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.

Page 199 of 212 · 20 per page

• From The Power of Myth (1988)

  And he says, “Yes indeed!” And he gives a buffalo bellow, and all the buffalo get up, and they all do a slow buffalo dance with tails raised, and they go over, and they trample that poor man to death, so that he disappears entirely. He is just all broken up to pieces. All gone. The girl is crying, and her buffalo husband says, “So you are crying.” “Yes,” she says, “he is my daddy.” “Well,” he says, “but what about us? There are our children, at the bottom of the cliff, our wives, our parents—and you cry about your daddy.” Well, apparently he was a kind of compassionate buffalo, and he said, “Okay, if you can bring your daddy back to life again, I will let you go.” So she turns to the magpie and says, “Please pick around a little bit and see if you can find a bit of Daddy.” And the magpie does so, and he comes up finally with a vertebra, just one little bone. And the girl says, “That’s enough.” And she puts the bone down on the ground and covers it with her blanket and sings a revivifying song, a magical song with great power. And presently—yes, there is a man under the blanket. She looks. “That’s Daddy all right!” But he is not breathing yet. She sings a few more stanzas of whatever the song was, and he stands up. The buffalo are amazed. And they say, “Well, why don’t you do this for us? We’ll teach you our buffalo dance, and when you will have killed our families, you do this dance and sing this song, and we will all come back to live again.” And that is the basic idea—that through the ritual that dimension is reached that transcends temporality and out of which life comes and back into which it goes. MOYERS: What happened a hundred years ago when the white man came and slaughtered this animal of reverence? CAMPBELL: That was a sacramental violation. You can see in many of the early nineteenth-century paintings by George Catlin of the Great Western Plains in his day literally hundreds of thousands of buffalo all over the place. And then, through the next half century, the frontiersmen, equipped with repeating rifles, shot down whole herds, taking only the skins to sell and leaving the bodies there to rot. This was a sacrilege. MOYERS: It turned the buffalo from a “thou”— CAMPBELL: —to an “it.” MOYERS: The Indians addressed the buffalo as “thou,” an object of reverence. CAMPBELL: The Indians addressed all of life as a “thou”—the trees, the stones, everything. You can address anything as a “thou,” and if you do it, you can feel the change in your own psychology.

• From Opening Up by Writing It Down (2016)

  Other studies have identified some circumstances where writing doesn’t seem to help. Note that this is different from those where writing may be harmful or hurtful. For example, in cases of relatively normal (as opposed to traumatic) grief, most studies indicate that writing doesn’t help (but also does not hurt) for most people. By the same token, the jury is still out about writing as an aid to caregivers of family members suffering from chronic disease—we simply don’t yet know what effect, if any, writing has in this context. One other situation where writing does not appear to be helpful is when people write about something uncertain that will be happening in the near future. For example, Lillian Nail and her colleagues attempted to use expressive writing for a large group of women who were finishing radiation treatment for breast cancer. Surprisingly, quite a few women who finish medical treatment for breast cancer typically become depressed. This is often attributed to the sudden and dramatic change in the structure and function of their daily routines. Writing in this group had no measurable benefit, perhaps because the women were writing about future outcomes they couldn’t know. Along these lines, Steve Ames at the Mayo Clinic in Orlando, Florida, studied people who were trying to quit smoking. In one study, he had people write before they had actually stopped. In another study, he had them write immediately after stopping. Consistent with Nail’s breast cancer study, those writing before stopping had a much vaguer sense of what they would experience once they stopped, and writing was not particularly helpful. When people wrote after they had stopped smoking, the writing intervention was much more successful. Writing, then, seems to work best when you are trying to come to terms with what has already happened. It appears to be much less effective in preparing you for what might happen in the unknown future. IS IT NECESSARY TO FOCUS ON TRAUMATIC OR NEGATIVE EXPERIENCES? No. Although writing about emotional upheavals can be helpful, there are many ways to think about them. As described earlier, Laura King and her colleagues found that benefit finding can apparently boost health and mood. Other studies suggest that writing about your most positive experiences in your life can boost health as well. Even writing about an imaginary trauma can be good for you. One of the most thought-provoking writing experiments of all time was conducted by Melanie Greenberg, Camille Wortman, and Arthur Stone. The researchers found a group of people who had all experienced major upheavals in their lives. About a third of the people were then asked to write about their upheavals in the standard way. Another third wrote about superficial topics. The final third were given the outlines of a personal trauma that they had never experienced. They were then told to write about this imaginary upheaval as though it had happened to them.

