Love

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 New Testament Words (1964)

  (xii) Love is the motive power of faith (Gal. 5.6). More people are won for Christ by the appeal to the heart than to the head. Faith is born, not so much from intellectual search, as from the uplifting of the Cross of Christ. It is true that sooner or later we must think things out for ourselves; but in Christianity the heart must feel before the mind can think. (xiii) Love is the perfecting of the Christian life (Rom. 13.10; Col. 3.14; I Tim. 1.5; 6.11; I John 4.12). There is nothing higher in this world than to love. The great task of any church is not primarily to perfect its buildings or its liturgy or its music or its vestments. Its great task is to perfect its love. Finally, the NT lays it down that there are certain ways in which love can be misdirected. (i) Love of the world is misdirected love (I John 2.15). It was because Demas loved the world that he forsook Paul (II Tim. 4.10). A man can so love time that he forgets eternity. A man can so love the world’s prizes that he forgets the ultimate prizes. A man can so love the world that he accepts the world’s standards and abandons the standards of Christ. (ii) Love of personal prestige is misdirected love. The scribes and Pharisees loved the chief seats in the synagogues and the praises of men (Luke 11.43; John 12.43). A man’s question must always be, not: How does this look to men? but, How does this look to God? (iii) Love of the dark and fear of the light is the inevitable consequence of sin (John 3.19). As soon as a man sins, he has something to hide; and then he loves the dark. But the dark may conceal him from men; it cannot conceal him from God. So at the end of things we see beyond a doubt that the Christian life is built on the twin pillars of love of God and love of man. AGGAREUEINTHE WORD OF AN OCCUPIED COUNTRYThere are some words which carry in their history the story of a nation’s triumph or a nation’s tragedy. Aggareuein is such a word. It is used three times in the NT, with the meaning to compel. It is the word used in Matt. 5.41 when Jesus speaks of going two miles when we are compelled to go one; and in Matt. 27.32 and Mark 15.21 it is the word that is used of Simon of Cyrene being compelled to carry the Cross of Jesus to Calvary.

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  “You carry around your students’ work in the same bag as your kink ropes and ball gag? Somehow that seems so very wrong.” He fastened his jeans and pulled his shirt on, feeling more comfortable once he matched Beth again. Although he much preferred it with both of them naked, he didn’t think that would be conducive to getting any work done. Beth shrugged. “Typically I don’t, but tonight I was trying to keep the papers from flying off the backseat so I stuck them in there.” “Okay, then. Grab the stuff, make me an answer key, and let’s do this shit.” * * * He had graded her freshmen’s quizzes. He had brought her a cup of tea and even massaged her feet. He had made her laugh. He had kissed her twice before letting her out the door—once on the lips, and once on the forehead. At the moment, though, he was about to get her pixie ass slaughtered by some trolls. Beth thought she might be in love with Ed. This frightened her, because she had known him only a few days. Not a great few days, either. Lots of lows to go with the highs, although the highs were admittedly spectacular. You cried about Aaron while you were having sex with Ed. You shouldn’t jump to the love conclusion. Your emotions are running away with you. You need to get your own self in order before you can love somebody else. Beth hated it when her internal voice used accusatory “you” language, but it was what it was. And that voice wasn’t necessarily wrong. She just wanted it to be wrong. “Okay. In the meantime, while Glabnak is recovering from the Curse of Pants-befouling—” Lin began. “By recovering, he means I’m changing my underwear and hosing out the chain mail,” Ed clarified, to the general amusement of everyone at the table. “Right, while Glabnak is cleaning up after himself—” “Hey, do I have a mobile changing-tent spell or something? I could just...shoooop, bam! Cabana!” “Maybe in the next game, if you decide to roll a caster instead of a warrior class. Okay, while Glabnak has been changing his poopy metal pants in front of everybody, another troll joins the first two trolls. He or she jumps down from the rune-covered boulder just as they did, carrying the same kind of giant bronze mace, and lands on top of...who’s next, again? Oh, Ben. So the troll lands on top of Darolon, and knocks him flat on the ground for, let’s see...twelve points of damage.” Beth had never met Lin before. He was on the short side, pudgy, fussy, with a limp hank of blue-black hair dangling over his forehead. Nothing to write home about, and definitely not a likely kinkster, though she tried not to judge books by their covers. He was obviously a good dungeon master, but Beth still had trouble thinking of him as the “DM” without giggling.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Masturbating with a PartnerI absolutely love to be a witness to a lover enjoying her own body; it is such a beautiful personal intimacy. I’ve used masturbating to turn my partner on, too, which is really fun. It is very empowering to be openly appreciated and acknowledged and not shamed for masturbating. You might find nothing is more tantalizing than your partner parading her arousal in front of you, working herself up to a colossal orgasm as you sit helplessly stewing in your own juices. When you masturbate in front of your partner, you’re inviting her to witness you pouring loving energy into yourself. You give her evidence that you value your sexual pleasure. It’s a sign of trust to allow someone to witness you in such an unguarded moment. Masturbating to orgasm in front of my partner brings up a lot of my issues around self-acceptance. I feel self-conscious because the spotlight’s entirely on me—I’m being watched. I worry that I look funny when I come. Not only do you get to revel in your partner’s gaze, you won’t have to cope with the problem of the well-meaning (but clueless) partner who has no idea how you like your clitoris stroked. If the idea of explaining your preferences leaves you tongue-tied, you can rely on your freshman English teacher’s favorite rule: Show, don’t tell. I don’t think twice about having a wank in front of my partner. Especially if she’s tied up. Phone sex turns your awareness to aural stimulation. As you touch yourself, the sounds of your partner touching herself intensify your experience. Cybersex, most of all in the form of chatroom sex, is a great tool for becoming adept at using words to describe your erotic experiences. With the advent of devices like Apple’s iSight, you can answer an online personal ad and then have real-time online sex, regardless of where you live. [image file=image_rsrc646.jpg] Illustration 4. Masturbating with a Partner You may discover the exhibitionist in you; and your partner may discover her inner voyeur. Every time you take a sexual risk, the possibility exists that you may widen and enhance your sexuality. You can also touch yourself during partner sex. Sometimes it’s just easier to take care of your own orgasm and leave your partner free to concentrate on other things—reaming your butt, filling your vagina with her fingers, wielding the G-Spotter, or sucking your nipples. Many women discover that they can come more reliably, more intensely, more easily when they touch themselves during partner sex. And when your partner is relieved of the job of “making” you come, she may be more creative, more assertive, more confident in pleasuring you.

