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 This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  Everything was as it should be, the set of my scarf, the alignment of my belt buckle, the angle of my cap, the drape of my two sashes. One was the Order of the Arrow sash, a red arrow on a brilliant white background. The other was my merit-badge sash. It was thick with proofs of competence. At camp that summer, with little else to do, I had worked myself into a delirium of badge-grubbing. I was a Life Scout now, with only one merit badge to go for Eagle. That badge was Citizenship in the Nation. I had already fulfilled the numerous requirements for it, including attendance at a jury trial to observe the rule of law, but Dwight refused to send in my papers. He wouldn’t explain why, except to say I didn’t deserve to be an Eagle. It was an issue between us. I shouldered my bag and left the diner. BETWEEN MY FLIGHT from the drugstore and my return, no more than fifteen minutes had gone by. An empty police car was parked outside the store with its light blinking. Calmly, eyes front and center, I walked past and up the street to the hotel where the banquet was to take place. Though an hour remained until chow time the lobby was already full of Scouts in OA sashes, preening themselves and looking each other over. I checked my bag and said hello to some acquaintances from other troops. One of them was in charge of setting up chairs. He asked me to help him out, and when that job was done he posted me at the door with a couple of other boys to greet the guests as they arrived. The three of us sparked each other. By the time people began filing past our table we were laying down a steady line of scintillant repartee. Between gags I checked off names on the invitation list, the second boy wrote them down on adhesive nameplates, and the third escorted the guests to their tables. Then she was there, in line behind an old couple. I looked up and saw her watching me. The room bucked but I kept my balance. I didn’t even blink. I checked off the old couple’s name, and made a friendly joke they laughed at. And then I turned to her. I gave her a welcoming smile and said, “Name, ma’am?” She stepped up to the table and stood there thoughtfully, holding her pocketbook in front of her with both hands. She still had on the white sweater and plaid skirt she’d been wearing in the store. I felt no fear, nor any surprise after the first shock had passed. I knew she hadn’t followed me here. Of course she would have a boy in the Scouts, and of course he would belong to OA.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  Because you are a noble yourself! Your father is a great gentleman and you are a princess. A chasm separates you from the rest of us, who do not belong to your circle of ruling families...' Yes, Tom, we feel nobility and distance and we should not try to live where we are not known and we are not known know how to assess, for we shall have nothing but humiliations from it, and we shall be found ridiculously proud. Yes, – everyone found me ridiculously haughty. I wasn't told, but I felt it every hour and I suffered from it too. Ha! In a country where cake is eaten with a knife, and where princes speak false German, and where it is conspicuous as a love affair for a gentleman to meet a lady picks up the fan, it's easy to seem arrogant in a country like this, Tom! acclimate? No, with people without dignity, morals, ambition, distinction and rigor, with people who are unruly, rude and sloppy, with people who are at the same time lazy and frivolous, thick-blooded and superficial … with such people I cannot and would not acclimate never can, as surely as I am your sister! Eva Ewers did it... good! But an Ewers isn't a Buddenbrook, and then she'll have her husband who's good for something in life. But how did I have it? Think Thomas, start over and remember! I came from here, from this house, where something matters, where one stirs and has goals, to Permaneder, who retired with my dowry ... ha, it was real, it was truly distinctive, but that was the only good thing about it. What next? A child is to come! How happy I was! It would have paid me for everything! What happens? it dies It's dead. That wasn't Permaneder's fault, beware, no. He had done what he could and even didn't go to the inn for two or three days, forbid! But it was part of it, Thomas. It didn't make me any happier, you can imagine. I endured and did not grumble. I walked around alone and misunderstood and denounced as arrogant and said to myself: You gave him your vows for life. He's a little clumsy and lazy, and has betrayed your hopes; but he means well and his heart is pure. And then I had to experience this and saw him in this disgusting moment. Then I found out: he understands me so well and knows how to respect me so much better than the others that he calls a word after me, a word that none of your storage workers would throw at a dog! And then I saw that nothing was holding me and that it would have been a shame to stay.

