Shame

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 Crazy Brave (2012)

  She had stolen it from a witch she saw regularly to combat the many enemies she had in the world: the terrible men, the minimum-wage jobs, and the unwanted daughter-in-law. I didn’t get sick or die that day or in the weeks that followed the witching, but neither did our fortunes change. I began to believe that I had dreamed the smoke curse. I pretended it had happened far away from my babies, my house. What I didn’t dream was that each day after she blew the curse in my face she began to stoop. Just a little at first, imperceptibly even. Then it became noticeable, how the weight of the smoke bore down on her as it sat on her back, kicking its legs as it rode. I measured the falling world by my baby’s small accomplishments. He could hold his head up, he smiled, or he laughed. Each increment was a promise of change. Not long after the witching incident, his mother and I were allies again, as we were short on food and resources. It was spring. My mother-in-law, the children, and I went walking at dusk toward the rich neighborhood that bordered on our part of town. Most of the flowers were blooming. My stepdaughter was also blooming, outgrowing clothes and shoes that were difficult to afford. We stepped into an alley, attracted by a pile of used furniture and barely worn clothes thrown in a bin for trash pickup. We sifted through, holding things up, chattering about our good fortune, until a child from the huge house spotted us from his immaculate yard and yelled to his parents that Indians were going through their trash. We ran, holding on to our new stuff in our arms, along with the children, until we reached our neighborhood. We laughed after we had made it, and felt rich enough with our new treasures to buy ice cream. I harbored a vague sense of shame at being discovered digging through someone else’s trash. I wondered why the residents would rather throw away the useful items than give them to someone who could use them. Another sign of spring was the posters announcing that the circus was coming to town. We got discount passes from the grocery store. I took the kids and my sister-in-law to the Sunday afternoon show. It was my first venture out in over a year, and I felt expansive. The arena was packed with families, and the city’s kids were swirling with snacks, circus toys, and excitement. We sat next to an aisle for easier access to the bathrooms. The girls asked about everything as we waited for the show. They wanted to know what-time-the-show-started-exactly-and-how-long-would-it-be-before-the-show-started-where-were-the-tigers-could-they-have-balloons-if-they-couldn’t-have-a-balloon-could-they-ride-the-elephant-and-why-couldn’t-we-sit-closer-so-we-could-see-better-and-could-they-go-to-the-bathroom-even-though-they-had-just-been-a-few-minutes-ago. As I answered, I watched people and imagined their lives and how I would paint them, rejuvenated by the smell of popcorn and the change in scenery. Out of the churning crowds came a slim man in tights and a cape.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘Oh, my dear—it’s so dreadfully hard to tell you. The pay was rotten, not enough to live on—I used to think that they did it on purpose, lots of the girls used to think that way too—they never gave us quite enough to live on. You see, I hadn’t a vestige of talent, I could only dress up and try to look pretty. I never got a real speaking part, I just danced, not well, but I’d got a good figure.’ She paused and tried to look up through the gloom, but Stephen’s face was hidden in shadow. ‘Well then, darling—Stephen, I want to feel your arms, hold me closer—well then, I—there was a man who wanted me—not as you want me, Stephen, to protect and care for me; God, no, not that way! And I was so poor and so tired and so frightened; why sometimes my shoes would let in the slush because they were old and I hadn’t the money to buy myself new ones—try to think of that, darling. And I’d cry when I washed my hands in the winter because they’d be bleeding from broken chilblains. Well, I couldn’t stay the course any longer, that’s all. . . .’ The little gilt clock on the desk ticked loudly. Tick, tick! Tick, tick! An astonishing voice to come from so small and fragile a body. Somewhere out in the garden a dog barked—Tony, chasing imaginary rabbits through the darkness. ‘Stephen!’ ‘Yes, my dear?’ ‘Have you understood me?’ ‘Yes—oh, yes, I’ve understood you. Go on.’

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  53 o Unlike Sarai, Hagar immediately conceives, and then, “she looked with contempt on her mistress.” o Sarai feels betrayed by her slave-girl and by Abram. But when she complains, Abram lets her know that she is the one in control of this aspect of the household. He says, “Look, your slave-girl is in your power, do to her as you please” (Gen. 16:6). o We then read that Sarai dealt harshly with Hagar, and Hagar fled the house into the wilderness. • Again, we note several differences in the marriage of Hagar and Abraham from that of Isaac and Rebekah. Hagar’s family is not involved in the marriage negotiations, and therefore, Hagar’s interests are not protected. Sarai negotiates Hagar’s change in status from slave-girl to wife, and she does this so that she, not Hagar, can be “built up” in Abram’s household. Even after Hagar conceives, she remains a foreign slave under the power of Sarai. • Later, in Genesis 21, Sarai miraculously conceives and bears her own son, Isaac. As soon as she weans Isaac, she expels Hagar and her son, Ishmael, from Abraham’s household. Hagar has no rights to Abraham’s estate. Deuteronomy 21:15 provides a law that seems designed to deal with disputes involving two wives and two firstborn sons, but it may address a situation in which the wives are of equal status. Dinah: Marriage by Abduction • In Genesis 34, we read, “Dinah, the daughter of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob, went out to visit the women of the land.” While she was out, Shechem, the prince of the land, “saw her, seized her, and lay with her by force.” He then apparently takes her back to his house before initiating negotiations with her family to make her his wife. • Note that this marriage is not endogamous; Shechem is of another nation. Note, too, that the marriage is not negotiated in a way that allows the daughter’s interests to be protected. Instead, after

