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 Little Women (1868)

  I didn't mean to be rude, but it's so comfortable to say all I think to you, and feel so safe and happy here." "My Jo, you may say anything to your mother, for it is my greatest happiness and pride to feel that my girls confide in me and know how much I love them." "I thought I'd grieved you." "No, dear, but speaking of Father reminded me how much I miss him, how much I owe him, and how faithfully I should watch and work to keep his little daughters safe and good for him." "Yet you told him to go, Mother, and didn't cry when he went, and never complain now, or seem as if you needed any help," said Jo, wondering. "I gave my best to the country I love, and kept my tears till he was gone. Why should I complain, when we both have merely done our duty and will surely be the happier for it in the end? If I don't seem to need help, it is because I have a better friend, even than Father, to comfort and sustain me. My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning and may be many, but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother." Jo's only answer was to hold her mother close, and in the silence which followed the sincerest prayer she had ever prayed left her heart without words. For in that sad yet happy hour, she had learned not only the bitterness of remorse and despair, but the sweetness of self-denial and self-control, and led by her mother's hand, she had drawn nearer to the Friend who always welcomes every child with a love stronger than that of any father, tenderer than that of any mother. Amy stirred and sighed in her sleep, and as if eager to begin at once to mend her fault, Jo looked up with an expression on her face which it had never worn before. "I let the sun go down on my anger. I wouldn't forgive her, and today, if it hadn't been for Laurie, it might have been too late! How could I be so wicked?" said Jo, half aloud, as she leaned over her sister softly stroking the wet hair scattered on the pillow.

• From Little Women (1868)

  I think the shaking hurt his feelings very much." Jo tried to look pathetic but must have failed, for Mr. Laurence began to laugh, and she knew the day was won. "I'm sorry for that, and ought to thank him for not shaking me, I suppose. What the dickens does the fellow expect?" and the old gentleman looked a trifle ashamed of his own testiness. "If I were you, I'd write him an apology, Sir. He says he won't come down till he has one, and talks about Washington, and goes on in an absurd way. A formal apology will make him see how foolish he is, and bring him down quite amiable. Try it. He likes fun, and this way is better than talking. I'll carry it up, and teach him his duty." Mr. Laurence gave her a sharp look, and put on his spectacles, saying slowly, "You're a sly puss, but I don't mind being managed by you and Beth. Here, give me a bit of paper, and let us have done with this nonsense." The note was written in the terms which one gentleman would use to another after offering some deep insult. Jo dropped a kiss on the top of Mr. Laurence's bald head, and ran up to slip the apology under Laurie's door, advising him through the keyhole to be submissive, decorous, and a few other agreeable impossibilities. Finding the door locked again, she left the note to do its work, and was going quietly away, when the young gentleman slid down the banisters, and waited for her at the bottom, saying, with his most virtuous expression of countenance, "What a good fellow you are, Jo! Did you get blown up?" he added, laughing. "No, he was pretty mild, on the whole." "Ah! I got it all round. Even you cast me off over there, and I felt just ready to go to the deuce," he began apologetically. "Don't talk that way, turn over a new leaf and begin again, Teddy, my son." "I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks, and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end," he said dolefully. "Go and eat your dinner, you'll feel better after it. Men always croak when they are hungry," and Jo whisked out at the front door after that. "That's a 'label' on my 'sect'," answered Laurie, quoting Amy, as he went to partake of humble pie dutifully with his grandfather, who was quite saintly in temper and overwhelmingly respectful in manner all the rest of the day. Everyone thought the matter ended and the little cloud blown over, but the mischief was done, for though others forgot it, Meg remembered. She never alluded to a certain person, but she thought of him a good deal, dreamed dreams more than ever, and once Jo, rummaging her sister's desk for stamps, found a bit of paper scribbled over with the words, 'Mrs.

