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 Pleasure Activism (2017)

  The second time, it was a lover who knew where the water was inside me and didn’t say a word but reached into me with busy fingers, tireless, finding me, bringing me to the surface, inviting my breath with hers, bringing me out. I trusted her touch. I relaxed, I opened. I thought squirting was only possible on my later orgasms in a multi-orgasmic sexual session, that the third orgasm was the gate, after which the water might come. I became voracious, wanting my lovers to continue and continue and continue, insatiable until the water came. Each orgasm brought down defenses, opened me up, brought breadth and width between my thighs. But the pressure of ejaculation, of feeling incomplete without it, began to distort my connection to my lovers, my presence in the moment. Perhaps this was what men feel? With time I realized it wasn’t about orgasmic marathons but about my presence, about my detachment from outcome, about my ability to bring my whole self to the point of contact with a lover or a finger or a toy. About letting my lover know when they are at the mouth of the river, of saying yes (and stay, and harder). I change the bedding, I prepare for oceans, I learn to respect the sea within. Sub-section: Skills for Sex in the #MeToo EraMost of the following pieces emerged in the wake of the latest wave of #metoo storytelling. I wrote these columns to address pleasure in this context and learn how we can begin to deconstruct rape culture through both a pleasure politic and pleasure practices. I feel very underwhelmed by strategies to eliminate sexual attraction, connection, or energy between humans as a way of ending rape culture, because it feels like asking everyone to be less honest about their feelings and complexity, asking everyone to repress some aspect of nature that wants to flow and actually needs healthy boundaries and transparency. The level of harm that still exists after several decades of trying to eliminate sexual tension from professional spaces would suggest that desexualization leads to repression and then toxic outbursts of harm, rather than actually decreasing harm. Part of transformative justice is getting to the root of harm, and so much sexual harm is rooted in sexual shame and repression. Increasing this with punitive frameworks around human connection seems bound to continue or increase resentment and harm. The following pieces acknowledge that many of us, at least during certain phases of our lives, are navigating an ever-shifting landscape of desire. They suggest that we can shift from a rape/punishment culture to a culture of enthusiastic consent and clear, respected boundaries. This series explores the skills all genders need in this navigation—clear conversations, boundaries, flirtation skills, liberated fantasies, and more.

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

  Calvin accepts Augustin’s definition that a sacrament (corresponding to the Greek "mystery") is "a visible sign of an invisible grace," but he improves it by emphasizing the sealing character of the sacrament, according to Rom. 4:11, and the necessity of faith as the condition of receiving the benefit of the ordinance. "It is," he says, "an outward sign by which the Lord seals in our consciences the promises of his good-will towards us, to support the weakness of our faith, or a testimony of his grace towards us, with a reciprocal attestation of our piety towards him." It is even more expressive than the word. It is a divine seal of authentication, which sustains and strengthens our faith. "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief" (Mark 9:24). To be efficacious, the sacraments must be accompanied by the Spirit, that internal Teacher, by whose energy alone our hearts are penetrated, and our affections moved. Without the influence of the Spirit, the sacraments can produce no more effect upon our minds, than the splendor of the sun on blind eyes, or the sound of a voice upon deaf ears. If the seed falls on a desert spot, it will die; but if it be cast upon a cultivated field, it will bring forth abundant increase. Calvin vigorously opposes, as superstitious and mischievous, the scholastic opus operatum theory that the sacraments justify and confer grace by an intrinsic virtue, provided we do not obstruct their operation by a mortal sin. A sacrament without faith misleads the mind to rest in the exhibition of a sensuous object rather than in God himself, and is ruinous to true piety. He agrees with Augustin in the opinion that the sign and the matter of the sacrament are not inseparably connected, and that it produces its intended effect only in the elect. He quotes from him the sentence: "The morsel of bread given by the Lord to Judas was poison; not because Judas received an evil thing, but because, being a wicked man, he received a good thing in a sinful manner." But this must not be understood to mean that the virtue and truth of the sacrament depend on the condition or choice of him who receives it. . The symbol consecrated by the word of the Lord is in reality what it is declared to be, and preserves its virtue, although it confers no benefit on a wicked and impious person. Augustin happily solves this question in a few words: "If thou receive it carnally, still it ceases not to be spiritual; but it is not so to thee." The office of the sacrament is the same as that of the word of God; both offer Christ and his heavenly grace to us, but they confer no benefit without the medium of faith.

