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 The Tides of Lust (1973)

  “I turned and fled into the bushes at the side of the road as the hooves clattered on the turning. There was no time to warn Guido and Pietro. I hid in the woods all day. Finally I got up courage to return to the cemetery in the late afternoon. The shack was a smoking scab at the graveyard’s edge. Distraught and angry townsmen clumped together, muttering about ‘the beast and his half-witted bastard,’ and their audacity to abduct the Duchessa herself. How fortunate, they declared, that she had escaped with her honor, yet was able to expose their atrocities to her husband who had arrived to save her, in time. No, she was upset, and the doctors said she must stay indoors several weeks; no one was to see her. “I left the town; shortly afterwards, the country. “As I drifted east, I pondered on all this. Soon I was in countries where life meant much less than in Europe. The particularities by which coming and killing could link up surpassed all I had heretofore experienced. But still I pondered Catherine’s actions. During those periods which all of us who live this particular life must endure, when I lose all taste for women, she exemplifies that fantasy the bourgeois misogynist has predicated to justify his own inadequacy. But at other times, when concourse with my own sex revolts me, I see her more generously, and I realize that the actions of all of us were webbed by circumstance, bound by whatever forces move a Duke and Duchess, a grave digger and his son, a wanderer in an alien land. “She was generous enough to let me escape an easy hanging. “I return little enough by letting her escape my censure. “Toward the end of two years’ wanderings I stayed a double month in India, most of it in the house of Geana Liana, a woman not twenty-one, but in whose palatial establishment, inherited from a doting ‘uncle,’ acts were committed hourly by Indians and Europeans alike, night and day, that would make the deeds of the grave diggers, were they lights in the sky, fade—to take an image from Sappho—as the moon blinds out the near stars. Those talents I had begun to develop with the Count were brought to fruition there: I ministered deeds, envisioned more arduous ones, participated in many; often I helped the participants recuperate. “Geana herself, as I drank Turkish coffee and ate candied fruit on the balcony and she painted at my portrait, asked, ‘Jon? What do you want to do?’ Eyes winged with kohl, she smiled behind her veil. ‘You are a doctor who cannot heal anyone. You say you have studied the ways of different cultures, yet you are amazed at everything you see. Do you paint?’ “ ‘I draw a little—’ I had actually had a job as a medical illustrator for one term.

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

  They are broken and sinful, and they damage us and others. Practice conviction together: 1 . Pray as a group that God would fill your hearts with conviction. 2 . Find ways to go into your neighborhoods and communities and to be with people marginalized because of their race, sexuality, politics, religion, disability, language, socioeconomic status, and so on. Some will be in your church, and others will not. As you spend time with and speak with them (individually and with your small group), what is the Holy Spirit convicting you to repent of? 3 . Now, on large sheets of paper (or on a whiteboard), list the things that the Spirit is convicting you to repent of. These might come from the introductory sections or twelve points made in this chapter. Or the list that the Spirit leads your group to write may be completely different. Contrition: Lament and mourn these things. Contrition involves lamenting and mourning our mistakes and sins, their effect on people and the earth, and their offensiveness to God. This is godly sorrow that moves us to action. So it is time to write another shared group lament. Practice contrition together: 1 . Write a group lament as described in chapter two. 2 . Choose one or more of the issues you wrote on your paper (or whiteboard) at stage one (conviction ). 3 . Then, following the nine elements of lament, spend some time in your small group writing a shared lament for the issues you chose. Write a lament together, structured around these nine stages or elements (described earlier): invocation, worship, description, connection, lament, confession, petition, trust, and praise. You might do this by asking people in pairs to write one or two of these nine stages or elements. 4 . Spend time together in prayer over the themes in the lament. Open to the contrition that the Holy Spirit inspires. Commitment: Commit to new and redemptive attitudes, postures, and behaviors. Commitment is about determining together to change our minds, attitudes, purpose, desires, and ways. We need to make this commitment together and rely on the power of the Holy Spirit. Practice commitment together: 1 . Ask members of your small group to do the following before you meet next time: a . Consider the list that you have formed together of things you feel convicted to repent of. b . Individually during the week, write personal commitments to new, redemptive, God-honoring attitudes and behaviors on a piece of paper. 2 . Share these commitments with each other next time you meet. 3 . Give each other feedback on these commitments. 4 . Spend time praying together that God would help you keep these commitments personally and as a group. 5 . Do all this in a spirit of repentance, grace, forgiveness, love, faith, and hope. Change: Practice becoming new in the world. Conviction, contrition, and commitment must lead to change. We start with recognizing what we have done.

