Pride

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 History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  because it contradicted Aristotle. To suggest this was to pull support from under the Aristotelian system and send everything else crashing down as well. GALILEO’S DISCOVERIES õ The story of the astronomer Galileo Galilei’s trouble with the church is famous, but some of the facts might come as a surprise. Galileo was born in Pisa in 1564. His father made a living repairing stringed instruments and composing music, and perhaps that’s where Galileo first got his appreciation for careful measurement, rhythm, and mathematical precision. õ As a young man, he flirted with the idea of becoming a priest, but went off to study medicine at the local university. He accidentally stumbled into a lecture on geometry and became fascinated. õ Within a couple years, he was already inventing amazing things, like an early type of thermometer and a device to measure the velocity of flowing water. In 1589, the University of Pisa made him chair of mathematics, and a few years later he moved to Padua to teach math and science, including astronomy. In 1609, he started fine-tuning earlier models of the telescope, and that was when he really started getting into trouble. õ It’s clear that Galileo was a genius. But like so many geniuses, he was also a bit of a jerk who went around looking for intellectual fights. Keep in mind this basic fact of his personality; it makes understanding what happened next easier. Lecture 12—The Church and the Scientific Revolution 113 õ Galileo peered through his telescope and saw details of the heavens that no one had ever seen before: mountains on the surface of the moon and moon-like objects orbiting Jupiter. Galileo threw himself into observing the movements of the planets and became convinced of one essential idea: the earth had to revolve around the sun. õ This was not a new idea. Some ancient thinkers had suggested as much, despite what Aristotle wrote, and despite the fact that most scholars favored the geocentric theory of the 2nd-century Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy. In 1543, the Polish astronomer Copernicus revealed that he had done the many years of mathematical spadework necessary to put together a precise theory of the universe that overturned the geocentric view. 114 The History of Christianity II

