Trust

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 Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  “Art and I had a little fight about it this weekend,” she says, and I am aware that it’s the first time I’ve heard of them having a conflict. “I think I told you, a long time ago, when I told my father about our infertility and the IVF and everything, he offered to pay some of the bills. I was shocked and immediately said no. I was worried that he wanted to bribe me and I didn’t want him to control me. So even though we didn’t have the money, we took a loan from the bank instead. But my father didn’t give up. He kept saying that he wanted to be part of this process. I told him I’d think about it but I never got back to him.” “Like in your childhood.” I cut her off, and she nods. “This weekend, Art and I talked about my childhood. I told him that in therapy I realized that I always dismissed my father’s attempts to be close to me. I just didn’t trust him. I told Art that I see things a little differently now. He understood what I was saying but he said that I still don’t let my father into my life and that when he tries to give me something, I reject him.” Alice smiles. “You know how Art speaks like a parent sometimes? He is smart that way.” I hear her slight ambivalence about Art’s parental position and I smile and nod. Alice laughs. “I know,” she says. “He can be annoying the way parents are sometimes. He argued that parents feel good just being able to give their child something she needs, and that it’s not always just a power move, the way I usually interpret it. He said that financial support is one way for parents to express their love. He talked about love languages and how each person has their own way of showing love, some through words and some through actions, and that one way isn’t better than another.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Watching the split screen, Beebe points out that caregivers tend to tune in to the infants’ movements, gestures, gazes, and expressions, and that the babies are responsive to every nuance of the mothers’ behavior. There is a rhythm co-created between the infants and their caretakers. The parent usually looks happy when her infant smiles and appears concerned when the infant cries. She reduces the intensity of her behavior when the baby turns its head away; she lowers her voice when the infant seems distressed; and she tries to excite the baby when it looks back to her. The parent talks to her baby and then gives the baby a turn. The baby responds vocally in her own way. They each follow the other’s rhythm of taking a turn. Ideal exchange between parents and their infants doesn’t mean absolute synchronization or “perfect” matching and superhigh responsiveness. Rather, a dynamic communication evolves that includes moments of mismatch and potential misunderstanding, followed by moments of re-attunement and repair. These studies highlight the fact that ruptures are an inevitable part of every relationship. In fact, in 1989 Jeffrey F. Cohn and Edward Z. Tronick indicated that imperfect interaction and mismatching of communication are the rule rather than the exception. They show that a “good enough” parent is slightly mismatched and desynchronized with their infant 70 percent of the time and in synch with them only 30 percent of the time. They suggest that a good relationship is the result not of a perfect level of attunement, but rather of successful repairs. The moments when the parent re-attunes to the baby are important. They are the foundation for future trust, where both parent and infant learn that they can go back to a rhythm that allows them to be seen and understood by the other. More than five decades of research highlight the implications of the early baby-parent interaction for future development, attachment, and mental health. Those studies predicted some of the difficulties that infants would experience later in life as children and as adults, based on the very early attachment to their caretakers. For example, a large body of research focuses on parental responsiveness, which is one of the key qualities for secure attachment. Research indicates that low maternal responsiveness at three and nine months predicts insecure attachment at twelve months, negative feelings and aggressive behavior at three years, and other behavioral problems from age ten on. I try to picture Jon as a baby, recognizing his withdrawal as an adult. I try to imagine what he saw in his mother’s eyes: her pain, her anger, her guilt, and her lack of responsiveness toward him. I wonder what he sensed even when it wasn’t directly communicated to him. I am aware that there is much I don’t know and may never know. Some of those early experiences are forever sealed. Jon walks into the room and sits on the armchair.

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

  It was conversations like these: conversations lasting sometimes far into the night, which first brought me close to Clea, taught me that I could rely upon the strength which she had quarried out of self-knowledge and reflection. In our friendship we were able to share our private thoughts and ideas, to test them upon one another, in a way that would have been impossible had we been linked more closely by ties which, paradoxically enough, separate more profoundly than they join, though human illusion forbids us to believe this. ‘It is true’ I remember her saying once, when I had mentioned this strange fact, ‘that in some sense I am closer to you than either Melissa or Justine. You see, Melissa’s love is too confiding: it blinds her. While Justine’s cowardly monomania sees one through an invented picture of one, and this forbids you to do anything except to be a demoniac like her. Do not look hurt. There is no malice in what I say.’

