Relief

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 Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Onias was no less enamored of the Laffertys, and what they could do to advance his ambitions for the School of the Prophets. Applying the full brunt of their prodigious energy, the Lafferty brothers dived headlong into the tedious chore of printing, folding, and collating more than fifteen thousand of Onias’s pamphlets, then addressing and mailing them to LDS leaders around the country. “It was like a miracle to us,” Onias says, “for what would have taken us several months to accomplish in our spare time, they were able to accomplish in two weeks working day and night.” By early 1984 the newly established School of the Prophets was meeting on a weekly basis, usually at the Provo home of the Laffertys’ mother, Claudine, upstairs from the family chiropractic clinic. Thanks to the enthusiasm of the five brothers, the school got off to a flying start. Onias appreciated the Laffertys’ pivotal role in his school’s successful launch. The Laffertys, it seemed to him, were heaven-sent. Onias soon got confirmation that in fact they were. On January 8, he received a revelation in which God explained that before the Lafferty boys were even born, He had singled them out “to be an elect people, for they are the true blood of Israel and the chosen seed.” Six weeks later, Onias received another revelation in which God commanded him to appoint Ron Lafferty bishop of the school’s Provo chapter, which he gladly did. All the younger brothers, including Dan, clearly looked up to Ron—as indeed they had their entire lives. When Ron assumed the bishop’s responsibilities, everyone in the School of the Prophets approved. Ron’s promotion to a position of authority lifted his morale at a moment when such a boost was sorely needed, because the prior months had delivered an avalanche of setbacks and disappointments. As Ron recorded in a journal entry, The events of the past year have caused me to do a great deal of research and scripture study and spend a great deal of time on my knees in prayer. I have been stripped of all my material wealth, my family has divorced me and moved to Florida, I have been unjustly excommunicated from the church that I love so dearly. Ron no longer had a job or a regular paycheck. He was regarded as a pariah by his church and community. Because the home he’d so painstakingly built with his own hands had been taken from him, he was reduced to living out of his 1974 Impala station wagon—the only asset of any value still in his possession. And yet he claimed in his journal to be grateful for such humiliations, saying, “These experiences have caused me to establish a personal relationship with my Father in Heaven and He has revealed to me, at least in part, the outcome of all these trials.” Though Ron claimed to enjoy wearing a hair shirt, however, his actions suggested otherwise.

• From The Vagina Bible (2019)

  We don’t know if a moisturizer is helpful skin maintenance for women who feel fine but are looking for preventative care. It seems medically intuitive that it may not be a bad idea to try, especially if you are in your forties or older, or if you chronically remove hair or can’t give up irritants like soaps or wipes. It is also probably useful if you have incontinence or a skin condition that affects your vulva, such as lichen simplex chronicus (an eczema-like condition) or lichen sclerosus. If you have a skin condition that affects your vulva, it is always a good idea to discuss a moisturizer with your health care provider before you start. I started a moisturizer when I hit menopause, and my vulva started to feel more supple after a few weeks. I didn’t realize how accustomed I had become to the dryness and how much I look forward to the “ah” moment that immediately follows application. If you don’t feel dry or use any regular products on your skin that irritate, a moisturizer is probably one of those things to try, see how you like it, and go from there. Are there downsides to moisturizing? Some products can block pores and lead to folliculitis (basically acne on the vulva). There is also the risk of irritation and allergic reactions and the hassle of using something chronically. I understand some women love applying creams or ointments as a beauty regimen, but for me it seemed like one more thing I was going to forget, so it took some dedication to get a regimen going. Maybe it just made me feel old to have to start to use a moisturizer? I’m over it now, but it took a few weeks. What Is the Best Moisturizer? No moisturizer has been specifically studied for the vulva, so this is an area where I can only offer general guidance. Here are some common products and the available data: • COCONUT OIL: This has been studied on the skin of premature babies with no ill effects, and it performed better than mineral oil in preventing water loss from the skin. Lipids from the oil coat the skin, and it may have beneficial anti-inflammatory activity. It also has only one ingredient, so if it irritates there is no big mystery to solve. It is cheaper than many other options, absorbs well, and smells nice. Some researchers have suggested virgin coconut oil, obtained without chemicals or heat, might offer even more anti-inflammatory activity, but there is no good data to support that hypothesis. Coconut oil is both an emollient and an occlusive agent. • OLIVE OIL: This has been studied as a vulvar moisturizer for breast cancer survivors who could not use estrogen and was well tolerated. It is also an emollient and has occlusive properties.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  struggle. We shall see in Daniel 10 that each people was thought to have a heavenly “prince” or protector. The “prince” of Israel was the archangel Michael. Most probably, it is Michael who is depicted as “one like a son of man” coming with the clouds of heaven. Of course, the vision in chapter 7 is still addressed to the situation of the Jewish people. The offensive “little horn” is Antiochus Epiphanes, who attempted to change the sacred festivals and the law (7:25). The Jews are given into his power for “a time, two times, and half a time,” or three and a half years. But eventually Israel’s heavenly allies, the holy ones, prevail. The Jewish people are “the people of the holy ones of the Most High” who receive the lasting kingdom in 7:27. Daniel’s vision dramatizes the conflict in which the Jews found themselves in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. On the one hand, it claims that this crisis is worse than might be thought: it is nothing less than an eruption of primordial chaos. But it is also reassuring, for the end of the story is known. The holy ones will eventually prevail, and the Most High will pronounce judgment. The conflict will be resolved on the heavenly level. The appropriate response on the part of the Jewish people is not to take up arms in its own defense but to wait for the deliverance from heaven. All of this will be spelled out more clearly in the last revelation of the book. Daniel 8 The vision in chapter 8 resembles chapter 7 in that it develops the image of the little horn. In this case, however, there are no beasts from the sea. At first Daniel sees a fight between a ram, representing Persia, and a goat, representing Greece. The goat wins, but “at the height of its power, the great horn was broken,” a reference to the early death of Alexander the Great. In its place grew four horns, representing the successors of Alexander in the separate kingdoms of Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. One of these (Syria) sprouts the little horn that becomes Antiochus Epiphanes. This little horn grows as high as the host of