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

  If current trends continue, one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime, as can one of every six Latino males—compared to one of every seventeen white males.”1 The sin of racism has had a devastating impact on African Americans and had led to both explicit racial discrimination and in effect the construction of two distinct criminal justice systems (“one for wealthy people and another for poor people and minorities”).2 As God’s people, we must embrace repentance and change. These are the right responses to racism, sexism, greed, and other forms of social and personal sin. But what is repentance? Repentance involves key changes in people, groups, and communities. It includes our minds, hearts, and wills. Repentance can be personal, but it can also be corporate. Repentance includes a metanoia , a change of mind and a turning around. Scripture says, “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:19 ). Acts 20:21 further says, “I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.” Repentance means that we change our ways and turn toward God. There are individual sins and corporate/community sins. As individuals we sin by ourselves and come to God for forgiveness. We are very aware of our individual sins, as we commit them personally. Corporate sins are committed by society and institutions that we as individuals become complicit in. We fail to speak up against institutional sins such as racism, sexism, and injustice in the criminal justice system. We therefore need to repent of our social sins as well. Repentance is a four-stage process. The first stage is conviction . We recognize that one or more of our attitudes and behaviors are wrong. They are broken and sinful, and they can damage us and others. This conviction of sin grips our hearts and minds. The second stage is contrition . We lament, regret, and mourn our mistakes and sins. We feel sorrow and remorse for these attitudes and behaviors, for their effect on people and on the earth, and for their offensiveness to God. Contrition is a godly sorrow that moves us to action. The third stage is commitment . We decide to turn away from our sin and commit to new, God-honoring, and redemptive attitudes, postures, and behaviors. This is changing our minds, changing our attitudes, changing our purpose, changing our desires, and changing our ways. The fourth stage is change . We practice a new way of being in the world. This is the way of repentance, righteousness, humility, justice, love, and reconciliation. Godly sorrow leads to faith, hope, and love. Why Do We Need to Repent?We live in a broken world. This brokenness not only hurts us, it also hurts those around us.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  Finally I got up courage to return to the cemetery in the late afternoon. The shack was a smoking scab at the graveyard’s edge. Distraught and angry townsmen clumped together, muttering about ‘the beast and his half-witted bastard,’ and their audacity to abduct the Duchessa herself. How fortunate, they declared, that she had escaped with her honor, yet was able to expose their atrocities to her husband who had arrived to save her, in time. No, she was upset, and the doctors said she must stay indoors several weeks; no one was to see her. “I left the town; shortly afterwards, the country. “As I drifted east, I pondered on all this. Soon I was in countries where life meant much less than in Europe. The particularities by which coming and killing could link up surpassed all I had heretofore experienced. But still I pondered Catherine’s actions. During those periods which all of us who live this particular life must endure, when I lose all taste for women, she exemplifies that fantasy the bourgeois misogynist has predicated to justify his own inadequacy. But at other times, when concourse with my own sex revolts me, I see her more generously, and I realize that the actions of all of us were webbed by circumstance, bound by whatever forces move a Duke and Duchess, a grave digger and his son, a wanderer in an alien land. “She was generous enough to let me escape an easy hanging. “I return little enough by letting her escape my censure. “Toward the end of two years’ wanderings I stayed a double month in India, most of it in the house of Geana Liana, a woman not twenty-one, but in whose palatial establishment, inherited from a doting ‘uncle,’ acts were committed hourly by Indians and Europeans alike, night and day, that would make the deeds of the grave diggers, were they lights in the sky, fade—to take an image from Sappho—as the moon blinds out the near stars. Those talents I had begun to develop with the Count were brought to fruition there: I ministered deeds, envisioned more arduous ones, participated in many; often I helped the participants recuperate. “Geana herself, as I drank Turkish coffee and ate candied fruit on the balcony and she painted at my portrait, asked, ‘Jon? What do you want to do?’ Eyes winged with kohl, she smiled behind her veil. ‘You are a doctor who cannot heal anyone. You say you have studied the ways of different cultures, yet you are amazed at everything you see. Do you paint?’ “ ‘I draw a little—’ I had actually had a job as a medical illustrator for one term. “ ‘Tomorrow I will loan you paints and brushes. And you will paint a mural on the wall of the West Chamber with the white jade columns.’ “I painted the wall.