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  You intuitively grasp her intentions. She wasn’t being friendly after all, she was gloating. She wasn’t looking to connect, but was instead self-satisfied. You don’t need to be a cynic to recognize that not all smiles are sincere bids for connection. Some smiles may even be flashed to exploit or control you. Just as you rely on your senses to discern nutritious from rotting food, so, too, can you rely on your senses to help you separate the honest from dishonest invitations for connection. Once you have made eye contact, your conclusions about your co-worker’s smile, conscious or not, inform your gut and your next move. Without eye contact, it is much easier to experience misunderstandings, crushed hearts, and exploitation as you over- or under-interpret the friendliness of other people’s smiles. You can also miss countless opportunities for life-giving connection. Eye contact helps you better detect the sincere affiliative gestures within a sea of merely polite or decidedly manipulative smiles that bid for your attention. Love, then, is not blind. Moments of seemingly shared positivity abound. You, and those in your midst, can be infused with one form of positivity or another, yet not be truly connected. You and everyone else in the movie theater, for instance, share the positivity emanating from the big screen; you and the person next to you in the lecture hall are fascinated by the same set of new ideas; you and your family members take in the same television comedy. Yet absent eye contact, touch, laughter, or another form of behavioral synchrony, these moments are akin to what developmental psychologists call parallel play. They no doubt feel great and their positivity confers broaden-and-build benefits both to you and to others, independently. But if they are not (yet) directly and interpersonally shared experiences, they do not resonate or reverberate, and so they are not (yet) instances of love. The key to love is to add some form of physical connection. To be clear, the sensory and temporal connections you establish with others through eye contact, touch, conversation, or other forms of behavioral synchrony are not, in and of themselves, love. Even holding hands, after all, can become a loveless habit. Yet in the right contexts, these gestures become springboards for love. The right contexts are those infused with the emotional presence of positivity. Imagine that instead of me sitting alone at my home office computer searching for words in July 2011 and you sitting (am I right?) who knows where reading these words some years later, that you and I are sitting together at your local coffee shop talking these ideas over. Turns out, you’ve got a boatload of great questions.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  These were the ones in whom they could place their trust and loyalty, the ones to whom they became irresistibly drawn. Without bonds, an ancient animal died young or failed to reproduce. With bonds, an ancient animal stood a chance to become one of your ancestors. Because bonds made the difference between life and death for your ancestors, so did opportunities to build bonds. Those opportunities presented themselves within safe moments of connection. And just as walking triggers callus formation and raises metabolism, the good feelings that arise when connecting with others trigger biochemical changes that reshape the lenses through which those others are seen, increasing their allure. Ancient animals enticed in this way into repeated moments of positivity resonance built more bonds. It’s their DNA that lives on within your own cells, that forms the wisdom of your body. Love is a product of human evolution. In this very literal way, you were made for love. This means that you didn’t need to learn everything about love anew, from your own firsthand experience. From birth, your body knew how to seek out love, to stoke it, and to gain pleasure and sustenance from it. Your brief yet recurrent blasts of positivity resonance with others accrued to build the very bonds that have kept you alive to this day, enabling you now to be reading these words. Human culture tempts you to turn away from your animal origins, to divorce yourself from the rat pups that wrestle playfully with one another by day and then later drift peacefully to sleep in one heaping pack, piled one upon the other, or from the zebras that groom each other during quiet moments of safety on the savanna. Yet these ancient, animal forms of love, enacted through touch and mutual care, still live on in you, in your cells. Your thirst for positivity resonance emerges from deep within. Bids for love, to be sure, take new heights in humans. Creatively using uniquely human forms of communication, you can caress your beloved through the spoken words of a poem or inspire him through the rhythms of song and dance. You’ve got more resources for connection to draw on than does a rat pup or zebra. Yet your need for love is one and the same. Resting in this wisdom you can see past even abundant bickering, nastiness, greed, and fear. You can spot and hone in on life-giving opportunities for positivity resonance. As I’ll share in chapter 3, science now reveals that when you become attuned to your body’s definition of love, your cells get the message. They defend you from illness and enable you to grow healthier and thrive.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Social resilience becomes all the more likely when you and those with whom you share fate—at home, at work, or in your community or nation—are able and motivated to connect with one another, to take one another’s perspectives, and to communicate care and respect just as readily as you recognize it when others convey their positive regard to you. Such emotional agility and fluid communication within groups isn’t easy to achieve, of course. Any brief reflection on politics, gossip, or any manner of nitpicking can remind you how easy it is to smother the openness, tolerance, and trust needed to support social resilience. Yet knowing that successive moments of positivity resonance shore up and strengthen these necessary resources can help you see that social resilience emerges in the wake of love. Close study of what makes some marriages more resilient than others bears this out. John Gottman, perhaps the world’s leading scientific expert on emotions in marriage, tells couples that they can “bank” their shared positive emotions to help them through later tough times. Through decades of meticulous research, Gottman discovered that couples who experience higher ratios of positive to negative emotions with each other are better able to navigate disagreements and upsets. When discussing difficult topics, for instance, they tend to refrain from mirroring each other’s distress and negativity with their own. Instead, they de-escalate any conflict (or potential conflict) by meeting their partner’s negativity with something altogether different, often making some caring, affirming, or lighthearted comment or gesture that creates space for reflection. Put differently, couples with rich recent histories of positivity resonance are better equipped to defuse the emotional bombs that threaten them both. You can “bank” positivity resonance