Grief

Passages

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

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

  I sat close by her bed, holding her hand, waiting and watching her breathe, a flood of thoughts going through my mind. I was still afraid I was going to lose her. I was angry at myself for not being there, angry at the police for all the times they didn’t arrest Abel. I told myself I should have killed him years ago, which was ridiculous to think because I’m not capable of killing anyone, but I thought it anyway. I was angry at the world, angry at God. Because all my mom does is pray. If there’s a fan club for Jesus, my mom is definitely in the top 100, and this is what she gets? After an hour or so of waiting, she opened her unbandaged eye. The second she did, I lost it. I started bawling. She asked for some water and I gave her a cup, and she leaned forward a bit to sip through the straw. I kept bawling and bawling and bawling. I couldn’t control myself. “Shh,” she said. “Don’t cry, baby. Shhhhh. Don’t cry.” “How can I not cry, Mom? You almost died.” “No, I wasn’t going to die. I wasn’t going to die. It’s okay. I wasn’t going to die.” “But I thought you were dead.” I kept bawling and bawling. “I thought I’d lost you.” “No, baby. Baby, don’t cry. Trevor. Trevor, listen. Listen to me. Listen.” “What?” I said, tears streaming down my face. “My child, you must look on the bright side.” “What? What are you talking about, ‘the bright side’? Mom, you were shot in the face. There is no bright side.” “Of course there is. Now you’re officially the best-looking person in the family.” She broke out in a huge smile and started laughing. Through my tears, I started laughing, too. I was bawling my eyes out and laughing hysterically at the same time. We sat there and she squeezed my hand and we cracked each other up the way we always did, mother and son, laughing together through the pain in an intensive-care recovery room on a bright and sunny and beautiful day. [image file=image_rsrc2UZ.jpg] When my mother was shot, so much happened so quickly. We were only able to piece the whole story together after the fact, as we collected all the different accounts from everyone who was there. Waiting around at the hospital that day, we had so many unanswered questions, like, What happened to Isaac? Where was Isaac? We only found out after we found him and he told us. When Andrew sped off with my mom, leaving the four-year-old alone on the front lawn, Abel walked over to his youngest, picked him up, put the boy in his car, and drove away. As they drove, Isaac turned to his dad. “Dad, why did you kill Mom?” he asked, at that point assuming, as we all did, that my mom was dead. “Because I’m very unhappy,” Abel replied. “Because I’m very sad.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

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

• From Best Erotic Romance

  Not that I’d ever dated much. Not that she’d remember, anyway. Besides, I’d always considered my legs to be my best asset. I was wearing silk stockings a shade darker than my light summer tan and three-inch heels. My curves were softer now, but I still danced miles of aerobics each week, keeping myself in shape. Melissa’s father had loved seeing me strut across the room in trashy stockings, a slinky top with no bra, and a shockingly short “Do me” skirt. Jerry had been all about visual stimulation, and he loved ripping my clothes off me. Our life together had been a rush of hot lust and youthful immediacy. Hell, maybe we’d just been all about youth. It was so long ago, sometimes the details blurred. Some things, I’d never forget. After Jerry’s memorial service, I’d deliberately cut off contact with his Special Operations buddies. Cutting my ties to their wives and girlfriends had been harder, but I’d done that, too. We’d been family, bonded through history we couldn’t begin to describe to people who hadn’t been through it. Not that we were allowed to talk about much of anything. There had been days I’d wondered if our grocery lists would end up classified. When the guys were gone, we helped each other cope with morning sickness and colic, with repairs for our POS cars and day care that never stayed open late enough, and always, with the bone-deep loneliness and fear. I’d been part of a band of sisters who understood the occasional need for immediate overnight babysitting when the guys were home and one of them put his hands on his wife’s or girlfriend’s hips, looked into her eyes, and they shared a look that let you know they wouldn’t be coming up for air until morning. God, we were so young back then. So naïve and certain we were immortal. Eight months after Saddam invaded Kuwait, the quick, ferocious first Gulf War was over. Jerry was dead, I was moving out of base housing as a widow with two small children, and the guys were just getting back. Eric came straight to the house, his hair still wet from his shower. He took me in his arms and held me close, the low murmur of his, “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” vibrating through my ears. I clung to him, inhaling the scent of his warm strong body, and knowing in that moment that while I’d survive losing Jerry, I’d never survive going through that kind of loss again. The Special Operations community is small and insular, and the women who’ve been part of it know the score. Eventually, Eric or others like him would be coming by my civilian apartment, wanting me to be part of their world again. They’d wait, quietly, until I was ready to rejoin them.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  tomorrow, as could other adversity or separation. We must stop postponing our awareness. We need to stop feeling superior and special, seeing that death is a fate shared by us all and something that should bind us in a deeply empathetic way. We are all a part of the brotherhood and sisterhood of death. In doing so, we set a much different course for our lives. Making death a familiar presence, we understand how short life is and what really should matter to us. We feel a sense of urgency and deeper commitment to our work and relationships. When we face a crisis, separation, or illness, we do not feel so terrified and overwhelmed. We don’t feel the need to go into avoidance mode. We can accept that life involves pain and suffering, and we use such moments to strengthen ourselves and to learn. And as with Flannery, the awareness of our mortality cleanses us of silly illusions and intensifies every aspect of our experience. When I look back at the past and think of al the time I squandered in error and idleness, lacking the knowledge needed to live, when I think of how often I sinned against my heart and my soul, then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute could have been an eternity of happiness! If youth only knew! Now my life wil change; now I wil be reborn. Dear brother, I swear that I shal not lose hope. I wil keep my soul pure and my heart open. I wil be reborn for the better. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky Keys to Human Nature If we could step back and somehow examine the train of our daily thoughts, we would realize how they tend to circle around the same anxieties, fantasies, and resentments, like a continuous loop. Even when we take a walk or have a conversation with someone, we generally remain connected to this interior monologue, only half listening and paying attention to what we see or hear. Upon occasion, however, certain events can trigger a different quality of thinking and feeling. Let us say we go on a trip to a foreign land we have never visited before, outside our usual comfort zone. Suddenly our senses snap to life and everything we see and hear seems a little more vibrant. To avoid problems or dangerous situations in this unfamiliar place, we have to pay attention. Similarly, if we are about to leave on a trip and must say good-bye to people we love, whom we may not see for a while, we might suddenly view them in a different light. Normally we take such people for granted, but now we actually look at the particular expressions on their faces and listen to what they have to say. The sense of a looming separation makes us more emotional and attentive. A more intense version of this will occur if a loved one—a parent

