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

  The difference between the Christian teaching and what preceded it is this, that the preceding social teaching said: "Live contrary to your nature (meaning only the animal nature), subordinate it to the external law of the family, the society, the state;" but Christianity says: "Live in accordance with your nature (meaning the divine nature), subordinating it to nothing,—neither to your own, nor to anybody else's animal nature,—and you will attain what you are striving after by subordinating your external nature to external laws." The Christian teaching takes man back to the primitive consciousness of self, not of self—the animal, but of self—God, the divine spark, of self—the son of God, of just such a God as the Father himself, but included in an animal integument. And the recognition of self as this son of God, whose chief quality is love, satisfies also all those demands for the widening of the sphere of love, to which the man of the social conception of life was brought. There, with a greater and ever greater widening of the sphere of love for the salvation of the personality, love was a necessity and was applied to certain objects,—self, the family, society, humanity; with the Christian conception of life, love is not a necessity and is not adapted to anything, but is an essential quality of man's soul. Man does not love because it is advantageous for him to love this man or these men, but because love is the essence of his soul,—because he cannot help loving. The Christian teaching consists in pointing out to man that the essence of his soul is love, that his good is derived not from the fact that he will love this or that man, but from the fact that he will love the beginning of everything, God, whom he recognizes in himself through love, and so will love everybody and everything. In this does the fundamental difference between the Christian teaching and the teaching of the positivists and of all the theorists of the non-Christian universal brotherhood consist. Such are the two chief misconceptions concerning the Christian teaching, from which originate the majority of the false opinions in regard to it. One is, that, like the preceding teachings, Christ's teaching inculcates rules, which men are obliged to follow, and that these rules are impracticable; the other is, that the whole significance of Christianity consists in the teaching about the advantageous cohabitation of humanity, as one family, for which, without mentioning the love of God, it is necessary only to follow the rule of love toward humanity. The false opinion of the scientific men, that the teaching of the supernatural forms the essence of the Christian teaching, and that Christ's vital teaching is impracticable, together with the misconception which arises from this false opinion, forms the second cause why Christianity is not understood by the men of our time. V.Table of ContentsThere are many causes for the failure to comprehend Christ's teaching.

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

  The error of judgment consists in this, that the social life-conception, on which is based the love of family and of country, is built on the love of personality, and that this love, being transferred from the personality to the family, the race, the nationality, the state, keeps growing weaker and weaker, and in the state reaches its extreme limit, beyond which it cannot go. The necessity for widening the sphere of love is incontestable; but at the same time this very necessity for its widening in reality destroys the possibility of love and proves the insufficiency of the personal, the human love. And here the preachers of the positivist, communistic, socialistic brotherhoods, to succour the human love, which has proved insufficient, propose the Christian love,—in its consequences alone, and not in its foundations: they propose the love of humanity alone, without the love of God. But there can be no such love. There exists no motive for it. Christian love results only from the Christian conception of life, according to which the meaning of life consists in the love of God and in serving Him. By a natural progression, from the love of self to the love of family, of the race, of the nation, of the state, the social conception of life has brought men to the consciousness of the necessity for a love of humanity, which has no limits and blends with everything in existence,—to something which evokes no sensations in man; it has brought them to a contradiction, which cannot be solved by the social conception of life. Only the Christian teaching in all its significance, by giving a new meaning to life, solves it. Christianity recognizes the love of self, and of the family, and of the nation, and of humanity,—not only of humanity, but of everything living, of everything in existence; it recognizes the necessity for an endless widening of the sphere of love; but the object of this love it does not find outside of self, or in the aggregate of personalities,—in the family, the race, the state, humanity, in the whole external world, but in oneself, in one's personality,—which, however, is a divine personality, the essence of which is the same love, to the necessity of widening which the animal personality was brought, in saving itself from the consciousness of its perdition.

• From The Vagina Monologues (1998)

  All this shit they’re constantly trying to shove up us, clean us up—stuff us up, make it go away. Well, my vagina’s not going away. It’s pissed off and it’s staying right here. Like tampons—what the hell is that? A wad of dry fucking cotton stuffed up there. Why can’t they find a way to subtly lubricate the tampon? As soon as my vagina sees it, it goes into shock. It says, Forget it. It closes up. You need to work with the vagina, introduce it to things, prepare the way. That’s what foreplay’s all about. You got to convince my vagina, seduce my vagina, engage my vagina’s trust. You can’t do that with a dry wad of fucking cotton. Stop shoving things up me. Stop shoving and stop cleaning it up. My vagina doesn’t need to be cleaned up. It smells good already. Not like rose petals. Don’t try to decorate. Don’t believe him when he tells you it smells like rose petals when it’s supposed to smell like pussy. That’s what they’re doing—trying to clean it up, make it smell like bathroom spray or a garden. All those douche sprays—floral, berry, rain. I don’t want my pussy to smell like rain. All cleaned up like washing a fish after you cook it. Want to taste the fish. That’s why I ordered it. Then there’s those exams. Who thought them up? There’s got to be a better way to do those exams. Why the scary paper dress that scratches your tits and crunches when you lie down so you feel like a wad of paper someone threw away? Why the rubber gloves? Why the flashlight all up there like Nancy Drew working against gravity, why the Nazi steel stirrups, the mean cold duck lips they shove inside you? What’s that? My vagina’s angry about those visits. It gets defended weeks in advance. It shuts down, won’t “relax.” Don’t you hate that? “Relax your vagina, relax your vagina.” Why? My vagina’s not stupid. Relax so you can shove those cold duck lips inside it? I don’t think so. Why can’t they find some nice, delicious purple velvet and wrap it around me, lay me down on some feathery cotton spread, put on some nice, friendly pink or blue gloves, and rest my feet in some fur-covered stirrups? Warm up the duck lips. Work with my vagina. But no, more tortures: dry wad of fucking cotton, cold duck lips, and thong underwear. That’s the worst. Thong underwear. Who thought that up? Moves around all the time, gets stuck in the back of your vagina, real crusty butt.

