Remorse

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 From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Red Sea and fi nding pearls.” She readied herself on the bed, and he sat next to her. Staring into her face, he reproached her, “Why do you have such contempt for Jesus, that you come to this? . . . I see Satan toying on your face.” Stirred, she asked him, “Is there repentance?” She repented and left, immediately, without even arranging her aff airs. Th e monk and the penitent trekked into the desert. When night fell, John made her a pillow of sand, marked with a cross. He camped some distance apart. In the middle of the night, under the clear desert sky, he awoke to see a luminous path, stretching from heaven down to Taïsia. He went to her lifeless body and pricked her foot, knowing she was dead. But he heard a voice affi rm, “After one hour of repentance, she will be received before those who repent for great lengths of time without showing such fervor as did she.” Th e salvation of Taïsia is the kernel of a literary type that was to triumph with irresistible force in the fi fth century. Along with Chrysostom’s actress, Taïsia belongs to the earliest stratum of a new legend, and there is no reason to doubt the reality of her existence. Here is the chance to watch the birth of an archetype. Th e story of Taïsia, as we have it, already bears traces of artistic touch. Taïsia’s internal refl ections about the monks and the pearls of the Red Sea are, surely, a contrivance. We sense but cannot grasp some distant connection with the famous actress of Antioch, whose legend was fer-menting in the same hot house of spiritual imagination, and whose stage name was none other than Margarito, pearl. But the story of Taïsia hits with the thud of simple reality. Her material desperation and loss of respectability had no literary parallel. Her story is very early and little stylized, and if we cannot disentangle the authentic core from the light embellishments of time and imagination, the story of Taïsia contains a stronger dose of authenticity than will soon be found in the highly artifi cial morality tales of penitent women. Th e tale of Taïsia’s repentance is handed down among the chain of traditions about the earliest generations of monks, principally from the site of Scetis. Th e Sayings of the Desert Fathers preserve a number of memories about the colorful ascetic John the Dwarf, who fl ourished in the last de-cades of the fourth century and the fi rst de cade of the fi fth. Most of the stories and sayings focus on monastic pioneers from the mid- fourth to the early fi fth century. In the earliest days these memories were transmitted orally, and characteristic traces of oral transmission remain in the collections. Th e story of Taïsia passed through only a few generations of oral transmission before 

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

  So every time I went for a job interview the guy from Berkeley or Caltech or wherever was first choice. They had the connections. I felt so low, I almost sank through the floor. And then I decided to contact one of my professors who had liked my work, to see if he had any ideas. That was real tough for me because I never expect anyone to come through for me. He asked me lots of questions about how I had been able to go to school during the day and work all night and why it had taken me six years instead of the usual four. Bottom line, he said he liked my work, said I had talent and grit, and recommended me to another former student who was starting a new company. The rest is history.” “That’s a very nice story. And it’s a tribute to you.” Larry looked at me soberly and said, “That’s the only time in my life that I’ve gotten help from a man.” “I take it your dad didn’t help with your education?” He hooted. “Not a cent. The only good thing is that I didn’t expect any help. My dad is a taker, not a giver. He’s never thought of anyone in his life except himself. He’s a smart man. He can be a charmer when he puts himself out. He has a good sense of humor. But he has never made sacrifices for anyone. He’s selfish through and through. I used to think he was a hero, a great man. I even thought that he loved me. He kept telling me, ‘You’re my favorite.’ If that’s true, hell must have a special place for those who are their father’s favorite child.” I was taken aback by Larry’s bitterness. “What’s your relationship now? Do you ever see your dad?” “I see him rarely. Once or twice a year. We talk on the telephone. We chat about work. About the weather. We tell each other dirty jokes. But that’s the extent of it. We don’t communicate on a deeper level.” “Do you miss not having a closer relationship?” “I don’t really care to be close to him now,” Larry said evenly. Then, more gently, he added, “Sometimes I feel bad. Like I heard recently that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and I’m sorry. But the truth is that my sister and I can’t be there for him. We’re still angry at him, even after all this time.” I wondered whether Larry’s father was aware of these feelings. “Tell me, did you ever try to tell him how hurt you were feeling or to talk about having a different kind of relationship?” Larry looked away and then stared down at his hands, inspecting his fingernails. “I did try. I tried to tell him about the issues between us that hurt me. I told him that I felt cheated out of a father.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  In Jerusalem Mary’s debauchery continues blazing its path. As the pilgrims gather for the feast, Mary hunts fresh prey. She brazenly goes to the Church of the True Cross, and even tries to enter, but she is repelled by some invisible force. Standing in the courtyard of the church, she senses that her own deeds are preventing her entrance. When she looks up, she sees an icon of the Mother of God. She prays to the chaste, pure, and undefiled virgin. “I have heard that the God who became man did so on this account, that he might call sinners to repent. Help me, for I am alone, and I have none to help me.” Mary promises that she will not only abandon her life of shame, she will renounce this world altogether if she can only see the wood of the true cross. The Mother of God extends God’s grace upon Mary the prostitute, and she is saved. Whereas Thais, Pelagia, and the niece of Abraham are shepherded to repentance through the guidance of a holy man, Mary of Egypt finds unmediated salvation. She falls into sin of her own volition, and she finds redemption without an intermediary between her and the archetypal virgin whose name she shared.72 When Zosimas finds Mary, she has lived alone in the desert for forty-seven years. In that time she has eaten a total of three loaves of bread. She has wrestled with temptations, with the thoughts of fornication that constantly pricked the mind of the male monk. For seventeen years, the span of time she lived in wantonness in Alexandria, she suffered and struggled, as her withering body paid for her crimes. Then she spent thirty years in ascetic tranquility. She instructs Zosimas not to repeat her tale while she lives, but to return to Jerusalem and to visit her in a year with the bread and wine of the Eucharist. He comes to her again in the desert and she takes communion. Again she instructs him to return in a year. He begs her to pray, “for the church, for the empire, and for him.” When Zosimas returns the next year, he finds Mary, dead, her corpse turned to the east. He weeps over her, soaking her feet with his tears, inverting the biblical trope. In the sand he finds a message from her, revealing her name and asking for burial. A lion appears and helps dig the grave. Zosimas cries, prays, and returns to his monastery, where at last he relates the story that Mary conveyed to him, a story that was handed down by the monks through the generations. Finally the author’s voice breaks in, claiming to have inscribed the unwritten truth at the command of God: like the artful confections of the sophistic romance, the Life of Mary makes the reader aware of the frames within which the narrative is stored.73