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  Joe now notices his shoulders pulling up and off to the right. He becomes aware of his arm wanting to turn the wheel to the right just as he hears the crash and buckling of metal. Tom asks Joe to ignore the crash for the moment, focus on the sensation, and complete the turn to the right. Joe makes the turn in his body and “avoids” the accident. He has some more mild shaking that is quickly followed by a tremendous amount of relie f even though he knows the accident did happen. Tom asks Joe to return to the point where he first saw the yellow fender and the man through the windshield. From there they move to the moment where he hears the first clang of metal. As these images are accessed, Joe feels his body being thrown to the left, while at the same time, it is pulling back in the opposite direction. He feels like he is being propelled forward and his back muscles are trying, unsuccessfully, to pull him back. Tom encourages Joe to keep feeling his back muscles. Joe experiences increased tension as he focuses on the muscles. He then experiences a slight feeling of panic. At that point, Joe’s back muscles release and he breaks into a sweat. He shakes and trembles deeply for several minutes. At the end of this, Joe discovers himself feeling peaceful and safe. Joe knows that the accident happened. He knows that he tried to avoid it. He knows that he wanted to go back to talk to his wife. Each of these experiences are equally real for him. It doesn’t seem like one is real and the others are made up; they appear as different outcomes to the same event, both equally real. In the few days following the release of the energy stored in trauma, the symptoms in Joe’s right arm and back cleared up significantly. It is important to recognize that the pain he was experiencing was related to impulses he had that had not been completed. The first impulse was to turn the steering wheel to the right and to go back to talk to his wife. The second was to turn right to avoid the accident. A third was the muscles in his back that were trying to pull him back. Being encouraged to complete each of these actions, Joe was able to release the stored energy associated with the impulses, even if it was after the fact. We can see that this process offers a way to allow responses to complete and images to become more connected (associated). Images that are constricted become expanded, while stored energy is released through gradual discharge and completio n one step at a time. 17. First Aid for Children Delayed Traumatic Reactions