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

  AUGUSTINE. (Serm. 373. 3.) O blessed infants! He only will doubt of your crown in this your passion for Christ, who doubts that the baptism of Christ has a benefit for infants. He who at His birth had Angels to proclaim Him, the heavens to testify, and Magi to worship Him, could surely have prevented that these should not have died for Him, had He not known that they died not in that death, but rather lived in higher bliss. Far be the thought, that Christ who came to set men free, did nothing to reward those who died in His behalf, when hanging on the cross He prayed for those who put Him to death. RABANUS. He is not satisfied with the massacre at Bethlehem, but extends it to the adjacent villages; sparing no age from the child of one night old, to that of two years. AUGUSTINE. (Serm. 132. App.) The Magi had seen this unknown star in the heavens, not a few days, but two years before, as they had informed Herod when he enquired. This caused him to fix two years old and under; as it follows, according to the time he had enquired of the Magi. AUGUSTINE. (Gloss. ord.) Or because he feared that the Child to whom even stars ministered, might transform His appearance to greater or under that of His own age, or might conceal all those of that age: hence it seems to be that he slew all from one day to two years old. AUGUSTINE. (de Cons. Ev. ii. 11.) Or, disturbed by pressure of still more imminent dangers, Herod’s thoughts are drawn to other thoughts than the slaughter of children, he might suppose that the Magi, unable to find Him whom they had supposed born, were ashamed to return to him. So the days of purification being accomplished, they might go up in safety to Jerusalem. And who does not see that that one day they may have escaped the attention of a King occupied with so many cares, and that afterwards when the things done in the Temple came to be spread abroad, then Herod discovered that he had been deceived by the Magi, and then sent and slew the children. BEDE. (Hom. in Nat. Innocent.) In this death of the children the precious death of all Christ’s martyrs is figured; that they were infants signifies, that by the merit of humility alone can we come to the glory of martyrdom; that they were slain in Bethlehem and the coasts thereof, that the persecution shall be both in Jerusalem whence the Church originated, and throughout the world; in those of two years old are figured the perfect in doctrine and works; those under that age the neophytes; that they were slain while Christ escaped, signifies that the bodies of the martyrs may be destroyed by the wicked, but that Christ cannot be taken from them. 2:17–1817. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  It is also clear that unpleasant feelings induced by external events rather than due to primarily disturbed homeostasis actually lead to states of disturbed life regulation. Continued sadness motivated by personal losses, for example, can disturb health in varied ways—reduce immune responses and diminish the alertness that can protect us from everyday harms.29 Both on the good and on the bad sides of the feeling coin, feelings fit the role of motives behind the development of the instruments and practices of cultures. An Aside on Remembrances of Feelings PastSomething that especially intrigues me about memory and feeling is the way in which, at least for some of us, so many good moments of the past can become, in recollection, wonderful moments of the past, even extraordinary moments of the past. Good to wonderful, wonderful to extraordinary, the transformation can be magic and entertaining. The material is reclassified and regraded. There is a sweetening of the things one recalls, such that the details become more vivid and more finely etched. For example, visual and auditory images become enhanced and the associated feelings warmer, richer in tone, so delightful to experience that the very thought of interrupting the recollection becomes painful, even though the experience now past was so positive. What can possibly account for this transformation, one should ask? I doubt age explains it (personally, I have always experienced memory this way), although it can become more pronounced with age. Does the actual frequency of good experiences rise with age so that more of them can be recalled as excellent? Unlikely. By the way, the betterment of memories, if that is how one should call the actual process, does not result from glossing over events or skipping details. On the contrary, the details of the recalled events can even be more numerous; many images of the composition can linger quite long and are allowed to produce a stronger emotive response. Perhaps that explains the betterment, after all: a careful editing of the remembrance such that certain key images are given longer screen time and are thus allowed to cause better-rounded emotions, which, in turn, translate into deeper feelings. One thing is for certain: the abundantly positive feeling that accompanies the recollection is not part of the material being recollected. The feeling is newly and freshly minted as a result of the strong emotive responses that the remembrances engender. In and of themselves, feelings are never memorized and thus cannot be recollected. They can be re-created, more or less faithfully, on the fly, to complete and accompany recollected facts.