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  How could I explain the water jar left empty by the river to my mother, who deciphered my burning lips as shame? My imagination swallowed me like a mica chip. In it, I had seen the water monster fighting with lightning. He broke trees, stirred up killer winds. In it, I had lost my brother to a spear of flame. I saw my beloved there, hidden in the skin of the suddenly vulnerable. I was taken with a fever and nothing cured it until I dreamed my fiery body dipped in the river where it fed into the lake. My father carried me as if I were newborn, as if he were presenting me once more to the world. And when he dipped me I was pronounced healed. My parents immediately made plans to marry me to an important man who was years older and would provide me with everything I needed to survive in this world. It was a world I could no longer perceive. I had been blinded, when I was most in need of a drink, by a man who was not a man. He stole my secrets, those created at the brink of language. When I disappeared it was in a storm that destroyed the houses of my relatives. My baby sister was found sucking on her hand in the crook of an oak. And though it may have appeared otherwise, I did not go willingly. That night when I had seen my story strung on the shell belt of my ancestors, I was standing next to a man who could not look me in the eye. The oldest woman in the tribe wanted to remember me as the girl who disobeyed, who gave in to her desires before marriage and was destroyed by the monster disguised as the seductive warrior. Others saw the car I was driving as it drove into the lake early one morning, the time the carriers of tradition wake up, before the sun or the appearance of red birds. They found the empty six-pack on the sandy shores of the lake. The power of the victim is a power that will always be reckoned with, one way or the other. When the proverbial sixteen-year-old woman walked down to the lake, within her were all the sixteen-year-old women who had questioned their power from time before time. Years later, she walked out of the lake and headed for town. No one recognized her. The story of the girl and the water monster was a story no one told anymore. My stepfather was paying more and more attention to me as I grew into womanhood. I did everything I could to stay out of his way. I did not want his eyes on me. Like most teenage girls, I felt sensual and awkward all at once. My body had its own mind, its own wisdom. I was tethered to its cycles. I was up and I was down.

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

  After the death of Countess Matilda, July 24, 1115, he hastened for a third time to Italy, and violently seized the rich possessions which she had bequeathed to the chair of St. Peter. Pascal fled to Benevento, and called the Normans to his aid, as Gregory VII. had done. Henry celebrated the Easter festival of 1117 in Rome with great pomp, caused the empress to be crowned, showed himself to the people in his imperial purple, and amused them with shows and processions; but in the summer he returned to Germany, after fruitless negotiations with the pope. He lived to conclude the Concordat of Worms. He was an energetic, but hard, despotic, and unpopular ruler. Pascal died, Jan. 21, 1118, in the castle of St. Angelo, and was buried in the church of St. John in Lateran. He barely escaped the charge of heresy and schism. He privately condemned, and yet officially supported, lay-investiture, and strove to satisfy both his own conscience and his official duty to the papacy. The extreme party charged him with the sin of Peter, and exhorted him to repent; milder judges, like Ivo of Chartres and Hildebert of Le Mans, while defending the Hildebrandian principle of the freedom of the Church, excused him on the ground that he had yielded for a moment in the hope of better times and from the praiseworthy desire to save the imprisoned cardinals and to avoid bloodshed; and they referred to the example of Paul, who circumcised Timothy, and complied with the wish of James in Jerusalem to please the Jewish Christians. § 21. The Concordat of Worms. 1122. Ekkehardus Uraugiensis: Chronica (best ed. by Waiz in Mon. Germ. Script., VI. 260).—Ul. Robert: Étude sur les actes du pape Calixte II. Paris, 1874.—E. Bernheim: Zur Geschichte des Wormser Concordats. Göttingen, 1878.—M. Maurer: Papst Calixt II. München, 1886.—Giesebrecht, III. 931–959.—Ranke, VIII. 111–126.—Hefele-Knöpfler, V. 311–384; Bullaire et histoire de Calixte II. Paris, 1891.—D. Schafer: Zur Beurtheilung des Wormser Konkordats. Berlin, 1905. The Gregorian party elected Gelasius a cardinal-deacon, far advanced in age. His short reign of a year and four days was a series of pitiable misfortunes. He had scarcely been elected when he was grossly insulted by a mob led by Cencius Frangipani and cast into a dungeon. Freed by the fickle Romans, he was thrown into a panic by the sudden appearance of Henry V. at the gates, and fled the city, attempting to escape by sea. The Normans came to his rescue and he was led back to Rome, where he found St. Peter’s in the hands of the anti-pope. A wild riot again forced him to flee and when he was found he was sitting in a field near St. Paul’s, with no companions but some women as his comforters. He then escaped to Pisa and by way of Genoa to France, where he died at Cluny, 1119.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile the Abbot ordered one of his servants to go and see whether the man was still there. ‘“Yes, sir,” replied the servant. “What is more, he is eating a loaf of bread, which he must have brought with him.” ‘“Then let him eat his own food, if he has some,” said the Abbot, “for he shall eat none of ours today.” ‘The Abbot would have preferred that Primas should go away of his own accord, for he felt it would be discourteous to order him to leave. Having eaten the first loaf, there being still no sign of the Abbot, Primas began to eat the second. This fact also was reported to the Abbot, who had sent to see whether he was still there. ‘Finally, since the Abbot showed no sign of coming, Primas, having finished the second loaf, started to eat the third. This too was reported to the Abbot, who began to ponder the matter and say to himself: “Now what on earth has got into me today? Why have I suddenly become such a miser? Why should I feel so much contempt for this unknown visitor? For years I have provided food for any man who cared to eat it, without inquiring whether he was a peasant or a gentleman, poor or rich, merchant or swindler. With my own eyes, I have seen any number of rogues devouring my food, and I have never felt as I do today about this fellow. No ordinary man can have caused me to be afflicted with such meanness. This fellow I regard as a knave must be someone important, for me to have set my heart so firmly against offering him my hospitality.” ‘Having said this to himself, he was anxious to know who the man might be. And when he discovered it was Primas, who had come there to see if the tales of his generosity were true, the Abbot felt thoroughly ashamed, for he had long been aware of the reputation Primas enjoyed as a man of excellent worth. Being desirous of making amends, he went out of his way to do him honour. After having fed him in a manner appropriate to his renown, he saw

