Guilt

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 Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Realize that what is real is the relationship you have with your partner—warts, roses, and all. If you want to get your relationship back on track, you need to put in some time and effort to make this happen. Consider counseling as you and your partner work on strengthening your relationship. Picking up the piecesMany people consider cheating an absolute deal breaker, but in some relationships, healing is possible. Couples’ counseling is a good idea when healing. A therapist can help couples rebuild their relationship and reconnect sexually with each other, and can also help people discover why the infidelity occurred in the first place. But to go about healing this massive wound, the injured partner will need time to vent about the way he or she feels. Couples often have a hard time bouncing back from an affair because the betrayed partner can’t let go of the pain and the guilty partner feels helpless to fix the situation. To help begin the healing process, the betrayed partner should be able to vent about his or her anger and sadness for 10 minutes a day. After the 10 minutes is up, the affair should not be discussed for the rest of the day. This will help to prevent the affair from becoming the focus of the relationship. The cheating partner will have to be honest without being hurtful if the relationship is to make it through this period. When discussing the affair, the betrayed partner is likely to have many questions. The guilty partner should offer truthful answers, but avoid any intimate details about the other woman or man as it will only further upset their partner. Honesty is a must when rebuilding a relationship after an affair—but so is tactfulness. Know your limitsEmail, instant messaging, texts, and social networks blur the line when it comes to adultery. Sending your colleague a suggestive text or email seems harmless, but it is a form of cheating. Don’t write anything in an email, blog, or text that you wouldn’t say in front of your partner. At home, avoid spending hours in front of the computer when you should be with your partner. If it feels wrong, it probably is. [image file=image_rsrc3AR.jpg] Connecting with your RelationshipAll relationships take work, so it makes sense that the most important relationship in your life should require the most work and commitment. “Happily ever after” is the stuff of fairy tales, but deep, lasting love is possible. It just takes effort, communication, and dedication. Luckily, the payoff is huge—a happy life, a fulfilling relationship, and unconditional love. However, it helps to know how to bypass the roadblocks, keep your love life exciting, and navigate the trials and triumphs of monogamy.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Now that she’d finished her housework for the week, a little luxury was in order, starting with a long, hot bath. As the water ran in the claw-foot tub, Rusty chose her bath salts carefully, sniffing each one. Was she in a lavender mood, vanilla, musk? Yes, musk. Something to remind her she was just turning thirty-three. She was still young. It wasn’t too late. She stepped into the steamy bath, then lowered herself, sinking lower and lower until only her face was above water. IreneDownstairs, in her first-floor apartment, Rusty’s mother, Irene Ammerman, poured a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream into a crystal decanter, to welcome the holiday shoppers she hoped would flock to her house from four to eight p.m., despite the falling temperatures. She’d sent out penny postcards, inviting all her regular customers, encouraging them to bring friends. This morning, before he left for work at the newspaper, Henry had opened her dining room table to its full length, big enough to seat twelve. She’d created a tabletop display with fluffy cotton, white as fresh snow, arranged the Volupté compacts just so, then scattered sparkly snowflakes around. The snowflakes would make a mess, she knew, and she’d be Hoovering tomorrow morning, but they were worth it. This year’s line featured a style to appeal to every taste. If you wanted gemstones, there were gemstones. If you preferred gold accents on silver, fine. And if you wanted simple but elegant, there were plenty to choose from. She set the Ronson lighters, the other line she carried, in small groups, ranging from large silver tabletop models to small, pocket-size squares. There was still time to have the Ronsons engraved, but not much. She had to be careful what else she put on the table. Last year she’d used her leaded crystal candlesticks to add height to her display, along with a few colorful antique bowls. A mistake, since customers assumed they were also for sale. So she sold a few bowls, making up prices on the spot. But the candlesticks—no. She didn’t have much left from the old days, when they were flush from the store, and these she was keeping for Rusty, or Miri, or even Henry’s wife, if he married, which she hoped he would. Yesterday, she’d splurged on a wash, set and manicure at Connie’s Beauty Salon. She needed to look as stylish as the gifts she was hoping to sell. Presentation was presentation, and that included her. She moved the family photos, usually lined up on the sideboard, to the top of the spinet to make room for her famous coffee cakes. Her customers would expect a nosh. She touched her lips to Miri’s photo and stood it next to one of Max, her husband, who’d died two weeks before Miri was born. Boom boom boom —just like that—Rusty turned eighteen, Max died, Miri was born. She was forty-one at the time and in one month she’d become both a widow and a grandmother.