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Houston, Texas, Howard Hughes Jr. (1905–1976) was a rather shy and awkward boy. His mother had nearly died giving birth to him and consequently could not have other children, so she completely doted on her son. Continually anxious that he might catch some illness, she watched his every move and did all she could to protect him. The boy seemed in awe of his father, Howard Sr., who in 1909 had started the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company, which would soon make the family a fortune. His father was not home much, always traveling for business, so Howard spent a great deal of time with his mother. To the relatives he could seem nervous and hypersensitive, but as he got older he became a remarkably polite, soft-spoken young man, completely devoted to his parents. Then in 1922 his mother, at the age of thirty-nine, suddenly died. His father never quite recovered from her early death and passed away two years later. Now, at the age of nineteen, young Howard was alone in the world, having lost the two people who had been his closest companions and who had directed every phase of his life. His relatives decided they would have to fill the void and give the young man the guidance he needed. But in the months after the death of his father, they suddenly had to confront a Howard Hughes Jr. they had never seen before or suspected. The soft-spoken young man suddenly became rather abusive. The obedient boy was now the complete rebel. He would not continue college as they advised. He would not follow any of their recommendations. The more they insisted, the more belligerent he became. Inheriting the family wealth, young Howard could now become completely independent, and he meant to take this as far as he could. He immediately went to work to buy out all of the shares in the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company that his relatives possessed and to gain complete control of the highly lucrative business. Under Texas law he could petition the courts to declare him an adult, if he could prove himself competent enough to assume the role. Hughes befriended a local judge and soon got the declaration he wanted. Now he could run his own life and the tool company with no interference. His relatives were shocked by all of this, and soon both sides would cut off almost all contact with each other for the rest of their lives. What had changed the sweet boy they had known into this hyperaggressive, rebellious young man? It was a mystery they would never solve. Shortly after declaring his independence, Howard settled in Los Angeles, where he was determined to follow his two newest passions—filmmaking and piloting airplanes. He had the money to indulge himself in both of these interests, and in 1927 he decided to combine them, producing an epic, high-budget film about airmen