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

  A final example: My current lover of eight years and I first met when he was homeless and selling books from a blanket spread out on Seventy-second Street. Our two best friends for many years now are a male couple, one of whom I first met in an encounter, perhaps a decade ago, at the back of the now closed-down Variety Photoplays Movie Theater on Third Avenue just below Fourteenth Street. Outside my family, these are among the two most rewarding relationships I have: both began as cross-class contacts in a public space. Visitors to New York might be surprised that such occurrences are central to my vision of the city at its healthiest. Lifetime residents won’t be. Watching the metamorphosis of such vigil and concern into considered and helpful action is what gives one a faithful and loving attitude toward one’s neighborhood, one’s city, one’s nation, the world. I have taken “contact,” both term and concept, from Jane Jacobs’s instructive 1961 study, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jacobs describes contact as a fundamentally urban phenomenon and finds it necessary for everything from neighborhood safety to a general sense of social well-being. She sees it supported by a strong sense of private and public in a field of socioeconomic diversity that mixes living spaces with a variety of commercial spaces, which in turn must provide a variety of human services if contact is to function in a pleasant and rewarding manner. Jacobs mentions neither casual sex nor public sexual relations as part of contact—presumably because she was writing at a time when such things were not talked of or analyzed as elements contributing to an overall pleasurable social fabric. Today we can. When social forces menace the distinction between private and public, people are most likely to start distrusting contact relations. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities (98–111), Jacobs analyzes how limited socioeconomic resources in the area around a public park (lack of restaurants, bathrooms, drugstores, and small shops) can make the mothers who use the playground and live near it feel that their privacy within their home is threatened—thus markedly changing their public attitude to interclass contact. Briefly, a park with no public eating spaces, restaurants, or small item shopping on its borders forces mothers who live adjacent to it and who thus use it the most to “share everything or nothing” in terms of offering facilities of bathroom use and the occasional cup of coffee to other mothers and their children who use the park but do not live so near. Because the local mothers feel they must offer these favors to whomever they are even civil with (since such services are not publicly available), they soon become extremely choosy and cliquish about whom they will even speak to. The feel of the park becomes exclusive and snobbish—and uncomfortable (and inconvenient) for mothers who, in carriage, dress, race, or class, do not fit a rigid social pattern.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  Skinny femme girl that I am, there are times I’ve wished for a more womanly figure. But I love that my small breasts disappear in the palms of my lover’s hands—and the ease with which I am lifted into her arms. I love catching butch girls staring at my braless chest, my nipples peeking out through a thin shirt. Weight issues get complicated by gender and sexual orientation. It’s disconcerting to be told that because you are delicate and petite you can’t possibly be a dyke (after all, you could get a man)—or that because you’re big and broad-shouldered you could only be a dyke (because no man would have you). Thankfully, many of us manage to turn this around. I like my broad shoulders, big hands, tight ass. I enjoy being strong. I love being able to pick up my lover, wrap her around my waist, and fuck her even longer than she thought she wanted. I am big-boned, with quarterback shoulders, muscular biceps, and calves an NFL pro kicker would die for. I’m a fat dyke. That used to be an issue for me but it isn’t anymore. My hills and valleys and breasts make an excellent playground for those who are adventurous enough to explore them. During the process of gender transition, body image takes on a whole new layer of meaning. What does it mean to identify as masculine when you have 40DD breasts? To be female but not feminine? To wear your clit as a cock? Or conversely, to be 45 years old and have the brand-new budding breasts of a 14-year-old girl? To identify as female and have a penis? For years, sex was unsatisfying for me because I was completely out of touch with my body. Now that I’m in the early stages of transitioning from female to male, I can handle physical pleasure and accept that this flesh-cart is part of me. My breasts are small but perky, and I love my tattoos and my nipple piercing. I have a beautiful tattoo of ivy on my breast covering scars from a lumpectomy I had when I was 19. It made me feel so much better about my breasts when I had that done! Take a Good LookGet naked and position yourself in front of a full-length mirror. Lights up! Take an uncritical look at yourself. Drop your judgments, save your critical skills for a film review, and forget all the things you’ve heard about what you are “supposed” to look like. Just look at yourself. Pay attention. What do you see? I have a nice hourglass shape (maybe a two-hour glass!) and my breasts are full, which I like. I like how I look without clothes because I pretty much like how anyone looks without clothes—we’re all so unique and interesting and vulnerable and human without clothes. Appreciate YourselfI love that I’m so sensitive! Everything feels so damn good!