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Messer Antonio d'Orso, a learned and worthy prelate, being Bishop of Florence, there came thither a Catalan gentleman, called Messer Dego della Ratta, marshal for King Robert, who, being a man of a very fine person and a great amorist, took a liking to one among other Florentine ladies, a very fair lady and granddaughter to a brother of the said bishop, and hearing that her husband, albeit a man of good family, was very sordid and miserly, agreed with him to give him five hundred gold florins, so he would suffer him lie a night with his wife. Accordingly, he let gild so many silver poplins,[301] a coin which was then current, and having lain with the lady, though against her will, gave them to the husband. The thing after coming to be known everywhere, the sordid wretch of a husband reaped both loss and scorn, but the bishop, like a discreet man as he was, affected to know nothing of the matter. Wherefore, he and the marshal consorting much together, it chanced, as they rode side by side with each other, one St. John's Day, viewing the ladies on either side of the way where the mantle is run for,[302] the prelate espied a young lady,--of whom this present pestilence hath bereft us and whom all you ladies must have known, Madam Nonna de' Pulci by name, cousin to Messer Alessio Rinucci, a fresh and fair young woman, both well-spoken and high-spirited, then not long before married in Porta San Piero,--and pointed her out to the marshal; then, being near her, he laid his hand on the latter's shoulder and said to her, 'Nonna, how deemest thou of this gallant? Thinkest thou thou couldst make a conquest of him?' It seemed to the lady that those words somewhat trenched upon her honour and were like to sully it in the eyes of those (and there were many there) who heard them; wherefore, not thinking to purge away the soil, but to return blow for blow, she promptly answered, 'Maybe, sir, he would not make a conquest of me; but, in any case, I should want good money.' The marshal and the bishop, hearing this, felt themselves alike touched to the quick by her speech, the one as the author of the cheat put upon the bishop's brother's granddaughter and the other as having suffered the affront in the person of his kinswoman, and made off, shamefast and silent, without looking at one another or saying aught more to her that day. Thus, then, the young lady having been bitten, it was not forbidden her to bite her biter with a retort." [Footnote 301: A silver coin of about the size and value of our silver penny, which, when gilded, would pass muster well enough for a gold florin, unless closely examined.] [Footnote 302: _Il palio_, a race anciently run at Florence on St. John's Day, as that of the Barberi at Rome during the Carnival.] THE FOURTH STORY