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

  Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink, or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof (Matt. vi. 25-34). Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is there will your heart be also (Luke xii. 33-34). Go and sell that thou hast, and follow me, and who hath not forsaken father or mother, or children, or brethren, or fields, or house, cannot be my disciple. Turn away from thyself, take thy cross for every day, and come after me. My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to do His work. Not my will be done, but Thine; not what I want, but what Thou wantest, and not as I want, but as Thou wantest. The life is in this, not to do one's will, but the will of God. All these propositions seem to men who are standing on a lower life-conception to be an expression of an ecstatic transport, which has no direct applicability to life. And yet these propositions just as strictly result from the Christian conception of life as the tenet about giving up one's labour for the common good, about sacrificing one's life in the defence of one's country, results from the social conception. Just as a man of the social life-conception says to a savage, "Come to your senses, bethink yourself! The life of your personality cannot be the true life, because it is wretched and transitory. Only the life of the aggregate and of the sequence of personalities, of the tribe, the family, the race, the state, is continued and lives, and so a man must sacrifice his personality for the life of the family, the state." Precisely the same the Christian teaching says to a man of the aggregate, of the social conception of life.

• From The Vagina Monologues (1998)

  “Right here.” I waved. “I’m right here.” Then he began to undress me. “What are you doing, Bob?” I said. “I need to see you,” he replied. “No need,” I said. “Just dive in.” “I need to see what you look like,” he said. “But you’ve seen a red leather couch before,” I said. Bob continued. He would not stop. I wanted to throw up and die. “This is awfully intimate,” I said. “Can’t you just dive in?” “No,” he said. “It’s who you are. I need to look.” I held my breath. He looked and looked. He gasped and smiled and stared and groaned. He got breathy and his face changed. He didn’t look ordinary anymore. He looked like a hungry, beautiful beast. “You’re so beautiful,” he said. “You’re elegant and deep and innocent and wild.” “You saw that there?” I said. It was like he read my palm. “I saw that,” he said, “and more—much, much more.” He stayed looking for almost an hour, as if he were studying a map, observing the moon, staring into my eyes, but it was my vagina. In the light, I watched him looking at me, and he was so genuinely excited, so peaceful and euphoric, I began to get wet and turned on. I began to see myself the way he saw me. I began to feel beautiful and delicious—like a great painting or a waterfall. Bob wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t grossed out. I began to swell, began to feel proud. Began to love my vagina. And Bob lost himself there and I was there with him, in my vagina, and we were gone. MY VAGINA WAS MY VILLAGEFor the women of BosniaMy vagina was green, water soft pink fields, cow mooing sun resting sweet boyfriend touching lightly with soft piece of blond straw. There is something between my legs. I do not know what it is. I do not know where it is. I do not touch. Not now. Not anymore. Not since. My vagina was chatty, can’t wait, so much, so much saying, words talking, can’t quit trying, can’t quit saying, oh yes, oh yes. Not since I dream there’s a dead animal sewn in down there with thick black fishing line. And the bad dead animal smell cannot be removed. And its throat is slit and it bleeds through all my summer dresses. My vagina singing all girl songs, all goat bells ringing songs, all wild autumn field songs, vagina songs, vagina home songs. Not since the soldiers put a long thick rifle inside me. So cold, the steel rod canceling my heart. Don’t know whether they’re going to fire it or shove it through my spinning brain. Six of them, monstrous doctors with black masks shoving bottles up me too. There were sticks, and the end of a broom. My vagina swimming river water, clean spilling water over sun-baked stones over stone clit, clit stones over and over.

