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.

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• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  When I reached out to the abbot and let him know of my wish, his response, not surprisingly, was one of elation. He promised a very quiet affair, as I requested—nothing that would get the attention of the rest of the large crowd that would be arriving for the picnic, and he reassured me that we would go off premises to the small Catholic church in the center of town. My dearest friend, Alexandra Trower, agreed to be my witness, and the only other attendants were my parents. [image file=Image00041.jpg] What I had not anticipated was the abbot’s decision to turn a requested “Catholic blessing” into a full Catholic wedding, concelebrated by one of the other priests from the abbey. I was on the verge of giggles when, during the ceremony, the abbot asked the question that is part of the Catholic wedding ceremony, “Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God?” I was about to be fifty and my husband was fifty-nine. I answered in the affirmative; I’m not sure my husband did. My Catholic wedding was indeed the best fiftieth birthday present. * * * As I entered my fifties, I reminisced on the uniqueness of my childhood experience and felt an urge to record my personal recollections as a legacy for my children and theirs. The Center of my childhood was now extinct, and within a generation or two, there would be no one left who had a firsthand memory of the life we had lived. In one small way, my story was the same as that of thirty-eight other children. But in reality, there were thirty-nine stories that could be told, and I could tell only mine. I was struck by how differently the thirty-nine of us approached life, religion, and relationships after the similarity of our upbringing, defined by the deprivation of parental affection and a regime of rules and punishments. Only two of the thirty-nine remain in religious life. Several others made a commitment to that life but eventually left in their twenties, thirties, and even sixties. Some of the thirty-nine remained resolutely Catholic, while others took a more laissez-faire attitude toward religion and more than a few abandoned religion entirely. There were marriages and divorces, as well as couples who chose to live together unwed. There were Ivy League graduates and those who did not attend college at all; straight and gay; financially successful professionals, with careers in medicine, psychiatry, engineering, and finance; and a few who struggled to face life’s daily challenges.

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

  Alongside a revival of Catholicism in the parishes, the regime allowed a minimal restoration of male monastic life, but it considered that it had much less to fear from female religious Orders, particularly those that could take up the educational and charitable functions so prominent up to the Revolution. In fact, a remarkable number of new Orders were now founded for the same purposes, and Napoleon’s regime had too much else to think about to do much to stop them. These Orders took advantage of a relaxation in the Church’s rules on female religious from before the Revolution. In 1749, Pope Benedict XIV had arbitrated in a local row in Bavaria between the Bishop of Augsburg and a group of religious women in the diocese: as the ‘Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary’, they were still obstinately carrying on the work of Mary Ward, the would-be founder of a female equivalent of the Society of Jesus a century before (above, Chapter 14). Rather surprisingly, the Pope ruled against the Bishop and allowed his opponents a continuing existence as an ‘Institute’: effectively he recognized them as more than just a group of pious laywomen. In the post-Revolutionary era, women gleefully seized on this breach in the Council of Trent’s decree of female enclosure for their own purposes.[13] The Concordat was not designed to give women a greater active share in the life of the Church, but the vacuum was there to be filled – and not merely by nuns. The nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable re-enchantment of the world that the Enlightenment had sought to govern by reason; this reflected priorities among devout laywomen. The French Revolution was not the first time that women had guarded Christian practice through difficult times through observances they cherished (above, Chapters 10 and 14). Women kept the Church going through the worst phases of Revolutionary de-Christianization; they sustained their faith through their loyalty to Catholic customs that pre-Revolutionary clergy had often despised but did not now have the power to discourage – the cult of saints and pilgrimages, for instance. Such practices had a rich future at the dawn of the nineteenth century. In Catholic Europe after 1815, where secular political authority took its cue from the Code Napoléon and emphasized the superiority and agency of a man as paterfamilias, it proved to be the Church that gave more space for women to seize initiatives for themselves. In that frequent paradox of Western Christianity since the Reformation, as for instance in British Methodism, French Catholicism became an organization run by (clerical) men for the benefit of women. The institutional component of female Catholic life was led by a quite astonishing proliferation of convents and female Orders, a process heralded in pre-Revolutionary France but now spreading elsewhere, as both Enlightenment and Revolution cut a swathe through comfortably funded male monasteries.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  It was Jay who had witnessed that scene and said to himself, “That’s me,” and so it was. And in this moment, right in this place, you suddenly realize there is no friction, no antagonists or doubters. They cannot be found inside the Barn. There is only the state of Iowa and its abiding love of the sport—and its true champions. The one thing Jay probably never counted on was the idea that these people might appreciate the moment as much as he would. Go figure. And later, after the ceremonies and the love, after Dan Gable stops by for photographs, and the TV cameras and reporters’ notebooks go away, the Borschels’ extended family, twenty or so in all, heads out to a Bennigan’s near the Linn-Mar team hotel to celebrate. Jay is presented with a poster signed by Cael Sanderson congratulating him on the four titles. Food and drinks are ordered all around. And then Jay, the center of all of this, stands up and says, “Thank you,” and very quietly excuses himself, and hugs all the folks at the table; and he takes his ravaged body back to the hotel and passes out, leaving Jim and Carol and the coaches and their wives and girlfriends to carry on the party by themselves. They sit in the hotel hallway drinking Curt Hynek’s homemade Swisher moonshine; and inside, Jay sleeps, just as happy not to be part of it. Nobody has to tell him it’s a great thing he did, after all. Nobody has to tell him anything, unless perhaps they want to say that they wonder how he’ll do at the next level, with the next challenge. If they want to say that, Jay will listen. CHAPTER 15Making Things GrowThe day always starts at the same location. “We’ll meet at the gas station in Walker,” Brad Bridgewater had said the night before, by way of imparting the complete and total set of directions. Sure enough, all that is needed is to spot the sign that says WALKER while heading north on Troy Mills Road, and then to take that left turn. After a few miles of gently undulating corn fields and cattle pastures, there begin to pop up a few homes and then a few more; and finally, over there on the left-hand side of the road, there appears a little station with a couple of gas pumps and plenty of parking and hanging-around room. There’s a place inside where you can buy chips and soda, fast food, mostly. It is called Hocken’s, after Shannon Hocken’s grandfather, who has owned the place for a long while—decades, really. In one of those signs of the times out in the country, the Hockens have run out of people who want to keep the family business going, and they’re selling. The store and station will be called something else pretty soon, for the first time in most of these kids’ lives.