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  When people are overwhelmed and cannot successfully defend themselves, they often feel ashamed. When they act violently, they are seeking justice and vengeance for having been shamed. In Chapter Seven, we discussed the fact that the human brain has three integral systems: reptilian (instincts), mammalian (emotions), and neo- cortex (rational). Shame is an emotion formulated by the (mammalian) brain system. Justice is an idea formulated by the neo-cortex, but what of the instincts? It is my contention that if the instinctive urge to discharge intense survival energy is thwarted, then the function of the other two brain systems is profoundly altered. For example, let’s look at the previously mentioned “re-enactment” scenario. What effect did the undischarged energy have on the emotional and rational responses of the individual? Quite simply, the emotional brain translated this energy into anger. Then, the “rational” brain created the idea of revenge. These two inter-related systems were doing what they could, given the circumstances. However, the failure to instinctively discharge a very powerful biological energy put them in a position they are not adapted to handle. The result of this attemp t - re-enactment rather than renegotiation. Although violent behavior may provide temporary relief and an increased feeling of “pride”, without biological discharge, there is no completion. As a result, the cycle of shame and violence returns. The nervous system remains highly activated, which compels people to seek the only relief they kno w - more violence. The traumatic event is not resolved, and people continue to behave as if it is still happenin g - because, biologically speaking, it i s - their nervous systems are still highly activated. The three little cheetah cubs mentioned earlier knew when the real event was over. The human being, with its vastly “superior” intelligence, often does not. Struck by the way in which people’s entire lives seem to play out themes from their childhood, Freud coined the term “repetition compulsion” to describe the behaviors, relationships, emotions, and dreams that seemed to be replays of early trauma. Central to Freud’s concept of repetition compulsion was his observation that people continue to put themselves in situations strangely reminiscent of an original trauma in order to learn new solutions. July 5th, 6:30 in the Morning Bessel van der Kolk, a psychiatric researcher who has made great contributions to the field of post-traumatic stress, relates a story about a veteran that illustrates vividly both the dangerous and repetitive aspects of re-enactment in its drive toward resolution. On July 5 in the late 1980’s a man walked into a convenience store at 6:30 in the morning. Holding his finger in his pocket to simulate a gun, he demanded that the cashier give him the contents of the cash register.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  One of the most profound and conceptually challenging aspects of healing trauma is understanding the role played by memory. Many of us have the faulty and limiting belief that to heal our traumas we must dredge up horrible memories from the past. What we know for certain is that we feel damaged, fragmented, distressed, shameful, unhappy, etc. In an attempt to feel better we search for the cause(s) of our unhappiness, hoping that finding them will ease our distress. Even if we are able to dredge up reasonably accurate “memories” of an event, they will not heal us. On the contrary, this unnecessary exercise can cause us to re-enact the experience and get sucked into the trauma vortex once again. The search for memories may engender more pain and distress, while further solidifying our frozen immobility. The vicious cycle then escalates as we are compelled to search for other explanatory events (“memories”) to account for our additional distress. How important are these memories? There are two kinds of memory pertinent to trauma. One form is somewhat like a video camera, sequentially recording events. It is called “explicit” (conscious) memory, and stores information such as what you did at the party last night. The other form is the way that the human organism organizes the experience of significant event s for example, the procedure of how to ride a bicycle. This type of memory is called “implicit” (procedural) and is unconscious. It has to do with things we don’t think about; our bodies just do them. In many ways, the seemingly concrete images of a traumatized person’s “memory” can be the most difficult to let go of. This is particularly true when the person has previously attempted to move through a traumatic reaction using forms of psychotherapy that encourage ca-tharsis and the emotional reliving of the traumatic event as the panacea for recovery. Catharsis reinforces memory as an absolute truth and inadvertently reinforces the trauma vortex. An incorrect understanding of memory is one of the misconceptions that interferes with the transformation process. What Is Memory? The brain’s function is to choose from the past, to diminish it, to simplify it, but not to preserve it. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind, 1911

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  And as though some mysterious cord stretched between them, Stephen’s heart was troubled at that very moment; intolerably troubled because of Morton, the real home which might not be shared with Mary. Ashamed because of shame laid on another, compassionate and suffering because of her compassion, she was thinking of the girl left alone in Paris—the girl who should have come with her to England, who should have been welcomed and honoured at Morton. Then she suddenly remembered some words from the past, very terrible words: ‘Could you marry me, Stephen?’ Mary turned and walked back to the Rue Jacob. Disheartened and anxious, David lagged beside her. He had done all he could to distract her mind from whatever it was that lay heavy upon it. He had made a pretence of chasing a pigeon, he had barked himself hoarse at a terrified beggar, he had brought her a stick and implored her to throw it, he had caught at her skirt and tugged it politely; in the end he had nearly got run over by a taxi in his desperate efforts to gain her attention. This last attempt had certainly roused her: she had put on his lead—poor, misunderstood David. 3Mary went into Stephen’s study and sat down at the spacious writing-table, for now all of a sudden she had only one ache, and that was the ache of her love for Stephen. And because of her love she wished to comfort, since in every fond woman there is much of the mother. That letter was full of many things which a less privileged pen had best left unwritten—loyalty, faith, consolation, devotion; all this and much more she wrote to Stephen. As she sat there, her heart seemed to swell within her as though in response to some mighty challenge. Thus it was that Mary met and defeated the world’s first tentative onslaught upon them. CHAPTER 431T here comes a time in all passionate attachments when life, real life, must be faced once again with its varied and endless obligations, when the lover knows in his innermost heart that the halcyon days are over. He may well regret this prosaic intrusion, yet to him it will usually seem quite natural, so that while loving not one whit the less, he will bend his neck to the yoke of existence. But the woman, for whom love is an end in itself, finds it harder to submit thus calmly. To every devoted and ardent woman there comes this moment of poignant regretting; and struggle she must to hold it at bay. ‘Not yet, not yet—just a little longer’; until Nature, abhorring her idleness, forces on her the labour of procreation.

