Sadness

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 Wild (2012)

  I shook my head without explaining that I’d heard little news, big or small, for two months. “You know the Grateful Dead?” he asked, and I nodded. “Jerry Garcia is dead.” I stood on a sidewalk in the center of town and bent to see an image of Garcia’s face in psychedelic colors on the front page of the local paper, reading what I could through the newspaper box’s clear plastic window, too broke to spring for a copy. I’d liked several of the Grateful Dead’s songs, but I’d never collected tapes of their live shows or followed them around the country like some of my Deadhead friends had. Kurt Cobain’s death the year before had felt closer to me—his sad and violent end a cautionary tale not only of my generation’s excesses, but of my own as well. And yet Garcia’s death felt bigger, as if it was the end of not just a moment, but an era that had lasted all of my life. I walked with Monster on my back a few blocks to the post office, passing homemade signs propped in store windows that said: WE LOVE YOU, JERRY, RIP. The streets were alive with a mix of well-dressed tourists pouring in for the weekend and the radical youth of the lower Pacific Northwest, who congregated in clumps along the sidewalks emitting a more intense vibe than usual because of the news. “Hey,” several of them said to me as I passed, some adding “sister” to the end. They ranged in age from teenager to senior citizen, clad in clothing that placed them somewhere along the hippy/anarchist/punk rock/funked-out artist continuum. I looked just like one of them—hairy, tan, and tattooed; weighed down by all of my possessions—and I smelled like one of them too, only worse, no doubt, since I hadn’t had a proper bath since I’d showered at that campground in Castle Crags when I’d been hungover a couple of weeks before. And yet I felt so outside of them, of everyone, as if I’d landed here from another place and time. “Hey!” I exclaimed with surprise when I passed one of the quiet men who’d been in the truck that had pulled up at Toad Lake, where Stacy and I had been searching for the Rainbow Gathering, but he replied with a stony nod, not seeming to remember me. I reached the post office and pushed its doors open, grinning with anticipation, but when I gave the woman behind the counter my name, she returned with only a small padded envelope addressed to me. No box. No box within the box. No Levi’s or black lace bra or $250 in traveler’s checks or the food I needed to hike to my next stop at Crater Lake National Park. “There should be a box for me,” I said, holding the little padded envelope. “You’ll have to check back tomorrow,” the woman said without concern.

• From Bold Move

  Yet this vacation memory was in sharp contrast to those learned beliefs. In reflecting further, Ricardo realized that by being present that day, he was happier and less anxious, which surprised him. When we further examined the values that really allowed Ricardo to experience sweetness in that moment, he identified connection as a core value. Through this exploration, Ricardo realized that for him to live a life with less stress and more meaning, he needed to have real and sustained connection with his family. But in particular, this value needed to be applied when it came to his children. Although Ricardo chose to look at his values through a sweet moment, it was not without sadness, as he had not been living his life in line with his core values. Ricardo realized that one of the reasons his marriage was failing might be his lack of connection with his wife and children. Yes, he deeply valued connection but often ignored this key value when his emotions were high (which was often), and as such he spent most of his waking life living a painfully emotion-driven life instead of one driven by values. Now it is your turn. Turn to your “Experiencing Sweetness” writing exercise, and contemplate it using the next reflection . The goal here is to get you to use your sweetness reflection to identify the values you care about the most. Reflection Identifying Values: How Sweet It Is Anchoring on your reflection about a sweet moment, try to identify specific values by asking yourself: What does this moment suggest about the life I want to live? [Your Notes] What qualities in me does this moment bring out that illustrate the life I want to live? [Your Notes] What matters most to me in this moment? [Your Notes] After reflecting on these questions, try to identify a few values that are important to you. At times, Naming values is hard, so if you need help identifying yours, please look back at the list of common values here . From “La Bamba” to ValuesFor a few weeks, I just could not find time to write this chapter. Specifically, I could not “walk the talk.” To be honest with you, I got stuck while trying to write my own sweetness exercise around health. Although I have been struggling with getting my health back on track, I was inspired by Ricardo and wanted to see if I could dig up anything that was sweet related to my health, but I was hitting nothing! (Somehow, “sweating through my clothes in public” didn’t really inspire much in the way of joy.) Eventually, I realized that I was avoiding! Once I was able to identify this, I asked myself, What is the roadblock here? That is when I noticed a little voice in my head that was complaining: But I’m so out of shape!