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

  I answer that, As stated above ([2581]FS, Q[25], AA[1],2,3), when we were treating of the passions, joy and sorrow proceed from love, but in contrary ways. For joy is caused by love, either through the presence of the thing loved, or because the proper good of the thing loved exists and endures in it; and the latter is the case chiefly in the love of benevolence, whereby a man rejoices in the well-being of his friend, though he be absent. On the other hand sorrow arises from love, either through the absence of the thing loved, or because the loved object to which we wish well, is deprived of its good or afflicted with some evil. Now charity is love of God, Whose good is unchangeable, since He is His goodness, and from the very fact that He is loved, He is in those who love Him by His most excellent effect, according to 1 Jn. 4:16: “He that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him.” Therefore spiritual joy, which is about God, is caused by charity. Reply to Objection 1: So long as we are in the body, we are said to be “absent from the Lord,” in comparison with that presence whereby He is present to some by the vision of “sight”; wherefore the Apostle goes on to say (2 Cor. 5:6): “For we walk by faith and not by sight.” Nevertheless, even in this life, He is present to those who love Him, by the indwelling of His grace. Reply to Objection 2: The mourning that merits happiness, is about those things that are contrary to happiness. Wherefore it amounts to the same that charity causes this mourning, and this spiritual joy about God, since to rejoice in a certain good amounts to the same as to grieve for things that are contrary to it. Reply to Objection 3: There can be spiritual joy about God in two ways. First, when we rejoice in the Divine good considered in itself; secondly, when we rejoice in the Divine good as participated by us. The former joy is the better, and proceeds from charity chiefly: while the latter joy proceeds from hope also, whereby we look forward to enjoy the Divine good, although this enjoyment itself, whether perfect or imperfect, is obtained according to the measure of one’s charity. Whether the spiritual joy, which results from charity, is compatible with an admixture of sorrow?Objection 1: It would seem that the spiritual joy that results from charity is compatible with an admixture of sorrow. For it belongs to charity to rejoice in our neighbor’s good, according to 1 Cor. 13:4, 6: “Charity . . . rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth.” But this joy is compatible with an admixture of sorrow, according to Rom. 12:15: “Rejoice with them that rejoice, weep with them that weep.” Therefore the spiritual joy of charity is compatible with an admixture of sorrow.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  The back door slams. Jim is heading off in the truck to his workshop. I don’t want to leave. I sulk. I fret. I scowl at the fire, hot with self-pity. Then I hear the door open and Erin’s tousled head appears round the frame. It wears a vastly conspiratorial expression. I sense a plan is brewing. And a minute later I’m helping him drag their huge Christmas tree out of the room and onto the snowy lawn, tip snaking through the rough trail it makes, branches skittering over and cutting through the crust that glitters in the sparse light. We prop it up in the deep snow as if it had grown there. I have no idea what is going on. ‘OK, Macca, let’s burn this!’ he says. Puzzlement. ‘It’s traditional. It’s what we do here. In America.’ I don’t believe him for a second. ‘In England we dump them on the street, traditionally,’ I say. ‘Absolutely let’s burn it.’ ‘I’ll get the firelighter!” he yells. I can feel the madness to this, its contagious pagan glee. He runs back from the house with a squeezy plastic bottle of firelighting gel and in the snowy hush, fog collecting around us as the thaw turns ice to water that hangs in the warming air, he decorates the tree with gloopy green strings that drip and stick like glutinous tinsel. ‘Stand back!’ he commands. He strikes a match. A branch catches with a tearing scratch of flame. For a few moments this is pretty: a soft yellow light in the monochromatic gloom. But then there is an explosive, tearing waterfall of rearing flame that bursts into appalling brightness. Erin’s eyebrows go up. He steps back a good few paces. And now I am laughing so much I can hardly stand. ‘Jesus, Erin,’ I shout. It’s as if he’s set light to the whole of the world: a twenty-foot pyramid of flame lighting the lawn, the house, the river, the far side of the river, sending black shadows out from trees that a moment ago were lost in darkness, and our faces are gilded with fierce, orange fire. What the hell have we done? The smoke mixes with the fog so that everything, everywhere is on fire. The incandescent tree, black twigs sintering, clicking, crumbling, and smoke, and Erin and I now wearing the faces of people who are going to be in serious trouble. ‘I think we might be seeing the fire truck any moment now,’ Erin shouts, and we’re both of us children again, delighted at what we have made and fearful of disaster. And then the fire is out. The skeleton stands in the snow, all its complexity gone. Just a thin trunk with a few charcoal branches, already damp in the steaming air. And I stare at the remains of the tree and breathe the smoke and fog from the air and Erin makes a face at me and I make one back. ‘That,’ he says, ‘was excellent.’