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  (iii) Love is generous (II Cor. 8.24). There are two kinds of love—the love which demands and the love which gives. The Christian love is the giving love, because it is a copy of the love of Jesus (John 13.34), and has its mainspring in the giving love of God (I John 4.11). (iv) Love is practical (Heb. 6.10; I John 3.18). It is not merely a kindly feeling, and it does not limit itself to pious good wishes; it is love which issues in action. (v) Love is forbearing (Eph. 4.2). The Christian love is the love which is proof against the things which so easily turn love to hate. (vi) Love issues in forgiveness and restoration (II Cor. 2.8). Christian love is able to forgive, and, in forgiving, it enables the wrong-doer to return to the right way. (vii) Love is not sentimental (II Cor. 2.4). Christian love does not shut its eyes to the faults of others. Love is not blind. It will use rebuke and discipline when these are needed. The love which shuts its eyes to all faults, and which evades the unpleasantness of all discipline, is not real love at all, for in the end it does nothing but harm to the loved one. (viii) Love controls liberty (Gal. 5.13; Rom. 14.15). It is perfectly true that a Christian man has the right to do anything which is not sin. But there are certain things in which a Christian may see no harm, but which may offend other Christians. There are certain things which may do one man no harm, but which may be the ruination of another man. The Christian never forgets his Christian liberty, but he also never forgets that Christian liberty is controlled by Christian love, and by Christian responsibility for others. (ix) Love controls truth (Eph. 4.15). The Christian loves truth (II Thess. 2.10), but he never cruelly or unsympathetically speaks the truth in order to hurt. It was said of Florence Allshorn, the great teacher, that, when she had occasion to rebuke any of her students, she always did it as if with her arm around the person who had to be rebuked. The Christian is never false to the truth, but he always remembers that love and truth must go hand in hand. (x) Love is the bond which holds the Christian fellowship together (Phil. 2.2; Col. 2.2). Paul speaks of Christians being knit together in love. Our theological views may differ; our views on methods may differ. But across the differences there should come the constant memory that we love Christ, and that therefore we love each other. (xi) Love is that which gives the Christian the right to ask a help or favour from another Christian (Philemon 9). If we were really bound together in love as we ought to be, we would find it easy to ask and natural to give when need arose.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  (ii) The Christian love goes out to the brotherhood (I Peter 2.17). It was the astonished cry of the heathen in the early days, ‘See how these Christians love one another.’ One of the severest handicaps of the modern Church is that to the outsider it must often appear to be a company of people squabbling bitterly about nothing. A church completely enveloped in the peace of mutual love is a rare phenomenon. Such a church would not be a church where everyone thought the same and agreed on everything; it would be a church in which men could differ and still love each other. (iii) The Christian love goes out to our neighbours (Matt. 19.19; 22.39; cp. Mark 12.31 and Luke 10.27; Rom. 13.9; Gal. 5.14; James 2.8). And the definition of our neighbour is simply that our neighbour is anyone who happens to be in need. As the Roman poet said: ‘I regard no human being as a stranger.’ It is the simple fact that more people have been brought into the Church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world; and more people have been driven from the Church by the hardness and the ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all the doubts in the world. (iv) The Christian love goes out to our enemies (Luke 6.27; cp. Matt. 5.44), We have seen that Christian love means unconquerable benevolence and invincible goodwill. No matter what any man does to him, the Christian will never cease to seek that man’s nighest good. No matter how he is insulted, injured, wronged and slandered, the Christian will never hate and will never let bitterness into his heart. When Lincoln was accused of treating his opponents with too much courtesy and kindness, and when it was pointed out to him that his whole duty was to destroy them, he answered: ‘Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?’ The Christian’s only method of destroying his enemies is to love them into being his friends. We must now look at the characteristics of this Christian love. (i) Love is sincere (Rom. 12.9; II Cor. 6.6; 8.8; I Peter 1.22). It has no ulterior motive; it is not cupboard love. It is not a surface pleasantness, which cloaks an inner bitterness. It is the love which loves with open eyes and with open heart. (ii) Love is innocent (Rom. 13.10). The Christian love never injured any man. So-called love can injure in two ways. It can lead into sin. Burns said of the man whom he met when he was learning flax-dressing in Irvine: ‘His friendship did me a mischief.’ Or it can be over-possessive and over-protective. Mother love can become smother love.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In the department of theology proper Gerson has a place among the mystics.396 Mysticism he defines as "the art of love," the "perception of God through experience." Such experience is reached by humility and penance more than through the path of speculation. The contemplative life is most desirable, but, following Christ’s example, contemplation must be combined with action. The contemplation of God consists of knowledge as taught in John 17:3, "This is life eternal, to know Thee and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent." Such knowledge is mingled with love. The soul is one with God through love. His mysticism was based, on the one hand, on the study of the Scriptures and, on the other, on the study of Bonaventura and the St. Victors. He wrote a special treatise in praise of Bonaventura and his mystical writings. Far from having any conscious affinity with the German mystics, he wrote against John of Ruysbroeck and Ruysbroeck’s pupil, John of Schönhofen, charging them with pantheism. While Gerson emphasized the religious feelings, he was far from being a religious visionary and wrote treatises against the dangers of delusion from dreams and revelations. As coins must be tested by their weight, hardness, color, shape and stamp, so visions are to be tested by the humility and honesty of those who profess to have them and their readiness to teach and be taught. He commended the monk who, when some one offered to show him a figure like Christ, replied, "I do not want to see Christ on the earth. I am contented to wait till I see him in heaven." When the negotiations were going on at the Council of Constance for the confirmation of the canonization of St. Brigitta, Gerson laid down the principle that, if visions reveal what is already in the Scriptures,397 then they are false, for God does not repeat Himself, Job 33:14. People have itching ears for revelations because they do not study the Bible. Later he warned398 against the revelations of women, as women are more open to deception than men. The Scriptures, Gerson taught, are the Church’s rule and guide to the end of the world. If a single statement should be proved false, then the whole volume is false, for the Holy Spirit is author of the whole. The letter of the text, however, is not sufficient to determine their meaning, as is proved from the translations of the Waldenses, Beghards and other secretaries.399 The text needs the authority of the Church, as Augustine indicated when he said, "I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Church did not compel me."