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

  AUGUSTINE. (de Quæst. Evan. l. ii. qu. 33.) But whether was this sin against heaven, the same as that which is before thee; so that he described by the name of heaven his father’s supremacy. I have sinned against heaven, i. e. before the souls of the saints; but before thee in the very sanctuary of my conscience. CHRYSOSTOM. (ut sup.) Or by heaven in this place may be understood Christ. For he who sins against heaven, which although above us is yet a visible element, is the same as he who sins against man, whom the Son of God took into Himself for our salvation. AMBROSE. Or by these words are signified the heavenly gifts of the Spirit impaired by the sin of the soul, or because from the bosom of his mother Jerusalem which is in heaven, he ought never to depart. But being cast down, he must by no means exalt himself. Hence he adds, I am no more worthy to be called thy son. And that he might be raised up by the merit of his humility, he adds, Make me as one of thy hired servants. BEDE. To the affection of a son, who doubts not that all things which are his father’s are his, he by no means lays claim, but desires the condition of a hired servant, as now about to serve for a reward. But he admits that not even this could he deserve except by his father’s approbation. GREGORY OF NYSSA. (ubi sup.) Now this prodigal son, the Holy Spirit has engraved upon our hearts, that we may be instructed how we ought to deplore the sins of our soul. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 14. in Ep. Rom.) Who after that he said, I will go to my father, (which brought all good things,) tarried not, but took the whole journey; for it follows, And he arose, and came to his father. Let us do likewise, and not be wearied with the length of the way, for if we are willing, the return will become swift and easy, provided that we desert sin, which led us out from our father’s house. But the father pitieth those who return. For it is added, And when he was yet afar off. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) For before that he perceived God afar off, when he was yet piously seeking him, his father saw him. For the ungodly and proud, God is well said not to see, as not having them before his eyes. For men are not commonly said to be before the eyes of any one except those who are beloved. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 10. in Ep. Rom. Greg. ubi sup.) Now the father perceiving his penitence did not wait to receive the words of his confession, but anticipates his supplication, and had compassion on him, as it is added, and was moved with pity.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The sequence opens with the arrest and acquittal of Rabbi Eliezer, who is mistakenly charged with minuth—Christian heresy. This accusation, even though false, perturbs him. He remembers a conversation with a follower of Jesus that may have led to the confusion. The conversation involved the citation of three verses on fornication, on harlotry. The Talmud puts into mind both the literal meaning, prostitution, and the metaphorical meaning, spiritual promiscuity, idolatry. These passages prompt reflection on the nature of sin and evoke the question whether the literal commission of fornication is as damning as its metaphorical twin, idolatry or heresy. The editors tell the story of Rabbi Eleazar ben Dordia, a fallen rabbi who had sex with no less than every prostitute in the world. When a prostitute warned him that he was lost, he was suddenly struck to his core with remorse for his sins. He begged God for forgiveness. A heavenly voice announced his redemption, whereupon he immediately died. His sin of sexual fornication was so vast that it was like minuth, heresy. When Rabbi Judah ha Nasi heard this story, he wept and exclaimed, “One may acquire eternal life after many years, or in an hour!” The first half of the sequence then closes with a story that recapitulates all the themes of the preceding discussion. Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Jonathan are walking and reach a fork in the road, and they must pass either a temple of idolatry or a brothel. They opt for the brothel. Not only does this imply that idolatry is worse than literal fornication, the rabbis hope to earn merit for overcoming their desires. As they walk past the brothel, the prostitutes scramble inside, out of their presence. Significantly, in the concluding words the anonymous of the Babylonian tells us, “Against these things the Torah will watch over thee.”44 It is against this story that, thematically, the escape from the brothel must be understood. The text launches into another stream of memories, narrating a sequence of events which step-by-step mirrors the first series. The second panel begins with an arrest—two arrests, in fact, one of which is the arrest of Haninah ben Teradion for studying the Torah. He is executed by fire. He has with him a scroll of the Torah that he was studying, and as he expires he experiences a vision of the letters of the Torah ascending to heaven, even as the parchment burned. The executioner is moved by the scene and repents of his sins. In the first sequence, a rabbi repents of literal harlotry; in the second, a gentile repents of metaphorical harlotry. The executioner leaps into the fire, where he is consumed with the rabbi. A heavenly voice announces that the executioner has been admitted to eternal life, and again we hear the reaction of Rabbi, in identical words, that one may earn salvation in a single, wrenching moment of heartfelt repentance.45

