she’d died in a car accident—was this any crueler?

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  She remembered what Nora had said once: “For us, Paris wasn’t even Paris. It was all a projection. It was whatever we needed it to be.” This conversation had happened at the wedding where she’d told Nora to get in touch with Yale, where she’d written down Yale Tishman, Northwestern, Brigg on a cocktail napkin. It was her cousin Melanie’s wedding, north of Milwaukee, and Melanie had specifically invited Nico and Fiona but not their parents. She didn’t include Terrence—it would’ve been a step too far, maybe, for 1985 Wisconsin—but her loyalty was to her own generation. Fiona and her brother had walked in together, like dates. Nico had lost weight, but Fiona thought nothing of it. He danced with Fiona, and he danced with the bride, and with their terrible cousin Debra, and he sat and entertained Nora. In his car on the way home, he rolled up the side of his shirt to show her a stripe of vicious red bumps, ones that made Fiona’s eyes water. “It’s shingles,” he said. And when she freaked out, he said, “It itches like hell, but it’s the same thing as chicken pox. Anyone who ever had chicken pox can get it. The virus lives under your skin forever.” He hadn’t been to his own doctor, she learned later, just to the ER, where they’d given him calamine lotion and a leaflet. A month later, he and Terrence were shopping, and Terrence asked how much cash he had, and Nico spent a long minute staring at the ten dollar bill in one hand, the five dollar bill in the other hand, unable to add them together. And six weeks after that, he was gone. She looked at the pigeon that had landed on the balcony rail. She was not ready to look at Richard’s videos, but maybe she could work her way there by looking through Richard’s photo albums. She closed the balcony, poured a glass of milk, took a few deep breaths. There were probably twenty albums on the shelf, a fact Fiona hadn’t absorbed that first day. Rows of black leather, brown leather, colored canvas. Boxes full of slides, as well, but she wouldn’t mess with those. When she pulled a thick red album off the shelf, though, a paper slipped out and landed on the floor. Fiona attempted to clutch the album closed before anything else fell, but she dropped the whole thing, and now there were papers everywhere. Cream-colored sheets folded in half, small cards, a lavender page with a grainy photo of a man. They were funeral bulletins and prayer cards. She got on her knees and started stacking them up. This wasn’t a photo album at all, she saw when she opened it to an old clipping from Out Loud Chicago , an obituary of someone who’d danced with the Alvin Ailey Theater. Jesus. She opened the album at the beginning, and tried to slide the papers back into the empty spots.

• From What My Bones Know (2022)