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  • Do not share needles, whether for IV drug use, play piercing, permanent piercing, or tattooing. • Blood play: Wear gloves during any activity that may bring you in contact with a partner’s blood, such as piercing, cutting, or shaving. Be careful not to stick yourself. Dispose of sharps properly. • Dispose of gloves and condoms carefully: Turn gloves and condoms inside out as you pull them off to prevent exposure to bodily fluids. • Clean your sex toys with an antibacterial soap after every use. • Wash your hands frequently with an antibacterial soap. • If you have sex with men, use condoms for fellatio (or avoid ejaculation in the mouth). Use condoms for vaginal or anal penetration. Asking a new partner about her STD status is not foolproof either. While it’s good to know a partner’s story, you can hardly take a thorough sexual history on a first date. Even if you ask all the right questions and get all the right answers, you can’t assume that a new acquaintance is being truthful—no matter how charming she is. She may have an STD and not know it. Whether you have one partner or many, if you don’t know your partners’ sexual practices, health status, and sexual history—and their partners’ practices, health status, and history—you’d do well to practice safer sex. Of course, if you don’t know your own sexual health status (because you haven’t been tested for HIV and other STDs), you need to practice safer sex to avoid transmitting an STD to your partners. And if you know you have an STD, then you need to practice safer sex. Be PresentSex is always more gratifying when you are really there. Not skin deep, not hiding, not distracted, not anesthetized, and not suffocated under a molasses-thick blanket of shame—but fully available to engage in the moment. Whether you are flying solo, enjoying a sensual tangle with several partners, or gazing soulfully into the eyes of your one true love, it’s good to be present for the experience. Being present is the bottom line for most spiritual practices. Meditation, ritual, and prayer are all intended to bring the consciousness to the moment. What’s I love the feeling of connection I get from making love with my girlfriend. this got to do with sex? Well, many people find a powerful connection between sex and spirituality. Tantra, essentially a spiritual tradition, has become the basis for sexual techniques designed to refocus erotic energy from “slam-bam-thank-you-Ma’am” to something a bit more, well, holy. Others find sex to be a rare oasis of animal nature in our overscheduled, too civilized urban lives. When else do we permit ourselves to loll in bed in the middle of the workday? An afternoon of sex will go a long way toward reminding you that you have a body—and a great capacity for pleasure.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  [image file=image_rsrc2FK.jpg] I was quietly crazed with love for him, the way a ceramic bowl is crazed with fine cracks and lines. I felt like I could split open at any moment and it would all spill out, the jelly of my insides, like the alien in a sci-fi movie who looks like a woman but in the act of love is revealed to be a glowing column of light. He’s so good, I’d say to friends, catching them up on my news. I wanted to learn from him. His parents had been hippies, he told me. His mother had given him dolls and trucks, and he’d played soccer and saxophone and taken dance classes. His parents had tried to raise him without gender bias, and as an adolescent, he wanted to join a ballet company one day. I’d never known someone like him. My mother hoped I’d wind up a gay, ballet-dancing rock star, he laughed. She was disappointed when I turned out to be straight. Of course, there were things I wasn’t sure about. We lived on opposite sides of the country and knew each other in a once-a-month-visit kind of way. He also fantasized frequently about robbing a bank and what he could do with the money. Usually these were altruistic, Robin Hood–y fantasies, which was charming, but they were disturbingly elaborate. It didn’t seem very fun to me, daydreaming about something illicit that I didn’t want to do. Tomato, tomahto? Once, visiting his parents in New Jersey, we borrowed their car and went out to dinner. It was late summer, the end of a hot and torpid day, and Brandon half-assed his parallel-parking job. The wheels were three and a half feet from the curb, if not four, and when I suggested that he repark, he scoffed. If I get a ticket, he said, I’ll just pay it. I huffed the whole way to the restaurant. We’ll never share a bank account, I scolded. I don’t want you using my money for a parking ticket you could have avoided. He had a tendency to talk in absolutes, offering opinions and judgments with an air of immutable fact. He was prone to exaggerations and boasts. I didn’t like how big and loud he got, how he stopped listening. I’m from New Jersey! he’d explain. This is how people are in Jersey! I bit my lip. I grew up in Oklahoma—what did I know? It was easier to give in. I couldn’t tell what I was supposed to care about and what I was supposed to brush off. I’d dated around, had had one long-term boyfriend. I had enough experience to know that relationships—even romantic ones, especially romantic ones—require compromise. But what could, and should, I compromise on? How does anyone know?

