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 House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  This dick! This dick! How can you possibly give up this massive dick, it feels so fucking full in my cunt canal, aaaaaaaaaaaaah, shit, shit, oh, shit, Glenn, unbelievable!” She caught her breath for a moment and looked around the room. Daggett, balls a-waggle, was slamming himself into Lanasha, and Jason was doing Zilka. Betsy had her legs hooched and the beardwater sprayer-wand up her ass and was jiggling it lasciviously. Suddenly, Glenn’s orgasm slammed into gear, and he threw the first hot clot of a busted nutload of jizzling twizzlering sperm up inside her. Shandee let out a ragged joyous screamy cry of pure consummated cockfuckedfulness. Then she said to Dave, “Dave, I’m ready to tug you off onto my lips. Come on these lips, these Terranova lips that will always be true to you.” She saw his eyes meet hers and felt both his hands—the one she knew and the one she didn’t—hold her head. She said, “I’m going to jack off your beautiful real Dave cock onto my face now—oh, my god, it’s never been this good.” And suddenly Dave bucked in her hands, and she felt a Tuileries Garden of manly Dave-jizm leap onto her forehead and then again on her cheek and her neck. She was dripping with one perfect man’s cockjuice, and she loved it so much that when Glenn touched her clit with his thumb she wonked down full force on his restored dickitude, and that was enough to start the Atlas-shrug shudderation of arrival that made her shiver her way through the seven, eight, nine, twelve seconds of worldwide interplanetary flux of orgasmic strobing happy unmatched tired coughing ebbing thrilled spent ecstasy. Lila Says It’s Almost Time to Go Lila stood on the dais, her arms raised. “Thank you all for coming,” she said. “I hope you’ll be back next year.” A deep foaming whirlpool had formed in the middle of the White Lake. Some of the guests were beginning to paddle their boats toward it. It was the group exit portal, and it made a distant roaring sound. “One last event, though,” Lila said. “Cardell, are you here? Will you please come up?” Cardell leapt the three steps up to the stage. “Is that an egg in your pocket, hon?” “Yes, it is, as a matter of fact,” Cardell said. “A silver egg. From my friend Jackie.” He handed it to Lila, who set it down on a folded washcloth. “Now let’s let it hatch,” said Lila. “The egg of love, ladies and gentlemen. Farewell.” The Silver Egg Hatches Gallanos woke up curled in what he later found out was a small egg made of silver. Around him was a woman. Their heads were sometimes at opposite ends of the egg, and sometimes they stared at each other, blinking their silver luminous eyes. They floated in a shadowy fluid. They drank it, they breathed it.

• From The City of God

  342 Books That Matter: The City of God xylophone, from the deepest despair to the highest heights of exultation and joy. And all of those emotions can be good; and they are good for Paul, for Paul’s emotions are properly ordered to the glory of God, not his own anxious self-interest; his fear, his jealousy, his anger, they are all ordered to God’s ends, and so they are all, Augustine says, holy emotions. Augustine’s critique of the Stoics here tacitly answers a fundamental question. What does proper human life look like? And can we get it back? Proper life, Augustine says, was undisturbed—there’s a kind of quasi-Stoic moment—undisturbed love and gladness, a smooth and easy emotional life—so there is how it’s not Stoic—marked by happiness, tranquility, gratitude and awe. There was no violent turbulence in our soul; Augustine and the Stoics agree with that. We never lost sleep; we never woke up grumpy; we never felt jealous of one another’s successes in Eden. It’s not that we did not feel emotions—and here is the disagreement with the Stoics—but the emotions we had were rightly ordered. They were properly attuned to whatever prompted them in the world. In Eden, our first parents felt grateful awe at the beauty of the created world, and they were uplifted in joy and gratitude when they reflected on God’s expressed purposes in creating them in the divine image and likeness. There were no negative emotions before the Fall since there were no evils to prompt such emotions, no sources of suffering or pain outside the self, and no incoherence or rebellion within it, either. But after the Fall, as the example of Paul teaches, such emotions—anger, fear, jealousy—these emotions can be holy, too. Our basic problem is really due to our fall. The instability and constant flux of our emotional life are due to our rebellion against God. But the punishment is not the affections themselves, but only the anarchic way that they course through us, they surge through our everyday life. We have to come to know ourselves as other people, as distinct from