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

  Then we move on to repentance, to seeking justice for those whom we and others have wronged, and, where appropriate, to acts of reparation. Reconciliation only happens when we repent and seek justice, truth, freedom, and reparation. In other words, reconciliation and forgiveness demand a new way of being and living in the world (personally and together). Practice change together: 1 . Form three- or four-person accountability groups out of your small group. Invite people to choose whom they’d like to be in a small accountability group with. 2 . This accountability group may meet separately from your normal group time. Or it may meet for accountability discussions for thirty minutes during your normal meeting times. 3 . When groups meet, they should begin with prayer, recognizing that change only happens in community and through the grace and power of God. We can’t orchestrate change (personally or in accountability groups). Only God gives us the power to change. 4 . The group should also commit to confidentiality, empathy, prayer, listening, honesty, and being accountable to each other. 5 . Now, in these accountability groups, discuss the list you have formed of things you feel convicted to repent of. Discuss the commitments you have made to change. 6 . Hold each other accountable for actions that express this change. Ask each other tough questions about how you are changing your attitudes, postures, and behaviors. (For example: How are you letting go of the pursuit of power and control in your relationships? How are you dealing with racism, sexism, and gender inequality in your life, ministry, and workplace? How are you listening to those who are different from you—sexually, politically, racially, religiously, and so on? How are you opening your heart to refugees and immigrants? How are you caring for the earth, the poor, the disabled, the marginalized, and so on?) FourRELINQUISH POWERT o relinquish something is to voluntarily choose to give it up. The church will never truly be the new humanity in Christ until it embraces relinquishment. The gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to relinquish (to give up) our own righteousness, status, privilege, selfish ambition, self-interest, vain conceit, personal gain, and power. Jesus practiced relinquishment, and Paul followed his example. In Philippians 2:5-11 Paul describes how Jesus emptied and humbled himself. Jesus chose the path of relinquishment, and we must embrace the same mindset. “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” (Phil 2:5-8 ) God exalted Jesus, but only after Jesus walked willingly down the path of self-emptying, humility, and relinquishment. It isn’t only in the incarnation that Jesus practiced relinquishment.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  But it was easy, and I sailed in the Mediterranean a long time. You could haul tankers if you could speak languages and make friends. There’s always been more people liked me where I went than I liked. Which is pretty good. Over there too. It was the first white man I killed. I had killed two niggers before and the white man was in I shouldn’t talk about these though. I don’t know who’ll read this, and if it is somebody else, I don’t want trouble. I’m going to tear this page out and start again. But it was cold and the ice kept clicking the side of the boat, and he saw I was going to kill him, and that was when it was. I knocked him into the winch and kicked the safety, and the chains jumped and caught some cloth on his shirt that pulled him into the chains and wrapped him like a rag around the spool, arm, shoulder, neck. His eyes came out and blood ran out his hair. He knew I was going to kill him, but he didn’t know I was going to do it that way. Then I put the safety back on and went back to my boat and he’s the only one of those I ever killed. Yet. Births. Deaths. [The page ends here and has been torn from the log, then folded and stuck in its proper place as though the writer changed his mind.] Marriages; it says in this newspaper on the back page. I should tell you about that since I’m telling you about where I’m from and all. In Guatemala, the time when the boat went down, I got two wives in one week. But that was a joke with these friends who had money for the new boat. But I got babies off both of them, I found out when I came back, and later, when I was working good on the new boat I took a wife named Leora. Leora worked on this boat with me hard as I did a year, and the Father that married us hid me four times from the authorities—I was running things, then. She got two girls and a boy from me already and maybe I’ll go back. Some day. But I went to jail for eighteen months. When I got out, I thought it was good to go as far as I could. So I took my boat to Europe again. I’ve been through at Port Said. And at Panama. I stopped at Venice and Singapore. I’ve been down Baja California and in Osaka. But maybe the best way to describe what I am trying isn’t to describe it clear.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Mostly, Mother couldn’t hurt you. But I both could and did. The time I’m mostly thinking of, you were barely four, which—I would argue—is less like being a miniature person than like a dog or cat who can talk. Your father and I were coming to pieces, and not long after, you came to see me in the hospital. You remember the embossed smiley faces on my green slippers. You remember the red-haired woman so psychotic she once landed in four-point restraints just about the time you got there with your Ninja Turtle lunch box, and you could hear her howls. We had a picnic one summer afternoon when you visited, and the hospital grounds so evoked the playing fields where your father distinguished himself that you told your teachers at daycare that I was at a slumber party at Harvard. We both remember, albeit in varying tones of gray and black and shit brown, the misery I mired us in. That’s the story I want to tell: how I started getting drunk. How being drunk got increasingly hard, and being not drunk felt impossible. In Odyssean terms, I’d wanted to be a hero, but wound up—as Mother did—a monster. But because of you, I couldn’t die and couldn’t monster myself, either. So you were the agent of my rescue—not a good job for somebody barely three feet tall. Blameless, the Greek translators call it. That’s what Odysseus wished for his son, Telemachus: to live guilt free. As a teenager myself, reading how Odysseus boffed witches and fought monsters, I inked the word blameless on the bottom of my tennis shoe. And my favorite part was always when he came home after decades and no one knew him. As you get older, you look at me more objectively—or try to. As I become strange to you in some ways, you’ve become more familiar to yourself. Maybe you could loan me some of the shine in your young head to clear up my leftover dark spaces. Just as you’re blameless for the scorched parts of your childhood, I’m equally exonerated for my own mother’s nightmare. Maybe I can show you how I came to peace, how she and Daddy wound up as blameless in my story as you are. Before you left the other night, you added—in the form of afterthought—what was, to me, the most dramatic news I’d heard that night: after the tape of your grandmother, you’d read nearly fifty pages of my own memories. You added, I’m gonna use that and some footage of Grandma for my documentary class. I watched you disappear down the stairs and wanted to call you back but thought better of it. Your girlfriend was with you, and you were so loaded down with bags and equipment. And something about those orange boxers with their cartoon fish—they draw from me such a throat-clenching nostalgia for a younger version of you—an image at odds with the man you are. You’re disembarking now, I can see it. Maybe by telling you my story, you can better tell yours, which is the only way to get home, by which I mean to get free of us.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (To me, this advice seemed both sound and practical, because it would free me from any annoyance by Ascyltos, and because it gave promise of a happier life. I was overcome by the kindly sympathy of Eumolpus, and was especially sorry for the latest injury I had done him. I began to repent my jealousy, which had been the cause of so many unpleasant happenings) and with many tears, I begged and pled with him to admit me into favor, as lovers cannot control their furious jealousy, and vowing, at the same time, that I would not by word or deed give him cause for offense in the future. And he, like a learned and cultivated gentleman, ought to remove all irritation from his mind, and leave no trace of it behind. The snows belong upon the ground in wild and uncultivated regions, but where the earth has been beautified by the conquest of the plough, the light snow melts away while you speak of it. And so it is with anger in the heart; in savage minds it lingers long, it glides quickly away from the cultured. “That you may experience the truth of what you say,” exclaimed Eumolpus, “see! I end my anger with a kiss. May good luck go with us! Get your baggage together and follow me, or go on ahead, if you prefer.” While he was speaking, a knock sounded at the door, and a sailor with a bristling beard stood upon the threshold. “You’re hanging in the wind, Eumolpus,” said he, “as if you didn’t know that son-of-a-bitch of a skipper!” Without further delay we all got up. Eumolpus ordered his servant, who had been asleep for some time, to bring his baggage out. Giton and I pack together whatever we have for the voyage and, after praying to the stars, we went aboard. CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDREDTH. (We picked out a retired spot on the poop and Eumolpus dozed off, as it was not yet daylight. Neither Giton nor myself could get a wink of sleep, however. Anxiously I reflected that I had received Eumolpus as a comrade, a rival more formidable than Ascyltos, and that thought tortured me. But reason soon put my uneasiness to flight.) “It is unfortunate,” (said I to myself,) “that the lad has so taken our friend’s fancy, but what of it? Is not nature’s every masterpiece common to all? The sun shines upon all alike! The moon with her innumerable train of stars lights even the wild beasts to their food. What can be more beautiful than water?