and draw on it later because momentary experiences of love and other positive emotions build resources. In other words, the small investments you deposit in the so-called bank don’t just sit there. They accumulate, earn interest, and pay out dividends in the form of durable resources that you can later draw on to face future adversity. Moreover, just as money earned in one arena can be spent in other arenas, the positivity resonance that you create in certain relationships can build personal resources—values, beliefs, and skills—that help you navigate all manner of social upsets and difficulties. Having a loving marriage, then, can help you be more resilient in your work team. Sharing more moments of positivity resonance in schools and neighborhoods, for instance, may help whole nations be more resilient during tough times. Resilience matters now more than ever, both your personal resilience, as well as the collective resilience that you cultivate within your family, your community, your nation, and our world. No matter how resilient you are today, higher levels of resilience are readily within your grasp. That’s because genuine positive emotions are available to you at any time. And when you connect with others over these good feelings, you create a positivity resonance that energizes and strengthens the metaphorical connective tissue that binds you.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Oxytocin, which is nicknamed by some the “cuddle hormone” or the “love hormone,” is actually more properly identified as a neuropeptide because it acts not just within your body but also within your brain. Oxytocin has long been known to play a key role in social bonding and attachment. Clear evidence of this first emerged from experiments with a monogamous breed of prairie voles: Oxytocin, when dripped into one animal’s brain in the presence of the opposite sex, creates in that animal a long-lasting preference to remain together with the other, cuddled up side by side, behavior taken as evidence that oxytocin sparked the formation of a powerful social bond between them. In humans, oxytocin surges during sexual intercourse for both men and women, and, for women, during childbirth and lactation, pivotal interpersonal moments that stand to forge new social bonds or cement existing ones. The natural blasts of oxytocin during such moments are so large and powerful that for many years they all but blinded scientists to the more subtle ebb and flow of oxytocin during more typical day-to-day activities, like playing with your kids, getting to know your new neighbor, or striking a deal with a new business partner. Technical obstacles also needed to be cleared. Decades after oxytocin’s role in monogamous prairie voles had been amply charted, scientists studying human biochemistry still struggled to find ways to reliably and noninvasively measure and manipulate oxytocin during natural behavior. Scientific understanding of oxytocin’s role in your everyday social life could not advance without more practical research tools at hand. Dramatic new evidence of oxytocin’s power to shape your social life first surfaced in Europe, where laws permitted the use of a synthetic form of oxytocin, available as a nasal spray, for investigational purposes. Among the first of these studies was one in which 128 men from Zurich played the so-called trust game with real monetary outcomes on the line. At random, these men were assigned to either the role of “investor” or the role of “trustee,” and each was given an equivalent pot of starting funds. Investors made the first move in the game. They could give some, all, or none of their allocated funds to the trustee. During the transfer of funds, the experimenter tripled their investment while letting the trustee know how much the investors had originally transferred. Trustees made the next move. They could give some, all, or none of their new allotment of funds (the investors’ tripled investment plus their own original allocation) back to investors. The structure of the game puts investors, but not trustees, at risk. If an investor chose to entrust the other guy with his investment, he risked receiving nothing in return if the trustee chose to selfishly keep the entire monetary gain for himself. But if the trustee was fair, they could each double their money.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Even so, the distinctions revealed in the Taipei study, between imagining your loved one’s pain and imagining a stranger’s pain, underscore that stifled emotions and guarded personal boundaries, while at times necessary and fully appropriate, can also function as obstacles to positivity resonance. As we’ll see in the next section, your attunement to various opportunities for positive connection with others is supported not just by neural synchrony, but by the hormone oxytocin as well. Biochemistries in Love Oxytocin, which is nicknamed by some the “cuddle hormone” or the “love hormone,” is actually more properly identified as a neuropeptide because it acts not just within your body but also within your brain. Oxytocin has long been known to play a key role in social bonding and attachment. Clear evidence of this first emerged from experiments with a monogamous breed of prairie voles: Oxytocin, when dripped into one animal’s brain in the presence of the opposite sex, creates in that animal a long-lasting preference to remain together with the other, cuddled up side by side, behavior taken as evidence that oxytocin sparked the formation of a powerful social bond between them. In humans, oxytocin surges during sexual intercourse for both men and women, and, for women, during childbirth and lactation, pivotal interpersonal moments that stand to forge new social bonds or cement existing ones. The natural blasts of oxytocin during such moments are so large and powerful that for many years they all but blinded scientists to the more subtle ebb and flow of oxytocin during more typical day-to-day activities, like playing with your kids, getting to know your new neighbor, or striking a deal with a new business partner. Technical obstacles also needed to be cleared. Decades after oxytocin’s role in monogamous prairie voles had been amply charted, scientists studying human biochemistry still struggled to find ways to reliably and noninvasively measure and manipulate oxytocin during natural behavior. Scientific understanding of oxytocin’s role in your everyday social life could not advance without more practical research tools at hand. Dramatic new evidence of oxytocin’s power to shape your social life first surfaced in Europe, where laws permitted the use of a synthetic form of oxytocin, available as a nasal spray, for investigational purposes. Among the first of these studies was one in which 128 men from Zurich played the so-called trust game with real monetary outcomes on the line. At random, these men were assigned to either the role of “investor” or the role of “trustee,” and each was given an equivalent pot of starting funds. Investors made the first move in the game. They could give some, all, or none of their allocated funds to the trustee. During the transfer of funds, the experimenter tripled their investment while letting the trustee know how much the investors had originally transferred.