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

  AUGUSTINE. (de Con. Ev. lib. iii. c. 25.) For they walked not with their eyes shut, but there was something within them which did not permit them to know that which they saw, which a mist, darkness, or some kind of moisture, frequently occasions. Not that the Lord was not able to transform His flesh that it should be really a different form from that which they were accustomed to behold; since in truth also before His passion, He was transfigured in the mount, so that His face was bright as the sun. But it was not so now. For we do not unfitly take this obstacle in the sight to have been caused by Satan, that Jesus might not be known. But still it was so permitted by Christ up to the sacrament of the bread, that by partaking of the unity of His body, the obstacle of the enemy might be understood to be removed, so that Christ might be known. THEOPHYLACT. But He also implies another thing, that the eyes of those who receive the sacred bread are opened that they should know Christ. For the Lord’s flesh has in it a great and ineffable power. AUGUSTINE. (ut sup.) Or because the Lord feigned as if He would go farther, when He was accompanying the disciples, expounding to them the sacred Scriptures, who knew not whether it was He, what does He mean to imply but that through the duty of hospitality men may arrive at a knowledge of Him; that when He has departed from mankind far above the heavens, He is still with those who perform this duty to His servants. He therefore holds to Christ, that He should not go far from him, whoever being taught in the word communicates in all good things to him who teaches. (Gal. 6:6.) For they were taught in the word when He expounded to them the Scriptures. And because they followed hospitality, Him whom they knew not in the expounding of the Scriptures, they know in the breaking of bread. For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. (Rom. 2:13.) GREGORY. (ut sup.) Whoever then wishes to understand what he has heard, let him hasten to fulfil in work what he can now understand. Behold the Lord was not known when He was speaking, and He vouchsafed to be known when He is eating. It follows, And he vanished out of their sight. THEOPHYLACT. For He had not such a body as that He was able to abide longer with them, that thereby likewise He might increase their affections. And they said one to another, Did not our hearts burn, within us while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? ORIGEN. By which is implied, that the words uttered by the Saviour inflamed the hearts of the hearers to the love of God.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Then, in silence, they came to the wide crossing where the tramline ran. A lean cat stalked the gutter and fled as they approached; turned to watch them, with yellow, malevolent eyes, from the ambush of a dustbin. A grey bird flew above them, above the electric wires for the tram line, and perched on the metal cornice of a roof. Then, far down the avenue, they heard a siren, and the clanging of a bell, and looked up to see the ambulance speed past them on the way to the hospital that was near the church. ‘Another soul struck down,’ murmured Sister McCandless. ‘Lord have mercy.’ ‘He said in the last days evil would abound,’ said Sister Price. ‘Well, yes, He did say it,’ said Praying Mother Washington, ‘and I’m so glad He told us He wouldn’t leave us comfortless.’ ‘When ye see all these things, know that your salvation is at hand,’ said Sister McCandless. ‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand—but it ain’t going to come nigh thee. So glad, amen, this morning, bless my Redeemer.’ ‘You remember that day when you come into the store? ’ ‘I didn’t think you never looked at me. ’ ‘Well — you was mighty pretty. ’ ‘Didn’t little Johnny never say nothing,’ asked Praying Mother Washington, ‘to make you think the Lord was working in his heart?’ ‘He always kind of quiet,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He don’t say much.’ ‘No,’ said Sister McCandless, ‘he ain’t like all these rough young ones nowadays— he got some respect for his elders. You done raised him mighty well, Sister Grimes.’ ‘It was his birthday yesterday,’ Elizabeth said. ‘No!’ cried Sister Price. ‘How old he got to be yesterday?’ ‘He done made fourteen,’ she said. ‘You hear that?’ said Sister Price, with wonder. ‘The Lord done saved that boy’s soul on his birthday!’ ‘Well, he got two birthdays now,’ smiled Sister McCandless, ‘just like he got two brothers—one in the flesh, and one in the Spirit.’ ‘Amen, bless the Lord!’ cried Praying Mother Washington. ‘What book was it, Richard? ’ ‘Oh, I don’t remember. Just a book. ’ ‘You smiled. ’ ‘You was mighty pretty. ’ She took her sodden handkerchief out of her bag, and dried her eyes; and dried her eyes again, looking down the avenue. ‘Yes,’ said Sister Price, gently, ‘you just thank the Lord. You just let the tears fall.

• From The City of God

  465 Heaven: The Self Redeemed (Book 22) A nd so at last—and after our recent quick trip to Hell it couldn’t come more welcomely—we come to Augustine’s account of heaven, his vision of the final fulfilled state of the human, of Creation, and the full realization of God. Here Augustine offers to tell us as much as we can know now about this final state to which all creation tends, and for which it longs. What does the blessed state of the saved look like at the end of time? What does seeing God amount to? What exactly do the blessed do in heaven? And when the blessed are resurrected, are the scars and marks that they suffered in life entirely erased from their bodies? What, if anything, happens in heaven? What is the nature of the human condition there? And is the eschatological Kingdom of God fundamentally a restoration of Eden, or something else altogether? And finally, what do the answers to all these questions tell us about Christian life in this world today? In answering these questions, Augustine is using them to expose and explore one of the deepest, if not the deepest, puzzle of Christian theology, the question of the tension between now and then, here and there, earth and heaven. Note that he does not think, as many Christians seem to do today, that the full and final state of heaven begins right after the individual died. Augustine would probably see that as deeply mistaken. For him, our individual demises, as dramatic as they might seem to us, are in no way the same thing as the Kingdom of God. The state in which the blessed subsist as dead is not the full state of ecstatic joy promised to the blessed in paradise; it’s rather a vague and vaguely pleasant Lecture 22 Transcript