• From Bold Move

  In other words, when they were fighting, her love for them was compromised, thus causing her pain. It is important to highlight that Stephanie and I had to do a lot of work in therapy before we got to this exercise. When it comes to acculturation, there are pressures both internal and external, and we had to address those before we could get her to look at the family tension through the lens of values. That being said, by looking at her pain and arriving at love as a core value, Stephanie was able to start feeling better and less angry and to begin the work of finding a way to integrate the different parts of her identity while negotiating with her parents. Now it is your turn. Once you’ve spent time writing about your sour moment in the previous reflection, ask yourself the following question: What value of mine would I have to not care about for this pain not to exist? By pondering this question, you will be able to identify what value of yours is likely being violated in this painful scenario. This is an indication that that value matters a lot to you. Summarize your thoughts using the reflection below. Reflection Uncovering Values in Sour Patches Anchoring on your narrative about this painful moment, ask yourself: What value of mine would I have to not care about for this pain to not exist? [Your Notes] What is it that matters to me that is being compromised? [Your Notes] After reflecting on these questions, try to identify a few values that are important to you. At times, Naming values is hard, so if you need help identifying yours, please look back at the list of common values here . The Pain of Reflecting on PainIf you are struggling to slow down and quiet your brain to engage in this reflection, you are not alone. I have personally found that looking at pain to identify values is very helpful, yet I often avoid it myself because just like Miriam, a patient of mine, said the other day: “It feels like there is a huge fire in my life right now, and instead of putting it out, you want me to let it burn to see what’s behind the pain.” I had to agree with her: it is counterintuitive to contemplate pain, both from a cultural and biological standpoint, yet every time a client of mine has allowed themselves to go there, the outcome has been absolute clarity in terms of values. Before we get to Set as the next step to align values with goals, I want to share with you my own painful moment, which in many ways led to this book. In fact, if I hadn’t allowed myself to experience that pain, I bet I would still be pursuing goals, lying to myself that it was driven by ambition, but knowing all the while that something was off.

• From Wild (2012)

  I watched my mother. Outside the sun glinted off the sidewalks and the icy edges of the snow. It was Saint Patrick’s Day, and the nurses brought her a square block of green Jell-O that sat quivering on the table beside her. It would turn out to be the last full day of her life, and for most of it she held her eyes still and open, neither sleeping nor waking, intermittently lucid and hallucinatory. That evening I left her, though I didn’t want to. The nurses and doctors had told Eddie and me that this was it. I took that to mean she would die in a couple of weeks. I believed that people with cancer lingered. Karen and Paul would be driving up together from Minneapolis the next morning and my mother’s parents were due from Alabama in a couple of days, but Leif was still nowhere to be found. Eddie and I had called Leif’s friends and the parents of his friends, leaving pleading messages, asking him to call, but he hadn’t called. I decided to leave the hospital for one night so I could find him and bring him to the hospital once and for all. “I’ll be back in the morning,” I said to my mother. I looked over at Eddie, half lying on the little vinyl couch. “I’ll come back with Leif.” When she heard his name, she opened her eyes: blue and blazing, the same as they’d always been. In all this, they hadn’t changed. “How can you not be mad at him?” I asked her bitterly for perhaps the tenth time. “You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip,” she’d usually say. Or, “Cheryl, he’s only eighteen.” But this time she just gazed at me and said, “Honey,” the same as she had when I’d gotten angry about her socks. The same as she’d always done when she’d seen me suffer because I wanted something to be different than it was and she was trying to convince me with that single word that I must accept things as they were. “We’ll all be together tomorrow,” I said. “And then we’ll all stay here with you, okay? None of us will leave.” I reached through the tubes that were draped all around her and stroked her shoulder. “I love you,” I said, bending to kiss her cheek, though she fended me off, in too much pain to endure even a kiss. “Love,” she whispered, too weak to say the I and you. “Love,” she said again as I left her room. I rode the elevator and went out to the cold street and walked along the sidewalk. I passed a bar packed with people I could see through a big plate-glass window. They were all wearing shiny green paper hats and green shirts and green suspenders and drinking green beer. A man inside met my eye and pointed at me drunkenly, his face breaking into silent laughter.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  It remains now to pass in review the doctrines which would be affected by the social gospel and which ought to give more adequate expression to it. On some of the more speculative doctrines the social gospel has no con- tribution to make. Its interests lie on earth, within the social relations of the life that now is. It is concerned with the eradication of sin and the fulfilment of the mis- sion of redemption. The sections of theology which ought to express it effectively, therefore, are the doctrines of sin and redemption. The Christian consciousness of sin is the basis of all doctrines about sin. A serious and humble sense of sin- fulness is part of a religious view of life. Our conscious- ness of sin deepens as our moral insight matures and be- comes religious. When we think on the level of law or public opinion, we speak of crime, vice, bad habits, or de- fective character. When our mind is in the attitude of religion, we pray : Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.'’ When a man is within the presence and consciousness of God, he sees himself and his past actions and present conditions in the most searching light and in eternal connections. To lack the consciousness of sin is a symptom of moral immatur- 31 32 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL ity or of an effort to keep the shutters down and the light out. The most highly developed individuals, who have the power of interpreting life for others, and who have the clearest realization of possible perfection and the keenest hunger for righteousness, also commonly have the most poignant sense of their own shortcomings. By our very nature we are involved in tragedy. In childhood and youth we have imperious instincts and de- sires to drive us, and little knowledge to guide and control us. We commit acts of sensuality, cruelty, or dishonour, which nothing can wipe from our memory. A child is drawn into harmful habits which lay the foundation for later failings, and which may trip the man again when his powers begin to fail in later life. How many men and women have rushed with the starry eyes of hope into relations which brought them defilement of soul and the perversion of their most intimate life, but from which they could never again extricate themselves by any wrench. “ Forgive us our trespasses. Lead us not into temptation.’’ The weakness or the stubbornness of our will and the tempting situations of life combine to weave the tragic web of sin and failure of which we all make experience before we are through with our years.