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

  A pagan, a social man, no longer recognizes life in himself alone, but in the aggregate of personalities,—in the tribe, the family, the race, the state,—and sacrifices his personal good for these aggregates. The prime mover of his life is glory. His religion consists in the glorification of the heads of unions,—of eponyms, ancestors, kings, and in the worship of gods, the exclusive protectors of his family, his race, his nation, his state. [9] The man with the divine life-conception no longer recognizes life to consist in his personality, or in the aggregate of personalities (in the family, the race, the people, the country, or the state), but in the source of the everlasting, immortal life, in God; and to do God's will he sacrifices his personal and domestic and social good. The prime mover of his religion is love. And his religion is the worship in deed and in truth of the beginning of everything, of God. The whole historical life of humanity is nothing but a gradual transition from the personal, the animal life-conception, to the social, and from the social to the divine. The whole history of the ancient nations, which lasted for thousands of years and which came to a conclusion with the history of Rome, is the history of the substitution of the social and the political life-conception for the animal, the personal. The whole history since the time of imperial Rome and the appearance of Christianity has been the history of the substitution of the divine life-conception for the political, and we are passing through it even now. It is this last life-conception, and the Christian teaching which is based upon it and which governs our whole life and lies at the foundation of our whole activity, both the practical and the theoretical, that the men of so-called science, considering it in reference to its external signs only, recognize as something obsolete and meaningless for us. This teaching, which, according to the men of science, is contained only in its dogmatic part,—in the doctrine of the Trinity, the redemption, the miracles, the church, the sacraments, and so forth,—is only one out of a vast number of religions which have arisen in humanity, and now, having played its part in history, is outliving its usefulness, melting in the light of science and true culture. What is taking place is what in the majority of cases serves as a source of the coarsest human errors,—men who are standing on a lower level of comprehension, coming in contact with phenomena of a higher order, instead of making efforts to understand them, instead of rising to the point of view from which they ought to look upon a subject, judge it from their lower point of view, and that, too, with greater daring and determination the less they understand what they are talking about.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  The nightingale cannot withstand so many joys And sings, and we are reconciled. Our warm bodies touch, Cane branch and pine branch, Our boat floats in toward the bank. 12. Blackness. The night is black And I am excited about you. My love climbs in me, and you ask That I should climb to the higher room. Things are hidden in a black night. Even the dream is black On the black-lacquered pillow, Even our talk is hidden. 13. Models. Butterfly Or falling leaf, Which ought I to imitate In my dancing? 14. Ghosts. Midnight uncalm shadows Creaking the willow. I am afraid. This firefly That has come to rest on my sleeve. How strange it is, How strange it all is. 15. Snow Dance. The snow dances endlessly, The snow falls in a whirlwind Endlessly. The wind-screen being put up Provides our coming together. Our bed of triple down With its silk embroidered in butterflies and peewees, My young lover. The perch-bird with the tender bill Comes back to perch. 16. Cats. With no care for duty or people Or Strange looks or the opinion of other cats, One Striped and the other white Go on the edge of the roof Or climb to the ridge of it. Driven by the need of love Which is Stronger than death. One day the wind of Autumn shall come And they will not know each other. My soul, I envy the love of cats. 17. Night Waiting. I have waited all night. It is midnight and I burn for love. Towards dawn I pillow my head on my folded arms In case I may see him in dream. I hate these blustering birds. 18. Intimacy. Two in their little room Far from other people and from life. The silence of boiling water, And she says: 'Listen to the wind In the pine tops. 19. Small Hours. Midnight has passed and she wakes And looks to left and right, There is no one. She only sees the long sleeve of her nightgown To left and right. 20. Knots in the Bamboo. The nightingale Climbing a bamboo Stem Sings his love at every knot, At every knot of it. The season of long night is coming When the leaves of the sainfoin redden. I weep at every midnight. 21. The Letter. If there were no moon I would read it by the Winter snow light, Or in Summer by the fireflies, Or if there were no moon or snow or fireflies I would read it by the light of my heart. 22. Spring all in Flower. Spring all in flower And the dark Stain of the pine forest On the watershed of the Sumida. The gracious cherry trees reflected In that deep water, which is love. To-day two Chinese ducks Float in the thread of the current, And I too am married. 23. Feast of Kamo.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  The monk stared at her in alarm. ‘God forbid, dear niece, that in your grief you should do away with yourself. Tell me everything. I may be able to help or counsel you. Confide in me. I promise never to betray you. I swear on my breviary here that I will never repeat anything you say. I will remain as silent as any stone.’ ‘I make the same oath,’ she replied. She put her hand upon his breviary. ‘May I be torn to pieces by wild men. May I be condemned to hell itself. I will never betray your confidence. Not because you are my cousin. But because you are my true and trusted friend.’ So they swore their oath, and gave each other the kiss of peace. Then they started to talk. ‘Dear cousin,’ she began, ‘if I had time and opportunity, I would tell you now the story of my married life. I have been a martyr to that man you call your cousin.’ ‘No, no, you are wrong,’ he replied. ‘He is no more my cousin than the leaf on that tree. I only called him that so I had an excuse to visit this house. And to see you. I confess to you now that I have loved you from the first moment I saw you. I swear this on my profession as a monk. Explain to me now what you have suffered at his hands. Tell me quickly, before he returns.’