• From Another Country (1962)

  It’s no different from New York.” “No, they’re working. You might feel differently out there, with all the sunshine and oranges and all.” He smiled. “Make a new man of you, baby.” “I guess you think,” said Rufus, malevolently, “that it’s time I started trying to be a new man.” There was a silence. Then Vivaldo said, “It’s not so much what I think. It’s what you think.” Rufus watched the tall, lean, clumsy white boy who was his best friend, and felt himself nearly strangling with the desire to hurt him. “Rufus,” said Vivaldo, suddenly, “believe me, I know, I know—a lot of things hurt you that I can’t really understand.” He played with the keys of his typewriter. “A lot of things hurt me that I can’t really understand.” Rufus sat on the edge of the sprung easy chair, watching Vivaldo gravely. “Do you blame me for what happened to Leona?” “Rufus, what good would it do if I did blame you? You blame yourself enough already, that’s what’s wrong with you, what’s the good of my blaming you?” He could see, though, that Vivaldo had also hoped to be able to avoid this question. “Do you blame me or don’t you? Tell the truth.” “Rufus, if I wasn’t your friend, I think I’d blame you, sure. You acted like a bastard. But I understand that, I think I do, I’m trying to. But, anyway, since you are my friend, and, after all, let’s face it, you mean much more to me than Leona ever did, well, I don’t think I should put you down just because you acted like a bastard. We’re all bastards. That’s why we need our friends.” “I wish I could tell you what it was like,” Rufus said, after a long silence. “I wish I could undo it.” “Well, you can’t. So please start trying to forget it.” Rufus thought, But it’s not possible to forget anybody you were that hung up on, who was that hung up on you. You can’t forget anything that hurt so badly, went so deep, and changed the world forever. It’s not possible to forget anybody you’ve destroyed. He took a great swallow of his bourbon, holding it in his mouth, then allowing it to trickle down his throat. He would never be able to forget Leona’s pale, startled eyes, her sweet smile, her plaintive drawl, her thin, insatiable body. He choked slightly, put down his drink, and ground out his cigarette in the spilling ashtray. “I bet you won’t believe this,” he said, “but I loved Leona. I did.” “Oh,” said Vivaldo, “believe you! Of course I believe you. That’s what all the bleeding was about.” He got up and turned the record over.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He smiled and said, gently, reasonably, “But it cannot go on forever, I also am a man.” “What cannot go on forever?” But he knew what Yves meant and he knew that what Yves said was true. “Why,” said Yves, “my youth. It cannot last forever.” Then he grinned. “I have always been sure that you would be returning to your country one day. It might as well be now, while you are still fond of me, and I can seduce you into taking me along.” “You’re a great little old seducer,” said Eric, “and that’s the truth.” “Ah,” said Yves, wickedly, “with you it was easy.” Then he looked at Eric gravely. “So it is decided.” It was not a question. “I suppose that I must go and visit my whore of a mother and tell her that she will never see me any more.” And his face darkened and his large mouth grew bitter. His mother had been a bistro waitress when the Germans came to Paris. Yves had then been five years old and his father had vanished so long before that Yves could scarcely remember him. But he remembered watching his mother with the Germans. “She was really a putain. I remember many times sitting in the café, watching her. She did not know I was watching—anyway, old people think that children never see anything. The bar was very long, and it curved. I would always be sitting behind it, at the far end, around the curve. There was a mirror above me and I could see them in the mirror. And I could see them in the zinc of the bar. I remember their uniforms and the shine on their leather boots. They were always extremely correct—not like the Americans who came later. She would always be laughing, and she moved very fast. Someone’s hand was always on her—in her bosom, up her leg. There was always another one at our house, the whole German army, coming all the time. How horrible a people.” And then, as though to give his mother a possible, reluctant justice: “Later, she says that she do it for me, that we would not have eaten otherwise. But I do not believe that. I think she liked that. I think she was always a whore. She always managed everything that way. When the Americans came, she found a very pretty officer. He was very nice to me, I must say—he had a son of his own in the States that he had only seen one time, and he pretended that I was his son, though I was much older than his son would have been. He made me wish that I had a father, one father, especially”—he grinned—“an American father, who liked to buy you things and take you on his shoulder everywhere. I was sorry when he went away.

• From Little Women (1868)