• From The City of God

  463 Lecture 22—Heaven: The Self Redeemed (Book 22) › After the grace of Christ has been received it becomes possible for humans not to sin. ›After the Second Coming, when history has reached its end and the souls of the blessed rest with all the company of heaven in perfect love of God, human wills will be strengthened in such a way that it is no longer possible for humans to sin. „The blessed will be fully liberated from the slavery to sin to which all humans are manifestly captive. That enslavement splits the will and thereby sunders our integrity. When we are liberated, the singular goodness of God will not simply be the primary good—it will be the obvious good. „Augustine draws a picture of idealized agency where the center is not a wide range of options, but no options at all—human agency whose flourishing lies wholly in the complete and unimpeded engagement of the whole person in the dynamic joy of paradise. For him, true, fully achieved human agency is one where “choice” plays no role, where one is wholly and willingly engaged—but where one seems to have no choice. „To characterize this end in a more straightforwardly positive way Augustine offers a powerful single sentence that sums up so much of his eschatological imagination: “There we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. Behold, this is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end is there for us, but to arrive at the kingdom which has no end?” „Augustine’s claim that eternity is being co-present to all moments of time offers some comfort. If that is the case, each instant of life is ultimately no less real than every other instant. That means that Augustine knows well the Beatitude, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” 464 Books That Matter: The City of God redemption, when it happens, happens to every instant. It’s not that the course of one’s life is a runway and the soul lifts off like an airplane at the moment of death; but that the whole course of your life is gathered into God each and every moment. Questions to Consider 1. Is t he eschatological kingdom of God fundamentally a restoration of Eden or something else altogether for Augustine? What does the answer tell us about Christian life in our world today? 2. What does August ine think are the four stages of human freedom? Why are they ordered in this way? Do you think this account of freedom makes sense? 3. What does seeing God amount to, for August ine? 4. What does a r esurrected body look like? If I have a scar on my knee from arthroscopic surgery, is it still there in my resurrected flesh?