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Under Umar’s leadership, the Arabs burst out of the peninsula, initially in small local raids but later in larger expeditions. As they expected, they met little opposition. The armies of both the great powers had been decimated, and the subject peoples were disaffected. Jews and Monophysite Christians were sick of harassment from Constantinople, and the Persians were still reeling from the political upheaval that had followed Khosrow II’s assassination. Within a remarkably short period, the Arabs forced the Roman army to retreat from Syria (636) and crushed the depleted Persian army (637). In 641 they conquered Egypt, and though they had to fight some fifteen years to pacify the whole of Iran, they were eventually victorious in 652. Only Byzantium, now a rump state shorn of its southern provinces, held out. Thus, twenty years after the Battle of Badr, the Muslims found themselves masters of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. When they finally subdued Iran, they fulfilled the dream that had eluded both the Persians and Byzantines and re-created Cyrus’s empire.45 It is hard to explain their success. The Arabs were accomplished raiders but had little experience of protracted warfare and had no superior weapons or technology.46 In fact, like the Prophet, in the early years of the conquest period, they gained more territory by diplomacy than by fighting: Damascus and Alexandria both surrendered because they were offered generous terms.47 The Arabs had no experience of state building and just adopted Persian and Byzantine systems of land tenure, taxation, and government. There was no attempt to impose Islam on the subject peoples. The people of the book—Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians—became dhimmis (“protected subjects”). Critics of Islam often denounce this arrangement as evidence of Islamic intolerance, but Umar had simply adapted Khosrow I’s Persian system: Islam would be the religion of the Arab conquerors—just as Zoroastrianism had been the exclusive faith of the Persian aristocracy—and the dhimmis would manage their own affairs as they had in Iran and pay the jizya, a poll tax, in return for military protection. After centuries of forcible attempts by the Christian Roman Empire to impose religious consensus, the traditional agrarian system reasserted itself, and many of the dhimmis found this Muslim polity a relief.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  of the law leads to the conclusion that a man makes himself pleasing to God by obedience. 174 'Thus the Jewish religion, as presented by the Tannaites, remains a religion in which the normal relationship with God is built on the righteousness of man and the goodwill (Wohlgefallen) of God which is achieved by it.' 175 Here the ideas of mercy and election, which Sjoberg saw and tried to hold in balance, have finally fallen away. The refutation of Sjoberg's view is simple. Sanhedrin IO.I by its very wording (literally, 'All Israel- there is for them a share in the world to come'; thus 'All Israelites have') indicates that it applies to individuals, not just to the continuation of the Israelite nation. The exceptions which follow further show that individuals not excluded are counted in. Most decisive, however, are the detailed efforts to work out how individuals atone for their trans gressions. To repeat our frequent conclusion, the universal view is that every individual Israelite who indicates his intention to remain in the coven ant by repenting, observing the Day of Atonement and the like, will be for given for all his transgressions. The passages on repenting and atoning in order to return to God, which are ubiquitous in the literature, presuppose the covenantal relationship between God and all the members of Israel. In dealing with the individual, one cannot dismiss his membership in the covenant of God with Israel. 1 76 The statements of reward and punishment, on the other hand, do not indicate how one earns salvation. Their opposite would not be that God is merciful and saves, but that there is no correspond ence between God's rewards and man's behaviour: that God is arbitrary. If it appears that within this world God is not being just, one may rest assured that justice will be done in the world to come. The Israelite in the covenant will be punished for transgressions - by suffering, by death and even after death if necessary - but he is saved by remaining in the covenant given by God. Thus, for example, R. Akiba believed in strict punishment for deeds. Suffering reveals that one has sinned and is being punished, 1 77 and God will not show mercy to the righteous by refraining from punishing them for their transgressions. 178 But this describes God's behaviour within the covenant, not how one is saved. R. Akiba agreed with the statement that all Israelites have a share in the world to come, which is indicated by his glossing it by listing a few (a very few) exceptions. Further, in one sense even God's punishment of the sins of the righteous is itself mercy, since it indicates that one is being punished here in order not to be punished hereafter. Mercy and justice are not truly in conflict, nor is strict reward and punishment for deeds an alternative soteriology to election and atonement.

• From Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988)