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Through suffering we must subdue, break, and subordinate to the spirit our untamed flesh in order to assist hope, strengthen faith, and firm up the word.’ Replying to Luther’s attack on him for wearing peasant grey, Karlstadt mocked the reformer’s predilection for wearing ‘scarlet, satin, brocade, angora cloth, velvet, and gold tassels’ — a well-chosen barb, for Karlstadt knew how irritated Luther had been in 1519 at the Leipzig Debate where the citizens had given Eck the fine angora cloth which Luther had longed for.® Karlstadt, the former provost of All Saints who had once driven a hard bargain over how much his chaplain should pay him from the income of the Orlamiinde property, now wrote: “Would to God that I were a real peasant, field labourer, or craftsman, that I might eat my bread in obedience to God, i.e., in the sweat of my brow. Instead, I have eaten from the poor people’s labours whom I have given nothing in return. I had no right to this nor could I protect them in any way. Nonetheless, I took their labours into my house. If I could, I should like to return to them everything I took.’ In 1524 he was not only idealising peasant life: he was now also reaping the consequences of his theology for social relations, realising how as a priest he had been complicit in the exploitation of the poor. For him, the Reformation was becoming a movement of liberation of the common people. He was not alone. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans and Anna Luder, 1527. View of Wittenberg, 1536. On the far left the Elector’s castle is clearly visible. The twin towers in the centre are those of the city church, and the Augustinian monastery can be made out on the right. Lucas Cranach the Younger, 7he Conversion of Saul, 1547. The three castles at Mansfield can be seen in the background of this painting, each picked out ina different colour. Johann von Staupitz. Painted in 1522, this portrait shows a large, round-faced man with real physical presence, natural authority and a warm paternal manner. Luther's later antagonist Cochlaeus described Staupitz as ‘remarkable for the beauty and stature of his body’. ASIN) DOMINE- 15 O49 Lucas Cranach the Elder, Georg Spalatin, 1509. Pilgrimage of Friedrich the Wise to Jerusalem, painted shortly after the journey in 1493.

• From Shunned (2018)

  It was oddly comforting when a few of them came up to me and said hello as I followed Ray and Deborah up the aisle to choose our seats. The gray-haired man with all those tales of his travels to Indonesia was off to the side of the stage, buttoning his suit jacket. He approached the microphone, cleared his throat, and called the meeting to order. I was thrilled when he announced that we would be singing one of my favorite songs—“We Thank You Jehovah.” I pulled my old Kingdom Songbook from my purse, knowing what page to open to before being told, allowing myself to be seduced by the familiar. It felt right to sing along. The mood of the melody is one of awe and gratitude, thanking God for light, guidance, and spirit. Despite my spiritual waffling and confusion, I was unwavering in my appreciation for all that I had. However, the feeling was short-lived. The third stanza talked of giving praise for Christ’s sacrifice, and the honor of preaching and teaching. I felt myself pulling back, unwilling or unable to give voice to that lyric. Sacrifice of any kind seemed brutal, unnecessary. Hadn’t we all sacrificed enough? The opening prayer came next. The brother followed the precise format, asking for forgiveness, and I recoiled inside as he begged for the Holy Spirit to help us conquer the “desires of the flesh.” I recognized it as a thought form based on fear, not love. Going on, he asked Jehovah to protect everyone there from the influences of Satan and his worldly, doomed system. Again I saw the fear, and how this religion fostered a feeling of separation as a positive state. And yet my recent experience was of how painful that separation can be. How ironic that I’d come here to feel connected, to experience belonging somewhere. I was silent as those around me echoed “amen” to that prayer. Deborah and I took our seats. I regretted coming and couldn’t wait to leave, but years of training to “be good” kept me in my seat. I pulled my Bible from my purse, set it on my lap, and buckled down to ride out Ray’s talk. For most of that hour, I mentally checked out, allowing my mind to wander wherever it wished, without concern or desire to pull it back to the topic at hand. I don’t remember what he talked about, except that it was all “old news” to me, nothing new or uplifting. Instead, the messaged weighed on me and I found myself feeling spacey, then sleepy. At the midpoint of the meeting, after Ray’s talk and before the Watchtower discussion, I said goodbye to Deborah under my breath and excused myself. Pulling my coat collar up around my neck and ears, I walked out into the steely air, so sharp it pierced my nostrils. Later that day, I spoke to Mom, who was overjoyed to learn about my trip to the Hall.

