Mortification

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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  In the day-nursery Seryozha, leaning on the table with his legs on a chair, was drawing and chatting away merrily. The English gover ness, who had during Anna's illness replaced the French one, was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl. She hurriedly got up, curtseyed, and pulled Seryozha. Alexey Alexandrovitch stroked his son's hair, answered the governess's inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of baby. 'The doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath, sir.' 'But she is still in pain,' said Alexey Alexandrovitch, listening to the baby's screaming in the next room. 'I think it's the wet-nurse, sir,' the Englishwoman said firmly. 'What makes you think so?' he asked, stopping short. 'It's just as it was at Countess Paul's, sir. They gave the baby medicine, and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the nurse had no milk, sir.' Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and after standing still a few seconds he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its head thrown back, stiffening itself in the nurse's arms, and would not take the plump breast offered it; and it never ceased screaming in spite of the double hushing of the wet-nurse and the other nurse, who was bending over her. 'Still no better?' said Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'She's very restless,' answered the nurse in a whisper. 'Miss Edwarde says that perhaps the wet-nurse has no milk,' he said. 'I think so too, Alexey Alexandrovitch.' 'Then why didn't you say so?' 'Who's one to say it to? Anna Arkadyevna still ill . . . ' said the nurse discontentedly. The nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple words there seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch an allusion to his position. The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The nurse, with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the wet-nurse's arms, and began walking up and down, rocking it. 'You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse,' said Alexey Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse, frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position. 'Luckless child!' said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking up and down with it.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Lancelot could hardly contain his joy at the thought of finally being in his lady's presence. But to his shock, she seemed angry, and would not look at her rescuer. She told Meleagant's father, "Sire, in truth he has wasted his efforts. I shall always deny that I feel any gratitude toward him." Lancelot was mortified but he did not complain. Much later, after undergoing innu- merable further trials, she finally relented and they became lovers. One day he asked her: when she had been abducted by Meleagant, had she heard the story of the cart, and how he had disgraced knighthood? Was that why she had treated him so coldly that day? The queen replied, "By delaying for two steps you showed your unwillingness to climb into it. That, to tell the truth, is why I didn't wish to see you or speak with you." Interpretation. The opportunity to do your selfless deed often comes upon you suddenly. You have to show your worth in an instant, right there on the spot. It could be a rescue situation, a gift you could make or a favor you could do, a sudden request to drop everything and come to their aid. What matters most is not whether you act rashly, make a mistake, and do some- thing foolish, but that you seem to act on their behalf without thought for yourself or the consequences. At moments like these, hesitation, even for a few seconds, can ruin all the hard work of your seduction, revealing you as self-absorbed, unchival- rous, and cowardly. This, at any rate, is the moral of Chrétien de Troyes's twelfth-century version of the story of Lancelot. Remember: not only what you do matters, but how you do it. If you are naturally self-absorbed, learn to disguise it. React as spontaneously as possible, exaggerating the ef- fect by seeming flustered, overexcited, even foolish—love has driven you to that point. If you have to jump into the cart for Guinevere's sake, make sure she sees that you do it without the slightest hesitation. 5. In Rome sometime around 1531, word spread of a sensational young woman named Tullia d'Aragona. By the standards of the period, Tullia was not a classic beauty; she was tall and thin, at a time when the plump and voluptuous woman was considered the ideal.