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Eternal life in man consists in the knowledge of the only true God and of Jesus Christ—a knowledge which implies full sympathy and communion of love.852 It begins here in faith; hence the oft-repeated declaration that he who believes in Christ has (e[cei) eternal life.853 But it will not appear in its full development till the time of his glorious manifestation, when we shall be like him and see him even as he is.854 Faith is the medium of communication, the bond of union with Christ. Faith is the victory over the world, already here in principle.855 John’s idea of life eternal takes the place of Paul’s idea of righteousness, but both agree in the high conception of faith as the one indispensable condition of securing it by uniting us to Christ, who is both righteousness and life eternal.856 The life of the Christian, moreover, is a communion with Christ and with the Father in the Holy Spirit. Our Lord prayed before his passion that the believers of that and all future ages might be one with him, even as he is one with the Father, and that they may enjoy his glory. John writes his first Epistle for the purpose that his readers may have "fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ, and that thus their joy may be made full."857 This fellowship is only another word for love, and love to God is inseparable from love to the brethren. "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." "God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God abideth in him." Love to the brethren is the true test of practical Christianity.858 This brotherly fellowship is the true essence of the Church, which is nowhere even mentioned in John’s Gospel and First Epistle.859 Love to God and to the brethren is no mere sentiment, but an active power, and manifests itself in the keeping of God’s commandments.860 Here again John and Paul meet in the idea of love, as the highest of the Christian graces which abides forever when faith shall have passed into sight, and hope into fruition.861 Notes. The incarnation is expressed by John briefly and tersely in the phrase "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14). I. The meaning of savrx. Apollinaris confined "flesh" to the body, including the animal soul, and taught that the Logos occupied the place of the rational soul or spirit (nou'", pneu'ma) in Christ; that consequently he was not a full man, but a sort of middle being between God and man, half divine and haIf human, not wholly divine and wholly human. This view was condemned as heretical by the Nicene church, but renewed substantially by the Tübingen school, as being the doctrine of John. According to Baur (l.c., p. 363) savrx ejgeneto is not equivalent to (a[nqrwpo" ejgevneto, but means that the Logos assumed a human body and continued otherwise the same.