• From Bold Move

  By Shifting, you are updating your predictions, taking a wider view of the world, and learning to talk to yourself as you would to your best friend: with kindness, accuracy, and directness. Shifting is a skill that must be developed, practiced, and implemented throughout your life. Today, I live a life where I practice Shifting daily, in real time, and a lot of times with real success—but don’t get me wrong, it was not always this way. It Is My Fault That He Does Not Love Me! At fifteen, I was living with my grandmother because she lived in a larger city with a better education system than the small town where we lived. My mom decided this better education system could set me up for a better future. The transition from Governador Valadares to Belo Horizonte had been rough at first, likely because I’d lost my sense of security that I’d usually enjoyed within the comforts of a small town with my mom and sister. But by the end of the year, I had started to adjust and was even enjoying it. Perhaps the joy I had felt at conquering the “big city” is why I agreed to spend a New Year’s Eve there with my father, who had been mostly out of the picture since I was ten years old. As a teenager I still desperately wanted to fix whatever was broken—in other words, I still believed that if I were to fix my relationship with him, I would finally overcome my fear of being “not enough” and thus fix myself. But my father was a no-show on New Year’s Eve. Amid tears, sadness, and hopelessness, I sobbed to my grandmother: “If I had been a better child, he would have shown up. He will never love me. I will never have a father. I just can’t trust him or anyone. No one will ever show up for me. And now here I am stuck alone, without anyone to spend New Year’s Eve with because I told my friends I had other plans. Why did I believe him? I should have known better. It is all my fault.” In her calm, cool, and often collected way, my grandmother asked: “Is there another way to see this situation?” “No!” I protested. “It is simple: he hates me, doesn’t care enough to show up. And it is all my fault. I am the problem.” My grandmother asked again, “Is there another way to see this situation?” “No! No! And NO!” I told her.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Was it some rookery, where you must sleep ten to a bed with your sisters?’‘A rookery?’ I thought very suddenly, and more vividly than I had in months, of our old front parlour at home - of the cloth with the fringe that dangled, fluttering, above the hearth. I said, ‘I was born in Kent, in Whitstable.’ Maria only stared. I said again, ‘Whitstable - where the oysters come from.’At that, she threw back her head. ‘Why my dear, you’re a mermaid! Diana, did you know it? A Whitstable mermaid ! - though thankfully,’ and here she placed her free hand upon my knee, and patted it, ‘thankfully, without the tail. That would never do, now would it?’I could not answer. Hot into my head after the image of our parlour had come the memory of Kitty, at her dressing-room door. Miss Mermaid, she had called me; and she had said it again that time in Stamford Hill, when she had heard me weeping, come, and kissed my tears ...I gave a gulp, and put my cigarette to my lips. It was smoked right down and almost burned me; and as I fumbled with it, it fell. It struck the sofa, bounced, then rolled between my legs. I reached for it - that made the ladies stare again, and twitch - but it was caught, still smouldering, between my buttock and the chair. I leapt up, found the fag at last, then pulled at the linen that covered my bum. I said, ‘Hell, if I haven’t scorched a hole through these dam’ trousers!’The words came out louder than I meant them to; and as they did, there was an answering cry from the room at my back: ‘Really, Mrs Lethaby, this is intolerable!’ A lady had risen, and was approaching our table.‘I must protest, Mrs Lethaby,’ she said when she arrived at it, ‘I really must protest, on behalf of all the ladies present, and absent, at the very great damage you are inflicting upon our club!’Diana raised languid eyes to her. ‘Damage, Miss Bruce? Are you referring to the presence of my companion, Miss King?’‘I am, ma’am.’‘You don’t care for her?’‘I don’t care for her language, ma’am, or for her clothes!’ She herself wore a silk shirt with a cummerbund and a cravat; in the cravat there was a pin, cast in silver, of the head of a horse. Now she stood expectantly at Diana’s side; and after a moment, Diana sighed.‘Well,’ she said. ‘I see we must bow to the members’ pleasure.’ She rose, then drew me up beside her and leaned rather ostentatiously upon my arm. ‘Nancy, dear, you costume has proved too bold for the Cavendish after all.