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  And Rhea turned back to the dishes, shaking her head, trying to find some correlation between my loving Muriel and her own painful love affairs. She did not dare to see the similarities and so she could not see the differences. And the words were never spoken. I was too chicken to come right out and say, “Hey, look, Rhea, Muriel and I are lovers.” Rhea could not bear the heartbreak of her affair with Art, and began to make plans to move to Chicago later in the spring. The idea that I would soon have the apartment all to myself delighted me. I made up my mind that I would never live with anyone else again, unless we were lovers. Muriel and I were beginning to envision the world together. I didn’t know how I was going to bring my personal and political visions together, but I knew it had to be possible because I felt them both too strongly, and knew how much I needed them both to survive. I did not agree with Rhea and her progressive friends when they said that this was not what the revolution was about. Any world which did not have a place for me loving women was not a world in which I wanted to live, nor one which I could fight for. One Friday night, Muriel and I spent the evening making love on my studio couch in the middle room of the apartment. Dusk crept away from the window on the air shaft and night came in. We were just resting briefly when we heard Rhea’s key in the front door in the kitchen. Muriel and I lay curled into each other’s arms on the now-familiar single couch. Without moving much, we simply pulled the covers up over us, closed our eyes, and pretended to be asleep. We heard Rhea come into the kitchen and turn on the light. I could feel the glow of the sudden brightness from the room next door as it shined through the arched doorway and along the floor of my room, parallel to where the two of us lay. Rhea entered, proceeding across my room to hers at the front of the house. Her footsteps stopped beside the bed where Muriel and I were, our eyes squeezed shut like children. She stood there for a moment looking down at our supposedly sleeping figures under the covers entwined within the narrow space, lit by the dim reflected light from the kitchen. And then, without warning, Rhea burst into tears. She stood over us sobbing wildly as if her heart was being broken by what she saw. She wept over us for at least two minutes while we both lay there, our arms around each other and our eyes closed tightly.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  The cock shape grew longer and pushed into her, and then the whole tree seemed to branch into her core and out her arms and legs and lift her far above the earth. “Hold on!” called Jason, as she was swept up on a high bough impaled on old boreal growth. She looked out from her high-splayed vantage, and she said, “I’m a treefucking woman!” Dappled sunlight shone and emptied itself onto her. She squeezed her Kegeling love muscle around the smooth, thickened branch within, and when the wind came up again all the leaves twittered and shook. The tree itself shuddered: It was having some kind of orgasm. The new growth of penisbranches fell off. Panting and quivering, Luna climbed down. Jason hugged her, then gathered the fallen branches. “I’ll polish and stain these tomorrow,” he said. “Dendro dildos?” “Yes, inspired by you.” “Can I come back and get one?” “Please do,” said Jason. “I’ll make a salad for you.” Henriette Goes for a Wal k H enriette decided to take her new extra-big ass on a walk to the noisy quay where the Masturboats docked. She wanted to feed the gulls and see what was up. First she got in the shower to wash herself so that she could be clean all day and the world wouldn’t know what a totally freaky, filthy-minded, cocksucking whore of a princess she actually was. She washed her hair and her face and her body, and last of all she washed her pussy and her huge deep asscrack. Her pussy she washed by holding it spread open with her right hand and splashing water up at it a bunch of times, and her asscrack she washed by jamming the cold soap between her pleasantly joggling cheeks and working it around a few times. Washing the asscrack wasn’t really that difficult; rinsing was trickier. Soap could burn later if you didn’t rinse every bit of it away, Henriette knew from experience—burn like a bastard—and you couldn’t just rely on the water that was coursing down your back to do the job . So Henriette employed what she thought of as the Aswan Dam method. She cupped her left hand in the shape of a C, and then she pressed this C below her anus, but before her pussyhole, in the no-man’s-land known as the perineum, which is a word that comes from the Greek word for “pine barrens.” She cupped her left hand there and made a seal against her asscheeks so that the water as it coursed down her back would be caught in this temporary well or spillway that she had created. She had in effect dammed her ass temporarily. When her hand was full she began agitating it, still keeping the seal intact—steadily slooshing the water in waves against her anus for ten seconds or so.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I then pass into another room of my parents’ home—their bedroom, the room in which I am now asleep. It is dark and silent. There is a watermelon shaped like an egg on the bureau. I lift the fruit up and it drops down upon the linoleum floor. The melon splits open, and at the core is a brilliant hunk of turquoise, glowing. I see it as a promise of help coming for me . Rhea is asleep, still, in my parents’ large bed. She is in great danger. I must save her from the great and nameless evil in this house, left here by the hickory-faced devils. I take her hand. It is white and milky in the half-dark . And then suddenly I realize that in this house of my childhood I am no longer welcome. Everything is hostile to me. The doors refuse to open. The glass cracks when I touch it. Even the bureau drawers creak and stick when I try to close them. The light bulbs blow out when I switch on the light. The can-opener won’t turn; the eggbeater jams mysteriously . This is no longer my home; it is only of a past time . Once I realize this, I am suddenly free to go, and to take Rhea with me . Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography 26 In March, I got a job as a library clerk in the New York Public Library Children’s Services, and I was truly delighted. Not only was I relieved to be making money again, but I loved libraries and books, and was so pleased to be able to do work which I enjoyed. Muriel and I saw each other as often as we could now, and we began to discuss her coming back to New York to live. When she was animated, with her tousled dark hair and her round monkish head, Muriel reminded me of a chrysanthemum, always slightly bent over upon itself. She talked incessantly about her “sickness” of the years before, and about what being schizophrenic meant. I listened but did not know enough to realize that, out of her love, she was also warning me. On the few occasions that we smoked reefer together, she waxed most eloquent and I was most open. “Electric shock treatments are like little deaths,” Muriel said, reaching across me for the ashtray. “They broke into my head like thieves with official sanction and robbed me of something precious that feels like it’s gone forever.” Sometimes she sounded angry, and sometimes she sounded curiously flat, but however she sounded it made my arms ache to hold her.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  They never spoke as they passed my house on their way to the cars or the pool. I knew one of them had a shop in town called La Señora, which had the most interesting clothes on the Square. “Haven’t you heard, only mad dogs and englishmen go out in the noonday sun?” I shaded my eyes so I could see her better. I was more curious than I had realized. “I don’t burn that easily,” I called back. She was framed in the large casement window, a crooked smile on her half-shaded face. Her voice was strong and pleasant, but with a crack in it that sounded like a cold, or too many cigarettes. “I’m just going to have some coffee. Would you like some?” I stood, picked up the blanket upon which I’d been lying, and accepted her invitation. She was waiting in her doorway. I recognized her as the tall grey-haired woman called La Periodista. “My name’s Eudora,” she said, extending her hand and holding mine firmly for a moment. “And they call you La Chica, you’re here from New York, and you go to the new university.” “Where did you find all that out?” I asked, taken aback. We stepped inside. “It’s my business to find out what goes on,” she laughed easily. “That’s what reporters do. Legitimate gossip.” Eudora’s bright spacious room was comfortable and disheveled. A large easy chair faced the bed upon which she now perched crosslegged, in shorts and polo shirt, smoking, and surrounded by books and newspapers. Maybe it was her direct manner. Maybe it was the openness with which she appraised me as she motioned me towards the chair. Maybe it was the pants, or the informed freedom and authority with which she moved. But from the moment I walked into her house, I knew Eudora was gay, and that was an unexpected and welcome surprise. It made me feel much more at home and relaxed, even though I was still feeling sore and guilty from my fiasco with Bea, but it was refreshing to know I wasn’t alone. “I’ve been drinking for a week,” she said, “and I’m still a little hung-over, so you’ll have to excuse the mess.” I didn’t know what to say. Eudora wanted to know what I was doing in Mexico, young, Black, and with an eye for the ladies, as she put it. That was the second surprise. We shared a good laugh over the elusive cues for mutual recognition among lesbians.