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

  Calvin, being a foreigner and a Frenchman, ignorant of the German language, acted a subordinate part, though he commanded the respect of both parties for his ability and learning, in which he was not inferior to any. Having no faith in compromises, or in the sincerity of the emperor, he helped to defeat rather than to promote the pacific object of these conferences. He favored an alliance between the Lutheran princes of the Smalkaldian League with Francis I., who, as the rival of Charles V., was inclined to such an alliance. He was encouraged in this line of policy by Queen Marguerite, who corresponded with him at that time through his friend Sleidan, the statesman and historian.528 He did succeed in securing, after repeated efforts, a petition of the Lutheran princes assembled at Regensburg to the French king in behalf of the persecuted Protestants in France (May 23, 1541).529 But he had no more confidence in Francis I. than in Charles V. "The king," he wrote to Farel (September, 1540), "and the emperor, while contending in cruel persecution of the godly, both endeavor to gain the favor of the Roman idol."530 He placed his trust in God, and in a close alliance of the Lutheran princes among themselves and with the Protestants in France and Switzerland. He was a shrewd observer of the religious and political movements, and judged correctly of the situation and the principal actors. Nothing escaped his attention. He kept Farel at Neuchâtel informed even about minor incidents. Calvin attended the first colloquy at Frankfurt in February, 1539, in a private capacity, for the purpose of making the personal acquaintance of Melanchthon and pleading the cause of his persecuted brethren in France, whom he had more at heart than German politics. The Colloquy was prorogued to Hagenau in June, 1540, but did not get over the preliminaries. A more important Colloquy was held at Worms in November of the same year. In that ancient city Luther had made his ever memorable declaration in favor of the liberty of conscience, which in spite of the pope’s protest had become an irrepressible power. Calvin appeared at this time in the capacity of a commissioner both of Strassburg and the dukes of Lüneburg. He went reluctantly, being just then in ill health and feeling unequal to the task. But he gathered strength on the spot, and braced up the courage of Melanchthon who, as the spokesman of the Lutheran theologians, showed less disposition to yield than on former occasions. He took a prominent part in the discussion. He defeated Dean Robert Mosham of Passau in a second disputation, and earned on that occasion from Melanchthon, and the Lutheran theologians who were present, the distinctive title "the Theologian" by eminence.531

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  When you especially resonate with someone else—even if you’ve just met—the two of you are quite literally on the same wavelength, biologically. A synchrony also unfolds internally, as your physiological responses—in both body and brain—mirror each other as well. True connection is one of love’s bedrock prerequisites, a prime reason that love is not unconditional, but instead requires a particular stance. Neither abstract nor mediated, true connection is physical and unfolds in real time. It requires a sensory and temporal copresence of bodies. The main mode of sensory connection, scientists contend, is eye contact. Other forms of real-time sensory contact—through touch, voice, or mirrored body postures and gestures—no doubt connect people as well and at times can substitute for eye contact. Nevertheless, eye contact may well be the most potent trigger for connection and oneness. A smile, more so than any other emotional expression, pops out and draws your eye. That’s a good thing, too, because a smile can mean so many different things. Why, for instance, is your new coworker suddenly smiling at you? Is she being sincere or smug? Friendly or self-absorbed? Caring or just polite? Considering that Paul Ekman, the world’s leading scientist of human facial expressions, estimates that humans regularly use some fifty different types of smiles, the ambiguity of any given smile becomes more understandable. Plus, the differences between different types of smiles—a friendly smile, an enjoyment smile, a domineering smile, even a fake smile—can be subtle. Whereas scientists like Ekman use deliberate and formal reasoning to detect those subtle differences—most often with the aid of slow-motion video capture—without specialized training, all you have are your gut feelings to figure out what your coworker’s smile really means. Yet those gut feelings can be a powerful source of intuition and wisdom if you know how best to access them. Eye contact, it turns out, is crucial. New scientific evidence suggests that if you don’t make direct eye contact with your coworker, you’re at a distinct disadvantage in trying to figure out what she really feels or means. Eye contact is the key that unlocks the wisdom of your intuitions because when you meet your smiling coworker’s gaze, her smile triggers activity within your own brain circuitry that allows you to simulate—within your own brain, face, and body—the emotions you see emanating from hers. You now know, through this rapid and nonconscious simulation, more about what it feels like to have smiled like that. Access to this embodied feeling, this information springing up from within you, makes you wiser. You become more accurate, for instance, at discerning what her unexpected smile means. You’re more attuned, less gullible. You intuitively grasp her intentions. She wasn’t being friendly after all, she was gloating. She wasn’t looking to connect, but was instead self-satisfied.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Dr. David Moscovitch puts it this way: “If you try to be warm and friendly and curious, then everything else—the blemishes and foibles and awkward behaviors all of us have simply because we’re human—becomes much less important to the other person because we’re connecting with them.” And that’s what matters: connection, which is built on warmth and trust. So keep showing up. Share what you think and feel and do. Show others that you like them. These are the building blocks of beautiful friendships. Epilogue In 1938, researchers at Harvard wondered: What makes a good life? This, to say the least, was an unlikely time to reflect on quality of life. In 1938, the Great Depression had been grinding on for the better part of a decade. Positive psychology and the science of happiness were developments not even on the horizon. Fulfillment was not the job of science. This was the realm of poets and priests, philosophers and ethicists. Indeed, studying what went into a good life