  More than two hundred years later the Christian convert Augustine, then a brilliantly successful young orator, was walking through the streets of Milan one night, dreading the speech he had to give the following day in praise of the emperor. In the midst of these anxieties he noticed a drunken beggar. Why, Augustine asked himself, did this beggar seem so happy, when he himself was so miserable? Augustine later described his overwhelming relief when at last he gave up his career, his ambition, the woman who had lived with him and borne him a son, as well as his impending marriage to a wealthy heiress, for the freedom of celibacy and renunciation. His pagan contemporaries regarded such renunciation not only as social suicide but as the worst impiety and dishonor. But Augustine came to believe that it meant no more than “dying to the world”—destroying the false self, constructed according to worldly custom and tradition, in order to “raise his own life above the world.”3 Ascetically inclined Christians even projected their idealized celibacy back into Paradise, as we shall see, and turned the story of the first marriage into a story of two virgins whose sin and consequent sexual awakening ended in their expulsion from the “Paradise of virginity” into marriage and all its attendant sufferings, from labor pains to social domination and death.4 The renowned teacher and bishop Gregory of Nyssa (c. 331–395 C.E.) declared, “Marriage, then, is the last stage of our separation from the life that was led in Paradise; marriage therefore … is the first thing to be left behind; it is the first station, as it were, for our departure to Christ.”5 Even today, an adolescent who takes time to think before plunging into ordinary adult society—into marriage, and the double obligations of family and career—may hesitate, for such obligations usually cost nothing less than one’s life, the expense of virtually all one’s energy attempting to fulfill obligations to family and society, especially if one also wants to be recognized and celebrated within one’s community. It is in this sense that Christian renunciation, of which celibacy is the paradigm, offered freedom—freedom, in particular, from entanglement in Roman society. In classical Greek and Roman society, a young man or woman who hesitated or refused to marry the person chosen by his or her family would be considered insubordinate or possibly even insane. Many parents expected their daughters to marry at about the age of puberty or soon after; in aristocratic circles, advantageous marriages sometimes were arranged when the children were as young as six or seven. Through marriage, as the historian Peter Brown says, “a girl was conscripted as a fully productive member by her society, as was her spouse.”6 Young men were expected to marry between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five and then to place themselves at the service of their communities, according to their family tradition and station.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  I turned some kind of corner when, at Alain Ducasse New York, I was offered a painfully extensive discourse on the water selections—a lengthy distraction which bled out any possibility of joy from what was already a dark, stiff, and humorless exercise in pomposity. My meal at Joel Robuchon's new concept operation in Paris, L'Atelier, was a welcome relief, and seemed to light the way for other chefs to serve high-style food in more comfortable, less stuffy surroundings. And Martin Picard's outrageously over the top Au Pied de Cochon in Montreal was an answered prayer, a loud, defiant, and joyous "fuck you!" to convention for which I was (obviously) very grateful. When I find a chef or a restaurant I love, I tend to make a cause of it—to get hyperbolic. But I feel a real sense of relief, a return to sanity and reason, when I eat at St. John in London, or at Martin's Au Pied, or at Avec in Chicago. When it's finally and only about the food, and all the nonsense and artifice are stripped away. When I can be certain the words "truffle oil" will never issue from a waiter's mouth, and no sauce shall be foamed, and nothing will be served in a shot glass except tequila. A LIFE OF CRIME Writing incessantly about food is like writing porn. How many adjectives can there be before you repeat yourself? How many times can you write variations on the tale of the lonely housewife, temporarily short of funds, and the horny but hunky delivery boy who's not averse to negotiating for that pizza? How many times can you describe a fucking salad without using the word "crisp"? So it's always a pleasure when I'm given the opportunity to write about something that doesn't involve food or chefs. I do have other interests. Crime is one of them. ADVANCED COURSES I think all the international travel began to make it easier for me to see and appreciate my own country, and I stopped sneering and started looking at the flyover and the red states not as the enemy but as strange and potentially wonderful foreign lands. It certainly helps that it's usually the chefs and cooks I meet first, but after sitting down to eat with ex-Khmer Rouge, for instance, or being hosted with incredible generosity by former VC cadre leaders—and a lot of other Very Nice People who've done some Very Bad Things—I began to be (I like to think) less judgmental about my own country. I mean, if I can get drunk with a bunch of probably murderous Russian gangsters and have a good time, why can't I get along with an Evangelical Republican from Texas? This was an early grope at being comfortable with that vast space between the coasts, a coming to terms with my own snobbery. NAME DROPPING DOWN UNDER Written for a British magazine, and dripping with Britishisms.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  In contrast, like the other adults who did not want to emulate their parents’ marriage, Gary had a clear agenda. One of the lessons he drew from watching his parents was that he wanted to have better communication in his own marriage. “That wasn’t hard,” he quipped, “because my parents hardly talked except about us kids. Communication isn’t talking baseball or even children. It’s solving problems. I had this notion that admitting to problems meant that you’d end up in a big, screaming fight feeling misunderstood and angry for days. But I’ve really learned from Sara that it doesn’t have to be that way, that you can discuss your differences and actually have the tension get less, not bigger. That’s been a huge relief to me.” In his anxieties over dealing with conflicts, Gary sounded a lot like Karen. The difference is that Gary eventually learned how to argue without feeling the world would crash down on his head. Karen never could. Gary had the enormous advantage of having seen his parents cooperate consistently over many years in situations involving the children. Their cooperation made it easier for him to learn from Sara how to deal with differences directly, without fear that they will rock the marriage. He was also greatly reassured by Sara’s firm belief that problems in a marriage are meant to be resolved. The multiple parts of Gary’s legacy from his parents were evident in two marital crises that Gary described. The first reflects Gary’s legacy from his father of a steely resolve to fight for the marriage and the belief that one has to give it priority over other relationships.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  goat carried the sin of the people into the wilderness could hardly feel any relief when it went out of sight. The Priestly laws in Leviticus may give the impression that the sacrifices work automatically, but elsewhere in the Bible we often find an awareness that rituals are only effective when they give expression to genuine human intentions. We shall find that the prophets were often very critical of the sacrificial cult when it was not accompanied by the practice of justice (see especially Amos 5). The psalmists also were aware of the limits of ritual. “For you have no delight in sacrifice,” says Ps 51:16-17. “If I were to give a burnt offering you would not be pleased. The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Leviticus, however, assumes that God is pleased by burnt offerings and that the ritual is effective when it is performed properly. The Consecration of Priests The instructions for the building of the tabernacle included directions for the consecration of the sons of Aaron as priests in Exodus 29. The actual consecration is described in Leviticus 8–10. Aaron is given a special tunic and a breastplate equipped with Urim and Thummim, which were used to consult the Lord. We do not know exactly what the Urim and Thummim were. Scholars have speculated that they were some form of dice that could be rolled so as to get either a positive or a negative answer to a question. In any case, it is of interest that the high priest was equipped to engage in divination, which is a function that we associate more usually with prophets. It is also noteworthy that the priests were anointed with oil. Anointing was widely used in the ancient Near East to indicate a raise in status. In Israel the king was anointed. The Hebrew verb “to anoint” is mashach. An anointed one is a mashiach, the word commonly rendered in English as messiah . After the Babylonian exile, when there no longer was a king in Israel, the term “messiah” (mashiach) came to designate a future king. But a priest could also be called mashiach, and