• From Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

  7 As winter descended on Chicago , I practiced bringing mundane issues to group. A prickle of shame skidded down my spine when I asked my group to weigh in on matters I should know how to handle as a reasonably intelligent twenty-seven-year-old, like whether I should use some of my financial aid money to go on a ski trip organized by my college roommate Kat. The group unanimously voted yes to the trip. Dr. Rosen pressed me for a good reason not to go. “It’s all couples. I’ll be the eleventh wheel.” “Be open,” Dr. Rosen said. I can’t believe it! You never come to anything! Kat wrote when I accepted her invitation. On the Tuesday morning between Christmas and New Year’s, I dialed Rory’s cell from a cabin in Crested Butte. It was my first time missing a session. “Hi, sweetie, let me put you on speaker.” I heard a rustling and then Rory’s voice, slightly muffled: “Everyone say hi to Christie.” A chorus of hellos in the background. “What’re y’all doing?” I asked, picturing each of them in their regular spots, the gray Chicago sky out the window. “It’s boring without you,” Carlos said. “Y’all miss me?” Weren’t they grateful to have a break from me and my pitiful stories of too many apples, too many worms? “Everyone’s nodding,” Rory said. “Even Dr. Rosen.” My heart soared up over the Rocky Mountains and zoomed across the plains to the fourteen-by-fourteen room where they sat, where there was an empty chair my body usually fit, where they held me in their minds. As a kid, my siblings and I would take turns visiting our paternal grandmother, who lived in a big yellow farmhouse in Forreston, Texas. I loved those weeks—I could roam around her property, looking for treasures by the creek and picking through bones at the cow graveyard. Once, I called home halfway through my visit. I can’t remember why. I think I was testing my ability to make a long-distance call. The phone at 6644 Thackeray Avenue rang and rang. Maybe they’re at the neighborhood pool or in the backyard . I tried again that night. No answer. Where could they be? When my dad called that weekend to arrange a time to pick me up, I grabbed the phone from my grandma. “Where were y’all? I tried to call two nights ago.” “We went to Oklahoma for a few days.” They took a vacation without me? My vision blurred as tears gathered. I’d never been to Oklahoma, and suddenly I was desperate to go—to see whatever they’d seen. Cool stuff like authentic tepees tended by women in long black braids and working oil rigs dotting a straight dusty highway. How could they travel—cross the state line!—without me? This clearly meant I wasn’t an integral part of my family, and the realization made me want to curl up and bawl.

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  The debates with Julian saw Augustine, who had written so eloquently on the “Good of Marriage” against the ascetic elitism of men like Jerome, turn his focus toward the inevitable sinfulness of sexual desire, even within marriage. Augustine continued to maintain his threefold account of the goods of marriage: reproduction, mutual fidelity, and sacred bond. But in his later years he would write more energetically about the impossibility of defeating concupiscence, even within marriage. For Augustine, “concupiscence, this law of sin which abides in our members,” was an intractable symptom of human nature. Concupsicence was “not to be imputed to marriage, but only to be tolerated within marriage.” Procreative sex alone was not to be reckoned a sin, but even the act of procreation, in the postlapsarian world, required the mobilization of dangerous forces beyond man’s complete control. “Conjugal intercourse which is had with procreative intention is not in itself a sin, because a righteous will leads the spirit which follows, and does not follow the lead of bodily pleasure; human choice is in this case not led by mastering sin, when the attack of sin is rightly redirected for the purpose of procreation.” Augustine was led to articulate a model of procreationist sex that was, momentously, far more specific than anything that had preceded it. Certainly Clement of Alexandria, the most important early exponent of procreationism, had avoided backing himself into the corners where Augustine finds himself. Augustine provided a pessimistic reading of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. Sex within marriage was indeed a safeguard against “damnable crimes, that is fornication and adultery.” But conjugal sex that served “an overpowering concupiscence” was allowed only by way of concession. The Apostle had allowed that marriage could act as a mitigating factor in the commission of sexual sin. Marriage transformed sexual acts performed out of desire into “venial sins.”70

• From Educated (2018)