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  I’m not worried about you sharing the orange juice.” Yale said, “Thank you. I can’t believe you’re being this good to me.” “Look, I know how I can come off. To get by in my job, as a woman, I have to be a certain way. But I genuinely like you.” She refilled his scotch, and he was glad. He said, “It’s been a long time since I had a day that just cuts your life in two. Like, this hangnail on my thumb, I had it yesterday. It’s the same hangnail, and I’m a completely different person.” The scotch was helping him talk. He wasn’t sure why he trusted Cecily, but he did. They’d done nothing but embarrass themselves in front of each other. Well, wasn’t that how fraternities made kids bond? If they puked enough beer on each other, they were tethered for life. Cecily said, “I’ve had days like that. Nothing this bad, but before-and-after days.” Yale didn’t know what path Cecily’s divorce had taken, but he imagined it was true. “A change of scene is probably good. You’re not around everything that reminds you. You know, if he’d walked out—” “Right.” “Then you’re left with all his things.” Charlie was the one surrounded by Yale’s things. Charlie was sitting on the bed they’d shared, and beside him was Yale’s pillow, and in the closet were Yale’s clothes. But Yale didn’t feel pity, just gratification. Let him be miserable. Let him hate himself as he publishes hypocritical articles about condom distribution. He couldn’t quite get to Let him be sick . Of course he didn’t want that. Maybe he wanted Charlie to suffer before the doctors came back and said it was a false positive. He wanted him to worry for six months until the researchers suddenly announced a cure. He said to Cecily, “This disease has magnified all our mistakes. Some stupid thing you did when you were nineteen, the one time you weren’t careful. And it turns out that was the most important day of your life. Like, Charlie and I could get past it, if he’d just cheated. I’d probably never find out. Or we’d fight and make up. But instead, an atom bomb went off. There’s no undoing it.” She said, quietly, “Doesn’t he need you? I mean, when he gets sick, don’t you think that might change things?” “I could get sick before he does. This thing doesn’t follow a predictable timeline. And if I do, I don’t know that he’s the one I want holding my hand.” “Fair enough.” It was something he hadn’t known for sure until he said it aloud. Cecily said, “You can stay as long as you need. A few days, a few weeks. Kurt could use a male figure around. Lord knows his father isn’t much of one.” —Before bed, he called home. The first five times, there was no answer. The sixth, Teresa picked up.

• From Maybe You Should Talk to Someone (2019)

  “Unless someone’s dying,” he’d told them, quoting Margo, “find a way to handle it yourselves.” They weren’t complete idiots, he assured himself. The show was doing well. They could manage whatever came up. It was three fucking days. Now, making up silly songs in the car, John glanced over at Margo. She was laughing the way she’d laughed with him at the party where they’d met. He hadn’t seen her laugh like that in—well, he couldn’t remember how long. She placed her hand on his neck, and he melted into it, responding in a way he hadn’t in—again, he couldn’t remember how long. The kids were jabbering away in the back. He felt a sense of peace, and an image popped into his mind. He imagined that his mom was looking down from heaven or wherever the hell she was, smiling at how well things had turned out for her youngest son, the one he’d always believed was her favorite. Here John was, with his wife and kids, now a successful television writer, heading to Legoland in a car full of laughter and love. He remembered sitting in the back seat himself as a young boy, squeezed in the middle between his two older brothers, his parents in the front, his dad driving, his mom riding shotgun and navigating, all of them making up song lyrics and laughing their heads off. He remembered trying to keep up with his older brothers when it was his turn to add a line, and how his mom delighted in his wordplay. “So precocious!” she’d exclaim each time. John didn’t know what precocious meant. He assumed it was a fancy way of saying “precious”—and he knew that, to his mom, he was the most precious of the boys, not the “mistake” his brothers teasingly called him because he was so much younger than they were but instead, as his mom said, a “special surprise.” He remembered seeing his mom put her hand on the back of his father’s neck, and now Margo was doing this for him. He felt optimistic; he and Margo would find their way back to each other. Then John’s phone rang. The ringing phone was sitting on the console between him and Margo. John glanced at it. Margo gave him the death stare. John remembered his instructions to his staff to call only in case of emergency—unless someone’s dying. He knew that today’s shoot was on location. Had something gone wrong? “Don’t,” Margo said. “I just need to check who it is,” John replied. “God damn it,” Margo hissed, the first time she’d sworn in front of the kids. “Don’t ‘God damn it’ me,” John hissed back. “We’ve been away only two hours,” Margo said, her voice rising, “and you promised you wouldn’t do this!” The kids went silent, and so did the phone. The call had gone to voicemail. John sighed.