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  One of them would consist in thinking that intercourse between husband and wife had no other function for the Greeks in the classical period than the calculation which allied two families, two strategies, and two fortunes, and which had the sole objective of producing descendants. The Against Neaera aphorism, which seems to sharply differentiate the roles that ought to be played in a man’s life by the courtesan, the concubine, and the wife, has sometimes been read as a tripartition that implies exclusive functions: sexual pleasure on one side, everyday life on the other, and for the wife nothing more than the maintenance of the line of descent. But one has to consider the context in which this harsh-sounding maxim was formulated. It was part of a litigant’s attempt to invalidate the apparently legitimate marriage of one of his enemies, as well as the claim to citizenship of the children born of that marriage. And the arguments given had to do with the wife’s birth, her past as a prostitute, and her current status, which could only be that of a concubine. The object therefore was not to show that pleasure was to be sought elsewhere than with the legal wife, but that legitimate descendants could not be obtained except with the wife herself. This is why, as Lacey comments, it would be a mistake to interpret this text as offering a definition of three distinct roles; it is more in the nature of a cumulative enumeration, to be read as follows: pleasure is the only thing a courtesan can give; as for the concubine, she is capable of providing the satisfactions of everyday life besides; but only the wife can exercise a certain function that is owing to her special status: she can bear legitimate children and ensure the continuity of the family institution.11 It needs to be understood that in Athens marriage was not the only kind of union that was accepted; it actually formed a particular and privileged union, which alone could lead to matrimonial cohabitation and legitimate offspring. Further, there exists a good deal of evidence testifying to the value that was attached to the wife’s beauty, to the importance of the sexual relations that one might have with her, and to the existence of mutual love (as in the play of Eros and Anteros that unites Niceratus and his wife in Xenophon’s Symposium).12 The radical separation between marriage and the play of pleasures and passions is doubtless not an adequate formula for characterizing marital life in antiquity.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  And he continues his priestly functions, being our Advocate in Heaven and ready to forgive us when we sin and come to him in true repentance.837 This is the negative part of Christ’s work, the removal of the obstruction which separated us from God. The positive part consists in the revelation of the Father, and in the communication of eternal life, which includes eternal happiness. He is himself the Life and the Light of the world.838 He calls himself the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In him the true, the eternal life, which was from the beginning with the Father, appeared personally in human form. He came to communicate it to men. He is the bread of life from heaven, and feeds the believers everywhere spiritually without diminishing, as He fed the five thousand physically with five loaves. That miracle is continued in the mystical self-communication of Christ to his people. Whosoever believes in him has eternal life, which begins here in the new birth and will be completed in the resurrection of the body.839 Herein also the Apocalypse well agrees with the Gospel and Epistles of John. Christ is represented as the victor of the devil.840 He is the conquering Lion of the tribe of Judah, but also the suffering Lamb slain for us. The figure of the lamb, whether it be referred to the paschal lamb, or to the lamb in the Messianic passage of Isaiah 53:7, expresses the idea of atoning sacrifice which is fully realized in the death of Christ. He "washed" (or, according to another reading, he "loosed") "us from our sins by his blood;" he redeemed men "of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and made them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests." The countless multitude of the redeemed "washed their robes and made them white (bright and shining) in the blood of the Lamb." This implies both purification and sanctification; white garments being the symbols of holiness.841 Love was the motive which prompted him to give his life for his people.842 Great stress is laid on the resurrection, as in the Gospel, where he is called the Resurrection and the Life. The exalted Logos-Messiah has the keys of death and Hades.843 He is a sharer in the universal government of God; he is the mediatorial ruler of the world, "the Prince of the kings of the earth" "King of kings and Lord of lords."844 The apocalyptic seer likewise brings in the idea of life in its highest sense as a reward of faith in Christ to those who overcome and are faithful unto death, Christ will give "a crown of life," and a seat on his throne. He "shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life; and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes."845 IV. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Pneumatology). This is most fully set forth in the farewell discourser, of our Lord, which are reported by John exclusively.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  God is love; this John repeats twice, looking upon love as the inmost moral essence of God, which animates, directs, and holds together all other attributes; it is the motive power of his revelations or self-communications, the beginning and the end of his ways and works, the core of his manifestation in Christ. II. The doctrine of Christ’s Person. He is the eternal and the incarnate Logos or Revealer of God. No man has ever yet seen God (qeovn, without the article, God’s nature, or God as God); the only-begotten Son (or God only-begotten),822 who is in the bosom823 of the Father, he and he alone (ekei'no") declared him and brought to light, once and forever, the hidden mystery of his being.824 This perfect knowledge of the Father, Christ claims himself in that remarkable passage in Matthew 11:27, which strikingly confirms the essential harmony of the Johannean and Synoptical representations of Christ. John (and he alone) calls Christ the "Logos" of God, i.e., the embodiment of God and the organ of all his revelations.825 As the human reason or thought is expressed in word, and as the word is the medium of making our thoughts known to others, so God is known to himself and to the world in and through Christ as the personal Word. While "Logos" designates the metaphysical and intellectual relation, the term "Son" designates the moral relation of Christ to God, as a relation of love, and the epithet "only-begotten" or "only-born" (monogenhv") raises his sonship as entirely unique above every other sonship, which is only a reflection of it. It is a blessed relation of infinite knowledge and infinite love. The Logos is eternal, he is personal, he is divine.826 He was in the beginning before creation or from eternity. He is, on the one hand, distinct from God and in the closest communion with him (pro;" to;n qeovn); on the other hand he is himself essentially divine, and therefore called "God" (qeov", but not oJ qeov").827 This pre-existent Logos is the agent of the creation of all things visible and invisible.828 He is the fulness and fountain of life (hJ zwhv, the true, immortal life, as distinct from bivo", the natural, mortal life), and light (to; fw'", which includes intellectual and moral truth, reason and conscience) to all men. Whatever elements of truth, goodness, and beauty may be found shining like stars and meteors in the darkness of heathendom, must be traced to the Logos, the universal Life-giver and Illuminator. Here Paul and John meet again; both teach the agency of Christ in the creation, but John more clearly connects him with all the preparatory revelations before the incarnation. This extension of the Logos revelation explains the high estimate which some of the Greek fathers, (Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen) put upon the Hellenic, especially the Platonic philosophy, as a training-school of the heathen mind for Christ.

• From The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us (2004)