  I don’t yell, “Lady, I’ve been seeing you for a fucking decade, yes I want to know my goddamn diagnosis,” because Samantha taught me about appropriate communication. Thanks, Samantha. Instead, I say, “Yes. Of course.” Something in her jaw becomes determined, and her gaze is direct. “You have complex PTSD from your childhood, and it manifests as persistent depression and anxiety. There’s no way someone with your background couldn’t have it,” she says. “Oh. Yeah, PTSD.” Post-traumatic stress disorder. I had a crappy childhood, so I kinda figured that. “Not just PTSD. Complex PTSD. The difference between regular PTSD and complex PTSD is that traditional PTSD is often associated with a moment of trauma. Sufferers of complex PTSD have undergone continual abuse—trauma that has occurred over a long period of time, over the course of years. Child abuse is a common cause of complex PTSD,” she says. Then her eyes drift to the corner of the screen. “Oh—we’re out of time! Let’s continue this next week.” The first thing I do after our Skype window closes is bring up Google. I’ve never heard of complex PTSD. Surprisingly, there aren’t that many results. I go from Wikipedia to a government page about C-PTSD as it relates to veterans. I read the list of symptoms. It is very long. And it is not so much a medical document as it is a biography of my life: The difficulty regulating my emotions. The tendency to overshare and trust the wrong people. The dismal self-loathing. The trouble I have maintaining relationships. The unhealthy relationship with my abuser. The tendency to be aggressive but unable to tolerate aggression from others. It’s all true. It’s all me. The more I read, the more every aspect of my personhood is reduced to deep diagnostic flaws. I hadn’t understood how far the disease had spread. How complete its takeover of my identity was. The things I want. The things I love. The way I speak. My passions, my fears, my zits, my eating habits, the amount of whiskey I drink, the way I listen, and the things I see. Everything—everything, all of it—is infected. My trauma is literally pumping through my blood, driving every decision in my brain. It is this totality that leaves me frantic with grief. For years I’ve labored to build myself a new life, something very different from how I was raised. But now, all of a sudden, every conflict I’ve encountered, every loss, every failure and foible in my life, can be traced back to its root: me. I am far from normal. I am the common denominator in the tragedies of my life. I am a textbook case of mental illness.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  In bee and ant matriarchies, males are intruders that are massacred each season: at the time of the wedding flight, all the male ants escape from the anthill and fly toward the females; if they reach and fertilize them, they die immediately, exhausted; if not, the female workers refuse them entry. They kill them in front of the entrances or let them starve to death; but the fertilized female has a sad fate: she digs herself into the earth alone and often dies from exhaustion while laying the first eggs; if she manages to reconstitute a colony, she is imprisoned for twelve years laying eggs ceaselessly; the female workers whose sexuality has been atrophied live for four years, but their whole life is devoted to raising the larvae. Likewise for the bees: the drone that catches the queen in her wedding flight crashes to the ground eviscerated; the other drones return to their colony, where they are unproductive and in the way; at the beginning of the winter, they are killed. But the sterile worker bees trade their right to life for incessant work; the queen is really the hive’s slave: she lays eggs ceaselessly; and the old queen dies; some larvae are nourished so they can try to succeed her. The first one hatched kills the others in the cradle. The female giant spider carries her eggs in a bag until they reach maturity: she is bigger and stronger than the male, and she sometimes devours him after coupling; the same practices can be seen in the praying mantis, which has taken shape as the myth of devouring femininity: the egg castrates the sperm, and the praying mantis assassinates her spouse; these facts prefigure a woman’s dream of castration. But in truth, the praying mantis only manifests such cruelty in captivity: free and with rich enough food around, she rarely makes a meal out of the male; if she does, it is like the solitary ant that often eats some of her own eggs in order to have the strength to lay eggs and perpetuate the species. Seeing in these facts the harbinger of the “battle of the sexes” that sets individuals as such against each other is just rambling. Neither for the ants, nor the honeybees, nor the termites, nor the spider, nor the praying mantis can one say that the female enslaves and devours the male: it is the species that devours both of them in different ways. The female lives longer and seems to have more importance; but she has no autonomy; laying, incubation, and care of the larvae make up her whole destiny; her other functions are totally or partially atrophied. By contrast, an individual existence takes shape in the male. He very often takes more initiative than the female in fertilization; it is he who seeks her out, who attacks, palpates, seizes her and imposes coitus on her; sometimes he has to fight off other males.