• From man s search for meaning (1946)

  A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive. I knew only one thing—which I have learned well by now: Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. “Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.” This intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. When given free rein, his imagination played with past events, often not important ones, but minor happenings and trifling things. His nostalgic memory glorified them and they assumed a strange character. Their world and their existence seemed very distant and the spirit reached out for them longingly: In my mind I took bus rides, unlocked the front door of my apartment, answered my telephone, switched on the electric lights. Our thoughts often centered on such details, and these memories could move one to tears. As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances. If someone had seen our faces on the journey from Auschwitz to a Bavarian camp as we beheld the mountains of Salzburg with their summits glowing in the sunset, through the little barred windows of the prison carriage, he would never have believed that those were the faces of men who had given up all hope of life and liberty. Despite that factor—or maybe because of it—we were carried away by nature’s beauty, which we had missed for so long.

• From The Work of Theology (2015)

  For example, some years ago I wrote an essay titled “A Tale of Two Stories: On Being a Christian and a Texan.”12 The essay begins by acknowledging that I want to entertain my reader while doing what I take to be serious intellectual work. I wrote the essay first and foremost to honor my parents in the hope that if they read the essay they would recognize how deeply I valued the way they had formed me to be a Texan without regret.13 I assumed such training was the necessary condition to be a human being. I also wrote the essay for my own amusement because in it I was able to use William Humphrey’s great novel, The Ordways, to elicit what it means to be a Texan. The novel, moreover, is filled with stories of Texans trying to make it in a hard land, stories that are at once humorous and sad. The serious intellectual work the essay was meant to do was to respond to the criticism that a focus on narrative as a basic grammar of Christian speech fails to appropriately acknowledge that no one narrative can or should constitute our lives. “On Being a Christian and a Texan” was my way to show how different stories work to shape our lives. I also wanted to show how the different stories that possess us can be judged more or less truthful by suggesting how the narrative(s) generally recognized as Christian makes how the stories of Texas must be told as well as lived. The great trick is how the injustice that is inherent in the stories that are Texas can be remembered without their being justified. I should like to think not only that “A Tale of Two Stories” is entertaining but that it is so exactly because it is serious theology. Then, of course, there is my semi-famous essay, “Why Gays (as a Group) Are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group).”14 That short essay was meant to be funny by reframing the question of gay relationships in terms of their (at the time) doubtful status in the military. By raising the question about why Christians could not accomplish the feat of being banned from the military as a group I was trying to suggest how arguments about gays depended on the accommodated character of contemporary Christianity in America. But if Christians as followers of Christ found themselves banned from the military as a group then arguments about gay participation in the church would be quite different. But enough about me. There is much more to be said about why theology needs to be funny. In particular I want to call attention to the theologian I think may be the “funniest” in the Christian tradition, namely, Karl Barth. Before doing so, however, I need to prepare the ground for Barth’s humor by calling attention to a philosophical analysis of jokes.

• From Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

  You’ve heard toasts to the new couple and the opening bars of “Brown Eyed Girl.” Here’s what I want you to see at our wedding reception: See table five, where Dr. Rosen and his wife sit flanked by Max, Lorne, Patrice, and their spouses. See table six ringed with the women from my Tuesday-afternoon group. See table seven, where Rory, Marty, and Carlos pass pasta and fish to one another. See each of them embrace me throughout the night, wishing me well, and holding me tight—just as they always have. From the miracle department, please see Reed and his wife, Miranda, weaving through the crowd toward me after the second course. Congratulations , they say. See me hug them both, dumbfounded at what the human heart can do, how it can surprise and delight, how it can rejoin, regenerate, forgive, and connect across oceans of hurt, canyons of loneliness. Thank you for coming. It means so much to me. Most weddings are a blending of families like my Texas Catholic clan and John’s Jewish family from the West Coast. Every dance floor at every wedding is a blur of bodies, some that belong to one side and some that belong to the other. As John’s family members scooped me into a chair and lifted me above their heads for the hora, I saw our reception from above. My parents and siblings gamely clapping along on one side, absorbing a custom that didn’t belong to them. Dr. Rosen and his wife amid a throng of his patients, linked arm in arm as they circled us, singing the words they knew by heart. Jeff’s brother, parents, and cousins waving their napkins in the air. As “Hava Nagila” played on, the chaotic, joyous scene below me became a collage of loving faces and arms holding me and John up. In the weeks leading up to my wedding, I asked Dr. Rosen if we could share a dance during the wedding. I wanted to honor the work I’d done with him in group that made my life with John and our baby possible. “I don’t want to step on your father’s toes.” “Don’t worry, of course my father will get his own dance. Ours can be later. A traditional, mid-reception, therapist-patient waltz.” “Talk about it in your groups.” The more I discussed it, the more I wanted to dance with Dr. Rosen. I wanted to commemorate that I’d showed up for hundreds of therapy sessions and was no longer the isolated young woman with nothing but billable hours in her future. After all the crying, gnashing, rending, and screaming, it was now time to dance. I wanted to dance. Right after John and I got engaged, Clare asked me if I would have eventually ended up with John even if I hadn’t gone to group all these years. I said, I doubt it, but what I really mean to say was No fucking way.