  "You have only made the mistake that most young wives make—forgotten your duty to your husband in your love for your children. A very natural and forgivable mistake, Meg, but one that had better be remedied before you take to different ways, for children should draw you nearer than ever, not separate you, as if they were all yours, and John had nothing to do but support them. I've seen it for some weeks, but have not spoken, feeling sure it would come right in time." "I'm afraid it won't. If I ask him to stay, he'll think I'm jealous, and I wouldn't insult him by such an idea. He doesn't see that I want him, and I don't know how to tell him without words." "Make it so pleasant he won't want to go away. My dear, he's longing for his little home, but it isn't home without you, and you are always in the nursery." "Oughtn't I to be there?" "Not all the time, too much confinement makes you nervous, and then you are unfitted for everything. Besides, you owe something to John as well as to the babies. Don't neglect husband for children, don't shut him out of the nursery, but teach him how to help in it. His place is there as well as yours, and the children need him. Let him feel that he has a part to do, and he will do it gladly and faithfully, and it will be better for you all." "You really think so, Mother?" "I know it, Meg, for I've tried it, and I seldom give advice unless I've proved its practicability. When you and Jo were little, I went on just as you are, feeling as if I didn't do my duty unless I devoted myself wholly to you. Poor Father took to his books, after I had refused all offers of help, and left me to try my experiment alone. I struggled along as well as I could, but Jo was too much for me. I nearly spoiled her by indulgence. You were poorly, and I worried about you till I fell sick myself. Then Father came to the rescue, quietly managed everything, and made himself so helpful that I saw my mistake, and never have been able to get on without him since. That is the secret of our home happiness. He does not let business wean him from the little cares and duties that affect us all, and I try not to let domestic worries destroy my interest in his pursuits. Each do our part alone in many things, but at home we work together, always." "It is so, Mother, and my great wish is to be to my husband and children what you have been to yours. Show me how, I'll do anything you say." "You always were my docile daughter.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Rufus sat on the edge of the sprung easy chair, watching Vivaldo gravely. “Do you blame me for what happened to Leona?” “Rufus, what good would it do if I did blame you? You blame yourself enough already, that’s what’s wrong with you, what’s the good of my blaming you?” He could see, though, that Vivaldo had also hoped to be able to avoid this question. “Do you blame me or don’t you? Tell the truth.” “Rufus, if I wasn’t your friend, I think I’d blame you, sure. You acted like a bastard. But I understand that, I think I do, I’m trying to. But, anyway, since you are my friend, and, after all, let’s face it, you mean much more to me than Leona ever did, well, I don’t think I should put you down just because you acted like a bastard. We’re all bastards. That’s why we need our friends.” “I wish I could tell you what it was like,” Rufus said, after a long silence. “I wish I could undo it.” “Well, you can’t. So please start trying to forget it.” Rufus thought, But it’s not possible to forget anybody you were that hung up on, who was that hung up on you. You can’t forget anything that hurt so badly, went so deep, and changed the world forever. It’s not possible to forget anybody you’ve destroyed. He took a great swallow of his bourbon, holding it in his mouth, then allowing it to trickle down his throat. He would never be able to forget Leona’s pale, startled eyes, her sweet smile, her plaintive drawl, her thin, insatiable body. He choked slightly, put down his drink, and ground out his cigarette in the spilling ashtray. “I bet you won’t believe this,” he said, “but I loved Leona. I did.” “Oh,” said Vivaldo, “believe you! Of course I believe you. That’s what all the bleeding was about.” He got up and turned the record over. Then there was silence, except for the voice of Bessie Smith. When my bed get empty, make me feel awful mean and blue, “Oh, sing it, Bessie,” Vivaldo muttered. My springs is getting rusty, sleeping single like I do. Rufus picked up his drink and finished it. “Did you ever have the feeling,” he asked, “that a woman was eating you up? I mean—no matter what she was like or what else she was doing—that that’s what she was really doing?” “Yes,” said Vivaldo. Rufus stood. He walked up and down. “She can’t help it. And you can’t help it. And there you are.” He paused. “Of course, with Leona and me—there was lots of other things, too——” Then there was a long silence. They listened to Bessie. “Have you ever wished you were queer?” Rufus asked, suddenly. Vivaldo smiled, looking into his glass. “I used to think maybe I was. Hell, I think I even wished I was.” He laughed. “But I’m not. So I’m stuck.”