• From The City of God

  476 Books That Matter: The City of God non peccare. And fourth and finally, after the Second Coming, at the end of time, when history has reached its end and the souls of the blessed rest with all the company of Heaven in perfect love of God, the human will will be strengthened in such a way that it is no longer possible for humans to sin, non posse peccare. The blessed will be fully liberated from the slavery to sin to which all humans are manifestly, for Augustine, captive. It is that enslavement that divides or splits our will and so sunders our integrity. When we are so liberated, the singular goodness of God will not simply be the primary good—it will be, in a way, the obvious good, in a way that is hard for us to understand today. Augustine has scriptural arguments for this, and experiential analogies to make it comprehensible. First of all, many biblical passages talk about service to God as a kind of enslavement, a yoke, or a chain linking us to God, which is also at the same time a liberation. And Paul himself talks about Christians being “slaves to righteousness.” Furthermore, experientially, we have all been in situations when our agency, our activity, was no less our own for being involuntary. We can be involuntary about our agency in much the same way that one has no choice about laughing at a funny movie, but one laughs, at times, indeed if it’s really funny with more than one's voice, but in a way with one's whole being. So this notion of a non-choice centered freedom, this does not require compulsion of any dangerous sort. Here then, is a picture of idealized agency where the center of the picture is not a wide range of options, but no options at all—a picture of human agency whose flourishing lies wholly in the complete and unimpeded engagement of the whole person in the dynamic joy of paradise. For Augustine, true, fully achieved human agency is not one where choice plays any role at all, it is rather a kind of full voluntary exercise of one's being, where one is wholly and willingly engaged— but where one seems to have no choice about this at all. This may seem a strange notion, an alien notion, of true freedom for us.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  Then he cried: ‘Oh, blessed Jesus! Oh, Lord Jesus! Take me through!’ Of tears there was, yes, a very fountain—springing from a depth never sounded before, from depths John had not known were in him. And he wanted to rise up, singing, singing in that great morning, the morning of his new life. Ah, how his tears ran down, how they blessed his soul!—as he felt himself, out of the darkness, and the fire, and the terrors of death, rising upward to meet the saints. ‘Oh, yes!’ cried the voice of Elisha. ‘Bless our God for ever!’ And a sweetness filled John as he heard this voice, and heard the sound of singing: the singing was for him. For his drifting soul was anchored in the love of God; in the rock that endured for ever. The light and the darkness had kissed each other, and were married now, for ever, in the life and the vision of John’s soul. I , John, saw a city, way in the middle of the air, Waiting, waiting, waiting up there. He opened his eyes on the morning, and found them, in the light of the morning, rejoicing for him. The trembling he had known in darkness had been the echo of their joyful feet—these feet, bloodstained for ever, and washed in many rivers—they moved on the bloody road for ever, with no continuing city, but seeking one to come: a city out of time, not made with hands, but eternal in the heavens. No power could hold this army back, no water disperse them, no fire consume them. One day they would compel the earth to heave upward, and surrender the waiting dead. They sang, where the darkness gathered, where the lion waited, where the fire cried, and where blood ran down: My soul, don’t you be uneasy! They wandered in the valley for ever; and they smote the rock, for ever; and the waters sprang, perpetually, in the perpetual desert. They cried unto the Lord for ever, and lifted up their eyes for ever, they were cast down for ever, and He lifted them up for ever. No, the fire could not hurt them, and yes, the lion’s jaws were stopped; the serpent was not their master, the grave was not their resting-place, the earth was not their home. Job bore them witness, and Abraham was their father, Moses had elected to suffer with them rather than glory in sin for a season. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had gone before them into the fire, their grief had been sung by David, and Jeremiah had wept for them.

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

  The men spoke of their growing wish to become fathers in the context of their relationships. One young man told me, “I think I’m finally ready to be a doting father.” Unlike men from intact families, they did not take fatherhood for granted. They had weighty agendas for their children, loved being fathers, and took great pride in their children. “My greatest joy is to see my children grow and develop and overcome the hang-ups that I had as a child,” one man told me. “My hope for me and for them is that the deleterious effect of the divorce and the pain that I endured as a child would someday stop. And that they will succeed in things I was never able to do.” Another spelled out his pleasure in his son’s achieving where he had failed as a child: “When I see Thomas do the things that I could never do as a child, I can’t explain how gratifying it is. He’s five years old. He has on his backpack. He’s raring to go. The bus comes and he gets on, ready for camp. No crying, no hesitation. I just couldn’t have done that. I was too insecure. I’d have said, no, no. And he just doesn’t have any of those fears. To see my son so well adjusted, to see him succeed in things I was never able to do, is the most rewarding thing that has ever happened to me.” It may be that having a child was a deterrent to divorce, especially among men in divorced families. In this study very few such men divorced. 3 For example, one man, whose wife walked out on him, was struggling financially, attending school, working all night long, and paying child support in full. It was very important to him not to behave like his own father, who left him stranded economically and emotionally when he was six years old. Most of the women in the study who divorced had no children. But among those who did have children and went on to divorce, all left violent or addicted men. The decision was never easy and they stayed in the marriages as long as they could. They told me at length how hard they tried to avoid divorce. No one wanted their child to experience the same losses that they had endured. Years earlier, these same people had told me that they approved of divorce “when necessary,” but most were against divorce if there were children. Their attitude changed when they felt that they or their children would be physically or emotionally abused in the marriage. Several decided to remain in very troubled marriages because they had young children and didn’t want to disrupt the children’s lives.