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

  “Well, I finally know why. I wasn’t aware of it until tonight, but while I was speaking I realized I have held a belief close to my heart and I have guarded it like Fort Knox. I realized I don’t trust men. It started with my dad, then the youth pastor added to it, and then when we went through the infidelity and the porn you added to it. But I realized that part of me needed you to do some of the things you did. It’s what I believed men do. I believed it so deeply that unknowingly I may have played a part in our marital difficulties.” “Kaycie, no, I can’t let you own my mistakes, not one drop of it.” “James, I understand, but for me to really heal I have to own the fact I have held that belief in my heart and even Scripture says, “As a man or woman believes so shall it be.” I looked for ways to push you away. I wanted an excuse to not be intimate with you. I wanted you to leave me alone instead of sharing myself with you. I have withheld from you. And that’s on me.” Tears filled her eyes; truth felt hard but freeing. “James, I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to give myself to you like it’s our first time together. Would you make love to me?” James cocked his head to the side as his eyes widened. “Um, yeah, I would be thrilled to.” The tease of his smile warmed Kaycie’s heart. She knew he was a changed man and no longer wanted the type of sex where his head was filled with images of other women and where he wasn’t present but was using her body for a sexual release. She could feel the difference in him and had felt it for months. He was a changed man and she was a changed woman. The hell they went through, the trauma, had led them both to face the brokenness of their lives and now there was redemption. With this new truth, Kaycie stood up, reached for his hand, and led him to the bedroom. The next morning Kaycie quietly wrapped her robe around her contented body and headed to the back porch for a moment by herself before James woke and the kids came home from her mother’s house. She lifted her eyes to the vast Texas morning sky, slashed with emerging colors defining the day ahead. “So God, this is what I have been missing all of these years? Wow, I had no idea this is what you had in mind for a husband and wife. Pure sexual joy—thank you for the work you have done to bring us to this place. Thank you for taking what the enemy planned to use to destroy us and using it for good.”

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Part Three [image file=image_rsrcW2.jpg] THIS MEDICINE, LOVEAn Officer and a Gentleman [image file=image_rsrcW1.jpg] There was a time when I honestly believed that there was only a certain amount of pain one had to go through in life. Because manic-depressive illness had brought such misery and uncertainty in its wake, I presumed life should therefore be kinder to me in other, more balancing ways. But then I also had believed that I could fly through starfields and slide along the rings of Saturn. Perhaps my judgment left something to be desired. Robert Lowell, often crazy but rarely stupid, knew better than to assume a straight shot at happiness: If we see a light at the end of the tunnel, he said, it’s the light of an oncoming train. For a while—courtesy of lithium, time’s passing, and the love of a tall, handsome Englishman—I caught a glimpse of what I imagined to be the light at the end of the tunnel, and I could feel, however elusively, what seemed to be the return of a warm and secure existence. I learned how marvelously the mind can heal, given half a chance, and how patience and gentleness can put back together the pieces of a horribly shattered world. What God had put asunder, an elemental salt, a first-rank psychiatrist, and a man’s kindness and love could put almost right again. I met David my first year on the faculty at UCLA. It was early in 1975, six months after I had gone barkingly manic, and my brain had gradually knit itself into a rather brittle, but vaguely coherent, version of its former self. My mind was skating on thin ice, my emotions were completely frayed, and most of my true existence was lived within the narrow range of very long-cast inner shadows. But my overt actions were within the conservative range of my so-called normal colleagues, so—at least professionally speaking—all was ostensibly well. On this particular day I had unlocked the door to the inpatient ward with my usual sense of annoyance—not because of the patients, but because there was a staff meeting scheduled, which meant that the nurses would be venting their collective spleen on the psychiatric residents, who would, in turn, be irritatingly secure in their knowledge that they had the final authority and higher degrees; the ward chief, who was hopelessly ineffectual, would allow the resentments, envies, and personal animosities to completely dominate the meetings. Patient care, on that particular ward, often took a backseat to staff neuroses, internecine wars, and self-indulgence. Having procrastinated as long as I could, I walked into the conference room, looked for a chair out of the line of fire, and sat down to see how the inevitable unpleasantries would unfold.