• From Satyricon (1)

  (To me, this advice seemed both sound and practical, because it would free me from any annoyance by Ascyltos, and because it gave promise of a happier life. I was overcome by the kindly sympathy of Eumolpus, and was especially sorry for the latest injury I had done him. I began to repent my jealousy, which had been the cause of so many unpleasant happenings) and with many tears, I begged and pled with him to admit me into favor, as lovers cannot control their furious jealousy, and vowing, at the same time, that I would not by word or deed give him cause for offense in the future. And he, like a learned and cultivated gentleman, ought to remove all irritation from his mind, and leave no trace of it behind. The snows belong upon the ground in wild and uncultivated regions, but where the earth has been beautified by the conquest of the plough, the light snow melts away while you speak of it. And so it is with anger in the heart; in savage minds it lingers long, it glides quickly away from the cultured. “That you may experience the truth of what you say,” exclaimed Eumolpus, “see! I end my anger with a kiss. May good luck go with us! Get your baggage together and follow me, or go on ahead, if you prefer.” While he was speaking, a knock sounded at the door, and a sailor with a bristling beard stood upon the threshold. “You’re hanging in the wind, Eumolpus,” said he, “as if you didn’t know that son-of-a-bitch of a skipper!” Without further delay we all got up. Eumolpus ordered his servant, who had been asleep for some time, to bring his baggage out. Giton and I pack together whatever we have for the voyage and, after praying to the stars, we went aboard. CHAPTER THE ONE HUNDREDTH. (We picked out a retired spot on the poop and Eumolpus dozed off, as it was not yet daylight. Neither Giton nor myself could get a wink of sleep, however. Anxiously I reflected that I had received Eumolpus as a comrade, a rival more formidable than Ascyltos, and that thought tortured me. But reason soon put my uneasiness to flight.) “It is unfortunate,” (said I to myself,) “that the lad has so taken our friend’s fancy, but what of it? Is not nature’s every masterpiece common to all? The sun shines upon all alike! The moon with her innumerable train of stars lights even the wild beasts to their food. What can be more beautiful than water?

• From Satyricon (1)

  The Old Testament proves that the Hebrew authorities of the time were no strangers to the abomination, but no mention of eunuchs in Judea itself is to be found prior to the time of Josiah. Castration was forbidden the Jews, Deuteronomy, xxiii, 1, but as this book was probably unknown before the time of Josiah, we can only conjecture as to the attitude of the patriarchs in regard to this subject; we are safe, however, in inferring that it was hostile. “Periander, son of Cypselus, had sent three hundred youths of the noblest young men of the Corcyraeans to Alyattes, at Sardis; for the purpose of emasculation.” Herodotus, iii, chapter 48. “Hermotimus, then, was sprung from these Pedasians; and, of all men we know, revenged himself in the severest manner for an injury he had received; for, having been captured by an enemy and sold, he was purchased by one Panionius, a Chian, who gained a livelihood by the most infamous practices; for whenever he purchased boys remarkable for their beauty, having castrated them, he used to take them to Sardis and Ephesus and sell them for large sums; for with the barbarians, eunuchs are more valued than others, on account of their perfect fidelity. Panionius, therefore, had castrated many others, as he made his livelihood by this means, and among them, this man. “Hermotimus, however, was not in every respect unfortunate, for he went to Sardis, along with other presents for the king, and in process of time was the most esteemed by Xerxes of all his eunuchs. “When the king was preparing to march his Persian army against Athens, Hermotimus was at Sardis, having gone down at that time, upon some business or other, to the Mysian territory which the Chians possess, and is called Atarneus, he there met with Panionius. Having recognized him, he addressed many friendly words to him, first recounting the many advantages he had acquired by this means, and secondly, promising him how many favors he would confer upon him in requital, if he would bring his family and settle there; so that Panionius joyfully accepted the proposal and brought his wife and children. But when Hermotimus got him with his whole family into his power, he addressed him as follows: “‘O thou, who, of all mankind, hast gained thy living by the most infamous acts, what harm had either I, or any of mine, done to thee, or any of thine, that of a man thou hast made me nothing? “‘Thou didst imagine, surely, that thy machinations would pass unnoticed by the Gods, who, following righteous laws, have enticed thee, who hath committed unholy deeds, into my hands, so that thou canst not complain of the punishment I shall inflict upon thee.’