• From Chasing Beauty

  “You are not, darling”: Tharp, 82. “I will ask you not”: Tharp, 82. almost from the start: Frank married Bessie Berdan; Maud Howe Elliott describes her and the wedding in My Cousin, 190. weeks after his departure: Margaret Chanler, Roman Spring (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1934), 119. color to Jackie’s: It is also interesting to note that there is no lock of Jackie’s hair in the museum. She named the display case in the Blue Room after her friendship with Crawford. $40,000 line of credit: Tharp, 84. TEN: THE WAY OF THE TRAVELER, 1883–84 in Japan “bewitching”: ISG to MHE, June 30, 1883, Journeys, 123. The citations for this chapter come principally from two published sources: Morris Carter’s biography, which reprints long passages from Isabella’s travel diaries; and Journeys East, the comprehensive exhibition catalog edited by curator Alan Chong and published in 2009. Here Chong and a range of scholars discuss Isabella’s relationship to Asia and reprint many selections from the Gardner correspondence, diaries, and travel albums. A key correspondent during this period of travel is Maud Howe Elliott. Early on, Carter used these letters in his biography, returning the originals. The museum has transcribed copies. For the Howe letters in this chapter, I have included the date of a letter when possible and indicated if it is reprinted in Journeys. Otherwise, I have drawn from the Howe transcribed copies. For Belle’s diaries, I use entries reprinted in Carter, 59–88, where possible. Letters between Jack and his family are from the Gardner Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, though several of these are also reprinted in Journeys. “I was wretched”: ISG to Anna “Nina” Lyman Mason Gray, July 5, 1883, John Chipman Gray Correspondence, 1800–1932, MS Am 2152, Houghton. “The papers say”: ISG to MHE, July 30, 1883, ISG Papers, ISGM. “awash with a perfect”: JLG Jr. to GAG, June 17, 1883, Journeys, 103. “so much more Japanese”: ISG to MHE, June 30, 1883, Journeys, 123. See also Isabella Bird’s description of fashion in Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1880), 38. there’d been “no end”: JLG Jr., to GPG, July 5, 1883, GFP. “It is a much more”: ISG to Anna “Nina” Lyman Mason Gray, July 5, 1883, Houghton. expect from Morse’s lectures: Edward Sylvester Morse, Japan Day by Day, 1877, 1878–79, 1882–83, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917), x. closed to foreigners, a sakoku: There had been trade via Nagasaki with the Dutch and Chinese before Perry. See Benfey, xiv–xvi, 31–33. in her travel album: JLG Jr. Diary, June 20, 1883, Journeys, 108; Travel Album: China and Japan, vol. 2. For a description of the Gardners’ arrival in Japan and their preparations for travel, see Journeys, 104. For an interpretation of this image, see David Odo, “Deceptive Intimacy,” Fellow Wanderer, 176–77. “very respectable in appearance”: JLG Jr. to GPG, July 5, 1883, GFP. was a little boy: Dykstra, Clover Adams, 18–19.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) Where it is evident that He did not proclaim him openly to all, lest He should make him the more shameless; at the same time He did not altogether keep it silent, lest thinking that he was not discovered, he should boldly hasten to betray Him. THEOPHYLACT. But how could they eat reclining, when the law ordered that standing and upright they should eat the Passover? It is probable that they had first fulfilled the legal Passover, and had reclined, when He began to give them His own Passover. PSEUDO-JEROME. The evening of the day points out the evening of the world; for the last, who are the first to receive the penny of eternal life, come about the eleventh hour. All the disciples then are touched by the Lord; so that there is amongst them the harmony of the harp, all the well attuned strings answer with accordant tone; for it goes on: And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto him one by one, Is it I? One of them however, unstrung, and steeped in the love of money, said, Is it I, Lord? as Matthew testifies. THEOPHYLACT. But the other disciples began to be saddened on account of the word of the Lord; for although they were free from this passion, yet they trust Him who knows all hearts, rather than themselves. It goes on: And he answered and said unto them, It is one of the twelve, that dippeth with me in the dish. BEDE. (ubi sup.) That is, Judas, who when the others were sad and held back their hands, puts forth his hand with his Master into the dish. And because He had before said, One of you shall betray me, and yet the traitor perseveres in his evil, He accuses him more openly, without however pointing out his name. PSEUDO-JEROME. Again, He says, One out of the twelve, as it were separate from them, for the wolf carries away from the flock the sheep which he has taken, and the sheep which quits the fold lies open to the bite of the wolf. But Judas does not withdraw his foot from his traitorous design though once and again pointed at, wherefore his punishment is foretold, that the death denounced upon him might correct him, whom shame could not overcome; wherefore it goes on: The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him. THEOPHYLACT. The word here used, goeth, shews that the death of Christ was not forced but voluntary. PSEUDO-JEROME. But because many do good, in the way that Judas did, without its profiting them, there follows: Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had never been born.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Entering the group room, I looked around and immediately spotted the eager young faces of the three new psychiatry residents. As always, I felt a wave of affection toward my students and wanted nothing so much as to give them something—a good demonstration, the type of dedicated teaching and sustenance I had been given when I was their age. But as I surveyed the meeting room, my spirits dropped. It was not simply that the clutter of medical paraphernalia—intravenous stands, indwelling catheters, cardiac monitors, wheelchairs—reminded me that this particular ward specialized in psychiatric patients who had a severe medical illness and hence were likely to be particularly resistant to talking therapy. No, it was the sight of the patients themselves. There were five in the room, sitting in a row. The head nurse had briefly described their conditions to me on the phone. First there was Martin, an elderly man in a wheelchair with a severe muscle-wasting disease. He was belted into his chair and draped to his waist with a sheet that permitted only a glimpse of his lower legs—fleshless twigs covered by dark, leathery skin. One of his forearms was heavily bandaged and supported by an external frame: no doubt he had slashed his wrist. (I learned later that his son, exhausted and bitter from having nursed him for thirteen years, had greeted his suicide attempt with, “So you botched that too.”) Next to Martin was Dorothy, a woman who had been paraplegic for a year since trying to end her life by leaping from a third-story window. She was in such a depressive stupor that she could barely lift her head. Then there were Rosa and Carol, two anorexic young women who, both hooked up to IVs, were being fed intravenously because their blood chemistry was unbalanced from self-purging and their weight was dangerously low. Carol’s appearance was particularly unsettling: she had exquisite, nearly perfect facial features but almost no covering flesh. Looking at her, sometimes I saw the face of an astonishingly beautiful child, sometimes a grinning skull. Last there was Magnolia, an unkempt, obese seventy-year-old black woman whose legs were paralyzed and whose paralysis was a medical mystery. Her thick gold-rimmed spectacles had been mended with a small piece of adhesive tape, and a tiny, delicate lace cap was pinned to her hair. I was struck, when she introduced herself, by the way she held my gaze with her creamy brown eyes and by the dignity in her soft Southern drawl. “Ah’m very pleased to meet you, Doctah,” she said. “Ah heah good things about you.” The nurses had told me that Magnolia, then sitting quietly and patiently in her wheelchair, was often agitated and tore at imaginary insects crawling on her skin.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  Furthermore, I gave you a preview of that process in the “exploratory probe” on Paul in Chapter 2. We saw there how the post-Pauline letter to the Colossians subverted and denied the Pauline letter to Philemon on slavery. That was an early warning of how Pauline radicality on certain basic values would be de-radicalized back into Roman normalcy. Still, even though we expect that by now, it is sad how swiftly the New Testament returned to Roman acculturation in preparation for Constantine. We can at least lament the consequent sufferings of all those who never learned How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian, especially when it involved reading Christ against pseudo-Christ and Paul against pseudo-Paul. Finally, then, I focus on what happened to Paul. CHAPTER 14Paul and the Normalcy of EmpireThe toga was everywhere . . . and they classed as civilization what was but part of their enslavement. TACITUS , Agricola (98 CE ) WRITING TO THE PHILIPPIANS in the early 50s CE , Paul told them to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (1:12b). If you stop there, it seems that he is warning about divine retribution for failure. Be afraid, he seems to say, of the avenging God’s retributive justice. But now read the entire context (always, by the way, a good idea): “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:12b–13). Wait a minute: What is there to fear from God for failure if God supplies both “will” and “work”? Then you see it: work out your salvation with fear and trembling not because God will punish you if you fail, but because Rome will punish you if you succeed. As always, of course, Rome was the normalcy of civilization—the first-century Mediterranean version. This warning explains why the oft-seen biblical pattern of assertion-and-subversion as God’s radicality is regularly dialed back toward civilization’s normalcy throughout the Christian Bible. So, therefore, as we already found with Jesus, so also here with Paul. How exactly was Paul de-radicalized back into Roman normalcy? Where do we see it most clearly? “There Are Some Things in Them Hard to Understand”THE CHRISTIAN NEW TESTAMENT has twenty-seven books. Of those, about half involve Paul: thirteen letters are attributed to him, and half of the Acts of the Apostles are about him. There is, however, a strong scholarly consensus about those thirteen letters, as we saw in Chapter 2: seven were certainly written by Paul; three were probably not written by him; and three were certainly not written by him. That consensus is the basis of this chapter, as the division of the letters into three groups is based on cumulative differences within them in time and place, style and format, content and theology.