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  likely that we have two reports of the same incident from different vantage points. There is no doubt that Judah was brought to its knees by the Assyrians. For the survivors in Jerusalem, however, the more remarkable thing was that the city was not destroyed. This unexpected deliverance is celebrated in the story of the angel of the Lord. It contributed to the myth of the inviolability of Zion, which we have seen in connection with the temple ideology. According to Ps 46:5, “God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.” Psalm 48 tells how kings who came up against Jerusalem were seized with panic and fled. It is possible that these psalms were inspired by the fact that Sennacherib did not destroy Jerusalem. More probably, the belief that the city was protected by YHWH was older, but it was powerfully reinforced by this deliverance. A century later, the confidence inspired by this myth would prove to be false when the city was destroyed by the Babylonians. The Conquest of Jerusalem Year 7, month of Kislimu: The king of Akkad moved his army into Haddi land, laid siege to the city of Judah, and the king took the city on the second day of the month Addaru. He appointed in it a [new] king to his liking, took heavy booty from it, and brought it into Babylon. Babyonian Chronicle, trans. A. Leo Oppenheim; ANET, 564. The End of the Kingdom of Judah The “good” King Hezekiah is followed in 2 Kings 21 by Manasseh, who reigns for fifty-five years and does “more wicked things than all the Amorites did, who were before him” (21:11). Manasseh does everything of which the Deuteronomists disapprove, restoring the high places that Hezekiah had torn down, erecting altars for Baal, and even making his son “pass through fire” as a burnt offering. He is also said to have practiced soothsaying and dealt with mediums. How far these practices were traditional in Judah and how far they were introduced by Manasseh under Assyrian influence, is disputed. At least the high places and the worship of Baal were traditional, although the cult of Baal

• From Opening Up by Writing It Down (2016)

  You can appreciate the irony of this situation. This man had come into the polygrapher’s office a free man, safe in the knowledge that polygraph evidence was not allowed in court. Nevertheless, he confessed. Now, his professional, financial, and personal life was on the brink of ruin. He was virtually assured of a prison term. Despite these realities, he was relaxed and at ease with himself. Later, when a policeman came to handcuff and escort him to jail, he warmly shook the polygrapher’s hand and thanked him for all he had done. Several months later, the polygrapher received a warm Christmas card written by the former bank vice president with the federal penitentiary as the return address. Even when the costs are high, the confession of painful secrets can reduce anxiety and physiological stress. Whereas being the center of the conversation in a group may be fun, revealing pent-up thoughts and feelings can be liberating—even if they end up sending you to prison. Psychosomatics, Self-Knowledge, and Healing Here’s a little tip about researchers in psychology: Many of them study topics that are most troublesome or relevant for them personally. It is possible that Jamie was interested in emotion and health issues because of family issues earlier in his life. He was probably drawn to the area of psychosomatics by virtue of having had asthma as a child. He grew up in West Texas, a very dry and flat part of the world. During his adolescence, asthma attacks became a routine feature of the windy part of winter (as opposed to the windy parts of spring, summer, and fall). At the time, he reasoned that pollen and dust that had blown in from New Mexico and Nevada were to blame. In college, he never had any wheezing bouts except when he went home for the Christmas holidays. The pollen and dust again. During his last year in college, however, his parents came to visit him in Florida in late November. The day they arrived, he developed asthma. All of a sudden, the profound realization hit him that there was more to asthma than pollen. We don’t want to be judgmental here, but one could reasonably argue that long-standing conflicts with his parents were linked to his upper respiratory system. Interestingly, once he saw the parent–asthma connection, he never wheezed again. It was far too embarrassing.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  more important in popular Israelite religion than in the writings that are preserved in the Bible. Little is said about Azazel here, and it is difficult to know just what role he ever played in Israelite religion. He was apparently important enough at some point that he had to be appeased by the offering of a goat. The goat is not killed but is simply sent out into the wilderness, where Azazel presumably lived. Our purpose in considering Leviticus 16 here is not to speculate on the origin of Azazel, but to reflect on the way in which the ritual works. The priest “shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat. . . . The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities” (16:21-22). Iniquities (sins) are not material objects that can be packaged and put on an animal’s head. They are deeds that people have done (murder, for example), and in many cases they cannot be undone. The action of the priest, then, is symbolic, and the effectiveness of his action depends on the belief of everyone involved. When the ritual is performed correctly, the sins of the people are deemed to be carried away into the wilderness. Just as a judge in a court has the power to declare someone guilty or innocent, the priest has the power to declare sin forgiven. The legitimacy of a court depends on the consensus of a society. Similarly, the effectiveness of a ritual depends on its acceptance within a society. It is assumed in Leviticus that these rituals are prescribed by God and that sin is forgiven because God so declares it. God, however, speaks through the priest. While we cannot verify the divine acceptance of the ritual, we can assess its effect on the people who practiced it. We can imagine that people who approached the Day of Atonement burdened by a sense of sin would feel a great sense of relief as they watched the goat bearing their sins disappear into the wilderness. Such people might well resolve to avoid sinful conduct in the future, although this is not necessarily the case. We can also understand that an individual who made an offering for sin would be pardoned not only by God but by the society that acknowledged the validity of the ritual. The efficacy of the ritual, however, depends on its acceptance. A person who did not believe that the