• From Pleasure Activism (2017)

  In my relationship coaching work, I often see people push down their deepest desires because our society measures our success by a relationship, even if it’s a bad relationship—being “alone” is still read as a sign of failure. These denied desires become toxic energy that strives for daylight. Desire shifts and changes over time, but my mom always taught me that it doesn’t disappear. Opening a relationship in some way can release a desire and allow it to nourish the relationship, relieve pressure, and feed trust and satisfaction. Nonmonogamy looks different for everyone. The model I’ve been most excited by recently is relationship anarchy, which operates around a set of principles that can strengthen any connection.124 I find this model makes room for all kinds of relationships, increasing the freedom and truth in any formation. It’s a deeply feminist model, founded in the equality of all partners and the idea that everyone gets to determine what works for them. Trust is a core aspect of relationship anarchy and a core part of reprogramming the parts of us that believe we can never trust those we love, that we have to be suspicious and deceitful in the pursuit and maintenance of relationships. What if, instead, we started from trust, and we kept returning to trust, measuring intimacy by how much it made us trust ourselves and trust those we hold close to us? Because let me testify—trust feels incredibly good. We often take for granted the kind of trust we have for friends and that we can trust our friends to love us and also love other friends, to get different needs met in different friendships. Bringing this kind of trust to our intimate relationships, whether the needs include sex or just other ways of knowing, means more time can be spent on the pleasure of connection. Hot and Heavy Homework At the top of a blank page, write down your ideal structure (monogamy, open marriage, lovers, et cetera) for sexual connection, love, and relationship. Create a map from the bottom of the page to that ideal, showing what skills, conversations, and practices are needed to get there.

• From Philosophy and Religion in the West (1999)

  1. If critical dialogue is conducted in the spirit of Socrates then reasoned disagreement is a form of respect for the other. 2. Such dialogue preserves mutuality with the other by putting the self at risk: if I criticize other people’s views, it is only fair to listen to their criticisms of my views. 3. Openness to other views involves the risk of what may be called Socratic or cognitive repentance: the recognition that my beliefs are based on ignorance or error. 4. This risk does not lessen one’s commitment to one’s own religion, but is simply a consequence of the adventure of life, in which it is always possible to find one is mistaken. 5. I would propose such a dialogical approach to the diversity of religious traditions, in the conviction that it “does justice to difference”: i.e., pays respect to otherness of other people’s views and the possibility that their religion really does mean something fundamentally different from mine. 6. All this is a reason to be glad that the religious traditions of the West have a long history of learning from the philosophical tradition. Essential Reading: Hick, “A Philosophy of Religious Pluralism” in Hick, chapter 3. Mitchell in “Theology and Falsification.” Supplemental Reading: Cary, “Believing the Word: A Proposal about Knowing Other Persons” (my philosophical argument in favor of the view that knowledge of other persons is always dependent on their authority). Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith, chapters 7 and 8 (on critical historiography and belief in miracles) and chapters 9 and 11 (on the “externalism” of Reformed Epistemology). James, The Variety of Religious Experience, chapters 16–20. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, chapters 10–36 (contains what is in my judgment the deepest attempt to address the problem of theodicy ever written by a Christian). ©1999 The Teaching Company. 165 Questions to Consider: 1. Do you think there is a role for authority in religion? 2. Do you think it is possible to disagree with other people’s religions without disrespect? ©1999 The Teaching Company. 166 Timeline

• From The Art of Memoir

  a loved one has engaged in hyperbole or stretched the bounds of evidence or dug in her heels to prove a point that’s wrong. But ask yourself, how many of your clan would just flat out make up stuff that everybody knows is bullshit, then publish it? Publishing lies requires a whole different level of sociopathy. For veracity’s sake, it doesn’t cost a memoirist the reader’s confidence either to skip over the half-remembered scene or to replicate her own psychic uncertainty—“This part is blurry.” Any decent comp teacher schools you to work in the realms of maybe and perhaps. The great memoirist enacts recall’s fuzzy form. That’s why we trust her. As we’ve lost faith in old authorities, our confidence in objective truth has likewise eroded. Science and scripture and church doctrine were once judged unassailable founts of truth. History was told from the viewpoint of the victors—cowboys good, Native Americans bad. We’ve learned to question the Pentagon report and the firm presidential denial. Histories and biographies often open with “positioning essays” explaining the writer’s innate prejudices. And while formerly sacred sources of truth like history and statistics have lost ground, the subjective tale has garnered new territory. That’s partly why memoir is in its ascendancy—not because it’s not corrupt, but because the best ones openly confess the nature of their corruption. The master memoirist creates such a personal interior space, with memories pieced together, that the reader never loses sight of the enterprise’s tentative nature. Maxine Hong Kingston and Michael Herr don’t manufacture authoritative, third-person, I-am-a-camera views. Their books don’t masquerade as fact. They let you in on how their own prejudices mold memory’s sifter. By transcribing the mind so its edges show, a writer constantly reminds the reader that he’s not watching crisp external events played from a digital archive. It’s the speaker’s truth alone. In this way, the form constantly disavows the rigors of objective truth. So how have memoirists’ families reacted? Toby Wolff claimed he was corrected on small points, mostly of chronology, but basically