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

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) As being God, dwelling in the body, He shews the frailty of flesh, that the blasphemy of those who deny the mystery of His Incarnation might find no place; for having taken up a body, He must needs also take up all that belongs to the body, hunger, thirst, pain, grief; for the Godhead cannot suffer the changes of these affections. THEOPHYLACT. But some have understood this, as if He had said, I am sorrowful, not because I am to die, but because the Jews, my countrymen, are about to crucify me, and by these means to be shut out from the kingdom of God. PSEUDO-JEROME. By this also we are taught to fear and to be sorrowful before the judgment of death, for not by ourselves, but by Him only, can we say, The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me. (John 14:30) There follows: Tarry ye here, and watch. BEDE. He does not mean natural sleep by the sleep which He forbids, for the time of approaching danger did not allow of it, but the sleep of unfaithfulness, and the torpor of the mind. But going forward a little, He falls on His face, and shews his lowliness of mind, by the posture of His body. Wherefore there follows: And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. AUGUSTINE. (de Con. iii. iv) He said not, if He could do it, but if it could be done; for whatever He wills is possible. We must therefore understand, if it be possible, as if it were; if He is willing. And lest any one should suppose that He lessened His Father’s power, he shews in what sense the words are to be understood; for there follows, And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee. By which He sufficiently shews, that the words, if it be possible, must be understood not of any impossibility, but of the will of His Father. As to what Mark relates, that he said not only Father, but Abba, Father, Abba is the Hebrew for Father. And perhaps the Lord said both words, on account of some Sacrament contained in them; wishing to shew that He had taken upon Himself that 1sorrow in the person of His body, the Church, to which He was made the chief corner stone, and which came to Him, partly from the Hebrews, who are represented by the word Abba, partly from the Gentiles, to whom Father belongs.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  “Aunt Jane. Listen, Barry, your father is dead. He is killed in a car accident. Hello? Can you hear me? I say, your father is dead. Barry, please call your uncle in Boston and tell him. I can’t talk now, okay, Barry. I will try to call you again ….” That was all. The line cut off, and I sat down on the couch, smelling eggs burn in the kitchen, staring at cracks in the plaster, trying to measure my loss. At the time of his death, my father remained a myth to me, both more and less than a man. He had left Hawaii back in 1963, when I was only two years old, so that as a child I knew him only through the stories that my mother and grandparents told. They all had their favorites, each one seamless, burnished smooth from repeated use. I can still picture Gramps leaning back in his old stuffed chair after dinner, sipping whiskey and cleaning his teeth with the cellophane from his cigarette pack, recounting the time that my father almost threw a man off the Pali Lookout because of a pipe …. “See, your mom and dad decided to take this friend of his sightseeing around the island. So they drove up to the Lookout, and Barack was probably on the wrong side of the road the whole way over there—” “Your father was a terrible driver,” my mother explains to me. “He’d end up on the left-hand side, the way the British drive, and if you said something he’d just huff about silly American rules—” “Well, this particular time they arrived in one piece, and they got out and stood at the railing to admire the view. And Barack, he was puffing away on this pipe that I’d given him for his birthday, pointing out all the sights with the stem, like a sea captain—” “Your father was really proud of this pipe,” my mother interrupts again. “He’d smoke it all night while he studied, and sometimes—” “Look, Ann, do you want to tell the story or are you going to let me finish?” “Sorry, Dad. Go ahead.” “Anyway, this poor fella—he was another African student, wasn’t he? Fresh off the boat. This poor kid must’ve been impressed with the way Barack was holding forth with this pipe, ’cause he asked if he could give it a try. Your dad thought about it for a minute, and finally agreed, and as soon as the fella took his first puff, he started coughing up a fit. Coughed so hard that the pipe slipped out of his hand and dropped over the railing, a hundred feet down the face of the cliff.”