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

  Why educate a slave? Why teach someone Latin when his only purpose is to dig holes in the ground? Mission schools were told to conform to the new curriculum or shut down. Most of them shut down, and black children were forced into crowded classrooms in dilapidated schools, often with teachers who were barely literate themselves. Our parents and grandparents were taught with little singsong lessons, the way you’d teach a preschooler shapes and colors. My grandfather used to sing the songs and laugh about how silly they were. Two times two is four. Three times two is six. La la la la la. We’re talking about fully grown teenagers being taught this way, for generations. What happened with education in South Africa, with the mission schools and the Bantu schools, offers a neat comparison of the two groups of whites who oppressed us, the British and the Afrikaners. The difference between British racism and Afrikaner racism was that at least the British gave the natives something to aspire to. If they could learn to speak correct English and dress in proper clothes, if they could Anglicize and civilize themselves, one day they might be welcome in society. The Afrikaners never gave us that option. British racism said, “If the monkey can walk like a man and talk like a man, then perhaps he is a man.” Afrikaner racism said, “Why give a book to a monkey?” THE SECOND GIRL My mother used to tell me, “I chose to have you because I wanted something to love and something that would love me unconditionally in return.” I was a product of her search for belonging. She never felt like she belonged anywhere. She didn’t belong to her mother, didn’t belong to her father, didn’t belong with her siblings. She grew up with nothing and wanted something to call her own. My grandparents’ marriage was an unhappy one. They met and married in Sophiatown, but one year later the army came in and drove them out. The government seized their home and bulldozed the whole area to build a fancy, new white suburb, Triomf. Triumph. Along with tens of thousands of other black people, my grandparents were forcibly relocated to Soweto, to a neighborhood called the Meadowlands. They divorced not long after that, and my grandmother moved to Orlando with my mom, my aunt, and my uncle. My mom was the problem child, a tomboy, stubborn, defiant. My gran had no idea how to raise her. Whatever love they had was lost in the constant fighting that went on between them. But my mom adored her father, the charming, charismatic Temperance. She went gallivanting with him on his manic misadventures.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: In that instantaneous movement of contrition, although it is not possible to find an actually distinct intensity in respect of each individual sin, yet it is found in the way explained above; and also in another way, in so far as, in this general contrition, each individual sin is related to that particular motive of sorrow which occurs to the contrite person, viz. the offense against God. For he who loves a whole, loves its parts potentially although not actually, and accordingly he loves some parts more and some less, in proportion to their relation to the whole; thus he who loves a community, virtually loves each one more or less according to their respective relations to the common good. In like manner he who is sorry for having offended God, implicitly grieves for his different sins in different ways, according as by them he offended God more or less. Reply to Objection 3: Although each mortal sin turns us away from God and deprives us of His grace, yet some remove us further away than others, inasmuch as through their inordinateness they become more out of harmony with the order of the Divine goodness, than others do. OF THE TIME FOR CONTRITION (THREE ARTICLES)We must now consider the time for contrition: under which head there are three points of inquiry: (1) Whether the whole of this life is the time for contrition? (2) Whether it is expedient to grieve continually for our sins? (3) Whether souls grieve for their sins even after this life? Whether the whole of this life is the time for contrition?Objection 1: It would seem that the time for contrition is not the whole of this life. For as we should be sorry for a sin committed, so should we be ashamed of it. But shame for sin does not last all one’s life, for Ambrose says (De Poenit. ii) that “he whose sin is forgiven has nothing to be ashamed of.” Therefore it seems that neither should contrition last all one’s life, since it is sorrow for sin. Objection 2: Further, it is written (1 Jn. 4:18) that “perfect charity casteth out fear, because fear hath pain.” But sorrow also has pain. Therefore the sorrow of contrition cannot remain in the state of perfect charity. Objection 3: Further, there cannot be any sorrow for the past (since it is, properly speaking, about a present evil) except in so far as something of the past sin remains in the present time. Now, in this life, sometimes one attains to a state in which nothing remains of a past sin, neither disposition, nor guilt, nor any debt of punishment. Therefore there is no need to grieve any more for that sin.

