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 Hours (1998)

  At this moment she could devour him, not ravenously but adoringly, infinitely gently, the way she used to take the Host into her mouth before she married and converted (her mother will never forgive her, never). She is full of a love so strong, so unambiguous, it resembles appetite. “You’re such a good, smart boy,” she says. Richie grins; he looks ardently into her face. She looks back at him. They pause, motionless, watching each other, and for a moment she is precisely what she appears to be: a pregnant woman kneeling in a kitchen with her three-year-old son, who knows the number four. She is herself and she is the perfect picture of herself; there is no difference. She is going to produce a birthday cake—only a cake—but in her mind at this moment the cake is glossy and resplendent as any photograph in any magazine; it is better, even, than the photographs of cakes in magazines. She imagines making, out of the humblest materials, a cake with all the balance and authority of an urn or a house. The cake will speak of bounty and delight the way a good house speaks of comfort and safety. This, she thinks, is how artists or architects must feel (it’s an awfully grand comparison, she knows, maybe even a little foolish, but still), faced with canvas, with stone, with oil or wet cement. Wasn’t a book like Mrs. Dalloway once just empty paper and a pot of ink? It’s only a cake, she tells herself. But still. There are cakes and then there are cakes. At this moment, holding a bowl full of sifted flour in an orderly house under the California sky, she hopes to be as satisfied and as filled with anticipation as a writer putting down the first sentence, a builder beginning to draw the plans. “Okeydoke,” she says to Richie. “You do the first one.” She hands him a bright aluminum cup measure. It is the first time he’s been entrusted with a job like this. Laura sets a second bowl, empty, on the floor for him. He holds the measuring cup in both hands. “Here goes,” she says. Guiding Richie’s hands with her own, she helps him dip the cup into the flour. The cup goes in easily, and through its thin wall he can feel the silkiness and slight grit of the sifted flour. A tiny cloud rises in the cup’s wake. Mother and son bring it up again, heaped with flour.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  " Ah, madam," said he, " it is impossible to love your honour more than I have done. As long as you were un- married I so well mastered my passion that you never were aware of it ; but now that you are married and your honour is shielded, what wrong do I do you in asking of you what belongs to me .■• For have I not won you by the force of my love "> The first who had your heart has .so little coveted your body that he deserved to lose both. He who possesses your body is unworthy to have your heart, and consequently your body even does not belong to him. But I have taken such pains for your sake during the last five or six years that you cannot but be aware, madam, that to me alone belong your body and your heart, for which I have forgotten my own. If you think to excuse yourself on the ground of conscience, doubt not that when love forces the body and the heart, sin is never imputed. Those even who are so infuriated as to kill themselves cannot sin ; for passion leaves no room for reason. And if the passion of love is the most in- tolerable of all others, and that which most blinds all the First day:\ Q UEEN OF NA VARRE. 9 1

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  amorous, or historical subjects ; eight dramatic pieces, includ- ing tour mysteries, two moralities, and two farces ; poetical epistles to her brother, her mother, and the King of Navarre ; and rondeaux, dixains, songs, and other small pieces. Accord- ing to the last editors of the Heptameron, some of Margaret's fugitive pieces, published by them for the first time, are superior as literary works to her more serious compositions, and in them alone are to be found the gayety and grace for which she has been so much celebrated by her contemporaries. There is one among them, of a graver character, which appears to us so remarkable for its impassioned force and its full and flowing rhythm that we gladly lay it before the reader : — Souvieigne voiis des lermes respandues, Qui par regret tres grand fiirent rendues Sur vostre tant amyable visaige ; Souvieigne voiis du dangercux oultraige Que vous cuida faire mon povre coeur, Presse par trop d'une e.xtreme douleur, Ouand il forca la voix de satistaire Au tres grand mal oil ne scavois que faire, Tant qu'a peu pres la pleur fut entendu Souvieigne vous du sens qui fut perdu, Tant que raison, parolle & contenance N'eurent pouvoir, ny force, ny puissance, De desclairer ma double passion. Ny aussi ]jeu ma grand affection ; Souvieigne vous du coeur qui bondissoit Pour la tristesse en quoy il perissoit ; Souvieigne vous des souspirs tres ardens Qui k la foule en despict de mes dentz Sortoient dehors, pour mieulx me soulaiger ; Souvieigne vous du peril & danger Ou nous estions, dont nous ne tenions compt Car vraye amour ne congnoist paour ny honte ; Souvieigne vous de nostre amour honneste, Dont ne devons pour nul baisser la teste, Car nous scavons tons deux certainement Qu'honneur & Dieu en sont le fondement ; Souvieigne vous du tr^s chaste embrasser Dont vous ne moy ne nous pouvions laisser ; Souvieigne vous do vostre foy promise • Par vostre main dedans la mienne mise ; Souvieigne vous de mes doubtes passees, QUEEN OF NA VARRE. xxxix