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

  As he pulled, she felt the silk coming alive against her skin. It was clearly not just an ordinary fabric; it had an intelligence. “I can sense the nervous vibration in your hands,” she said. “Yes, sorry,” Daggett said. “Now we wait just a bit, and the silk will conform itself exactly to your shape, and it will understand your weight. But you must walk with me for a moment for it to work.” Rhumpa walked slowly around the room, and Daggett followed behind her. She could feel her breasts bouncing a little in their sheer halter, and she knew that the fabric was recording how they moved. Suddenly she felt a surge of warmth that began deep in her breasts and burned upward till it reached the tips of her nipples and was gone. “That’s it!” said Daggett. “Your breasts have communicated.” He withdrew the silk and Rhumpa hiked her robe back on and tied the sash. Daggett dangled the fabric over the bras that he’d arranged on the bed and waited. Nothing happened. Then all at once there was a twitching, a tugging, a movement similar to that of a dowsing rod. “It’s working,” he said. “Watch.” The very end of the fabric quivered and reached in the direction of a pale-yellow-and-white plaid bra with a white band of lace over its top. “This yellow one?” Rhumpa said. “I wouldn’t have chosen it.” “It will fit you well and make you feel so beautiful and so new to yourself that you will make a movie that will cause many men watching it to bring out their cocks and yank on them till the jizz flies everywhere.” “Okay,” Rhumpa said. “And, uhm, Daggett? I don’t know quite how to put this. You can have my old bra if you want.” Daggett, reddening, reached under the pillow for it. “I just put it away for safekeeping.” “I saw you manhandling yourself with it.” Daggett moaned and dove facedown on the other bed. “I’m so sorry,” Rhumpa heard him say, muffled in the pillow. “I’m so utterly mortified.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “That’s okay. You wanted to see my breasts and you weren’t allowed to. You were a big bundle of pent-up desire. ” Daggett peeked at her. “Thank you for understanding,” he said, visibly relieved. Rhumpa took the yellow plaid bra to the bathroom with her and put it on. And it was true, this bra fit her perfectly, and her breasts looked full and luscious and slightly squeezed together, and she had a feeling it would drive a man crazy to look at what she was carrying in that bra. “What should I wear below?” she asked. He handed her the Silken Flesh Communicator. “Tie this around your waist, it can be your skirt. Leave your panties on.” Daggett helped her set up the tripod, aiming the camera so that she could dance next to the bed or on the bed.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  advanced scholarship of his day: he founded the University of Alcalá out of his own resources, and funded the printing of a great number of books particularly aimed at introducing the writings of his favourite mystics to a literate public. At the same time, he was responsible for burning thousands of non-Christian books and manuscripts, and he became Inquisitor-General in 1507, the same year that he was made cardinal. In the aftermath of the fall of Granada the Inquisition became central to the programme of eliminating the rival civilizations of the peninsula. It was not going to let up on the converso population just because conversos claimed to be Christian. This illogicality was aided by a sinister feature of the supposed martyrdom of the ‘Holy Child of La Guardia’ in 1490: the alleged perpetrators had been a mixed group of professed Jews and New Christians.56 The Inquisition not only sought out evidence of continued secret practice of Islam or Judaism, but reinforced an existing tendency in Spanish society to regard heresy and deviation as hereditary. So it became increasingly necessary for loyal Spanish Catholics to prove their limpieza de sangre (purity of blood), free of all mudéjar or Jewish taint. Evidence of converso descent ended one’s chances of receiving major promotion in the Church, such as a canonry in the chapter of Spain’s premier cathedral, Toledo. The main religious orders started insisting on limpieza de sangre, starting in 1486 with the influential native order much patronized by the nobility, the Jeronimites, closely followed by the Franciscans and Dominicans, as well as the secular clergy – in the end the Inquisition even required this assurance for its ‘familiars’, its network of spies and helpers. The authorities in Rome never liked the custom and did their best without much success to dismantle it, and there were ironies in this ideological use of genealogy: few of the higher Spanish nobility could claim such purity of blood, and they found themselves excluded from high office in the Church in favour of social inferiors who could prove their lack of taint.57 The Inquisition’s work was justified in the eyes of the reliably Catholic population, and led to a steady stream of spontaneously volunteered information, because there were real continuing challenges to Christian Spain, both internal and external. The general perception of Spain in the rest of Europe was that it remained an exotic place, full of Moors and Jews: a mortifying image for hypersensitive Catholic Spaniards (and so for the many in Europe who came to loathe Spanish power, also a useful theme with which to annoy them). Rebellions from the Morisco population continued well into the sixteenth century, and in 1609 there was finally a general expulsion order against 300,000 Moriscos, more than a century after Granada had fallen, the largest population expulsion anywhere in early modern Europe. After 1492, the Christianity of

• From Scandalous Liaisons (2007)

  “You must learn your place!” Dunsmore barked. “Accustom yourself to your future duties, create issue.” Sebastian shook his head. “Stay out of my life and my business. Stay away from my wife. I won’t tell you again.” Her father reached for her. “Come, Olivia. We’re leaving.” “She goes nowhere without me,” Sebastian warned without taking his eyes from his father. “You are welcome to stay in my home if you like, Mr. Lambert, but Olivia’s place is with her husband. With me.” “I don’t even know you!” Jack bellowed. “How can I trust my daughter to your care?” “Father!” she beseeched, alarmed at his vehemence. She had no wish to defy him, but Sebastian was her life now. She prayed she wouldn’t be forced to choose between the only two people who mattered. “Please!” “You shall have plenty of opportunity to become acquainted with me,” Sebastian said as he returned to her side and reclaimed her arm in an obvious declaration of possession. “My father is correct. It is far too late for an annulment.” His implication was clear—she’d been compromised. Olivia flushed, mortified. Her father searched her face, his own tight with concern. “Livy?” “Come with us, Father.” She glanced at Lord Dunsmore. “I do not think I can remain here another moment.” Sebastian nodded. “I agree. We’ve finished our business.” He gestured with his free hand toward the door. “Mr. Lambert. Will you join us?” “Of course.” He shot a furious glare at the marquess. “I am not done with you, my lord. You should have held a care for your reputation. I care only for Olivia.” Dunsmore arched a scornful brow. “Of course. You care so much for your daughter, you would marry her to a stranger without even an introduction. You’re a paragon of paternal affection.” Jack flushed. “I considered her welfare. You cared only for your own.” Olivia stared at the marquess and was certain she’d never met a man as devoid of emotion. He appeared to care nothing for the enmity directed toward him from all sides. She shivered merely from being in the same room with him and wondered how a man as warm and vibrant as her husband could have come from such a father. “Where is your gratitude, Sebastian?” the marquess asked. “I procured you a beautiful bride and a hefty dowry. Of course, she’s not but a merchant’s daughter, but since you weren’t here to see to the matter yourself, you should be appreciative in any case. In fact, you strike me as unfashionably smitten, which suits the rest of your appearance.” The hatred that poured from Sebastian poisoned the air. “You may insult me at your leisure, Father, but keep your talons out of my wife. It is only my . . . appreciation for her that prevents me from tearing you apart with my bare hands.”