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

  Turn off the TV and the computer and make clear that you expect to stay home and be available for the rest of the day and evening. Tell them why this is happening and how sorry you both are for you and for them. Explain that when you got married you loved each other and hoped to live together for your whole lives. Go out of your way to talk about the dream you had when you married and how happy you were when the children were born. Why? Because you want the children to feel that they were born into a loving family and that they were wanted. You want to offset their notion, which can gnaw at them over time, that they were born in anger and are leftovers from a marriage no one wanted. Speak to their self-esteem and keep in mind that you’re talking about the relationship between a man and a woman that will shape their lives. Tell them honestly how reluctant you are to call it quits, how hard you tried. If you went to a therapist, minister, or rabbi for help, say so. Don’t deprecate or scapegoat each other. Because you and your spouse cannot make the marriage work, and things between you can only get worse, say you’ve decided to divorce for everyone’s sake. You don’t want them to grow up with the wrong view of what marriage is. You don’t want to live a lie or mislead them into thinking that your failing marriage is the best that marriage provides. It isn’t. Then ask what they understand about divorce. Ask about their friends’ experiences. Let them speak. Let them tell you about their worry of losing you, about their strange ideas of having to be put in a foster home, about children not having funds to go to college. They may be full of bad information and you can correct them gently. Some children will be frozen into silence. Try to help them say what they’re scared of or relieved about. After all, you know them well. Remember that whether or not they speak, every child will have a mind that is spinning fast forward. They will all be worried, some realistically, some exaggeratedly. Keep in mind that there are no empty spaces in their minds. Even when they say “I don’t know,” they can have ideas that are too scary to articulate. Keep in mind that they’ll try with all their might to protect you, that they’re just as worried about you as you are about them, and that they may happily lie to you about what they feel if they think it will comfort you. Then tell them what plans you are making and ask for response and input. Leave it open and tentative. Be sure to give them some real choices. The worst is when they feel like inanimate objects that are just distributed between two homes.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  Though the baptismal candidate was given a broad moral entry exam, the sins of the initiate were continually monitored, and over the fourth century a penitential regime began to achieve some measure of universal consistency. An accommodation with sin is noticeable. The canons from Elvira had denied communion to the violator of boys, even to the point of death. But by the second half of the fourth century, forgiveness was placed within reach. In his canonical letters, the bishop Basil of Caesarea prescribed fifteen years of excommunication for anyone guilty of adultery, bestiality, or “shameful acts with males.” Gregory of Nyssa applied the same grid of punishment, subjecting those guilty of adultery, bestiality, or “pederasty” to eighteen years of excommunication, though he allotted the bishop discretion to shorten the punishment. Episcopal oversight was the lynchpin of a therapeutic regime for the sick sinner. Penance was “the common cure for the raging desire after such pleasures, to purify the man through repentance.” Gregory’s letter also offers a rare insight into the informal systems of surveillance behind the nascent penitential system. A man who became his own accuser might be treated leniently, because confession was a sign of contrition. But the sinner who was “detected in his wickedness, or unwillingly called out through some suspicion or accusation,” was shown no mercy. The church was not yet a fully organized confessional machine, designed to reach inside the souls of its wards, but we might imagine that “suspicion” and “accusation” had, in their own ways, an insidious reach.14 Gregory’s canonical letter hints at one of the principal developments in the church’s understanding of same-sex desire in late antiquity. Pederasty and bestiality were grouped with adultery, Gregory explains, because these two sins were “an adulteration of nature.” Same-sex love was a crime “against nature.” It is hard to appreciate just how comprehensive was the triumph of a particular understanding of “nature” in the morality of sex. In late antiquity “natural” sex came to mean, exclusively, the one configuration of body parts that has generative potential. This transformation drove a profound shift in the idiom of sexual deviance. One casualty of this shift is the gradual obsolescence of the term kinaidos/cinaedus, a word that appears in a handful of fourth-century texts and thereafter declines. Once an indispensable monster of sexual deviance, who condensed a whole array of stereotypes rooted in ancient assumptions about manliness and the body, the kinaidos gradually became unnecessary, as the thought-world that called him into existence crumbled around him. Perhaps even more surprising, much of the Pauline idiom of sexuality simply vanishes too. The words connoting same-sex love in his vice lists quietly disappear. The term arsenokoitēs is virtually nonexistent in late antique texts, and even malakia has somewhat more limited traction in the post-Constantinian world.15

