Joy

Passages

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

Page 284 of 299 · 20 per page

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

  Whether the spiritual joy which proceeds from charity, can be filled?Objection 1: It would seem that the spiritual joy which proceeds from charity cannot be filled. For the more we rejoice in God, the more is our joy in Him filled. But we can never rejoice in Him as much as it is meet that we should rejoice in God, since His goodness which is infinite, surpasses the creature’s joy which is finite. Therefore joy in God can never be filled. Objection 2: Further, that which is filled cannot be increased. But the joy, even of the blessed, can be increased, since one’s joy is greater than another’s. Therefore joy in God cannot be filled in a creature. Objection 3: Further, comprehension seems to be nothing else than the fulness of knowledge. Now, just as the cognitive power of a creature is finite, so is its appetitive power. Since therefore God cannot be comprehended by any creature, it seems that no creature’s joy in God can be filled. On the contrary, Our Lord said to His disciples (Jn. 15:11): “That My joy may be in you, and your joy may be filled.”

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

  The utilitarian ethos of the Industrial Revolution further robbed Christmas of its magic. That changed during the Victorian Age thanks to Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert (who helped bring Germanic traditions such as the Christmas tree to England) and Charles Dickens’s beloved A Christmas Carol (1843), whose main character, the miserly Scrooge, learns to honor Christmas in his heart and to treat it as a time of joy and renewal.1 {Click here to go back to N4 in text} [image file=Image00011.jpg] [image file=Image00001.jpg] 1. For more information about the influence both Prince Albert and Charles Dickens had on Christmas traditions, see Christine Lalumia, “Scrooge and Albert,” History Today 51, issue 12 (December 2001), https://www.historytoday.com/archive/scrooge-and-albert. TWELVE: Prometheus T welve [image file=Image00010.jpg] Prometheus Z eus and his Olympians might not have defeated the Titans had they not secured the help of Prometheus (pro MEE thee us), a Titan himself whose name in Greek means “forethought.” Believing that Zeus would be a more just and civilized God than Kronos, Prometheus agreed to help Zeus in his bid for power and dominion. Alas, when Zeus, like his father before him, began to act cruelly and vindictively, Prometheus feared that he had chosen the wrong side in the conflict. His fears intensified as he watched Zeus’s ill treatment of the newborn race of men. Prometheus, though an immortal god, took pity upon man, and swore he would help and defend him from the injustices of Zeus. This he did when a great contest was held between gods and men to see who would get what part of a sacrificial ox. Prometheus knew Zeus would swindle mankind, taking the best part for himself and leaving only the offal behind. To prevent Zeus from robbing man of needed sustenance, Prometheus devised a ruse. He took all the best meat from the ox and hid it deep in the ox’s belly. Then he built a finely woven structure of bones around the belly and disguised it with fat. As Prometheus hoped, Zeus chose the outer portion of the ox, winning for himself and his fellow immortals only fat and bones. The mortals, instead, won the most useful parts of the ox, enough meat to sustain them and help them grow strong. Zeus, angry at the trick, sought to punish mankind by keeping from him the secret of fire. But Prometheus once again defended his beloved mortals. Stealing quietly into the throne room of Zeus, Prometheus seized the secret fire and gave it as a gift to man. With fire in his possession, man could now hold back the darkness of the night, warm his home, cook his food, and ward off the wild animals that stalked him day and night. With fire, too, he could explore the arts and sciences: from pottery to glass blowing to metallurgy. Fire would ennoble man and allow him to flourish past the limits that jealous Zeus had set for him.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  What greater and more gracious act of divine justice is there than to distribute to all the human race an internal identity and destiny as God’s own image and likeness? The next comment is that not the slightest hint of threat or sanction, possible penalty, or potential punishment exists in this ecstatic vision of creation. Indeed, if one invokes internal identity and destiny rather than external decree or command, any rejection or default would beget internal consequences rather than external punishments. As I use those two terms, by the way, consequences flow internally from an act, whereas punishments flow externally from it. For example, a drunk driver hits a tree and is killed by the impact—that is a consequence; a drunk driver hits a tree and is fined by the police—that is a punishment. The final comment is that in the utopian perfection of God’s creation-dream, no blood ever stains the ground. All alike, animals and humans, are vegan and eat only “every green plant” (1:29–30)—hence, that “peaceable Kingdom” of Isaiah 11:6. I return to this understanding of Genesis 1 later in the chapter, but now I consider the character of that Sabbath God who created humankind in God’s own image and likeness. “So That Your Ox and Your Donkey May Have Relief”I BEGIN WITH THE Sabbath Day. Within the section known as the Book of the Covenant in Exodus 20:22–23:19 is a decree about the Sabbath day that clearly spells out its purpose and intention: Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, so that your ox and your donkey may have relief, and your homeborn slave and the resident alien may be refreshed. (23:12) This command and its “so that” purpose are later repeated and expanded to include “your son or your daughter . . . or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns” (Deut. 5:12–14). We might not think today of equal rest for all as a matter of basic distributive justice (unless, of course, you experience or think about certain jobs, shops, or factories where inadequate rest pushes some people beyond human endurance into violent reprisal). The purpose, reason, and intention of the Sabbath day was to give all alike —householders, children, slaves, animals, and immigrants—the same rest every week. It was not rest for worship of God, but rest as worship of God. In other words, the Sabbath day as rest in Genesis 1 is both a part and a sign of something far deeper than itself—namely, that the crown of creation and the destiny of humanity is distributive justice in a world not our own. The Sabbath day placed distributive justice—where all God’s people get a fair share of all God’s earth—as the rhythm of time and the metronome of history.