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Makkai does an excellent job of capturing the jaded, ironic and affectionately jibing small talk of a group of cultured gay friends in the Reagan era. . . . Conversations among her gay male characters feel very real—not too flamboyant, not too serious, always morbidly witty. It’s hard not to get drawn into this circle of promising young men as they face their brutally premature extinction.” —Newsday “Rebecca Makkai’s novel The Great Believers has stolen my heart. Crossing decades and lives, love and loss, art, and the long lasting legacy of AIDS, the novel is a brilliant triumph of empathy and intimacy between friends.” —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Small Backs of Children “Two distinct narratives intertwine ingeniously . . . The stories meet up to heartbreaking effect.” —New York Magazine “A poignant, historical journey through a virus’s outbreak and legacy.” —Condé Nast Traveler “This book will be compared to similar mammoth works of fiction, but Makkai differs in that she seems to care about her characters and her readers. . . . Each character—main or secondary—is fully developed, and it is hard not to care for them. The pain and prejudice they suffer becomes personal as their lives are carefully told . . . A forceful work of fiction that will captivate readers.” —Baltimore Outloud “Rebecca Makkai’s beautiful (literally—look at that cover!) novel takes us to an art gallery in Chicago at the height of the AIDS crisis. From Chicago to Paris, The Great Believers is a sweeping story of multi-generational trauma and the solitude that the AIDS epidemic created, as an entire generation was decimated by the virus.” —Fodor’s Travel “Powerfully emotional.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch “The Great Believers kept me up reading late into the night, and I’d wake up thinking about Makkai’s vibrant, complex, and deeply human characters. This is an immersive, heartbreaking novel—I loved it.” —Maggie Shipstead, author of Astonish Me “The Great Believers is a magnificent novel—well imagined, intricately plotted, and deeply felt, both humane and human. It unfurls like a peony: you keep thinking it can’t get any more perfect, and it does. A stunning feat.” —Rabih Alameddine, author of The Angel of History and Koolaids: The Art of War “The Great Believers is by turns funny, harrowing, tender, devastating, and always hugely suspenseful. It reminds us, poignantly, of how many people, mostly young, often brilliant, were lost to the AIDS epidemic, and of how those who survived were marked by that struggle. This is Rebecca Makkai at the height of her powers.” —Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of Mercury “Makkai is very good at conjuring a gay community enacting the usual dramas of love and lust and ambition and jealousy in a world where all the usual dramas suddenly can carry a fatal charge.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “With its broad time span and bedrock of ferocious, loving friendships, [The Great Believers ] might remind readers of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life . . .

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

  Six executions in all took place in Zurich between 1527 and 1532. Manz was the first victim. He was bound, carried to a boat, and thrown into the river Limmat near the lake, Jan. 5, 1527. He praised God that he was about to die for the truth, and prayed with a loud voice, "Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit!" Bullinger describes his heroic death. Grebel had escaped the same fate by previous death in 1526. The last executions took place March 23, 1532, when Heinrich Karpfis and Hans Herzog were drowned. The foreigners were punished by exile, and met death in Roman Catholic countries. Blaurock was scourged, expelled, and burnt, 1529, at Clausen in the Tyrol. Hätzer, who fell into carnal sins, was beheaded for adultery and bigamy at Constance, Feb. 24, 1529. John Zwick, a Zwinglian, says that "a nobler and more manful death was never seen in Constance." Thomas Blaurer bears a similar testimony.143 Hübmaier, who had fled from Waldshut to Zurich, December, 1525, was tried before the magistracy, recanted, and was sent out of the country to recant his recantation.144 He labored successfully in Moravia, and was burnt at the stake in Vienna, March 10, 1528. Three days afterwards his faithful wife, whom he had married in Waldshut, was drowned in the Danube. Other Swiss cantons took the same measures against the Anabaptists as Zurich. In Zug, Lorenz Fürst was drowned, Aug. 17, 1529. In Appenzell, Uliman and others were beheaded, and some women drowned. At Basle, Oecolampadius held several disputations with the Anabaptists, but without effect; whereupon the Council banished them, with the threat that they should be drowned if they returned (Nov. 13, 1530). The Council of Berne adopted the same course. In Germany and in Austria the Anabaptists fared still worse. The Diet of Speier, in April, 1529, decreed that "every Anabaptist and rebaptized person of either sex be put to death by sword, or fire, or otherwise." The decree was severely carried out, except in Strassburg and the domain of Philip of Hesse, where the heretics were treated more leniently. The most blood was shed in Roman Catholic countries. In Görz the house in which the Anabaptists were assembled for worship was set on fire. "In Tyrol and Görz," says Cornelius,145 "the number of executions in the year 1531 reached already one thousand; in Ensisheim, six hundred. At Linz seventy-three were killed in six weeks. Duke William of Bavaria, surpassing all others, issued the fearful decree to behead those who recanted, to burn those who refused to recant.... Throughout the greater part of Upper Germany the persecution raged like a wild chase.... The blood of these poor people flowed like water so that they cried to the Lord for help.... But hundreds of them of all ages and both sexes suffered the pangs of torture without a murmur, despised to buy their lives by recantation, and went to the place of execution joyfully and singing psalms."