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  For Christians, faith is trusting that there is a viable ‘big picture’ of life, leading into a decision to step inside this worldview, and live it out. The Latin word credo (I believe) has the root meaning ‘to trust or confide in something or someone’. While we now tend to think of belief in terms of a hesitant theoretical judgement, the creeds see it as a confident personal commitment. I cannot prove that this is true, but I know there is something here that I cannot let go of without losing my identity, significance and meaning. Historically, early Christianity did not see itself as a ‘religion’ (as many now use that word) based on a set of beliefs to which we must assent, but as a way of imagining and living which we can trust, and are invited to enter. Perhaps for this reason, the early Christians were initially known as both ‘believers’ and ‘followers of the way’ – people who thought and acted in a new way. 34 What is the difference between a ‘religious’ belief and an ‘ordinary’ belief? To begin with, there is an obvious similarity: like ordinary beliefs, religious beliefs lie beyond proof. Yet they are not individual disconnected affirmations; they are elements of a greater scheme of things which we are invited to trust, and make the basis of our way of thinking and living. Earlier, I mentioned the philosopher of religion Keith Yandell’s definition of a religion, which captures this point without falling into the error of assuming that belief in God is integral to the identity of religion. His ‘neutral definition’ of religion needs to be quoted more fully. A religion is a conceptual system that provides an interpretation of the world and the place of human beings in it, bases an account of how life should be lived given that interpretation, and expresses this interpretation and lifestyle in a set of rituals, institutions and practices. 35 Yandell chose this definition with some care, aiming to avoid bias in terms of its outcomes. Where the New Atheism defined religion in terms that were designed to facilitate its ridicule and destructive criticism, Yandell does not presuppose anything about the truth or falsity of religion, nor fall into the error of assuming that a religion necessarily involves belief in a god or gods. His concern is to place religion upon a conceptual map, and try to clarify at least some aspects of its distinct identity and functions. One aspect of Yandell’s analysis is particularly significant: his clear recognition that a religious ‘conceptual system’ leads to the creation of moral values and the emergence of a manner of living which is not based on some allegedly universal human rationality, but is an appropriate expression or enactment of the internal logic of this religion.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  As too great a delicacy of sentiments did not extremely belong to my character at that time, I confess, against myself, that I perhaps too readily closed with a proposal which my candor and ingenuity gave me some repugnance to: but not enough to contradict the intention of one to whom I had now thoroughly abandoned the direction of all my steps. For Mrs. Cole had, I do not know how unless by one of those unaccountable invincible sympathies that, nevertheless, from the strongest links, especially of female friendship, won and got entire possession of me. On her side, she pretended that a strict resemblance, she fancied she saw in me, to an only daughter whom she had lost at my age, was the first motive of her taking to me so affectionately as she did. It might be so: there exist a slender motives of attachment, that, gathering force from habit and liking, have proved often more solid and durable than those founded on much stronger reasons; but this I know, that though I had no other acquaintance with her, than seeing her at my lodgings, when I lived with Mr. H..., where she had made errands to sell me some millinery ware, she had by degrees insinuated herself so far into my confidence, that I threw myself blindly into her hands, and came, at length, to regard, love, and obey her implicitly; and, to do her justice, I never experienced at her hands other than a sincerity of tenderness, and care for my interest, hardly heard of in those of her profession. We parted that night, after having settled a perfect unreserved agreement; and the next morning Mrs. Cole came, and took me with her to her house for the first time. Here, at the first sight of things, I found every thing breathe an air of decency, modesty and order.

• From Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life (2010)