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

  a. The evil custom, growing on us, becomes almost like a law; so that Scripture asks if the leopard can change his spots or the Ethiopian his skin. The habit of sinning becomes, as it were, a second nature; but things impossible to man are possible to God. Sinners who have gone on for long in sin seem to change their nature; but it is God who works in them. St. Augustin says, ‘Thou didst call me, O Lord, and I sighed, bound as I was, not by the iron of another, but by my own self-will. For an enemy had hold of my will, and by this he forged a chain and bound me. From my perverted will there sprang up lust. As I served that lust it grew up into a habit, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity.’ b. Such men do away with the providence of God. They do not understand that He rewards the good and punishes the wicked; but they think that all things are ruled by chance. Thus they are like the fool of whom David speaks, and are hardened and hateful. c. A wicked spirit has hold of the souls of these men, and rules in them, and blinds them so that they do not see God. They listen to his lying promises, and he leads them away. They grow harder and harder, more unclean and more unbelieving; and their end is death, that is, death in the unutterable woe where God is not and cannot be. The Voice of the Holy Ghost (3) About the third miracle in consecration; 1. A prophetic grace; The men of the city said to Eliseus, … The waters are very bad.… He said, Bring me a new vessel, and put salt in it. When they had brought it, he went out to the spring of the waters and cast the salt into it, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters, and there shall be no more in them death or barrenness. And the waters, were healed to this day, according to the word of Eliseus which he spoke. 4 Kings 2:19–22. 2. Spiritual conversion; The Spirit of the Lord shall come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be changed into another man. When, therefore, these signs shall happen to thee, do whatsoever thy hand shall find, for the Lord is with thee, 1 Kings 10:6, 7. 3. Natural change; R. Hardness of heart; O Lord, Thy eyes are upon truth; Thou hast struck them, and they have not grieved; Thou hast bruised them, and they have refused to receive correction; they have made their faces harder than the rock, and have refused to return. Jer. 5:3. a. A habit of sin; If the Ethiopaian can change his skin and the leopard his spots, you also may do well when you have learned evil. Jer. 13:23.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The bishop Nonnos plays the role of Pelagia’s lover. He groans, prays, and fasts for her. Soon he is the recipient of a nocturnal dream, a surreal vision of himself praying at the altar, while a dove, befouled with mud, hovered over him. As he left the sanctuary, the dove flitted above him, and he snatched it, plunging it into the nearest basin of water. The grime was washed away, the stench disappeared, and the beautiful white bird fluttered off over the horizon. As in romance, the dream is both a harbinger of things to come and a soft assurance to the characters and the reader alike that the story is wrapped in divine providence. When Sunday comes, the bishops attend services at the great church of Antioch, and Nonnos is asked to preach. His sermon is true fire and brimstone, describing the torments reserved for the wicked. Unexpectedly, Pelagia had stepped into church that day and heard his homily. The words of Nonnos lanced her spirit. She sobbed, inconsolably, with her sins before her eyes. The crowd stirred at the sight of the famous actress in tears. She has to leave when the mysteries begin, but two of her slaves find Nonnos and deliver a letter from their mistress in wax. She pours out her remorse and begs for an audience with Nonnos. Nonnos agrees to see her, in the relative safety of a small conclave of bishops. She groveled before them, grasping the feet of Nonnos, soaking them with her tears, like the sinner in the gospels. Her confession is a tsunami of self-loathing guilt: “I am a sea of sins. I am an abyss of wickedness.” Pelagia asks Nonnos himself to be her sponsor in baptism, as she exchanges her whorish garb for the robes of purification. The two will be united in her spiritual rebirth.62

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  The most common English word spoken in the nail salon was sorry. It was the one refrain for what it meant to work in the service of beauty. Again and again, I watched as manicurists, bowed over a hand or foot of a client, some young as seven, say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” when they had done nothing wrong. I have seen workers, you included, apologize dozens of times throughout a forty-five-minute manicure, hoping to gain warm traction that would lead to the ultimate goal, a tip—only to say sorry anyway when none was given. In the nail salon, sorry is a tool one uses to pander until the word itself becomes currency. It no longer merely apologizes, but insists, reminds: I’m here, right here, beneath you. It is the lowering of oneself so that the client feels right, superior, and charitable. In the nail salon, one’s definition of sorry is deranged into a new word entirely, one that’s charged and reused as both power and defacement at once. Being sorry pays, being sorry even, or especially, when one has no fault, is worth every self-deprecating syllable the mouth allows. Because the mouth must eat. And yet it’s not only so in the nail salon, Ma. In those tobacco fields, too, we said it. “Lo siento,” Manny would utter as he walked across Mr. Buford’s field of vision. “Lo siento,” Rigo whispered as he reached to place a machete back on the wall where Buford sat ticking off numbers on a clipboard. “Lo siento,” I said to the boss after missing a day when Lan had another schizophrenic attack and had shoved all her clothes into the oven, saying she had to get rid of the “evidence.” “Lo siento,” we said when, one day, night arrived only to find the field half harvested, the tractor, its blown-out engine, sitting in the stilled dark. “Lo siento, señor,” each of us said as we walked past the truck with Buford inside blasting Hank Williams and staring at his withered crop, a palm-sized photo of Ronald Reagan taped to the dash. How the day after, we began work not with “Good morning” but with “Lo siento.” The phrase with its sound of a bootstep sinking, then lifted, from mud. The slick muck of it wetting our tongues as we apologized ourselves back to making our living. Again and again, I write to you regretting my tongue.