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

  Reply to Objection 3: Comprehension denotes fulness of knowledge in respect of the thing known, so that it is known as much as it can be. There is however a fulness of knowledge in respect of the knower, just as we have said of joy. Wherefore the Apostle says (Col. 1:9): “That you may be filled with the knowledge of His will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.” Whether joy is a virtue?Objection 1: It would seem that joy is a virtue. For vice is contrary to virtue. Now sorrow is set down as a vice, as in the case of sloth and envy. Therefore joy also should be accounted a virtue. Objection 2: Further, as love and hope are passions, the object of which is “good,” so also is joy. Now love and hope are reckoned to be virtues. Therefore joy also should be reckoned a virtue. Objection 3: Further, the precepts of the Law are about acts of virtue. But we are commanded to rejoice in the Lord, according to Phil. 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Therefore joy is a virtue. On the contrary, It is not numbered among the theological virtues, nor among the moral, nor among the intellectual virtues, as is evident from what has been said above (FS, QQ[57],60,62). I answer that, As stated above ([2583]FS, Q[55], AA[2],4), virtue is an operative habit, wherefore by its very nature it has an inclination to a certain act. Now it may happen that from the same habit there proceed several ordinate and homogeneous acts, each of which follows from another. And since the subsequent acts do not proceed from the virtuous habit except through the preceding act, hence it is that the virtue is defined and named in reference to that preceding act, although those other acts also proceed from the virtue. Now it is evident from what we have said about the passions ([2584]FS, Q[25], AA[2],4) that love is the first affection of the appetitive power, and that desire and joy follow from it. Hence the same virtuous habit inclines us to love and desire the beloved good, and to rejoice in it. But in as much as love is the first of these acts, that virtue takes its name, not from joy, nor from desire, but from love, and is called charity. Hence joy is not a virtue distinct from charity, but an act, or effect, of charity: for which reason it is numbered among the Fruits (Gal. 5:22).

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  In Israel, the seventh century was a watershed that saw the beginnings of the religion of Judaism. Hezekiah had left a grim legacy. Determined not to repeat his father’s mistakes, his son Manasseh (687–642) remained a loyal vassal of Assyria, and Judah prospered during his long reign.94 The Assyrians did not expect their allies to worship Asshur, their national god, but inevitably, some of their religious symbols became highly visible. Manasseh was not interested in the worship of Yahweh alone. He rebuilt the rural shrines that Hezekiah had destroyed, set up altars to Baal, brought an effigy of Asherah into the Jerusalem temple, set up statues of the divine horses of the sun at the entrance of the temple, and instituted child sacrifice outside Jerusalem.95 The biblical historian was appalled by these developments, but few of Manasseh’s subjects would have found them very surprising, since, as archaeologists have discovered, many had similar icons in their own homes.96 Nevertheless, there was widespread unrest in the rural districts, which had been devastated during the Assyrian invasions.97 Even though Hezekiah’s nationalist policies had been so disastrous, some may have harbored dreams of a golden age when their forefathers had lived peacefully in their land, without the constant threat of enemy invasion and domination by foreign powers. This smoldering discontent erupted after the death of Manasseh. His son Amon reigned for only two years before he was assassinated in a palace uprising led by the rural aristocracy, whom the Bible calls am ha-aretz (“the people of the land”).98 [image file=image_rsrc5K0.jpg] The leaders of the coup put Amon’s eight-year-old son, Josiah, on the throne; because his mother came from Bozkath, a small village in the Judean foothills, he was one of their own.99 Power had shifted away from the urban elites to the leaders of the countryside, and at first everything seemed to be going their way. By this time, Assyria was in decline and Egypt was in the ascendancy. In 656 Pharaoh Psammetichus I, founder of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, forced the Assyrian troops to withdraw from the Levant. With astonishment and joy, the Judahites watched the Assyrians vacating the territories of the old northern kingdom of Israel. True, Josiah had now become the vassal of Egypt, but Pharaoh was too busy taking control of the lucrative trade routes in the Canaanite lowlands to bother about Judah, which—for the time being—was left to its own devices.