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  But it is not at all proper to speak of such things now.” Incidentally, around this time Tony very often began to use the expression "As things go in life..." and when she heard the word "life" she had a pretty and serious look, which gave an idea of the depth of her gaze into human life and destiny done... The table in the dining-room grew even larger, and Tony was given new opportunities to speak out when Thomas returned home from Pau in August of that year. She loved and adored this brother, who had known and appreciated her pain when she left Travemünde and in whom she saw with all her heart the future head of the company, the former head of the family. "Yeah, yeah," he said, "we've both been through a lot, Tony..." Then he cocked an eyebrow and let the Russian cigarette drift to the other corner of his mouth, probably thinking about the little flower girl with the Malay face type that was before had married the son of her breadwinner for a short time and was now running the flower shop in the Fischergrube on her own. Thomas Buddenbrook, still a little pale, was a strikingly elegant figure. It seemed that these last years had quite completed his education. With his hairstyle brushed over his ears into small mounds, his mustache, which was very pointed in the French fashion and pulled out horizontally with a cautery, and his stocky, fairly broad-shouldered build, his figure made an almost military impression. But the bluish, all too visible veins on his narrow temples, from which his hair receded in two indentations, and a slight tendency to shiver, which the good Doctor Grabow fought in vain, indicated that his constitution was not particularly strong. What details of the body formation, like the chin, the nose and especially the hands ... wonderfully genuine Buddenbrooke hands! concerned, his resemblance to his grandfather had become even greater. He spoke French mixed with Spanish sounds and amazed everyone by his fondness for certain modern writers of a satirical and polemical character... Only in the city did he find understanding for this inclination in the dark agent, Herr Gosch; his father condemned her severely. This did not prevent the Consul's pride and happiness in his eldest son from showing in his eyes. With emotion and joy he greeted him again as soon as he arrived as an employee in his office, where he himself now began to work again with greater satisfaction: after the death of old Madame Kröger, which took place at the end of the year. One had to bear the loss of the old lady with composure. She had grown very old and had finally lived quite alone. She went to God and the Buddenbrooks got a lot of money, a whopping 100,000 thalers Kurant round, bolstering the company's working capital in the most desirable way.

• From The Hours (1998)

  Sally gets out of the store as quickly as she can, marches toward the subway at Sixty-eighth. She’d like to come home with a gift for Clarissa, but can’t imagine what. She’d like to tell Clarissa something, something important, but can’t get it phrased. “I love you” is easy enough. “I love you” has become almost ordinary, being said not only on anniversaries and birthdays but spontaneously, in bed or at the kitchen sink or even in cabs within hearing of foreign drivers who believe women should walk three paces behind their husbands. Sally and Clarissa are not stingy with their affections, and that of course is good, but now Sally finds that she wants to go home and say something more, something that extends not only beyond the sweet and the comforting but beyond passion itself. What she wants to say has to do with all the people who’ve died; it has to do with her own feelings of enormous good fortune and imminent, devastating loss. If anything happens to Clarissa she, Sally, will go on living but she will not, exactly, survive. She will not be all right. What she wants to say has to do not only with joy but with the penetrating, constant fear that is joy’s other half. She can bear the thought of her own death but cannot bear the thought of Clarissa’s. This love of theirs, with its reassuring domesticity and its easy silences, its permanence, has yoked Sally directly to the machinery of mortality itself. Now there is a loss beyond imagining. Now there is a cord she can follow from this moment, walking toward the subway on the Upper East Side, through tomorrow and the next day and the next, all the way to the end of her life and the end of Clarissa’s.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  but no!' she answered quickly to a movement from Morten , "I rejected him, I couldn't make up my mind to give him my vows for life." 'And why not… if I may ask?' said Morten awkwardly. "Why? Oh God, because I couldn't stand him!' she cried, almost indignantly... 'You should have known him, how he looked and how he acted! Among other things, he had golden yellow favorites ... completely unnatural! I'm sure he dressed himself up with the powder used to gild Christmas nuts... Besides, he was wrong. He fawned around my parents and shamelessly taunted their lips…” Morten interrupted her. “But what do you mean… you have to tell me one more thing… which means it cleans really well?” Tony broke into a nervous and giggling laugh. “Yes… that's what he said, Morten! He didn't say: 'That looks good', or: 'That decorates the room', but: 'That cleans up quite enormously'... he was that silly, I assure you!... And he was importunate in the highest degree; he would not let go of me, although I never treated him with anything but irony. Once he made me a scene where he almost cried ... I beg you: a man who cries ..." "He must have admired you very much," Morten said softly. "But what's that to do with me !" she exclaimed in astonishment, turning to the side on her sand hill... 'You are cruel, Miss Tony... Are you always cruel? Tell me... you didn't like that Mr. Grünlich, but have you ever been fond of someone else?... Sometimes I think: maybe you have a cold heart? I'll tell you one thing... it's true enough, I can swear to you: A man isn't silly because he cries that you don't want to know him... that's it. I'm not sure, not at all sure, that I'm not too... You see, you're a spoiled, distinguished creature... Do you ever make fun of the people lying at your feet? Do you really have a cold heart?' After the brief hilarity, Tony's upper lip suddenly began to tremble. She turned a pair of large and sad eyes on him, which were slowly brimming with tears, and said softly: "No, Morten, do you believe that about me?... You don't have to believe that about me." "I don't believe it either!" Morten exclaimed with a laugh in which one could hear emotion and suppressed jubilation... He rolled over completely so that he was now lying on his stomach next to her, gripped by propping his elbows , with both hands on hers and looked at her face with his steel-blue, good-natured eyes, delighted and enthusiastic. "And you... you don't mock me when I tell you that..." "I know, Morten," she interrupted him quietly while looking sideways at her free hand, which was slowly sliding the soft, white sand through her fingers. "You know …! And you . . . you , Miss Tony . "Yes, Morten. I think highly of you.