• From The City of God

  "This is the most glorious city of God; this is the city which knows and worships one God:she is celebrated by the holy angels, who invite us to their society, and desire us to become fellow-citizens with them in this city; for they do not wish us to worship them as our gods, but to join them in worshipping their God and ours; nor to sacrifice to them, but, together with them, to become a sacrifice to God. Accordingly, whoever will lay aside malignant obstinacy, and consider these things, shall be assured that all these blessed and immortal spirits, who do not envy us (for if they envied they were not blessed), but rather love us, and desire us to be as blessed as themselves, look on us with greater pleasure, and give us greater assistance, when we join them in worshipping one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, than if we were to offer to themselves sacrifice and worship.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  I never questioned where my knowledge of her body and her need came from. Loving Ginger that night was like coming home to a joy I was meant for, and I only wondered, silently, how I had not always known that it would be so. Ginger moved in love like she laughed, openly and easily, and I moved with her, against her, within her, an ocean of brown warmth. Her sounds of delight and the deep shudders of relief that rolled through her body in the wake of my stroking fingers filled me with delight and a hunger for more of her. The sweetness of her body meeting and filling my mouth, my hands, wherever I touched, felt right and completing, as if I had been born to make love to this woman, and was remembering her body rather than learning it deeply for the first time. In wonder, but without surprise, I lay finally quiet with my arms around Ginger. So this was what I had been so afraid of not doing properly. How ridiculous and far away those fears seemed now, as if loving were some task outside of myself, rather than simply reaching out and letting my own desire guide me. It was all so simple. I felt so good I smiled into the darkness. Ginger cuddled closer. “We better get some sleep,” she muttered. “Keystone tomorrow.” And drifted off into slumber. There was an hour or so before the alarm went off and I lay awake, trying to fit everything together, trying to reassure myself that I was in control and did not need to be afraid. And what, I wondered, was my relationship now to this delicious woman who lay asleep on my arm? Ginger by night now seemed so different from the Ginger I knew in the day. Had some beautiful and mythic creature created by my own need suddenly taken the place of my jovial and matter-of-fact buddy? Once earlier, Ginger had reached out to touch the wet warmth of my own body and I had turned her hand aside without thinking, without knowing why. Yet I knew that I was still hungry for her cries of joy and the soaring wonder of her body moving beneath mine, guided by a power that flowed through me from that charged core pressed against her. Ginger was my friend, the only friend I had made in this strange town, and I loved her, but with caution. We had slept together. Did that mean we were lovers? A few months after Gennie’s death I walked down Broadway late one Saturday afternoon. I had just had another argument with my mother, and I was going to the A&P to get milk. I dawdled along the avenue looking into shop windows, not wanting to return to the tensions and misunderstandings waiting for me at home .

• From The City of God

  Therefore let the Church of Christ, the city of the great King, [986] full of grace, prolific of offspring, let her say what the prophecy uttered about her so long before by the mouth of this pious mother confesses, "My heart is made strong in the Lord, and my horn is exalted in my God. "Her heart is truly made strong, and her horn is truly exalted, because not in herself, but in the Lord her God. "My mouth is enlarged over mine enemies;" because even in pressing straits the word of God is not bound, not even in preachers who are bound. [987]"I am made glad," she says, "in Thy salvation. "This is Christ Jesus Himself, whom old Simeon, as we read in the Gospel, embracing as a little one, yet recognizing as great, said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation. " [988]Therefore may the Church say, "I am made glad in Thy salvation. For there is none holy as the Lord, and none is righteous as our God;" as holy and sanctifying, just and justifying. [989]"There is none holy beside Thee;" because no one becomes so except by reason of Thee. And then it follows, "Do not glory so proudly, and do not speak lofty things, neither let vaunting talk come out of your mouth. For a God of knowledge is the Lord. "He knows you even when no one knows; for "he who thinketh himself to be something when he is nothing deceiveth himself. " [990]These things are said to the adversaries of the city of God who belong to Babylon, who presume in their own strength, and glory in themselves, not in the Lord; of whom are also the carnal Israelites, the earth-born inhabitants of the earthly Jerusalem, who, as saith the apostle, "being ignorant of the righteousness of God," [991] that is, which God, who alone is just, and the justifier, gives to man, "and wishing to establish their own," that is, which is as it were procured by their own selves, not bestowed by Him, "are not subject to the righteousness of God," just because they are proud, and think they are able to please God with their own, not with that which is of God, who is the God of knowledge, and therefore also takes the oversight of consciences, there beholding the thoughts of men that they are vain, [992] if they are of men, and are not from Him. "And preparing," she says, "His curious designs. "What curious designs do we think these are, save that the proud must fall, and the humble rise? These curious designs she recounts, saying, "The bow of the mighty is made weak, and the weak are girded with strength. "The bow is made weak, that is, the intention of those who think themselves so powerful, that without the gift and help of God they are able by human sufficiency to fulfill the divine commandments; and those are girded with strength whose in ward cry is, "Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak. " [993]

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  Muriel and I sat talking in the kitchen over cups of black coffee, because all the powdered milk was used up. Rhea woke up about noon, and I introduced her to Muriel. We made Rhea some coffee, and she and Muriel argued the pros and cons of Marxism (although Muriel insisted she was apolitical, which I translated as naïve) for about an hour while I took a bath. Rhea dressed and went off to her parents’ house for dinner, only a little sodden around the eyes. I turned off the record player and double-locked the door. Then Muriel and I, with no more to-do about it, went to bed with each other in the New Year’s watery sunlight in Rhea’s front room double bed. The afternoon unfolded into a blossom of loving from which she rose to me like a flame. I had not been close to a woman since those nights with Eudora in Cuernavaca more than six months before. We lay entwined and exhausted afterward, laughing and talking excitedly. The camaraderie and warmth between us breached places within me that had been closed off and permanently sealed, I thought, when Genevieve died. When Muriel and I talked, as we did, about Naomi and Genevieve, each dead at fifteen, the spirit of those two dead girls seemed to rise up from the earth, bless us, and then depart. A particular and terrible loneliness seemed at last about to give way. We made love over and over and over again, pausing only to turn on the lights in the early dusk and to feed the cat. The sun went down and the steam came up, and the whole room seemed alight with the fragrance of our bodies. For every secret hurt of Muriel’s, there was one of mine to match, and the similarities of our lonelinesses, as well as of our dreams, convinced us that we were made for each other. January 2, 1955. I rolled over and raised myself up on one arm, regarded the sleep-sweet cheek and tousled hair of the woman curled away from me, one arm under her head. I bent to kiss the curl that swept over her ear, and ran my tongue slowly down the nape of her dark hair to where the covers draped her shoulders. With a sigh and a slow smile, Muriel opened one eye as I advanced, whispering, toward her ear. “In the West Indies, they call this raising your zandalee.” Later, I called Mrs. Goodrich from bed, Muriel drowsing beside me. I explained that I was sick and could not come in to work. The whole department had been warned by Mrs. Goodrich the last day before the holidays to make sure that such “sicknesses” did not occur, under any circumstances. Mrs. Goodrich fired me on the spot. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography 25 Rhea had all the cues she needed about my relationships with women. She had witnessed the melodrama with Bea.