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Anwen wanted a letter of apology, but she didn’t need Sameer’s guilt. She didn’t need his shame. She didn’t need his acquiescence to her every request. She needed him to act, to think, to come up with his own ideas for making things right, or as right as they could be. Eventually, they developed a plan. Sameer would tell his story publicly: he wrote an article for a campus magazine (signing his real name); he cowrote a spoken-word piece with Anwen that they performed together at a Green Dot training, which, in part because of Sameer’s efforts, was now mandatory for every recruit to Greek life; he talked to me for this book. Sameer would also strive to educate other men about consent and assault. He met with officials from local high schools, hoping he could talk to boys to show them that someone who perpetrates assault could be an ordinary guy—to encourage them to make better choices; to keep them from having to learn, as he did, at the expense of someone else’s suffering. No one, though, was eager to have an admitted assailant address their students. I think that’s too bad, as Sameer is exactly the kind of guy that young men need to hear from—someone just like them, someone just like they could be, for better or worse. “Nights like the one with Anwen are so common,” Sameer said. “That’s how guys learn to operate in a lot of ways; our level of understanding of how to communicate and navigate sexual relationships is so infinitesimally small. They don’t have the frame of reference to understand what it means to be a good partner, a good lover. So a lot of us are guilty of doing things like this, and we need to start talking about it and owning up to it.” Sameer also started talking more directly to his male friends, challenging their hookup narratives. “They’d be like, ‘I hooked up with this girl! It was great!’ And I’d ask whether she enjoyed herself. Guys are taken aback by that response. I’d be like, ‘Did you ask her?’ And they’d either be silent or say that it would be too weird. But why is it weird? “I got into the habit, and I’ll say this to my guy friends, of doing a kind of—debrief, I guess, with my partner. Like, ‘Hey, what did you like? What didn’t you like? What might you like to try?’ Just the standard conversation that needs to happen or else people will just keep having bad sex and faking orgasms and lying to each other about what makes them happy sexually.”

• From Little Women (1868)

  She ran to him and held him close, crying, with repentant tears, "Oh, John, my dear, kind, hard-working boy. I didn't mean it! It was so wicked, so untrue and ungrateful, how could I say it! Oh, how could I say it!" He was very kind, forgave her readily, and did not utter one reproach, but Meg knew that she had done and said a thing which would not be forgotten soon, although he might never allude to it again. She had promised to love him for better or worse, and then she, his wife, had reproached him with his poverty, after spending his earnings recklessly. It was dreadful, and the worst of it was John went on so quietly afterward, just as if nothing had happened, except that he stayed in town later, and worked at night when she had gone to cry herself to sleep. A week of remorse nearly made Meg sick, and the discovery that John had countermanded the order for his new greatcoat reduced her to a state of despair which was pathetic to behold. He had simply said, in answer to her surprised inquiries as to the change, "I can't afford it, my dear." Meg said no more, but a few minutes after he found her in the hall with her face buried in the old greatcoat, crying as if her heart would break. They had a long talk that night, and Meg learned to love her husband better for his poverty, because it seemed to have made a man of him, given him the strength and courage to fight his own way, and taught him a tender patience with which to bear and comfort the natural longings and failures of those he loved. Next day she put her pride in her pocket, went to Sallie, told the truth, and asked her to buy the silk as a favor. The good-natured Mrs. Moffat willingly did so, and had the delicacy not to make her a present of it immediately afterward. Then Meg ordered home the greatcoat, and when John arrived, she put it on, and asked him how he liked her new silk gown. One can imagine what answer he made, how he received his present, and what a blissful state of things ensued. John came home early, Meg gadded no more, and that greatcoat was put on in the morning by a very happy husband, and taken off at night by a most devoted little wife. So the year rolled round, and at midsummer there came to Meg a new experience, the deepest and tenderest of a woman's life. Laurie came sneaking into the kitchen of the Dovecote one Saturday, with an excited face, and was received with the clash of cymbals, for Hannah clapped her hands with a saucepan in one and the cover in the other. "How's the little mamma? Where is everybody? Why didn't you tell me before I came home?" began Laurie in a loud whisper.

• From Another Country (1962)