• From The Varieties of Religious Experience

  “Reflecting on my situation, I found myself tied down by a multitude of bonds—temptations on every side. Considering my teaching, I found it was impure before God. I saw myself struggling with all my might to achieve glory and to spread my name. [Here follows an account of his six months’ hesitation to break away from the conditions of his life at Bagdad, at the end of which he fell ill with a paralysis of the tongue.] Then, feeling my own weakness, and having entirely given up my own will, I repaired to God like a man in distress who has no more resources. He answered, as he answers the wretch who invokes him. My heart no longer felt any difficulty in renouncing glory, wealth, and my children. So I quitted Bagdad, and reserving from my fortune only what was indispensable for my subsistence, I distributed the rest. I went to Syria, where I remained about two years, with no other occupation than living in retreat and solitude, conquering my desires, combating my passions, training myself to purify my soul, to make my character perfect, to prepare my heart for meditating on God—all according to the methods of the Sufis, as I had read of them.

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  For both sexes, but particularly for girls, giving oral sex was also seen as a path to popularity. Intercourse could bring stigma, turn you into a “slut”; fellatio, at least under certain circumstances, conferred the right sort of reputation. “Oral sex is like money or some kind of currency,” Sam explained. “It’s how you make friends with the popular guys. And it’s how you rack up points for hooking up with someone without actually having sex, so you can say, ‘I hooked up with this person and that person,’ and increase your social status. I guess it’s more impersonal than sex, so people are like, ‘It’s not a big deal.’” I may be of a different generation, but, frankly, it’s hard for me to consider a penis in my mouth as “impersonal.” Beyond that, I was concerned about the dynamics around oral sex: the morass of obligations, pressures, and judgments leveled at girls; the calculus and compromises they made to curry favor with boys while remaining emotionally, socially, and even physically “safe”; the lack of reciprocity or physical pleasure they described, or expected. One afternoon in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, I met Anna, a freshman at a small West Coast college. Anna had grown up in a politically liberal family and attended progressive private schools through twelfth grade. She wore skinny jeans with lace-up boots and had recently pierced the small flap of cartilage in front of her ear canal with a silver hoop; her long, wavy brown hair was swept to one side. “Sometimes,” she told me, “a girl will give a guy a blow job at the end of the night because she doesn’t want to have sex with him and he expects to be satisfied. So if I want him to leave and I don’t want anything to happen . . .” She trailed off, leaving me to imagine the rest. There was so much to unpack in that short statement: why a young man should expect to be sexually satisfied; why a girl not only isn’t outraged, but considers it her obligation to comply; why she doesn’t think a blow job constitutes “anything happening”; the pressure young women face in any personal relationship to put others’ needs before their own; the potential justification of assault with a chaser of self-blame. “It goes back to girls feeling guilty,” Anna said. “If you go to a guy’s room and are hooking up with him, you feel bad leaving him without pleasing him in some way. But, you know, it’s unfair. I don’t think he feels badly for you.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  There are, of course, children who never break free from caring for their parent, husband, or other needy person. There are many dangerous traps along the way for the caregiver child who places others’ interests far ahead of her own. Karen could have remained in her unfortunate cohabitation with a man who needed her ministrations and stood in for her needy parents. Several caregiver children went on to marry men who were dependent on their caregiving, and, in fact, that was their appeal. Karen, too, might have remained at home sitting in the cinders like the well-known fairy-tale child waiting to be rescued by a fairy godmother and a prince. So the role of caregiver imposes a corollary task of freeing oneself and moving out and up because there is no one to rescue or even help her. Inarguably the role of caregiver is tricky. If it lasts during adolescence, it provides the young person with a sense of pride and satisfaction, of having been a virtuous person who helped her family. If it extends too far and there are no limits, then the child begins to feel responsible for keeping the parent alive. It becomes an impossible burden. And if it extends into adulthood and becomes the dominant pattern of relating to people, it’s a serious detriment to enjoying one’s own life. The other great hazard is that the child forever feels deprived of her own childhood and as an adult tries to make up for the playtime she has lost or for the nurturance she never received when she was young. Whether a caregiver child can shed her role as she reaches adulthood or remains tied emotionally and sometimes physically to her parents or to her own unsatisfied needs is the single most important key.

• From The Confessions (400)