• From The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2000)

  Yet the image of an evolutionary arms race between penis and clitoris is not quite accurate. The female mechanism for assessing penis size is not the clitoris itself, but the ring of nerves around the entrance to the vagina, which sense circumference. The clitoris does something more sophisticated, assessing the male’s ability to move in pleasurable, rhythmic ways during copulation. Also, clitoral stimulation usually leads to orgasm only when the female mind is feeling erotic about the man and the situation. Human female orgasm depends on an interaction between the clitoris, the hypothalamus (the brain’s emotional center), and the cerebral cortex (the brain’s cognitive center). The clitoris is only the tip of the psychological iceberg in female choice. Having a mate with a large penis is not enough. To be fair, the penis is not just an insensate stimulator either. It is also a mechanism for male mate choice. If it is happy, its owner may be more likely to stay in a long-term relationship with a woman. Tragically, while scientists in developed countries spent decades debating whether clitorises are legitimate adaptations, over a hundred million clitorises were cut out of African girls by village women precisely so that the girls would not be tempted to exercise their powers of sexual choice. Currently, another two million girls a year are genitally mutilated in countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia. To my mind, sexual selection theory offers a powerful scientific rebuttal to the argument that we should accept female genital mutilation in such countries as part of “traditional tribal practice.” Just as the penis can be seen as a metaphor for the mind’s sexually selected entertainment abilities, the clitoris can be seen as a metaphor for the mind’s judgment and discrimination abilities. When we see a human perceptual or cognitive ability that looks curiously sensitive to stimulation yet resistant to satisfaction, we should not assume that it is a poorly designed information processing system. It may be part of a system for sexual or social discrimination. Consider humor. Some theories of humor have proposed that laughter evolved to promote group bonding, discharge nervous tension, or keep us healthy. The more laughter the better. Such theories predict that we should laugh at any joke, however stupid, however many times we have heard it before, yet we do not. A good sense of humor means a discriminating sense of humor, not a hyena-like shriek at every repetitive pratfall. Such discrimination is easy to understand if our sense of humor evolved in the service of sexual choice, to assess the joke-telling ability of others.

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

  After the victory of the Reformation, Oecolampadius continued unto the end of his life to be indefatigable in preaching, teaching, and editing valuable commentaries (chiefly on the Prophets). He took a lively interest in French Protestant refugees, and brought the Waldenses, who sent a deputation to him, into closer affinity with the Reformed churches.179 He was a modest and humble man, of a delicate constitution and ascetic habits, and looked like a church father. He lived with his mother; but after her death, in 1528, he married, at the age of forty-five, Wilibrandis Rosenblatt, the widow of Cellarius (Keller), who afterwards married in succession two other Reformers (Capito and Bucer), and survived four husbands. This tempted Erasmus to make the frivolous joke (in a letter of March 21, 1528), that his friend had lately married a good-looking girl to crucify his flesh, and that the Lutheran Reformation was a comedy rather than a tragedy, since the tumult always ended in a wedding. He afterwards apologized to him, and disclaimed any motive of unkindness. Oecolam-padius had three children, whom he named Eusebius, Alitheia, and Irene (Godliness, Truth, Peace), to indicate what were the pillars of his theology and his household. His last days were made sad by the news of Zwingli’s death, and the conclusion of a peace unfavorable to the Reformed churches. The call from Zürich to become Zwingli’s successor he declined. A few weeks later, on the 24th of November, 1531, he passed away in peace and full of faith, after having partaken of the holy communion with his family, and admonished his colleagues to continue faithful to the cause of the Reformation. He was buried behind the Minster.180 His works have never been collected, and have only historical interest. They consist of commentaries, sermons, exegetical and polemical tracts, letters, and translations from Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Cyril of Alexandria.181 Basel became one of the strongholds of the Reformed Church of Switzerland, together with Zürich, Geneva, and Berne. The Church passed through the changes of German Protestantism, and the revival of the nineteenth century. She educates evangelical ministers, contributes liberally from her great wealth to institutions of Christian benevolence and the spread of the Gospel, and is (since 1816) the seat of the largest Protestant missionary institute on the Continent, which at the annual festivals forms a centre for the friends of missions in Switzerland, Würtemberg, and Baden. The neighboring Chrischona is a training school of German ministers for emigrants to America. § 33. The Reformation in Glarus. Tschudi. Glarean. Valentin Tschudi: Chronik der Reformationsjahre 1521–1533. Mit Glossar und Commentar von Dr. Joh. Strickler. Glarus, 1888 (pp. 258). Publ. in the "Jahrbuch des historischen Vereins des Kantons Glarus," Heft XXIV., also separately issued. The first edition of Tschudi’s Chronik (Beschryb oder Erzellung, etc.) was published by Dr. J. J. Blumer, in vol. IX. of the "Archiv für schweizerische Geschichte," 1853, pp. 332–447, but not in the original spelling and without comments.