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  Crap! I feel my cheeks heating, so I distract her with flattery, always a good ploy. “You probably would have gotten a lot more out of him.” “I doubt that, Ana. Come on—he practically offered you a job. Given that I foisted this on you at the last minute, you did very well.” She glances up at me speculatively. I make a hasty retreat into the kitchen. “So what did you really think of him?” she calls after me. Damn, she’s inquisitive. Why can’t she just let this go? Think of something—quick. “He’s very driven, controlling, arrogant—scary, but very charismatic. I can understand the fascination,” I add truthfully, hoping this will shut her up once and for all. “You, fascinated by a man?” She snorts. “That’s a first.” I start gathering the makings of a sandwich so she can’t see my face. “Why did you want to know if he was gay? Incidentally, that was the most embarrassing question. I was mortified, and he was pissed to be asked, too.” I scowl at the memory. “Whenever he’s in the society pages, he never has a date.” “It was embarrassing. The whole thing was embarrassing. I’m glad I’ll never have to lay eyes on him again.” “Oh, Ana, it can’t have been that bad. I think he sounds quite taken with you.” Taken with me? Now Kate’s being ridiculous. “Would you like a sandwich?” “Please.” We talk no more of Christian Grey that evening, much to my relief. Once we’ve eaten, I’m able to sit at the dining table with Kate, and while she works on her article, I work on my essay on Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Damn, that woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time in the wrong century. By the time I finish, it’s midnight, and Kate has long since gone to bed. I make my way to my room, exhausted but pleased that I’ve accomplished so much for a Monday. I curl up in my white iron bed, wrap my mother’s quilt around me, close my eyes, and am instantly asleep. That night, I dream of dark places; bleak, cold white floors, and gray eyes. For the rest of the week, I throw myself into my studies and my job at Clayton’s. Kate is busy, too, compiling her last edition of the student newspaper before she has to relinquish it to the new editor while also cramming for her finals. By Wednesday, she’s much better, and I no longer have to endure the sight of her pink-flannel-with-too-many-rabbits PJs.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  The writing has come back—with a polished quiet around it. Somehow I feel freer to fail. But the work mortifies me. Previously I’d seen the poems as adorable offspring, but they’ve become the most pathetic batch of little bow-legged, snaggle-toothed pinheads imaginable. Even the book I published with such pride a few years before—eager to foist it on anybody who’d read it—now seems egregiously dull, sophomoric, phony. If the pages were big enough, I might well use them to wrap fish. In the past, I strafe-bombed poetry editors with pages, the old insatiable-for-praise ego desperate to carve my name on any vacant surface. Now my instinct is to rathole. Just before Christmas, the publisher I most admire—an aging patrician I’ve never met—writes me the only fan letter I ever got. James Laughlin from New Directions published and palled around with titans like Pound and Williams, plus Trappist monk Thomas Merton, whose spiritual books I’ve fallen for. Laughlin wonders do I have a second collection, adding cautiously they hardly ever take anybody on. Usually, I’d have retyped everything with a watchmaker’s precision before mailing it off in a fancy binder. But so certain am I that the rejection letter’s going to wing back like a homing pigeon, I just jam what I have in an envelope with an apology for how cobbled up it is. Getting the poems off my desk frees me to label a folder MEMOIR, which stays pristinely empty for months, till I stuff a few scrawled notes in. Next summer maybe I can set off down that row. That winter, snow falls without letup. From the eaves, the icicles grow jagged fangs big around as my thigh, past the windows. Living in the mouth of the winter witch, a friend calls this phenomenon. Also, we must’ve pissed off the snowplow driver, who has a nasty habit of dropping his shovel loads in our driveway. Hours on end, Warren and I, faces chapped, hack away at mountains of ice while Dev frolics in his blue snowsuit. The marriage has become nights on end of cordial agony. In the two years since I’ve gotten sober, Warren and I have alternately clung to or given room to each other till—over a tense series of months—we can no longer hold on.

• From A History of God (1993)

  They rejected mysterious doctrines about him that were abhorrent to reason. But their belief in a Supreme Being remained intact. Voltaire built a chapel at Ferney with the inscription “Deo Erexit Voltaire” inscribed on the lintel and went so far as to suggest that if God had not existed it would have been necessary to invent him. In the Philosophical Dictionary, he had argued that faith in one god was more rational and natural to humanity than belief in numerous deities. Originally people living in isolated hamlets and communities had acknowledged that a single god had control of their destinies: polytheism was a later development. Science and rational philosophy both pointed to the existence of a Supreme Being: “What conclusion can we draw from all this?” Voltaire asks at the end of his essay on “Atheism” in the Dictionary. He replies: That atheism is a monstrous evil in those who govern; and also in learned men even if their lives are innocent, because from their studies they can affect those who hold office; and that, even if it is not as baleful as fanaticism, it is nearly always fatal to virtue. Above all, let me add that there are fewer atheists today than there have ever been, since philosophers have perceived that there is no vegetative being without germ, no germ without design etc. 22 Voltaire equated atheism with the superstition and fanaticism that the philosophers were so anxious to eradicate. His problem was not God but the doctrines about him which offended against the sacred standard of reason. The Jews of Europe had also been affected by the new ideas. Baruch Spinoza (1632–77), a Dutch Jew of Spanish descent, had become discontented with the study of Torah and had joined a philosophical circle of Gentile freethinkers. He evolved ideas which were profoundly different from conventional Judaism and which had been influenced by scientific thinkers such as Descartes and the Christian scholastics. In 1656, at the age of twenty-four, he was formally cast out of the synagogue of Amsterdam. While the edict of excommunication was read out, the lights of the synagogue were gradually extinguished until the congregation was left in total darkness, experiencing for themselves the darkness of Spinoza’s soul in a God-less world: Let him be accursed by day and accursed by night; accursed in his lying down and his rising up, in going out and in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowledge him! May the wrath and displeasure of the Lord burn against this man henceforth, load him with all the curses written in the book of the law, and raze out his name from under the sky. 23 Henceforth Spinoza belonged to none of the religious communities of Europe. As such, he was the prototype of the autonomous, secular outlook that would become current in the West.