  This hast Thou taught me, that I should set myself to take food as physic. But while I am passing from the discomfort of emptiness to the content of replenishing, in the very passage the snare of concupiscence besets me. For that passing, is pleasure, nor is there any other way to pass thither, whither we needs must pass. And health being the cause of eating and drinking, there joineth itself as an attendant a dangerous pleasure, which mostly endeavours to go before it, so that I may for her sake do what I say I do, or wish to do, for health's sake. Nor have each the same measure; for what is enough for health, is too little for pleasure. And oft it is uncertain, whether it be the necessary care of the body which is yet asking for sustenance, or whether a voluptuous deceivableness of greediness is proffering its services. In this uncertainty the unhappy soul rejoiceth, and therein prepares an excuse to shield itself, glad that it appeareth not what sufficeth for the moderation of health, that under the cloak of health, it may disguise the matter of gratification. These temptations I daily endeavour to resist, and I call on Thy right hand, and to Thee do I refer my perplexities; because I have as yet no settled counsel herein.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  The failure to mention the sacrificial system as atoning is probably due to the nature of the Psalms and their immediate concerns. As we shall see when we discuss the character of the sinners, one of the sins was the pollution of the Temple, which indicates that the pious of the Psalms held the Temple and its sacrifices as sacred. 34 The identification of the righteous and the wicked We should now tum to the most pressing question: the identity and charac ter of the righteous and the sinners and the attitude of the righteous toward the rest of the Israelites. It will already have become clear that a number of terms are used interchangeably to indicate the righteous. Perhaps the most characteristic term is 'pious' (hosioi, which probably reflects the Hebrew ~asidim): 2.40 (36); 3.10 (8); 8.40 (34); 9.6 (3) (the pious do righteous deeds, dikaiosynai); 3~ 13.11 (12); 14.2 (5); 14.6f. (9f.). In the last passage, the pious are paralleled with the righteous: the righteous will obtain mercy at the judgment; the pious shall inherit life. The term 'righteous' (dikaioi, 34 On the attitude toward the Temple cult, see further Biichler, Piety, pp. 170-4. He argued that there were two schools of the ~asidim, one favouring sacrifices as a means of atonement, and one finding them unnecessary (pp. 193f.). This may be too much to conclude from the fact that the Psalms of Solomon do not expressly mention atonement by sacrifice. 35 Biichler (Piety, pp. 155-64) correctly criticized Ryle and James for taking dikaiosynai to refer especially to ceremonial observances and works of mercy (charity). The term refers to the actions of the righteous in general (ibid., p. 160 ). Biichler, however, rel}'ing on the use of terms in Josephus and Philo, also argued that pious refers to one's fear and love toward God, while righteous refers to one's justice and love toward his fellows (pp. 16o-4). That this is the case in Philo and Josephus, and elsewhere in Hellen istic Jewish literature, cannot be contested. It is possible that the distinction is also in mind in the Psalms of Solomon, although it is not clearly marked. 'Righteous' and 'pious' seem more likely to be undiffer entiated synonyms, and the 'righteous deeds' of the pious in 9.6 (3) may refer to their actions toward both God and man. The Psalms of Solomon 399

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  It may be that having a child was a deterrent to divorce, especially among men in divorced families. In this study very few such men divorced.3 For example, one man, whose wife walked out on him, was struggling financially, attending school, working all night long, and paying child support in full. It was very important to him not to behave like his own father, who left him stranded economically and emotionally when he was six years old. Most of the women in the study who divorced had no children. But among those who did have children and went on to divorce, all left violent or addicted men. The decision was never easy and they stayed in the marriages as long as they could. They told me at length how hard they tried to avoid divorce. No one wanted their child to experience the same losses that they had endured. Years earlier, these same people had told me that they approved of divorce “when necessary,” but most were against divorce if there were children. Their attitude changed when they felt that they or their children would be physically or emotionally abused in the marriage. Several decided to remain in very troubled marriages because they had young children and didn’t want to disrupt the children’s lives. In our conversations, parents reported that their children were happy and well adjusted. Most are still young, including many babies and toddlers. Those I spent time with looked very good and well cared for. In watching the parents with their children, I was impressed with their consideration and kindness. Those who were stepparents extended the same interest to their stepchildren. Several said it’s important to treat all children in the family alike. One man with three stepchildren spoke with me earnestly about his grave concerns about the children’s relationship with their father. Having been abandoned at age ten by his own father, he wanted to help them not feel rejected by their father.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  He himself told of the circumstance that led to that flight. He had attended a ball at the home of a prominent nobleman, and passed the night in dancing and feasting, leaving his peasant-coachman waiting for him outside, in an open sleigh, in a bitter cold night. When at four in the morning he wished to return home, he found the coachman seemingly frozen dead, and it required several hours of strenuous effort to restore him to consciousness and to save his life. "Why," he asked himself, "should I, a rich, young aristocrat, who has done nothing for society, spend the night amid warmth and luxuries and feastings, while this peasant who represents the class that has built our cities, given us our food and clothing and other necessities, be kept outside to freeze?" He resolved, then and there, to dedicate the remainder of his life to the righting of this and other wrongs. And he kept his promise. How strong an impression this incident made upon him may be gathered from an indirect allusion to it, in his novel "Master and Man ," published some two score years later. Consecrates life to peasant. It was discouraging work at first. The people whom he desired to benefit had no faith in him. They could not conceive of an aristocrat, to whom the serfs had been no more than worms to be trod upon, becoming suddenly interested in their welfare. There were long spells of utter disheartenment. A number of times he found himself at the brink of suicide. He sought relief and diversion in travel, but returned more convinced than ever of the corruptions and evils of society, of the tyranny of the classes and of the sufferings of the masses. Marriage opened at last a new vista of life to him. Aided and stimulated by his cultured and companionable wife he entered upon his reform work by directing a powerful search-light on the goings-on among the high and the low, in a series of novels that secured for him at once rank among the greatest novelists of his age. Aided by his writings. In the second discourse of this series, I spoke of his having deprecated his novels, and of his having expressed his preference for his ethical and religious and sociological and economical and political writings. I ven tured to say to him that but for his novels he would have gotten but comparatively few people to look into his other writings, that his fiction had secured a world-wide audience, that they contained many of the teachings of his other books, and that the public swallows a moral pill easiest when offered in the form of a novel. To which he replied "Most readers swallow the sugar-coating and leave the pill untouched, or, if they swallow it, it remains unassimilated." His novels criticized. And he was right. I have heard much criticism of Tolstoy's novels. Some find him too realistic, too plain spoken, even coarse.