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  I’m seeing a psychiatrist twice a week. He’s a Catholic. That should help.” Again we looked at each other. I recalled Mother Frances’s words: “You and Rebecca!” We both seemed bent on a destructive course. I watched Rebecca spoon up the pink, sugary yogurt, which her body refused to absorb. Like me, she seemed to be losing her hold on life, seemed unable to move forward into the future. We did not know how to live anymore. We had somehow lost the knack. “Have you seen him yet, the psychiatrist?” I recalled Mother Frances’s distaste for the very idea of such an expedient. But she had been wrong. It seemed, as I looked at Rebecca, that you could die of “nerves” after all. Rebecca nodded. “We’ve talked about my childhood mostly.” She smiled—a terrible corpselike smile. “It’s interesting. I’d quite forgotten. I was a rather passionate, violent child. Always losing my temper. I used to lock myself up in cupboards and refuse to come out until I had made my point.” “You? Violent?” I was astonished. Where had all that fury gone? That, of course, was another silly question. Whoever heard of a passionate or rebellious nun? And yet, I asked myself suddenly, why not? “Why couldn’t they just work with what we were?” I was thinking aloud, really. “Why try to change us so drastically? With you it was fury and passion; I was always ‘too sensitive.’ ‘What are we going to do about your sensitivity, Sister?’ ” I mimicked the tones of the assistant novice mistress’s exasperated, faintly disgusted tone. “But what’s wrong with passion? What’s wrong with sensitivity? Jesus was a passionate man, wasn’t he? You couldn’t call him insensitive, either. Hardly an example of the stiff upper lip.” “I know.” Rebecca sounded defeated. “But you know, I wanted to change,” she continued dispassionately, as though her former self had no connection with her at all. “I wanted to be another kind of person.” “We wanted to be transformed.” I noted that I too spoke abstractly, as though about somebody else. As though I had already passed away. “But that’s different, surely?” I thought of Jesus on Mount Tabor when, the gospels tell us, his disciples had seen him transfigured: light streamed from his face, his garments had shone white as snow. He had not been diminished but enhanced. His personality and body had remained intact, but transfused with divine power; he had perfected his humanity. “They didn’t have to get rid of us; they could have perfected what we were.” But that hadn’t happened. There was—literally—almost nothing left of Rebecca. A nurse came in with a wheelchair. “Time for your X ray, Sister.” “Can’t you walk?”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I put my hand to my pocket for a handkerchief: what I drew out was the programme that Miss Skinner had given me, for Flo to sign; I found myself gazing at it, quite bewildered by the sudden turns the afternoon had taken. And all the time, the woman on the platform talked hoarsely on, arguing with the hecklers in the audience - the air seemed clotted with shouts and smoke and bad feeling.I looked up. Florence was standing near the wall of canvas, beside Annie and Miss Raymond: she was shaking her head, as they leaned to put their hands upon her arm. When Annie drew back I caught her eye, and she walked over and gave me a wary smile.‘You should have learned better than to argue with Florrie,’ she said, taking the seat beside me. ‘She is about as sharp-tongued as anyone I know.’‘She tells the truth,’ I said miserably. ‘Which is sharper than anything.’ I sighed; then, to change the subject, I asked: ‘Have you had a good day, Annie?’‘I have,’ she said. ‘It has all been rather wonderful.’‘And who is that girl with your Emma?’ I nodded to the fair-haired woman at Miss Raymond’s side.‘That’s Mrs Costello,’ she said, ‘Emma’s widowed sister.’‘Oh!’ I had heard of her before, but never expected her to be so young and pretty. ‘How handsome she is. What a shame she ain’t - like us. Is there no hope of it?’‘None at all, I’m afraid. But she is a lovely girl. Her husband was the kindest man, and Emma says she is just about despairing that she will ever find another to match him. The only men who want to court her turn out to be boxers ...’I smiled dully; I was not much bothered about Mrs Costello, really. While Annie talked I kept glancing over to Florence. She now stood at the far side of the tent, a handkerchief gripped between her fingers but her cheeks dry and white. However long and hard I looked at her, she would not meet my gaze.I had almost decided to make my way over to her, when there came a sudden clamour: the lady on the platform had finished her speech, and the crowd was reluctantly clapping. This meant, of course, that it was time for Ralph’s address; Annie and I turned to see him hover uncertainly at the side of the little stage, then stumble up the steps as his name was announced, and take up his place at the front of the platform.I looked at Annie and grimaced, and she bit her lip.