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

  "Dearest Philip," he wrote to Melanchthon, April 23, "we have at last reached our Sinai; but we shall make a Sion of this Sinai, and here I shall build three tabernacles, one to the Psalms, one to the Prophets, and one to Aesop .... It is a very attractive place, and just made for study; only your absence grieves me. My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven. The sad condition of our German empire distresses you more." Then he describes to him his residence in the "empire of birds." In other letters he humorously speaks of the cries of the ravens and jackdaws in the forest, and compares them to a troop of kings and grandees, schoolmen and sophists, holding Diet, sending their mandates through the air, and arranging a crusade against the fields of wheat and barley, hoping for heroic deeds and grand victories. He could hear all the sophists and papists chattering around him from early morning, and was delighted to see how valiantly these knights of the Diet strutted about and wiped their bills, but he hoped that before long they would be spitted on a hedge-stake. He was glad to hear the first nightingale, even as early as April. With such innocent sports of his fancy he tried to chase away the anxious cares which weighed upon him. It is from this retreat that he wrote that charming letter to his boy Hans, describing a beautiful garden full of goodly apples, pears, and plums, and merry children on little horses with golden bridles and silver saddles, and promising him and his playmates a fine fairing if he prayed, and learned his lessons.989 Joy and grief, life and death, are closely joined in this changing world. On the 5th of June, Luther received the sad news of the pious death of his father, which occurred at Mansfeld, May 29. When he first heard of his sickness, he wrote to him from Wittenberg, Feb. 15, 1530: "It would be a great joy to me if only you and my mother could come to us. My Kate, and all, pray for it with tears. We would do our best to make you comfortable." At the report of his end he said to Dietrich, "So my father, too, is dead," took his Psalter, and retired to his room. On the same day he wrote to Melanchthon that all he was, or possessed, he had received from God through his beloved father.