• From Three Women (2019)

  She spent more money than she felt comfortable spending on a houndstooth dress but it fits fantastically. It’s a size eight. She weighs only three pounds more than she weighed in high school. She pairs the dress with tall black riding boots and she feels beautiful. In the new and lovely dress she can’t really afford, she looks off at the muddy pontoon boat and thinks about the first time they were at the river. Lina has clear days when she tells herself the truth. Most days she depends on the fantasy version. But on clear days she knows Aidan is not the greatest man in the world. It was all me, she will eventually tell the women in the discussion group. I believe he never would have cheated on his wife if it weren’t for me. Especially not the second time and all the times that followed. The shock of saying this out loud is a lot to bear. I roped him in, she says, like a cowgirl. I roped him in using Facebook. The first time at the hotel was one thing but the second time she all but forced him to see her, she says. She friend-requested his buddy Kel Thomas early in the day. Then she sent Aidan a Facebook message asking if he wanted any of the toys her two kids had outgrown. It was getting close to the holidays, and the first time they’d been together, at the hotel, he told Lina he was working overtime so he could get his girls all the things they wanted for Christmas. So she wrote to him, If you want these toys—you can have them all for nothing—you could meet me somewhere later on and I could give them to you. Aidan asked her to send some pictures of the toys. Really, she says to the women in the room, the only thing he cared about was the toys for his girls and the only thing I cared about was him. And that made me feel pathetic. She took her phone down to the basement with her children trailing her and corralled all the items into an attractive bunch and said to herself, I can’t believe I’m doing this, just for the chance of seeing this guy. She sent the picture of all the toys. Then she waited. Her daughter said, Mom, what are you doing with our old stuff? They began to play with some things. They turned on an old Fisher-Price keyboard and Lina’s son jammed to a demo song. A ding. Aidan had written back: Nah. No thanks. Her eyes widened in shock, even rage. She had corralled all these toys for him, she had gone out of her way, and here was this insipid, indifferent little response? Nah. No thanks.

• From Three Women (2019)

  I don’t have to be here, Sloane said quietly. But I’m here. And whether or not you believe me, I’m telling you I didn’t know, until the end, when I got the idea that you didn’t know. And— Sloane could not say the rest. How awful it was in the end. How she did it maybe two or three more times, fucked this woman’s partner, though she knew that Jenny might not know. She could not tell her how she’d asked Wes if they could include her, and how he’d brushed it off with silence. He brushed it off by beginning to make love to Sloane. She could not say that part. She knew it was best for this woman to hate her and not the father of her own children. Why didn’t you fucking come by? Jenny said. If you felt so bad, why didn’t you fucking come by and talk to me? Sloane remembered the advice from her friend Ingrid: Richard has to go over. Tell him he has to go over there and take care of this. Tell him to go and say it was all his idea. Which is the truth. That’s what you deserve. That’s what this other woman deserves. It’s his responsibility. His and Wes’s. Not yours. Now Sloane said to Jenny, I should have. You’re right. I’m so sorry I didn’t. I guess I felt it was best to leave it alone. You were so cryptic in your text message! You didn’t act caught, you acted like I was crazy! I’m sorry, Sloane said. I didn’t know what you knew. I didn’t want to hurt you more. You were protecting Wes. And yourself. I swear to God I was protecting you! Jenny shook her head. You were fucking the father of my children. And you were protecting me from that? That’s what you actually think? Tell me that’s what you actually fucking think. I want to hear you say that. Sloane felt her lip trembling. She knew it would sound ludicrous to say that she thought she had done the right thing. You like yourself, is that right? You can look at yourself in the mirror every morning. You like how you look. Sloane found herself smiling, suddenly, despite herself. At the inanity. She remembered a moment a few months ago when she took the pickup to Providence, to run some errands and get the restaurant’s tent cleaned. Afterward she had some time to kill so she stopped at a patisserie. Her eyes were drawn to an almond croissant that looked like the most beautiful pastry in the entire world. The shape of it was a perfect elbow. The flakes were crisp and fragile, the color of sunshine.