• From House of Holes: A Book of Raunch (2011)

  He took her to a waiting room, and then she met Lila, a cheerful busty woman who wore bifocals. “What do you want?” Lila asked. “I don’t know—a Cape house on a knoll and a husband?” said Polly. “Can’t help you.” “Then I don’t want anything,” said Polly. “You’re unhappy with your boyfriend because he’s acting like a shit.” “Yes, and he and I have different taste in plays.” “Do you still like men? ” “Yes, I love men. I’ve always loved men.” Lila picked up the phone. “Mischa, our friend Polly needs to spend some time in the Hall of the Penises.” Mischa was there in a moment. He took Polly’s hand and led her to a very large room—a kind of dance studio with a refinished floor, hung all the way around with green curtains made of shot silk. One wall had enormous windows that overlooked the hills. There were two other women in the room. Polly nodded at them and they introduced themselves. One was Saucie, and one had a name like Donna. Polly said to Saucie, “What are those odd little bumps there in the curtains?” “They’re what you think they are,” said Saucie. Polly found a drape cord and pulled it to make some of the green fabric slide to one side. She saw many little toadlike things hanging out from holes in the wall at about crotch height. She said, “All those little brown toadlike things are penises?” “Yep,” said Saucie. “And balls.” “They go all around the room,” said Donna. “What are we supposed to do with them?” asked Polly. Saucie handed her a tasseled knee pillow. “I think we’re supposed to talk to them, or maybe even suck them off.” Donna whispered, “I think that one there is my husband.” Polly was surprised. “Is that good or bad?” “Not entirely sure,” said Donna. “And I’m guessing that one there is my ex-husband,” said Saucie. Then it occurred to Polly to wonder whether one of the penises was Jeff ’s. She toured the rows carefully to see if she could spot Jeff ’s organ hanging out among the crowd. But she couldn’t be sure. Which was all in all a relief. He was probably still down in the glade, she thought, chatting up the topless girl in the polka-dot skirt. “Do you think we should dance for them?” said Donna. Polly, feeling a little giddy, started in with a Diane Birch song, “Rise Up,” and the three women danced and sang around the room. “Rise up, little sisters!” they sang—and soon they began to notice some changes in some of the wall toads. There was a new alertness about their attitude, no question about it.

• From The City of God

  [983] Gal. iv. 22-31. [984] Heb. viii. 8-10. Chapter 4. --About the Prefigured Change of the Israelitic Kingdom and Priesthood, and About the Things Hannah the Mother of Samuel Prophesied, Personating the Church. Therefore the advance of the city of God, where it reached the times of the kings, yielded a figure, when, on the rejection of Saul, David first obtained the kingdom on such a footing that thenceforth his descendants should reign in the earthly Jerusalem in continual succession; for the course of affairs signified and foretold, what is not to be passed by in silence, concerning the change of things to come, what belongs to both Testaments, the Old and the New,--where the priesthood and kingdom are changed by one who is a priest, and at the same time a king, new and everlasting, even Christ Jesus. For both the substitution in the ministry of God, on Eli's rejection as priest, of Samuel, who executed at once the office of priest and judge, and the establishment of David in the kingdom, when Saul was rejected, typified this of which I speak. And Hannah herself, the mother of Samuel, who formerly was barren, and afterwards was gladdened with fertility, does not seem to prophesy anything else, when she exultingly pours forth her thanksgiving to the Lord, on yielding up to God the same boy she had born and weaned with the same piety with which she had vowed him. For she says, "My heart is made strong in the Lord, and my horn is exalted in my God; my mouth is enlarged over mine enemies; I am made glad in Thy salvation. Because there is none holy as the Lord; and none is righteous as our God:there is none holy save Thee. Do not glory so proudly, and do not speak lofty things, neither let vaunting talk come out of your mouth; for a God of knowledge is the Lord, and a God preparing His curious designs. The bow of the mighty hath He made weak, and the weak are girded with strength. They that were full of bread are diminished; and the hungry have passed beyond the earth:for the barren hath born seven; and she that hath many children is waxed feeble. The Lord killeth and maketh alive:He bringeth down to hell, and bringeth up again. The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich:He bringeth low and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, that He may set him among the mighty of [His] people, and maketh them inherit the throne of glory; giving the vow to him that voweth, and He hath blessed the years of the just:for man is not mighty in strength. The Lord shall make His adversary weak:the Lord is holy. Let not the prudent glory in his prudence and let not the mighty glory in his might; and let not the rich glory in his riches:but let him that glorieth glory in this, to understand and know the Lord, and to do judgment and justice in the midst of the earth. The Lord hath ascended into the heavens, and hath thundered:He shall judge the ends of the earth, for He is righteous: and He giveth strength to our kings, and shall exalt the horn of His Christ. " [985]