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

  Rome was a place of law and order, of duty and obedience, but during the Saturnalia, all those strictures were loosened. All the desires and longings that lay latent in the hearts of the sober citizens of Rome were released, and life bubbled over into song and dance. It was during this week, on the actual day of the winter solstice (which, under the Julian calendar, was December 25), that the Romans celebrated the birth of the unconquerable sun (Sol Invictus ). The days leading up to the solstice carried terror with them: Would the sun continue to lose its power and its potency? Would darkness seize the land? But no. After the solstice, the tide would turn, and the days, slowly, would begin to lengthen. When the Saturnalia ended, everyone would return to his labors and the social hierarchy would be reestablished. But all would be stronger at heart for recalling the golden days when the gods dwelled with men and peace and justice reigned on earth. — Virgil, Aeneid , Book VIII R eflections How does one build a Christian bridge over which pagans can cross smoothly and naturally into the Church? In chapter 6, I suggested that Paul and Jesus both built such bridges to help facilitate the conversion of pre-Christian Greeks: Paul when he quoted pagan poetry in Athens (see Acts 17:28); Jesus when he used imagery that would have had a special and deeply personal meaning to devotees of the Eleusinian mysteries (see John 12:23-24). In the fourth century, Constantine faced a similar challenge, and on a large scale. How could he get Rome to transition from a pagan empire to a Christian one? Even if the pagans were eager and willing to convert, how could the Church engage their emotions, desires, and dreams in a positive and affirming way? One of the chief methods the Church found for touching the depth of the pagan heart was to place Christmas at the intersection point of the Saturnalia and the birthday of the unconquerable sun. {N1} {N2} {N3} I know that some Christians have faulted the Church for making this decision, even going so far as to accuse it of being syncretistic or of watering down the faith. But that was not the intent. The Saturnalia was not based on a Corn King myth, nor did it speak of a divine child, but it drew on the same wellspring of joy as did the story of Christ’s birth.

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

  By doing this, Digby helped me build credibility with my new colleagues. He took action as an ally, using his position of privilege to sponsor me. His shout-outs made a difference, and definitely made me feel great.” What we learn from this is twofold. First, Digby Horner is probably the coolest name ever. And second, more on point, when allies take on the role of sponsor, they vocally support the work of colleagues from underrepresented groups in all contexts, specifically in situations that will help boost their reputation. This can’t be pandering but has to be honest promotion of people’s expertise. The goal for leaders is to support and promote those from oft-marginalized groups. For example, for several years Adrian has been asked to deliver keynotes on corporate culture at the Women’s Foodservice Forum, an industry group with the goal of advancing female leaders in foodservice. Three thousand attendees arrive each year to hear messages from luminaries such as Brené Brown and Maya Angelou. Adrian has been inspired by those attending and found it significant that about 10 percent of the attendees are senior male leaders—there to learn and champion the women in their organizations to greater success. These men are not benevolent benefactors, but wise leaders who intentionally invest in and rely on the skills of their protégés to achieve greater things for their organizations. Method 3: Stand Up Good allies don’t hide in the shadows, says Isaac Sabat, assistant professor of organizational psychology at Texas A&M University. Instead, they show their support through actions, even by seemingly small things like attending events, adding comments on Slack, or affixing stickers to their cubicles. He said, “Research shows that confronting bad behavior in the moment—responding to someone’s insensitive remark or calling attention to the lack of representation in the room—can be more effective when it comes from an ally.” If a person of color, for instance, calls out a microaggression, other teammates might see them as complaining or self-serving, he added, but when allies initiate a similar confrontation, others typically view it as objective. “If you can signal your allyship identity, then it shows people that you are supportive and that you are there for them if something goes down.”

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  the opening chapters of Genesis (the others are in Ben Sira and the Dead Sea Scrolls). The view of marriage that it expresses, which emphasizes the role of the wife as helpmate, is much more positive than what we find in Ben Sira. We cannot be sure when or where Tobit was written. That it was current both in Hebrew and Aramaic in the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that it can be no later than the second, or more likely the third, century B.C.E. Tobit’s prediction of the course of Israel’s history at the end shows no awareness of the upheavals in Jerusalem in the time of the Maccabees. This is one of the most entertaining stories in the biblical corpus, and we must assume that entertainment was one of the purposes for which it was composed. The author of the story as we have it used the entertaining romance as an occasion for conventional moral instruction. In his deathbed speech in chapter 14, Tobit assures his son that righteousness is rewarded and wickedness punished. And so it is in this story, but only if one takes a long-term view and watches out for bird droppings along the way.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  She smiled. “If you had said ‘never again,’ I wouldn’t have done my job. My job is for you to have a good experience.” She squeezed his hand and disappeared to find her next student. Jim leaned against the wall. He had done it. Yet again, he was experiencing The Moment. Thinking back, he remembers, “It was one of the greatest moments of my life.” * * * A couple of days later, Mayumi handed him the envelope from the judge. “Does it say I’m a mess? If he could have seen inside my brain he would have seen that I was a mess.” Mayumi looked at him. “You always assume that you’re the only one who’s anxious and no one else is.” “But they look so calm,” he protested. “So do you.” She ripped open the envelope and put the paper in his hands. At the top of the page, in big letters, was written: “VERY RELAXED.” Jim never would have guessed that, at fifty-two, he would essentially start living a new life. He thought it was too late, that the lessons of Dorchester and decades of avoidance would have settled in irreversibly. But it’s never too late to move forward. Whether you’re thirteen or eighty-three, an old dog really can be taught new tricks. Jim’s story still isn’t over. He keeps in touch with Deena, holding strong their shared connection and mutual respect from over forty years prior. It’s unclear what the future will bring, but for now Jim is satisfied with the turns his life has taken. From Dorchester to the dance floor, Jim’s journey over the mountain of social anxiety and down the other side is one he never knew was in him. * * *