  It’s marvelous how much delight we take in our bodies. When you consider the ridiculously narrow cultural standards most people hold for female beauty, it’s truly remarkable that so many of us wholeheartedly love our bodies. Do you ever get the feeling that if you give yourself a compliment, someone will correct you? (“Dream on, girlfriend—those cellulite bags are not becoming.”) You might even think it impolite or conceited to say you find yourself gorgeous. It may seem safer to downplay the whole thing. No matter what your size, shape, age, health concerns, abilities or disabilities, HIV or STD status, you deserve to love yourself fully and unconditionally—and that includes your body. A Love/Hate RelationshipSo many of us women come to adulthood with less than perfect feelings about our bodies. Even if our families were supportive of how we looked and felt, our commodity-oriented, gender-obsessed, homophobic, and lesbophobic culture probably was not! Many of us continue to feed a love/hate relationship with our bodies. We accept and reject parts of ourselves, managing only a cafeteria-style kind of acceptance. Some days I can’t keep the internalized stuff in check. I hate it…my body. Belly’s fat. Butt ain’t big and bubbly enuff for a black girl. More breasts. Less breasts. Skin too dark. Skin too light. On these days I just can’t win! I don’t have many days like this—thank Gawd! Finding out that others love exactly the characteristics of your body you’d like to hide can be quite an awakening. That belly? That butt? You may have gotten the message that it all adds up to something less than zero—but odds are there are some women out there who’d be tickled to look just like you (and to take you to bed). Many of us come to love ourselves in spite of severe barriers—such as childhood sexual abuse, eating disorders, addiction, depression, disability, chronic or life-threatening illnesses, or harassment for our gender presentation or sexual choices. Add racism and classism, and the mix gets very thick. For us, developing a positive self-image is a lifelong process, with a fully conscious relationship with our bodies as our reward. Our self-love is hard won and thus all the more precious. Formerly ignored, stuffed and numbed with food, I love my body. What aspects of my body make me happy? That everything I have pretty much keeps me alive and kicking to enjoy another day. Body size, of course, is the most common stumbling block women mention when they talk about body image. Too fat. Too thin. We’ve been trained to measure our self-worth according to the numbers on the scale. My mother used to tell me that no one would ever find me beautiful unless I lost weight, and it wasn’t until I met the love of my life that I finally stopped believing it.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The one begins from the summit, with God and the Logos, the other from the depths of man’s sin and misery; but both meet in the God-man who brings God down to man and lifts man up to God. John is contemplative and serene, Paul is aggressive and polemical; but both unite in the victory of faith and the never-ending dominion of love. John’s theology is Christological, Paul’s soteriological; John starts from the person of Christ, Paul from his work; but their christology and soteriology are essentially agreed. John’s ideal is life eternal, Paul’s ideal is righteousness; but both derive it from the same source, the union with Christ, and find in this the highest happiness of man. John represents the church triumphant, Paul the church militant of his day and of our day, but with the full assurance of final victory even over the last enemy. The Central Idea. John’s Christianity centres in the idea of love and life, which in their last root are identical. His dogmatics are summed up in the word: God first loved us; his ethics in the exhortation: Therefore let us love Him and the brethren. He is justly called the apostle of love. Only we must not understand this word in a sentimental, but in the highest and purest moral sense. God’s love is his self-communication to man; man’s love is a holy self-consecration to God. We may recognize—in rising stages of transformation—the same fiery spirit in the Son of Thunder who called vengeance from heaven; in the Apocalyptic seer who poured out the vials of wrath against the enemies of Christ; and in the beloved disciple who knew no middle ground, but demanded undivided loyalty and whole-souled devotion to his Master. In him the highest knowledge and the highest love coincide: knowledge is the eye of love, love the heart of knowledge; both constitute eternal life, and eternal life is the fulness of happiness.819 The central truth of John and the central fact in Christianity itself is the incarnation of the eternal Logos as the highest manifestation of God’s love to the world. The denial of this truth is the criterion of Antichrist.820 The Principal Doctrines. I. The doctrine of God. He is spirit (pneu'ma), he is light (fw'") he is love (ajgavph).821 These are the briefest and yet the profoundest definitions which can be given of the infinite Being of all beings. The first is put into the mouth of Christ, the second and third are from the pen of John. The first sets forth God’s metaphysical, the second his intellectual, the third his moral perfection; but they are blended in one. God is spirit, all spirit, absolute spirit (in opposition to every materialistic conception and limitation); hence omnipresent, all-pervading, and should be worshipped, whether in Jerusalem or Gerizim or anywhere else, in spirit and in truth. God is light, all light without a spot of darkness, and the fountain of all light, that is of truth, purity, and holiness.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Thomas very clearly states the consequences of Christ’s atonement. The first is that thereby man comes to know how great the love of God is, and is provoked to love God in return.1801 By the cross Christ set an example of humility, righteousness, and other virtues. He also taught men the necessity of keeping free from sin, overcoming the devil, and conquering death by dying to sin and the world. God might have pardoned man without the satisfaction of the cross, for all things are possible with Him. This was in opposition to Anselm’s position that God could have redeemed man in no other way than by the cross. Bonaventura went further in opposition to Anselm and distinctly asserted that God could have liberated and saved the race otherwise than He did. He might have saved it by the way of pity—per viam misericordiae —in distinction from the way of justice. And in choosing this way he would have done no injury to the claims of justice.1802 His chapter on this subject he closes with the words, "It would be dangerous for me to put a limit on God’s power to redeem, for He is able to do above what we are able to think." No distinction was made by the mediaeval theologians between the doctrine of justification and the doctrine of sanctification, such as is made by Protestant theologians. Justification was treated as a part of the process of making the sinner righteous, and not as a judicial sentence by which he was declared to be righteous. Sanctification was so thoroughly involved in the sacramental system that we must look for its treatment in the chapters on the seven sacraments, the instrumentalities of sanctification; or under the head of the Christian virtues, faith, hope, and love, as in Bonaventura’s treatment.1803 Thomas Aquinas discusses it under the head of the atonement and in special chapters entitled "the division of grace,"1804 by which he means the distinction between prevenient, or preparatory, and cooperant grace,—gratia gratis data, or the grace which is given freely, and the gratis gratum faciens, or the grace which makes righteous. Justification, says Thomas, is an infusion of grace.1805 Four things are required for the justification of the sinner: the infusion of grace, the movement of the freewill to God in faith, the act of the freewill against sin, and the remission of sins. As a person, turning his back upon one place and receding from it, reaches another place, so in justification the will made free at once hates sin and turns itself to God.