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

  But there is another perfect manner of observing this precept, which cannot be achieved in this life. For, as St. Augustine says in De perfectione justitiae, “In that fulness of charity which will reign it our heavenly country, the precept of charity ‘Love the Lord your God with your whole heart’ etc. will be perfectly obeyed.” “Why,” he continues, should not this perfection be anticipated by man, although, in this life he may not attain to it? He does not run aright, who does no know where he is running to. But how can he know, if he is not taught by any precepts Therefore, to this, as to their end, are directed the commandments of love of God and of our neighbour, together with all other counsels and commands. Hence St. Augustine says in Ench.: “God gives us certain commandments, such as: ‘Do not commit adultery’, while other things, such as ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman,’ are not enjoined on us by precept, but set before us as a spiritual counsel. Such things are rightly done when they are referred to the love of God and to the love of our neighbour, for His sake.” Nevertheless, the manner in which the precept of Charity is to be fulfilled by certain precepts of the Law is different to that in which it is to be accomplished by the Counsels. For some things are so designed to a particular end that the end cannot be attained without them. Such is the case with food and the maintenance of life. Other things, again, serve to attain an end with peculiar certainty and completeness. Thus, though food is necessary for the continuance of physical life? medicine serves for the more easy and certain preservation of health. Now some of the commandments are given for the first of these two reasons, namely as a necessary means of attaining to charity. For instance, no one can fulfil the precept of charity who worships false gods, and thus withdraws from the love of God, or who commits murder or theft, which are contrary to the love of our neighbour. But the Counsels are given to us in order that we may fulfil the precept of charity, in the second way of which we have spoken. Hence the Apostle, “king of the Counsel of virginity, expressly says that its object is to enable us to love God. “He who is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he who is with a wife is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife” (1 Cor 7:32).