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  forms of human expression ate very ancient and were once honored in communal societies on every continent. And I found evidence that the hostile laws and attitudes towards trans expression, the role of women, and same-sex love, arose with the cleavage of societies into haves and have-nots. Now I am confident that you, living in the oldest continuously recorded culture in the world, will find many, many more examples from your own history— both of the acceptance of trans expression and of the social origins of this form of oppression. Today, we as US. revolutionaries have put these demands for sex and gender liberation on the agenda of struggle. As a lifelong revolutionary, it means a great deal to me to see the demands for trans liberation raised on banners and shouted as chants in all major protests in this country. But whether or not you and I share a common view about the future of humanity or which road will take us forward, I believe we may very well share other beliefs that are very important. We strive to be the best human being—the best person—that we can possibly be. We try to live a principled life. To uplift our knowledge and our consciousness. To leave the world a better place wherever that is within our power. 342 Leslie Feinberg If you pride yourself on these qualities, then I believe that once you have looked at the world through the eyes of someone who is “gender different” through reading this novel, you will try to take a stand against the cruel jokes and mockery and social isolation of those whose only crime is to be part of the gender and sex diversity that has existed in all human societies. What a wonderful contribution you could make! However, I also believe that once we find common ground in the fight against this one injustice, we will have forged a bond that can continue. I hope that we discover we have become comrades in a lifelong struggle to win the liberation of every human being who is degraded, devalued and downtrodden by exploitation and oppression. AUTHOR NOTE STONE BUTCH BLUES Serbo-Croatian Edition September 24, 2012 MESSAGE FROM LESLI FAJNBERG TO Serbo- Croat readers: XBasla TyHo! I send this message to Milica Jeremic—one of the translators of Stone Butch Blues into Setbo- Croatian, and to the entire Kolektiv Queer Beograd that shared my work with Serbian and Croatian readers by publishing Svone Butch Blues: XBasla IyHO Hvala puno puno hvala Thank you very much! Thank you, Milica, for your message to me that the Serbo-Croat edition publication was launched, “{I]n the second biggest town in Serbia, at a feminist festival. It was great, the people massively love the book.” On facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ events /412873802108596 /?ref=ts Link to translation: ttp:/ /faktiva.net/vest/stoun-buc- bluz-lesli-fajnberg I will be publishing a new 20th-Anniversary Author’s Edition of Stone Butch Blues on May Day Stone Butch Blues 343 2013. The online digital edition will include links to your translation.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Just as important, train yourself to return to a more neutral expression at a natural moment, careful to not go too far with your emoting. Adapt to your audience. Although you conform to certain parameters set by the role you play, you must be flexible. A master performer like Bill Clinton never lost sight of the fact that as president he had to project confidence and power, but if he was speaking to a group of autoworkers he would adjust his accent and his words to fit the audience, and he would do the same for a group of executives. Know your audience and shape your nonverbal cues to their style and taste. Create the proper first impression. It has been demonstrated how much people tend to judge based on first impressions and the difficulties they have in reassessing these judgments. Knowing this, you must give extra attention to your first appearance before an individual or group. In general it is best to tone down your nonverbal cues and present a more neutral front. Too much excitement will signal insecurity and might make people suspicious. A relaxed smile, however, and looking people in the eye in these first encounters can do wonders for lowering their natural resistance. Use dramatic effects. This mostly involves mastering the art of presence/absence. If you are too present, if people see you too often or can predict exactly what you will do next, they will quickly grow bored with you. You must know how to selectively absent yourself, to regulate how often and when you appear before others, making them want to see more of you, not less. Cloak yourself in some mystery, displaying some subtly contradictory qualities. People don’t need to know everything about you. Learn to withhold information. In general, make your appearances and your behavior less predictable. Project saintly qualities. No matter what historical period we are living through, there are certain traits that are always seen as positive and that you must know how to display. For instance, the appearance of saintliness never goes out of fashion. Appearing saintly today is certainly different in content from the sixteenth century, but the essence is the same—you embody what is considered good and above reproach. In the modern world, this means showing yourself as progressive, supremely tolerant, and open-minded. You will want to be seen giving generously to certain causes and supporting them on social media. Projecting sincerity and honesty always plays well. A few public confessions of your weaknesses and vulnerabilities will do the trick. For some reason people see signs of humility as authentic, even though people might very well be simulating them. Learn how to occasionally lower your head and appear humble. If dirty work must be done, get others to do it. Your hands are clean. Never overtly play the Machiavellian leader—that only works well on television.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Of course, on the larger changes later requested by Louis’s censors, Beaumarchais did not relent. By then he had so won over the members of his own tribunal that they stridently defended him, and Louis had to back down. Lowering people’s defenses in this way on matters that are not so important will give you great latitude to move them in the direction you desire and get them to concede to your desires on more important matters. Goodness. In our daily thoughts, we constantly comfort ourselves as to the moral nature of our actions. If we are employees of a company, we see ourselves as good team members. If we are bosses, we treat people well, or at least we pay and support them well. We help the right causes. In general, we do not like to see ourselves as selfish and narrowly focused on our own agenda. Just as important, we want others to see us in this light. Look at social media and how people will make a display of supporting the best causes. Few people give to charities anonymously—they want their names loudly advertised. You must never inadvertently cast doubts on this saintly self- opinion. To make positive use of this trait in people, frame what you are asking them to do as part of a larger cause that they can participate in. They are not merely buying clothes but helping the environment or keeping jobs local. In taking these actions, people can feel better about themselves. Keep it subtle. If you are trying to get recruits for a job, let others spread the message about the cause. Make it appear prosocial and popular. Make people want to join the group, instead of having to plead with them. Pay great attention to the words and labels you use. It is better, for instance, to call someone a team member than an employee. To put yourself in the inferior, one-down position, you can commit some relatively harmless faux pas, even offend people in a more pronounced way, and then ask for their forgiveness. By asking for this, you imply their moral superiority, a position people love to occupy. Now they are vulnerable to suggestion. Finally, if you need a favor from people, do not remind them of what you have done for them in the past, trying to stimulate feelings of gratitude. Gratitude is rare because it tends to remind us of our helplessness, our dependence on others. We like to feel independent. Instead, remind them of the good things they have done for you in the past. This will help confirm their self-opinion: “Yes, I am generous.” And once reminded, they will want to continue to live up to this image and do yet another good deed. A similar effect can come from suddenly forgiving your enemies and forging a rapprochement.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  His family had thrived through the Depression, and he will also, but on his own terms. For a writer the place to be is Beacon Hill, he has friends there, he is known—he promises to take her.