  He thought of Eric for the first time in years, and wondered if he were prowling foreign streets tonight. He glimpsed, for the first time, the extent, the nature, of Eric’s loneliness, and the danger in which this placed him; and wished that he had been nicer to him. Eric had always been very nice to Rufus. He had had a pair of cufflinks made for Rufus, for Rufus’ birthday, with the money which was to have bought his wedding rings: and this gift, this confession, delivered him into Rufus’ hands. Rufus had despised him because he came from Alabama; perhaps he had allowed Eric to make love to him in order to despise him more completely. Eric had finally understood this, and had fled from Rufus, all the way to Paris. But his stormy blue eyes, his bright red hair, his halting drawl, all returned very painfully to Rufus now. Go ahead and tell me. You ain’t got to be afraid . And, as Eric hesitated, Rufus added—slyly, grinning, watching him: “You act like a little girl—or something.” And even now there was something heady and almost sweet in the memory of the ease with which he had handled Eric, and elicited his confession. When Eric had finished speaking, he said, slowly; “I’m not the boy for you. I don’t go that way.” Eric had placed their hands together, and he stared down at them, the red and the brown. “I know,” he said. He moved to the center of his room. “But I can’t help wishing you did. I wish you’d try.” Then, with a terrible effort, Rufus heard it in his voice, his breath : “I’d do anything. I’d try anything. To please you.” Then, with a smile, “I’m almost as young as you are. I don’t know—much—about it.” Rufus had watched him, smiling. He felt a flood of affection for Eric. And he felt his own power. He walked over to Eric and put his hands on Eric’s shoulders. He did not know what he was going to say or do. But with his hands on Eric’s shoulders, affection, power, and curiosity all knotted together in him—with a hidden, unforeseen violence which frightened him a little; the hands that were meant to hold Eric at arm’s length seemed to draw Eric to him; the current that had begun flowing he did not know how to stop. At last, he said in a low voice, smiling, “I’ll try anything once, old buddy.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  Those cufflinks were now in Harlem, in Ida’s bureau drawer. And when Eric was gone, Rufus forgot their battles and the unspeakable physical awkwardness, and the ways in which he had made Eric pay for such pleasure as Eric gave, or got. He remembered only that Eric had loved him; as he now remembered that Leona had loved him. He had despised Eric’s manhood by treating him as a woman, by telling him how inferior he was to a woman, by treating him as nothing more than a hideous sexual deformity. But Leona had not been a deformity. And he had used against her the very epithets he had used against Eric, and in the very same way, with the same roaring in his head and the same intolerable pressure in his chest. Vivaldo lived alone in a first-floor apartment on Bank Street. He was home, Rufus saw the light in the window. He slowed down a little but the cold air refused to let him hesitate; he hurried through the open street door, thinking, Well, I might as well get it over with. And he knocked quickly on Vivaldo’s door. There had been the sound of a typewriter; now it stopped. Rufus knocked again . “Who is it?” called Vivaldo, sounding extremely annoyed. “It’s me. It’s me. Rufus.” The sudden light, when Vivaldo opened the door, was a great shock, as was Vivaldo’s face. “My God,” said Vivaldo. He grabbed Rufus around the neck, pulling him inside and holding him. They both leaned for a moment against Vivaldo’s door. “My God,” Vivaldo said again, “where’ve you been? Don’t you know you shouldn’t do things like that? You’ve had all of us scared to death, baby. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.” It was a great shock and it weakened Rufus, exactly as though he had been struck in the belly. He clung to Vivaldo as though he were on the ropes. Then he pulled away. Vivaldo looked at him, looked hard at him, up and down. And Vivaldo’s face told him how he looked. He moved away from the door, away from Vivaldo’s scrutiny. “Ida’s been here; she’s half crazy. Do you realize you dropped out of sight almost a month ago?” “Yes,” he said, and sat down heavily in Vivaldo’s easy chair—which sagged beneath him almost to the floor. He looked around the room, which had once been so familiar, which now seemed so strange. He leaned back, his hands over his eyes. “Take off your jacket,” Vivaldo said. “I’ll see if I can scare up something for you to eat—are you hungry?” “No, not now. Tell me, how is Ida?” “Well, she’s worried , you know, but there’s nothing wrong with her. Rufus, you want me to fix you a drink?” “When was she here?” “Yesterday. And she called me tonight.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Liam never did tell anyone about what happened at camp, including—and maybe especially—his parents. His dad is an architect; his mom a social worker. Liam described them as politically progressive, emotive, and open, and his relationship to them as close. They were tolerant of his drinking in high school (as long as he didn’t drive) but were emphatic that he was too young for sex. They were, then, oblivious to his reputation, unaware that he’d been engaging in oral sex since age thirteen and vaginal intercourse since fifteen. Frankly, Liam felt they had done him a disservice. “I love my parents,” he said. “They have taught me a lot of things. But when it comes to sex, they haven’t. Just about nothing. They haven’t guided me, and there’ve been times where I really wish they had, that they’d given me some advice. I wish that they had told me that sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes it’s really scary. . . . Honestly, I just wish they had told me anything, because I was sort of thrown into this place where I knew literally nothing except [from] a couple of classes in school and watching porn. And I don’t know. I guess I resent them a little bit for that. . . . I mean, it’s uncomfortable to talk to your parents about sex, but it’s also one of those things that I wish they had forced me to do, because I feel like I would have been better prepared. Maybe I could have not gone into some more uncomfortable situations if they had talked to me.”