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

  I answer that, As was said above ([2170]FP, Q[60], A[5]), where the various opinions concerning the natural love of the angels were set forth, man in a state of perfect nature, could by his natural power, do the good natural to him without the addition of any gratuitous gift, though not without the help of God moving him. Now to love God above all things is natural to man and to every nature, not only rational but irrational, and even to inanimate nature according to the manner of love which can belong to each creature. And the reason of this is that it is natural to all to seek and love things according as they are naturally fit (to be sought and loved) since “all things act according as they are naturally fit” as stated in Phys. ii, 8. Now it is manifest that the good of the part is for the good of the whole; hence everything, by its natural appetite and love, loves its own proper good on account of the common good of the whole universe, which is God. Hence Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv) that “God leads everything to love of Himself.” Hence in the state of perfect nature man referred the love of himself and of all other things to the love of God as to its end; and thus he loved God more than himself and above all things. But in the state of corrupt nature man falls short of this in the appetite of his rational will, which, unless it is cured by God’s grace, follows its private good, on account of the corruption of nature. And hence we must say that in the state of perfect nature man did not need the gift of grace added to his natural endowments, in order to love God above all things naturally, although he needed God’s help to move him to it; but in the state of corrupt nature man needs, even for this, the help of grace to heal his nature. Reply to Objection 1: Charity loves God above all things in a higher way than nature does. For nature loves God above all things inasmuch as He is the beginning and the end of natural good; whereas charity loves Him, as He is the object of beatitude, and inasmuch as man has a spiritual fellowship with God. Moreover charity adds to natural love of God a certain quickness and joy, in the same way that every habit of virtue adds to the good act which is done merely by the natural reason of a man who has not the habit of virtue.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  And the same law which made me once care for them makes me care for them still. My own body and what ministers to its needs are thus the primitive object, instinctively determined, of my egoistic interests. Other objects may become interesting derivatively through association with any of these things, either as means or as habitual concomitants; and so in a thousand ways the primitive sphere of the egoistic emotions may enlarge and change its boundaries. This sort of interest is really the meaning of the word 'my .' Whatever has it is eo ipso a part of me. My child, my friend dies, and where he goes I feel that part of myself now is and evermore shall be: "For this losing is true dying; This is lordly man's down-lying; This his slow but sure reclining, Star by star his world resigning." The fact remains, however, that certain special sorts of thing tend primordially to possess this interest, and form the natural me. But all these things are objects , properly so called, to the subject which does the thinking.[268] And this latter fact upsets at once the dictum of the old-fashioned sensationalist psychology, that altruistic passions and interests are contradictory to the nature of things, and that if they appear anywhere to exist, it must be as secondary products, resolvable at bottom into cases of selfishness, taught by experience a hypocritical disguise. If the zoological and evolutionary point of view is the true one, there is no reason why any object whatever might not arouse passion and interest as primitively and instinctively as any other, whether connected or not with the interests of the me. The phenomenon of passion is in origin and essence the same, whatever be the target upon which it is discharged; and what the target actually happens to be is solely a question of fact. I might conceivably be as much fascinated, and as primitively so, by the care of my neighbor's body as by the care of my own. The only check to such exuberant altruistic interests is natural selection, which would weed out such as were very harmful to the individual or to his tribe. Many such interests, however, remain unweeded out—the interest in the opposite sex, for example, which seems in mankind stronger than is called for by its utilitarian need; and alongside of them remain interests, like that in alcoholic intoxication, or in musical sounds, which, for aught we can see, are without any utility whatever. The sympathetic instincts and the egoistic ones are thus co-ordinate. They arise, so far as we can tell, on the same psychologic level. The only difference between them is, that the instincts called egoistic form much the larger mass.

• From The Hours (1998)

  He nods with such guileless, unguarded enthusiasm that her throat constricts in a spasm of love. It seems suddenly easy to bake a cake, to raise a child. She loves her son purely, as mothers do—she does not resent him, does not wish to leave. She loves her husband, and is glad to be married. It seems possible (it does not seem impossible) that she’s slipped across an invisible line, the line that has always separated her from what she would prefer to feel, who she would prefer to be. It does not seem impossible that she has undergone a subtle but profound transformation, here in this kitchen, at this most ordinary of moments: She has caught up with herself. She has worked so long, so hard, in such good faith, and now she’s gotten the knack of living happily, as herself, the way a child learns at a particular moment to balance on a two-wheel bicycle. It seems she will be fine. She will not lose hope. She will not mourn her lost possibilities, her unexplored talents (what if she has no talents, after all?). She will remain devoted to her son, her husband, her home and duties, all her gifts. She will want this second child. Mrs. Woolf She walks up Mt. Ararat Road, planning Clarissa Dalloway’s suicide. Clarissa will have had a love: a woman. Or a girl, rather; yes, a girl she knew during her own girlhood; one of those passions that flare up when one is young—when love and ideas seem truly to be one’s personal discovery, never before apprehended in quite this way; during that brief period of youth when one feels free to do or say anything; to shock, to strike out; to refuse the future that’s been offered and demand another, far grander and stranger, devised and owned wholly by oneself, owing nothing to old Aunt Helena, who sits every night in her accustomed chair and wonders aloud whether Plato and Morris are suitable reading for young women. Clarissa Dalloway, in her first youth, will love another girl, Virginia thinks; Clarissa will believe that a rich, riotous future is opening before her, but eventually (how, exactly, will the change be accomplished?) she will come to her senses, as young women do, and marry a suitable man. Yes, she will come to her senses, and marry. She will die in middle age. She will kill herself, probably, over some trifle (how can it be made convincing, tragic instead of comic?). That, of course, will occur later in the book, and by the time Virginia reaches that destination she hopes its precise nature will have revealed itself. For now, walking through Richmond, she focuses her thoughts on the question of Clarissa’s first love. A girl. The girl, she thinks, will be brash and captivating. She will scandalize the aunts by cutting the heads off dahlias and hollyhocks and floating them in great bowls of water, just as Virginia’s sister, Vanessa, has always done.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  This was Pastor Tiburtius, who came from Riga, had officiated in central Germany for a few years and now, on the journey to his homeland, where a preaching position had fallen to him, touched the city. Provided with the recommendation of an official who had also once eaten mockturtle soup and ham with shallot sauce on Mengstrasse, he paid his respects to the consul, was invited to be a guest for the duration of his stay, which was to last a few days, and lived there spacious guest rooms on the first floor in the corridor. But he lingered longer than he expected. Eight days passed, and he still had this or that sight, the Dance of Death and the apostle clock in St. Mary's Church, the town hall, the "Schiffergesellschaft" or the sun with the moving eyes in the cathedral not visited. Ten days passed and he repeatedly spoke of his departure; but as a result of the first little word that asked him to stay, he moved away again. He was a better person than Messrs Jonathan and Perlen-Trieschke. He didn't bother at all about Frau Antonien's burnt forelocks and didn't write her any letters. But he was all the more attentive to Klara, her younger and more serious sister. In her presence, when she spoke, went or came, it could happen that his eyes widened in an unexpected way, got bigger and bigger, bulged out, almost jumped out ... and most of the day he stayed with her, talking spiritually and plowed worldly conversations with her or read to her... in his high, cracking voice and in the droll, hopping pronunciation of his Baltic homeland. On the very first day he had said: "Have mercy, Madam Consul! What a treasure and blessing of God you have in your daughter Klara. That must be a lovely child!' "You are right," the Consul replied. But he repeated it so often that she let her bright blue eyes wander to him in a discreet examination and caused him to tell a little more about his background, his circumstances, his prospects. It turned out that he came from a merchant family, that his mother was with God, that he had no siblings and that his old father lived in Riga as a private individual with a decent fortune, which would one day belong to himself, Pastor Tiburtius; besides, his office secures him a sufficient income. As for Klara Buddenbrook, she was now in her nineteenth year and, with her dark, smoothly parted hair, her stern yet dreamy looking brown eyes, her slightly hooked nose, her mouth a little too tightly shut, and her tall, slender figure, grown into a young lady of harsh and peculiar beauty. In the house she was most attached to her poor and also pious cousin Klothilde together, whose father had recently died and who was thinking about "establishing herself" sometime soon, that is, retiring somewhere with a few pennies and furniture that she inherited...