• From The World of Biblical Israel (2013)

  147 people then make a covenant with God, promising to “put away all these [foreign] wives and their children” (Ezra 10:3). o The book of Ezra closes with a decree that all returnees should put aside their foreign wives and remain separate from “the people of the land.” • Nehemiah served as governor of Judah during the same period as Ezra, and much of the material about intermarriage from the book of Ezra is repeated in the book of Nehemiah. • Although it seems unlikely that the oath of all the Israelite men to put aside their foreign wives and their children was ever carried out on a large scale, the issue of intermarriage was clearly important to the community of returned exiles. They had managed to maintain their Judean identity as worshipers of the Israelite god while in Babylonia, but upon returning to Judah, they found that those who had stayed in the land did not share the same sense of national identity and boundary marking. Public Reading of the Torah • A second focal point for the restored and reconstituted Judean community is the temple and the Torah of Moses. In the books of Ezra-Nehemiah, the lengthy transition to a Torah-centered community is sacralized in a single remembered event. • We learn that Ezra gathered all the people of Israel to Jerusalem in the seventh month. He stood on a raised wooden platform or pulpit, flanked by laity and Levites, and he opened “the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had given to Israel” (Neh. 8:1). • Ezra then leads a kind of liturgy. He blesses the Lord, his god, and the people respond, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands, bowing their heads, and worshipping their god, whom they understand to be in some way present in this gathering around the Torah. 148 Lecture 20: The New Israel—Resettling the Land • While Ezra presents the Torah and reads from it, the Levites are described as “helping the people understand the law.” We must remember that the Torah was in Hebrew, and many of the people gathered would no longer speak or understand Hebrew. • During this Second Temple period, we begin to see several developments that will become foundational to early Judaism: the elevation of the Torah and the study of the Torah to a religious and community-forging ritual, the elevation of the role of scribes, and the elevation of the status of the Levites as translators of the law for the people. Carr, An Introduction to The Old Testament, pp. 207–228. Kessler, The Social History of Ancient Israel, pp. 128–157. 1. What factors contributed to internal divisions and debates in the Judean community during the time of the rebuilding of the temple? 2. Why might Persia have adopted a policy of repatriating exiles and sponsoring the rebuilding of local temples and shrines? Suggested Reading Questions to Consider

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Never, sir, except on one occasion,’ replied Ser Ciappelletto, ‘when I spoke ill of someone. For I once had a neighbour who, without the slightest cause, was forever beating his wife, so that on this one occasion I spoke ill of him to his wife’s kinsfolk, for I felt extremely sorry for that unfortunate woman. Whenever the fellow had had too much to drink, God alone could tell you how he battered her.’ Then the friar said: ‘Let me see now, you tell me you were a merchant. Did you ever deceive anyone, as merchants do?’ ‘Faith, sir, I did,’ said Ser Ciappelletto. ‘But all I know about him is that he was a man who brought me some money that he owed me for a length of cloth I had sold him. I put the money away in a box without counting it, and a whole month passed before I discovered there were four pennies more than there should have been. I kept them for a year with the intention of giving them back, but I never saw him again, so I gave them away to a beggar.’ ‘That was a trivial matter,’ said the friar, ‘and you did well to dispose of the money as you did.’ The holy friar questioned him on many other matters, but always he answered in similar vein, and hence the friar was ready to proceed without further ado to give him absolution. But Ser Ciappelletto said: ‘Sir, I still have one or two sins I have not yet told you about.’ The friar asked him what they were, and he said: ‘I recall that I once failed to show a proper respect for the Holy Sabbath, by making one of my servants sweep the house after nones on a Saturday.’ ‘Oh!’ said the friar. ‘This, my son, is a trifling matter.’ ‘No, father,’ said Ser Ciappelletto, ‘you must not call it trifling, for the Sabbath has to be greatly honoured, seeing that this was the day on which our Lord rose from the dead.’ Then the friar said: ‘Have you done anything else?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Ser Ciappelletto, ‘for I once, without thinking what I was doing, spat in the house of God.’ The friar began to smile, and said: ‘My son, this is not a thing to worry about. We members of religious orders spit there continually.’ ‘That is very wicked of you,’ said Ser Ciappelletto, ‘for nothing should be kept more clean than the holy temple in which sacrifice is offered up to God.’ In brief, he told the friar many things of this sort, and finally he began to sigh, and then to wail loudly, as he was well able to do whenever he pleased. ‘My son,’ said the holy friar. ‘What is the matter?’

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  The house smelled of gingerbread, and we’d eaten everything: the scraps of dough, raisin eyes, and fresh cookie shapes taken from the oven. We ran back and forth to the front window to watch for our father. Our baby sister stirred in her wrappings from her winter newborn nap. Every passing car and we were at the window again. It was Saturday night, and our father had left late morning to pick up the Christmas tree. My brother kept asking our mother, “When’s Daddy coming home?” And she always answered the same: “He’ll be home any minute.” She anxiously paced the kitchen, checking the baking sheets of cookies and chopping and frying the potatoes and meat. It was long past time for dinner, and we were hungry and cranky. I set the table with plates and glasses while my brother seriously set the forks. At two years old, he was already our mother’s “little man.” He shadowed her, and usually she didn’t mind, but tonight the baby was restless and there was no sign of our father. Since the baby had been born, my brother had been clingy and whiny. That night he was an outright nuisance. I had to keep shooing him from the coffee table covered with ornaments we’d unpacked for the Christmas tree. He’d already broken one of the glass soldiers, and I had cut my finger while sweeping up the slivers. My brother asked yet again about our dad. I elbowed him a sharp one in the ribs. He cried, the baby cried, and I was in trouble for hitting again. “As the older sister, you’re to take care of your little brother. That’s your responsibility.” My mother shamed me. The sniffling boy nestled his head against her skirt as she soothed the sobbing infant and heated up the bottle of formula at the stove. She sent me to my room. I refused to cry. I only cried when Daddy hit our mother. I felt terrible that I had hit my little brother. Shamed , as my mother said. It’s a word I turned over and over in my mouth, and it didn’t fit with the smell of gingerbread and frying potatoes. It didn’t fit with the sparkle of the ornaments waiting to be put on the tree. I went to my hiding place in the closet in the bedroom I shared with my brother. I pulled out my crayons. I picked through them. Most were half eaten by my brother. He always managed to find them, no matter where I hid them. My latest hiding place was in the corner of the closet, in the back of the trunk my father used at school. I drew on the wall. I imagined I was painting like my grandmother, whose painting of a warrior from our tribe hung in the living room. I looked at my drawings hidden behind our hanging clothes: here’s the baby in her cradleboard, and here’s my father hunting deer.