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  That story reminded Pearl of Chinese checkers. Dwight and Skipper refused to play, but the rest of us joined in. First we played as free agents and then in teams. Pearl and I played the last round together. It was close—very close. When Pearl made the winning move we jumped up and down, and crowed, and pounded each other on the back. DWIGHT DROVE US down to Seattle early the next morning. He stopped on the bridge leading out of camp so we could see the salmon in the water below. He pointed them out to us, dark shapes among the rocks. They had come all the way from the ocean to spawn here, Dwight said, and then they would die. They were already dying. The change from salt to fresh water had turned their flesh rotten. Long strips of it hung off their bodies, waving in the current. Taylor and Silver and I sometimes hung out in the bathroom during lunch hour. We smoked cigarettes and combed our hair and exchanged interesting facts not available to the general public about women. It was just after Thanksgiving. I told Taylor and Silver and a couple of weed fiends who practically lived in the bathroom the story of how I’d killed the turkey in Chinook. “I mean I blew it off , man—I blew his fucking head right off!” At first nobody responded. Silver did the French inhale, then slowly blew the smoke toward the ceiling. “With a .22,” he said. “Fuckin’ A,” I said. “Winchester .22. Pump.” “Wolff,” he said, “you are so full of shit.” “Fuck you, Silver. I don’t care what you think.” “All a .22 would do is just make a hole in his head.” I took a drag and let the smoke come out of my mouth as I talked. “One bullet, maybe.” “Oh. Oh, I see—you hit him more than once. While he was flying. In the head.” I nodded. Silver howled. The other guys were also manifesting signs of disbelief. “Fuck you, Silver,” I said, and when he howled again I said, “Fuck. You. Fuck. You.” Still saying this, I went over to the wall, which had just been repainted, and took out my comb. It was a girl’s comb. We all carried them, tails sticking out of our back pockets. With the tail of the comb I scratched FUCK YOU into the soft paint and once more told Silver, “Fuck you.” The two weed fiends ditched their cigarettes and cleared out. So did Silver and Taylor. I threw away the comb and followed. During the first period after lunch the vice-principal visited each classroom and demanded the names of those responsible for the obscenity that had been written in the boys’ lavatory. He said that he was fed up with the delinquent behavior of a few rotten apples. They had names.

• From Love & Sex: A Christian Guide to Healthy Intimacy (2018)

  What a task God gave to Adam! I believe part of what God was doing here was to help Man develop an awareness of his aloneness. I imagine as Man named the animals, he must have noticed there were two of the same kind—one with male parts and the other with female parts. I also imagine he watched them frolic and mate and wondered where his playmate and partner was. We humans often don’t notice a need until we become aware. God didn’t assign a random task to Adam, but created a life changing event for the dawning of awareness of Man’s desire for a complementary counterpart. God loves to meet our needs, so He proceeds to put Man into a semi-coma. “God put the Man into a deep sleep. As he slept he removed one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh. God then used the rib that he had taken from the Man to make Woman and presented her to the Man” (Gen 2:21–22). I can only imagine Man’s thrill at God’s presentation. As a matter of fact, he exclaims, “Finally! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh! Name her Woman for she was made from Man” (Gen. 2:23–24). Can you hear his joy? At last, finally, he has someone like himself! He then prophesies, “Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and embraces his wife. They become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). He recalls the animals and how they are partnered with one like themselves, but slightly different from each other. He must have envied how they had one another, a companion, a sexual partner who brought not only pleasure, but offspring. Now God has made him one of these. He is delighted and can instantly imagine how this partner will cause him to change his priorities to make room for her in his life. I think he also recognizes her as his sexual partner and must be experiencing sexual arousal for the first time. Then Scripture tells us, “The two of them, the Man and his Wife, were naked, but they felt no shame” (Gen. 2:25).