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  From the start he had the hands of the Buddenbrooks quite distinctly: broad, a little too short, but finely articulated; and his nose was exactly that of his father and great-grandfather, although the wings seemed to want to remain even more delicate. The entire long, narrow lower face, however, belonged neither to the Buddenbrooks nor to the Krögers, but to the maternal family - as did, above all, his mouth, which early on - even now - tended to Expression to which later the gaze of his peculiar golden-brown eyes with the bluish shadows more and more adapted... Under the looks of reserved tenderness that his father gave him, under the care with which his mother supervised his clothing and care, adored by his aunt Antonie, presented with riders and spinning tops by the consul and uncle Justus - he began to live, and when his pretty little carriage appeared in the street people looked after him with interest and expectation. But as far as the worthy nanny Madame Decho was concerned, who was initially on duty, it was decided that she would no longer move into the new house, but that Ida Jungmann should move in her place, while the consul would look for other help... Senator Buddenbrook carried out his plans. The purchase of the property in the Fischergrube did not pose any difficulties, and the house in the Breite Straße, which the broker Gosch had angrily declared ready to take over, brought Mr. Stephan Kistenmaker, whose family was growing and who, together with his brother, lived in Rotspohn with good money earned, directly purchasable in itself. Mr. Voigt took over the construction, and soon one could unroll his clean plan in the family circle on Thursdays and see the facade in advance: a magnificent shell with sandstone caryatids that supported the bay window and a flat roof, about which Klothilde remarked in a friendly and drawled manner , that one could drink coffee on it in the afternoon ... Even with regard to the ground floor rooms of the Mengstrasse house, which would now stand empty, Autumn came, gray walls crumbled to rubble, and over spacious cellars, while winter fell and faded again, Thomas Buddenbrook's new house grew. No talking point in town that could have been more engaging! It turned out to be tip top, it turned out to be the most beautiful residential building around and wide! Were there nicer ones in Hamburg?... But it also had to be desperately expensive, and the old consul would certainly not have made such leaps... The neighbors, the townspeople in the gabled houses, lay in the windows, watched the men working on the scaffolding, rejoiced as the building rose and sought to determine the date of the topping-out ceremony. It came up and was committed with all the intricacies.

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

  I pray that the most Holy Body of Jesus which I am going to receive may be in me as that balm of Galaad against which no diseases of the spirit can prevail. Let it be to me that light of salvation against which no thickness of darkness has power. Jesus, coming to me from Thy Altar, fill my soul with love, and bring me at last safely to the whiteness of the streets in Thy Heavenly City, where Thy elect dwell with Thee for ever. XXII About the second four fruits of the Body of Jesusii. Our second chief misery, noted in the last Meditation, is want of grace. From this come our second four evils or weaknesses; and these are a grievous loss to many souls. They are: 1, want of self-knowledge; 2, want of brotherly love; 3, want of the spiritual taste; 4, want of perseverance in good. The fruit of the womb of Mary, that is, the Body of Jesus, prevails against these defects. 1. From the ancient days the heart of man has been wrapped up in ignorance of self. Who can understand the evil ways in which he has made others sin, or in which he has consented to the sins of others? 2. We love our brethren but little, and charity grows cold. This is proved by outward things. We do not help our neighbour when we can nor as much as we can. Diverse weights and measures are hateful to God, as the Scripture says. Now he has these unjust weights and these unjust measures in his house who measures and weighs in one way for himself and in another way for his neighbour, and who sees always in his own actions the things that are to be praised, but in the actions of his neighbour the things that are to be blamed. He who in things of the world strives always to give more to himself and less to his neighbour is displeasing to God. The same must be said about the man who by word or deed grieves his neighbour or hurts him or causes him loss.