• From Satyricon (1)

  “Gone are those locks that to thy beauty lent such lustrous charm And blighted are the locks of Spring by bitter Winter’s sway; Thy naked temples now in baldness mourn their vanished form, And glistens now that poor bare crown, its hair all worn away Oh! Faithless inconsistency! The gods must first resume The charms that first they granted youth, that it might lovelier bloom! Poor wretch, but late thy locks did brighter glister Than those of great Apollo or his sister! Now, smoother is thy crown than polished grasses Or rounded mushrooms when a shower passes! In fear thou fliest the laughter-loving lasses. That thou may’st know that Death is on his way, Know that thy head is partly dead this day!” CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND TENTH. It is my opinion that he intended favoring us with more of the same kind of stuff, sillier than the last, but Tryphaena’s maid led Giton away below and fitted the lad out in her mistress’ false curls; then producing some eyebrows from a vanity box, she skillfully traced out the lines of the lost features and restored him to his proper comeliness. Recognizing the real Giton, Tryphaena was moved to tears, and then for the first time she gave the boy a real love-kiss. I was overjoyed, now that the lad was restored to his own handsome self, but I hid my own face all the more assiduously, realizing that I was disfigured by no ordinary hideousness since not even Lycas would bestow a word upon me. The maid rescued me from this misfortune finally, however, and calling me aside, she decked me out with a head of hair which was none the less becoming; my face shone more radiantly still, as a matter of fact, for my curls were golden! But in a little while, Eumolpus, mouthpiece of the distressed and author of the present good understanding, fearing that the general good humor might flag for lack of amusement, began to indulge in sneers at the fickleness of women: how easily they fell in love; how readily they forgot even their own sons! No woman could be so chaste but that she could be roused to madness by a chance passion! Nor had he need to quote from old tragedies, or to have recourse to names, notorious for centuries; on the contrary, if we cared to hear it, he would relate an incident which had occurred within his own memory, whereupon, as we all turned our faces towards him and gave him our attention, he began as follows: CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  was an English Augustinian canon, exercised because when he had been admitted to the Augustinian Order he had taken on a new name, Augustine. He worried that if people offered prayers for him as ‘Augustine’, the prayer would not be as effective as if they had used his baptismal name of Henry, and he wanted his old name back. Rome gravely assured him that since the pope himself took a new name on assuming his office, there was no cause for concern.23 Naturally the unified Church of Gregory’s reforms needed a single system of law by which universal justice could be given, and the twelfth century was the first age when this began to be put in systematic form as canon law. There had once been just such a system of universal law: that of the Roman Empire. Now a great stimulus was the rediscovery in Italy around 1070 of two copies of a compilation of imperial law, the great Digest of Roman laws ordered by the Emperor Justinian (see pp. 433–4); this prompted a flourishing of legal studies in Italy, especially in the city of Bologna.24 If an emperor could once have gathered a definitive volume of laws, so now could the Bishop of Rome. The chief collection of existing laws and papal decisions which codifies canon law comes from mid-twelfth-century Bologna, and goes under the name of Gratian, about whom nothing else is known and who may only have been the mastermind behind one draft of what remained an unwieldy and disjointed document. Even though Gratian’s Decretum only gained official status from papal publication as late as 1917, from its earliest days it was the basis of Roman canon law – not least because of the vision which it embodied of a pyramid of Church authority culminating in the pope. Gratian made much use of the earlier fictions of pseudo-Isidore about papal authority (see pp. 351–2).25 The Decretum and canon law in general also specifically embodied that principle of the Gregorian Revolution that there were two classes of Christians, clerical celibates and laypeople. Only a century ago, this could still be pithily spelled out in an official papal pronouncement: ‘The Church is essentially an unequal society, that is, a society comprising two categories of persons, the pastors and the flock, those who occupy a rank in the different degrees of the hierarchy and the multitude of the faithful.’26 Given the new importance of canon law, it was no coincidence that every pope of significance between 1159 and 1303 was trained primarily as a canon lawyer.27 Bishops likewise developed their own administrations for local justice and Church order in their dioceses which reflected what was now happening centrally in Rome. The balance of local power in the Church between diocese and monastery was now tipping back in favour of bishops, after centuries in which abbots and indeed abbesses had characteristically been the leading figures