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

  Her affectionate son says in one of the poems in which he extols her piety and her blessed end: "Bewail, O mortals, the mortal race; but when one dies, like Nonna, praying, then weep I not." Gregory was early instructed in the Holy Scriptures and in the rudiments of science. He soon conceived a special predilection for the study of oratory, and through the influence of his mother, strengthened by a dream,1968 he determined on the celibate life, that he might devote himself without distraction to the kingdom of God. Like the other church teachers of this period, he also gave this condition the preference, and extolled it in orations and poems, though without denying the usefulness and divine appointment of marriage. His father, and his friend Gregory of Nyssa were among the few bishops who lived in wedlock. From his native town he went for his further education to Caesarea in Cappadocia, where he probably already made a preliminary acquaintance with Basil; then to Caesarea in Palestine, where there were at that time celebrated schools of eloquence; thence to Alexandria, where his revered Athanasius wore the supreme dignity of the church; and finally to Athens, which still maintained its ancient renown as the seat of Grecian science and art. Upon the voyage thither he survived a fearful storm, which threw him into the greatest mental anguish, especially because, though educated a Christian, he, according to a not unusual custom of that time, had not yet received holy baptism, which was to him the condition of salvation. His deliverance he ascribed partly to the intercession of his parents, who had intimation of his peril by presentiments and dreams, and he took it as a second consecration to the spiritual office. In Athens be formed or strengthened the bond of that beautiful Christian friendship with Basil, of which we have already spoken in the life of Basil. They were, as Gregory says, as it were only one soul animating two bodies. He became acquainted also with the prince Julian, who was at that time studying there, but felt wholly repelled by him, and said of him with prophetic foresight: "What evil is the Roman empire here educating for itself!"1969 He was afterwards a bitter antagonist of Julian, and wrote two invective discourses against him after his death, which are inspired, however, more by the fire of passion than by pure enthusiasm for Christianity, and which were intended to expose him to universal ignominy as a horrible monument of enmity to Christianity and of the retributive judgment of God.1970 Friends wished him to settle in Athens as a teacher of eloquence, but he left there in his thirtieth year, and returned through Constantinople, where he took with him his brother Caesarius, a distinguished physician,1971 to his native city and his parents’ house. At this time his baptism took place. With his whole soul he now threw himself into a strict ascetic life.

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  “I’m getting there. I realized a long time ago that my mother’s beliefs weren’t my beliefs, and that used to be a huge problem for me, especially when I was a kid. That’s part of my baggage now, she’s part of my baggage, in a way I don’t think everybody’s parents are. Way more than my dad’s ever been. Because I had to get past the idea that only one of us could be right, and that I had to hate her if she was wrong or hate myself if she was right.” “You needed separation from her.” “Yeah. But at the same time, this is an ongoing thing, because she loves me and is pretty convinced I’m going to hell. So unless I cut her out of my life, which I don’t want to do, I have to listen to this stuff a lot. How I shouldn’t be drinking, or cavorting with loose women, or whatever.” “Does she actually say ‘cavorting with loose women’?” “Yes, she does. Even though I don’t get much cavorting action. Anyway. Last year she tried an email campaign on me. Every evening, at the same time, she’d send me something on this topic. A link, a photo, a forwarded crazytime email chain, just something. It was hard, because I didn’t want to blow up at her, so I decided to turn it into an experiment. I bought some wine on my way home from work one day, and when I got the email I sat down, read the thing she sent, then drank one glass of wine. I thought about—this part is kind of crazy but it also was sort of the point—about putting all the stuff I wanted to say to her into that glass. Pouring it in there. And then drinking it down and processing it instead. Letting my body get rid of it.” “No,” Beth interrupted. “It was a sacrament. The symbolism is too obvious. You were turning your rebellion against her into a sacred ritual by drinking the forbidden.” He shrugged. “Maybe. Whatever it was, it worked. After maybe eight or nine months of this, I was completely over feeling bad about her position on the state of my soul. It was her problem, not mine, but it didn’t have to come between us if I changed the pattern. So I started replying to her emails, and sending sort of random stuff. Feel-good puppy pictures, or human interest stories, or science. Sometimes pictures of vineyards. Not a repudiation, just glimpses of a world that was very different from hers.” Beth had stopped crying. Now she was just listening to him, a bemused expression on her tear-streaked face. Ed felt a sense of accomplishment he probably didn’t deserve, and a quickening in his genitals that was probably very poorly timed. “So is she still sending you emails about you going to hell? You need that much wine to cope?”

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

  Since charity is not only the end, but also the foundation of all virtues and of all the precepts given us for the attainment of virtue, it follows that as by means of the Counsels man advances towards more perfect love of God and of his neighbour, so likewise the more perfect observance of the Counsels is furthered by obedience to those Commandments which are necessary to charity. He who has the intention of practising continence or poverty for the love of Christ is a long way from committing adultery or theft. The various exercises of the religious life, such as watching, fasting and retirement from worldly affairs, tend furthermore to preserve man from vice, and to facilitate his practice of perfect virtue. Thus the observance of the Counsels leads to the observance of the other Commandments. Of course, we do not mean that keeping the Commandments is the end proposed by those who practise the Counsels. No one, for instance, embraces virginity in order that he may abstain from adultery, or leads a life of poverty as a safeguard against theft; but the Counsels are practised as a means of advancing in the love of God and of our neighbour. For greater things are not made for lesser ones as their end. From all this it becomes clear that the Counsels pertain to perfection of life, not because perfection necessarily consists in their observance, but because they are the way or means to perfection. St. Augustine bears this out in De moribus ecclesiae, where he says of the life of religious: “Let all our endeavour be to restrain concupiscence, and to preserve brotherly love.” Again, in the same work, he writes, “Charity is there (in religious life) chiefly cultivated: virtue, words, manner, countenance, all are agreeable to charity.” Again, in the Collatio patrum, the Abbot Moses says, “For this (i.e. for the sake of purity of heart and charity), we do and suffer all things, and on this account we renounced kinsfolk, country, honours, riches and all manner of earthly joy. To gain these virtues we undertake fasting, watching, labour and nakedness, and for these we practise reading and all other virtues. For we desire to prepare our hearts and to keep them pare from defiling thoughts, and by these means to rise to the perfection of charity.” Hence we learn that obedience to the Commandments may be either perfect or imperfect, according as we practise a more or less perfect means of keeping them. For we may, as we have shown, practise by means of the Counsels perfect obedience to the Commandments; or we may, by living in the world without the Counsels, keep them imperfectly.