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

  Now, what we do by our friends, we do apparently by ourselves: because friendship, especially the love of charity, binds two persons together as one. Wherefore as a man can satisfy God by himself, so can he by another; especially when there is urgent need for it. For a man looks upon the punishment which his friend suffers for his sake, as though he suffered it himself: and so he is not without punishment, seeing that he suffers with his suffering friend, and he suffers all the more, according as he is the cause of his friend’s suffering. Again, the love of charity in him who suffers for his friend makes the satisfaction more acceptable to God, than if he suffered for himself: for the former comes of the eagerness of charity, but the latter comes of necessity. Hence we infer that one man may satisfy for another, so long as both remain in charity: wherefore the Apostle says (Gal. 6:2): Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so ye shall fulfil the law of Christ. CHAPTER CLIX THAT, ALTHOUGH MAN CANNOT BE CONVERTED TO GOD WITHOUT GOD’S GRACE, YET IT IS REASONABLY IMPUTED TO HIM, IF HE BE NOT CONVERTEDSINCE, without the aid of divine grace, man cannot be directed to his last end, as we have shown in the preceding chapters; and seeing that without it man can have none of the things required that he may tend to his last end, such as faith, hope, love, and perseverance; someone might think that man is not to be blamed if he lack the things in question: and especially because man cannot merit the assistance of divine grace, nor be converted to God unless God convert him: since no one is blamed for what depends on another. But, if this be granted, it is clear that several absurdities follow, For it would follow that a man without faith, or hope, or love of God, or perseverance in good, is not deserving of punishment: whereas it is said expressly (Jo. 3:36): He that believeth not in the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.—And since no man obtains beatitude without these things, it would also follow that there are some who neither obtain beatitude from God, nor suffer punishment from Him. Whereas the contrary is proved from the words of Matth. 25:34–41, where we are told that to all who are present at God’s judgement it will be said, Come … possess the kingdom prepared for you; or Depart … into everlasting fire.

• From Wild (2012)

  “I mean serious. Like actual literature worth your time,” I replied. “Well, my time has never been worth all that much, you might like to know, since I’ve never made more than minimum wage and more often than not, I’ve slaved away for free.” She laughed lightly and swatted my arm with her hand, slipping effortlessly away from my judgment, the way she always did. When my mother died and the woman Eddie eventually married moved in, I took all the books I wanted from my mother’s shelf. I took the ones she’d bought in the early 1980s, when we’d first moved onto our land: The Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening and Double Yoga. Northland Wildflowers and Quilts to Wear. Songs for the Dulcimer and Bread Baking Basics. Using Plants for Healing and I Always Look Up the Word Egregious. I took the books she’d read to me, chapter by chapter, before I could read to myself: the unabridged Bambi and Black Beauty and Little House in the Big Woods. I took the books that she’d acquired as a college student in the years right before she died: Paula Gunn Allen’s The Sacred Hoop and Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s This Bridge Called My Back. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. But I did not take the books by James Michener, the ones my mother loved the most. “Thank you,” I said now to Jeff, holding The Novel. “I’ll trade this for the Flannery O’Connor if you’d like. It’s an incredible book.” I stopped short of mentioning that I’d have to burn it that night in the woods if he said no. “Absolutely,” he replied, laughing. “But I think I’m getting the better deal.” After lunch, Christine drove me to the ranger station in Quincy, but when we got there, the ranger I spoke to seemed only dimly aware of the PCT. He hadn’t been on it this year, he told me, because it was still covered with snow. He was surprised to learn I had. I returned to Christine’s car and studied my guidebook to get my bearings. The only reasonable place to get back on the PCT was where it crossed a road fourteen miles west of where we were. “Those girls look like they might know something,” said Christine. She pointed across the parking lot to a gas station, where two young women stood next to a van with the name of a camp painted on its side.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  So I empathized with her dilemma. I listened, probed gently, and kept my opinions to myself. Finally I suggested that she write a softer letter to the medical board: “Honest but softer,” I said. “Then the doctors will get only a reprimand rather than a license forfeiture.” All this, of course, was in bad faith. No medical board in the world was going to take her letter seriously. No one was going to believe that all the clinic physicians were conspiring against her. There was no possibility of either reprimand or revocation of license. She lapsed into thought, weighing my advice. I believe she felt my caring for her, and I hoped she would not know that I was being false. Finally she nodded. “You’ve given me good, sound counsel, Irv. It’s just what I needed.” I felt painfully the irony that it was only now, when I had acted in bad faith, that she considered me helpful and trustworthy. Despite her sensitivity to the sun, Paula insisted on walking with me to my car. She put on her sun hat, wrapped herself in her veil and linens, and, as I started the ignition, leaned into the car window to give me a last hug. As I drove away I looked back through the rearview mirror. Silhouetted against the sun, her hat and linen wrapping gleaming with light, Paula was incandescent. A breeze came up. Her clothes fluttered. She seemed a leaf, trembling, twisting on its stem, readying itself for the fall. In the ten years before this visit, I had dedicated myself to my writing. I turned out book after book—a productivity due to a simple strategy: I put the writing first and let nothing and no one interfere with it. Guarding my time as fiercely as a mother bear guards her cubs, I eliminated all but absolutely essential activities. Even Paula fell into the nonessential category, and I did not take the time to call her again. Several months later my mother died, and while I was flying to her funeral, Paula slipped into my mind. I thought of her farewell letter to her dead brother—the letter containing all the things she had never said to him. And I thought of what I had never said to my mother. Almost everything! My mother and I, though loving one another, had never spoken directly, heart to heart, as two people reaching out with clean hands and clear minds. We had always “treated” each other, spoken past each other, each of us fearing, controlling, deceiving the other. I’m certain that’s why I had always wanted to speak honestly and directly to Paula. And why I hated being forced to “treat” her falsely. The night after the funeral, I had a powerful dream.