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

  Archbishop Cranmer appears in an unfavorable light. His first wife, "Black Joan," died in childbed before his ordination. Early in 1532, before he was raised to the primacy of Canterbury by Henry VIII. (August, 1532), he married a niece of the Lutheran preacher Osiander of Nürnberg, and concealed the fact, the disclosure of which would have prevented his elevation. The papal bulls of confirmation were dated February and March, 1533, and his consecration took place March 30, 1533. The next year he privately summoned his wife to England; but sent her away in 1539, when he found it necessary to execute the bloody articles of Henry VIII., which included the prohibition of clerical marriage. He lent a willing hand to the divorces and re-marriages of his royal master. And yet with all his weakness of character, and time-serving policy, Cranmer must have been an eminently devout man if he translated and reproduced (as he certainly edited) the Anglican liturgy, which has stood the test of many generations to this day.620 John Knox, the Luther of Scotland, had the courage, as a widower of fifty-eight (March, 1563–64), to marry a Scotch lass of sixteen, Margaret Stuart, of royal name and blood, to the great indignation of Queen Mary, who "stormed wonderfully" at his audacity. The papists got up the story that he gained her affection by sorcery, and aimed to secure for his heirs, with the aid of the Devil, the throne of Scotland. His wife bore him three daughters, and two years after his death (1572) contracted a second marriage with Andrew Ker, a widower.621 The most unfortunate matrimonial incident in the Reformation is the consent of Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer to the disgraceful bigamy of Landgrave Philip of Hesse. It is a blot on their character, and admits of no justification. When the secret came out (1540), Melanchthon was so over-whelmed with the reproaches of conscience and a sense of shame that he fell dangerously ill at Weimar, till Luther, who was made of sterner stuff, and found comfort in his doctrine of justification by faith alone, prayed him out of the jaws of death. In forming a just estimate of this subject, we must not only look backward to the long ages of clerical celibacy with all its dangers and evils, but also forward to the innumerable clerical homes which were made possible by the Reformation. They can bear the test of the closest examination. Clerical celibacy and monastic vows deprived the church of the services of many men who might have become shining stars. On the other hand, it has been calculated by Justus Möser in 1750, that within two centuries after the Reformation from ten to fifteen millions of human beings in all lands owe their existence to the abolition of clerical celibacy.622 More important than this numerical increase is the fact that an unusual proportion of eminent scholars and useful men in church and state were descended from clerical families.623