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  In 1537, for example, it was the turn of Johannes Agricola, one of Luther’s closest and most long-standing followers. Agricola came from the Harz region and had close ties with Luther’s friends and relatives in Mansfeld. Luther dubbed him “Mr. Eisleben” after his parish, the town where both men were born. They had fought the early battles of the Reformation shoulder to shoulder, Agricola acting as Luther’s secretary in the Leipzig Debate. He may even have lit the famous fire in 1520 at the Elster Gate where the bull was burned. Though Luther was a decade older, Agricola had married in 1520, five years before him, and he was among the first Luther told about the birth of his son Hans.28 Their children overlapped in age, and for many years the letters between them discussed their wives’ pregnancies and childcare.29 When Agricola’s wife fell ill, she came to Wittenberg to stay with Katharina, Agricola confiding to Luther that she was sick “in spirit, not body, and no apothecary can help.”30 Yet in 1528, at the height of the dispute with Karlstadt, Luther heard that Agricola was preaching the erroneous idea that faith could exist without good works, and wrote him a stern warning about dressing up such nonsense in fine rhetoric and Greek words: “watch out for Satan and your flesh.”31 A year later, however, when Agricola got into trouble with a collection of German proverbs, a book to which he would continue to add for the rest of his life, Luther was supportive once more. Concealed in this apparently harmless work were some disparaging remarks about Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, who had been ejected by the Swabian League and the Habsburgs, and had become a follower of the Reformation. Ludwig von Passavant, a nobleman in Ulrich’s entourage, noticed the remarks, and attacked Agricola very publicly.32 The hapless Agricola discovered he had alienated not only Ulrich, but Albrecht of Mansfeld and Philip of Hesse to boot, major evangelical princes. Luther’s response was robust: He counseled the younger man to stick to his guns and upbraided him for cravenly apologizing to Philip of Hesse: “I hear you just caved in to Philip of Hesse, gave him too humble an answer, which I was sorry about. You should now publish an Introduction where you answer the Graf [that is, Passavant], and include that you earlier humbly sought peace, but because they rage and do not want peace you are forced not to be humble but to fight for the matter according to justice, and you are sorry about your humility.”33 Still, the misjudgment dogged Agricola for years, and he had to be excluded from the 1537 Schmalkalden negotiations to try to reach a common front among evangelical theologians, because his presence might irritate Duke Ulrich, who by then had regained his duchy.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Its preface took the form of a “letter” to his father, in which Luther developed the ideas he had explored in the letter to Melanchthon, sometimes in the very same words. It was a letter only in a fictional sense: Since it was written in Latin, his father could not have read it, nor could he have read the treatise itself, which was dedicated to him. It is a remarkably compact, emotional, and dramatic piece of writing. Luther now offered his father an apology. I disobeyed your wishes, he confessed, and I know that you had other plans for me: “you were determined, therefore, to tie me down with an honorable and wealthy marriage.” He told the story of his first Mass, and he recalled that even after they had made their peace with each other, his father had again exploded: “Have you not also heard…that parents are to be obeyed?” Yet at the time, Luther wrote, “I hardened my heart as much as I could against you and your word”—a revealing terminology that would have reminded the reader of Christ and the true Word. Now, Luther wrote, he realized that the apparition in the storm could not have been from God, because his decision to enter the monastery was against his father’s will. Conceding that the vision was indeed diabolic, he still placed it within a wider divine plan: It was one of the Devil’s attacks on Luther that proved that he was one of the elect. Satan, he wrote, “has raged against me with incredible contrivings to destroy or hinder me, so that I have often wondered whether I was the only man in the whole world whom he was seeking.” All this, he realized, was part of God’s purpose that he should get to know monasticism and the universities from the inside, so he could write against them with real knowledge. This was why he became a monk, and still was a monk. “What do you think now?” he asked his father. “Will you still take me out of the monastery?” 30 But his father could not boast that he freed his son from monasticism. That was God’s doing, and God’s rights over him were greater than those of any earthly father, just as his Word was greater than any human wisdom: “God, who has taken me out of the monastery, has an authority over me that is greater than yours. You see that he has placed me now not in a pretended monastic service but in the true service of God.” Luther insisted that the real miracle was not his rescue from the storm but his deliverance from monasticism through Christ.

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  Problem 7: Choose between 90% chance to win $1 million OR $150,000 with certainty. Compare the anticipated pain of choosing the gamble and not winning in the two cases. Failing to win is a disappointment in both, but the potential pain is compounded in problem 7 by knowing that if you choose the gamble and lose you will regret the “greedy” decision you made by spurning a sure gift of $150,000. In regret, the experience of an outcome depends on an option you could have adopted but did not. Several economists and psychologists have proposed models of decision making that are based on the emotions of regret and disappointment. It is fair to say that these models have had less influence than prospect theory, and the reason is instructive. The emotions of regret and disappointment are real, and decision makers surely anticipate these emotions when making their choices. The problem is that regret theories make few striking predictions that would distinguish them from prospect theory, which has the advantage of being simpler. The complexity of prospect theory was more acceptable in the competition with expected utility theory because it did predict observations that expected utility theory could not explain. Richer and more realistic assumptions do not suffice to make a theory successful. Scientists use theories as a bag of working tools, and they will not take on the burden of a heavier bag unless the new tools are very useful. Prospect theory was accepted by many scholars not because it is “true” but because the concepts that it added to utility theory, notably the reference point and loss aversion, were worth the trouble; they yielded new predictions that turned out to be true. We were lucky. Speaking of Prospect Theory “He suffers from extreme loss aversion, which makes him turn down very favorable opportunities.” “Considering her vast wealth, her emotional response to trivial gains and losses makes no sense.” “He weighs losses about twice as much as gains, which is normal.” 27 The Endowment Effect You have probably seen figure 11 or a close cousin of it even if you never had a class in economics. The graph displays an individual’s “indifference map” for two goods. Figure 11 Students learn in introductory economics classes that each point on the map specifies a particular combination of income and vacation days. Each “indifference curve” connects the combinations of the two goods that are equally desirable—they have the same utility. The curves would turn into parallel straight lines if people were willing to “sell” vacation days for extra income at the same price regardless of how much income and how much vacation time they have. The convex shape indicates diminishing marginal utility: the more leisure you have, the less you care for an extra day of it, and each added day is worth less than the one before. Similarly, the more income you have, the less