• From Untrue (2018)

  And she was still trying to understand how she could feel so bereft when what she’d had with Paul had mostly been “just” a digital relationship. Why exactly, she wondered, had she been unable to consummate their intimate connection in person? “I think I was still holding out hope for my marriage,” she suggested as she stirred her coffee. That seemed understandable, and wise. But Sarah was clear: she regretted not sleeping with this married man while she was married. She had been good, and it felt bad, and if she had it to do over again, she would go through with it and do the thing she thought was wrong. Sarah was far from the only woman I spoke to over the course of researching this book who pondered this apparently inescapable, fundamental contradiction: while doing what was supposed to be natural for a woman—refuse sex outside monogamy or marriage—she was profoundly remorseful and resentful about the enormous sacrifice she felt she had made. Our deeply ingrained social script about female sexual reticence—a script that persists right alongside and in spite of assertive anthems of female sexual autonomy by CupcakKe, Cosmo articles about how to get what you want in bed, and episodes of Veep in which the female president has sex when she feels like it, “like a man”—ensures that women like Sarah won’t get credit for exercising self-control and self-abnegation about something that, after all, they’re not even supposed to desire. It’s as if there isn’t room in our culture for Sarah’s wants. We are far more comfortable with the narrative of a woman who regrets with every molecule of her being having had an affair, or whose life is destroyed or nearly destroyed by one—Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina, Patty Berglund—than we are with the woman who regrets not having one. Or has one with few or no regrets. Or simply refuses monogamy a priori. Or struggles with it in a long-term partnership. Over a century and a quarter ago, Ibsen’s precocious creation Nora Helmer walked away from her entire life in the name of autonomy and self-respect in A Doll’s House, and the inscrutably complex Hedda Gabler killed herself rather than be exposed to a scandal involving a former lover. Nearly half a century ago, the pill was legalized for unmarried women, decoupling sex and reproduction as well as sex and marriage; a year later, Isadora Wing pined for and sought out the zipless fuck in Fear of Flying. But today, Sarahs everywhere expose the bedrock of lies that so much of what we cherish continues to rest upon: the notion that healthy women don’t want as intensely as men do, that they don’t long for more than what they have, which implies they are somehow essentially less likely (not to mention fundamentally less entitled) to act on that longing once they have committed to someone.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  mind both the literal meaning, prostitution, and the meta phorical meaning, spiritual promiscuity, idolatry. Th ese passages prompt refl ection on the nature of sin and evoke the question whether the literal commission of fornication is as damning as its meta phorical twin, idolatry or heresy. Th e editors tell the story of Rabbi Eleazar ben Dordia, a fallen rabbi who had sex with no less than every prostitute in the world. When a prostitute warned him that he was lost, he was suddenly struck to his core with remorse for his sins. He begged God for forgiveness. A heavenly voice announced his redemption, whereupon he immediately died. His sin of sexual fornication was so vast that it was like minuth, heresy. When Rabbi Judah ha Nasi heard this story, he wept and exclaimed, “One may acquire eternal life after many years, or in an hour!” Th e fi rst half of the sequence then closes with a story that recapitulates all the themes of the preceding discussion. Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Jonathan are walking and reach a fork in the road, and they must pass either a temple of idolatry or a brothel. Th ey opt for the brothel. Not only does this imply that idolatry is worse than literal fornication, the rabbis hope to earn merit for overcoming their desires. As they walk past the brothel, the prostitutes scramble inside, out of their presence. Signifi cantly, in the concluding words the anonymous of the Babylonian tells us, “Against these things the Torah will watch over thee.”  It is against this story that, thematically, the escape from the brothel must be understood. Th e text launches into another stream of memories, narrating a sequence of events which step- by- step mirrors the fi rst series. Th e second panel begins with an arrest— two arrests, in fact, one of which is the arrest of Haninah ben Teradion for studying the Torah. He is executed by fi re. He has with him a scroll of the Torah that he was studying, and as he expires he experiences a vision of the letters of the Torah ascending to heaven, even as the parchment burned. Th e executioner is moved by the scene and repents of his sins. In the fi rst sequence, a rabbi repents of literal harlotry; in the second, a gentile repents of meta phorical harlotry. Th e executioner leaps into the fi re, where he is consumed with the rabbi. A heavenly voice announces that the executioner has been admitted to eternal life, R O M A N C E I N T H E L AT E C L A S S I C A L WO R L D  and again we hear the reaction of Rabbi, in identical words, that one may earn salvation in a single, wrenching moment of heartfelt repentance.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The sequence opens with the arrest and acquittal of Rabbi Eliezer, who is mistakenly charged with minuth —Christian heresy. This accusation, even though false, perturbs him. He remembers a conversation with a follower of Jesus that may have led to the confusion. The conversation involved the citation of three verses on fornication, on harlotry. The Talmud puts into mind both the literal meaning, prostitution, and the metaphorical meaning, spiritual promiscuity, idolatry. These passages prompt reflection on the nature of sin and evoke the question whether the literal commission of fornication is as damning as its metaphorical twin, idolatry or heresy. The editors tell the story of Rabbi Eleazar ben Dordia, a fallen rabbi who had sex with no less than every prostitute in the world. When a prostitute warned him that he was lost, he was suddenly struck to his core with remorse for his sins. He begged God for forgiveness. A heavenly voice announced his redemption, whereupon he immediately died. His sin of sexual fornication was so vast that it was like minuth, heresy. When Rabbi Judah ha Nasi heard this story, he wept and exclaimed, “One may acquire eternal life after many years, or in an hour!” The first half of the sequence then closes with a story that recapitulates all the themes of the preceding discussion. Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Jonathan are walking and reach a fork in the road, and they must pass either a temple of idolatry or a brothel. They opt for the brothel. Not only does this imply that idolatry is worse than literal fornication, the rabbis hope to earn merit for overcoming their desires. As they walk past the brothel, the prostitutes scramble inside, out of their presence. Significantly, in the concluding words the anonymous of the Babylonian tells us, “Against these things the Torah will watch over thee.”44 It is against this story that, thematically, the escape from the brothel must be understood. The text launches into another stream of memories, narrating a sequence of events which step-by-step mirrors the first series. The second panel begins with an arrest—two arrests, in fact, one of which is the arrest of Haninah ben Teradion for studying the Torah. He is executed by fire. He has with him a scroll of the Torah that he was studying, and as he expires he experiences a vision of the letters of the Torah ascending to heaven, even as the parchment burned. The executioner is moved by the scene and repents of his sins. In the first sequence, a rabbi repents of literal harlotry; in the second, a gentile repents of metaphorical harlotry. The executioner leaps into the fire, where he is consumed with the rabbi. A heavenly voice announces that the executioner has been admitted to eternal life, and again we hear the reaction of Rabbi, in identical words, that one may earn salvation in a single, wrenching moment of heartfelt repentance.45