• From Wild (2012)

  “We aren’t poor,” my mother said, again and again. “Because we’re rich in love.” She would mix food coloring into sugar water and pretend with us that it was a special drink. Sarsaparilla or Orange Crush or lemonade. She’d ask, Would you like another drink, madam? in a snooty British voice that made us laugh every time. She would spread her arms wide and ask us how much and there would never be an end to the game. She loved us more than all the named things in the world. She was optimistic and serene, except a few times when she lost her temper and spanked us with a wooden spoon. Or the one time when she screamed FUCK and broke down crying because we wouldn’t clean our room. She was kindhearted and forgiving, generous and naïve. She dated men with names like Killer and Doobie and Motorcycle Dan and one guy named Victor who liked to downhill ski. They would give us five-dollar bills to buy candy from the store so they could be alone in the apartment with our mom. “Look both ways,” she’d call after us as we fled like a pack of hungry dogs. When she met Eddie, she didn’t think it would work because he was eight years younger than she, but they fell in love anyway. Karen and Leif and I fell in love with him too. He was twenty-five when we met him and twenty-seven when he married our mother and promised to be our father; a carpenter who could make and fix anything. We left the apartment complexes with fancy names and moved with him into a rented ramshackle farmhouse that had a dirt floor in the basement and four different colors of paint on the outside. The winter after my mother married him, Eddie fell off a roof on the job and broke his back. A year later, he and my mom took the twelve-thousand-dollar settlement he received and with it bought forty acres of land in Aitkin County, an hour and a half west of Duluth, paying for it outright in cash.

• From Wild (2012)

  I was her daughter, but more. I was Karen, Cheryl, Leif. Karen Cheryl Leif. KarenCherylLeif. Our names blurred into one in my mother’s mouth all my life. She whispered it and hollered it, hissed it and crooned it. We were her kids, her comrades, the end of her and the beginning. We took turns riding shotgun with her in the car. “Do I love you this much?” she’d ask us, holding her hands six inches apart. “No,” we’d say, with sly smiles. “Do I love you this much?” she’d ask again, and on and on and on, each time moving her hands farther apart. But she would never get there, no matter how wide she stretched her arms. The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified or contained. It was the ten thousand named things in the Tao Te Ching’s universe and then ten thousand more. Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve. She grew up an army brat and Catholic. She lived in five different states and two countries before she was fifteen. She loved horses and Hank Williams and had a best friend named Babs. Nineteen and pregnant, she married my father. Three days later, he knocked her around the room. She left and came back. Left and came back. She would not put up with it, but she did. He broke her nose. He broke her dishes. He skinned her knees dragging her down a sidewalk in broad daylight by her hair. But he didn’t break her. By twenty-eight she managed to leave him for the last time. She was alone, with KarenCherylLeif riding shotgun in her car. By then we lived in a small town an hour outside of Minneapolis in a series of apartment complexes with deceptively upscale names: Mill Pond and Barbary Knoll, Tree Loft and Lake Grace Manor. She had one job, then another. She waited tables at a place called the Norseman and then a place called Infinity, where her uniform was a black T-shirt that said GO FOR IT in rainbow glitter across her chest. She worked the day shift at a factory that manufactured plastic containers capable of holding highly corrosive chemicals and brought the rejects home. Trays and boxes that had been cracked or clipped or misaligned in the machine. We made them into toys—beds for our dolls, ramps for our cars. She worked and worked and worked, and still we were poor. We received government cheese and powdered milk, food stamps and medical assistance cards, and free presents from do-gooders at Christmastime. We played tag and red light green light and charades by the apartment mailboxes that you could open only with a key, waiting for checks to arrive.

• From When Breath Becomes Air (2016)

  Most of our family and friends will have been unaware, until the publication of this book, of the marital trouble Paul and I weathered toward the end of his residency. But I am glad Paul wrote about it. It’s part of our truth, another redefinition, a piece of the struggle and redemption and meaning of Paul’s life and mine. His cancer diagnosis was like a nutcracker, getting us back into the soft, nourishing meat of our marriage. We hung on to each other for his physical survival and our emotional survival, our love stripped bare. We each joked to close friends that the secret to saving a relationship is for one person to become terminally ill. Conversely, we knew that one trick to managing a terminal illness is to be deeply in love—to be vulnerable, kind, generous, grateful. A few months after his diagnosis, we sang the hymn “The Servant Song” while standing side by side in a church pew, and the words vibrated with meaning as we faced uncertainty and pain together: “I will share your joy and sorrow / Till we’ve seen this journey through.” When Paul told me, immediately after his diagnosis, to remarry after he died, it exemplified the way he would, throughout his illness, work hard to secure my future. He was fiercely committed to ensuring the best for me, in our finances, my career, what motherhood would mean. At the same time, I worked hard to secure his present, to make his remaining time the best it could be, tracking and managing every symptom and aspect of his medical care—the most important doctoring role of my life—while supporting his ambitions, listening to his whispered fears as we embraced in the safety of our darkened bedroom, witnessing, acknowledging, accepting, comforting. We were as inseparable as we had been as medical students, when we would hold hands during lectures. Now we held hands in his coat pocket during walks outside after chemotherapy, Paul in a winter coat and hat even when the weather turned warm. He knew he would never be alone, never suffer unnecessarily. At home in bed a few weeks before he died, I asked him, “Can you breathe okay with my head on your chest like this?” His answer was “It’s the only way I know how to breathe.” That Paul and I formed part of the deep meaning of each other’s lives is one of the greatest blessings that has ever come to me.