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

  THIRTEEN Spiritual bypassing is not spiritual at all A while back, a friend of mine killed her car. The worst part is that it was a beautiful Mercedes-Benz; not brand-new or anything, but one of those cars that are timelessly cool, with real personality. Everybody loved it. That made its tragic passing even more painful. Here’s how it happened. My friend had recently moved to LA from the South, with a cute Southern accent and a head full of dreams. Apparently her focus was on her dreams, though, not the oil level in her car. When the “check oil” light first appeared, it was intermittent. But eventually it stayed on permanently, a glowing red alert on the instrument panel every time she drove. She didn’t think too much of it, though. Her dad had always taken care of things like that. She hoped that if she ignored it long enough, it would fix itself. This went on for months. The light stayed on, forlornly trying to warn her that the engine needed attention. Needless to say, ignoring the problem didn’t work, and the car didn’t fix itself. She drove that innocent Mercedes-Benz right into oblivion. There was no funeral. Too bad, because we all would have attended. RIP Mercedes-Benz.

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  248 ATHEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL strike back at you. The stronger and more influential a man's life is, and the broader his moral interests, the deeper will be his experience of these chief evils. I have been impressed with the fact that so many of them plainlyconverged on Jesus and had a part in doing him to death. These evils were not as gigantic and fully developed in Palestine as they have been in the great Empires, includ- ing our own. But the fact that even inthis remote cor- nerof the ancient world they were present and virulent, proves their universal power in the lifeof the race. There are few communities, a cross-section of which would not reveal their presence. Jesus experienced his full collision with them when he came to the capital of his nation in the last week. There is a reason why prophets are most likely to die at Jerusalem. To make thisclear Ishall enumerate six sins, all ofa public nature, which combined to kill Jesus. He bore their crushing attack in his body and soul. He bore them, not by sympathy, but by direct experience. In so faras the personal sins of men have contributed to the existence of these public sins, he came into collision with the totality of evil in mankind. It requires no legal fic- tion of imputation to explain that " hewas wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities." Solidarityexplains it. The most persistent force which pushed Jesus toward death, theearliest onthe field and the latest on the watch, was religious bigotry. Atthat time it wasembodied in the intellectual expounders and the devotees of Judaism

• From A Theology for the Social Gospel (1918)

  Christianity has combined several explanations of suf- fering. It grounds it in general on the prevalence of sin since the fall. It has ascribed a malignant power of afflicting the righteous to Satan and his servants. It has taken satisfaction when justice was vindicated in some striking case of goodness or wickedness. It has held out a hope of a public vindication of the righteous in the great judgment, and of an equalization of their lot by their bliss in heaven and the suffering of the wicked. (This element, however, was weakened in Protestantism by the disappearance of purgatory and the tacit assump- THE CONCEPTION OF GOD l8l tion that all who are saved at all will enjoy an equal bliss. Purgatory was a great balancer and equalizer.) Finally, Christianity has taught that God allots suffering with wise and loving intent, tempering it according to our strength, relieving it in response to our prayer, and using it to chasten our pride, to win us from earthliness to himself, and to prepare us for heaven. This interpretation does not assert the justice of every suffering, taken by itself, but does maintain its loving intention. All these are powerful and comforting considerations. But they are shaken by the bulk of the unjust suffering in sight of the modern mind. These Christian ideas are largely true as long as we look at a normal village com- munity and its individuals and families. But they are jarred by mass disasters. The optimism of the age of rationalism was shaken by the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, when ^^0,000 people were killed together, just and unjust. The War has deeply affected the religious assurance of* our own time, and will lessen it still more when the ex- citement is over and the aftermath of innocent suffering becomes clear. But that impression of undeserved mass misery which the war has brought home to the thought- less, has long been weighing on all who understood the social conditions of our civilization. The sufferings of a single righteous man could deeply move the psalmists or the poet of Job. To-day entire social classes sit in the ashes and challenge the justice of the God who has af- flicted them by fathering the present social system. The moral and religious problem of suffering has entered on a new stage with the awakening of the social conscious- ness and the spread of social knowledge. i 82 A THEOLOGY FOR THE SOCIAL GOSPEL

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Her voice - ‘Oh, Ma, what’s up?’ - pursued me up the stairwell, followed by Mrs Milne’s murmurs. In a moment I was in my own room again, with the door closed hard behind me. The little bits and pieces I owned, of course, could be bundled together in a second, in my sailor’s bag, and a carpet-bag that Mrs Milne had once given me. My bedclothes I folded and placed neatly at the end of the mattress, and the rug I shook out at the open window; the few little pictures I had pinned to the wall I took down, and burned in the grate. My toilet articles - a cake of cracked yellow soap, a half-used jar of tooth-powder, a tub of face-cream scented with violet - I scooped into the bin. I kept only my toothbrush, and my hair-oil; these, together with an unopened tin of cigarettes and a slab of chocolate, I added to the carpet-bag - though, after a second’s hesitation, I took the chocolate out again, and left it on the mantel, where I hoped Grace would find it. In half an hour the room looked quite as it had when I had first moved in. There was nothing at all to mark my stay there save the cluster of pinholes in the wallpaper where my pictures had been tacked, and a scorch-mark on the bedside cabinet where once, slumbering over a magazine, I had let a candle fall. The thought seemed a miserable one; but I would not grow sad. I didn’t go to the window, for a last sentimental look at the view from it. I didn’t check the drawers, or go poking under the bed, or pull the cushions from the chair. If I had left anything behind I knew that Diana would replace it with something better.Downstairs all seemed ominously still, and when I arrived at the parlour it was to find its door shut fast against me. I gave a knock, and turned the handle, my heart beating. Mrs Milne was seated before the table, where I had left her. She was less ashen than before, but still looked grim. The teapot stood cooling on its tray, its contents unpoured; the cups lay huddled on their nest of saucers beside it. Gracie sat stiff and straight on the sofa, her face turned effortfully away, her gaze fixed unswervingly - but also, I thought, unseeingly - on the view beyond the window. I had expected her to weep at my news; instead, it seemed to have enraged her. Her lips were clenched and quite drained of colour.Mrs Milne, at least, appeared to have reconciled herself a little to my departure, for she addressed me now with something like a smile. ‘I’m afraid Gracie is not quite herself,’ she said. ‘Your tidings’ve quite upset her. I told her you’ll be coming to see us, but - well - she’s that stubborn.’‘Stubborn?’