• From Don't Feed the Monkey Mind: How to Stop the Cycle of Anxiety, Fear, and Worry (2017)

  She got lots of support for taking responsibility for herself rather than for her son and his illness. After a few months of trying on these new ideas, she noticed that her health was improving and she was able to do things for herself—and even have a little fun once in a while. Coping with her son’s illness turned out to be an opportunity for Samantha to change basic assumptions that she had operated from her whole life. She actually believes now that she is responsible for herself and that her son is responsible for himself. She has a stake in something she can control—her own health and well-being—which she is not going to sacrifice for something she can’t control—her son’s. She doesn’t assume responsibility for him even when he fails. Whatever your anxiety and worries are based on, when you choose to act with a mind-set based on your personal values—and not the monkey’s—you will get new experience that supports that mind-set. Your consciousness will integrate this new experience and expand. With repeated new experiences, your old perfectionist, need-to-be-certain, over-responsible mind-sets will break down. You’ll learn to believe in the new expansive mind-set you have chosen. Expansive thinking will become your new default. Living with Purpose, Achieving Your Goals [image "40%" file=Image00062.jpg] As you become less limited by the monkey’s bias toward safety and more resilient to its alarms of perceived threats, you will begin to take the risks necessary to meet your larger personal goals. Things you only dreamed about doing before will begin to appear doable. Maria, as you recall, longed to travel. The values she cherished most were curiosity and spontaneity, but she was afraid to go more than ten miles or so from her doctor and her hospital. All that has changed now. First of all, Maria is delighted to report that she has far fewer uncomfortable physical sensations. This is partially because she isn’t constantly scanning her body for them anymore. It’s also because when she does happen to feel something uncomfortable, she doesn’t look it up on the Internet. When she doesn’t feed her worry, there’s less to worry about. She feels healthier and less stressed. After all her practicing tolerance for uncertainty regarding physical symptoms, Maria has noticed she is more willing to be uncertain in other areas of her life. She doesn’t second-guess her financial investments anymore, she is bold and decisive when shopping, and the number one thing she Googles now is travel locations. After years of hugging the shoreline Maria is making up for lost time. She just returned from a month in South America, a destination she would have been terrified to travel to before. Maria is living according to her own values now—explore, explore, explore! Increased Compassion and Self-Esteem Eric, like all perfectionists, held himself to an impossible standard. He wasn’t allowed to make mistakes.

• From The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006)