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

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) But He prays, that the cup may pass away, to shew that He is very man, wherefore He adds: Take away this cup from me. But remembering why He was sent, He accomplishes the dispensation for which He was sent, and cries out, But not what I will, but what thou wilt. As if He had said, If death can die, without my dying according to the flesh, let this cup pass away; but since this cannot be otherwise, not what I will, but what thou wilt. Many still are sad at the prospect of death, but let them keep their heart right, and avoid death as much as they can; but if they cannot, then let them say what the Lord said for us. PSEUDO-JEROME. By which also He ceases not up to the end to teach us to obey our fathers, and to prefer their will to ours. There follows: And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping. For as they are asleep in mind, so also in body. 1But after His prayer, the Lord coming, and seeing His disciples sleeping, rebukes Peter alone. Wherefore it goes on: And saith unto Peter, Simon, steepest thou? couldest not thou watch with me one hour? As if He had said, If thou couldest not watch one hour with me, how wilt thou be able to despise death, thou who promisest to die with me? It goes on: Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation, that is, the temptation of denying me. BEDE. (ubi sup.) He does not say, Pray that ye may not be tempted, because it is impossible for the human mind not to be tempted, but that ye enter not into temptation, that is, that temptation may not vanquish you. PSEUDO-JEROME. But he is said to enter into temptation, who neglects to pray. There follows: The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. THEOPHYLACT. As if He had said, Your spirit indeed is ready not to deny me, and for this reason ye promise; but your flesh is weak, in that unless God give power to your flesh through prayer, ye shall enter into temptation. BEDE. (ubi sup.) He here represses the rash, who think that they can compass whatever they are confident about. But in proportion as we are confident from the ardour of our mind, so let us fear from the weakness of our flesh. 2For this place makes against those, who say that there was but one operation in the Lord and one will. For He shews two wills, one human, which from the weakness of the flesh shrinks from suffering; one divine, which is most ready. It goes on: And again he went away and prayed, and spake the same words.

• From Fifty Shades of Grey (2011)

  “You’re very grumpy.” He gazes at me impassively. “I wonder why that is?” “Well, it’s good to set the right tone for an intimate and honest discussion about the future, wouldn’t you say?” I smile at him sweetly. His mouth presses into a hard line, but then, almost reluctantly, his lips lift, and I know he’s trying to stifle his smile. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Apology accepted, and I’m pleased to inform you I haven’t decided to become a vegetarian since we last ate.” “Since that was the last time you ate, I think that’s a moot point.” “There’s that word again, ‘moot.’” “Moot,” he mouths and his eyes soften with humor. He runs his hand through his hair, and he’s serious again. “Ana, the last time we spoke, you left me. I’m a little nervous. I’ve told you I want you back, and you’ve said…nothing.” His gaze is intense and expectant while his candor is totally disarming. What the hell do I say to this? “I’ve missed you…really missed you, Christian. The past few days have been…difficult.” I swallow, and a lump in my throat swells as I recall the desperate anguish I’ve felt since I left him. This last week has been the worst in my life, the pain almost indescribable. Nothing has come close. But reality hits home, winding me. “Nothing’s changed. I can’t be what you want me to be.” I squeeze the words out past the lump in my throat. “You are what I want you to be.” He sounds emphatic. “No, Christian, I’m not.” “You’re upset because of what happened last time. I behaved stupidly, and you… So did you. Why didn’t you safe-word, Anastasia?” His tone changes, becoming accusatory. What? Whoa—change of direction. “Answer me.” “I don’t know. I was overwhelmed. I was trying to be what you wanted me to be, trying to deal with the pain, and it went out of my mind. You know…I forgot,” I whisper, ashamed, and I shrug apologetically. Perhaps we could have avoided all this heartache. “You forgot!” he exclaims in horror, grabbing the sides of the table and glaring. I wither under his stare. Shit! He’s furious again. My inner goddess glares at me, too. See, you brought all this on yourself! “How can I trust you?” His voice is low. “Ever?” The waiter arrives with our wine as we sit staring at each other, blue eyes to gray. Both of us filled with unspoken recriminations, while the waiter removes the cork with an unnecessary flourish and pours a little wine into Christian’s glass. Automatically Christian reaches out and takes a sip. “That’s fine.” His voice is curt. Gingerly the waiter fills our glasses, placing the bottle on the table before beating a hasty retreat. Christian has not taken his eyes off me the whole time. I’m the first to crack, breaking eye contact, picking up my glass and taking a large gulp. I barely taste it.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  PART FOUR The Total Society and its Enemies (1054–1500) ‘A NTIQUITY RELATES that laymen show a spirit of hostility towards the clergy,’ wrote Pope Boniface VIII in 1296, ‘and it is clearly proved by the experience of the present time.’ Having uttered this melancholy reflection, in his bull Clericis laicos, Boniface went on to make a number of pronouncements calculated to ensure that the warfare continued. Clerics were not to pay taxes; those who did so, and secular officials who collected the money from them, were to be excommunicated. Universities who defended the practice of clerical taxation were to be placed under interdict; and those under sentence of excommunication or interdict were not be absolved, except at the moment of death, without the express authority of the papacy. Four years after this bellicose pronouncement, he issued a further one, Unam Sanctam, which attempted to define the claims of his caste. Christianity, he wrote, provides for two swords, the spiritual and the temporal: ‘Both are in the power of the church, the spiritual sword and the material. But the latter is to be used for the church, the former by her; the former by the priest, the latter by kings and captains but at the will and by the permission of the priest. The one sword, therefore, should be under the other, and temporal authority subject to spiritual. . . . If, therefore, the earthly power err, it shall be judged by the spiritual power. . . . But if the spiritual power err, it can only be judged by God, not by man. . . . For this authority, though given to a man and exercised by a man, is not human, but rather divine. . . . Furthermore, we declare, state, define and pronounce that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to