  Yet when the strangers leave, “Abraham remained standing before Yahweh.”9 Instead of thinking that the plight of these passing travelers has nothing to do with him, Abraham has “made place for the other” in his life. He has thrown down the precautionary barriers we erect to protect ourselves from harm and entered a sacred dimension of experience. In Hebrew, the world for “holiness” is qaddosh, which literally means “separate, other.” This myth suggests that if instead of excluding the stranger we welcome him, overcoming our inertia, reluctance, fear, or initial repugnance, we will have intimations of the transcendent Otherness that some call “God.” There is a similar moment in the New Testament in Saint Luke’s gospel. It is three days after Jesus’s crucifixion, and two of his disciples are walking together from Jerusalem to nearby Emmaus.10 They are naturally in great distress. On the road, they fall in with another traveler, who asks them why they are so troubled. Instead of telling him to mind his own business, they share with him the terrible story of Jesus’s execution, explaining that they had believed he was the Messiah. The disciples are taking a risk, because the stranger could easily have ridiculed them. But they have the courage to open their hearts to him, expose their raw vulnerability, and confide their most intimate hopes to somebody they have never met before. Their trust is rewarded. Instead of jeering at them, the stranger is able to comfort them. Starting with Moses, he begins to expound the “full message of the prophets,” arguing that the Messiah was destined to suffer before entering his glory. In fact, there is nothing in either the Torah or the prophetic writings to suggest any such thing. The stranger has embarked on some highly inventive rabbinic midrash, and the disciples could have rebuked him for taking too many liberties with the original texts and dismissed his exegesis as nonsense. But again, they are ready to listen to his insights; they allow him to change their minds about their own faith, which is enhanced by this input. Later they would remember how their hearts “burned within them” when the stranger expounded the scriptures.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  LIKE EVERY SCIENTOLOGIST , when Haggis entered the church, he took his first steps into the mind of L. Ron Hubbard. He read about Hubbard’s adventurous life: how he wandered the world, led dangerous expeditions, and healed himself of crippling war injuries through the techniques that he developed into Dianetics. He was not a prophet, like Mohammed, or divine, like Jesus. He had not been visited by an angel bearing tablets of revelation, like Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. Scientologists believe that Hubbard discovered the existential truths that form their doctrine through extensive research—in that way, it is “science.” The apparent rationalism appealed to Haggis. He had long since walked away from the religion of his upbringing, but he was still looking for a way to express his idealism. It was important to him that Scientology didn’t demand belief in a god. But the figure of L. Ron Hubbard did hover over the religion in suggestive ways. He wasn’t worshipped, exactly, but his visage and name were everywhere, like the absolute ruler of a small kingdom. [image file=Image00008.jpg] L. Ron Hubbard in the 1960s There seemed to be two Hubbards within the church: the godlike authority whose every word was regarded as scripture, and the avuncular figure that Haggis saw on the training videos, who came across as wry and self-deprecating. Those were qualities that Haggis shared to a marked degree, and they inspired trust in the man he had come to accept as his spiritual guide. Still, Haggis felt a little stranded by the lack of irony among his fellow Scientologists. Their inability to laugh at themselves seemed at odds with the character of Hubbard himself. He didn’t seem self-important or pious; he was like the dashing, wisecracking hero of a B movie who had seen everything and somehow had it all figured out. When Haggis experienced doubts about the religion, he reflected on the 16 mm films of Hubbard’s lectures from the 1950s and 1960s, which were part of the church’s indoctrination process. Hubbard was always chuckling to himself, marveling over some random observation that had just occurred to him, with a little wink to the audience suggesting that they not take him too seriously. He would just open his mouth and a mob of new thoughts would burst forth, elbowing one another in the race to make themselves known to the world. They were often trivial and disjointed but also full of obscure, learned references and charged with a sense of originality and purpose. “ You walked in one day and you said, ‘I’m a seneschal,’ ” Hubbard observed in a characteristic aside, and this knight with eight-inch spurs, standing there—humph —and say, “I’m supposed to open the doors to this castle, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’m a very trusted retainer.”…He’s insisting he’s the seneschal but nobody will pay him his wages, and so forth.… He was somebody before he became the seneschal.

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  paramount importance here. An Arabic proverb puts it succinctly: “Men forget, God remembers.” What men forget, among other things, is their reciprocal identifications in the game of playing society. Social identities and their corresponding roles are assigned to the individual by others, but others are also quite liable to change or withdraw the assignments. They “forget” who the individual was and, because of the inherent dialectic of recognition and self- recognition, thus powerfully threaten his own recollections of identity. If he can assume that, at any rate, God remembers, his tenuous self-identifications are given a foundation seemingly secure from the shifting reactions of other men. God then becomes the most reliable and ultimately significant other (11). Where the microcosm/macrocosm understanding of the relationship between society and cosmos prevails, the parallelism between the two spheres typically extends to specific roles. These are then understood as mimetic reiterations of the cosmic realities for which they are supposed to stand. All social roles are representations of larger complexes of objectivated meanings (12). For example, the role of father represents a wide variety of meanings ascribed to the institution of the family and, more generally, to the institutionalization of sexuality and interpersonal relationships. When this role is legitimated in mimetic terms —the father reiterating “here below” the actions of creation, sovereignty, or love that have their sacred prototypes “up above”—then its representative character becomes vastly enhanced. Representation of human meanings becomes mimesis of divine mysteries. Sexual intercourse mimes the creation of the universe. Paternal authority mimes the authority of the gods, paternal solicitude the solicitude of the gods. Like the institutions, then, roles become endowed with 49