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  What it takes the ordinary man a number of incarnations—supposing there are such things—to live out, I live out in a lifetime. I have the accelerated rhythm which goes with genius. I make no bones about it—it’s a fact. I am gay inside all the time, even when I am depressed. I never doubt for a minute. Never. I am dead certain of everything. I do not even sign contracts with my publisher any more. What for? What have I to fear, what have I to lose? I am inexhaustible. And to date nobody has ever yet done me a dirty turn. Nobody has ever cheated me, that I can say. Now and then I may do a little cheating myself—but as for the others, no, not one ever does me a dirty turn. The longer I live the less protection I demand. As I explained it to Reichel one night, if you are an artist, that means that you are denuding yourself more and more, that by the time you die you are stark naked and your bowels turned inside out. If you are an artist it is quite legitimate to talk about “the man of the record,” because there is no other man and there is nothing but the record. Everything is gravy to you and everything turns back into gravy—it slops over and runs right out into the backyard. And that is why, my dear Fraenkel, after having digested Oswald Spengler, D. H. Lawrence, Elie Faure, Friedrich Nietzsche and all the others, I feel very happy about the bad times we are living through and always have lived through. I am glad to be a maggot in the corpse which is the world. I feast on death. The more death there is the stronger I become. Bigger, fatter corpses, is what I say! I am on my way to Godhood, a little angle worm now, but eating my way through and leaving no dirt behind. I am helping the world along with my fine digestive apparatus. Sometimes I begin to munch before the corpse is cold. A friend is talking to me, for example, and not realizing that he has not yet turned cold, I begin to bite into him. You should try that some time. It’s like eating cold turkey with a hot sauce. Anyway, this is the point. Somewhere you talk about words, words, words. I say fine! Words are never just words, even when they seem just words. For the hand that writes there is the mind that reads, the soul that deciphers. Some write syllabically, some cabalistically, some esoterically, some epigrammatically, some just ooze out like fat cabbages or weeds. I write without thought or let. I take down the dictation, as it were. If there are flaws and contradictions they iron themselves out eventually.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  convictions has created prayers and hymns of social aspiration, for which the newer hymn books are making room. Conservative denominations have formally committed themselves to the fundamental ideas of the social gospel and their practical application. The plans of great interdenominational organizations are inspired by it. It has become a constructive force in American politics. This new orientation, which is observable in all parts of our religious life, is not simply a prudent adjustment of church methods to changed conditions. There is religious compulsion behind it. Those who are in touch with the student population know what the impulse to social service means to college men and women. It is the most religious element in the life of many of them. Among ministerial students there is an almost impatient demand for a proper social outlet. Some hesitate to enter the regular ministry at all because they doubt whether it will offer them sufficient opportunity and freedom to utter and apply their social convictions. For many ministers who have come under the influence of the social gospel in mature years, it has signified a religious crisis, and where it has been met successfully, it has brought fresh joy and power, and a distinct enlargement of mind. It has taken the place of conventional religion in the lives of many outside the Church. It constitutes the moral power in the propaganda of Socialism. All those social groups which distinctly face toward the future, clearly show their need and craving for a social interpretation and application of Christianity. Whoever wants to hold audiences of working people must establish some connection between religion and their social feelings and experiences. The religious organizations dealing with college men and women know that any appeal which leaves out the social note is likely to meet a listless audience. The most effective evangelists for these two groups are men who have thoroughly embodied the social gospel in their religious life and thought. When the great evangelistic effort of the “Men and Religion Forward Movement” was first planned, its organizers made room for “Social Service” very hesitatingly. But as soon as the movement was tried out before the public, it became clear that only the meetings which offered the people the social application of religion were striking fire and drawing crowds. The Great War has dwarfed and submerged all other issues, including our social problems. But in fact the war is the most acute and tremendous social problem of all. All whose Christianity has not been ditched by the catastrophe are demanding a christianizing of international relations. The demand for disarmament and permanent peace, for the rights of the small nations against the imperialistic and colonizing powers, for freedom of the seas and of trade routes, for orderly settlement of grievances,—these are demands for social