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

  I have foolishly run away, O Father, from your glory; I have squandered in evil deeds the riches you entrusted to me; therefore I offer you the words of the Prodigal: I have sinned before you, compassionate Father: take me now repentant and make me as one of your hired servants. You were transfigured on the mountain, and your Disciples beheld your glory, O Christ God, as far as they were able; that when they saw you crucified they might know that your suffering was voluntary, and might proclaim to the world that you are truly the brightness of the Father.65 So the worshipping congregation which hears the first chant joins the Prodigal of Christ’s parable in penitence (Luke 15.11-32). The worshippers in a different season stand beside the awed disciples on Mount Tabor, reassured that even those privileged first followers could only see Christ’s divinity in part; they also look forward through the year from this moment of glory to the next commemoration of the Saviour’s earthly death, which he had predicted for them on the high mountain. This slow liturgical dance through scripture means that, for better or worse, the Orthodox approach the Bible and its meaning with much less inclination to separate out the activity of biblical scholarship from meditation and the everyday practice of worship than is the case in the Western tradition. The ninth-century ‘Triumph of Orthodoxy’ should not obscure the fact that a very different strand of Christianity persisted both in the empire and to the east in the Armenian lands. These dissenters were opposed far more radically to the official hierarchy than were the iconophile monks, nuns and layfolk to the iconoclast bishops. They were dualist in belief, like gnostics and Manichees, although it is difficult to see any direct links with the earlier dualism. It seems that like Marcion (see pp. 125–7), from their own reading of the Christian New Testament and Paul in particular, they built up their theologies of a deep gulf between flesh and spirit. As we have seen, there were actually Marcionites surviving far to the east of the Byzantine Empire at this period, but the new dualism looks independent of them too, and is first to be found in late-seventh- century Armenia. Their enemies gave them the contemptuous name Paulicians, possibly from an early founder, but it is also noticeable that their admiration for the Apostle Paul was strong enough for them to follow Marcion’s example and cut down the canon of the New Testament by dropping the two epistles attributed to Peter. This was apparently because they were infuriated at the feline statement in II Peter 3.16 that in the epistles of Paul ‘there are some things … hard to understand’.66 Logically in view of their belief that matter was created by evil, the Paulicians despised fleshly aspects of imperial religion such as the cult of Mary or of a physical ceremony of baptism. Naturally they were also iconophobes – unlike the Byzantine iconoclasts, they extended their hatred to the Cross itself – and

• From Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

  expressed in a higher price. Perhaps most important, you will be responsible for the outcome if it is bad. You know that if you wake up one morning with symptoms indicating that you will soon be dead, you will feel more regret in the second case than in the first, because you could have rejected the idea of selling your health without even stopping to consider the price. You could have stayed with the default option and done nothing, and now this counterfactual will haunt you for the rest of your life. The survey of parents’ reactions to a potentially hazardous insecticide mentioned earlier also included a question about the willingness to accept increased risk. The respondents were told to imagine that they used an insecticide where the risk of inhalation and child poisoning was 15 per 10,000 bottles. A less expensive insecticide was available, for which the risk rose from 15 to 16 per 10,000 bottles. The parents were asked for the discount that would induce them to switch to the less expensive (and less safe) product. More than two-thirds of the parents in the survey responded that they would not purchase the new product at any price! They were evidently revolted by the very idea of trading the safety of their child for money. The minority who found a discount they could accept demanded an amount that was significantly higher than the amount they were willing to pay for a far larger improvement in the safety of the product. Anyone can understand and sympathize with the reluctance of parents to trade even a minute increase of risk to their child for money. It is worth noting, however, that this attitude is incoherent and potentially damaging to the safety of those we wish to protect. Even the most loving parents have finite resources of time and money to protect their child (the keeping-my-child-safe mental account has a limited budget), and it seems reasonable to deploy these resources in a way that puts them to best use. Money that could be saved by accepting a minute increase in the risk of harm from a pesticide could certainly be put to better use in reducing the child’s exposure to other harms, perhaps by purchasing a safer car seat or covers for electric sockets. The taboo tradeoff against accepting any increase in risk is not an efficient way to use the safety budget. In fact, the resistance may be motivated by a selfish fear of regret more than by a wish to optimize the child’s safety. The what-if? thought that occurs to any parent who deliberately makes such a trade is an image of the regret and shame he or she would feel in the event the pesticide caused harm. The intense aversion to trading increased risk for some other advantage plays out on a grand scale in the laws and regulations governing risk. This trend is especially strong in Europe, where the precautionary principle, which prohibits any action that might cause harm, is a widely accepted doctrine. In the