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  Oxford Movement and its offshoots, so apparently backward-looking and medievalizing in both their origins and some of their later posturing, that they have found it much easier to cope with the Enlightenment than has Anglican Evangelicalism. Moreover, there is an often camp mischief about High Church Anglicanism. Many Anglo-Catholic clergy and laity have relished shocking bishops by their extravagant borrowings from Roman Catholic ritual. Since Anglo-Catholicism also borrowed from Rome an emphasis on clerical celibacy new to the Anglican tradition, celibate vocation to the priesthood created Victorian England’s only profession which did not raise an eyebrow at lifelong abstention from marriage. That frequently aroused the fears of the Victorian paterfamilias, paralleling the neurosis of the Catholic layman since the High Middle Ages that his wife or daughter would be seduced in the confessional by lustful celibate priests. The worries were generally groundless, partly because the unprecedented singleness of many Anglo-Catholic clergy had a rather different dimension. From its earliest phases in its eponymous university, the Oxford Movement came to host a male homosexual subculture which even the sexual liberation movements from the 1970s did not entirely absorb or supplant.69 ORTHODOXY: RUSSIA AND OTTOMAN DECAY While the nineteenth century saw victory for new centripetal forces in Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy’s renewal took place against the background of two very different experiences: in Russia, within an already monolithic Russian Church, and to the south, amid much institutional fragmentation caused by the decline of the Ottoman Empire. From the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, the victorious Russian tsars claimed to be protectors of all Orthodox Christians under the sultan’s rule, and Catherine the Great extended Russian control over the kingdom of Georgia in the 1780s, taking care to leave intact its ancient independent Church, while bringing it under her control with a seat on the Holy Synod. As the Ottoman Empire further decayed, an exhilarating prospect emerged that an Orthodox tsar might ultimately take the sultan’s place and outdo the sway which Byzantine emperors once enjoyed in Orthodoxy; or that an assortment of Christian monarchs would once more rule Orthodox lands still under Ottoman control. Both these alternatives nevertheless pointed to a steep decline in the power which the Oecumenical Patriarch exercised among the various nationalities constituting Orthodoxy. He had long been so identified with the privilege and

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “How can you think of dirt, with such objects before you?” “Because,” replied he, smiling, “among the rest of the objects before me, I see a very dirty lane.” “How strange!” said Marianne to herself as she walked on. “Have you an agreeable neighbourhood here? Are the Middletons pleasant people?” “No, not all,” answered Marianne; “we could not be more unfortunately situated.” “Marianne,” cried her sister, “how can you say so? How can you be so unjust? They are a very respectable family, Mr. Ferrars; and towards us have behaved in the friendliest manner. Have you forgot, Marianne, how many pleasant days we have owed to them?” “No,” said Marianne, in a low voice, “nor how many painful moments.” Elinor took no notice of this; and directing her attention to their visitor, endeavoured to support something like discourse with him, by talking of their present residence, its conveniences, &c. extorting from him occasional questions and remarks. His coldness and reserve mortified her severely; she was vexed and half angry; but resolving to regulate her behaviour to him by the past rather than the present, she avoided every appearance of resentment or displeasure, and treated him as she thought he ought to be treated from the family connection. CHAPTER XVII. Mrs. Dashwood was surprised only for a moment at seeing him; for his coming to Barton was, in her opinion, of all things the most natural. Her joy and expression of regard long outlived her wonder. He received the kindest welcome from her; and shyness, coldness, reserve could not stand against such a reception. They had begun to fail him before he entered the house, and they were quite overcome by the captivating manners of Mrs. Dashwood. Indeed a man could not very well be in love with either of her daughters, without extending the passion to her; and Elinor had the satisfaction of seeing him soon become more like himself. His affections seemed to reanimate towards them all, and his interest in their welfare again became perceptible. He was not in spirits, however; he praised their house, admired its prospect, was attentive, and kind; but still he was not in spirits. The whole family perceived it, and Mrs. Dashwood, attributing it to some want of liberality in his mother, sat down to table indignant against all selfish parents. “What are Mrs. Ferrars’s views for you at present, Edward?” said she, when dinner was over and they had drawn round the fire; “are you still to be a great orator in spite of yourself?” “No. I hope my mother is now convinced that I have no more talents than inclination for a public life!” “But how is your fame to be established? for famous you must be to satisfy all your family; and with no inclination for expense, no affection for strangers, no profession, and no assurance, you may find it a difficult matter.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “No,” replied Elinor, most feelingly sensible of every fresh circumstance in favour of Lucy’s veracity; “I remember he told us, that he had been staying a fortnight with some friends near Plymouth.” She remembered too, her own surprise at the time, at his mentioning nothing farther of those friends, at his total silence with respect even to their names. “Did not you think him sadly out of spirits?” repeated Lucy. “We did, indeed, particularly so when he first arrived.” “I begged him to exert himself for fear you should suspect what was the matter; but it made him so melancholy, not being able to stay more than a fortnight with us, and seeing me so much affected. Poor fellow! I am afraid it is just the same with him now; for he writes in wretched spirits. I heard from him just before I left Exeter;” taking a letter from her pocket and carelessly showing the direction to Elinor. “You know his hand, I dare say,—a charming one it is; but that is not written so well as usual. He was tired, I dare say, for he had just filled the sheet to me as full as possible.” Elinor saw that it _was_ his hand, and she could doubt no longer. This picture, she had allowed herself to believe, might have been accidentally obtained; it might not have been Edward’s gift; but a correspondence between them by letter, could subsist only under a positive engagement, could be authorised by nothing else; for a few moments, she was almost overcome—her heart sunk within her, and she could hardly stand; but exertion was indispensably necessary; and she struggled so resolutely against the oppression of her feelings, that her success was speedy, and for the time complete. “Writing to each other,” said Lucy, returning the letter into her pocket, “is the only comfort we have in such long separations. Yes, _I_ have one other comfort in his picture, but poor Edward has not even _that_. If he had but my picture, he says he should be easy. I gave him a lock of my hair set in a ring when he was at Longstaple last, and that was some comfort to him, he said, but not equal to a picture. Perhaps you might notice the ring when you saw him?” “I did,” said Elinor, with a composure of voice, under which was concealed an emotion and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt before. She was mortified, shocked, confounded. Fortunately for her, they had now reached the cottage, and the conversation could be continued no farther. After sitting with them a few minutes, the Miss Steeles returned to the Park, and Elinor was then at liberty to think and be wretched. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME CHAPTER XXIII.