• From Between Us

  Amae is a final example of a culture-specific emotion. It refers to one’s “inclination to depend on or accept another’s nurturant indulgence, including one’s dependency wish, typically applied to the mother-child relationship”: the mother represents authority but at the same time acts as a servant. In an amae relationship, the dependent partner fully submits to the nurturing partner, giving up control; the nurturing partner is focused on meeting the needs of the dependent partner, without ever judging these needs; they just empathize. Receiving amae (i.e., being the dependent partner) is a bit like letting yourself fall backwards trusting that others will catch you: the nurturing partner catches the trusting, dependent one. Amae is so ingrained as an emotion concept in Japan that when Japanese psychiatrist Takeo Doi told one of his colleagues that there was no translation for this word in English, the colleague responded in astonishment: “Why, even puppies do it!” Leaving out these central emotion words in other languages may have led to an underestimation of the cultural differences in emotion lexicons as well. As illustrated by Doi’s astonished colleague, these words are at the very basis of emotional experience in other cultures, but were not in the list included in the Science article as they did not make it to the WEIRD agendas of emotion researchers. Emotion words play an important role in the socialization of emotions. Although emotion concepts are not limited to a word, emotion lexicons are good starting places to look for cultural differences in emotions. All we know points to the conclusion that different languages conceptualize the emotion domain differently. The category of emotion itself is differently understood across cultures, but moreover, emotion lexicons from different languages do not neatly map. This is one of the reasons that children in different cultures do not come to understand emotions in similar ways. Cultural Episodes What emotion concepts come to mean for children depends on the episodes to which these words become attached. My son Oliver’s concept of pride will include the experiences of his parents praising him for turning a book right side up, or for the many baseball games he won and the cheering as a result of those wins. His “pride” includes the “best student” awards, and the story of “the little engine that could,” one of his favorite children’s books describing a train engine that had all reason to feel good about himself because of his determination. Similarly, Didi’s shame experiences include all instances where his mom was ashamed of him because he disobeyed her, and probably also of instances where his sister behaved shamefully, and perhaps the adventures of some children’s books’ protagonists.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  But as the time approached for me to come to some resolution how to dispose of myself, and I was considering, round where to shift my quarters to, Mrs. Cole, a middle aged discreet sort of woman, who had been brought into my acquaintance by one of the misses that visited me, upon learning my situation, came to offer her cordial advice and service to me; and as I had always taken to her more than to any of my female acquaintances, I listened the easier to her proposals. And, as it happened, I could not have put myself into worse, or into better hands in all London: into worse, because keeping a house of conveniency, there were no lengths in lewdness she would not advise me to go, in compliance with her customers; no schemes, or pleasure, or even unbounded debauchery, she did not take even a delight in promoting: into a better, because nobody having had more experience of the wicked part of the town than she had, was fitter to advise and guard one against the worst dangers of our profession; and what was rare to be met with in those of her’s, she contented herself with a moderate living profit upon her industry and good offices, and had nothing of their greedy rapacious turn. She was really too a gentlewoman born and bred, but through a train of accidents reduced to this course, which she pursued, partly through necessity, partly through choice, as never woman delighted more in encouraging a brisk circulation of the trade, for the sake of the trade itself, or better understood all the mysteries and refinements of it, than she did; so that she was consummately at the top of her profession, and dealt only with customers of distinction: to answer the demands of whom she kept a competent number of her daughters in constant recruit (so she called those whom their youth and personal charms recommended to her adoption and management: several of whom, by her means, and through her tuition and instructions, succeeded very well in the world).