• From Between Us

  It is possible that the emotion profiles differed because immigrants encountered different types of interpersonal situations in public spaces versus at home. If they were more happy in public spaces, perhaps the reason was they encountered more (or fewer) situations that elicited happiness. For example, I might have been more “happy” after I immigrated to the U.S., because people in the U.S. create so many opportunities for happiness by celebrating you and giving you compliments. Alternatively, if the kinds of situations were no different, immigrants might have switched to a different frame of doing emotions (much like I started to do less “opinionated indignation” in North Carolina, just because the relational goals there were different than they had been in my native Holland). Both explanations may hold, but my colleague Jozefien De Leersnyder and I wanted to see if we could detect frame-switching in emotions, even if biculturals encountered the same kinds of interpersonal situations. So we designed a study to test this. We asked bicultural Turkish Belgians to collaborate with a “neighbor” on designing their ideal neighborhood. Their task was to jointly come up with a plan, helped by a map of the neighborhood, pictures of such things that they might want to have in their neighborhood (such as playgrounds and trees), pens, glue, etc. We created two cultural contexts. Half of the biculturals were invited to the social room of the Turkish neighborhood mosque, where they interacted with a Turkish “neighbor” and a Turkish experimenter, and spoke Turkish throughout the interaction. The other half of the biculturals were invited to the community center in the neighborhood that was funded by the local (Belgian) government, they interacted with a Belgian majority neighbor and a Belgian experimenter, and they spoke Dutch (the language spoken in this part of Belgium) throughout the experiment. Our main question was whether the emotional responses of the Turkish Belgian biculturals in the Turkish condition would be more “Turkish,” and in the majority Belgian condition more “Belgian”? Would the dance be different, depending on dance partners and music playing in the background?

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  The heavy weight of him moving so feverishly between her thighs renewed the ache within her. Wanting to experience the pleasure again, Olivia writhed beneath him, clawing at his back, as her body rushed for the precipice. She sobbed when the rapture hit her, and then Phoenix tensed, rock hard, against her. Burning dampness flooded across her stomach in pulsing jets. He cried out her name as he shuddered in her arms. [image file=image_rsrc3ZG.jpg] Sebastian buried his face in the fragrant curve of Olivia’s neck and damned himself for being a heartless cad. His control was a source of pride to him, but he’d had none of it today. From the moment he’d seen her on the deck of the Seawitch with her chin tilted defiantly and a far too heavy sword in her hand, he’d been captivated. As the day had progressed, he’d become more and more enamored with her. Her beauty alone was impossible to resist, but the fire, the passion . . . He could no more have resisted touching her than he could have chosen to stop breathing. She’d been trying to assist him, to tend to his wounds, as no one ever had. And he’d repaid her by staring lustily at her exposed breasts and stripping her of his shirt when she’d wished to cover herself. Olivia had been willing, eager, but he should have walked away for her own good. He could never be the husband she deserved. Despite this, he’d spread her out, a feast for a starving man, and debased her with his ravenous touch. And damned if he didn’t want to do it again. Immediately. Sebastian rose onto his elbows and gazed down at Olivia’s beautiful face, flushed with his passion. He almost inquired if she was well, but the dazed look in her eyes answered the unspoken question. His expression most likely mirrored hers. Placing a swift, hard kiss against her parted lips, he untangled his limbs from hers. Olivia was all heat and desire, a fiercely passionate woman who, even in her innocence, had pleasured him almost beyond bearing. Untried and unschooled, she hadn’t the guile to hide her response or to play any games. He’d felt wanted, needed, in a way no one had ever made him feel before. Staring at her taut belly, shiny with his seed, Sebastian was swept with an overwhelming wave of possessiveness. He wanted to mark her like this everywhere, brand her completely, so that no other man would ever touch her. Her drowsy eyes followed him with such warmth it took his breath away. The way she looked at him, her palpable panic when he’d slipped on the rigging—how long had it been since anyone had cared for his welfare? So long ago he could scarcely remember it. Only his gratefulness for her tender regard had prevented her complete ruination.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  “Only a few minutes ago Myrna left my office, and I was aware of feeling surprised that the hour had passed so quickly. And sorry to see her go. Amazing. She used to bore me. Now she’s a vivacious and engaging person. Haven’t heard a whine in weeks. We banter a lot—she’s so sharp that it’s hard for me to keep up with her. She’s open, introspective, produces interesting dreams, even dabbles in interesting words. No more monologues: she is very conscious of me in the room, and our process has become harmoniously interactive. I look forward to seeing her as much as any other patient—perhaps more. “The sixty-four-dollar question is: How did the T-shirt comment launch this transformation? How to reconstruct and interpret the events of the last fourteen weeks? “Dr. Werner was certain that the T-shirt comment was an egregious error, that it would result in a rupture of the therapeutic alliance. He was dead wrong about that. My thoughtless, insensitive crack turned out to be the pivotal incident of therapy! “But he was right—oh, so right—about the patient’s ability to tune in to the therapist’s countertransference. She intuited virtually every single countertransferential feeling I described at the last presentation. And with uncanny accuracy. It’s enough to make a Kleinian out of me. She missed nothing. She nailed me on everything. There is not one comment I shared with the group the last time I presented her that I haven’t had to acknowledge explicitly to her. Perhaps there is some validity to parapsychology after all. So what if the research has failed to replicate positive findings? A remarkable incident like this simply demonstrates the irrelevance of empirical research. “Why is she better? What else could it be but the wake-up call of the T-shirt comment? This case has demonstrated to me that there is a place for cruel honesty, for what Synanon used to call ‘hard love.’ But the therapist has to back it up, has to stay present, stay honest with the patient. It requires a relationship that has to be well established, that will enable therapist and patient to weather the ensuing storm. And in these litigious days it requires courage. The last time I presented Myrna, someone—I think Barbara—labeled the T-shirt comment ‘shock therapy.’ I agree: that’s exactly what it was. It changed Myrna radically, and in the post-shock period I grew to like her better. I admired the way she hung in there and kept insisting on straight feedback. She has a lot of guts. She must have sensed my growing admiration for her. People love themselves if they see a loving image of themselves reflected in the eyes of someone they really care about.”