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

  The very end of the fabric quivered and reached in the direction of a pale-yellow-and-white plaid bra with a white band of lace over its top. “This yellow one?” Rhumpa said. “I wouldn’t have chosen it.” “It will fit you well and make you feel so beautiful and so new to yourself that you will make a movie that will cause many men watching it to bring out their cocks and yank on them till the jizz flies everywhere.” “Okay,” Rhumpa said. “And, uhm, Daggett? I don’t know quite how to put this. You can have my old bra if you want.” Daggett, reddening, reached under the pillow for it. “I just put it away for safekeeping.” “I saw you manhandling yourself with it.” Daggett moaned and dove facedown on the other bed. “I’m so sorry,” Rhumpa heard him say, muffled in the pillow. “I’m so utterly mortified.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “That’s okay. You wanted to see my breasts and you weren’t allowed to. You were a big bundle of pent-up desire.” Daggett peeked at her. “Thank you for understanding,” he said, visibly relieved. Rhumpa took the yellow plaid bra to the bathroom with her and put it on. And it was true, this bra fit her perfectly, and her breasts looked full and luscious and slightly squeezed together, and she had a feeling it would drive a man crazy to look at what she was carrying in that bra. “What should I wear below?” she asked. He handed her the Silken Flesh Communicator. “Tie this around your waist, it can be your skirt. Leave your panties on.” Daggett helped her set up the tripod, aiming the camera so that she could dance next to the bed or on the bed. And he showed her how to turn on the music. Then he left. Rhumpa danced at first on the balcony. Because it was so bright outside she was in a silhouette. Then she paused the camera and came inside and closed the dark-green drapes. “I’m going to do a pussy dance for you guys,” she said. She slowly took off her robe and shook her jerries in the bra for the camera. She danced with one finger up her stash, danced while circling her clit, danced with one foot up on the edge of a chair seat. She knew it was good. She phoned down. “Daggett? I’m done pussy dancing.” He came back to her room and retrieved the camera. “Have some dinner,” he said. “I’ll edit the tape and load it on channel six.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  15. Johannes Cochlaeus (“Georg Sachsen”), Hertzog Georgens zu Sachssen Ehrlich vnd grundtliche entschuldigung, wider Martin Luthers Auffruerisch vn[d] verlogenne brieff vnd Verantwortung, Dresden 1533 [VD 16 C 4323], fo. B iii (v). This pasquil went out under the name of Duke Georg of Saxony but was actually written by Luther’s long-standing enemy Cochlaeus. He repeated it in his prefatory letter to his biography of Luther, which was more widely read and appeared in 1549. The same accusation had also been made by Georg Witzel, and by Petrus Sylvius, Die Letzten zwey beschlisslich und aller krefftigest büchleyn M. Petri Sylvii, so das Lutherisch thun an seiner person…(Leipzig, 1534); Ian Siggins, “Luther’s Mother Margarethe,” Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 125–50, 132. 16. Siggins, “Luther’s Mother,” 133: He referred to it again in 1543 in On the Jews and their Lies; and see WT 3, 3838: In 1538 Luther recalled how Duke Georg called his mother a bath maid and him a wechselbalck, referring to the pamphlet written by Cochlaeus under the name of Duke Georg in 1533. 17. LW Letters, I, 145; WB 1, 239, 14 Jan. 1520, 610:20–23. 18. Topp, Historia, 8: There were of course other versions of this story. 19. Ibid., 6–32; Bergmann, Kommunalbewegung, 11–15; 33–37. 20. Topp, Historia, 10–13; see also Stadtarchiv Eisenach, Bestand Chroniken, 40:1/9:1 Chronik Joh. Michael Koch. 21. Chronik Eisenachs bis 1409 (ed. H. Helmbold), 27–40; Kremer, Beiträge. 22. WB 1, 157, 24(?), Feb. 1519, 353:29–30; WT 3, 3626; 3653. 23. Topp, Historia, 15. 24. Topp recounts the story of a statue of the Madonna and child in St. Paul’s monastery in the town, where, if one prayed before the image, Jesus would turn his back as if rejecting the sinner. But if one promised a donation to the monastery, Jesus would turn his face, and if one offered more money, he would bless the worshipper: Topp, Historia, 15. 25. LW 44, 172; WS 6, 438:18–22; WB 2, 262, Feb. 29, 1520. The discomfort about begging was long-standing: Luther later reminisced how, back at Mansfeld, with a fellow pupil, he went begging for sausage at carnival as was customary, but when a burgher teased them they fled, and the householder had to run after them with the sausages: WT 1, 137: Luther uses this story as a parable of the believer’s relationship to God; and he couples it, interestingly, with the story of his terror of the sacrament when Staupitz carried it in procession at Eisleben. 26. Brecht, Luther, I, 18. 27. The family gave so many donations to the monastery that it was locally known as the “Collegium Schalbense.” See Kremer, Beiträge, esp. 69 and 89. 28. Scherf, Bau- und Kunstdenkmale, 9.