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

  I answer that, It was fitting for Christ’s soul at His Resurrection to resume the body with its scars. In the first place, for Christ’s own glory. For Bede says on Lk. 24:40 that He kept His scars not from inability to heal them, “but to wear them as an everlasting trophy of His victory.” Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xxii): “Perhaps in that kingdom we shall see on the bodies of the Martyrs the traces of the wounds which they bore for Christ’s name: because it will not be a deformity, but a dignity in them; and a certain kind of beauty will shine in them, in the body, though not of the body.” Secondly, to confirm the hearts of the disciples as to “the faith in His Resurrection” (Bede, on Lk. 24:40). Thirdly, “that when He pleads for us with the Father, He may always show the manner of death He endured for us” (Bede, on Lk. 24:40). Fourthly, “that He may convince those redeemed in His blood, how mercifully they have been helped, as He exposes before them the traces of the same death” (Bede, on Lk. 24:40). Lastly, “that in the Judgment-day He may upbraid them with their just condemnation” (Bede, on Lk. 24:40). Hence, as Augustine says (De Symb. ii): “Christ knew why He kept the scars in His body. For, as He showed them to Thomas who would not believe except he handled and saw them, so will He show His wounds to His enemies, so that He who is the Truth may convict them, saying: ‘Behold the man whom you crucified; see the wounds you inflicted; recognize the side you pierced, since it was opened by you and for you, yet you would not enter.’” Reply to Objection 1: The scars that remained in Christ’s body belong neither to corruption nor defect, but to the greater increase of glory, inasmuch as they are the trophies of His power; and a special comeliness will appear in the places scarred by the wounds. Reply to Objection 2: Although those openings of the wounds break the continuity of the tissue, still the greater beauty of glory compensates for all this, so that the body is not less entire, but more perfected. Thomas, however, not only saw, but handled the wounds, because as Pope Leo [*Cf. Append. Opp. August., Serm. clxii] says: “It sufficed for his personal faith for him to have seen what he saw; but it was on our behalf that he touched what he beheld.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  I shrugged. “It was hard. I talked to Jan first. She said pretty much the same thing I did to you—we shouldn’t be fighting each other. But she agreed Grant could be a real pain.” Theresa led me to the couch. “Did you talk to Meg?” “Yeah. Jan came with me. We talked to Meg before everyone else showed up to the meeting, I told Meg even if she barred the Black butches and queens that wasn’t gonna keep the peace because I would have jumped in Grant’s face over the shit she said, 138 = Leslie Feinberg too. Jan backed me up.” Theresa smiled. “Did you mention me?” I laughed. “Not at that point. I told Meg by the time she excludes everyone who might be offended by Grant when she’s drunk, she may as well shut down the bar. I said it would make more sense to bar Grant when she’s plowed.” Theresa nodded. I lit a cigarette. “So?” she urged. “Then what?” I sighed. “T said it wasn’t just about me and Ed being friends. I told Meg I didn’t think she handled it right. She said she’s got a business to run. I said I know that, but I wouldn’t go to an all-white bar.” Theresa slapped my shoulder. “Good for you, goddamn it. Right on!” “Anyway, when Grant got there she apologized for taking out her anger at her brother’s death on everybody else.” Theresa nodded. “Good.” I shook my head. “Well, it wasn’t enough, really. She wouldn’t say she was sorry for the racist shit she said. Grant shook Ed’s hand. Ed told me to let it go for now.” Theresa jiggled my arm. “Did you and Ed talk?” I smiled. “Yeah, we went over to her house afterward. I told Edwin I love her—she’s my friend. I said the world was changing faster than I am and I needed to do some catching up in order to understand. Ed talked to me for a couple of hours.” Theresa began kneading my shoulders. It felt so damn good. “What did she talk about?” I tried to remember. “So much stuff that it’s hard for me to put it all together and tell you. You know, I always fall back on assuming that what Ed and I deal with every day as butches is pretty much the same, you know? Ed reminded me about what she faces every day that I don’t.” Theresa smiled and nodded. “What did you say?” I shook my head. “I didn’t say anything. I listened as hard as I could. Look what Ed gave me.” I showed Theresa the copy of The Souls of Black Folk by WE.B. Du Bois. Theresa read the inscription: To my friend, Jess—Love, Edwin. Ed dotted the 7 in her name with a little heart.

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

  “Who needs to treat her with dignity?” Olivia asked. “I do. If I don’t treat her with dignity, no one else ever will,” Mary Francis stated with conviction. “How does it feel to recognize you will teach others how to treat you?” Olivia asked. “It feels empowering. If I can’t respect myself, no one else will. It starts with me,” Mary Francis acknowledged, her eyes lightening with the realization. Olivia asked, “Mary Francis, what do you need from the group right now?” “I think I need acceptance,” she said. “In what way?” Olivia asked. “I need to know if y’all still accept me—accept me in spite of what my mother did to me and how my body responded to her. Do I creep you out? Do you see me as less than? Do you think I am sexually so broken I can never be whole?” She pleadingly looked around the circle of women, her heart on her sleeve. “I accept you, Mary Francis. I don’t think you are broken beyond repair. I think what your mom did was broken. I imagine she had some severe woundedness of her own, and I wonder what happened to her. But I love you and I love your honest sharing with us today. I respect you for being so open and truthful. I think you are more dignified than ever to me,” Emily commented. Holly added, “I am so happy you’ve connected important dots today. You discovered what happened and how that impacted your life. I can see that little girl inside of you, and I think she is strong and resilient. I admire her for surviving so much and for telling us the truth today. I hope you keep allowing her to tell her story, give her a voice, and love her. She deserves to be loved. I love her. I love you. I know you are the same person, but it’s like the little girl had to go into hiding and lost her voice. Today she got her voice back.” The women celebrated together. Only Vanessa remained withdrawn and silent. Olivia smiled approvingly at the women gathered in the circle. “I’m so proud of you, Mary Francis, for letting us into your world and your story. That takes a lot of courage. And I’m proud of how you ladies are allowing her to open up without trying to fix her. This is what containment looks and feels like.