was totally impractical, blindly ambitious, and utterly revolutionary. In 1938, it never should have been on the agenda. But thankfully, it was. What resulted was the Study of Adult Development, also known as the Grant Study after its inaugural funder, William T. Grant. The Grant Study is the rarest among rare. It is a gem first because of its longevity—more than seventy-five years and four generations of researchers. The study has weathered wartime, social upheaval, and unimaginable medical and technological advances. It carries on in a world inconceivable in 1938. All in all, 724 young men signed up. Given that this was the 1930s, diversity as we know it wasn’t even a concept, much less a value, resulting in an all-white and all-male group. However, the study did cover both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. The most privileged and powerful of young America signed up, including a member of the Harvard swim team by the name of John F. Kennedy, as did young men from Boston’s poorest neighborhoods, most of whom lived in tenements without running water. For over seventy-five years, the men opened up their lives to the research team. The men shared health and illnesses, successes and challenges. Everything was measured, from their bodies to their personality, intelligence, political leanings, exercise habits, alcohol consumption, and much more. The researchers asked about the young men’s childhood, their relationships with their mothers (indeed, when the study opened, Freud was still a living, looming presence), and, as time rolled by, their jobs, their friends, their spouses, and the communities they built across the decades.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  21 Heb. 116 Jn. 20%. It is true that in certain instances such as Heb. rr} 3 the emphasis is so laid upon the apprehension and acceptance of truth rather than upon the corresponding volitional action, as to seem to imply that volitional action (except as involved in the will to believe) is not strictly speaking included in faith. But it is clear from the remainder of the chapter that the writer intends to apply the term xtotts only to a belief which exerts a determinative influence on conduct. If, therefore, volitional action is not strictly included in the term axtottc it is involved in the act itself. In Jas. 214-22, it is true also that «lotic is used of a purely intellectual holding of a religious proposition. But this usage is quite exceptional in N. T., and, moreover, the whole argument of this passage is aimed at showing that such faith is futile, and the usage of the rest of the letter indicates that in this passage the writer is merely adopting the verbal usage of another whose views he does not hold, and whose usage of words is different from his own usual employment of them. Once again, while in the Lxx (representing yoxn) and Apocr., ttotevw, followed by words referring to God or persons or things represent- ing God, is often used to express the attitude of the religious man, and while this use of the word furnishes the principal basis or point of attach- ment for the development of N. T. usage, it becomes much more frequent and important in N. T. than inO.T. In short, both xtotig and mtotetw are in N. T. prevailingly religious rather than intellectual or ethical terms, glotts is active rather than passive, and both are employed with much greater frequency than in preceding literature, either Greek or Hebrew. These facts are to such an extent characteristic of N. T. as a whole that while its several portions exhibit considerable difference in their emphasis upon the different elements or aspects of faith, yet these differences do not necessitate a separate lexicographical treatment for the different writers. The prominence of the verb and the fact that xfottc is active, so that the idea expressed by it is more definitely expressed by the verb with its various limitations, make it expedient that the verb should precede the noun. A. IItetedw has the following meanings: 1. To accept as true, to believe a proposition, or a person making a state- ment. The thing believed is expressed by an accusative, or by a clause 480 GALATIANS introduced by &tt; once by an infinitive with subject accusative (Acts 15"); once by a dative (Acts 24"); once by eig with the accusative (x Jn. 51°°); the name of the person making the statement, or the impersonal thing which is thought of as bearing testimony, is in the dative (Mt. 21%5 #2 Jn.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  The active sense: faith, belief, trust. 1. Belief of a‘proposition, or of a person, intellectual assent simply as such: Jas. 214-26, 2. Belief of the truth concerning, and corresponding trust in, a person including or involving the attitude of will and conduct which such belief calls for, especially the committal of one’s self to him to whom the truth pertains. The object of faith in this sense is in N. T. almost always ex- plicitly or by implication God or Christ; rarely the truth or a truth. (a) Apprehension and acceptance of the truth concerning God or Christ with the emphasis on this intellectual element: Heb. 11%: xfotet vooiwey xatnoticacbat todcs aidvac shuate Beod. Cf. v.1. (b) Belief in the power and willingness of God, as revealed in the pre- Christian period, to bless, help, and save, and a corresponding trust and 31 482 GALATIANS obedience; used of the faith of Abraham: Rom. 4% 1 1% 18, 19, 20 Heb. 11& % 17; of that of other O. T. characters: Heb. 4? 114 5 7 (bis) 11, 18, 20-89, (c) Of essentially the same type is the faith in God which Jesus, in the synoptic gospels, enjoins his disciples to exercise: Mk. 11%: &yete xtotty Oeod. See also Mt. 172° 212! Lk. 175 * 188; and that which is spoken of in Jas. 1% 6, (d) Belief in the power and willingness of Jesus to do a certain thing, heal the sick, deliver from peril, forgive sins, accompanied by a committal of one’s self to him in reference to the matter in question: Mt. 9%9: xat& chy ctotty buoy yernPntw dutv. Cf. v.28: mtotedete Ste Sbvauat toito mothoat; see also Mt. 81° 9% 22 1528 Mk. 25 449 534 ros? Lk, 520 7% 50 825, 48 y719 18%. Closely akin to this is the faith in the name of the risen Jesus, which secured the healing of the sick, Acts 31°14. In Jas. 51° it is not clear whether the faith referred to is thought of as faith in God or in Christ. (e) The acceptance of the gospel message concerning Jesus Christ, and the committal of one’s self for salvation to him or to God as revealed in him. Such faith is often spoken of specifically as faith in Jesus Christ, less often as faith in or towards God, very frequently simply as faith, or the faith, its specifically Christian character as based upon the Christian reve- lation and involving acceptance of the gospel message being implied in the context.