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

  The very end of the fabric quivered and reached in the direction of a pale-yellow-and-white plaid bra with a white band of lace over its top. “This yellow one?” Rhumpa said. “I wouldn’t have chosen it.” “It will fit you well and make you feel so beautiful and so new to yourself that you will make a movie that will cause many men watching it to bring out their cocks and yank on them till the jizz flies everywhere.” “Okay,” Rhumpa said. “And, uhm, Daggett? I don’t know quite how to put this. You can have my old bra if you want.” Daggett, reddening, reached under the pillow for it. “I just put it away for safekeeping.” “I saw you manhandling yourself with it.” Daggett moaned and dove facedown on the other bed. “I’m so sorry,” Rhumpa heard him say, muffled in the pillow. “I’m so utterly mortified.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “That’s okay. You wanted to see my breasts and you weren’t allowed to. You were a big bundle of pent-up desire.” Daggett peeked at her. “Thank you for understanding,” he said, visibly relieved. Rhumpa took the yellow plaid bra to the bathroom with her and put it on. And it was true, this bra fit her perfectly, and her breasts looked full and luscious and slightly squeezed together, and she had a feeling it would drive a man crazy to look at what she was carrying in that bra. “What should I wear below?” she asked. He handed her the Silken Flesh Communicator. “Tie this around your waist, it can be your skirt. Leave your panties on.” Daggett helped her set up the tripod, aiming the camera so that she could dance next to the bed or on the bed. And he showed her how to turn on the music. Then he left. Rhumpa danced at first on the balcony. Because it was so bright outside she was in a silhouette. Then she paused the camera and came inside and closed the dark-green drapes. “I’m going to do a pussy dance for you guys,” she said. She slowly took off her robe and shook her jerries in the bra for the camera. She danced with one finger up her stash, danced while circling her clit, danced with one foot up on the edge of a chair seat. She knew it was good. She phoned down. “Daggett? I’m done pussy dancing.” He came back to her room and retrieved the camera. “Have some dinner,” he said. “I’ll edit the tape and load it on channel six.”

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

  The pattern on the silk was of peonies and birds of paradise. As he pulled, she felt the silk coming alive against her skin. It was clearly not just an ordinary fabric; it had an intelligence. “I can sense the nervous vibration in your hands,” she said. “Yes, sorry,” Daggett said. “Now we wait just a bit, and the silk will conform itself exactly to your shape, and it will understand your weight. But you must walk with me for a moment for it to work.” Rhumpa walked slowly around the room, and Daggett followed behind her. She could feel her breasts bouncing a little in their sheer halter, and she knew that the fabric was recording how they moved. Suddenly she felt a surge of warmth that began deep in her breasts and burned upward till it reached the tips of her nipples and was gone. “That’s it!” said Daggett. “Your breasts have communicated.” He withdrew the silk and Rhumpa hiked her robe back on and tied the sash. Daggett dangled the fabric over the bras that he’d arranged on the bed and waited. Nothing happened. Then all at once there was a twitching, a tugging, a movement similar to that of a dowsing rod. “It’s working,” he said. “Watch.” The very end of the fabric quivered and reached in the direction of a pale-yellow-and-white plaid bra with a white band of lace over its top. “This yellow one?” Rhumpa said. “I wouldn’t have chosen it.” “It will fit you well and make you feel so beautiful and so new to yourself that you will make a movie that will cause many men watching it to bring out their cocks and yank on them till the jizz flies everywhere.” “Okay,” Rhumpa said. “And, uhm, Daggett? I don’t know quite how to put this. You can have my old bra if you want.” Daggett, reddening, reached under the pillow for it. “I just put it away for safekeeping.” “I saw you manhandling yourself with it.” Daggett moaned and dove facedown on the other bed. “I’m so sorry,” Rhumpa heard him say, muffled in the pillow. “I’m so utterly mortified.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “That’s okay. You wanted to see my breasts and you weren’t allowed to. You were a big bundle of pent-up desire.” Daggett peeked at her. “Thank you for understanding,” he said, visibly relieved. Rhumpa took the yellow plaid bra to the bathroom with her and put it on. And it was true, this bra fit her perfectly, and her breasts looked full and luscious and slightly squeezed together, and she had a feeling it would drive a man crazy to look at what she was carrying in that bra. “What should I wear below?” she asked. He handed her the Silken Flesh Communicator. “Tie this around your waist, it can be your skirt.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  36 Lake-Effect Humor The smiles of the bathers fade as they leave the water, And the lover feels sadness fall as it ends, as he leaves his love. The scholar, closing his book as the midnight clocks strike, is hollow and old; The pilot’s relief on landing is no release. These perfect and private things, walling us in, have imperfect and public endings... —Weldon Kees, “The Smiles of the Bathers” So we move to upstate New York, into a house on a leafy block with a skylit master bedroom off which is a balcony so buried in branches that it feels like a tree fort where you can smoke cigars and shoot off a pop gun. Is it Warren’s August birthday or Christmas when I get him a golden retriever puppy from Deb’s dog’s new litter? Grace, we call her. There’s a park two blocks away we go to every day and a pond with ducks and a trail in the woods. Dev walks to kindergarten in the frosted mornings with his backpack on. Warren and I keep differing orbits and finally start sleeping in separate rooms. I whipsaw back and forth on whether to stay or go, but no solid message shows up, as if the magic 8-ball’s still saying, Ask again later. Otherwise, the landscape seems less blunted and monochromatic. Stepping outside some mornings, it’s like that instant in the optometrist’s office when the right lens clicks over, the letters on the chart sharpening. There are individual leaves on trees where once was a lime smudge. The writing has come back—with a polished quiet around it. Somehow I feel freer to fail. But the work mortifies me. Previously I’d seen the poems as adorable offspring, but they’ve become the most pathetic batch of little bow-legged, snaggle-toothed pinheads imaginable. Even the book I published with such pride a few years before—eager to foist it on anybody who’d read it—now seems egregiously dull, sophomoric, phony. If the pages were big enough, I might well use them to wrap fish. In the past, I strafe-bombed poetry editors with pages, the old insatiable-for-praise ego desperate to carve my name on any vacant surface. Now my instinct is to rathole. Just before Christmas, the publisher I most admire—an aging patrician I’ve never met—writes me the only fan letter I ever got. James Laughlin from New Directions published and palled around with titans like Pound and Williams, plus Trappist monk Thomas Merton, whose spiritual books I’ve fallen for. Laughlin wonders do I have a second collection, adding cautiously they hardly ever take anybody on. Usually, I’d have retyped everything with a watchmaker’s precision before mailing it off in a fancy binder. But so certain am I that the rejection letter’s going to wing back like a homing pigeon, I just jam what I have in an envelope with an apology for how cobbled up it is.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  We must welcome and embrace the foreigner, the stranger, and the other. Ruth Padilla DeBorst says that this involves four things: (1) building homes that are a refuge for the homeless, disposed, stranger, and rural and urban poor; (2) planting gardens, caring for creation, and food sourcing; (3) cultivating families and churches that embrace intimacy, simplicity, hospitality, collaboration, and inclusion; and (4) seeking the welfare of our neighborhood and our city. Do you agree? Why or why not? 5 . How do diversity and inclusion make us a fuller, richer, and more Christlike people? 6 . What needs to change for you and your church to reactivate hospitality (and choose to be a people of every nation, tribe, people, and tongue) while cultivating unity in diversity? 7 . What steps will you take to apply this practice fully and in the long term? Think about how you can apply this practice in your life, family, small group, church, and neighborhood. Chapter 7: Reinforce Agency1 . Are you familiar with the term agency ? What does it mean? 2 . Why do those in power often treat minoritized or disadvantaged groups like helpless victims (or nasty perpetrators) and rob them of their autonomy and agency? 3 . How do church systems, traditions, practices, and structures sometimes squash personal and collective agency? 4 . Look at the list of practices under the subheading “Embracing Corporate Practices That Reinforce Agency (Inside and Outside the Church).” What would you add to these practices? 5 . At the end of this chapter, the authors challenge us to be “flowerpot breakers and seed sowers.” What does this mean? How can your group be flowerpot breakers and seed sowers in your setting? 6 . What needs to change for you and your church to help reinforce people’s agency, especially supporting marginalized and minority groups to make free, independent, and unfettered actions and choices? 7 . What steps will you take to apply this practice fully and in the long term? Think about how you can apply this practice in your life, family, small group, church, and neighborhood. Chapter 8: Reconcile Relationships1 . Do you agree with Brenda Salter McNeil’s definition of reconciliation? Would you modify it in any way? 2 . One of the authors (Graham) confesses how racism has influenced his life. Are you aware of forms of racism in your own life? How have they been expressed? 3 . Why is the order of the stages in reconciliation important? “First God reconciles us to Godself. Then God reconciles us with each other and gives us the ministry of reconciliation.” 4 . Why do we need a biblical view of reconciliation that frames our purpose and posture in reconciliation? How do we develop this biblical view of reconciliation? 5 . Look at the core practices of reconciliation. What would you add to these practices? What would you change about this list of practices? 6 .