• From Anxiety at Work: 8 Strategies to Help Teams Build Resilience, Handle Uncertainty, and Get Stuff Done

  She told us she’d never been big on conflict. “I expect my employees to do their jobs without hand-holding,” she said in our first session. In 360s with her team, we heard several complaints that her new employees didn’t know where they really stood with her. Everything was hinted at. “Become a better coach” and “become more assertive” were the two leadership skills we worked with her on over the coming months. Executive coach Peter Bregman had a similar experience with two of his clients. One of them was seen as the apparent successor to the CEO, but he had a problem. “Several of his direct reports were close friends, and he didn’t hold them accountable in the same way he held his other direct reports,” said Bregman. “They didn’t do what he asked and weren’t delivering the results expected. It was hurting his business and his reputation.” Bregman said the other members of this team saw the problem clearly enough and they admitted it was affecting their own motivation because of the unfairness. The leader, on the other hand, had blinders on. He didn’t see it. Bregman’s other client was CEO of a fast-growing billion-dollar enterprise. “He’s warm, gregarious, and authentic,” said the coach. “He’s learned, the hard way, that having friends when you’re the boss can be complicated.” He used to have work friends come to his house for dinner and get to know his family. “But then I had to make hard calls for the good of the business, including firing one of them, and it became too painful. I became hesitant to make decisions because of it. So no, I’m not looking for friends at work.” Bregman explained that this second leader doesn’t avoid friendships with employees because he is a bad guy. He avoids them because he is a good guy. Indeed, it can be hard for leaders to have close friends in the employee ranks, either because they can’t separate friendships from business decisions, or because they have to make tough calls that may destroy those relationships. “There’s plenty of research supporting the idea that having friends at work makes you happier and more engaged,” Bregman adds. “But the research doesn’t address that friendships at work are tricky, especially when you’re the boss.” This means for those who are promoted from individual contributor to manager, or from manager to a manager-of-managers, they can choose to be proactive. Says Professor Art Markman of the University of Texas at Austin, “Make an effort to take some of your [work] friends out and talk to them about some of the stresses and responsibilities of the new position. Help them understand some of the tensions you’re feeling. You may assume that your friends will implicitly understand the tensions you have, but they are much more likely to be sympathetic if you have an open conversation.”

• From The Power of Myth (1988)

  The hunt is a ritual. MOYERS: And a ritual expresses a spiritual reality. CAMPBELL: It expresses that this is in accord with the way of nature, not simply with my own personal impulse. I am told that when the Bushmen tell their animal stories, they actually mimic the mouth formations of the different animals, pronouncing the words as though the animals themselves were pronouncing them. They had an intimate knowledge of these creatures, and friendly neighborly relationships. And then they killed some of them for food. I know ranch people who have a pet cow in addition to their ranch animals. They won’t eat the meat of that cow because there is a kind of cannibalism in eating the meat of a friend. But the aborigines were eating the meat of their friends all the time. Some kind of psychological compensation has to be achieved, and the myths help in doing that. MOYERS: How? CAMPBELL: These early myths help the psyche to participate without a sense of guilt or fright in the necessary act of life. MOYERS: And these great stories consistently refer to this dynamic in one way or the other—the hunt, the hunter, the hunted, and the animal as friend, as a messenger from God. CAMPBELL: Right. Normally the animal preyed upon becomes the animal that is the messenger of the divine. MOYERS: And you wind up as the hunter killing the messenger. CAMPBELL: Killing the god. MOYERS: Does that cause guilt? CAMPBELL: No, guilt is what is wiped out by the myth. Killing the animal is not a personal act. You are performing the work of nature. MOYERS: Guilt is wiped out by the myth? CAMPBELL: Yes. MOYERS: But you must at times feel some reluctance upon closing in for the kill. You don’t really want to kill that animal. CAMPBELL: The animal is the father. You know what the Freudians say, that the first enemy is the father, if you are a man. If you are a boy, every enemy is potentially, psychologically associated with the father image. MOYERS: Do you think that the animal became the father image of God? CAMPBELL: Yes. It is a fact that the religious attitude toward the principal animal is one of reverence and respect, and not only that—submission to the inspiration of that animal. The animal is the one that brings the gifts—tobacco, the mystical pipe, and so on. MOYERS: Do you think this troubled early man—to kill the animal that is a god, or the messenger of a god? CAMPBELL: Absolutely—that is why you have the rites. MOYERS: What kind of rites? CAMPBELL: Rituals of appeasement and of thanks to the animal.