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  On the delays of that secondary tenderness he has no mercy in his self-accusations; but it does not appear that the young Augustine was a random libertine; he loved his companion and his child; his briefer bond with another was undertaken less in pleasure than in despair. And the chief evil, perhaps, was in the mere delay that by means of sexual love beset the soul created for love immediate and direct. Stripped of this, St. Augustine stood alone with the end of his search, alone in the great sincerity, one of the greatest sincerities in the history of the human race.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  These days, when Sameer tells people his story, they often try to let him off the hook, saying what he did wasn’t really “that bad.” That rankles him. “This is not a competition,” he said. “And also, what do you mean by ‘wasn’t that bad’? Forcing someone to do sexual things against her will, emotionally manipulating her, wasn’t that bad? Perpetuating a culture that makes people feel like they can’t say no or can’t be themselves or makes them feel scared wasn’t that bad? You’re affecting people’s lives. You don’t think it’s that bad? That’s simply not a qualifier I’m willing to accept. “It’s weird, though,” he continued. “Some people are so quick to come to a perpetrator’s aid, to justify his actions and try to make him seem like he’s not a bad guy. Then there’s other folks who are like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? This person is actively garbage, a piece-of-shit monster.’ But there’s not really that middle ground. Going through the restorative justice process and talking with Anwen gave me an opportunity to view it in a different way. The end goal is to view myself as a person who has done bad things, not just as a bad person. That’s a really hard thing to do. I don’t know if I’ll ever quite get there. At the very minimum, the silver lining becomes that you realize what you did was wrong and won’t ever do it again, and maybe you become someone who actively works every day to be a better person. To be a better man.”

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I had this idea of writing my life story while within a typical chronanistic experience just yesterday. It’s almost incredible to think that I’ve been Dropping since fourth grade and yet I’ve never made the effort to write about it right while it was going on. I kept an abbreviated log for a while in high school and college—date and time of Drop, what I did, how long in personal minutes or hours or days it took (for a watch usually starts up again in the Fold if I shake it, so I can easily measure how long I have been out), whether I learned anything new or not, and so on. You would think, if a person really could stop the world and get off, as I can, that it would occur to him fairly early on to stop the world in order to record with some care what it felt like to stop the world and get off, for the benefit of the curious. But I now see, even this far into my first autobiographical Fermata, why I never did it before. Sad to say, it is just as hard to write during a Fermation as it is in real time. You still must dole out all the things you have to say one by one, when what you want of course is to say them all at once. But I am going to give it a try. I am thirty-five now, and I have done quite a lot of things, mostly bad, with the Fold’s help (including, incidentally, reciting Dylan Thomas’s “Poem on His Birthday” apparently from memory at the final session of a class in modern lyric poetry in college: it is a longish poem, and whenever nervousness made me forget a line, I just paused the world by pressing the switch of my Time Perverter—which is what I called the modified garage-door opener that I used in those days—and refreshed my memory by looking at a copy of the text that I had in my notebook, and no one was the wiser)—and if I don’t write some of these private adventures down now, I know I’m going to regret it.

• From Boys & Sex (2020)