  I had already betrayed them by failing to love them as I should; the least I could do was stay silent. “Marriage is God’s plan,” the bishop said, then he stood. The meeting was over. He asked me to return the following Sunday. I said I would, but knew I wouldn’t. My body felt heavy as I walked to my apartment. All my life I had been taught that marriage was God’s will, that to refuse it was a kind of sin. I was in defiance of God. And yet, I didn’t want to be. I wanted children, my own family, but even as I longed for it I knew I would never have it. I was not capable. I could not be near any man without despising myself. I had always scoffed at the word “whore.” It sounded guttural and outmoded even to me. But even though I silently mocked Shawn for using it, I had come to identify with it. That it was old-fashioned only strengthened the association, because it meant I usually only heard the word in connection with myself. Once, when I was fifteen, after I’d started wearing mascara and lip gloss, Shawn had told Dad that he’d heard rumors about me in town, that I had a reputation. Immediately Dad thought I was pregnant. He should never have allowed those plays in town, he screamed at Mother. Mother said I was trustworthy, modest. Shawn said no teenage girl was trustworthy, and that in his experience those who seemed pious were sometimes the worst of all. I sat on my bed, knees pressed to my chest, and listened to them shout. Was I pregnant? I wasn’t sure. I considered every interaction I’d had with a boy, every glance, every touch. I walked to the mirror and raised my shirt, then ran my fingers across my abdomen, examining it inch by inch and thought, Maybe . I had never kissed a boy. I had witnessed birth, but I’d been given none of the facts of conception. While my father and brother shouted, ignorance kept me silent: I couldn’t defend myself, because I didn’t understand the accusation. Days later, when it was confirmed that I was not pregnant, I evolved a new understanding of the word “whore,” one that was less about actions and more about essence. It was not that I had done something wrong so much as that I existed in the wrong way. There was something impure in the fact of my being. It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you, I had written in my journal. But Shawn had more power over me than I could possibly have imagined. He had defined me to myself, and there’s no greater power than that. —I STOOD OUTSIDE THE bishop’s office on a cold night in February. I didn’t know what had taken me there. The bishop sat calmly behind his desk.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “She taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be guessed. The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her ignorance of the world—every thing was against me. The matter itself I could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in general, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention, the very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my present visit. In short, it ended in a total breach. By one measure I might have saved myself. In the height of her morality, good woman! she offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could not be—and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house. The night following this affair—I was to go the next morning—was spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be. The struggle was great—but it ended too soon. My affection for Marianne, my thorough conviction of her attachment to me—it was all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased. I had reason to believe myself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. A heavy scene however awaited me, before I could leave Devonshire;—I was engaged to dine with you on that very day; some apology was therefore necessary for my breaking this engagement. But whether I should write this apology, or deliver it in person, was a point of long debate. To see Marianne, I felt, would be dreadful, and I even doubted whether I could see her again, and keep to my resolution. In that point, however, I undervalued my own magnanimity, as the event declared; for I went, I saw her, and saw her miserable, and left her miserable—and left her hoping never to see her again.” “Why did you call, Mr. Willoughby?” said Elinor, reproachfully; “a note would have answered every purpose. Why was it necessary to call?”

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  And a person who thinks himself unlovable cannot be in a relationship with God because he can’t accept who God is; a Being that is love. We learn that we are lovable or unlovable from other people,” Paul says. “That is why God tells us so many times to love each other.” When the sky got dark Paul and I went back into the attic. We made small talk for an hour before he went downstairs to be with his wife, but I kept thinking about these things. I turned out the light and lay in my bed and thought about the girls I had dated, the fear I have of getting married, and the incredible selfishness from which I navigate my existence. [image "9780785263708_0160_003" file=Image00054.jpg] I had been working on a play called Polaroids that year. It was the story of one man’s life from birth to death, each scene delivered through a monologue with other actors silently acting out parts behind the narrator as he walks the audience through his life journey. In the scene I had written a few nights before, I had the man fighting with his wife. They were experiencing unbearable tension after losing a son in a car accident the year before. I knew in my heart they were not going to make it, that Polaroids would include a painful divorce that showed the ugliness of separation. But I changed my mind. After talking with Paul I couldn’t do it. I wondered what it would look like to have the couple stick it out. I got up and turned on my computer. I had the lead character in my play walk into the bedroom where his wife was sleeping. I had him kneel down by her and whisper some lines: What great gravity is this that drew my soul toward yours? What great force, that though I went falsely, went kicking, went disguising myself to earn your love, also disguised, to earn your keeping, your resting, your staying, your will fleshed into mine, rasped by a slowly revealed truth, the barter of my soul, the soul that I fear, the soul that I loathe, the soul that: if you will love, I will love. I will redeem you, if you will redeem me? Is this our purpose, you and I together to pacify each other, to lead each other toward the lie that we are good, that we are noble, that we need not redemption, save the one that you and I invented of our own clay? I am not scared of you, my love, I am scared of me. I went looking, I wrote out a list, I drew an image, I bled a poem of you. You were pretty, and my friends believed I was worthy of you. You were clever, but I was smarter, perhaps the only one smarter, the only one able to lead you. You see, love, I did not love you, I loved me.