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  In the desert, “the air is more pure, the heavens are more open, and God is nearer.” The figure of the penitent prostitute first took shape in the sands of Egypt, in the earliest monastic traditions, because she so radically condensed the cosmic possibilities of repentance, metanoia. In the pioneer phases of Egyptian monasticism, fallen women begin to populate the landscape as avatars of temptation and repentance. Taïsia belongs to this most primitive stratum. The trials and ecstasies she experienced were not hers alone. In another early legend an anonymous monk discovers that his sister has fallen into prostitution. He leads her to repentance, and as they walk into the desert, she expires. In the tale that was destined to have the most extravagant afterlife, a monk named Serapion passes through a “village of Egypt” and sees “a prostitute standing in her cell.” When dusk falls, he goes in with her. He chanted the psalms and prayed to God that she would “repent and be saved.” The prostitute realizes that he has come to save her soul. She cries and asks Serapion to lead her away. When they arrive at a monastery of virgins, he gives the abbess instructions to be gentle with her. After a few days, the former prostitute told the abbess, “I am a sinner. I want to eat every two days.” Then, again, she said, “I am a sinner. I want to eat every four days.” Finally, she asked the abbess to wall her in a cell with only a little opening to pass through bread. “Thus for the rest of her life she was pleasing to God.” The story begins in a cell (kellion) of dishonor and death, ends in a cell (kellion) of repentance and life. The living sepulture of the penitent prostitute symbolized both the radical possibilities, and the suffocating limits, of a purely spiritual redemption.50

• From Untrue (2018)