  Cirioni had a personal stake in restorative practices. As an undergraduate RA in the early 2000s, he had sexually harassed a female colleague for over six months, pestering her to go out with him, even more so after she’d dated one of his fraternity brothers (Why him and not me?). She eventually reported him, but, while he was found responsible for misconduct, there was neither reprimand nor consequence; he didn’t even lose his RA job. More important, he learned nothing from the experience. A few years later, as a graduate assistant, he harassed another, younger student, expressing sexual interest, touching her inappropriately, trying to convince her to meet him outside of class. She, too, reported him, and while again, he faced no meaningful penalty, he was required to read a formal statement she’d written describing the impact of his actions on her. That hit him in the gut. “It was the first time I could truly hear how I had made someone else feel,” Cirioni recalled. “It’s when my life really changed, and may be why I found myself learning about restorative justice a few years later and thinking, This feels like a way to connect. You have a better chance of making change when you say to someone, ‘We’re not going to exclude you or remove you; we’re going to help you. You are not a bad person, but your behaviors are concerning, and we need to examine those and where they come from and why you engage in them.’ “We’re all flawed humans,” he continued. “We’ve all caused harm. Some wells are definitely deeper than others. The real question is, how do we have a chance to take responsibility and make things right?” If Sameer’s initial behavior toward Anwen was a perfect storm of gender socialization and ignorance, his actions in the aftermath—along with Anwen’s self-awareness and desire for an alternative process—made Cirioni believe they would be an ideal test case for applying restorative practices to sexual misconduct. “When I told Sameer that a report had been filed against him,” Cirioni told me, “he immediately said, ‘I know what you’re talking about, and I take full responsibility.’”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The coughing of the other lodgers, the soreness at my cheek, my general wretchedness and panic, kept me wakeful. When Zena gave a shiver, I put my hand upon her; and when she didn’t take the hand away, I moved a little closer to her. I said, very low: ‘Oh Zena, I cannot sleep, for thinking of it all!’‘I daresay.’I trembled. ‘Do you hate me, Zena?’ She wouldn’t answer. ‘I shan’t blame you, if you do. But oh! do you know how sorry I am?’ A woman in the bed beside us gave a shriek — I think she was a drunkard - and that made both of us jump, and brought our faces even closer. Her eyes were still hard shut, but I could tell that she listened. I thought of how differently we had lain together, only a few hours before. My wretchedness since then had knocked the fire right out of me; but because it hadn’t been said by either of us, and I thought it ought to be, I whispered now: ‘Oh, if only Diana hadn’t come when she did! It was fun - wasn’t it? - before Diana came and stopped it ...’She opened her eyes. ‘It was fun,’ she said sadly. ‘It is always fun before they catch you.’ Then she gazed at me, and swallowed.I said: ‘It won’t be so bad, Zena - will it? You’re the only tom I know in London, now; and since you’re all alone, I thought - we might make a go of it, mightn’t we? We might find a room, in a rooming-house. You could get work, as a sempstress or a char. I shall buy another suit; and when my face is all healed up - well, I know a trick or two, for making money. We shall have your seven pounds back in a month. We shall have twenty pounds in no time. And then, you can make your trip out to the colonies; and I’ — I gave a gulp — ‘I might go with you. You said they always need landladies there; surely, they’ll always need gentlemen’s tarts, too - even in Australia ... ?’She gazed at me as I murmured, saying nothing. Then she bent her head and kissed me once, very lightly, upon the lips.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  258 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL tarism, and class contempt, every student of history will recognize thatthese sum up constitutional forces in the Kingdom of Evil. Jesus bore these sins inno legal orartificial sense, but intheir impact on his own body andsoul. He had not contributed to them, as we have, and yet they were laid onhim. They were not only the sins of Caiaphas, Pilate, or Judas, but the social sin of all mankind, towhich allwho ever lived have contributed, andunder which all who ever lived have suffered. * The spiritual insight of Jesus himself has added a further step tothissolidaristic interpretation ofhis death. Inthe parable o the Vineyard hedescribed the religious history of hisnation as a continuous straggle, with God andhis prophets on one side, and the selfish exploiters of religion onthe other, and set his own impending death at the end of the prophetic succession as its culmination. Thiswas an historical, social, and solidaristic interpre- tation ofhis death. At theclose of the invective against the religious lead- ers (Mathew 23) he again outlined this historical process, in which the ruling classes of the past had always silenced the living voices of God, but managed toutilize them 1 1have not seen this analysis attempted before. My attention has been called toa sermon by President William DeWitt Hyde, on "The Sinswhich Crucified Jesus," in thecollection of " Modern Sermons by World Scholars," Vol. IV, in which he fol- lows a similarline of inquiry. He specifies the envy of the hierarchy, the money-love of Judas, slander, and the servility of Pilate. But, except in the first part, dealing with the hierarchy, hedoes not place the discussion underthe category of solidarity, and that is the decisive point of my argument See also Henry Sloane Coffin, " Social Aspects ofthe Cross."