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

  Thou hast trodden the wine-press for me. I come to Thee, for Thou hast redeemed me. Thou art my beautiful One, and my loved One, walking in the greatness of Thy strength. Thou comest to my heart from Edom, with Thy dyed raiment from Bosra. Thou comest to me in Thy white raiment that is sprinkled with Blood. Thou hast come to me now in Thy Sacrament of Love. I bless Thee and praise Thee and thank Thee, with all my soul, O King and Spouse and God. Coming to me now, Thy Five Wounds are on Thy Body, but pain and sorrow can fall on Thee no more. The glittering lance does not sink into Thy side. Thy people love Thee and adore Thee and rejoice in Thy light. For Thee the winter is past, and the rain over and gone. O King of my heart, what a feast is Thine which Thou ever makest for Thy princes and Thy children. There is abundance of corn and wine, the wheat of the elect and the wine of virgins. The plenteousness of Thy heavenly banquet is worthy of Thy magnificence and love. Let me be a golden vessel for Thee, studded with precious stones. By this Bread of Life and this wine of God which Thou hast given me, let me be before Thee as the flower of roses in the days of the spring, and as the lilies that are on the brink of the water, and as the sweet-smelling frankincense in time of summer. Let me be as a bright fire, and as frankincense burning in that fire. Let me ever stretch forth my hands to pour forth a drink-offering to Thee, an offering of a soul thirsting for Thee, as a hart thirsts for the brooks of water. Let my voice ever be heard for a remembrance before Thee, my God. Now, at Thy Altar, by Thy love and pity, I have drunk the purest blood of the grape. I have drunk Thy Blood, my Jesus, in the Sacred Host. That Blood is in me a well-spring of holiness and joy and everlasting life. My Jesus, I love Thee and thank Thee for this, and will thank Thee for ever and ever. Thy name is the Word of God. XXX

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

  God had us in His heart when He created the world. He wanted a playground for His children to discover and explore the mysteries and intricacies of the heavens above and the earth below. Mostly, He wanted His creative design to draw us deeper into intimate knowing with Him. To top off His artful display, He created males and females with longings, desires, needs, and the potential to share bodies in sexual intimacy. Our human sexual drives aren’t a mistake or a glitch in our engineering, even though I’m pretty sure all of us have wondered at times, “Why is this so complex?” STDs, rape, assaults, sexual confusion, abuse . . . well the list could go on and on about how we humans have misused this beautiful, nearly majestic part of our bodies, souls, and spirits in ways that haven’t enhanced our lives. Rather than taking a clinical peek into human sexuality, or attempting to describe God’s glorious plan for these sexual bodies of ours, I have chosen to tell a story. A story of very real people (no character is based on a person, but rather a character sketch of intermingled lives) and how they were shaped sexually, because we are all shaped sexually, even if we have never taken an honest look at how that shaping went. As we follow their stories, we will meet the people they have loved, desired, and married, and how they have hurt and betrayed each other. We will also discover how sexuality either enhanced that love connection or destroyed it. My prayer is this book will capture your attention, engage your mind, and mostly expand your heart to discover the goodness of God’s design in creating you—a sexual creature. May you find healing in the pages your fingers are wrapped around. What might you find within these pages? •​How our histories shape our sexuality •​A deeper understanding of sexual trauma •​How to build a sexually satisfying marriage •​Abuse, porn, sexual confusion, affairs, and other hard stuff •​Integrating spirituality with sexuality •​Permission to have fun, creative, erotic, married sex •​The role of love and sex •​Accepting and making room for differences in sexuality •​The role of friendship and attachment in healthy sexuality THROUGH MY EYES For nearly twenty years of my life, I have worked with beautiful humans who have struggled with their sexuality. I have shed tears with those who have experienced the dark side of what God meant for good. I’ve helped those who lost hope and mostly created a safe place for women and men to find hope and healing. I’ve helped them to discover they too can experience a happy, playful, even erotic, married-sex life. This topic is more than just clinical for me; I too have walked through significant pain to find the joy in understanding and even claiming my sexuality as a valuable jewel of who I am as a person. I hope you will do the same. ONE The Invitation