• From A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1921)

  Cic. 418: xa thy odctayv aiths 6 Kixéowy év afoter xAnoovdmog &moAetpbels StepbAattey. (c) In an intellectual sense with reference to a proposition: conviction, confident belief; in Plato it is distinguished from éxtothun, knowledge, in that the latter implies the actuality of the thing believed, while xlotic¢ affirms only subjective certainty (Plato, Rep. 6o1E); in Aristotle from 56&%, opinion (Anim. 3. 3° [428 a], which, however, it is said to follow; for though 86& may be true or false, it is impossible not to believe those things which one thinks). In the religious realm, rtott¢ denotes general belief in the existence and power of the gods, not personal faith and con- fidence in them: Plato, Legg. XII 966D. (d) By metonymy, probably connected with (b): that with which one is entrusted, an office, as the expression or result of the confidence reposed in one: Polyb. 5. 412. 2. The passive sense: trustworthiness, faithfulness, or the pledge or assurance of it. (a) Personal fidelity, faithfulness: Hdt. 81%; Xen. An. 1. 63; Aristot. Mor. Magn. II 115 (1208 b*4); Polyb. 1. 433. (b) Pledge or promise of good faith, assurance of fidelity: Hdt. 3% Thuc. 5. 30%; Xen. Cyr. 7. 144. (c) Token of a compact, guarantee: Soph. O. C. 1632; Esch. Fr. 394 (290). (d) Evidence, proof, as presented in court: Polyb. 3. 100%; or in argument: Aristot. Rhet. 3. 13? (1414 a*). B. ImNtotedw, found in Greek writers from A®schylus down, is used in a sense corresponding to the active sense of xfotic: 1. To believe, to trust. (a) To trust, to put confidence in, to rely upon, whether of persons or things; the object is in the dat.: Eur. Or. 1103: Xen. Am. 3. 12° 5. 29; Thue, 5. 1122. (b) In an intellectual sense, to believe a person, or his word or statement. The name of the person, or the noun denoting his word, is in the dat., the word expressing the content of his statement in the acc.: Soph. EI. 886; * This treatment of classical usage is mainly based on Cremer. 476 GALATIANS Plato, Phaed. 88C; Asch. Pers. 800; Eur. Hel. 710. Followed also by an inf. with subj. acc.: Plato, Gorg. 524A. Since believing one’s word and putting confidence in one are in experience closely related, a sharp dis- crimination can not always be made between (a) and (b). 2. To entrust, to commit, with the acc. of the thing committed and dat. of the person to whom it is entrusted: Xen. Mem. 4. 4". Il. HEBREW USAGE OF PPS, M1PY, POX, AND MPR A. 73x in O. T. The primary sense of the root ps is, appar- ently, to be firm, lasting, enduring. This sense appears in a few uses of the noun. 1. Steadiness, stability. (a) Of physical things, steadiness, firmness: Ex. 17". (b) Of institutions, stability: Isa. 33°: “And there shall be stability in thy times.”

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Ass-fucking is not about shit. It’s about not being afraid of your shit, going past your shit—to find the shit that matters. PROFILE OF AN ASS-FUCKER Ass-fucking a woman is clearly about authority. The man’s authority; the woman’s complete acceptance of it. A man must have this confidence, in himself and his cock, to fuck a woman in the ass. If he does not have this control, his cock will direct the action; he will move too quickly, hurt the once-willing woman, and rarely, rightly, will he be given a second chance. Why A-Man has this authority I do not know. Psychology might find childhood reasons, but I believe, ultimately, that it’s something God-given, a deep knowledge of personal responsibility. This kind of self-possession and lack of desperation can get a man a long way with a woman . . . or at least partway up her ass. In the end, it’s who you are that will get you somewhere. Or nowhere. He told me once that he likes being where he shouldn’t be, crossing the velvet rope, hand in the candy jar, late to work, cock in my ass, an ass too small for his cock. A-Man made it so deeply into my ass because he dared. No one else really tried. Anyone who dares to be that intimate, that crazy, well, he might just get somewhere he never got before . I am in the throes of coming at the moment of first touch, my body, pussy, ass so open they peel outwardly to suck him in. I was never that open before. If I were that open to someone else, would I feel the same joy of openness? No. They would annoy me long before I was that open. It’s all that yakking that ruins it; it reveals too much. A-Man is the least annoying man I’ve ever known. And the only one who never yields to my will. At the same time, contrary to easy supposition, I do not believe that it is the arrogant, macho man who is the great ass-fucker: he is the asshole. That guy probably doesn’t even like women, he’s too busy competing with other men. In my limited experience, the great ass-fucker is the patient, gentle man, the one who knows how to listen to a woman, how to be with a woman, and has the equipment that can slow her down. He is the one who can imaginatively experience her submission—her release of control—with her, and thus know precisely how to get her to that place: he absorbs all that she gives up. He is a kind man, A-Man. #101 He stands by the bed naked, hard, and beautiful and says, “Show me your pussy.”