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “Who knows about what happened?” he asks, gently. I watch the fire eat the logs. For a minute I’m not sure which instance he’s referring to. There were so many. The carousel, I remind myself. It’s such a strange memory. Nothing fancy. But private. “Only you. That’s why it seems unlikely…” I look at him. “Did you—?” “No … no, Senna, never. That was our moment. I didn’t even want to think about it after.” I believe him. For a long second our eyes are locked and the past seems to float between us—a frail soap bubble. I break eye contact first, looking down at my socks. Patterned socks, not white. I searched for white, but all that was stocked for me were knee length patterned socks. A deviation from my character. I wear my new, colorful socks over my tights. Today, they are purple and grey. Diagonal stripes. “Senna…?” “Yes, sorry. I was thinking about my socks.” He laughs through his nose, like he’d rather not laugh. I’d rather he not laugh, too. “Isaac, what happened on the carousel was … personal. I don’t tell people things. You know that.” “Okay, let’s forget how this … this … person knows. Let’s assume he does. Maybe it’s a clue.” “A clue?” I say in disbelief. “To what? Our freedom? Like this is a game?” Isaac nods. I study his face, look for a joke. But, there are no jokes in this house. There are just two stolen people, clutching knives as they sleep. “And they call me the fiction writer,” I say it to make him angry, because I know he’s right. I make to stand up, but he grabs my wrist and gently pulls me back down. His eyes travel across the span of my nose and my cheeks. He’s looking at my freckles. He always did that, like they were works of art rather than screwed up pigment. Isaac doesn’t have freckles. He has soft eyes that dip down at the outer corners and two front teeth that overlap slightly. He’s average looking and beautiful at the same time. If you look close enough, you see how intense his features are. Each one speaks to you in a different way. Or maybe I’m just a writer. “We are not here for ransom,” he insists. “They want something from us.” “Like what?” I sound like a petulant child. I lift the back of my hand to my lips and bite the skin on my knuckles. “No one wants anything from me—except more stories, maybe.” Isaac raises his eyebrows. I think of Annie Wilkes and her rooty-patooties. No way. “They didn’t leave me a typewriter,” I point out. “Or even a pen and paper. This isn’t about my writing.” He doesn’t look convinced. I’d rather steer him toward the carousel, especially if it mean he’ll stops looking at me like I have the magical key to get out of here.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  An agreeable accent which colored every one of his words enabled one to identify his Italian origin and, I admit it, this monk's outward graces did much to dispel the alarm the other had caused me. "My dear girl," said he very graciously, "although the hour is unseasonable and though it is not our usage to receive so late, I will however hear your confession, and afterward we will confer upon the means whereby you may pass the night in decency; tomorrow you will be able to bow down before the sacred image which brings you here." We enter the church; the doors are closed; a lamp is lit near the confessional. Severino bids me assume my place, he sits down and requests me to tell him everything with complete confidence. I was perfectly at ease with a man who seemed so mild-mannered, so full of gentle sympathy. I disguised nothing from him: I confessed all my sins; I related all my miseries; I even uncovered the shameful mark wherewith the barbaric Rodin had branded me. Severino listened to everything with keenest attention, he even had me repeat several details, wearing always a look of pity and of interest; but a few movements, a few words betrayed him nevertheless Ä alas! it was only afterward I pondered them thoroughly. Later, when able to reflect calmly upon this interview, it was impossible not to remember that the monk had several times permitted himself certain gestures which dramatized the emotion that had heavy entrance into many of the questions he put to me, and those inquiries not only halted complacently and lingered lovingly over obscene details, but had borne with noticeable insistence upon the following five points: 1 Whether it were really so that I were an orphan and had been born in Paris. 2 Whether it were a certainty I were bereft of kin and had neither friends, nor protection, nor, in a word, anyone to whom I could write. 3 Whether I had confided to anyone, other than to the shepherdess who had pointed out the monastery to me, my purpose in going there, and whether I had not arranged some rendezvous upon my return. 4 Whether it were certain that I had known no one since my rape, and whether I were fully sure the man who had abused me had done so on the side Nature condemns as well as on the side she permits. 5 Whether I thought I had not been followed and whether anyone, according to my belief, might have observed me enter the monastery.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  And this is not only because Frances and I are lesbians, for unfortunately there are some lesbians who are still locked into patriarchal patterns of unequal power relationships. These assumptions of power relationships are being questioned because Frances and I, often painfully and with varying degrees of success, attempt to evaluate and measure over and over again our feelings concerning power, our own and others’. And we explore with care those areas concerning how it is used and expressed between us and between us and the children, openly and otherwise. A good part of our biweekly family meetings are devoted to this exploration. As parents, Frances and I have given Jonathan our love, our openness, and our dreams to help form his visions. Most importantly, as the son of lesbians, he has had an invaluable model — not only of a relationship — but of relating. Jonathan is fourteen now. In talking over this paper with him and asking his permission to share some pieces of his life, I asked Jonathan what he felt were the strongest negative and the strongest positive aspects for him in having grown up with lesbian parents. He said the strongest benefit he felt he had gained was that he knew a lot more about people than most other kids his age that he knew, and that he did not have a lot of the hang-ups that some other boys did about men and women. And the most negative aspect he felt, Jonathan said, was the ridicule he got from some kids with straight parents. “You mean, from your peers?” I said. “Oh no,” he answered promptly. “My peers know better. I mean other kids.” * First published in Conditions: Four (1979). * From “School Note” in The Black Unicom (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1978), p. 55. Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference * M UCH OF WESTERN EUROPEAN history conditions us to see human differences in simplistic opposition to each other: dominant/subordinate, good/bad, up/down, superior/inferior. In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Again, knowledge and understanding. They can function in concert, but they don’t replace each other. But I’m not rejecting your need for documentation. Adrienne: And in fact, I feel you’ve been giving it to me, in your poems always, and most recently in the long prose piece you’ve been writing, * and in talks we’ve been having. I don’t feel the absence of it now. Audre: Don’t forget I’m a librarian. I became a librarian because I really believed I would gain tools for ordering and analyzing information. I couldn’t know everything in the world, but I would gain tools for learning it. But that was of limited value. I can document the road to Abomey for you, and true, you might not get there without that information. I can respect what you’re saying. But once you get there, only you know why, what you came for, as you search for it and perhaps find it. So at certain stages that request for documentation is a blinder, a questioning of my perceptions. Someone once said to me that I hadn’t documented the goddess in Africa, the woman bond that moves throughout The Black Unicorn . * I had to laugh. I’m a poet, not a historian. I’ve shared my knowledge, I hope. Now you go document it, if you wish. I don’t know about you, Adrienne, but I have a difficult enough time making my perceptions verbal, tapping that deep place, forming that handle, and documentation at that point is often useless. Perceptions precede analysis just as visions precede action or accomplishments. It’s like getting a poem … That’s the only thing I’ve had to fight with, my whole life, preserving my perceptions of how things are, and later, learning how to accept and correct at the same time. Doing this in the face of tremendous opposition and cruel judgment. And I spent a long time questioning my perceptions and my interior knowledge, not dealing with them, being tripped by them. Adrienne: Well, I think that there’s another element in all this between us. Certainly in that particular conversation on the telephone where I said you have to tell me chapter and verse. I’ve had great resistance to some of your perceptions. They can be very painful to me. Perceptions about what goes on between us, what goes on between Black and white people, what goes on between Black and white women. So, it’s not that I can just accept your perceptions unblinkingly. Some of them are very hard for me. But I don’t want to deny them. I know I can’t afford to. I may have to take a long hard look and say, “Is this something I can use?