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

  Whether or not the feeling of love ensues, studies of couples show, hinges a lot on how you respond to your partner’s positive expressions. Do you lean in toward them? Or do you shy away? Do you meet them in kind, expressing your own genuine positive emotions in turn? Or do you shrug them off as irrelevant or point out the potential downsides? Researchers who have carefully coded couples’ responsiveness to each other in situations like these find that those who capitalize on each other’s good fortunes, by responding to their partner’s good news with their own enthusiasm and outward encouragement, have higher-quality relationships. They enjoy more intimacy, commitment, and passion with each other, and find their relationship to be more satisfying overall. In other words, when one partner’s good news and enthusiasm ignites to become the other partner’s good news and enthusiasm as well, a micro-moment of positivity resonance is born. Studies show that these moments of back-and-forth positivity resonance are not only satisfying in and of themselves, providing boosts to each partner’s own mood, but they also further fortify the relationship, making it more intimate, committed, and passionate next season than it is today. Another person’s expression of positivity, from this perspective, can be seen as a bid for connection and love. If you answer that bid, the ensuing positivity resonance will nourish you both. Two ways to fortify your intimate relationships, then, are to bring your own good news home to share, and to celebrate your partner’s good news. Regardless of who initiates, the key is to connect to create a shared experience, one that allows positivity to resonate between you for a spell, momentarily synchronizing your gestures and your biorhythms and creating the warm glow of mutual care. Sharing or celebrating the joy of some personal good fortune is certainly not the only way to foster the micro-moments of love that strengthen relationships. Any positive emotion, if shared, can do the same.

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

  GREGORY. (Mor. 14. c. 55.) For in that glory of the resurrection our body will not be incapable of handling, and more subtle than the winds and the air, (as Eutychius said,) but while it is subtle indeed through the effect of spiritual power, it will be also capable of handling through the power of nature. It follows, And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet, on which indeed were clearly marked the prints of the nails. But according to John, He also shewed them His side which had been pierced with the spear, that by manifesting the scar of His wounds He might heal the wound of their doubtfulness. But from this place the Gentiles are fond of raising up a calumny, as if He was not able to cure the wound inflicted on Him. To whom we must answer, that it is not probable that He who is proved to have done the greater should be unable to do the less. But for the sake of His sure purpose, He who destroyed death would not blot out the signs of death. First indeed, that He might thereby build up His disciples in the faith of His resurrection. Secondly, that supplicating the Father for us, He might always shew forth what kind of death He endured for many. Thirdly, that He might point out to those redeemed by His death, by setting before them the signs of that death, how mercifully they have been succoured. Lastly, that He might declare in the judgment how justly the wicked are condemned. 24:41–4441. And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? 42. And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. 43. And he took it, and did eat before them. 44. And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the Law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. The Lord had shewn His disciples His hands and His feet, that He might certify to them that the same body which had suffered rose again. But to confirm them still more, He asked for something to eat. GREGORY OF NYSSA. (Orat. 1. de Res.) By the command of the law indeed the Passover was eaten with bitter herbs, because the bitterness of bondage still remained, but after the resurrection the food is sweetened with a honeycomb; as it follows, And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and a honeycomb.

• From Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)

  “Sure. I love that stuff, man. Goin’ to visit people in the hospital, in nursing homes. That’s fun. I told you—my mother had this church? That’s what we used to do all the time when I was a kid. Go around and visit sick people. Man, that was the most fun I ever had in my life! They were real interesting, those people. Old people—they could tell some stories—” “My mom doesn’t talk any more,” I said. “That’s okay. It’s still fun. When you gonna go again?” “Uhh . . . ,” I said. “In two weeks. On Thursday. My sister goes every week. I’ve been trying to go every other week.” “Good,” he said. “You just tell me where you wanna meet.” So, two Thursdays hence, we met at my stoop and rode down to Fourteenth, transferred to the lonely L, and took the train to the end of the line to get out on the bustling Brooklyn avenue. On his single crutch, Arly lurched along beside me through the June sun to the Park Shore. In my mom’s room on the seventh floor, Arly became a one-legged whirlwind, straightening her pillow, putting things right on the table beside her bed—the crutch was left in the corner now: in such small spaces he found it easier to maneuver without it—telling her how well she looked, smoothing up her covers, reassuring her that she’d soon be well. Mom’s sluggishness over the first fifteen minutes of our visit gave way to a bright-eyed attention, as if by osmosis she absorbed his energy and his cheerfulness. Clearly she was enchanted with him, and grinned and nodded and followed him with her eyes. Several times she even laughed. We took her downstairs in her wheelchair and outside on a forty-minute tour of the neighborhood, stopping for ice cream, which, back in the grassy yard in the back of the Manor on our return, first I, then Arly fed her with a white plastic spoon. “She likes music,” I said. “Can you sing?” “Naw,” Arly said. “I play the drums, but I don’t sing too good—” then sang with me anyway: “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain,” “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In,” and “Jesus Loves Me,” Arly in Spanish, me in English, as, in her orange robe in the wheelchair, her paralyzed arm belted with white Velcro into its fiberglass brace, Mom “la-la-ed” along. If you’re looking for an analogue from literature, it’s not Gregor’s sister playing the violin outside her transformed brother’s door; it’s the young peasant who tells the meaningless jokes as he lets Ivan rest his feet on his shoulders, the only position in which the dying man can be comfortable, in The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