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

  22. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. 23. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee. GLOSS. (ap. Anselm.) Thus far He had brought His accusation against the Jews in common; now against certain towns by name, in which he had specially preached, and yet they would not be converted; whence it is said, Then began he to upbraid the cities in which most of his mighty works were done, because they had not repented. JEROME. His upbraiding of the towns of Corozaim, Bethsaida, and Capharnaum, is set forth in this chapter, because He therefore upbraided them, because after He had such mighty works and wonders in them they had not done penitence. Whence He adds, Wo for thee, Corozaim! wo for thee, Bethsaida! CHRYSOSTOM. That you should not say that they were by nature evil, He names Bethsaida, a town from which the Apostles had come, namely, Philip, and two pair of the chief of the Apostles, Peter and Andrew, James and John. JEROME. In this word Wo, these towns of Galilee are mourned for by the Saviour, that after so many signs and mighty works, they had not done penitence. RABANUS. Corozaim, which is interpreted ‘my mystery,’ and Bethsaida, ‘the house of fruits’ or, ‘the house of hunters,’ are towns of Galilee situated on the shore of the sea of Galilee. The Lord therefore mourns for towns which once had the mystery of God, and which ought to have brought forth the fruit of virtues, and into which spiritual hunters had been sent. JEROME. And to these are preferred Tyre and Sidon, cities given up to idolatry and vices; For if the mighty works which have been done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have long ago done penitence in sackcloth and ashes. GREGORY. (Mor. xxxv. 6.) In sackcloth is the roughness which denotes the pricking of the conscience for sin, ashes denote the dust of the dead; and both are wont to be employed in penitence, that the pricking of the sackcloth may remind us of our sins, and the dust of the ash may cause us to reflect what we have become by judgment. RABANUS. Tyre and Sidon axe cities of Phœnicia. Tyre is interpreted ‘narrowness,’ and Sidon ‘hunting;’ and denote the Gentiles whom the Devil as a hunter drives into the straits of sin; but Jesus the Saviour sets them free by the Gospel.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  clamored for revenge on the aristocracy and all counterrevolutionaries. To meet the enemy armies, Danton unleashed an enormous citizen army of millions that he had created, and in the first few months of battle these new French forces turned the tide of the war. To channel the people’s taste for revenge, he set up a revolutionary tribunal to bring quick justice to those suspected of trying to restore the monarchy. The tribunal initiated what would become known as the Terror, as it sent thousands of suspects to the guillotine, often on the flimsiest of charges. Shortly after the execution of the king, Danton traveled to Belgium to help oversee the war effort on that front. While there, he received the news that his beloved wife, Gabrielle, had died in premature childbirth. He felt horribly guilty for not being by her side in that moment, and the thought that he had no chance to say good-bye to her and that he would never see her face again was unbearable. Without thinking of the consequences, he abandoned his mission in Belgium and hurried back to France. By the time he arrived, his wife had been dead for a week and buried in the public cemetery. Overwhelmed with grief and the desire to see her one more time, he hurried to the cemetery, bringing along with him a friend and some shovels. On a moonless, rainy night, they managed to find the grave. He dug and he dug, and with his friend’s help, he lifted the casket out of the ground and, with much effort, finally pried the lid off. He gasped at the sight of her bloodless face. He pulled her out, hugging her tightly to his body, begging her to forgive him. He kissed her again and again on her cold lips. After several hours, he finally returned her to the ground. In the months to come, something seemed to have changed in Danton. Had it been the loss of his wife, or was it the guilt he now felt for having unleashed the Terror within France? He had ridden the wave of the revolution to the pinnacle of power, but now he wanted it to go in another direction. He became less engaged in affairs of state and was no longer in favor of the Terror. Maximilien Robespierre, his main rival for power, noticed the change and began to spread the rumor that Danton had lost his revolutionary fervor and could no longer be trusted. Robespierre’s campaign had effect: when it came time to elect members to the highest governing body, the Committee of Public Safety, Danton did not receive enough votes and Robespierre packed it with his sympathizers. Danton now openly worked to put an end to the Terror, through speeches and pamphlets, but this only played into the hands of his rival. On March 30, 1794, Danton was arrested for treason and brought before the revolutionary tribunal. It seemed ironic that the