• From Bold Move

  Emotional pain can have a similar utility (I know, hard to believe when you’re lying in bed sobbing over a breakup). Emotional pain signals to us potential danger or hurt, and although we often want to run away from emotional pain, it can be an opportunity to better understand our values. Through the lenses of ACT, there is a question that clinicians often ask their clients to help them identify the value behind the pain: “What would you have to not care about in this situation for you not to feel pain?” Often when we are feeling some degree of emotional pain, one of the reasons might be that something we really care about—one of our values—is being compromised, and as a result we are hurting. Reflection Sour Patches: From Pain To Values I want you to focus on a situation that brought you immense pain in the past two months. It could be a moment when you felt pain, sadness, discomfort, or any other unpleasant emotion. Visualize that moment as a movie playing out in front of you, and try to capture its essence. Don’t censor your brain or try to interpret this moment with needless concepts. Just try to throw yourself back to that moment as much as possible, using all of your senses to land there. Once that movie is created in your mind, I want you to take a piece of paper and write about that moment for ten minutes. To make sure you keep yourself accountable, set a timer. Just free-form journaling here, nothing fancy. Write whatever comes to mind about this difficult time in your life. We will use your narrative to help you identify some of your core values in the next exercise. Below are some questions that you can use to create this narrative if you find yourself stuck. Where are you feeling it in your body? What does it feel like to allow this pain to come in? What are you saying to yourself in that moment? What memories might come up when you allow that pain to surface? For example, when I asked Ricardo this question, he immediately burst into tears and told me, “For me to not feel pain about the divorce, I would have to not care about my wife and children, which is impossible.

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

  Afterwards when they were turning out his pockets I saw among the litter of odds and ends a small empty scent-bottle of the cheap kind that Melissa used; and I took it back to the flat where it stayed on the mantelpiece for some months before it was thrown away by Hamid in the course of a spring-clean. I never told Melissa of this; but often when I was alone at night while she was dancing, perhaps of necessity sleeping with her admirers, I studied this small bottle, sadly and passionately reflecting on this horrible old man’s love and measuring it against my own; and tasting too, vicariously, the desperation which makes one clutch at some small discarded object which is still impregnated with the betrayer’s memory. I found Melissa, washed up like a half-drowned bird, on the dreary littorals of Alexandria, with her sex broken.… * * * * * Streets that run back from the docks with their tattered rotten supercargo of houses, breathing into each others’ mouths, keeling over. Shuttered balconies swarming with rats, and old women whose hair is full of the blood of ticks. Peeling walls leaning drunkenly to east and west of their true centre of gravity. The black ribbon of flies attaching itself to the lips and eyes of the children — the moist beads of summer flies everywhere; the very weight of their bodies snapping off ancient flypapers hanging in the violet doors of booths and cafés. The smell of the sweat-lathered Berberinis, like that of some decomposing stair-carpet. And then the street noises: shriek and clang of the water-bearing Saidi, dashing his metal cups together as an advertisement, the unheeded shrieks which pierce the hubbub from time to time, as of some small delicately-organized animal being disembowelled. The sores like ponds — the incubation of a human misery of such proportions that one is aghast, and all one’s feelings overflow into disgust and terror. I wished I could imitate the self-confident directness with which Justine threaded her way through these streets towards the café where I waited for her: El Bab. The doorway by the shattered arch where in all innocence we sat and talked; but already our conversation had become impregnated by understandings which we took for the lucky omens of friendship merely. On that dun mud floor, feeling the quickly cooling cylinder of the earth dip towards the darkness, we were possessed only by a desire to communicate ideas and experiences which overstepped the range of thought normal to conversation among ordinary people. She talked like a man and I talked to her like a man. I can only remember the pattern and weight of these conversations, not their substance. And leaning there on a forgotten elbow, drinking the cheap arak and smiling at her, I inhaled the warm summer perfume of her dress and skin — a perfume which was called, I don’t know why, famais de la vie. * * * * *