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

  It turned out that other couples who’d signed up for the study didn’t have nearly as much fun as did Elaine and Art. By the flip of a coin, some couples got the same silly crawling assignment they did, whereas other couples were assigned to a far more mundane and slow-paced crawling task: Never bound by Velcro, each member of these couples took turns crawling very slowly across the mat, while rolling a ball ahead of them. Their snail’s pace was enforced by a metronome, no less! What the researchers hypothesized—and would find here and in their other experiments—is that couples who were at random assigned to the fun-filled task that required both touch and behavioral synchrony actually came to love each other more deeply; they reported greater relationship quality on the follow-up surveys and showed more accepting and fewer hostile behaviors in their follow-on discussions. Engaging in this silly, childlike activity together actually deepened loving feelings and strengthened bonds, even in long-standing intimate relationships. Experiments like these explain the observation I made back in chapter 2, that couples who regularly do new and exciting (or even silly) things together have better-quality marriages. At times, the impetus for sharing a positive emotion with a loved one might be some external activity, like a trip, or the silly assignment Art and Elaine were given in that laboratory study. Perhaps more frequently, however, there isn’t any jointly experienced external trigger at all. Instead, one or the other of you starts the ball rolling by bringing your own positive emotion to your partner. Suppose your partner comes home after a long day at the office with good news to share about a breakthrough at work, or some recognition he or she received for a recent accomplishment. Through the well-worn lenses of self-absorption, you might take such disclosures as simply your partner’s way of explaining his or her own good mood. Or more cynically, you might take it as bragging. Yet through the lenses of connection, you’re more likely to recognize disclosures like these as opportunities for positivity resonance, or new chances to stoke love and its benefits.

• From Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  There are, of course, other functions and other forms of active sadness. We will say no more about anger, which we have discussed at length already, and which, of all the emotions, is perhaps the most evidently functional. But what is to be said about joy? Does it fit into our description? At first sight it would seem not, since the joyful subject has no need to defend himself against a belittling or dangerous change. But we must first distinguish between the joyful feeling which betokens an equilibrium, or a state of adaptation, and emotional joy. For the latter, on closer consideration, is characterised by a certain impatience. We mean by this that the joyful subject is behaving very much like a man in a state of impatience. He cannot keep still, makes innumerable plans, begins to do things which he immediately abandons etc. For in fact this joy has been called up by an apparition of the object of his desires. He has been told that he has won a considerable sum of money, or that he will shortly meet someone he loves and has not seen for a long time. But although the object is 'imminent' it is not yet there, it is not yet his. He is separated from it by a certain length of time. And even when it is present, even when the friend so long desired appears upon the station platform, he is still an object that delivers itself to one only little by little; the delight that we feel in seeing him again soon becomes blunted; we shall never get so far as to hold him there, in front of us, as our own absolute possession and to grasp him all at once as a whole (nor shall we ever realise all at once our new-won riches, as an instantaneous totality. It will yield itself to us only through numberless details and, as it were, by abschattungen). Joy is magical behaviour which tries, by incantation, to realize the possession of the desired object as an instantaneous totality. This behaviour is accompanied by certainty that possession will be realized sooner or later, but it seeks to anticipate that possession. The various activities expressive of joy, as well as the muscular hypertonicity and the slight vascular dilatation, are animated and transcended by an intention which envisages the world through them. This seems easy, the object of our desires appears to be near and easy to posses. Every gesture expresses emphatic approbation. To dance, or to sing for joy — these represent the behaviour of symbolic approximation, of incantation. By their means the object — which in reality one may not be able to posses except by prudent and, after all, difficult behaviour — is possessed at once, symbolically. It is thus, for example, that a man to whom a woman has just said that she loves him may begin to dance and sing. In so doing he turns his mind away from the prudent and difficult behaviour he will have to maintain if he is to deserve this love and increase it, to gain possession of it through countless details (smiles, little attentions etc.), He turns away even from the woman herself as the living reality representative of all those delicate procedures. Those he will attend to later; he is now giving himself a rest. For the moment, he is possessing the object by magic; the dance mimes his possession of it.