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  e [8] , makes this eloquent statement: …“the attempt to achieve and maintain justice, or to undo or prevent injustice, is the one and only universal cause of violence.” (italics his) On an emotional and intellectual level, Dr. Gilligan’s insight is profound and accurate, but how does it translate into the biological level of instinctive functioning? To the non-thinking world of the felt sense, I believe that justice is experienced as completion. Without discharge and completion, we are doomed to repeat the tragic cycle of violent re-enactment, whether it be through “acting out” or “acting in.” It is humbling to own up to the fact that a significant portion of human behavior is performed from hyper-aroused states due to incomplete responses to threat. Most of humanity appears to be fascinated, perhaps even mesmerized by those of us who “act out” our search for justice. There are countless books detailing the lives of “serial-killers,” many of them best-sellers. The theme of justice and revenge is probably the subject of more movies than any other single topic. Underlying our powerful attraction to those who “act out” is the urge for completion and resolutio n- or, what I call “renegotiation” of trauma. In a renegotiation, the repetitive cycle of violent re-enactment is transformed into a healing event. A transformed person feels no need for revenge or violenc e- shame and blame dissolve in the powerful wake of renewal and self-acceptance (see Chapter Fourtee n– Transformation ). Unfortunately, there are very few examples of this phenomenon in literature and films. The movie Sling Blade has many of the transformative qualities inherent in a traumatic renegotiation. Our mundane “collision scenario” is much more a part of everyday life than the stuff movies are made of, and therefore, more telling. On page 133 of Violence, Gilligan writes: “If we want to understand the nature of the incident that typically provokes the most intense shame, and hence the most extreme violence, we need to recognize that it is precisely the triviality of the incident that makes the incident so shameful. And it is the intensity of the shame, as I said, that makes the incident so powerfully productive of violence.” When people are overwhelmed and cannot successfully defend themselves, they often feel ashamed. When they act violently, they are seeking justice and vengeance for having been shamed.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Having learnt that the lady’s husband, though he came of a good family, was very greedy and corrupt, he came to an arrangement with him whereby he would give him five hundred gold florins for allowing him to sleep for one night with his wife. But what he actually did was to gild five hundred coins of silver, called popolini, which were in everyday use at that period, and, having slept with the man’s wife against her will, he handed these over to the husband. Subsequently the story became common knowledge, so that the scoundrelly husband was not only cheated but held up to ridicule. And the Bishop, being a wise man, feigned complete ignorance of the whole affair. The Bishop and the Marshal were frequently to be seen in one another’s company, and one day, it being the feast of St John,3 they happened to be riding side by side down the street along which the palio4 is run, casting an eye over the ladies, when the Bishop spotted a young woman (now, alas, no longer with us, having died in middle age during this present epidemic), whose name was Monna Nonna de’ Pulci. You all know the person I mean – she was the cousin of Messer Alesso Rinucci, and at the time of which I am speaking she was a fine-looking girl in the flower of youth, well spoken and full of spirit, who had recently been married and set up house in the Porta San Piero quarter. The Bishop pointed her out to the Marshal, then he rode up beside her, clapped his hand on the Marshal’s shoulder, and said: ‘How do you like this fellow, Nonna? Do you think you could make a conquest of him?’ It seemed to Monna Nonna that the Bishop’s words made her out to be less than virtuous, or that they were bound to damage her reputation in the eyes of those people, by no means few in number, in whose hearing they were spoken. So that, less intent upon vindicating her honour than upon returning blow for blow, she swiftly retorted: ‘In the unlikely event, my lord, of his making a conquest of me, I should want to be paid in good coin.’ These words stung both the Marshal and the Bishop to the quick, the former as the author of the dishonest deed involving the niece of the Bishop’s brother, and the latter as its victim, inasmuch as she was one of his own relatives. And without so much as looking at one another, they rode away silent and shamefaced, and said no more to Monna Nonna on that day. In this case, therefore, since the girl was bitten first, it was not inappropriate that she should make an equally biting retort. FOURTH STORYCurrado Gianfigliazzi’s cook, Chichibio, converts his master’s anger into laughter with a quick word in the nick of time, and saves himself from the unpleasant fate with which Currado had threatened him.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  How could I explain the water jar left empty by the river to my mother, who deciphered my burning lips as shame? My imagination swallowed me like a mica chip. In it, I had seen the water monster fighting with lightning. He broke trees, stirred up killer winds. In it, I had lost my brother to a spear of flame. I saw my beloved there, hidden in the skin of the suddenly vulnerable. I was taken with a fever and nothing cured it until I dreamed my fiery body dipped in the river where it fed into the lake. My father carried me as if I were newborn, as if he were presenting me once more to the world. And when he dipped me I was pronounced healed. My parents immediately made plans to marry me to an important man who was years older and would provide me with everything I needed to survive in this world. It was a world I could no longer perceive. I had been blinded, when I was most in need of a drink, by a man who was not a man. He stole my secrets, those created at the brink of language. When I disappeared it was in a storm that destroyed the houses of my relatives. My baby sister was found sucking on her hand in the crook of an oak. And though it may have appeared otherwise, I did not go willingly. That night when I had seen my story strung on the shell belt of my ancestors, I was standing next to a man who could not look me in the eye. The oldest woman in the tribe wanted to remember me as the girl who disobeyed, who gave in to her desires before marriage and was destroyed by the monster disguised as the seductive warrior. Others saw the car I was driving as it drove into the lake early one morning, the time the carriers of tradition wake up, before the sun or the appearance of red birds. They found the empty six-pack on the sandy shores of the lake. The power of the victim is a power that will always be reckoned with, one way or the other. When the proverbial sixteen-year-old woman walked down to the lake, within her were all the sixteen-year-old women who had questioned their power from time before time. Years later, she walked out of the lake and headed for town. No one recognized her. The story of the girl and the water monster was a story no one told anymore. My stepfather was paying more and more attention to me as I grew into womanhood. I did everything I could to stay out of his way. I did not want his eyes on me. Like most teenage girls, I felt sensual and awkward all at once. My body had its own mind, its own wisdom. I was tethered to its cycles. I was up and I was down.