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  The sound level rose again after she’d gone. I felt empty and hollow with loss. If I ached, I knew Edna must be bleeding. I waited a decent amount of time before I went back to her. “Can I buy you a drink?” I asked her. She looked startled. ““What?” She hesitated. “Yes, thank you.” We drank in silence. I felt connected to her grief. I watched the couples dancing in the smoky darkness. Out of the blue Edna looked over at me and whispered, “TI hurt.” She said it so calmly and quietly I was afraid ’d misunderstood her. But I saw the pain in her eyes so I moved my chair near hers. Edna curled up against me, softly exploring my body with hers. Holding her was such a simple joy. She sighed once and then her body shook with sobs. At first I felt embarrassed, worried what people might think. But then I gave myself to Edna, concerned only with her comfort. She trusted me enough to bring her sorrow to my arms. I kissed her hair. The scent made me lightheaded. She looked up at me. I longed to lift her chin with my hands and kiss her mouth, deeply and slowly. She saw the look in my eyes. There was no point in hiding it. “Tl be right back,” she said. Edna was in the bathroom for a long time. When she returned I offered her a cigarette and lit it for her. Edna shook her head slowly. “Just when I thought I couldn’t hurt any more, guess who walks in the door?” I exhaled smoke and watched her face. “What did she want?” I couldn’t believe Pd asked her such a personal question. Edna blinked in surprise at my directness. “She heard Jan and I broke up. She waited a month or so and came to ask me if there was a chance we could get back together.” I lightly tapped my Zippo lighter against the whiskey glass: butch Morse code. “Is there? A chance, I mean.” Edna sighed. “People have seasons, you know? Cycles. I’ve just left an eight-year marriage. Rocco’s been alone a long time.” It hurt me to think of Rocco being lonely. Stone Butch Blues 103 “T don’t think P’ve ever seen a woman like Rocco before,” I told her. I could see that Edna wasn’t quite sure what I meant and I realized she’d fight to the death to defend Rocco. “I wish she were my friend,” I said quickly, to make her understand. She smiled warmly and reached out to touch my arm. “Rocco would love you,” Edna said. I brightened. “You really think so?” Edna nodded and shook her head. “You remind me of her in many ways. You're a lot like she was when she was younger.” I wanted to ask her what she meant, but part of me was afraid to hear her answer.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Al didn’t move, but I pretended that her presence was closer, that she was listening, in order to focus what I was trying to say to her. “There’s things I would have told you, Al, but I always thought I'd see 314. Leslie Feinberg you again. You know, that’s how kids are, they think things are never gonna end.” I thought Al nodded. Maybe it was my imagination. I put my hand ever so gently on Al’s arm and looked long and hard at her profile. Minutes later she turned and looked at me, then looked away. In that brief moment I saw her peeking from behind a wall. “Al,” I tried to say, but I choked on the words. I put my forehead down on her arm and cried. I just couldn’t hold my body up anymore. I pushed the tears back down and wiped my eyes. I fished around in my pockets for a Kleenex. One appeared before my eyes, thrust forward by the Oracle. I nodded in thanks. “Butch Al,’ I said quietly, “if you can hear me, please just nod, blink, do anything.” She turned and looked at me. “Al,” I smiled. Her hand clamped on my arm like a claw, her face contorted with anger. “Don’t bring me back,” she growled. “Run away, now!” the Oracle warned me. “No,” I said. I could hear the fear in my voice. I wouldn’t run from Al, I was willing to face anything, This moment was all I had with her and it would be my last. “Don’t bring me back,” Al repeated. Her nails cut into the flesh of my arms. I tried to calm down. Suddenly I understood what she was saying and I felt ashamed. How had AI survived? By forgetting, going to sleep, going away! She went underground, hid for safety just as I'd done. I faced her gaze. Her eyes were steely but filling with tears. So were mine. I put my free hand gently overt her fingers, and they began to relax. “I’m sorry,” I said, “forgive me, Al. This was selfish. I didn’t realize until just now that I did this for me. I wasn’t thinking about how it would be for you. People tried to tell me, and I didn’t listen.” I covered my face with my hand. “Go back to wherever you go to be safe, I won’t bother you anymore. I’m sorry.” “Tt’s OK, kid,” a familiar old friend’s voice said. “Tt’s alright,’ I looked up and saw Butch Al smiling at me. The tears streamed down my face. She wiped them with one hand. I could feel the effort it took to lift her arm. “You look nice,” she said. “Can anybody else see you, of just me?” “T’m real, but only you can see me.” Al looked over my head and then her eyes lowered to mine. “You look young,” she told me.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  because we do not see the connection between problems in our lives and our constant misreading of people’s moods and intentions and the endless missed opportunities that accrue from this. The first step, then, is the most important: to realize you have a remarkable social tool that you are not cultivating. The best way to see this is to try it out. Stop your incessant interior monologue and pay deeper attention to people. Attune yourself to the shifting moods of individuals and the group. Get a read on each person’s particular psychology and what motivates them. Try to take their perspective, enter their world and value system. You will suddenly become aware of an entire world of nonverbal behavior you never knew existed, as if your eyes could now suddenly see ultraviolet light. Once you sense this power, you will feel its importance and awaken to new social possibilities. I do not ask the wounded person how he feels. . . . I myself become the wounded person. —Walt Whitman 3 See Through People’s Masks The Law of Role-playing People tend to wear the mask that shows them off in the best possible light—humble, confident, diligent. They say the right things, smile, and seem interested in our ideas. They learn to conceal their insecurities and envy. If we take this appearance for reality, we never really know their true feelings, and on occasion we are blindsided by their sudden resistance, hostility, and manipulative actions. Fortunately, the mask has cracks in it. People continually leak out their true feelings and unconscious desires in the nonverbal cues they cannot completely control—facial expressions, vocal inflections, tension in the body, and nervous gestures. You must master this language by transforming yourself into a superior reader of men and women. Armed with this knowledge, you can take the proper defensive measures. On the other hand, since appearances are what people judge you by, you must learn how to present the best front and play your role to maximum effect. The Second Language One morning in August 1919 seventeen-year-old Milton Erickson, future pioneer in hypnotherapy and one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, awoke to discover parts of his body suddenly paralyzed. Over the next few days the paralysis spread. He was soon diagnosed with polio, a near epidemic at the time. As he lay in bed, he heard his mother in another room discussing his case with two specialists the family had called in. Assuming Erickson was asleep, one of the doctors told her, “The boy will be dead by morning.” His mother came into his room, clearly trying to disguise her grief, unaware that her son had overhead the conversation. Erickson kept asking her to move the chest of drawers near his bed over here, over there. She thought he was delusional, but he had his reasons: he wanted to distract her from her anguish, and he wanted the mirror on the chest positioned just right. If he