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  The only way to learn consciously to suspend judgments is through practice in a nonthreatening environment. Just like children, when we fear being judged or ridiculed—by ourselves or others—we become immobilized or take refuge in rigid beliefs and habits. But any observer who suspends judgment, even for a moment, immediately becomes more open-minded and relaxed. How can you develop this skill? The first step is to begin acknowledging what triggers your critical responses. Then you must decide whether to repeat those responses or to try setting them aside. All that matters now is that you become aware of when you’re making judgments—especially if they occur automatically and are therefore invisible. Some people have a mistaken notion that suspending judgments means adopting an amoral stance toward sexuality or negating the importance of one’s values. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, only through a courageous examination of the difficult truths of erotic life does it become possible to establish a meaningful ethical system to guide our actions. TRUSTING YOURSELFFew of us have been taught that we can be trusted in the erotic realm—quite the opposite. As youngsters most of us were encouraged by a variety of subliminal and explicit messages to be wary of our eroticism as it was developing. Understandably, adults who have learned these lessons well often feel squeamish about examining the content and meaning of their turn-ons. It’s not surprising or unusual to harbor a semiconscious concern that you might uncover things about yourself that you would be better off not knowing. You can imagine how such an attitude restricts your vision. But if your childhood training has made you uneasy about eroticism, denying that attitude will only make matters worse. The best thing you can do is to acknowledge your feelings, no matter how illogical it may seem, and avoid putting yourself down for them. Discomfort with one’s sexuality takes years to build up and can’t be changed overnight. Your journey of erotic self-discovery will be infinitely easier and more rewarding if you can find and nurture even a small spark of faith in yourself. As you come to realize that eros is fueled by the energy of life itself—and thus contains a deep-rooted urge toward growth and self-affirmation—the legacy of mistrust can be gradually overcome. Keep in mind that those who establish a comfortable acceptance of their erotic urges are the least likely to inflict harm upon themselves or others. USING A GENTLE APPROACHAlthough many have tried to command the inner secrets of their erotic life to reveal themselves, no one has succeeded. Your erotic mind, fearing condemnation or rejection, has become adept at concealing itself. Because few of us are free to express our unfolding eroticism openly, hiding the truth—even from yourself—begins as an act of primitive self-preservation.