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

  29. But Peter said unto him, Although all shall be offended, yet will not I. 30. And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. 31. But he spake the more vehemently, If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise. Likewise also said they all. THEOPHYLACT. As they returned thanks, before they drank, so they return thanks after drinking; wherefore it is said, And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives, to teach us to return thanks both before and after our food. PSEUDO-JEROME. For by a hymn he means the praise of the Lord, as is said in the Psalms, The poor shall eat and be satisfied; they that seek after the Lord shall praise him. (Ps. 22:26, 29) And again, All such as be fat upon earth have eaten and worshipped. THEOPHYLACT. He also shews by this that He was glad to die for us, because when about to be betrayed, He deigned to praise God. He also teaches us when we fall into troubles for the sake of the salvation of many, not to be sad, but to give thanks to God, who through our distress works the salvation of many. BEDE. (ubi sup.) That hymn in the Gospel of John (John 17.) may also be meant, which the Lord sang, returning thanks to the Father, in which also He prayed, raising His eyes to heaven, for Himself and His disciples, and those who were to believe, through their word. THEOPHYLACT. Again, He went out into a mountain, that they might come to Him in a lonely place, and take Him without tumult. For if they had come to Him, whilst He was abiding in the city, the multitude of the people would have been in an uproar, and then His enemies, who took occasion against Him, should seem to have slain Him justly, because He stirred up the people. BEDE. (ubi sup.) Beautifully also does the Lord lead out His disciples, when they had tasted His Sacraments, into the mount of Olives, to shew typically that we ought through the reception of the Sacraments to rise up to higher gifts of virtue, and graces of the Holy Ghost, that we may be anointed in heart. PSEUDO-JEROME. Jesus also is held captive on the mount of Olives, whence He ascended to heaven, that we may know, that we ascend into heaven from that place in which we watch and pray; there we are bound and do not tend back again to earth.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Month after month, year after year went by as Hughes ran through hundreds of crewmembers and stunt pilots, three of whom died in fiery accidents. After endless battles, he ended up firing almost every head of a department and running things himself. He fussed over every shot, every angle, every storyboard. Finally Hell’s Angels premiered in 1930 and it was a smash hit. The story was a mess, but the flying and action sequences thrilled audiences. Now the legend of Howard Hughes was born. He was the dashing young maverick who had bucked the system and created a hit. He was the rugged individualist who did everything himself. The film had cost a whopping $3.8 million to make and had lost close to $2 million, but nobody paid attention to this. Hughes himself was humble and claimed to have learned his lesson on the production: “Making Hell’s Angels by myself was my biggest mistake. . . . Trying to do the work of twelve men was just dumbness on my part. I learned by bitter experience that no one man can know everything.” During the 1930s the Hughes legend only seemed to grow as he piloted planes to several world records in speed, courting death on several occasions. Hughes had spun off from his father’s company a new business venture called Hughes Aircraft, which he hoped to transform into the biggest manufacturer of airplanes in the world. At the time, this required procuring large military contracts for planes, and as the U.S. entered World War II Hughes made a big play for such a contract. In 1942 various officials in the Defense Department, impressed by his aviation feats, the meticulous attention to detail he revealed in his interviews, and his tireless lobbying efforts, decided to award Hughes Aircraft an $18 million grant to produce three enormous transport planes, called the Hercules, which would be used to ferry soldiers and supplies to various fronts in the war. The planes were called flying boats and were to have wingspans longer than a football field and stand over three stories high at the hull. If the company did a good job on this, bringing the planes in on time and on budget, they would order many more and Hughes could corner the market in transport planes. Less than a year later, there was more good news. Impressed with the beautiful and sleek design of his smaller D-2 plane, the air force put in an order for one hundred photo-reconnaissance planes for $43 million, to be reconfigured along the lines of the D-2. But soon word began to spread of trouble at Hughes Aircraft. The company had started as a sort of hobby for Hughes. He had placed various Hollywood friends and aviation buddies in high-level positions. As the company grew, so did the number of departments, but there was little communication among them.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  53 nature of that flesh. Indeed, it was the very “nature” of this flesh that made Paul—in his eyes—obviously one of the Ioudaioi. Nothing Paul said about being “in Christ” ever questioned that fact. What Paul did question, however, was the sufficiency of this fact to name everything else that the same earthly body yet might be. The truth of Paul’s Jewish flesh remained intact. It never was denied or erased. But its truth was displaced or re-described through an experience of another equally possible identity for the same existence. This other identity Paul called “heavenly citizenship” (Phil 3:20). Obviously, much more would need to be said adequately to explain the equation just drawn between the experience of being “in Christ” and the possession of “heavenly citizenship” for Paul since such an equation seems to require something like the possibility of embodying two ontologically distinct identities simultaneously. Paul was still a free male Hebraios ex Hebraiôn and yet claimed already to be also a supra- individual extra- or hyper-physical denizen of the heavens. And to compound matters even further, this second identity was somehow supposed to have become wholly (if not fully) present in that body of enduring Jewish flesh as the experience of a certain “spirit” (pneuma). For the moment, however, I have merely tried to state as clearly as possible what Paul literally said about himself. The focus of this essay is on the first of Paul’s two identities: to wit, Paul’s earthly existence as someone who obviously was Ioudaios. 33 I have insisted on two key conclusions in this regard: (1) that Paul’s Jewish identity did not prevent him from becoming a Jew “in Christ” who no longer would be governed by the distinction between Jew and non- Jew; and (2) that “in Christ” Paul’s Jewish identity—understood to describe the kind of “flesh” that Paul’s physical body was supposed to display—never ceased to articulate the substance of this flesh-and-blood human being. The coeval truth of these two claims means that, while Paul understood himself to be certainly Ioudaios as long as he remained on earth, he did not understand this identity to prevent him from simultaneously and already becoming a citizen of another “heavenly” polity in which that “fleshly” identity would be rendered of secondary importance even if and as it never was annulled or diminished as such. I have already acknowledged that the very possibility of such a “doubleness” is extremely difficult to imagine within the cultural (identity) politics of late capitalist North Atlantic (post-) modernity. At the same time, I am obviously trying to hold together two aspects of Paul’s self-understanding that usually are opposed to one another. For this reason, I have argued that Paul remained from the beginning to the end of his early Christian apostolic life indubitably and even proudly Ioudaios. At the same time, he did not make of that identity—despite his own equation of it with his fleshly “nature”—the exclusive definition of who he was. Thus Paul claimed as “carnal” fact a Jewish identity that is basically equivalent to the one that Boyarin otherwise ascribes to the ensuing rabbinical tradition; yet Paul, unlike Boyarin, disavowed the ability of this fact to disqualify the correlative and discrepant truth about himself “in Christ.”