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  His lips quirk up, his eyes shining with incredulity. “Not exactly.” “You said fifteen.” My confusion is obvious. “I was referring to the number of women in my playroom. I thought that’s what you meant. You didn’t ask me how many women I’d had sex with.” “Oh.” Holy shit, there’s more… How many? I gape at him. “Vanilla?” “No. You are my one vanilla conquest.” He shakes his head, still grinning at me. Why does he find this funny? And why am I grinning back at him like an idiot? “I can’t give you a number. I didn’t put notches in the bedpost or anything.” “What are we talking—tens, hundreds…thousands?” My eyes grow wilder as the numbers get larger. “Tens. We’re in the tens, for pity’s sake.” “All submissives?” “Yes.” “Stop grinning at me,” I scold him mildly, trying and failing to keep a straight face. “I can’t. You’re funny.” “Funny peculiar or funny ha-ha?” “A bit of both, I think.” His words mirror mine. “That’s damned cheeky, coming from you.” He leans across and kisses the tip of my nose. “This will shock you, Anastasia. Ready?” I nod, wide-eyed, still with the stupid grin on my face. “All submissives in training, when I was training. There are places in and around Seattle that one can go and practice. Learn to do what I do.” What? “Oh.” I blink at him. “Yep, I’ve paid for sex, Anastasia.” “That’s nothing to be proud of,” I mutter haughtily. “And you’re right, I am deeply shocked. And cross that I can’t shock you.” “You wore my underwear.” “Did that shock you?” “Yes.” My inner goddess pole-vaults over the fifteen-foot bar. “You didn’t wear your panties to meet my parents.” “Did that shock you?” “Yes.” The bar’s moved to sixteen feet. “It seems I can only shock you in the underwear department.” “You told me you were a virgin. That’s the biggest shock I’ve ever had.” “Yes, your face was a picture, a Kodak moment.” I giggle. “You let me work you over with a riding crop.” “Did that shock you?” “Yep.” I grin. “Well, I may let you do it again.” “Oh, I do hope so, Miss Steele. This weekend?” “Okay,” I agree shyly. “Okay?” “Yes. I’ll go to the Red Room of Pain again.” “You say my name.” “That shocks you?” “The fact that I like it shocks me.” “Christian.” He grins. “I want to do something tomorrow.” His eyes glow with excitement. “What?” “A surprise. For you.” His voice is low and soft. I raise an eyebrow and stifle a yawn at the same time. “Am I boring you, Miss Steele?” His tone is sardonic. “Never.” He leans across and kisses me gently on my lips. “Sleep,” he commands, then switches off the light.

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

  Among the most important followers were sisters from a village called Bethany, Mary and Martha, along with their brother Lazarus, clearly a particular favourite of Jesus, though Lazarus says nothing recorded in the Gospels. Then there is the stand-out figure of Mary Magdalen; all four Gospels name her as among the first witnesses of the Resurrection. Mary Magdalen’s role is particularly enhanced in John’s dramatic presentation. She meets the risen Jesus alone – first in deep distress mistaking him for a gardener, and then in deep joy, recognizing the reality (John 20.11–18). For this reason, she has often been called ‘Apostle to the Apostles’, for she passes the astonishing news on to the wider disciple-group. In the course of later history, she has undergone almost as many transformations as her familial opposite number, Mary the Mother of the Lord. John the Evangelist is responsible also for the theme that there was one special male disciple whom Jesus ‘loved’. It sits untidily beside the motif recorded in the Synoptics that Jesus sternly rebuked some of the Twelve for seeking a special place in Heaven (Mark 10.35–45; Matt. 20.20–28; Luke 22.24–27). The beloved disciple is never named in John’s Gospel, though it says that he provided its textual content (John 21.24); traditionally the character has been elided into the person of John the Evangelist himself. Other identifications have been suggested, such as Lazarus, but the indications are that the final editor wished the content of his Gospel to be seen as coming from John, son of Zebedee; John was one of the Twelve, and was actually one of those whom the Synoptic Jesus rebuked for seeking special treatment. This language of love and particular favour has inevitably aroused interest in those aware of Graeco-Roman institutions of same-sex relationships. Like the turbulence built into the picture of Mary Magdalen, the resonance passed down the centuries for those inclined to find it (see Plate 19). That irrepressibly witty monarch James VI of Scotland and I of England, for instance, astonished his Privy Councillors at Hampton Court in 1617 with a truculent defence of his undoubtedly erotic relationship with his favourite, George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham: Christ had his John, he said, and James had his George.[28]