  And then after her divorce, as she contemplated getting in touch with Paul again, her trade-offs morphed into another form of balancing the pursuit of satisfaction against risk. She wanted to have sex with Paul, still. But he hadn’t responded to her emails since that disastrous Friday afternoon at the hotel. And, she told me, she felt she would seem “desperate” if she reached out to him. It was “unfeminine,” she said—though she said it with irony—to pursue him. Now the calculus she ran was: What if he rejects me? What if he thinks I’m a slut? What if I am a slut? Though we live in a state of ecological release, engineering a state of ideological release—freedom from censure, judgment, and self-judgment—is more complicated, particularly for women living in a culture brimming with double standards about female and male sexuality and misinformation about the hearts and libidos of women. In the end, Sarah read her desire to be with Paul as a sign that her marriage was beyond repair. The divorce took over a year and a half and was as stressful and draining—emotionally and financially—as she had feared. Now, with hindsight as her guide, this capable woman sat under fluorescent lights in the worn booth, tearing up, lamenting not her divorce but her previous propriety, her “goodness,” the way she had allowed herself to be hemmed in not only by her legitimate fears but by a code she had no role in authoring about what she might do with her own body. Sarah had dated several men since her divorce. She had great sexual and emotional chemistry with two of them. But she hadn’t found the kind of connection again that she’d had with Paul—that feeling of discovering someone as deeply fascinated by her as she was by him, that awakening of the long-slumbering sense that she was desirable and capable of deep, thrilling, albeit dangerous desire herself. Maybe Paul was so important to Sarah precisely because he had been the one to rekindle that sense within her. As Marta Meana had explained, “A stranger who can desire anyone at all and desires you—that means something.” Or maybe Paul really, truly was that special and unusual. Sarah would never know. Constraint had been every bit as effective as a leash, or a chastity belt. As we sat there and the breakfast rush drained away, I found it easy to sympathize with her, this non-adulteress who wished she had been one. She wanted to reconnect with the man with whom she had come so close to having an affair, to be a party to his own infidelity, and here I was, wishing to hell she’d just do it already.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Once a month, Ian was allowed to make a phone call. Soon after he arrived in prison, on Christmas Eve in 1992, he used his call to reach out to Debbie Baigre, the woman he shot. When she answered the phone, Ian spilled out an emotional apology, expressing his deep regret and remorse. Ms. Baigre was stunned to hear from the boy who had shot her, but she was moved by his call. She had physically recovered from the shooting and was working to become a successful bodybuilder and had started a magazine focused on women’s health. She was a determined woman who didn’t let the shooting derail her from her goals. That first surprising phone call led to a regular correspondence. Ian had been neglected by his family before the crime took place. He’d been left to wander the streets with little parental or family support. In solitary, he met few prisoners or correctional staff. As he sank deeper into despair, Debbie Baigre became one of the few people in Ian’s life who encouraged him to remain strong. After communicating with Ian for several years, Baigre wrote the court and told the judge who sentenced Ian of her conviction that his sentence was too harsh and that his conditions of confinement were inhumane. She tried to talk to prison officials and gave interviews to the press to draw attention to Ian’s plight. “No one knows more than I do how destructive and reckless Ian’s crime was. But what we’re currently doing to him is mean and irresponsible,” she told one reporter. “When this crime was committed, he was a child, a thirteen-year-old boy with a lot of problems, no supervision, and no help available. We are not children.” The courts ignored Debbie Baigre’s call for a reduced sentence. By 2010, Florida had sentenced more than a hundred children to life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide offenses, several of whom were thirteen years old at the time of the crime. All of the youngest condemned children—thirteen or fourteen years of age—were black or Latino. Florida had the largest population in the world of children condemned to die in prison for non-homicides. — The section of South Central Los Angeles where Antonio Nuñez lived was plagued by gang violence. Antonio’s mother would force her children to the floor when shooting erupted outside their crowded home, which happened with disturbing regularity. Nearly a dozen of their neighbors were shot and killed after being caught in the crossfire of gun violence.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  In the small world of frontier monasticism, rumors of the girl’s plight quickly spread. The brothers were distraught by her fall. They appointed the sturdiest among them, a monk known as John the Dwarf, to go to her and “set her affairs in order.” His mission met resentment as soon as he reached the door, whose guardian chided him. “From the beginning you have devoured her stores, and now she is destitute.” Nevertheless, Taïsia grants John entry, reasoning to herself, “Those monks are always roving about the Red Sea and finding pearls.” She readied herself on the bed, and he sat next to her. Staring into her face, he reproached her, “Why do you have such contempt for Jesus, that you come to this?… I see Satan toying on your face.” Stirred, she asked him, “Is there repentance?” She repented and left, immediately, without even arranging her affairs. The monk and the penitent trekked into the desert. When night fell, John made her a pillow of sand, marked with a cross. He camped some distance apart. In the middle of the night, under the clear desert sky, he awoke to see a luminous path, stretching from heaven down to Taïsia. He went to her lifeless body and pricked her foot, knowing she was dead. But he heard a voice affirm, “After one hour of repentance, she will be received before those who repent for great lengths of time without showing such fervor as did she.”48 The salvation of Taïsia is the kernel of a literary type that was to triumph with irresistible force in the fifth century. Along with Chrysostom’s actress, Taïsia belongs to the earliest stratum of a new legend, and there is no reason to doubt the reality of her existence. Here is the chance to watch the birth of an archetype. The story of Taïsia, as we have it, already bears traces of artistic touch. Taïsia’s internal reflections about the monks and the pearls of the Red Sea are, surely, a contrivance. We sense but cannot grasp some distant connection with the famous actress of Antioch, whose legend was fermenting in the same hothouse of spiritual imagination, and whose stage name was none other than Margarito, pearl. But the story of Taïsia hits with the thud of simple reality. Her material desperation and loss of respectability had no literary parallel. Her story is very early and little stylized, and if we cannot disentangle the authentic core from the light embellishments of time and imagination, the story of Taïsia contains a stronger dose of authenticity than will soon be found in the highly artificial morality tales of penitent women.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  spiritual power that transcends the physics of beauty, and the scenes of encounter between holy men and whores dramatize their impassibility. Th e bishop Nonnos plays the role of Pelagia’s lover. He groans, prays, and fasts for her. Soon he is the recipient of a nocturnal dream, a surreal vision of himself praying at the altar, while a dove, befouled with mud, hovered over him. As he left the sanctuary, the dove fl itted above him, and he snatched it, plunging it into the nearest basin of water. Th e grime was washed away, the stench disappeared, and the beautiful white bird fl uttered off over the horizon. As in romance, the dream is both a harbinger of things to come and a soft assurance to the characters and the reader alike that the story is wrapped in divine providence. When Sunday comes, the bishops attend ser vices at the great church of Antioch, and Nonnos is asked to preach. His sermon is true fi re and brimstone, describing the torments reserved for the wicked. Unexpectedly, Pelagia had stepped into church that day and heard his homily. Th e words of Nonnos lanced her spirit. She sobbed, in-consolably, with her sins before her eyes. Th e crowd stirred at the sight of the famous actress in tears. She has to leave when the mysteries begin, but two of her slaves fi nd Nonnos and deliver a letter from their mistress in wax. She pours out her remorse and begs for an audience with Nonnos. Nonnos agrees to see her, in the relative safety of a small conclave of bishops. She  F R O M S H A M E TO S I N groveled before them, grasping the feet of Nonnos, soaking them with her tears, like the sinner in the gospels. Her confession is a tsunami of self-loathing guilt: “I am a sea of sins. I am an abyss of wickedness.” Pelagia asks Nonnos himself to be her sponsor in baptism, as she exchanges her whorish garb for the robes of purifi cation. Th e two will be united in her spiritual rebirth. When she is baptized, she reveals that the name by which she was famous throughout Antioch, “Margarito,” “Pearl,” was merely a stage name. In fact her parents had named her Pelagia. Under her true name she is baptized and receives the holy mysteries. As the assembly rejoices, Satan himself appears, glowering at the baptismal party. He berates Nonnos and then Pelagia herself. He takes the guise of a jilted lover, humiliated by Pelagia’s betrayal. Pelagia, whose bridehood is now vouchsafed to Christ, crosses herself and turns away her old companion. He tempts her again, by night, but she resists and confesses her allegiance to her heavenly marriage cham-ber. Th