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  49 trusted their entire allotment to their trustee more than doubled: Michael Kosfeld, Markus Heinrichs, Paul J. Zak, Urs Fischbacher, and Ernst Fehr (2005). “Oxytocin increases trust in humans.” Nature 435(2): 673–76. 49 the mere act of being entrusted with another person’s money raises the trustee’s naturally occurring levels of oxytocin, and that the greater the trustee’s oxytocin rise, the more of his recent windfall he sacrificed back to the investor: Paul J. Zak, Robert Kurzban, and William T. Matzner (2005). “Oxytocin is associated with human trustworthiness.” Hormones and Behavior 48: 522– 27. Interestingly, the effect of being trusted on circulating oxytocin and monetary sacrifice is far higher if trustees have just had a shoulder massage. See Vera B. Morhenn, Jang Woo Park, Elisabeth Piper, and Paul J. Zak (2008). “Monetary sacrifice among strangers is mediated by endogenous oxytocin release after physical contact.” Evolution and Human Behavior 29: 375–83. 49 more trusting—a whopping 44 percent more trusting—with confidential information about themselves: Moira Mikolajczak, Nicolas Pinon, Anthony Lane, Philippe de Timary, and Olivier Luminet (2010). “Oxytocin not only increases trust when money is at stake, but also when confidential information is in the balance.” Biological Psychology 85: 182–84. 49 sharing an important secret from your life with someone you just met increases your naturally circulating levels of oxytocin: Szabolcs Keri and Imre Kiss (2011). “Oxytocin response in a trust game and habituation of arousal.” Physiology and Behavior 102: 221–24. The effect of telling secrets on oxytocin holds unless you are diagnosed with schizophrenia; see Szabolcs Keri, Imre Kiss, and Oguz Keleman (2009). “Sharing secrets: Oxytocin and trust in schizophrenia.” Social Neuroscience 4(4): 287–93. 50 The effects of oxytocin on trust turn out to be quite sensitive to interpersonal cues: Moiri Mikolajczak, James J. Gross, Anthony Lane, Olivier Corneille, Philippe de Timary, and Olivier Luminet (2010). “Oxytocin makes people trusting, not gullible.” Psychological Science 21(8): 1072–74. Likewise, oxytocin seems to especially promote trust with in-group members; see Carsten K. W. De Dreu, Lindred L. Greer, Gerben A. Van Kleef, Shaul Shalvi, and Michel J. J. Handgraaf (2010). “Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 108(4): 1262–66. 50 under the influence of oxytocin, you attend more to people’s eyes: Adam J. Guastella, Philip B. Mitchell, and Mark R. Dadds (2008). “Oxytocin increases gaze to the eye region of human faces.” Biological Psychiatry 63: 3–5. 50 more attuned to their smiles, especially subtle ones: Abigail A. Marsh, Henry H. Yu, Daniel S. Pine, and R. J. R. Blair (2010). “Oxytocin improves specific recognition of positive facial expressions.” Psychopharmacology 209: 225–32. 50 a better judge of their feelings: Gregor Domes, Markus Heinrichs, Andre Michel, Christoph Berger, and Sabine C. Herpertz (2007). “Oxytocin improves ‘mind-reading’ in humans.” Biological Psychiatry 61: 731–33. 50 view people on the whole as more attractive and trustworthy: Angeliki Theodoridou, Angela C. Rowe, Ian S. Penton-Voak, and Peter J.

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

  We are shut up therefore to the theory of a dream or vision, and an experience within the mind of Constantine. This is supported by the oldest testimony of Lactantius, as well as by the report of Rufinus and Sozomen, and we do not hesitate to regard the Eusebian cross in the skies as originally a part of the dream,29 which only subsequently assumed the character of an outward objective apparition either in the imagination of Constantine, or by a mistake of the memory of the historian, but in either case without intentional fraud. That the vision was traced to supernatural origin, especially after the happy success, is quite natural and in perfect keeping with the prevailing ideas of the age.30 Tertullian and other ante-Nicene and Nicene fathers attributed many conversions to nocturnal dreams and visions. Constantine and his friends referred the most important facts of his life, as the knowledge of the approach of hostile armies, the discovery of the holy sepulchre, the founding of Constantinople, to divine revelation through visions and dreams. Nor are we disposed in the least to deny the connection of the vision of the cross with the agency of divine Providence, which controlled this remarkable turning point of history. We may go farther and admit a special providence, or what the old divines call a providentia specialissima; but this does not necessarily imply a violation of the order of nature or an actual miracle in the shape of an objective personal appearance of the Saviour. We may refer to a somewhat similar, though far less important, vision in the life of the pious English Colonel James Gardiner.31 The Bible itself sanctions the general theory of providential or prophetic dreams and nocturnal visions through which divine revelations and admonitions are communicated to men.32 The facts, therefore, may have been these. Before the battle Constantine, leaning already towards Christianity as probably the best and most hopeful of the various religions, seriously sought in prayer, as he related to Eusebius, the assistance of the God of the Christians, while his heathen antagonist Maxentius, according to Zosimus,33 was consulting the sibylline books and offering sacrifice to the idols. Filled with mingled fears and hopes about the issue of the conflict, he fell asleep and saw in a dream the sign of the cross of Christ with a significant inscription and promise of victory. Being already familiar with the general use of this sign among the numerous Christians of the empire, many of whom no doubt were in his own army, he constructed the labarum,34 or rather he changed the heathen labarum into a standard of the Christian cross with the Greek monogram of Christ,35 which he had also put upon the shields of the soldiers. To this cross-standard, which now took the place of the Roman eagles, he attributed the decisive victory over the heathen Maxentius.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Saint Ambrose has written about the miracle of these coronets of flowers, in the preface to his mass for Saint Cecilia’s Day. That wise father of the Church has declared that Saint Cecilia received the palm of martyrdom when she renounced the world and the flesh. She was thereby filled with the grace of God. ‘Witness the conversion of Valerian and Tiburce,’ he writes, ‘as a token of her holiness. That is why the angel brought down two sweet crowns from heaven. This virgin has brought bliss to both these men. The world will know the worth of truth and chastity in love.’ Then Cecilia showed to Tiburce the folly of worshipping false idols; they are made of stone and wood; they are deaf and dumb; they are to be shunned. ‘Who does not believe this,’ Tiburce told her, ‘is as dumb as wood and deaf as stone. This is the truth I now know.’ On hearing these words Cecilia kissed his breast in token of their kinship. ‘I now take you as my faithful friend,’ the blessed maid said. ‘Just as the love of Christ made me your brother’s wife,’ she added, ‘so now for the same love I take you as my kinsman and dear relation. Now that you have forsaken your false gods, go with your brother and be baptized. Cleanse your soul. Then you will see the face of the angel.’ Tiburce turned to Valerian. ‘Will you tell me, brother, where are we going? Who will baptize me?’ ‘There is a man,’ he replied. ‘Come with me now in good heart and spirit. I will take you to Pope Urban.’ ‘To Urban? Are you taking me to see him? That would be strange. That would be wonderful. Are we talking about the Urban who has so often been condemned to death? About the man who is in perpetual hiding, and dare not show himself? If he were found, or seen, he would be consigned to the flames. We also would keep him company in the fire. While we are looking for the divine world, concealed by the light of heaven, on earth our bodies will burn. Is that the truth of it?’ Cecilia replied to him calmly. ‘If life on earth were the only life, my dear brother, then you would be right to fear death. But it is not the only life. There is a better life in another place that will last eternally. Fear nothing. Jesus Christ has made a promise to us. God the Father has created all things in heaven and earth. He has given reason to mortals. God the Holy Ghost has, through grace, imparted to us the soul. God the Son, when He took on human form in the world, declared that there was another life to be won elsewhere.’ ‘Dear sister,’ Tiburce said, ‘I don’t understand. You have told me just now that there is only one living God. Now you speak to me of three.’

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  If you stop trying to control your mind so much, you’ll have intuitive hunches about what this or that character is all about. It is hard to stop controlling, but you can do it. If your character suddenly pulls a half-eaten carrot out of her pocket, let her. Later you can ask yourself if this rings true. Train yourself to hear that small inner voice. Most people’s intuitions are drowned out by folk sayings. We have a moment of real feeling or insight, and then we come up with a folk saying that captures the insight in a kind of wash. The intuition may be real and ripe, fresh with possibilities, but the folk saying is guaranteed to be a cliché, stale and self-contained. Take the attitude that what you are thinking and feeling is valuable stuff, and then be naive enough to get it all down on paper. But be careful: if your intuition says that your story sucks, make sure it really is your intuition and not your mother. “I see this character in a purple sharkskin suit,” you suddenly think, and then the voice of the worried mother says, “No, no, put him in something respectable.” But if you listen to the worried mother, pretty soon you’ll be asleep and so will your reader. Your intuition will make it a much wilder and more natural ride; it may show you what would really jump out from behind those trees over there. You won’t always get a clear, panting, “Aha! Purple sharkskin suit!” More often you will hear a subterranean murmur. It may sound like one of the many separate voices that make up the sounds of a creek. Or it may come in code, oblique and sneaky, creeping in from around the corner. If you shine too much light on it, it may draw back and fade away. I think a major step in learning to rely on your intuition is to find a usable metaphor for it. Broccoli is so ridiculous that it works for me. A friend says that his intuition is his animal: “My animal thinks this,” he says, or “My animal hates that.” But whatever you come up with needs to suggest a voice that you are not trying to control. If you’re lost in the forest, let the horse find the way home. You have to stop directing, because you will only get in the way. Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly. There will be many mistakes, many things to take out and others that need to be added. You just aren’t always going to make the right decision. My friend Terry says that when you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Thus, good dialogue encompasses both what is said and what is not said. What is not said will sit patiently outside that stuck elevator door, or it will dart around the characters’ feet inside the elevator, like rats. So let these characters hold back some thoughts, and at the same time, let them detonate little bombs. If you are lucky, your characters may become impatient with your inability, while writing dialogue, to keep up with all they have to say. This is when you will know that you are on the right track. Dialogue is the way to nail character, so you have to work on getting the voice right. You don’t want to sit there, though, trying to put the right words in their mouths. I don’t think the right words exist already in your head, any more than the characters do. They exist somewhere else. What we have in our heads are fragments and thoughts and things we’ve heard and memorized, and we take our little ragbag and reach into it and throw some stuff down and then our unconscious kicks in. For instance, say you have a guy walking down the street, and it’s cold, and you’ve always wanted a leather topcoat, so you give him one. Then you follow him down the street. Describe what you see, and listen carefully. Say this boy meets a girl. The boy in the leather overcoat meets the beautiful girl with the harelip and the Gucci bag, on the street, and he can’t just say, Hey, let’s get married! Things need to happen. They need to get to know each other, even if just a little. They will talk to each other, and they will talk about each other to friends. Get all this down. After you’ve spent a while with them, they will start to sound more like themselves—because you are getting to really know them—and you may see that you’d better get rid of that topcoat, it’s pretty jive, and that you need to go back and redo the early dialogue. But don’t stop and do it just now. Keep moving; let them spend some time together, let them jam for a while. Come back later for the rewrite. The better you know the characters, the more you’ll see things from their point of view. You need to trust that you’ve got it in you to listen to people, watch them, and notice what they wear and how they move, to capture a sense of how they speak. You want to avoid at all costs drawing your characters on those that already exist in other works of fiction. You must learn about people from people, not from what you read. Your reading should confirm what you’ve observed in the world.