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

  Pilgrimages, Crusades, a Militant SocietyThe Compostela route was only part of a growing Western enterprise of mass pilgrimage, new not in character but in scale; it became one of the defining features of Western Latin devotion right up to the sixteenth-century Reformation. This search for holy places and the route to salvation that they might offer was enticingly open to anyone who chose to undertake it (that might include the growing proportion of Europeans who were serfs, or other unfree people, if they could seize or were granted the opportunity). Choice, it is true, was not always part of the package: we have already noted in Chapter 11 that, from the beginning of the new penitential discipline in Ireland or Wales, one penitential possibility was an order to go on pilgrimage to seek the forgiving power of a saint. That became standard in medieval Europe’s repertoire of penance, an early spiritual variant on the modern proposition that travel broadens the mind.[2] Pilgrimage afforded the same opportunities to women as to men, and, despite all the problems that medieval women might face in travel, they took full advantage of it; one estimate of Western pilgrim activity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries considers that women were almost as numerous as men among those known to have undertaken pilgrimages. Naturally all this activity created its own economy of service industries for support, entertainment and accommodation, besides very considerable financial benefit for the shrine churches themselves.[3] Unusually, the devotional activism of pilgrimage put laypeople on the same footing as clergy during a devotional revolution that in so many ways gave clergy a privileged position in society. Indeed, holy travelling gave laity the advantage over monks and nuns who observed their commitment to sacred enclosure. In the fourteenth century, Geoffrey Chaucer’s pilgrim Prioress did exploit seniority to exempt herself from enclosure for her cheerful journey to Canterbury, but her sisters would have had to make do with journeys of the mind. Accordingly, some late medieval nunneries resourcefully equipped themselves with a series of pictures of goals of pilgrimage for pleasantly profitable contemplation amid their other spiritual amenities. The Poor Clares of Villingen in south Germany outclassed most others by enriching their precinct with no fewer than 210 representations of places to visit in Rome and Jerusalem, and a generous papal grant gave them all benefits of indulgences just like a ‘real’ visit to these shrines (they all burst into tears with dutiful pleasure when this grant was read out to them). This was the ultimate tribute to the power of the pilgrimage.[4]

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

  A sacrament being an outward and visible sign of an inward or spiritual reality, this new reality encouraged a formal ecclesiastical ritual in church for all, for the first time in the Western Church. Western clergy had previously only been involved in negotiating or presiding over royal or noble marriages, but from the eleventh century a long campaign sought to make this requirement universal.[55] This was a marked shift even from the new devotional activism of the Carolingian Church. Carolingian monarchs or high nobility might have considered a church ceremony as bonus legitimation for dynastic turning points, but it had still been optional. In an analogous liturgical situation, the Emperor Charlemagne did not consider giving an active role to the senior clergy present in his chapel in Aachen when he granted his imperial title to his son Louis in 813; the younger man simply took his crown from the altar while everyone present looked on as witnesses.[56] An institution of marriage carefully constructed on the basis of family negotiations had not felt itself needing much confirmation in Christian liturgy. As late as the end of the eleventh century, the German romantic poem Ruodlieb included a prolonged description of decorously cheerful wedding ceremonial in a knightly family. It was still entirely domestic and did not involve a priest at all – all the more remarkable since the poet-author was a monk of the stately Benedictine house of Tegernsee in Bavaria.[57] A significant liturgical symbol of the anomaly in the marriage sacrament now constructed by liturgists was that at first it remained slightly distanced from the interior of the church building. The most prominent liturgical pattern-book in medieval England was the ‘Use’ of Sarum, designed to specify the elaborate round of services in a brand-new cathedral, under construction from 1220 on a virgin site at Salisbury (Sarum). Its wedding rite placed the bulk of the ceremony ‘ante ostium ecclesiae’, in front of the entrance to the church. At Salisbury, what that meant was that the actual marriage took place in the new Cathedral’s extremely large north porch. Only after the couple had taken their vows, exchanged rings and been blessed by the priest, did they get the chance to process into the church itself for a nuptial Mass. On the one hand, the Church wanted to take charge of the event, which after all had been declared to be one of the seven sacraments, but, on the other, it could not bring itself to do so inside the church building.

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

  The issue remained in play for another half-century, before the later Empress Theodora was freed by the death of her iconoclast husband Theophilos in 842 to emerge as a second female champion of icons. A run of military victories for iconoclast emperors had abruptly and humiliatingly ended in the 830s: God’s favour seemed to have deserted the iconoclast cause. As regent for her son Michael III, toddler as well as Emperor, Theodora ordered a new Patriarch hand-picked for his iconophile sympathies to restore the icons to public worship. The occasion of their joyful formal reintroduction to the great church of Hagia Sophia, 11 March 843, was a decision never reversed, and it has always subsequently been celebrated in successor-Churches as the ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’. It is possible to read this sequence of events simply as a matter of high politics and of the doctrinal statements produced by successive ecclesiastical councils and distinguished theologians (now much weighted to the iconophilic side, thanks to later censorship by the victors). Yet it is no accident that a succession of military men as emperors with strategic considerations in mind favoured the iconoclastic cause, and that two (admittedly ambitious and ruthless) women should successfully defy them and alter the future of Eastern Orthodoxy. It has been plausibly argued that the two sides represent contrasting ways of approaching the mystery of God at the heart of Christian faith, appealing to different constituencies in Byzantine society. Iconophilia became an alliance between women and monks, and the debate was about how to find holiness in this world.[35] It was a theme among iconoclasts that Christians met holiness in the particular situations where the clergy represented the Church to God, primarily in public performance of the Church’s liturgy. No one on either side was going to deny the place of the liturgy in the life of the Church, but it could perfectly well continue in its magnificence in churches without artistic representation of sacred figures. One reason for iconoclasts to reject the holiness of icons was that there was no official provision for a cleric to say a prayer of blessing over them (in the centuries since the Triumph of Orthodoxy, that has been remedied).[36] In terms of art, iconoclasts were content with rich depictions of a plain cross in their churches, some of which survive, and which might call to a soldier’s mind the humiliation brought to Christians by the Muslim seizure of Jerusalem, site of the crucifixion of Jesus and shrine to the miraculously preserved True Cross.