• From The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)

  And yet, think, think, think—and keep this of tonight, this holy, miraculous resuscitation of the creative integrating blind optimism which was dead, frozen, gone quite away. To love, to be loved. By one; by humanity. I am afraid of love, of sacrifice on the altar. I am going to think, to grow, to sally forth, please please, unafraid. Tonight, biking home toward midnight, talking to myself, sense of trap, of time, rolled the stone of inertia away from the tomb. Tomorrow I will curse the dawn, but there will be other, earlier nights, and the dawns will be no longer hell laid out in alarms and raw bells and sirens. Now a love, a faith, an affirmation is conceived in me like an embryo. The gestation may be a while in producing, but the fertilization has come to pass. Good night, Oh Big Good Book. * * * Tuesday, November 18 . You are crucified by your own limitations. Your blind choices cannot be changed; they are now irrevocable. You have had chances; you have not taken them, you are wallowing in original sin; your limitations. You cannot even decide to take a walk in the country: you are not sure whether it is an escape or a refreshing cure from cooping yourself in your room all day. You have lost all delight in life. Ahead is a large array of blind alleys. You are half-deliberately, half-desperately, cutting off your grip on creative life. You are becoming a neuter machine. You cannot love, even if you knew how to begin to love. Every thought is a devil, a hell—if you could do a lot of things over again, ah, how differently you would do them! You want to go home, back to the womb. You watch the world bang door after door in your face, numbly, bitterly. You have forgotten the secret you knew, once, ah, once, of being joyous, of laughing, of opening doors. January 10, 1953 . Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not forget it. It is a chalk mask with dead dry poison behind it, like the death angel. It is what I was this fall, and what I never want to be again. The pouting disconsolate mouth, the flat, bored, numb, expressionless eyes: symptoms of the foul decay within. Eddie wrote me after my last honest letter saying I had better go to get psychiatric treatment to root out the sources of my terrible problems. I smile, now, thinking: we all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists. But all I need is sleep, a constructive attitude, and a little good luck. So unbelievably much has happened since I last wrote in here: [image file=Image00012.jpg] Thanksgiving I met a man I could want to see again and again.k I spent three days with him up here at House Dance. I got a sinus infection for a week.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  You should order a mug in response, my friend mused while drinking her coffee. Like, how about one that features Iggy’s head crowning, in all its bloody glory? (I had told her earlier that day that I was vaguely hurt that my mother hadn’t wanted to look at my birth photos; Harry then reminded me that few people ever want to look at anyone’s birth photos, at least not the graphic ones. And I was forced to admit that my past feelings about other people’s birth photos bore out the truth of this statement. But in my postpartum haze, I felt as though giving birth to Iggy was such an achievement, and doesn’t my mother like to be proud of my achievements? She laminated the page in the New York Times that listed me as a Guggenheim recipient, for God’s sake. Unable to throw the Guggenheim placemat away (ingratitude), but not knowing what else to do with it, I’ve since placed it below Iggy’s high chair, to catch the food that flows downward. Given that the fellowship essentially paid for his conception, each time I sponge tidbits of shredded wheat or broccoli florets off of it, I feel a loose sense of justice.) During our first forays out as a couple, I blushed a lot, felt dizzy with my luck, unable to contain the nearly exploding fact that I’ve so obviously gotten everything I’d ever wanted, everything there was to get. Handsome, brilliant, quick-witted, articulate, forceful, you. We spent hours and hours on the red couch, giggling, The happiness police are going to come and arrest us if we go on this way. Arrest us for our luck. What if where I am is what I need? Before you, I had always thought of this mantra as a means of making peace with a bummer or even catastrophic situation. I never imagined it might apply to joy, too. In The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde rails against the imperative to optimism and happiness that she found in the medical discourse surrounding breast cancer. “Was I really fighting the spread of radiation, racism, woman-slaughter, chemical invasion of our food, pollution of our environment, the abuse and psychic destruction of our young, merely to avoid dealing with my first and greatest responsibility—to be happy?” Lorde writes. “Let us seek ‘joy’ rather than real food and clean air and a saner future on a liveable earth! As if happiness alone can protect us from the results of profit-madness.” Happiness is no protection, and certainly it is not a responsibility. The freedom to be happy restricts human freedom if you are not free to be not happy. But one can make of either freedom a habit, and only you know which you’ve chosen.