• From The Myth Made Fact: Reading Greek and Roman Mythology through Christian Eyes (2020)

  This is an important question, because that third voice is “you,” the “you” created in God’s image and endowed with free will who must choose between good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice.Is it sometimes hard to hear that voice?How can we strengthen that voice?What happens to that voice when we choose to listen to the head?What happens to it when we choose to listen to the belly?Have you ever felt that third voice slipping away?How does continually listening to and giving in to the voice from the belly cause the third voice to get weaker and lose itself? Note 1: In 1802, British Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850) began writing a poem about something he felt that he had lost. That something was not physical but perceptual. That is to say, he came to realize that he no longer could perceive something in the world around him that he had perceived strongly when he was a boy. When he was young, he explains in the opening stanzas of the poem, all of nature seemed bathed in a celestial light that made everything seem alive and throbbing with life. Sadly, as he got older, he could no longer see that light. A kind of magic, wonder, and radiance seemed to pass away from the face of nature. Unable to resolve his emotional- spiritual crisis, Wordsworth put his poem down for two years. Then, suddenly, the answer came to him in a flash: what if, as Plato suggests in his myth of the winged soul, our soul existed in heaven before it came down and entered our body. What if, he went on to write in stanza five of the poem he would title “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. (lines 58–65)2 What if, when our soul enters our body, it carries with it vague memories of heaven and of God? If that were true, it might help explain why, when we are young, we can still see some of that heavenly radiance hanging around us, but, when we age and travel farther away from those memories, the radiance fades, to quote the poem, “into the light of common day” (line 76).

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

  I answer that, It is impossible for any sorrow or pain to be man’s greatest evil. For all sorrow or pain is either for something that is truly evil, or for something that is apparently evil, but good in reality. Now pain or sorrow for that which is truly evil cannot be the greatest evil: for there is something worse, namely, either not to reckon as evil that which is really evil, or not to reject it. Again, sorrow or pain, for that which is apparently evil, but really good, cannot be the greatest evil, for it would be worse to be altogether separated from that which is truly good. Hence it is impossible for any sorrow or pain to be man’s greatest evil. Reply to Objection 1: Pleasure and sorrow have two good points in common: namely, a true judgment concerning good and evil; and the right order of the will in approving of good and rejecting evil. Thus it is clear that in pain or sorrow there is a good, by the removal of which they become worse: and yet there is not an evil in every pleasure, by the removal of which the pleasure is better. Consequently, a pleasure can be man’s highest good, in the way above stated ([1345]Q[34], A[3]): whereas sorrow cannot be man’s greatest evil. Reply to Objection 2: The very fact of the will being opposed to evil is a good. And for this reason, sorrow or pain cannot be the greatest evil; because it has an admixture of good. Reply to Objection 3: That which harms the better thing is worse than that which harms the worse. Now a thing is called evil “because it harms,” as Augustine says (Enchiridion xii). Therefore that which is an evil to the soul is a greater evil than that which is an evil to the body. Therefore this argument does not prove: nor does Augustine give it as his own, but as taken from another [*Cornelius Celsus]. OF THE IRASCIBLE PASSIONS, AND FIRST, OF HOPE AND DESPAIR (EIGHT ARTICLES)We must now consider the irascible passions: (1) Hope and despair; (2) Fear and daring; (3) Anger. Under first head there are eight points of inquiry: (1) Whether hope is the same as desire or cupidity? (2) Whether hope is in the apprehensive, or in the appetitive faculty? (3) Whether hope is in dumb animals? (4) Whether despair is contrary to hope? (5) Whether experience is a cause of hope? (6) Whether hope abounds in young men and drunkards? (7) Concerning the order of hope to love; (8) Whether love conduces to action? Whether hope is the same as desire of cupidity?Objection 1: It would seem that hope is the same as desire or cupidity. Because hope is reckoned as one of the four principal passions. But Augustine in setting down the four principal passions puts cupidity in the place of hope (De Civ. Dei xiv, 3,7). Therefore hope is the same as cupidity or desire.