• From Between Us

  32 ​For Japanese, emotions were OURS; for Americans, they were MINE: Japanese and American research participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) a Japanese athlete by themselves, (2) a Japanese athlete with three others, (3) an American athlete by themselves, and (4) an American athlete with three others. The described differences were found in the within-culture conditions, where American participants projected the emotions for American athletes, and Japanese participants projected emotions onto the Japanese athletes. Differences were not found for the conditions in which participants reported emotions for athletes from the other culture (Uchida et al., “Emotions as within or between People? Cultural Variation in Lay Theories of Emotion Expression and Inference”). 34 ​our study examined which emotions: Takahiko Masuda et al., “Placing the Face in Context: Cultural Differences in the Perception of Facial Emotion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 3 (2008): 365–81. Copyright © 2008, American Psychological Association. 34 ​looked at the expressions of the other figures: Note that the traditional paradigm for “face recognition” would have been just fine for our North American participants: they did not use the information from the surrounding people’s faces. Yet, this paradigm failed to capture an important aspect of “emotion” perception in the Japanese. This is one example where Western researchers, by modeling their very paradigm according to a MINE model of emotions, would never have picked up on important cultural differences in the way emotional episodes evolve (Batja Mesquita et al., “A Cultural Lens on Facial Expression in Emotions,” Observer 17, no. 4 [2004]: 50–51). 34 ​using pictures of real faces: Takahiko Masuda et al., “Do Surrounding Figures’ Emotions Affect Judgment of the Target Figure’s Emotion? Comparing the Eye-Movement Patterns of European Canadians, Asian Canadians, Asian International Students, and Japanese,” Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience 6, no. 72 (2012): 1–9. 35 ​Historically, this seems to be the common way: Many of the examples in this and the next paragraph are taken from Paul Heelas, “Emotion Talk across Cultures,” 1986. In ordinary language, the English “emotion” (introduced from French) is said to have become associated with the mind no earlier than the eighteenth century; before that it was located in the body (as in physical disturbance or bodily movement) (Thomas Dixon, “Emotion: One Word, Many Concepts,” Emotion Review 4, no. 4 [2012]: 387–88). 35 ​the Homeric Greeks: Bennett Simon and Herbert Weiner, “Models of Mind and Mental Illness in Ancient Greece: I. The Homeric Model of Mind,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 2, no. 4 (October 1, 1966): 306. 35 ​early modern people in the United States: John R. Gillis, “From Ritual to Romance,” in Emotion and Social Change: Toward a New Psychohistory, ed. Carol Z. Stearns and Peter N. Stearns (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), 90–91. 35 ​the Kaluli, living in Papua New Guinea: Edward L. Schieffelin, “Anger and Shame in the Tropical Forest: On Affect as a Cultural System in Papua New Guinea,” Ethos 11, no. 3 (1983): 183–84.