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ἐρι-βρτθής, és, very heavy, Orph. H. 5.636. €pt-Bpopos, ov, loud-shouting, of Bacchus, ἢ. Hom, Bacch. 56, Anacr. 14, Panyas. ap. Ath. 36 D: loud-roaring, λέοντες Pind. O. 11 (10). fin. ; χθών, νεφέλη Id. P. 6. 3, τι. ἐρι-βρύχης [Ὁ]. gen. ov Ep.-ew, 6,=sq., ταῦρος Hes. Th. 832; πόντος, λέων Opp. H. 1. 476, 709. ᾿ ἐρί-βρῦχος, ον, loud-bellowing, βοῦς h. Hom. Merc. 116; λέων Ο. ὅπη. 3.171: loud-braying, of the trumpet, Anth. P. 6. 159. ἐρι-βῶλαξ, ἄκος, ὃ, 7, with large clods, of rich, loamy soil; hence, very fertile, once in Od., ἐριβώλακος ἠπείροιο 13. 235; often in Il., ἐν Φθίῃ ἐριβώλακι I. 155, εἴς. ; πόλεως ép. Cratin. Apam. 3, ubi v. Meineke. ἐρί-βωλος, ον, =foreg., Od. 5. 34, and often in 1]. ἐρι-γάστωρ, opos, 6, 7, pot-bellied, μόσχος Nic. Al. 344. ἐριγδουπέω, to rattle loud, coined by Schol. Il. 7. 507. ἐρί-γδουπος, ον, -- ἐρίδουπος (4. v.), loud-sounding, thundering, in Hom. always as epith. of Zeus, ἐριγδούπου Διὸς υἱόν 1]. 5.672; ἐρ. πόσις Ἥρης Od. 15. 112, 180, Il.; except in Il. 11. 152, ἐρ. πόδες ἵππων. ἐριγηθήξς, €s, very joyful, Orph. Lith. pr. 24. épi-ynpus, 6, ἡ, loud-speaking, Hesych. épiyAnvos, ov, with large eye-balls, full-eyed, Opp. C. 1. 310. ἔριγμα, τό, (epeixw) bruised beans, Hipp. 220F: v. épeypa. ἐρίγμη, 7, =foreg., Schol. Ar. Ran. 505. ἐρϊδαίνω : impf. ἠρίδαινον Babr. 68: Ep. aor. ἐρίδηνα Ap. Rh. 1. 89: —Med., Q. Sm. 5. 105: Ep. aor. 1 inf. ἐριδήσασθαι (with « long) or ἐριδδήσασθαι 1]. 23. 792: elsewhere Hom. uses only pres.: (épifw). To wrangle, quarrel, per’ ἀνδράσι Od. 21. 310; αὔτως yap ῥ᾽ ἐπέεσσ᾽ ἐριδαίνομεν 1]. 2. 342; viv δὲ περὶ πτωχῶν ép. Od. 18. 403; εἰ δὴ σφὼ ἕνεκα θνητῶν ἐρ. 1]. 1. 574; εἵνεκα τῆς ἀρετῆς ep. ye strive (as for a prize) for her excellence, Od. 2. 206; c. dat., ἐριδαίνετον ἀλλήλοιϊν .. πελεμιζέμεν 1]. 16. 765, cf. Ap. Rh. 1.89; also, ἀντία πάντων .. ἐριδαι- νέμεν οἷος Od. 1. 79; τι ina thing, Call. Dian, 262:—of war, first in Ap. Rh. 2. 986, etc. :—Med., ποσσὶν ἐριδήσασθαι ᾿Αχαιοῖς with them in the foot-race, Il. 23. 792.—Ep. word used by Dem. Byz. ap. Ath. 452 D; Luc. Pisc. 6 is taken from Ap. Rh. 1. 89. épiddvrys, ov, 6, a wrangler, Timo ap. Diog. L. 2. t07; an Ion. gen. pl. ἐριδαντέων is cited from Democr. by Plut. 2. 614 E, which led Clem. Al. (p. 328) to invent the nom. ἐριδαντέες. ἐρίδηλος, ov, very conspicuous, Nonn. Jo. 18. v. 15. ἐριδινής, és, (δῖνος) whirling, eddying swiftly, Tryph. 231. ἐρίδιον, τό, Dim. of ἔριον, Luc. Ocyp. 8g (where épidiov), Arr. Epict. 3. 22, 71, Phot. s. v. λαϊνπάδιον, ἐριδμαίνω, = ἐρεθίζω, to provoke to strife, irritate, σφήκεσσιν ἐοικότες... ovs παῖδες ἐριδμαίνωσιν 1]. 16. 260. II. intr. = ἐριδαίνω, to con- tend, Ap. Rh. 3.94; τι about .., Mosch. 2.69; διά τι Anth. Plan. 4. 297; ὑπέρ twos Nic. Al. 407; c. inf., ἄκρα φέρεσθαι Theocr. 12. 31. ἐρί-δμᾶτος, ον, (Séuw) strongly-built, i.e.