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

  The glue that positivity resonance offers isn’t just for connecting once-strangers at the start of new relationships. It also further cements long-standing ties, making them even more secure and satisfying. Art and Elaine, a married couple living in Long Island, New York, learned this fact in a surprising way. They saw a poster in town recruiting couples to join a study on the “factors that affect relationships.” Motivated more by curiosity than the promised thirty dollars, they called to sign up. They got more curious when the person on the phone asked them about a range of medical conditions that might prevent them from engaging in physical or aerobic activity. Their curiosity rose still higher when they met the researcher at the designated lab room on campus. It was set up more like a gymnastics room, with a large gymnasium mat rolled out across the floor, covering about thirty feet. Halfway down the mat, another fat mat was rolled up like a barricade, about three feet high. As part of the study, the researcher asked Art and Elaine to complete surveys and discuss a few topics together, like their next vacation and a future home improvement project, which she videotaped for later analysis. These tasks seemed simple enough and not altogether unexpected in a study of relationships. Yet they were flabbergasted when the researcher directed them to their next task. Indeed, their curiosity about the room setup erupted into outright chuckles of disbelief as the researcher used Velcro bands to tie Art’s and Elaine’s wrists and ankles together. She told them that their task was to crawl on their hands and knees as fast as they could to the far end of the mat and back, clearing the barrier in each direction. All the while, they’d need to hold a cylinder-shaped pillow off the floor without using their hands, arms, or teeth. If they could complete this absurd task in less than a minute, she told them, they’d win a bag of candy, something she said few couples before them had done. It didn’t take long for Art and Elaine to discover that they could only hold the pillow up by pressing it between their torsos, which made their bound-crawling all the more challenging. The whole event was hilarious. They toppled over several times, laughing uncontrollably. By their third attempt, they finally got their limbs into sync. They beat the clock and won the prize—all smiles and (once unbound) high fives!

• From My People (2022)

  We landed at the old airport, with its tiny, aging one-room reception area filled with people unhappily departing, and others like ourselves, happily arriving. The place was standing-room only, generating a closeness among friends and strangers alike, some of whom became friends right then and there. This is where I experienced my first Vineyard magic. (I love the new airport, but . . .) Our next stop was what was then Gay Head, with its mystical cliffs and dunes and fiercely compelling waves whose undertow once during our trip took my husband and Bill and Mimi Grinker a little too far out (they were rescued by two island teenagers on Styrofoam kickboards). My disappointment over my image of the vine-filled Vineyard was soon more than assuaged by the multifarious landscapes at every turn in the road after our visit with the Sviridoffs. Oak Bluffs was calling. So we rented a car and drove through the enchanting towns of Chilmark, West Tisbury, Vineyard Haven, and at last, Oak Bluffs. I’d never been there but had heard about the more-than-century-old, black-owned Shearer Cottage. We immediately set out to find it and spent a night there before we began our Oak Bluffs exploration, which took us to places I had heard about from Bobby, including the Inkwell. There I discovered (well, kind of like Christopher Columbus “discovered” America) one of the main arteries that was the heartbeat of Oak Bluffs: beautiful black bodies of all shapes, sizes, and ages frolicking freely in and out of the water they owned by virtue of years of occupancy. I was so excited about what I was seeing that I immediately got my editor at the New York Times on the phone and convinced him to allow me to extend my vacation by a few days so I could tell the world about something many would find hard to conceive, since even then in 1970, after the Civil Rights Acts abolished the last of the “separate but equal” lie in the South, there were still places in both the North and the South that were not welcoming to people of color. And tell the world I did, on the second front of the New York Times , illustrated with a picture of longtime Vineyarder Teixiera Nash in a huge sun hat. By this time, we had met Dr. and Mrs. Leslie Hayling, who graciously invited us to stay with them in their home with a beautiful grand piano and copious amounts of great food. Over the years and many more trips to the Vineyard with our children Suesan and Chuma and our friends and theirs who joined us, we put down roots—even though they were in the yards of other people. There was the legendary Lee Simmons, who knew (and would share) everybody’s business because everybody found in her a sympathetic mother confessor.

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  Hugh followed directly, pouring into her, flooding her with his joy and his love in a release so devastating, he knew he would never be the same again. “You shall marry me, Charlotte.” “Are you certain? I’m not suitable.” He snorted. “You are entirely suitable. And marriage has decided benefits you’re failing to consider.” Charlotte curled into him where they lay on the floor and stroked her hand across his chest. “Such as?” “The marital bed, for one.” “Ah, yes, a bed. That would be lovely. Perhaps with marriage, we will make it there more often . . .” Epilogue London, August 1815 Sebastian Blake, Earl of Merrick, took the steps of Montrose Hall two at a time. He rapped with the knocker and waited. A moment later the door swung open, and he was faced with a stooped butler sporting the largest eye he’d ever seen in his life. He blinked, quickly comprehending the reason his footman had returned to the carriage in a fright. “Aye?” the old man queried, in a gravelly voice. He held out his card. “I’ve come to collect Lord and Lady Montrose. They are expecting me.” The butler lifted the card to his oddly protruding eye, squinted at the lettering, and then dropped his hand with a grunt. The servant stepped aside. “Come in, gov’na, and I’ll inform ’is lordship yer ’ere.” He shuffled off, leaving Sebastian to carry his own hat and shut the door himself. Pausing by an open doorway, the servant gestured wildly and said, “Wait in ’ere.” Moving into a well-appointed parlor, Sebastian frowned. The Earl and Countess of Montrose never held social functions in their home, which he’d not thought untoward, considering their newly wedded status. The rest of the ton, however, found them mysterious, and their aloofness only fueled the rumors that they ran a bizarre household. The butler was an oddity, to be sure, but . . . An odd noise caught his ear, and Sebastian cocked a brow as it drew closer and increased in volume. The next moment a young serving girl appeared in the doorway, her slim arms weighted with a beautiful china tea service that wobbled horrendously. He’d never seen such a spectacle in his life. Every item was jumping and rattling—spoons clinking against each other, cups dancing in their saucers. Sebastian gaped for a moment and then moved to assist her, shaking his head in wonder. He would remember to speak to Montrose about this later. He definitely wanted an invitation to dinner. “The Merrick carriage has arrived,” Charlotte noted, looking down at the front drive from the upper-floor window. A moment later warm arms encircled her waist, and then her husband’s deep voice was purring in her ear. “Are you still excited?” “Are you jesting?” She spun in Hugh’s embrace and stared up into his handsome face. “Of course I’m excited.” “You seem pensive.”