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  36 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL his keeping, he has failed in his trust. Voted, that he be excluded until he has proved his lasting repentance.’^ The result would be the same, but the sense of sin would do its work more intelligently. In his Appeal to the Christian Nobility,” Luther said that in consequence of the many fast days and the insist- ence of the priests on their observance, the people had come to a point where they regarded it as a greater sin to eat butter on a fast day than to lie, swear, or commit fornication. An eminent minister in New York enumer- ated as the chief marks of a Christian that he attends church, reads the Bible, and contributes to the support of public worship. A less eminent minister in the same place mentioned as the four sins from which a Christian must abstain, drinking, dancing, card playing, and going to the movies. And this in New York where the capital- istic system of the nation comes to a head ! It may well be that with some individuals there is a loss of seriousness in the sense of sin as a result of the social gospel. But on the whole the result consists chiefly in shifting the emphasis and assigning a new valu- ation to different classes of sins. Attention is concen- trated on questions of public morality, on wrongs done by whole classes or professions of men, on sins which en- ervate and submerge entire mill towns or agricultural states. These sins have been side-stepped by the old the- ology. We now have to make up for a fatal failure in past teaching. We feel a deep consciousness of sin when we realize that we have wasted our years, dissipated our energies, left our opportunities unused, frustrated the grace of THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN 37 God, and dwarfed and shamed the personality which God intended when he called us into life. It is a similar and even deeper misery to realize that our past life has hurt and blocked the Kingdom of God, the sum of all good, the essential aim of God himself. Our duty to the King- dom of God is on a higher level than all other duties. To aid it is the supreme joy. To have failed it by our weakness, to have hampered it by our ignorance, to have resisted its prophets, to have contradicted its truths, to have denied it in time of danger, to have betrayed it for thirty pieces of silver, — this is the most poignant con- sciousness of sin. The social gospel opens our eyes to the ways in which religious men do all these things. It plunges us in a new baptism of repentance. CHAPTER V THE FALL OF MAN

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  ‘I was not warned by this but redoubled my efforts to penetrate the curtain behind which I thought my adversary stood, a black patch over one eye. I was still in correspondence with Magnani and tried to collect as much evidence as possible which might help him elucidate the mystery, but in vain. In the thorny jungle of guilty impulses which constitute the human psyche who can find a way — even when the subject wishes to co-operate? The time we wasted upon futile researches into her likes and dislikes! If Justine had been blessed with a sense of humour what fun she could have had with us. I remember a whole correspondence based upon the confession that she could not read the words “Washington D.C.” on a letter without a pang of disgust! It is a matter of deep regret to me now that I wasted this time when I should have been loving her as she deserved. Some of these doubts must also have afflicted old Magnani for I recall him writing: “and my dear boy we must never forget that this infant science we are working at, which seems so full of miracles and promises, is at best founded on much that is as shaky as astrology. After all, these important names we give to things! Nymphomania may be considered another form of virginity if you wish; and as for Justine, she may never have been in love. Perhaps one day she will meet a man before whom all these tiresome chimeras will fade into innocence again. You must not rule this thought out”. He was not, of course, trying to hurt me — for this was a thought I did not care to admit to myself. But it penetrated me when I read it in this wise old man’s letter.’ * * * * * I had not read these pages of Arnauti before the afternoon at Bourg El Arab when the future of our relationship was compromised by the introduction of a new element — I do not dare to use the word love, for fear of hearing that harsh sweet laugh in my imagination: a laugh which would somewhere be echoed by the diarist. Indeed so fascinating did I find his analysis of his subject, and so closely did our relationship echo the relationship he had enjoyed with Justine that at times I too felt like some paper character out of Moeurs. Moreover, here I am, attempting to do the same sort of thing with her in words — though I lack his ability and have no pretensions to being an artist. I want to put things down simply and crudely, without style — the plaster and whitewash; for the portrait of Justine should be rough-cast, with the honest stonework of the predicament showing through.

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  I could go on, of course. Not just about the forgotten junk stacked in the nooks and crannies of our homes, but about the other useless things we spend our time and money on. Sometimes we look back and wonder, Why did I waste so much of myself on that activity, that belief, that offense, that business, that addiction, that investment, that mistake? Nobody should live in regret, so the only reason to look backward is to look forward. That is, we learn from the past to improve our future. This goes for prayer too. Not all prayer is good prayer. There are some ways of praying that are just as useless as single socks and empty storage bins. Maybe you’ve prayed these kinds of prayers. I know I have. If we’re going to be effective in our prayer lives, we need to identify the prayers that are wasting our time and God’s time. (Can you even waste an eternal being’s time? I have no idea.) Once we identify them, we can replace useless prayers with prayers that matter. 1. HYPOCRITICAL PRAYER The word hypocrite comes from the Greek word for actor. It could also have a negative meaning, referring to someone who was playing a part to deceive others. German theologian Gerhard Kittel wrote, “The stage is a sham world and actors are deceivers. Hence hypókrisis takes on the sense of ‘pretense’ or ‘pretext.’” 1 Hypocritical prayer is all for show. It’s a drama, a performance, a sham. Jesus addressed hypocrites very bluntly, as only He could: And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matthew 6:5–6 Jesus seems to have had specific people in mind when He called out the “hypocrites” among them. Maybe some of them were listening to Him right then. They were likely the religious leaders of the day who tended to make a big show of their spirituality.