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

  BEDE. Or, because they saw Peter, James, and John, taken apart to the mount, and the keys of the kingdom of heaven promised to Peter, they were angry that these three, or Peter, should have precedence over all; or because in the payment of the tribute they saw Peter made equal to the Lord, they supposed he was to be placed before the rest. But the attentive reader will find that the question was raised among them before the payment of the penny. For in truth Matthew relates that this took place at Capernaum; but Mark says, And he came to Capernaum, and being in the house, he asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves in the way? But they held their peace; for by the way they had disputed among themselves who should be the greatest. (Mat. 18:24, Mark 9:33.) CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. But our Lord, Who knew how to save, seeing in the hearts of the disciples the thought that had risen up thereupon as it were a certain root of bitterness, plucks it up by the roots before it received growth. For when passions first begin in us, they are easily subdued; but having gained strength, they are with difficulty eradicated. Hence it follows, And Jesus perceiving the thought of their heart, &c. Let him who thinks Jesus to be mere man, know that he has erred; for the Word, although made flesh, remained God. For it is God alone Who is able to search into the heart and reins. But in taking a child, and placing it beside Him, He did it for the Apostles’ sake and ours. For the disease of vain-glory feeds generally on those who have the preeminence among other men. But a child has a pure mind and unspotted heart, and abides in simplicity of thought; he courts not honours, nor knows the limits of each one’s power, nor shuns seeming to be inferior to others, bearing no moroseness in his mind or heart. Such the Lord embraces and loves, and thinks them worthy to be near Him, as those who had chosen to taste of the things which are His; for He says, Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart. Hence it follows, And he says unto them, Whosoever shall receive a child in my name, receiveth me. As if He were to say, Seeing that there is one and the same reward to those that honour the saints, whether perchance such an one be the least, or one distinguished for honours and glory, for in him is Christ received, how vain is it to seek to have the preeminence?