• From Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy (1989)

  “Carlos, you take pride in your honesty in the group—but were you really being honest? Or only part honest, or easy honest? It’s true, you were more open than the other men in the group. You did express some of your real sexual feelings. And you do have a point about how widespread these feelings are: the porno business must be offering something which appeals to impulses all men have. “But are you being completely honest? What about all the other feelings going on inside you that you haven’t expressed? Let me take a guess about something: when you said ‘big deal’ to Sarah and Martha about their rapes, is it possible you were thinking about your cancer and what you have to face all the time? It’s a hell of a lot tougher facing something that threatens your life right now than something that happened a year or two ago. “Maybe you’d like to get some caring from the group, but how can you get it when you come on so tough? You haven’t yet talked about having cancer.” (I had been urging Carlos to reveal to the group that he had cancer, but he was procrastinating: he said he was afraid he’d be pitied, and didn’t want to sabotage his sexual chances with the women members.) Carlos grinned at me. “Good try, Doc! It makes a lot of sense. You’ve got a good head. But I’ll be honest—the thought of my cancer never entered my mind. Since we stopped chemotherapy two months ago, I go days at a time without thinking of the cancer. That’s goddamn good, isn’t it—to forget it, to be free of it, to be able to live a normal life for a while?” Good question! I thought. Was it good to forget? I wasn’t so sure. Over the months I had been seeing Carlos, I had discovered that I could chart, with astonishing accuracy, the course of his cancer by noting the things he thought about. Whenever his cancer worsened and he was actively facing death, he rearranged his life priorities and became more thoughtful, compassionate, wiser. When, on the other hand, he was in remission, he was guided, as he put it, by his pecker and grew noticeably more coarse and shallow. I once saw a newspaper cartoon of a pudgy lost little man saying, “Suddenly, one day in your forties or fifties, everything becomes clear. . . . And then it goes away again!” That cartoon was apt for Carlos, except that he had not one, but repeated episodes of clarity—and they always went away again. I often thought that if I could find a way to keep him continually aware of his death and the “clearing” that death effects, I could help him make some major changes in the way he related to life and to other people.