  And when, after the four rounds of Louis Treize and a chocolate souffle dusted with a few grains of sea salt and the petit-fours and a single spoonful of Meyer lemon sorbet, Rob emerged from the kitchen to dazzle the girls (who were now so drunk as to be nearly unable to speak) and receive sincere thanks from Cleveland, Roland Schutz sat Rob Holland down and did what he did so well. He made a multiunit, multiyear, multimillion-dollar deal, acquiring (after the lawyers and accountants had looked things over and cleared the way of any obstacles) a 65-percent share in the soon-to-be-formed Rob Holland Group International. The Boston and Philly partners would be bought out and the restaurants closed. The airport operations would be sold (at a tidy profit) to Wolfgang Puck, who needed more locations to sell pizzas. New Rob Holland restaurants would open in Schutz-owned casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and in hotels in Miami, London, and Dubai. Trusted Holland associates Paul, Kevin, and Michelle would each head up a unit. Other loyalists would be similarly rewarded with positions suiting their skills. Even Thierry scored a position as chief of operations at the retail baking and pastry wing in the soon-to-be-erected Schutz Plaza in midtown Manhattan. Marvin accepted a very generous offer of two million five for his stake in Saint Germain, which would allow him to return to the more secure prospects of the auto body business. (Which, he had to admit these days, he'd always loved and never should have left. He'd be able to quickly open up five new stores across Long Island and become wealthier than his wildest dreams—a rare survivor of the New York restaurant industry. There was the added perk that Marvin would still be able to eat and entertain for free at Saint Germain whenever he wished.) Saint Germain, as the flagship of the new Schutz-Holland Axis, was allowed to retain its 60-percent food cost and to run even higher labor percentages as it was the showcase (and loss leader) for the whole empire. Schutz and eventually the repugnant Hitchcock were favored with regular tables of their choosing. Hitchcock was additionally favored with the offering of a free renovation of his kitchens in Bucks County, South Hampton, and Manhattan (supposedly from Rob but actually from a Schutz-controlled contractor). The restaurant was saved. The Puebla Posse soon ran the kitchen—even hiring additional friends and family members from their hometown of Atlixco. Though Rob continued to retain the title of chef, Manuel was given the day-to-day responsibility of running the kitchen and the title of chef de cuisine and a sizable raise to go with it. Needless to say, everyone got a generous Christmas bonus. No one got kicked out of their apartment. Credit card payments were made. Thousands of miles away, new satellite dishes appeared on rooftops in tiny Mexican towns. Best of all, Rob continued to cook now and again.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Every cell of my body relaxed as he continued on: “We’re thrilled with how well you’re still doing. If you feel comfortable enough, we’re confident that it would be safe for you to have even more time between scans. You can come back in three to five years if you want—whatever works for you.” Sweet Jesus. After comparing 16 years of my scans, the doctors’ consensus was that my cancer was stable enough to give me more breathing room between checkups. “Are you serious!?” I exclaimed. “This is incredible! Thank you so much, Dr. D.! I’ll be back in five.” The force of my enthusiastic response surprised even me. But after nearly two decades of anxiety-provoking doctors’ appointments, I was ready to leave fear in my rearview. As I was doing a happy dance in my head, Brian interjected: “Let’s go with three.” For him, five years felt like too much time to allow, as cancer can be a trickster and show up at the most unlikely times. Oh, and the lump in my arm? Turns out it was a glamorous fatty tumor. No metastasis. That night Brian and I toasted my milestone with an expensive glass of champagne at a fancy hotel bar. Perhaps I could even retire my lucky underwear (the elastic had certainly seen better days). When I called my parents to share the news, they were ecstatic. These were the kinds of calls they prayed for. Despite the outward celebration, on the inside I felt awful—guilty. It seemed cruel that I was OK while Dad’s fate hung in the balance. My incredible news felt as if I were intentionally pouring alcohol on his open wound. This isn’t fair! Why me? Why not him? Why ask why? I know better. While my fear of dying was fading to a more manageable level, my fear of losing Dad was on the rise. I knew he wasn’t a statistic; he was a real person with real hopes and real potential. Just because the five-year survival rate for people with pancreatic cancer is only 10 percent didn’t mean he couldn’t be one of the “lucky ones.” Every patient’s circumstances, genetic makeup, and capacity to heal are different. But I still couldn’t shake the idea that I knew where this was ultimately going. That my dad wouldn’t make it.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  PART SIX Faith, Reason and Unreason (1648– 1870) T HE TWO DECADES of the 1640s and 1650s form one of the great watersheds in the history of Christianity. Up to this point, the ideal of the total Christian society, embracing every aspect of man’s existence, still seemed attainable; and masses of men were prepared to wage war, to massacre, hang and burn to realize it. Christendom was split, but each of the rival parties saw their system of belief ultimately becoming coextensive with humanity, and themselves bidden by divine command to hasten the process at whatever cost. They were still, in a sense, mesmerized by the Augustinian vision conceived over 1200 years before. With the 1650s we get a change: war and suffering are replaced by exhaustion and doubt, and the European mind seems to sicken of the unattainable objective, and focus on more mundane ends. There is a huge, long-delayed and grateful relaxation of the spirit, a dousing of angry embers. Anthony Wood, writing his diary from an Oxford coign of vantage, gives a sardonic picture of the university moving back, in the years 1660–1, from republican commonwealth to parliamentary monarchy, from the dominance of Calvinism to Anglican conformity. A century before, the fires had burned fiercely outside St John’s College. Now the atmosphere is low-key, a mere heightening of the customary struggle for places, fellowships and influence, the raucous exchange of abuse and insult, low japes and ribaldry. The age of the martyrs had ended, for a second time. Wood relates what happened when the triumphant Anglicans brought back vestments to the cathedral services. ‘On the night of 21 January 1661, some varlets of Christ Church’ took all the new surplices issued to the choristers, and threw them ‘in a common privy house belonging to Peckwater Quadrangle, and there with long