• From Between Us

  Praising is embedded in a child-focused culture, where a child’s perspective is taken quite seriously from very early on. Mothers of white U.S. and European babies have face-to-face interactions with infants, and talk to them, as opposed to mothers from many other cultures who keep their babies on their bodies, instead of facing them. How much middle-class American families invite even their babies to be full conversation partners is well illustrated by a story of my own family. One of my undergraduate students at Wake Forest—let us call him John—was exceedingly smart, but less than exceedingly organized. Once in graduate school, he asked me for a last-minute favor: he needed a recording of a family dinner conversation, a family with small children. I agreed to help him, but right before the start of our dinner, I realized that the data would be worthless to him. I spoke Dutch to the children, their dad spoke English, so John (not being bilingual) would not be able to make any sense of our conversation. John’s deadline was imminent, so I had no choice but to tape our dinner conversation anyway. To my surprise the recording turned out to be very useful to John: he was interested in speaking turns. My daughter Zoë, who was less than one year old, and not speaking yet, was still allowed speaking time. We asked her questions (in either language), and we allowed her time to answer, even if she was not yet able. We prepared her for the role of an individual who was valued in her own right. There are many practices to let middle-class American children know that they are valued individuals, but praising is a practice that is particularly emotionally arousing. With praise for children’s small early successes—such as holding a book right side up and early talking (“me happy”)—American middle-class parents not only teach their children the importance of those particular achievements, “but also hope to instill in them a generalized self-reliance that, it is thought, will stand them in good stead in their future pursuit of success and happiness.” As one of the moms in Miller’s research said: “[It is important to give] them enough love and praise so that they feel good about themselves, and then they can go and master the world.” The marking of small achievements by parents and other socializing agents paves the road for the child to feel good about themselves generally; it predisposes children to feel happy, proud, or full of self-esteem.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  What I’ve found is that even though you experience positive emotions as exquisitely subtle and brief, such moments can ignite powerful forces of growth in your life. They do this first by opening you up: Your outlook quite literally expands as you come under the influence of any of several positive emotions. Put simply, you see more as your vision widens; you see the bigger picture. With this momentarily broadened, more encompassing mind-set, you become more flexible, attuned to others, creative, and wise. Over time, you also become more resourceful. This is because, little by little, these mind-expanding moments of positive emotions add up to reshape your life for the better, making you more knowledgeable, more resilient, more socially integrated, and healthier. In fact, science documents that positive emotions can set off upward spirals in your life, self-sustaining trajectories of growth that lift you up to become a better version of yourself. These two core facts about positive emotions—that they open you up and transform you for the better—form the two anchor points for my broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, which I wrote about in my first book, Positivity, to show how you can put positive emotions to work as you navigate your days to overcome negativity and thrive. The word positivity is purposefully broad. I chose it to cover the full range of positive emotions and then some. It also spans the psychological conditions that seed your positive emotions as well as their myriad effects—the slowing rhythm of your heart, the opening of your mind, and the relaxed, inviting look on your face. It even encompasses the fruits of positive emotions that ripen for you only a season later—their mounting effects on your relationships, your character, your health and spiritual growth. Here, you could protest and say that I’ve roped too much into this one term. Yet I see real value in using an encompassing word like positivity. It lassos the fuller dynamic system in which love and other positive emotions operate. Positive emotions are the tiny engines that drive this intricate, ever-churning positivity system. They are the active ingredients that set the rest in motion. Yet when I step back from the proverbial microscope to examine the larger system that orbits around your positive emotions, I see how positive emotions knit you into the fabric of life, the social fabric that unites you with others, and how they orchestrate the ways you grow and rebound through changing circumstances. I needed a new word to encompass that broader system, and that’s positivity. Keeping an eye on this fuller positivity system enables a more precise definition of love, which I provide in chapter 2. Love—like all the other positive emotions—follows the ancestral logic of broaden and build: Those pleasant yet fleeting moments of connection that you experience with others expand your awareness in ways that accrue to create lasting and beneficial changes in your life.

• From Between Us

  30 ​associated autonomic arousal: Robert W. Levenson, Paul Ekman, and Wallace V. Friesen, “Voluntary Facial Action Generates Emotion-Specific Autonomic Nervous System Activity,” Psychophysiology 27, no. 4 (July 1, 1990): 363–84. The meaning of the physiological data for this particular task has been contested: Boiten provides evidence that the autonomic activity associated with voluntarily adopted facial expression may be merely explained by effort-related changes in respiration (Frans A. Boiten, “Autonomic Response Patterns during Voluntary Facial Action,” Psychophysiology 33 [1996]: 123–31). See also Quigley and Barrett, “Is There Consistency and Specificity of Autonomic Changes during Emotional Episodes?,” 2014; Robert B. Zajonc and Daniel N. McIntosh, “Emotions Research: Some Promising Questions and Some Questionable Promises,” Psychological Science 3, no. 1 (1992): 70–74, for empirical reviews that challenge the existence of specific ANS patterns that, across studies, consistently distinguish between emotions. 31 ​“focusing on . . . interpersonal interactions and relationships”: Levenson et al., “Emotion and Autonomic Nervous System,” 974. Copyright © 1992, American Psychological Association. 31 ​failed to cue emotional experience in the Minangkabau: This is my conclusion. The Levenson team provides different explanations for this finding, rather suggesting that the Minangkabau had been less successful in making the various expressions, and that this could have been a reason that they did not feel the associated emotional state. (Levenson et al., “Emotion and Autonomic Nervous System,” 1992). 31 ​only if socially contextualized or shared: Cultural psychologists Hazel Markus and Shinobu Kitayama were the first to suggest “Americans and Minangkabau define emotions differently, and that they have different expectations about when and why an emotion will be experienced . . . one could argue that the subjectivity of the Minangkabau was keyed or tuned to the presence of others . . . the activity of the autonomic nervous system stemming from the configuration of the facial musculature did not [for them] constitute an emotion” (Hazel R. Markus and Shinobu Kitayama, “The Cultural Construction of Self and Emotion: Implications for Social Behavior,” in Emotion and Culture: Empirical Studies of Mutual Influence [Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 1994, 89–130]). To my knowledge, this hypothesis has never been directly tested. 31 ​Uchida decided to study the phenomenon more systematically: Yukiko Uchida et al., “Emotions as within or between People? Cultural Variation in Lay Theories of Emotion Expression and Inference,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 35, no. 11 (November 10, 2009): 1427–39; the quote of the Japanese athlete further down comes on p. 1432.