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  reveals some interestingly individual features. Some of the mosaics in Sant’ Apollinare are contemporary with its construction in the early sixth century. Two sequences depicting the Court of Theoderic and notables at his port city of Classis both now make no visual sense, as the figures have rather ineptly been replaced by abstract mosaic designs; these heroic portrayals of a heretical monarch and his retinue could not be allowed a place of honour in what had become a Catholic building. One intact sequence of original mosaic friezes, safely remote from the viewer at the very highest level of the walls, although it spans the whole length of the church on either side of the nave, seems to emphasize the Arian view of the nature of Christ. It tells stories of Jesus Christ’s life on earth: on the north side of the church the miracle worker and teller of parables is depicted as a young beardless man, while on the south side, which shows the Passion and Resurrection, he is portrayed as older and bearded. So the Redeemer lives his life and grows and matures as a truly human being who suffers as a human and yet is resurrected for our sakes (see Plate 19). Theoderic thus proclaimed his Arian faith to the world with all the resources of Christian art and architecture. Despite bombing hits in both world wars of the twentieth century, Sant’ Apollinare and the other Ostrogothic survivals in Ravenna are among the few witnesses to Arian culture and literature, when virtually everything else produced by the Arians has been deliberately erased from the record. Here we glimpse the splendour and richness of Arian Christianity, elsewhere so successfully obliterated by the medieval Latin Church of the West. Alongside his lavish gifts to the Arian Church, Theoderic allowed the Catholic Church to flourish, and used the skills of Roman and Catholic aristocrats in his administration. The most distinguished and learned of them, Boethius, was also one of the least fortunate: his service at Court ended around 524 with his execution on charges of treasonous intrigue with the Byzantines. Yet he played a great part in shaping the future of Christian culture in the West. Boethius had a fluency in Greek which was increasingly rare in the West: he knew its literature widely and intimately. He had planned to undertake a major programme of translations of Plato and Aristotle into Latin; in the end he completed only a few of Aristotle’s treatises on logic, but books which could provide a structured framework for clear thinking were precious enough amid the increasingly scarce resources of scholarship in the West. Equally significant was the treatise which Boethius wrote in prison while awaiting execution, The Consolation of Philosophy. There is not much that is Christian about the Consolation: it is the work of a man whose intellectual formation has been in Neoplatonism. Yet that was part of its value. It embedded Plato in Western thought for the next few