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  The mother of the young prince, being one day in her son's chamber, placed herself at the window where lay the big book. Presently one of Rolandine's com- panions in office, who was at the window of their cham- ber, saluted the lady. The latter asked her how Rolan- dine was. The other replied that she should see her if she pleased, and made her come to the window in her nightcap. After some conversation about Rolandine's illness, both parties retired. The lady casting her eyes on the big book of the Round Table, said to the valet- de-chambre who had charge of it, " I am astonished that young people give up their time to reading such follies." The valet-de-chambre replied that he was still more sur- prised that persons of ripe years, and who passed for sensible people, were more attached to them than the young ; and thereupon he told her, as a curious fact, how the bastard, her relation, spent four or five hours every day in reading that book. The lady at once guessed the reason, and ordered the valet-de-chambre to conceal himself, and watch narrowly what the bastard did. The valet-de-chambre executed his commission, and found that, instead of reading, the bastard planted himself at the window, and that Rolandine came and talked with him. He even overheard many expressions of their love, which they thought they had so well con- cealed. Next day, the valet having told his mistress what he had seen and heard, she sent for her cousin, the bastard, and after some sharp remonstrances, forbade him evermore to place himself at that window. In the evening she spoke to Rolandine, and threatened she would inform the queen if she persisted in that foolish attachment. Rolandine, without losing her presence of Third dciy:[ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 20I mind, replied that, whatever the lady might have been tola, she had not spoken to the bastard since she had been prohibited from doing so by her mistress, as her companions and her servants could witness. As for the window of which the lady spoke, she had never talked there with the bastard.

• From New Testament Words (1964)

  It is in fact the power to love the unlovable, to love people whom we do not like. Christianity does not ask us to love our enemies and to love men at large in the same way as we love our nearest and our dearest and those who are closest to us; that would be at one and the same time impossible and wrong. But it does demand that we should have at all times a certain attitude of the mind and a certain direction of the will towards all men, no matter who they are. What then is the meaning of this agapē? The supreme passage for the interpretation of the meaning of agapē is Matt. 5.43-48. We are there bidden to love our enemies. Why? In order that we should be like God. And what is the typical action of God that is cited? God sends his rain on the just and the unjust and on the evil and the good. That is to say—no matter what a man is like, God seeks nothing but his highest good. Let a man be a saint or let a man be a sinner, God’s only desire is for that man’s highest good. Now, that is what agapē is. Agapē is the spirit which says: ‘No matter what any man does to me, I will never seek to do harm to him; I will never set out for revenge; I will always seek nothing but his highest good.’ That is to say, Christian love, agapē, is unconquerable benevolence, invincible good will. It is not simply a wave of emotion; it is a deliberate conviction of the mind issuing in a deliberate policy of the life; it is a deliberate achievement and conquest and victory of the will. It takes all of a man to achieve Christian love; it takes not only his heart; it takes his mind and his will as well. If that is so, two things are to be noted. (i) Human agapē, our love towards our fellow men, is bound to be a product of the Spirit. The NT is quite clear about that (Gal. 5.22; Rom. 15.30; Col. 1.8). Christian agapē is unnatural in the sense that it is not possible for the natural man. A man can only exercise this universal benevolence, he can only be cleansed from human hatred and human bitterness and the natural human reaction to enmity and injury and dislike, when the Spirit takes possession of him and sheds abroad the love of God in his heart. Christian agapē is impossible for anyone except a Christian man. No man can perform the Christian ethic until he becomes a Christian.

• From The Hours (1998)