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

  Leo thus made out of a primacy of grace and of personal fitness a primacy of right and of succession. Of his person, indeed, he speaks in his sermons with great humility, but only thereby the more to exalt his official character. He tells the Romans, that the true celebration of the anniversary of his accession is, to recognize, honor, and obey, in his lowly person, Peter himself, who still cares for shepherd and flock, and whose dignity is not lacking even to his unworthy heir.588 Here, therefore, we already have that characteristic combination of humility and arrogance, which has stereotyped itself in the expressions: "Servant of the servants of God," "vicar of Christ," and even "God upon earth." In this double consciousness of his personal unworthiness and his official exaltation, Leo annually celebrated the day of his elevation to the chair of Peter. While Peter himself passes over his prerogative in silence, and expressly warns against hierarchical assumption,589 Leo cannot speak frequently and emphatically enough of his authority. While Peter in Antioch meekly submits to the rebuke of the junior apostle Paul,590 Leo pronounces resistance to his authority to be impious pride and the sure way to hell.591 Obedience to the pope is thus necessary to salvation. Whosoever, says he, is not with the apostolic see, that is, with the head of the body, whence all gifts of grace descend throughout the body, is not in the body of the church, and has no part in her grace. This is the fearful but legitimate logic of the papal principle, which confines the kingdom of God to the narrow lines of a particular organization, and makes the universal spiritual reign of Christ dependent on a temporal form and a human organ. But in its very first application this papal ban proved itself a brutum fulmen, when in spite of it the Gallican archbishop Hilary, against whom it was directed, died universally esteemed and loved, and then was canonized. This very impracticability of that principle, which would exclude all Greek and Protestant Christians from the kingdom of heaven, is a refutation of the principle itself. In carrying his idea of the papacy into effect, Leo displayed the cunning tact, the diplomatic address, and the iron consistency which characterize the greatest popes of the middle age. The circumstances in general were in his favor: the East rent by dogmatic controversies; Africa devastated by the barbarians; the West weak in a weak emperor; nowhere a powerful and pure bishop or divine, like Athanasius, Augustine, or Jerome, in the former generation; the overthrow of the Western empire at hand; a new age breaking, with new peoples, for whose childhood the papacy was just the needful school; the most numerous and last important general council convened; and the system of ecumenical orthodoxy ready to be closed with the decision concerning the relation of the two natures in Christ.

• From Beyond Belief

  After all, it was for the greater good. After my parents left, Pat remained with me and took me to the doctor’s office for an X-ray the next morning. My knee was indeed fractured. The only thing the doctor could do for me was to wrap it in an ACE Bandage. I was back at the nursery two days later. My leg hurt so much that my limp caused me to lag behind during our daily strolls along Franklin Avenue. Rather than slow the group down, the teacher would become irritated at me and tell me to hurry up. She seemed to think I was putting on an act. B. J. defended me, telling her that my knee was fractured. “Well if you fall behind, you are going to get left behind,” she scolded. She told me that I needed to “make it go right!” This was a common Scientology saying, which referred to the Church’s belief in mind over matter. All I had to do was not let the pain dominate my thoughts, and it wouldn’t feel as bad. A few months passed before my knee finally stopped hurting. Right before my fifth birthday, Justin told me he was leaving L.A. and going to live at a place called the Ranch. I didn’t know what the Ranch was