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

  abandoned the experiment in government by the oprichniki which had created this nightmare, but at his death, in 1584, he still left a country cowed and ruined. As he rounded in turn on his oprichniki in 1573, the Tsar wrote a letter of bitter repentance (or dictated it – contrary to a long Russian historiographical tradition, it is not certain whether he was literate); it was addressed to the Abbot of Beloozero, one of the monasteries for which he had particular reverence. He threw himself on the mercy of the Church: ‘I, a stinking hound, whom can I teach, what can I preach, and with what can I enlighten others?’59 In the last phase of his reign, the Tsar poured resources into new monastic foundations in what is likely to have been an effort to assuage his spiritual anguish (exacerbated by his murder of his own son in 1581), confirming in his generosity the victory of the ‘Possessors’ in the Church. Yet his terror against a variety of hapless victims continued. Did he think that he was purging his people of their sins by the misery which he was inflicting on them? As his latest biographer sadly comments, echoing earlier Russian historians, he had become ‘Lucifer, the star of the morning, who wanted to be God, and was expelled from the Heavens’.60 This ghastly latter-day caricature of Justinian needed no Procopius to expose his crimes; they were there for all to see, with little more than his own attempt in Red Square at rivalling Justinian’s Hagia Sophia to mitigate their dreadfulness. In the reign of Ivan’s son and successor, Feodor (Theodore) I, the Church of Muscovy gained a new title which mirrored the dynasty’s assumption of imperial status; it became the Patriarchate of Moscow. The occasion was an unprecedented visit to northern Europe by the Oecumenical Patriarch Jeremias II, desperate to raise money for the Church of Constantinople. When Jeremias eventually reached Moscow in 1588, he was given a fine welcome, but after nearly a year of entertainment, it became clear to him that his parting might be even more considerably delayed if he did not give his blessing to a new promotion for the metropolitan to patriarch. Jeremias agreed: after all, his involvement in conferring this honour was a renewed acknowledgement that, like his predecessors in the fourteenth-century contests between Lithuania and Muscovy, he had the power and ultimate jurisdiction which made such decisions feasible. One near-contemporary account of what happened suggests that Jeremias signed the document establishing the Moscow patriarchate without any clear idea of what it contained. This would have been just as well, since the text of it goes straight back to Filofei’s letter to Vasilii III in describing the Russian Church as the Third Rome. It echoes Filofei’s idea that Rome had fallen through Apollinarian heresy, while the Second Rome was now ‘held by the grandsons of Hagar – the godless Turks. Pious Tsar!’, it continues, ‘Your great Russian

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  And yet, after the novelty of Hugo's new life wore off, his affairs resumed. Finally, fearing for his health, and worried that she could no longer compete with yet another twenty-year-old coquette, Juliette made a calm but stern demand: no more women or she was leaving him. Taken completely by surprise, yet certain that she meant every word, Hugo broke down and sobbed. An old man by now, he got down on his knees and swore, on the Bible and then on a copy of his famous novel Les Misérables, that he would stray no more. Until Juliette's death, in 1883, her spell over him was complete. Interpretation. Hugo's love life was determined by his relationship with his mother. He never felt she had loved him enough. Almost all the women he had affairs with bore a physical resemblance to her; somehow he would make up for her lack of love for him by sheer volume. When Juliette met him, she could not have known all this, but she must have sensed two things: he was extremely disappointed in his wife, and he had never really grown up. His emotional outbursts and his need for attention made him more a little boy than a man. She would gain ascendancy over him for the rest of his life by supplying the one thing he had never had: complete, unconditional mother-love. Juliette never judged Hugo, or criticized him for his naughty ways. She lavished him with attention; visiting her was like returning to the womb. In her presence, in fact, he was more a little boy than ever. How could he refuse her a favor or ever leave her? And when she finally threatened to leave him, he was reduced to the state of a wailing infant crying for his mother. In the end she had total power over him. Unconditional love is rare and hard to find, yet it is what we all crave, since we either experienced it once or wish we had. You do not have to go as far as Juliette Drouet; the mere hint of devoted attention, of accepting your lovers for who they are, of meeting their needs, will place them in an infantile position. A sense of dependency may frighten them a little, and they may feel an undercurrent of ambivalence, a need to assert themselves periodically, as Hugo did through his affairs. But their ties to you will be strong and they will keep coming back for more, bound by the illusion that they are recapturing the mother-love they had seemingly lost forever, or never had. 2. Around the turn of the twentieth century, Professor Mut, a schoolmaster at a college for young men in a small German town, began to de- Effect a Regression • 341

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  always come before family—and he’d never realized the toll this had taken on Susan. He, too, attended counseling sessions. He considered resigning from Eastern, changing his hard-charging ways. But he realized, with the doctor’s help, that such a move would run counter to his DNA; it would do no one any good if he tried to become someone he was not. Instead, he promised to himself and to Susan: He would make more time for her, he would do more to communicate with her. And he swore to himself never to let anything like this happen again to the person he loved most. Susan stayed for four months at the Institute of Living before returning home to Miami. From that day forward, neither she nor Frank touched alcohol again. Susan even brought home a friend from the facility, a young woman with addiction issues who’d been rejected by her family. Susan helped the woman find an apartment and a job, then counseled her for months until she’d settled in to the community. After that, Susan threw herself into volunteer work, helping organizations that fought drug abuse, an effort that would extend to a national scope in later years. Frank had never known a feeling of pride such as he felt for Susan in the months after she came home. In May 1975, Borman was elected president and chief operations officer of Eastern Airlines. He was beloved by many in the company, from board members to pilots to mechanics. Often, he worked unloading baggage at the airport or checking engine parts on the tarmac, and he drove an old Chevy to work. In a later newspaper profile, another airline executive would say of him, “He kind of preceded all the ‘excellence’ books.” Less than two years later, Borman became chairman of the board at Eastern, and he appeared in several of the company’s television commercials. Even on TV, he couldn’t help but talk straight. “Selling you a seat on Eastern Airlines isn’t easy. It’s not easy to sell you on any airline. You know, they’re all pretty much the same,” he said in one spot. For several years under Borman, Eastern enjoyed record-setting profits. But labor difficulties, and the deregulation of the airline industry, caused a downturn in the company’s business. Borman fought to right the ship, even making concessions that went against his instincts. For a time, the moves worked. But after a downturn in the economy, and new labor conflicts, Eastern was sold to new owners. After more than a decade at the helm, Borman resigned as the company’s chairman in 1986.