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  But Luther now expected that he would at long last get the fair hearing he had been seeking, and he reckoned that the archbishop of Salzburg would probably be the judge. But what happened in the meantime would affect that too. And then, on January 12, the news came that the emperor had died. Years later, Luther recalled that with the earthshaking news of Maximilian’s death “the storm ceased to rage a bit.”17 CHAPTER EIGHTThe Leipzig DebateA simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it. —Martin Luther A plague on it! —Duke George the Bearded AS PROGRESS ON Luther’s case had slowed down in Rome and the Vatican, things again heated up in Germany. Luther had written his response to Eck’s Obelisks, titled Asterisks, but he had intended this to be rather private, along with their larger disagreement. And it had been, until Luther’s somewhat bumbling Wittenberg colleague Andreas Karlstadt had on his own accord—and without telling Luther—replied to Eck publicly, with his own 406 (sic) Theses. Karlstadt sometimes seems to have been angling to upstage Luther, but whatever his reasons for doing this, it was now unhelpful in the extreme, and the banked fires of the disagreement with Eck once more flared up. This was because Eck now felt compelled to respond publicly. Eck’s response to Karlstadt—titled Response—appeared in mid-August 1518. But Eck now escalated things dramatically. For some reason, he no longer was interested in a quiet academic dispute in writing between the universities of Wittenberg and Ingolstadt but rather in something more like a colossal public spectacle. On the title page of his Response, he called for a debate that should be decided by no less a person than the pope himself, which should be held at the university of Paris or Cologne—or Rome! He thought early April of the following year, 1519, would be about right for the date but said he would allow Karlstadt to decide the venue. The Wittenbergers thought that something closer to home would be far less expensive, not to mention theologically friendlier, so they suggested either of the universities at Erfurt or Leipzig. Eck chose Leipzig and immediately asked Duke George of Saxony for permission. [image file=image_rsrc6KW.jpg] A portrait of Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  When Marcus arrives at the house of his girlfriend, it’s after a long day of being the boss. With a sexually powerful woman, a dominating woman, he gets a respite from having to be in control. With his girlfriend in charge, in the role of dominatrix, he can give it up, for he knows that she can withstand the intensity of his urges. The surrender not only pleases him erotically, it nurtures him emotionally as well. Like Elizabeth, Marcus gets to experience a submerged but vital facet of himself in the erotic mirror. In our culture, passivity is perceived as female and weak. Consequently, it generates great emotional conflict for men (and for many women). But that doesn’t eradicate it from our psyche, or make it any less desirable. Marcus fears surrender as much as he craves it. His fantasy permits a bounded passivity, a safe but masked return to the mother’s arms. And while he is not interested in intellectual or heavy-duty psychological explanations of his “motivation,” his erotic inclinations challenge the stereotypical power distribution that always sees the man on top. There Is No Love Without Hate The defenders of modern intimacy—with marital counselors and self-help authors on the front line—have continuously sought to neutralize the thorny issue of power in committed relationships. The ideal partnership is said to be one of absolute equality in every area of the relationship, as if, with scale in hand, we could measure power quantitatively. Many of us, steeped in this ideology of fairness and mutuality, want nothing less. But the fact is that negotiating power is part and parcel of all human relationships. We recognize it most easily when it’s expressed outright, through authority, coercion, bullying, aggression, and castigation. The powerful one metes out punishments and rewards depending on one’s degree of compliance with his or her wishes. But there is also the power of the weak. Deference, passivity, withholding, ingratiation, and the moral one-upmanship of the victim are their own manifestations of might. Power and power imbalances are inescapable. Ethel Spector Person, in Feeling Strong, writes that we first learn about power differentials in the power grid of our families. “All power relationships, all desires either to dominate or submit, have their psychological roots in the fact that we were all once little children with big parents, and their existential roots in our feelings of being small people in an out-of-control big world that we need to be able to tame.” Childhood is our basic training for power tactics. We have our will; our parents have theirs. We demand; they object. We bargain for what we want; they tell us what we can have. We learn to resist, and we learn to surrender. At best we learn to balance, to mediate, to understand.

• From Open (2009)

  I drive J.P. all over Vegas, up and down the Strip, then into the mountains that circle the town. I show him what the Vette can do, open up the engine on a lonely stretch of highway, then open up myself. I tell him my story, in a ragged and disorderly fashion, and he has Perry’s knack for saying it all back to me, artfully reworded. He understands my contradictions, and reconciles a few of them. You’re a kid who still lives with his parents, he says, but you’re known around the planet. That’s got to be hard. You’re trying to express yourself freely and creatively and artistically, and you’re slammed at every turn. That’s very hard. I tell him about the knock on me, that I’ve snuck up on my high ranking, that I’ve never beaten anyone good, that I’ve been lucky. Horseshoe up my ass. He says I’m experiencing backlash, and never even got to enjoy the lash. I laugh. He says it must be bizarre to have strangers think they know me, and love me beyond reason, while others think they know me and resent me beyond reason—all while I’m a relative stranger to myself. What makes it perverse, I tell him, is that it all revolves around tennis, and I hate tennis. Right, sure. But you don’t actually hate tennis. Yes. Yes, I do. I talk about my father. I tell J.P. about the yelling, the pressure, the rage, the abandonment. J.P. gets a funny look on his face. You do realize, don’t you, that God isn’t anything like your father? You know that—don’t you? I almost drive the Corvette onto the shoulder. God, he says, is the opposite of your father. God isn’t mad at you all the time. God isn’t yelling in your ear, harping on your imperfections. That voice you hear all the time, that angry voice? That’s not God. That’s still your father. I turn to him: Do me a favor? Say that again. He does. Word for word. Say it once more. He does. I thank him. I ask about his own life. He tells me that he hates what he does. He can’t abide being a pastor. He no longer wants to be responsible for people’s souls. It’s a round-the-clock job, he says, and it leaves him no time for reading and reflection. (I wonder if this is a slight jab at me.) He’s also hounded by death threats. Prostitutes and drug pushers come to his church and reform, and then their pimps and junkies and families, who’ve depended on that stream of income, blame J.P. What do you think you’d like to do instead? Actually, I’m a songwriter. A composer. I’d like to make music for a living. He says he’s written a song, When God Ran, that’s a huge hit on the Christian charts. He sings a few bars. He has a nice voice and the song is moving.