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

  The persecution of Protestants began at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Charles V. issued from that city the first of a series of cruel enactments, or "placards," for the extermination of the Lutheran heresy in his hereditary dominion of the Netherlands. In 1523 two Augustinian monks, Henry Voes and John Esch, were publicly burnt, as adherents of Luther, at the, stake in Brussels. After the fires were kindled, they repeated the Apostles’ Creed, sang the "Te Deum laudamus," and prayed in the flames, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon us." The heroic death of these Protestant proto-martyrs inspired Luther’s first poem, which begins, — "Ein neues Lied wir heben an."808 The prior of their convents Lampert Thorn, was suffocated in prison. The martyrdom of Henry of Zütphen has already been noticed.809 Adolph Klarenbach and Peter Flysteden suffered at the stake in Cologne with constancy and triumphant joy, Sept. 28, 1529.810 George Winkler, a preacher in Halle, was cited by the Archbishop of Cologne to Aschaffenburg for distributing the communion in both kinds, and released, but murdered by unknown hands on his return, May, 1527.811 Duke George of Saxony persecuted the Lutherans, not by death, but by imprisonment and exile. John Herrgott, a traveling book-peddler, was beheaded (1527) for revolutionary political opinions, rather than for selling Lutheran books.812 In Southern Germany the Edict of Worms was more rigidly executed. Many executions by fire and sword, accompanied by barbarous mutilations, took place in Austria and Bavaria. In Vienna a citizen, Caspar Tauber, was beheaded and burnt, because he denied purgatory and transubstantiation, Sept. 17, 1524.813 In Salzburg a priest was secretly beheaded without a trial, by order of the archbishop, for Lutheran heresy.814 George Wagner, a minister at Munich, was burnt Feb. 8, 1527. Leonard Käser (or Kaiser) shared the same fate, Aug. 18, 1527, by order of the bishop of Passau. Luther wrote him, while in prison, a letter of comfort.815 But the Anabaptists had their martyrs as well, and they died with the same heroic faith. Hätzer was burnt in Constance, Hübmaier in Vienna. In Passau thirty perished in prison. In Salzburg some were mutilated, others beheaded, others drowned, still others burnt alive.816 Unfortunately, the Anabaptists were not much better treated by Protestant governments; even in Zürich several were drowned in the river under the eyes of Zwingli. The darkest blot on Protestantism is the burning of Servetus for heresy and blasphemy, at Geneva, with the approval of Calvin and all the surviving Reformers, including Melanchthon (1553). He had been previously condemned, and burnt in effigy, by a Roman-Catholic tribunal in France. Now such a tragedy would be impossible in any church. The same human passions exist, but the ideas and circumstances have changed. CHAPTER VII.THE SACRAMENTARIAN CONTROVERSIES.§ 101. Sacerdotalism and Sacramentalism.

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  He paused. “Paul,” he said, “do you think my life has meaning? Did I make the right choices?” It was stunning: even someone I considered a moral exemplar had these questions in the face of mortality. V’s surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments were trying, but a success. He was back at work a year later, just as I was returning to my clinical duties in the hospital. His hair had thinned and whitened, and the spark in his eyes had dulled. During our final weekly chat, he turned to me and said, “You know, today is the first day it all seems worth it. I mean, obviously, I would’ve gone through anything for my kids, but today is the first day that all the suffering seems worth it.” How little do doctors understand the hells through which we put patients. — In my sixth year, I returned to the hospital full-time, my research in V’s lab now relegated to days off and idle moments, such as they were. Most people, even your closest colleagues, don’t quite understand the black hole that is neurosurgical residency. One of my favorite nurses, after sticking around until ten P.M. one night to help us finish a long and difficult case, said to me, “Thank God I have tomorrow off. Do you, too?” “Um, no.” “But at least you can come in later or something, right? When do you usually get in?” “Six A.M.” “No. Really?” “Yep.” “Every day?” “Every day.” “Weekends, too?” “Don’t ask.” In residency, there’s a saying: The days are long, but the years are short. In neurosurgical residency, the day usually began at six A.M. and lasted until the operating was done, which depended, in part, on how quick you were in the OR. A resident’s surgical skill is judged by his technique and his speed. You can’t be sloppy, and you can’t be slow. From your first wound closure onward, spend too much time being precise and the scrub tech will announce, “Looks like we’ve got a plastic surgeon on our hands!” Or: “I get your strategy: by the time you finish sewing the top half of the wound, the bottom will have healed on its own! Half the work—very smart!” A chief resident will advise a junior, “Learn to be fast now. You can learn to be good later.” In the OR, everyone’s eyes are always on the clock. For the patient’s sake: How long has he been under anesthesia? During long procedures, nerves can get damaged, muscles can break down, kidneys can fail. For everyone else’s sake: What time are we getting out of here tonight?