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

  Reply to Objection 1: The passage quoted proves that the wise man is not made sorrowful by wisdom. Yet he sorrows for anything that hinders wisdom. Consequently there is no room for sorrow in the blessed, in whom there can be no hindrance to wisdom. Reply to Objection 2: Sorrow hinders the work that makes us sorrowful: but it helps us to do more readily whatever banishes sorrow. Reply to Objection 3: Immoderate sorrow is a disease of the mind: but moderate sorrow is the mark of a well-conditioned mind, according to the present state of life. Whether all the moral virtues are about the passions?Objection 1: It would seem that all the moral virtues are about the passions. For the Philosopher says (Ethic. ii, 3) that “moral virtue is about objects of pleasure and sorrow.” But pleasure and sorrow are passions, as stated above ([1541]Q[23], A[4];[1542] Q[31], A[1];[1543] Q[35], AA[1], 2). Therefore all the moral virtues are about the passions. Objection 2: Further, the subject of the moral virtues is a faculty which is rational by participation, as the Philosopher states (Ethic. i, 13). But the passions are in this part of the soul, as stated above ([1544]Q[22], A[3]). Therefore every moral virtue is about the passions. Objection 3: Further, some passion is to be found in every moral virtue: and so either all are about the passions, or none are. But some are about the passions, as fortitude and temperance, as stated in Ethic. iii, 6,10. Therefore all the moral virtues are about the passions. On the contrary, Justice, which is a moral virtue, is not about the passions; as stated in Ethic. v, 1, seqq. I answer that, Moral virtue perfects the appetitive part of the soul by directing it to good as defined by reason. Now good as defined by reason is that which is moderated or directed by reason. Consequently there are moral virtues about all matters that are subject to reason’s direction and moderation. Now reason directs, not only the passions of the sensitive appetite, but also the operations of the intellective appetite, i.e. the will, which is not the subject of a passion, as stated above ([1545]Q[22], A[3]). Therefore not all the moral virtues are about passions, but some are about passions, some about operations. Reply to Objection 1: The moral virtues are not all about pleasures and sorrows, as being their proper matter; but as being something resulting from their proper acts. For every virtuous man rejoices in acts of virtue, and sorrows for the contrary. Hence the Philosopher, after the words quoted, adds, “if virtues are about actions and passions; now every action and passion is followed by pleasure or sorrow, so that in this way virtue is about pleasures and sorrows,” viz. as about something that results from virtue.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: This and all similar arguments which Tully brings forward in De Tusc. Quaest. iv take the passions in the execution of reason’s command. Reply to Objection 3: When a passion forestalls the judgment of reason, so as to prevail on the mind to give its consent, it hinders counsel and the judgment of reason. But when it follows that judgment, as through being commanded by reason, it helps towards the execution of reason’s command. Whether sorrow is compatible with moral virtue?Objection 1: It would seem that sorrow is incompatible with virtue. Because the virtues are effects of wisdom, according to Wis. 8:7: “She,” i.e. Divine wisdom, “teacheth temperance, and prudence, and justice, and fortitude.” Now the “conversation” of wisdom “hath no bitterness,” as we read further on (verse 16). Therefore sorrow is incompatible with virtue also. Objection 2: Further, sorrow is a hindrance to work, as the Philosopher states (Ethic. vii, 13; x, 5). But a hindrance to good works is incompatible with virtue. Therefore sorrow is incompatible with virtue. Objection 3: Further, Tully calls sorrow a disease of the mind (De Tusc. Quaest. iv). But disease of the mind is incompatible with virtue, which is a good condition of the mind. Therefore sorrow is opposed to virtue and is incompatible with it. On the contrary, Christ was perfect in virtue. But there was sorrow in Him, for He said (Mat. 26:38): “My soul is sorrowful even unto death.” Therefore sorrow is compatible with virtue. I answer that, As Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 8), the Stoics held that in the mind of the wise man there are three {eupatheiai}, i.e. “three good passions,” in place of the three disturbances: viz. instead of covetousness, “desire”; instead of mirth, “joy”; instead of fear, “caution.” But they denied that anything corresponding to sorrow could be in the mind of a wise man, for two reasons.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Nothing. The hawk rouses again and begins to preen her covert feathers. The running deer and the running hare. Legacies of trade and invasion, farming, hunting, settlement. Hares were introduced, it is thought, by the Romans. Fallow deer certainly were. Pheasants, too, brought in their burnished hordes from Asia Minor. The partridges possessing this ground were originally from France, and the ones I see here were hatched in game-farm forced-air incubators. The squirrel on the sweet chestnut? North America. Rabbits? Medieval introductions. Felt, meat, fur, feather, from all corners. But possessing the ground, all the same. We set off, again, homeward this time. But now the rain in the air is harder, and the rabbits are so close to their holes that Mabel’s not able to get a foot to them before they disappear. After one hair’s-breadth miss in a rocky quarryhole by a bank of wild rose stems, I call her back and feed her up. She is tired. Beads of water spot her head and tiny eyelash feathers. We stroll back to the car park. I’m tired too, and glad to see people walking towards us. I’ve met them before: a retired couple from my mother’s village, walking their white-muzzled terrier on a long lead. They’re all wrapped up with scarves and snap-fastened country jackets and their shoulders are set a little against the cold and wet. I meet them here quite often. I’ve always been delighted to see them. I don’t know their names, and they don’t know mine, though they know my hawk’s called Mabel. I wave, and they stop and wave back. ‘Hello’, I say. ‘Hello! How’s the hawk?’ they ask. ‘She’s good,’ I say happily. ‘But tired. She’s been flying all over the place. It’s beautiful out here today. I saw the deer!’ I went on, glad to have someone to tell. ‘A big herd of them, dark-coated, down in the bottom of the valley.’ ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘The deer. Special, aren’t they, those ones. Rare. We see them quite often.’ He is smiling; we’re all enjoying our shared secrets of a place. She’s nodding too. ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ she says. ‘We counted them once, didn’t we?’ He nods. ‘There’re usually between twenty-five and thirty.’ ‘Thirty exactly!’ I say. ‘They’re a lovely sight.’ I agree. She tucks her scarf more tightly around her as a squall begins. Her husband nods vigorously, rain darkening his shoulders. ‘A herd of deer,’ he says, beaming, then his expression folds into something I don’t recognise. ‘Doesn’t it gives you hope?’ he says suddenly. ‘Hope?’ ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Isn’t it a relief that there’re things still like that, a real bit of Old England still left, despite all these immigrants coming in?’ I don’t know what to say. His words hang and all the awkwardness is silence. The leaves rattle in the hazel stems. And I nod a goodbye, sad as hell, and my hawk and I trudge home through the rain.