  Do people think she’s overprotective? Why does he do this so often? “Did you get it all done?” Mrs. Latch asks. “Yes. More or less. Thanks so much for taking him.” “Oh, we had a fine time together,” she says heartily, angrily. “You can bring him by any time.” “Did you have fun?” Laura asks. “Uh-huh,” Richie says, his tears abating. His face is a min iature agony of hope, sorrow, and confusion. “Were you good?” He nods. “Did you miss me?” “Yes!” he says. “Well, I had a lot to do,” Laura says. “We have to give your daddy a proper birthday tonight, don’t we?” He nods. He continues staring at her with teary, abashed suspicion, as if she might not be his mother at all. Laura pays Mrs. Latch, accepts a bird of paradise from her yard. Mrs. Latch always offers something—a flower, cookies— as if that were the object of payment, and the babysitting were free. Laura, apologizing again for her tardiness, citing her husband’s imminent arrival, cuts short the customary fifteen-minute conversation, puts Richie in the car, and pulls away with a last, slightly exaggerated wave. Her three ivory bangles click together. Once they are away from Mrs. Latch, Laura says to Richie, “Boy oh boy, we’re in trouble now. We’ve got to race right home and get that dinner started. We should have been there an hour ago.” He nods solemnly. The weight and grain of life reassert themselves; the nowhere feeling vanishes. This moment, now, midblock, as the car approaches a stop sign, is unexpectedly large and still, serene—Laura enters it the way she might enter a church from a noisy street. On either side, sprinklers throw brilliant cones of mist up over the lawns. Late sun gilds an aluminum carport. It is unutterably real. She knows herself as a wife and mother, pregnant again, driving home, as veils of water are tossed up into the air. Richie doesn’t speak. He watches her. Laura brakes for the stop sign. She says, “It’s a good thing Daddy works as late as he does. We’ll put it all together in time, don’t you think so?” She glances at him. She meets his eyes, and sees something there she can’t quite recognize. His eyes, his entire face, seem lit from within; he appears, for the first time, to be suffering from an emotion she can’t read. “Honey,” she says, “what is it?” He says, louder than necessary, “Mommy, I love you.” There is something odd in his voice, something chilling. It is a tone she’s never heard from him before. He sounds frantic, foreign.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Somewhere in the world a boy grows up, well equipped and well-off, gifted to develop his faculties, straight grown and untroubled, pure, cruel and lively, one of those people whose sight increases the happiness of the fortunate and drives the unfortunate to despair : - This is my son. That's me , soon... soon... as soon as death frees me from the miserable delusion that I'm not both he and I... Have I ever hated life, this pure, cruel and strong life? folly and misunderstanding! I only hated myself for not being able to bear it. But I love you...I love you all, you lucky ones, and soon I shall cease to be shut off from you by close confinement; soon that which loves you in me, my love for you, will be free and will be with and in you... with and in you all! – – He cried; pressed her face into the pillow and wept, trembling and lifted up as if intoxicated by a happiness that no other painful sweetness in the world can compare to. It was this, all this that had filled him drunkenly and darkly since yesterday afternoon, what had stirred in his heart in the middle of the night and awakened him like a budding love. And while he was now allowed to understand and recognize it - not in words and successive thoughts, but in sudden, blissful illuminations of his inner being - he was already free, he was actually already redeemed and rid of all natural and artificial barriers and bonds. The walls of his native city, in which he shut himself up willingly and consciously, opened up and opened up the world to his eyes, the whole world, of which he had seen this and that bit when he was young, and which death promised to bestow on him in its entirety. The deceptive forms of knowledge of space, time and thus history, the concern for a glorious, historical continuation in the person of descendants, the fear of some final historical dissolution and disintegration - all this released his spirit and no longer prevented it, the constant eternity understand. Nothing began and nothing ended. There was only one infinite present, and that power in him that loved life with such a painfully sweet, urgent and longing love, and of which his person was only a failed expression - it would always know how to find the access to this present . I will live! he whispered into the pillow, cried and… next moment he didn't know what about. His brain froze, his knowledge snuffed out, and suddenly there was nothing in him but dying darkness. But it will return! he assured himself. Have I not possessed it?...

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  And I remember sitting at my desk, and I don’t know what it was that I read or what Jesus was doing in the book, but I felt a love for Him rush through me, through my back and into my chest. I started crying, too, like that guy Bill Bright. I remember thinking that I would follow Jesus anywhere, that it didn’t matter what He asked me to do. He could be mean to me; it didn’t matter, I loved Him, and I was going to follow Him. I think the most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus. Sometimes when I go forward at church to take Communion, to take the bread and dip it in the wine, the thought of Jesus comes to me, the red of His blood or the smell of His humanity, and I eat the bread and I wonder at the mystery of what I am doing, that somehow I am one with Christ, that I get my very life from Him, my spiritual life comes from His working inside me, being inside me. I know our culture will sometimes understand a love for Jesus as weakness. There is this lie floating around that says I am supposed to be able to do life alone, without any help, without stopping to worship something bigger than myself. But I actually believe there is something bigger than me, and I need for there to be something bigger than me. I need someone to put awe inside me; I need to come second to someone who has everything figured out. [image "9780785263708_0251_001" file=Image00094.jpg] All great characters in stories are the ones who give their lives to something bigger than themselves. And in all of the stories I don’t find anyone more noble than Jesus. He gave His life for me, in obedience to His Father. I truly love Him for it. I feel that, and so does Laura and Penny and Rick and Tony the Beat Poet. I think the difference in my life came when I realized, after reading those Gospels, that Jesus didn’t just love me out of principle; He didn’t just love me because it was the right thing to do. Rather, there was something inside me that caused Him to love me. I think I realized that if I walked up to His campfire, He would ask me to sit down, and He would ask me my story. He would take the time to listen to my ramblings or my anger until I could calm down, and then He would look me directly in the eye, and He would speak to me; He would tell me the truth, and I would sense in his voice and in the lines on His face that he liked me.