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I said, as if amazed. ‘Not our Gracie?’ I took a step towards her and reached out a hand. With something like a yelp she thrust me away, and shuffled to the furthest end of the sofa, her head all the time kept at its stiff, unnatural angle. She had never shown me such displeasure before; when I spoke to her next it was with real feeling.‘Ah, now don’t be like that, Gracie, please. Won’t you give me a word, or a kiss, before I go? Won’t you shake hands with me, even? I shall miss you, so; and I should hate us to part on bad terms, after all our fun together.’ And I went on in this fashion, half entreating, half reproachful, until Mrs Milne rose and touched my shoulder, and said quietly, ‘Best leave her, Nance, and be on your way. You come back and see her another day; she’ll’ve come round by then, I don’t doubt it.’So I had to leave, in the end, without Grace’s good-bye kiss. Her mother accompanied me to the front door, where we stood awkwardly before the Light of the World and the blue effeminate idol, she with her arms folded over her bosom, me hung with bags, and still clad in my scarlet duds.‘I’m sorry, Mrs M, that this has been so sudden,’ I tried; but she hushed me.‘Never mind, dear. You must go your own way.’ She was too kind to be stern for long. I said that I had left my room in order; that I would send her my address (I never did, I never did!); and lastly that she was the best landlady in the city, and that if her next girl did not appreciate her I would make it my business to find out why.She smiled in earnest then, and we hugged. Yet, as we drew apart, I could sense that something was troubling her; and as I stood on the step for my final farewell, she spoke.‘Nance,’ she said, ‘don’t mind me asking, but - this friend: it is a girl, ain’t it?’I snorted. ‘Oh, Mrs Milne! Did you really think - ? Did you really think that I would - ?’ That I would set up house with a man, was what she meant: me, with my trousers and my barbered hair! She blushed.‘I just thought,’ she said. ‘A girl can get herself hooked up by a feller, these days, quicker’n that. And what with you moving out so sudden, I was half convinced you’d let some gentleman or other make you a pile of promises. I should’ve known better.’My laughter rang a little hollowly then, as I thought of how near her thoughts ran to the truth, while yet remaining so far from it.I took a firmer grip of my bags.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  "While I was meditating on these things, and was musing on them in my heart, I beheld in front of me a great white chair made out of fleeces of wool; and there came an aged woman, clad in very shining raiment, and having a book in her hand, and she sat down by herself on the chair and saluted me, saying: ’Hail, Hermas!" And I, sorrowing and weeping, said unto her: ’Hail, Lady!’ And she said unto me: ’Why art thou sorrowful, O Hermas, for thou wert wont to be patient, and good-tempered, and always smiling? Why is thy countenance cast down? and why art thou not cheerful?’ And I said unto her: ’O Lady, I have been reproached by a most excellent woman, who said unto me that I sinned against her.’ And she said unto me: ’Far be it from the servant of God to do this thing. But of a surety a desire after her must have come into thy heart. Such an intent as this brings a charge of sin against the servant of God; for it is an evil and horrible intent that a devout and tried spirit should lust after an evil deed; and especially that the chaste Hermas should do so-he who abstained from every evil desire, and was full of all simplicity, and of great innocence!’ 3. " ’But [she continued] God is not angry with thee on account of this, but in order that thou mayest convert thy house, which has done iniquity against the Lord, and against you who art their parent. But thou, in thy love for your children (filovtekno" wjn) didst not rebuke thy house, but didst allow it to become dreadfully wicked. On this account is the Lord angry with thee; but He will heal all the evils that happened aforetime in thy house; for through the sins and iniquities of thy household thou hast been corrupted by the affairs of this life. But the mercy of the Lord had compassion upon thee, and upon thy house, and will make thee strong and establish thee in His glory. Only be not slothful, but be of good courage and strengthen thy house. For even as the smith, by smiting his work with the hammer, accomplishes the thing that he wishes, so shall the daily word of righteousness overcome all iniquity. Fail not, therefore, to rebuke thy children, for I know that if they will repent with all their heart, they will be written in the book of life, together with the saints.’