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  It’s not being radical to point out that people on the fringe have to be better than people in the mainstream, that they have twice as much to prove. In trying to get people to see your humanity, you reveal just that: your humanity. Your fundamentally problematic nature. All the unique and terrible ways in which people can, and do, fail. But people have trouble with this concept. It’s like how, after Finding Nemo, people who were ill equipped to take care of them rushed to buy clown fish and how the fish died. People love an idea, even if they don’t know what to do with it. Even if they only know how to do exactly the wrong thing. [image file=image_rsrc2K0.jpg] 51. Andre was tried for, and acquitted of, Mendieta’s death. In his 911 call, Andre told the operator, “My wife is an artist, and I’m an artist, and we had a quarrel about the fact that I was more, eh, exposed to the public than she was. And she went to the bedroom, and I went after her, and she went out the window.” Whenever Andre has an exhibition, protestors show up. They create outlines of bodies on the ground, as if someone has fallen from a great height. They leave animal viscera smeared on sidewalks. They ask, “¿Dondé está Ana Mendieta?”Dream House as Cabin in the WoodsI went to Yaddo to write this book in full performance mode. I didn’t realize it until a few weeks in, when I was midlaugh middinner and, for the first time in ages, heard myself. As a teenager I would have given my eyeteeth for this sense of sureness. I performed as a witch, a socialite. I wore mermaid-cut skirts and silk jumpsuits and elegant, floor-length sequined dresses and faux-fur wraps and black frocks and glittering rhinestone earrings. I didn’t hold back on my opinions. I drank wine at dinner and took second helpings and strutted around the grounds. I slept mere feet from where I wrote, in a cabin in the trees. I played Pokémon Go on long walks and vied for control of the property’s single gym (located, abstractly, in a grand and elegant fountain at the base of the slope that dropped down from the mansion) with an avatar called “Hornbuckets.” It was autumn, and every day leaves and pine needles came down; I was forever picking detritus out of my bra. It got cold, and warm, and cold again. It snowed, but the snow melted the next day. I drove to southern Vermont for a reading on Halloween with a bunch of other writers and blew out a tire on a dark country road on the way home, and as we waited for AAA we sat in the car and told stories about our worst jobs.

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  178 The History of Christianity II CHURCH ORGANIZATION õ Every grown man in good standing in the LDS Church becomes a priest; it’s a rite of passage, like a bar mitzvah for Jews. For a long time, up until 1978, black men could not become priests. At present, women cannot be priests, although a small group of feminists within the church is pushing to change that. õ Each Mormon meetinghouse is led by a man called a bishop. He serves the church until the church leaders appoint someone else. õ The LDS Church was autocratic from the start and remains very hierarchical. The structure is complicated, but at the head of the church is the president, who chooses two counsellors. Together they are called the First Presidency. Below them is the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. õ An important element of Mormonism is going on a mission. Every healthy young man is supposed to go on a mission when he’s 18 for two years. In recent years, women have been encouraged to go at age 19 for slightly shorter missions. 179Lecture 18—The Mormons: A True American Faith õ The main point is to convert people to the Mormon faith. But Mormon missions are also a rite of passage, a challenging experience that many Mormons go through and that bonds them together. GROWTH õ A fundamental question about Mormonism is this: Why has the LDS Church grown so quickly? õ Part of the answer is the church’s early leadership. Smith was a religious genius. First-hand reports of what he was like in person make it clear that he had amazing charisma. He also addressed people’s frustrations in a way that existing churches did not. Additionally, Brigham Young was a great organizer and leader. õ The second big reason is the church’s devotion to missions. The third is that Mormons emphasize family, so they have a lot of children. õ The last reason is that Mormons have created a very distinctive culture that instills an intense sense of loyalty and commitment in church members. Being Mormon is not like being a member of most other Christian denominations. It’s a much stronger identity. õ Some observers have called Mormonism the ultimate American religion, a pioneer faith that emphasizes free will and family. Heaven is the ultimate homestead: Mormons seek the place where righteous families become gods, beget their own “spirit children” just as the Heavenly Father begot them, and live together as an eternal family.

• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  “Judaism”—a common-room discussion requiring several levels of abstraction. In this essay I have tried to examine with readers a different and simpler question, which is susceptible to at least partial (dis)confirmation: “How did Paul present himself to the groups of Christ-followers he established, in relation to Judaean law, custom, and culture?” Paul was a Judaean by ethnos, and that he could not change. He was indelibly circumcised, and he continued to follow at least some key moments in the Judaean calendar. The degree to which he “remained in the ancestral customs” of the Judaeans, as Josephus might have put it, is a different matter. Since most of what we all do comes from custom or habit, not rational analysis before each action, even if we could watch Paul acting in certain contexts we might not know what he was thinking or how he reconciled his thought with his actions. Where we can make some progress is with Paul’s self-representation to his “in Christ” groups in letters. From this it emerges, first, that he was sure of having been singled out by God, and son Christ, to prepare the chosen among the nations for rescue to heaven. Second, 67 This is Benedetto Croce’s summary, in The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico (trans. R. G. Collingwood; New York, NY: Macmil an, 1913), 157, of passages from Vico’s Scienza Nuova (1744), accessible in English in Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch, eds., The New Science of Giambattista Vico (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1948), such as l.vii (59); II.iv (127–128), and III (330). 39 Paul without Judaism 39 “The Announcement” he lays out to his groups lacked any Judaean requirements and required no biblical knowledge. Third, in response to those who thought that he should include Judaean content, he responded with a firm “No.” This was not because he had a different Judaism or because his groups were Gentiles. It was because, for him, being in Christ rendered every nomos, of Greeks or of Judaeans, a dead letter. Moses’ law too had served only until Christ. Paul was emphatical y not “under law.” Fourth, Paul declared as vividly as one could imagine his abandonment of the zeal he formerly had for his ancestral traditions. Fifth, he was happy to eat with non-Judaeans in a way that leading Judaean Christ-followers—Peter, Paul’s associate Barnabas, and a group from Jesus’ brother James—could not accept. Sixth, as word about these points got around, from Rome to Jerusalem, Paul’s Announcement caused deep offence to other Judaeans, whether Christ-followers or not. Seventh, Paul faced a rough reception from Judaeans everywhere, which included repeated whippings, because of The Announcement.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Speaking for myself, I feel (and friends have confirmed) that I was actually made stronger and more resilient by successfully navigating my accident and its sequel. My friends noticed that I seemed more grounded, focused and playful. This brings me to the central question: what determines whether acute exposure to a (potentially) traumatizing event will have a long- term debilitating effect as in posttraumatic stress disorder? And how does understanding the dynamics of the immobility response postulate clinical solutions to this crucial question? Let me reiterate. Generally, an animal in the wild, if not killed, recovers from its immobility and lives to see another day. It is wiser but none the worse for wear. For example, a deer learns to avoid a certain rock outcropping where it was ambushed by a mountain lion. While my observational hypothesis is based on field observations and is not empirically proven, my interviews with wildlife managers throughout the world have supported it. In addition, it is difficult to imagine how individual wild animals (or their entire species, for that matter) would have ever survived if they routinely developed the sorts of debilitating symptoms that many humans do. b This natural “immunity” is clearly not the case for us modern humans ... but why and what can we do about it? Long-Lasting Immobility As I was completing my doctoral dissertation at Berkeley in 1977, I continued with my daily visits to the musty stacks of the graduate library, where I stumbled upon the critical key in my understanding of trauma. This article by Gordon Gallup and Jack D. Maser informed the central question of how the normally time-limited immobility response becomes long-lasting and eventually unending. 26 For their work, I would like to make a personal nomination for them to retroactively receive the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—along with the three ethologists previously mentioned. In a carefully thought-out and well-controlled experiment, the authors demonstrated that if an animal is both frightened and restrained, the period during which it remains immobilized (after the restraint is removed) is dramatically increased. There is a nearly perfect linear correlation between the level of fear an animal experiences when it is restrained, and the duration of immobility. 27 When an animal is not subjected to fear before being restrained, immobility generally lasts from seconds to about a minute. This spontaneous capacity is called “self-paced termination.” 28 In dramatic contrast, when both repeatedly frightened and repeatedly restrained, the experimental animal may remain immobilized for as long as seventeen hours! It is my clinical experience and understanding that such a robust potentiation has profound clinical implications for the understanding and treatment of human trauma.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  barracuda (1956) Jonathan, years before he will become my father, is back north for another summer. For the past few winters, since he dropped out of college, he’s been working on charter fishing boats out of Palm Beach. When back in Massachusetts he ranges from his parents’ house in Scituate to friends’ couches in Boston. A vapor. Everywhere. Nowhere. Scituate ( sit-tchoo-it , from the Native American satuit , meaning “cold brook”), a fishing village about thirty miles south of Boston, is the summer home to a few of the city’s politicians, who’ve dubbed it “The Irish Riviera.” During the week Jonathan lives at home, working for a local construction mogul. On weekends he skips north to Boston, crashes on Beacon Hill with Ray, his best friend. Ray is from working-class French Canadian Catholic stock—he pays his bills on time and is generous with his friends, which is becoming more and more important for someone like Jonathan. Steady Ray. You didn’t need much money in your pocket, not a whole lot was expected of you. You could live well as a struggling artist, you could rise up or you could drift along . Cocky, his dark hair slicked back, Jonathan’s rising, making a name for himself— The Next Great American Poet —saying it and then moving toward being it, possessing what passes for ambition in those beatnik days. He often wanders Harvard Square dressed in tennis whites, a racket tucked under his arm, though he doesn’t play tennis. Trawling for Radcliffe girls , he calls it. He’d always been slight, and he’d overcompensate with his swagger. Ray’s making jewelry, bending forks into rings, moonstones in spider settings. In later years Ray will open his own factory and make a fair bit of money manufacturing plastics used in missiles—“Daddy Warbucks,” his family will call him. One afternoon on Charles Street Jonathan nudges Ray, nods into the crowded sidewalk— You watch , he says, there’s going to be a girl walking down that street, and she’ll be from a wealthy family. She’ll have artistic aspirations but not much talent. She’s coming to Beacon Hill to be part of the scene, looking for someone with talent that she can latch on to, looking to be the power behind a diamond in the rough, even if she still believes that she is the one with talent . Jonathan squints into his sun-drenched future. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s looking for me . Jody, seventeen, home for the summer, works in a coffee shop in Scituate Harbor. A photograph from that time shows a girl with a dark brown ponytail, deep green eyes, a difficult smile. Jonathan orders coffee, chats her up. As he recalls it, I think we went on a date the first night I met her. Your mother was beautiful, for chrissakes. I had a car, some shitbox I’d borrowed or finessed. We went on a date in it that first night .