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Jamie and her Barbara were starvation-poor, so poor that a square meal came as a godsend. Stephen would feel ashamed to be rich, and, like Mary, was always anxious to feed them. Being idle at the moment, Stephen would insist upon frequently taking them out to dinner, and then she would order expensive viands—copper-green oysters straight from the Marennes, caviare and other such costly things, to be followed by even more sumptuous dishes—and since they went short on most days in the week, these stomachic debauches would frequently upset them. Two glasses of wine would cause Jamie to flush, for her head had never been of the strongest, nor was it accustomed to such golden nectar. Her principal beverage was crème-de-menthe because it kept out the cold in the winter, and because, being pepperminty and sweet, it reminded her of the bull’s-eyes at Beedles. They were not very easy to help, these two, for Jamie, pride-galled, was exceedingly touchy. She would never accept gifts of money or clothes, and was struggling to pay off the debt to her master. Even food gave offence unless it was shared by the donors, which though very praiseworthy was foolish. However, there it was, one just had to take her or leave her, there was no compromising with Jamie. After dinner they would drift back to Jamie’s abode, a studio in the old Rue Visconti. They would climb innumerable dirty stone stairs to the top of what had once been a fine house but was now let off to such poor rats as Jamie. The concierge, an unsympathetic woman, long soured by the empty pockets of students, would peer out at them from her dark ground floor kennel, with sceptical eyes. ‘Bon soir, Madame Lambert.’ ‘Bon soir, mesdames,’ she would growl impolitely.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I liked their writhing aliveness, their black no-question eyes, and their tongues that flashed like lightning. They smelled like cool melon, stronger toward dusk and dew. And then my mother interrupted the party with a command: “Joy! Come in here right now and put on a shirt.” I bristled with injustice. “Why doesn’t my brother have to come in and put on a shirt?” “He’s a boy.” “But we look the same.” “Don’t argue with me, girl, or I’ll have you pick a switch.” I went inside to put on a shirt. I knew better than to talk back. In that small moment the earthy delight of being five years old, of being utterly body and breath, came falling down. I saw the Christian law of forthright tied-tight shoes ahead of me. I saw scratchy lace and flounce, my mother’s girding girdles, the shame of “down there,” the bowed heads, and the closed doors of house or church. As I pulled my T-shirt over my head to cover my girl-shame, I decided that though temporarily I had to acquiesce, I would have nothing to do with it. I would find a way, my way. I ran back outside into the flare of twilight to join my brother and our friends, and jumped back into our game of war. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] By the time I started school the family included two more children, another sister and a brother. In kindergarten the students were divided into groups after naptime and sent to various activity stations around the spacious classroom. The activities varied from drawing to jumping rope to stringing beads. The two kind, elderly teachers who wore matronly dresses and black boxy shoes with laces liked to see the “cute little Indian girl” stringing beads, so I was often first assigned to play there. Drawing was my favorite station. I loved the smell of crayons on newsprint. I smelled each crayon before using it and felt each color as a friendly field of possibility. One day I lost myself in a drawing as I discovered a design similar to the joined-hands circle of paper dolls made by cutting a folded sheet of paper. When I glanced up and around the table, I noticed that the other children were all drawing the same house, the same lollipop tree, and the same sun with a smiling face. I broke through my shyness and asked, “Why are you copying each other?” The other children looked at me, then at my drawing. They began copying me. For me drawing was dreaming on paper. I didn’t always know what was going to appear there. I followed the instinct of color, of line. I understood there were many kinds of houses. Some did not exist in the city in which I lived. The one I used to draw again and again was a round house with a tree at the center. The stairs wound around the outside of the house.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The Vicar would soon play a sterner game than cricket, while Alec must put away his law books and take unto himself a pair of wings—funny to associate wings with Alec. Colonel Antrim had hastily got into khaki and was cursing and swearing, no doubt, at the barracks. And Roger—Roger was somewhere in France already, justifying his manhood. Roger Antrim, who had been so intolerably proud of that manhood—well, now he would get a chance to prove it! But Jonathan Brockett, with the soft white hands, and the foolish gestures, and the high little laugh—even he could justify his existence, for they had not refused him when he went to enlist. Stephen had never thought to feel envious of a man like Jonathan Brockett. She sat smoking, with his letter spread out before her on the desk, his absurd yet courageous letter, and somehow it humbled her pride to the dust, for she could not so justify her existence. Every instinct handed down by the men of her race, every decent instinct of courage, now rose to mock her so that all that was male in her make-up seemed to grow more aggressive, aggressive perhaps as never before, because of this new frustration. She felt appalled at the realization of her own grotesqueness; she was nothing but a freak abandoned on a kind of no-man’s-land at this moment of splendid national endeavour. England was calling her men into battle, her women to the bedsides of the wounded and dying, and between these two chivalrous, surging forces she, Stephen, might well be crushed out of existence—of less use to her country, she was, than Brockett. She stared at her bony masculine hands, they had never been skilful when it came to illness; strong they might be, but rather inept; not hands wherewith to succour the wounded. No, assuredly her job, if job she could find, would not lie at the bedsides of the wounded. And yet, good God, one must do something! Going to the door she called in the servants: ‘I’m leaving for England in a few days,’ she told them, ‘and while I’m away you’ll take care of this house. I have absolute confidence in you.’ Pierre said: ‘All things shall be done as you would wish, Mademoiselle.’ And she knew that it would be so. That evening she told Puddle of her decision, and Puddle’s face brightened: ‘I’m so glad, my dear, when war comes one ought to stand by one’s country.’ ‘I’m afraid they won’t want my sort . . .’ Stephen muttered. Puddle put a firm little hand over hers: ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, this war may give your sort of woman her chance. I think you may find that they’ll need you, Stephen.’ 3There were no farewells to be said in Paris except those to Buisson and Mademoiselle Duphot.