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  Behold, I too say, O my God, Where art Thou? see, where Thou art! in Thee I breathe a little, when I pour out my soul by myself in the voice of joy and praise, the sound of him that keeps holy-day. And yet again it is sad, because it relapseth, and becomes a deep, or rather perceives itself still to be a deep. Unto it speaks my faith which Thou hast kindled to enlighten my feet in the night, Why art thou sad, O my soul, and why dost thou trouble me? Hope in the Lord; His word is a lanthorn unto thy feet: hope and endure, until the night, the mother of the wicked, until the wrath of the Lord, be overpast, whereof we also were once children, who were sometimes darkness, relics whereof we bear about us in our body, dead because of sin; until the day break, and the shadows fly away. Hope thou in the Lord; in the morning I shall stand in Thy presence, and contemplate Thee: I shall for ever confess unto Thee. In the morning I shall stand in Thy presence, and shall see the health of my countenance, my God, who also shall quicken our mortal bodies, by the Spirit that dwelleth in us, because He hath in mercy been borne over our inner darksome and floating deep: from Whom we have in this pilgrimage received an earnest, that we should now be light: whilst we are saved by hope, and are the children of light, and the children of the day, not the children of the night, nor of the darkness, which yet sometimes we were. Betwixt whom and us, in this uncertainty of human knowledge, Thou only dividest; Thou, who provest our hearts, and callest the light, day, and the darkness, night. For who discerneth us, but Thou? And what have we, that we have not received of Thee? out of the same lump vessels are made unto honour, whereof others also are made unto dishonour.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  My hair - which had lost its military sharpness after a week or two, anyway - I let grow; I even began to curl it at the ends. My pinching boots became less stiff, the more I walked in them; but I traded them in, at a second-hand clothes stall, for a pair of shoes with bows on. I did the same with my bonnet and my rusty frock - exchanged them, for a hat with a wired flower and a dress with ribbon at the neck. ‘Now, there’s a pretty frock!’ said Ralph to me, when I put it on for the first time; but Ralph would have told me I looked handsome wrapped in a piece of brown paper, if he thought it would make me smile. The truth was, I had looked awful ever since leaving St John’s Wood; and now, in a flowery frock, I only looked extraordinarily awful. The clothes I had bought, they were the kind I’d used to wear in Whitstable and with Kitty; and I seemed to remember that I had been known then as a handsome enough girl. But it was as if wearing gentlemen’s suits had magically unfitted me for girlishness, for ever - as if my jaw had grown firmer, my brows heavier, my hips slimmer and my hands extra large, to match the clothes Diana had put me in. The bruise at my eye faded quickly enough, but the brawl with Dickie’s book had left me with a scar at my cheek - I have it there still; and this, combined with the new firmness at my shoulders and thighs, got from carrying buckets and whitening steps, gave me something of the air of a rough. When I washed in the mornings in a bowl in the kitchen, and caught sight of myself, from a certain angle, reflected in the darkened window, I looked like a youth in the back-room of some boys’ club, rinsing himself down after a boxing match. How Diana would have admired me! At Quilter Street, however, as I have said, there was no one to gasp. By the time Ralph and Florence came down for their breakfasts, I would have my frock upon me and my hair in a curl; and then, more often than not, Florence would only gulp at her tea and say she had no time to eat, she was calling at the Guild on her way to work. Ralph would help himself to the red herrings left on her plate -‘My word, Cyril, but don’t these look good!’ - and she would leave, without a glance at me, wrapping a muffler about her throat like a woman of ninety.However much I thought about her - and I spent many hours at it: for there is not much to occupy the brain in housework, and I might as well puzzle over her, as over anything - I could not figure her out, at all.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The dinner-table was all covered with the paraphernalia of the woman’s trade - with folded garments and tissue wrappers, with pins and cotton reels and needles. The needles, she said, were always dropping on the floor, and the children were always stepping on them; her baby had recently put a pin in his mouth, and the pin had stuck in his palate and almost choked him.I listened to her story, and then watched while Florence spoke to her about the Women’s Guild, and about the seamstresses’ union it had established. Would she come to a meeting? Florence asked. The woman shook her head, and said she didn’t have the time; that she had no one to mind the children; that she was frightened that the masters at the outfitters for whom she worked would hear about it, and stop her shillings.‘Besides that, miss,’ she said at last, ‘my husband wouldn’t care for me to go. Not but what he ain’t a union man himself; but he don’t think much of women having a say in all that stuff. He says there ain’t the need for it.’‘But what do you think, Mrs Fryer? Don’t you think the women’s union a good thing? Wouldn’t you like to see things changed - see the masters made to pay you more, and work you kinder?’ Mrs Fryer rubbed her eyes.‘They would drop me, miss, that’s all, and find a gal to do it cheaper. There are plenty of ’em - plenty gals what envy me even my poor few shillings...’The discussion went on, until at last the woman grew fidgety, and said she thanked us, but couldn’t spare the time to hear us any longer. Florence shrugged. ‘Think on it a bit, won’t you? I’ve told you when the meeting is. Bring your babies if you like - we’ll find someone to take care of ’em for an hour or two.’ We rose; I looked again at the table, at the pile of reels and garments. There was a waistcoat, a set of handkerchiefs, some gentlemen’s linen — I found myself drifting towards it all, with fingers that itched to pick the garments up and stroke them. I caught the woman’s eye, and nodded at the table-top.I said, ‘What is it you do exactly, Mrs Fryer? Some of these look very fine.’‘I’m an embroid’rer, miss,’ she answered. ‘I does the fancy letters.’ She lifted a shirt, and showed me its pocket: there was a flowery monogram upon it, sewn very neatly in ivory silk. ‘It looks a bit queer, don’t it,’ she went on sadly, ‘seeing all these scraps of handsomeness in this poor room...’‘It does,’ I said - but I could hardly get the words out. The pretty monogram had reminded me suddenly of Felicity Place, and all the lovely suits that I had worn there.