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  It took some time, but she realized her mistake. She tasked the head of her secret service to lure Mary into her most far-reaching conspiracy to get rid of Elizabeth. Now with solid evidence of Mary’s complicity, Elizabeth could take the dreaded step. In the end, going against her own feelings for the sake of the country, in essence admitting her mistake, gained her even more trust from the English. It was the kind of response to public opinion that almost no rulers of the time were capable of. When it came to her foreign rivals, particularly Philip II, Elizabeth was not naive and understood the situation: Nothing she had done had earned her any respect or respite from their endless conspiracies to get rid of her. They disrespected her as an unmarried queen and as a woman who seemed to fear conflict and warfare. She largely ignored all of this and kept to her mission of securing England’s finances. But when the invasion of England seemed imminent, she knew it was time to finally prove herself as the great strategist that she was. She would play on Philip’s underestimating of her craftiness and her toughness as a leader. If war was necessary, she would do it as economically and efficiently as possible. She invested large sums in creating the most elaborate spy system in Europe, which allowed her to know in advance Spain’s plans for the invasion, including the date of the launch. With such knowledge, she could commission and pay for an army at the last minute, saving huge sums of money. She financed Sir Frances Drake’s raids on the coast of Spain and its galleons at sea. This allowed her to enrich England’s coffers and delay the launching of the armada, which made it all the more expensive for Philip. When it seemed certain the launch would occur within a few months, she quickly built up the English navy, commissioning smaller and faster ships, cheaper to build in bulk and well suited to the English seas. Unlike Philip, she left battle strategy in the hands of her admirals, but she overruled them on one score—she wanted them to fight the armada as close to England as possible. This would play into English hands, as the Spanish galleons were not suited for the stormy northern seas, and the English soldiers, fighting with their backs to their country, would fight all the harder. In the end, Spain was bankrupted and never to return to her former glory, while England under Elizabeth was now the rising power. But after this great victory, she resisted the calls to take the battle to Spain and deal the country a fatal blow.

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  That time my mother drove him to the Hingham Courthouse to answer some bullshit charge—what was it—something—Oh, I remember—it was nonsupport (laughs). That’s what it was (looks into camera). That’s where I escaped— . This was the years we were on food stamps, when my mother was taking home one hundred and twenty-seven dollars a week. As a bank teller. A young, good-looking woman. I lower the camera. Tourists pass. They keep looking at me like I’m some kind of movie star , my father glows.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  On April 14, 1488, a group of men, clad in armor and led by Ludovico Orsi, stormed into the palace and stabbed the count to death, throwing his body out the window and into the city square. The countess, dining with her family in a nearby room, heard the shouts and quickly shuffled her six children into a safer room in the palace’s tower. She bolted the door and from a window, under which several of her most trusted allies had gathered, she shouted instructions to them: they were to notify the Sforzas in Milan and her other allies in the region and urge them to send armies to rescue her; under no circumstances should the keeper of Ravaldino ever surrender the castle. Within minutes the assassins had broken into her room, taking her and her children captive. Several days later, Ludovico Orsi and his fellow conspirator Giacomo del Ronche marched Caterina up to Ravaldino—she was to order the castle’s commander to surrender it to the assassins. As the commander she had installed, Tommaso Feo, looked down from the ramparts, Caterina seemed to fear for her life. Her voice breaking with emotion, she begged Feo to give up the fortress, but he refused. As the two of them continued their dialogue, Ronche and Orsi sensed the countess and Feo were playing some sort of game, talking in code. Ronche had had enough of this. Pressing the sharp edge of his lance tight against her chest, he threatened to run her through unless she got Feo to surrender, and he gave her the sternest glare. Suddenly the countess’s expression changed. She leaned further into the blade, her face inches from Ronche, and with a voice dripping with disdain, she told him, “Oh, Giacomo del Ronche, don’t you try to frighten me. . . . You can hurt me, but you can’t scare me, because I am the daughter of a man who knew no fear. Do what you want: you have killed my lord, you can certainly kill me. After all, I’m just a woman!” Confounded by her words and demeanor, Ronche and Orsi decided they had to find other means to pressure her. Several days later Feo communicated with the assassins that he would indeed hand over the fortress, but only if the countess would pay him his back wages and sign a letter absolving him of any guilt for such surrender. Once again, Orsi and Ronche led her to the castle and watched her closely as she seemed to negotiate with Feo. Finally Feo insisted that the countess enter the fortress to sign the document. He feared the assassins were trying to trick him and he insisted she enter alone.