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  or a partner or a sibling—dies. This person played a large role in our lives; we have internalized them, and we have somehow lost a part of ourselves. As we grapple with this, the shadow of our own mortality falls over us for an instant. We are made aware of the permanence of this loss and feel regret that we did not appreciate them more. We may even feel some anger that life simply goes on for other people, that they are oblivious to the reality of death that has suddenly struck us. For several days or perhaps weeks after this loss, we tend to experience life differently. Our emotions are rawer and more sensitive. Particular stimuli will bring back associations with the person who has died. This intensity of emotion will fade, but each time we are reminded of the person we have lost, a small portion of that intensity will return. If we consider death as the crossing of a threshold that terrifies us in general, the experiences enumerated above are intimations of our own death in smaller doses. Separating from people we know, traveling in a strange land, clearly entering some new phase of life, all involve changes that cause us to look back at the past as if a part of us has died. In such moments, and during the more intense forms of grief from actual deaths, we notice a heightening of the senses and a deepening of our emotions. Thoughts of a different order come to us. We are more attentive. We can say that our experience of life is qualitatively different and charged, as if we temporarily became someone else. Of course, this alteration in our thinking, feeling, and senses will be strongest if we ourselves survive a brush with death. Nothing seems the same after such an experience. Let us call this the paradoxical death effect —these moments and encounters have the paradoxical result of making us feel more awake and alive. We can explain the paradoxical effect in the following way. For us humans, death is a source not only of fear but also of awkwardness. We are the only animal truly conscious of our impending mortality. In general, we owe our power as a species to our ability to think and reflect. But in this particular case, our thinking brings us nothing but misery. All we can see is the physical pain involved in dying, the separation from loved ones, and the uncertainty as to when such a moment might arrive. We do what we can to avoid the thought, to distract ourselves from the reality, but the awareness of death lies in the back of our minds and can never be completely shaken. Feeling the unconscious impulse to somehow soften the blow of our awareness, our earliest ancestors created a world of spirits, gods, and some concept of the afterlife. The belief in the afterlife helped mitigate the fear of death and even give it some appealing

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

  38 The History of Christianity II THE HUTTERITES õ Some Anabaptists went even further than the Mennonites in withdrawing from mainstream society. By the early 1530s, a group of Anabaptists had fled persecution by heading to Moravia, in what is now the Czech Republic. Things were a bit easier for them there because Moravia was rather isolated, and because the Holy Roman Emperor was more worried about fending off Turkish armies advancing from the east than he was about corralling a downtrodden bunch of heretics. õ The feudal lords who owned most of the land in Moravia were happy to have more people to farm it. The Anabaptists began to pool all their belongings and money in common ownership. In 1533, a man named Jakob Hutter showed up. He was deft at outmaneuvering the 39Lecture 4—The Anabaptist Radicals various rival factions, and before long he had cemented the Moravian Anabaptists into a brotherhood committed to communal living; their neighbors called them Hutterites. õ But just two years later, Ferdinand, the archduke of Austria and king of Hungary and Bohemia, pressured the lords of Moravia to start booting the Hutterites off their estates. He heard about the events that happened at Münster and decided he didn’t want to take any chances. In the end, most of the Hutterites had to leave, although the lords refused to imprison and execute them as so many of the princes of Europe did. õ Those who were traveling with Hutter were so concerned for his safety that they insisted he leave the group and go into hiding, but instead he went back to the Tyrol to keep spreading the Anabaptist message. õ One November night in 1535, when Hutter and his pregnant wife were spending the night in a friend’s home, government officials burst in and arrested him. They threw him in prison and then interrogated him, whipped him, and tortured him on the rack, trying to get him to recant his heresy. Hutter refused to give in, and on February 25, 1536, they burned him at the stake. MARTYRDOM õ From the earliest years of Anabaptist history, this was a movement of martyrs: of people who paid the ultimate price for their faith. It’s impossible to overstate how important the ideology of martyrdom has been for Anabaptists over the centuries. õ Some Anabaptist theologians came to argue that the theology of martyrdom is the core theology of Christianity. In other words, life is a constant battle between the forces of Satan and the forces of God, and as long as this fight goes on, faithful Christians will have to die at the hands of the devil’s servants. But God will win in the end, and every martyr’s death helps speed the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Ive alvays wanted to tell you this. In that one moment I knew you really did understand how I felt in hfe. Choking on anger, feeling so powerless, unable to protect myself or those I loved most, yet fighting back again and again, unwilling to give up. | didnt have the words to tell you this then. just said, “It be OK, itil be alright.” And then we smiled ironically at what Id said, and I took you back to our bed and made the best love to you I could, considering the shape I was in. You knew not to try to touch me that night. You just ran your fingers through my hair and cried and cried. Stone Butch Blues 5 When did we get separated in life, sweet warrior woman? We thought wed won the war of liberation when we embraced the word gay. Then suddenly there were professors and doctors and lawyers coming out of the woodwork telling us that meetings should be run with Robert’s Rules of Order. (Who died and left Robert god?) They drove us out, made us feel ashamed of how we looked. They said we were male chauvinist pigs, the enemy. It was women’s hearts they broke. We were not hard to send away, we went quietly. The plants closed. Something we never could have imagined. That’s when I began passing as a man. Strange to be exiled from your own sex to borders that will never be home. You were banished too, to another land with your own sex, and yet forcibly apart from the women you loved as much as you tried to love yourself. For more than twenty years I have lived on this lonely shore, wondering what became of you. Did you wash off your Saturday night makeup in shame? Did you burn in anger when women said, “If I wanted a man Id be with a real one?” Are you turning tricks today? Are you waiting tables or learning Word Perfect 5.12 Are you in a lesbian bar looking out of the corner of your eye for the butchest woman in the room? Do the women there talk about Democratic politics and seminars and co-ops? Are you with women who only bleed monthly on their cycles? 6 Leslie Feinberg Or are you married in another blue-collar town, lying with an unemployed auto worker who is much more like me than they are, listening for the even breathing of your sleeping children? Do you bind his emotional wounds the way you tried to heal mine? Do you ever think of me in the cool night? Ive been writing this letter to you for hours. My ribs hurt bad from a recent beating. You know. I never could have survived this long if Id never known your love. Yet still I ache with missing you and need you so. Only you could melt this stone. Are you ever coming back?