• From Jesus to Constantine (Great Courses) (2004)

  My father arrived in the city again, worn with worry, and he came, again, to see me with the idea of persuading me. ‘Daughter,’ he said, ‘have pity on my gray head. Have pity on me, your father, if I deserve to be called your father, if I have favored you above all your brothers, if I have raised you to reach the prime of your life. Do not abandon me to the reproach of others. Think of your brothers. Think of your mother and your aunt. Think of your child, who will not able to live once you are gone. Give up your pride. You will destroy all of us.’ Again, it was to no avail. She did not yield. She went on trial before the proconsul. They were trying, one by one, these Christians. When her turn came: My father appeared with my son, dragging me from the step, and saying, “Perform a sacrifice. Have pity on your child.’ But Hilarianus, the governor, who had received his judicial powers, said to me, ‘Have pity on your father’s gray head. Have pity on your infant child.’ Thus, again, you have a case of the governor trying to get these people to recant. He did not want to kill these people. He just wanted them simply to recant so that they didn’t have to go through with this. 202 ‘Offer the sacrifice for the welfare of the emperors.’ ‘I will not,’ I retorted. “Are you a Christian?’ said Hilarianus, and I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ When my father persisted in trying to persuade me, Hilarianus ordered him to be thrown to the ground, and beaten with a rod. | felt sorry for my father, just as if I myself had been beaten. I fell sorry for his pathetic old age. She didn’t feel sorry enough to recant, however. She spurned her father’s pleas, ended up relinquishing her child to others, and went to her death eagerly. I mentioned that she had several visions. I want to talk about one of these visions, because it is quite interesting. She had several dreams that she recorded while she was there in the prison, one of which was described in what is now chapter 10. It was a vision of her approaching death. It was the day before they were to fight the wild beasts, and she had this dream in which one of the deacons of her church came and opened the door, and led her into the arena. They came into the amphitheater, and he led her to the center of the arena: “He told me, ‘Do not be afraid. | am here struggling with you.’ Then, he left.” This was all in a dream she was having the day before the event itself. “Then, there came out an Egyptian against me, of vicious appearance, together with his seconds to fight with me.”

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

  First, because sorrow is for an evil that is already present. Now they held that no evil can happen to a wise man: for they thought that, just as man’s only good is virtue, and bodily goods are no good to man; so man’s only evil is vice, which cannot be in a virtuous man. But this is unreasonable. For, since man is composed of soul and body, whatever conduces to preserve the life of the body, is some good to man; yet not his supreme good, because he can abuse it. Consequently the evil which is contrary to this good can be in a wise man, and can cause him moderate sorrow. Again, although a virtuous man can be without grave sin, yet no man is to be found to live without committing slight sins, according to 1 Jn. 1:8: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” A third reason is because a virtuous man, though not actually in a state of sin, may have been so in the past. And he is to be commended if he sorrow for that sin, according to 2 Cor. 7:10: “The sorrow that is according to God worketh penance steadfast unto salvation.” Fourthly, because he may praiseworthily sorrow for another’s sin. Therefore sorrow is compatible with moral virtue in the same way as the other passions are when moderated by reason. Their second reason for holding this opinion was that sorrow is about evil present, whereas fear is for evil to come: even as pleasure is about a present good, while desire is for a future good. Now the enjoyment of a good possessed, or the desire to have good that one possesses not, may be consistent with virtue: but depression of the mind resulting from sorrow for a present evil, is altogether contrary to reason: wherefore it is incompatible with virtue. But this is unreasonable. For there is an evil which can be present to the virtuous man, as we have just stated; which evil is rejected by reason. Wherefore the sensitive appetite follows reason’s rejection by sorrowing for that evil; yet moderately, according as reason dictates. Now it pertains to virtue that the sensitive appetite be conformed to reason, as stated above (A[1], ad 2). Wherefore moderated sorrow for an object which ought to make us sorrowful, is a mark of virtue; as also the Philosopher says (Ethic. ii, 6,7). Moreover, this proves useful for avoiding evil: since, just as good is more readily sought for the sake of pleasure, so is evil more undauntedly shunned on account of sorrow. Accordingly we must allow that sorrow for things pertaining to virtue is incompatible with virtue: since virtue rejoices in its own. On the other hand, virtue sorrows moderately for all that thwarts virtue, no matter how.