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  Note 1: Paul Brand (1914–2003) was a medical missionary in India who discovered that the reason people with leprosy lose their fingers is not because the fingers fall off, but because they are worn away. The reason they are worn away is that leprosy damages the peripheral nervous system, causing lepers not to feel pain when they are injured. Without a sense of pain to protect them, they end up, quite literally, whittling themselves away. In two excellent books that he co-authored with Philip Yancey, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made (1980) and The Gift of Pain (1982), Brand discusses, among other things, how pain is actually a blessing from God. Though no one likes to feel pain, he explains, pain functions as a signal to tell us that there is something wrong with our body. If we ignore that signal and either overtax our body or do not repair the damage already done, we will, like lepers, fall apart. Adding to Brand’s powerful insight, I would make a connection between pain and guilt. Just as pain is a signal to tell us there is something wrong with our body, so guilt is a signal to tell us there is something wrong with our soul. It is important to understand this since, in our post-Freudian age, an increasing number of people in education and the behavioral sciences are claiming that guilt is the problem; that if we can just eliminate guilt, people will be happier. Some argue, for example, that the reason those in the gay (and transgender) lifestyle suffer from extremely high rates of depression, drug abuse, and suicide is that society burdens them with an unnatural sense of guilt for living out their natural urges. However, is it possible that many in the gay lifestyle feel guilty because they are engaging in behavior that is destructive to the soul and contrary to nature? It is significant that gay-rights advocates have not been satisfied just with the legalization of gay marriage, but also want to see gay marriage affirmed, praised, and celebrated as natural and good. Might the need for public affirmation and praise evidence guilt and be a means of seeking to eliminate it? To return to Paul Brand on pain, one caveat must be made. If someone contracts cancer, the disease will often disrupt their normal pain mechanism, causing them to suffer constant and debilitating pain. In that case, medication is needed to deal with the broken pain mechanism.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  exercised some form of agency in moving the process along, at least in some ways, in some places, and at some points in time. The assumption of mutuality is a welcome antidote to supersessionism and anti-Judaism. I wonder, however, whether scholars’ desire to atone for past sins has also caused them to misconstrue the historical processes that the “parting of the ways” discourse intends to clarify.2 To begin to probe this issue, I will in these pages consider a few of the sources that are used to construct the Jewish side of the “parting of the ways,” from the New Testament (NT), Josephus, Justin Martyr, and rabbinic literature, and the ways in which they are used in the “parting” discourse. I will argue two interconnected points. First, the available evidence for Jewish response to and concern with Christ-confessors can be read in at least two mutual y exclusive ways: as evidence for and against Jews’ engagement with Christ-confessors. Second, scholars’ judgments about the historical value of this evidence, while often presented as objective and even self-evident, are based on an unstated criterion—the criterion of plausibility—that is intuitive and therefore not objective at al . The Criterion of Plausibility The criterion of plausibility is discussed explicitly in the fields of epidemiology and biomedicine when proposing a causal association—a relationship between putative cause and an outcome—that is consistent with existing biological and medical knowledge. It has received little direct attention in the historical study of early Christianity despite the fact that it is employed by virtual y all scholars. Among the few to discuss this criterion directly are Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter. In their book The Quest for the Plausible Jesus, Theissen and Winter point out what we all know but prefer not to acknowledge: we cannot know with any certainty what actual y happened in the life of Jesus. 3 The same is true, I suggest, with the development of the movement that came to be called Christianity. We can only construct plausible scenarios that are consistent with existing knowledge. The problem is one of circularity, however. The existing knowledge that we need as a foundation for our plausible scenarios is often itself subject to question, as are the methods that we use for constructing our scenarios in the first place. As scholars, therefore, we are always in a position of assessing the plausibility of the scenarios that others propose, and, in turn, we are subject to the criticism of our peers, to whom our own scenarios may seem less than plausible. The sources that are often used to construct the Jewish role in the “parting” process il ustrate this conundrum perfectly. 2 Others too have tried it. See, e.g., Tobias Nicklas, Jews and Christians? Second-Century “Christian” Perspectives on the “Parting of the Ways” (Annual Deichmann Lectures 2013) (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 221–3. 3 Gerd Theissen and Dagmar Winter, The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002). 149

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  SO DO I. “Ana!” My mother calls me, making me jump. Shit. Why do I feel so guilty? “Just coming, Mom.” From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Moaning Date: May 31 2011 19:39 ET To: Christian Grey Gotta go. Laters, baby. I dash into the hall, where Bob and my mother are waiting. My mother frowns. “Darling, are you feeling okay? You look a bit flushed.” “Mom, I’m fine.” “You look lovely, dear.” “Oh, this is Kate’s dress. You like it?” Her frown deepens. “Why are you wearing Kate’s dress?” Oh…no. “Well, I like this one and she doesn’t,” I improvise quickly. She regards me shrewdly while Bob oozes impatience with his hangdog, hungry look. “I’ll take you shopping tomorrow,” she says. “Oh, Mom, you don’t need to do that. I have plenty of clothes.” “Can’t I do something for my own daughter? Come on, Bob’s starving.” “Too right,” moans Bob, rubbing his stomach and assuming a fake pained expression. I giggle as he rolls his eyes, and we head out the door. Later when I’m in the shower, cooling under the lukewarm water, I reflect on how much my mother has changed. Seeing her at dinner, she was in her element: funny and flirty and among many friends at the golf club. Bob was warm and attentive. They seem so good for each other. I’m really pleased for her. It means I can stop worrying about her and second-guessing her decisions and put the dark days of Husband Number Three behind us both. Bob is a keeper. And she’s giving me good advice. When did that start happening? Since I met Christian. Why is that? When I’m done, I dry myself quickly, eager to get back to Christian. There’s an email waiting for me, sent just after I left for dinner a few hours ago. From: Christian Grey Subject: Plagiarism Date: May 31 2011 16:41 To: Anastasia Steele You stole my line. And left me hanging. Enjoy your dinner. Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Who are you to cry thief? Date: May 31 2011 22:18 ET To: Christian Grey Sir, I think you’ll find it was Elliot’s line originally. Hanging how? Your Ana From: Christian Grey Subject: Unfinished Business Date: May 31 2011 19:22 To: Anastasia Steele Miss Steele, You’re back. You left so suddenly—just when things were getting interesting. Elliot’s not very original. He must have stolen that line from someone. How was dinner? Christian Grey CEO, Grey Enterprises Holdings, Inc. From: Anastasia Steele Subject: Unfinished Business? Date: May 31 2011 22:26 ET To: Christian Grey Dinner was filling—you’ll be very pleased to hear I ate far too much. Getting interesting? How? From: Christian Grey Subject: Unfinished Business—Definitely Date: May 31 2011 19:30 To: Anastasia Steele Are you being deliberately obtuse? I think you’d just asked me to unzip your dress. And I was looking forward to doing just that. I am also glad to hear you are eating. Christian Grey