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

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

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

  õ The Russian Orthodox Church splintered almost immediately. Those who rejected any compromise at all with the communist regime broke away and went underground or set up rival organizations abroad. It’s remarkable that by 1937, 57 percent of Soviet population still called themselves religious believers, even though the Russian Orthodox Church was only a skeleton of what it once was. By 1939, there were only four bishops in the whole country who weren’t in prison. õ Then came World War II. Stalin had brokered a non-aggression pact with Hitler that was supposed to guarantee that the Nazis would focus on fighting the Allied powers to the west and leave the Soviet Union alone. When Hitler went back on his word and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin was caught off guard and scrambled to rally his people. õ The communists grudgingly came to the conclusion that if they were going to expect the Russian people to make another colossal sacrifice, then they needed religion. They needed the help of the church. CONCLUSION õ The war years were a time of religious revival in the Soviet Union. Church attendance grew enormously. Stalin reversed his policy of suppressing church activity. Churches, theological schools, and monasteries all started to function again—as long as all church officials supported the war effort and demonstrated total loyalty to Stalin’s policies. õ It is impossible to overstate the devastation that the war wrought on Soviet society. The Soviets lost at least 11 million soldiers. Estimates of civilian deaths range from 7 to 20 million. õ It’s likely Stalin understood that religion had to play a role in helping his people rebuild their lives and their country. But throughout the Cold War, the Soviet state’s relationship with organized religion would prove to be complicated: a mix of cooptation, persecution, and benign neglect, depending on the political needs of the moment. 250 The History of Christianity II õ There is no doubt that brutal Bolshevik policies and the Orthodox Church’s own corruption destroyed the faith of many people. But the long history of Russians’ deep commitment to the weekly rhythms of their churches and the commitment of religious dissenters—even to the point of self-inflicted pain and martyrdom—give a sense of the tenaciousness of Russian Christianity. SUGGESTED READING Engelstein, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom. Figes, A People’s Tragedy. Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy on the Eve of Revolution. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER ä How might an ordinary Russian peasant have thought of their parish priest at the turn of the 20th century? ä What could motivate a person to join the Doukhobors or the Skoptsy? ä On paper, the Soviet constitution protected freedom of religion. How might the communists have reconciled that commitment with their real-life policy toward religious groups? Lecture 25—The Church and the Russian Revolution 251