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The bishop Nonnos plays the role of Pelagia’s lover. He groans, prays, and fasts for her. Soon he is the recipient of a nocturnal dream, a surreal vision of himself praying at the altar, while a dove, befouled with mud, hovered over him. As he left the sanctuary, the dove flitted above him, and he snatched it, plunging it into the nearest basin of water. The grime was washed away, the stench disappeared, and the beautiful white bird fluttered off over the horizon. As in romance, the dream is both a harbinger of things to come and a soft assurance to the characters and the reader alike that the story is wrapped in divine providence. When Sunday comes, the bishops attend services at the great church of Antioch, and Nonnos is asked to preach. His sermon is true fire and brimstone, describing the torments reserved for the wicked. Unexpectedly, Pelagia had stepped into church that day and heard his homily. The words of Nonnos lanced her spirit. She sobbed, inconsolably, with her sins before her eyes. The crowd stirred at the sight of the famous actress in tears. She has to leave when the mysteries begin, but two of her slaves find Nonnos and deliver a letter from their mistress in wax. She pours out her remorse and begs for an audience with Nonnos. Nonnos agrees to see her, in the relative safety of a small conclave of bishops. She groveled before them, grasping the feet of Nonnos, soaking them with her tears, like the sinner in the gospels. Her confession is a tsunami of self-loathing guilt: “I am a sea of sins. I am an abyss of wickedness.” Pelagia asks Nonnos himself to be her sponsor in baptism, as she exchanges her whorish garb for the robes of purification. The two will be united in her spiritual rebirth.62

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  What were they concealing? Yet when they passed us in the street they were always very cordial, always smiled, always spoke in English and a most excellent English it was. They used to make us feel rather ashamed of ourselves—they were superior, that’s what it was. And there was still another baffling thing—with the other boys a direct question brought a direct answer, but with Claude de Lorraine there was never any direct answer. He always smiled very charmingly before replying and he was very cool, collected, employing an irony and a mockery which was beyond us. He was a thorn in our side, Claude de Lorraine, and when finally he moved out of the neighborhood we all breathed a sigh of relief. As for myself, it was only maybe ten or fifteen years later that I thought about this boy and his strange, elegant behavior. And it was then that I felt I had made a bad blunder. For suddenly one day it occurred to me that Claude de Lorraine had come up to me on a certain occasion obviously to win my friendship and I had treated him rather cavalierly. At the time I thought of this incident it suddenly dawned on me that Claude de Lorraine must have seen something different in me and that he had meant to honor me by extending the hand of friendship. But back in those days I had a code of honor, such as it was, and that was to run with the herd. Had I become a bosom friend of Claude de Lorraine I would have been betraying the other boys. No matter what advantages lay in the wake of such a friendship they were not for me; I was one of the gang and it was my duty to remain aloof from such as Claude de Lorraine. I remembered this incident once again, I must say, after a still greater interval—after I had been in France a few months and the word raisonnable had come to acquire a wholly new significance for me. Suddenly one day, overhearing it, I thought of Claude de Lorraine’s overtures on the street in front of his house. I recalled vividly that he had used the word reasonable . He had probably asked me to be reasonable , a word which then would never have crossed my lips as there was no need for it in my vocabulary. It was a word, like gentleman, which was rarely brought out and then only with great discretion and circumspection. It was a word which might cause others to laugh at you. There were lots of words like that—really , for example. No one I knew had ever used the word really —until Jack Lawson came along. He used it because his parents were English and, though we made fun of him, we forgave him for it. Really was a word which reminded me immediately of little Carl Ragner from the old neighborhood.