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “I miss Gwen,” she said with a sigh. “I know she’s having a wonderful time at the finishing academy, but still . . .” Hugh kissed the tip of her nose. “I miss her, too.” Wrapping her arms around his lean waist, Charlotte squeezed tight. “Thank you so much.” “For what, love?” “For arranging this treasure hunt. I know you believe it to be nonsense.” His mouth curved in a smile that stole her breath. “And you don’t?” “I’d like to think it exists.” “You’d like to believe in the romantic version of the tale as well.” Hugh’s large hands smoothed the length of her spine and cupped her derriere. “What happened to my pragmatist?” Charlotte laughed, her heart light and filled with love. “I’ve never been a pragmatist where you are concerned.” Hopelessly addicted, she wondered how she ever considered living without him. He squeezed her close before turning away, moving to the trunks that had yet to be taken downstairs. He was preparing to close one, then paused. Picking up a brown-paper parcel, he shot her an inquiring glance before untying the twine. A moment later his laughter, warm and rich, filled the air and warmed her heart. “What do we have here?” He held up an eye patch. “The journey is long I’ve been told.” Hugh’s mouth twitched. “So it is.” “It could become tedious.” “You and I alone in a cabin? Never.” “I have a fantasy,” she confessed, moving toward him with salacious intent. “Umm . . . I like the sound of that.” Hugh tossed the pirate costume in the trunk and caught her about the waist. She winked. “You’ll like the doing of it much better.” “Fetch your pelisse,” he growled. “I want to get to that ship.” Author′s Note The characters of Calico Jack and Anne Bonny, mentioned in “Her Mad Grace,” did indeed exist. However, their “treasure” is entirely fictional. If you love Sylvia Day’s historical romances, don’t miss Seven Years to Sin, available now in print and digital formats. “Mr. Caulfield,” the object of his obsession purred. “Did no one teach you to knock?” One long, slender, very bare leg stretched out over the rim of a copper slipper tub. Jessica was flushed from the heat of the bathwater and too much claret . . . if her slurred words, lack of modesty, and the bottle on the stool beside her were any indication. Her hair was piled haphazardly atop her head, giving her a disheveled, recently tumbled look embodying every carnal imagining he’d ever had about her. He was more than satisfied with the lush figure on display for him. She had lovely peaches-and-cream skin, breasts fuller than he’d pictured, and legs longer than he’d dreamed. Bloody hell, his decision to indulge her by storing extra barrels of water for bathing had been a stroke of genius. As his inability to speak drew out, Jessica arched one brow and asked, “Would you care for a glass?”

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. But you will say, How does this concern me? Because thou also shalt be taken up in like manner into the clouds. For thy body is of like nature to His body, therefore shall thy body be so light, that it can pass through the air. For as is the head, so also is the body; as the beginning, so also the end. See then how thou art honoured by this beginning. Man was the lowest part of the rational creation, but the feet have been made the head, being lifted up aloft into the royal throne in their head. BEDE. When the Lord ascended into heaven, the disciples adoring Him where His feet lately stood, immediately return to Jerusalem, where they were commanded to wait for the promise of the Father; for it follows, And they worshipped him, and returned, &c. Great indeed was their joy, for they rejoice that their God and Lord after the triumph of His resurrection had also passed into the heavens. GREEK EXPOSITOR. And they were watching, praying, and fasting, because indeed they were not living in their own homes, but were abiding in the temple, expecting the grace from on high; among other things also learning from the very place piety and honesty. Hence it is said, And were continually in the temple. THEOPHYLACT. The Spirit had not yet come, and yet their conversation is spiritual. Before they were shut up; now they stand in the midst of the chief priests; distracted by no worldly object, but despising all things, they praise God continually; as it follows, Praising and blessing God. BEDE. And observe that among the four beasts in heaven, (Ezek. 1:10. Rev. 4:7) Luke is said to be represented by the calf, for by the sacrifice of a calf, they were ordered to be initiated who were chosen to the priesthood; (Exod. 29:1.) and Luke has undertaken to explain more fully than the rest the priesthood of Christ; and his Gospel, which he commenced with the ministry of the temple in the priesthood of Zacharias, he has finished with the devotion in the temple. And he has placed the Apostles there, about to be the ministers of a new priesthood, not in the blood of sacrifices, but in the praises of God and in blessing, that in the place of prayer and amidst the praises of their devotion, they might wait with prepared hearts for the promise of the Spirit. THEOPHYLACT. Whom imitating, may we ever dwell in a holy life, praising and blessing God; to Whom be glory and blessing and power, for ever and ever. Amen.