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

  I didn’t have to. He said, “Mom’s been shot,” and my mind automatically filled in the rest: “Abel shot mom.” “Where are you now?” I said. “We’re at Linksfield Hospital.” “Okay, I’m on my way.” I jumped out of bed, ran down the corridor, and banged on Mlungisi’s door. “Dude, my mom’s been shot! She’s in the hospital.” He jumped out of bed, too, and we got in the car and raced to the hospital, which luckily was only fifteen minutes away. At that point, I was upset but not terrified. Andrew had been so calm on the phone, no crying, no panic in his voice, so I was thinking, She must be okay. It must not be that bad. I called him back from the car to find out more. “Andrew, what happened?” “We were on our way home from church,” he said, again totally calm. “And Dad was waiting for us at the house, and he got out of his car and started shooting.” “But where? Where did he shoot her?” “He shot her in her leg.” “Oh, okay,” I said, relieved. “And then he shot her in the head.” When he said that, my body just let go. I remember the exact traffic light I was at. For a moment there was a complete vacuum of sound, and then I cried tears like I had never cried before. I collapsed in heaving sobs and moans. I cried as if every other thing I’d cried for in my life had been a waste of crying. I cried so hard that if my present crying self could go back in time and see my other crying selves, it would slap them and say, “That shit’s not worth crying for.” My cry was not a cry of sadness. It was not catharsis. It wasn’t me feeling sorry for myself. It was an expression of raw pain that came from an inability of my body to express that pain in any other way, shape, or form. She was my mom. She was my teammate. It had always been me and her together, me and her against the world. When Andrew said, “shot her in the head,” I broke in two. The light changed. I couldn’t even see the road, but I drove through the tears, thinking, Just get there, just get there, just get there. We pulled up to the hospital, and I jumped out of the car. There was an outdoor sitting area by the entrance to the emergency room. Andrew was standing there waiting for me, alone, his clothes smeared with blood. He still looked perfectly calm, completely stoic. Then the moment he looked up and saw me he broke down and started bawling.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  you proud of me. Al, I loved you then and I love you now.” I wiped tears off my arm twice before I realized they weren’t coming from my eyes. “T told you, you shouldn’t have come,” the Oracle whispered over my shoulder. “No, it was important to come,” I said. I stood up and put my arms around Al again. I kissed her gently on top of her head, and let my lips linger on her hait. “T love you, Butch Al.” I whispered. The nurse watched me from the doorway. I straightened up to go. The Oracle crossed herself. “Blessed be,” she said, looking at me and shaking her head. Moving very slowly, I took her hand in mine and kissed it lightly. She dropped her eyes and blushed. “Goodbye, Grandmother,” I told her, “thank you for letting me come.” I pulled the Triumph into the driveway behind Blue Violets. I found Jan and Edna inside the shop. They both looked grim. Edna wouldn’t meet my eyes; Jan smoldered. I walked outside behind the greenhouse and waited for Jan to follow. She stood three feet away from me. Her fists were balled up at her sides. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” she demanded. “It wasn’t my place,” I shrugged. “T didn’t want to come between you two.” Jan came closer. “Well, you couldn’t if you tried.” I inhaled through clenched teeth. “Actually, I know that. I couldn’t hold onto Edna. But am I gonna lose you too? I didn’t do anything to you. It’s not fair.” “Fair?” Jan shook her head. “It doesn’t have to be fair. ’'ve got a right to be pissed.” “No, you don’t,” I shouted at her. “You’re the one that got her. You two have each other. ’m the one who has a right to be hurt.” “You went behind my back and fucked my girl!” Jan yelled. “Whate” I slapped my thigh. “You must be kidding! You and Edna hadn’t been lovers for twelve years!” Jan obviously missed the logic. I smiled. “What’s so fucking funny?” she demanded. I shrugged. “You’re mad at me for dating Edna a dozen years after you broke up. ’'m mad at Edna for getting back together with you almost a decade after she and I stopped seeing each other. You know what I think?” Jan kicked the cement. “I don’t really give a fuck what you think.” I shrugged. “I’m gonna tell you anyway. I think there’s not enough love to go around. I’ll tell you what else I think. We all go back a long way. We really need each other, even if we’re real upset right now.” My voice softened. “T’ll speak for myself. I really need you, Jan. I didn’t betray you. I’ve always been a friend to you.” Jan shook her head. “Just let it be for now. Don’t tell me I don’t have a right to feel what I’m feeling.”

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

  õ Catholic authorities had Hus burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415, but the movement he inspired lived on. A Hussite group called Unity of the Brethren organized in 1457, and its members would eventually be known as the Moravians, after a region of what is now the Czech Republic. õ By the 1700s, the Moravians were not in good shape. They’d been persecuted on and off since they began, and were a pretty small, beaten up, demoralized group. But in 1722, Count Zinzendorf offered them refuge on his estate in eastern Germany. He called it Herrnhut, which is German for “the Lord’s watch.” õ The Moravians were like other Pietists in the broad features of their faith. They stressed the intense personal transformation necessary for a Christian to truly follow Christ. They rejected most compromises with the outside world, and sought to model their lifestyle on the values of the apostles. Yet in some important ways, they did things very differently, particularly when it came to ideas about sexuality and the role of women. õ Moravians believed that the best way to encourage Christian discipleship was to do away with the nuclear family model. They didn’t teach celibacy, but they divided people into choirs: groups of the same gender, age, and marital status. So even married couples could not live together, although they were allowed to meet privately once a week. Moravian parents turned over their babies to be raised communally almost as soon as they were weaned. õ This structure meant that female Moravians developed spiritual ideas and practices all their own. By the 1740s and 50s, the Moravians were appointing women to governing boards and ordaining them as deaconesses, elderesses, and even, briefly, as ministers. A young woman named Anna Nitschmann Lecture 14—Pietist Revival in Europe 137