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  Question to Paul: “You expected that the visitation of Christ would occur in your own lifetime. We know now that you were wrong about that. You were off by two thousand years and counting. Does that mistake bother you, Paul?” Answer from Paul: “No, not really, but please allow me to quote something I once said: ‘I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom. 8:38–39). I always knew the difference between faith, which is a life’s commitment, and theology, which is a mind’s speculation. I never thought that believing what God would do meant knowing how or even when it would happen. Besides, it is my experience that whatever details we give about the human future are usually wrong, but whatever details we give about the divine future are always wrong. Have you noticed that?” 4Blessings for All the EarthRome did not rely on the inertia or the awe of her subjects to compel their quietude; her guardians instead defined, distributed, and ultimately decorated the landscape of their imperium [empire], while their images stood in every square, their names marked every road, and their coins jingled in every market in the empire. —Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (2000) Just as the Romans planted colonies of retired solders about the world, which were really little bits of Rome set down on foreign soil, so the Jewish colonies in the various big cities might be compared to little bits of Jerusalem in a foreign country. —Henry Vollem Morton, In the Steps of St. Paul (1936) Only three Roman cities in central Anatolia outside the province of Asia have yet been excavated on a substantial scale: Ancyra, Pessinus, and Pisidian Antioch. In each case the central feature of these excavations has been a temple dedicated to the imperial cult, built in the time of Augustus or Tiberius…. Emperor worship was not a political subterfuge, designed to elicit the loyalty of untutored provincials, but was one of the ways in which Romans themselves and provincials alongside them defined their own relationships with a new political phenomenon, an emperor whose powers and charisma were so transcendent that he appeared to them as both man and god…. The third major Julio-Claudian temple found in Galatia [after Ancyra and Pessinus] is the Corinthian podium temple at Pisidian Antioch…. A copy of the Res Gestae [Acts of the Divine Augustus] adorned the area around the propylon. —Stephen Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor (1993) Two Letters to the Galatians Overture

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

  His talents and character did not rise above mediocrity, and he bears no comparison whatever with his great namesake, the theologian and bishop of Hippo; but he was, upon the whole, well fitted for his missionary work, and his permanent success lends to his name the halo of a borrowed greatness. He built a church and monastery at Canterbury, the mother-church of Anglo-Saxon Christendom. He sent the priest Laurentius to Rome to inform the pope of his progress and to ask an answer to a number of questions concerning the conduct of bishops towards their clergy, the ritualistic differences between the Roman and the Gallican churches, the marriage of two brothers to two sisters, the marriage of relations, whether a bishop may be ordained without other bishops being present, whether a woman with child ought to be baptized, how long after the birth of an infant carnal intercourse of married people should be delayed, etc. Gregory answered these questions very fully in the legalistic and ascetic spirit of the age, yet, upon the whole, with much good sense and pastoral wisdom.29 It is remarkable that this pope, unlike his successors, did not insist on absolute conformity to the Roman church, but advises Augustin, who thought that the different customs of the Gallican church were inconsistent with the unity of faith, "to choose from every church those things that are pious, religious and upright;" for "things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things."30 In other respects, the advice falls in with the papal system and practice. He directs the missionaries not to destroy the heathen temples, but to convert them into Christian churches, to substitute the worship of relics for the worship of idols, and to allow the new converts, on the day of dedication and other festivities, to kill cattle according to their ancient custom, yet no more to the devils, but to the praise of God; for it is impossible, he thought, to efface everything at once from their obdurate minds; and he who endeavors to ascend to the highest place, must rise by degrees or steps, and not by leaps.31 This method was faithfully followed by his missionaries. It no doubt facilitated the nominal conversion of England, but swept a vast amount of heathenism into the Christian church, which it took centuries to eradicate. Gregory sent to Augustin, June 22, 601, the metropolitan pall (pallium), several priests (Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, and others), many books, sacred vessels and vestments, and relics of apostles and martyrs. He directed him to ordain twelve bishops in the archiepiscopal diocese of Canterbury, and to appoint an archbishop for York, who was also to ordain twelve bishops, if the country adjoining should receive the word of God.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  And this challenge I can only meet by confronting m y t h o ught and language with th e thought and reactions of others . O f c our se, there is a big differ ence be tw een the situation, o n one hand, wh er e I wor k out where I stand in conversation only with my immedi ate h ist ori c communi ty and where I don't feel confirmed in what I believe unless we s e e ey e t o eye, and the case, on the other hand, where I rely mainly on a co m m unity of the like-minded, an d where confirmation c an take the form of my b ei n g satisfi ed that they give unwitting testimon y to m y views, that their 38 • IDENTITY AND THE GOOD thought and language bespeak contact with the same reality, w hich I see clearer than they. The gap gets even bigger when we reflect that in the latter case, the 'conversation' will no longer be exclusively with living contempo raries, but will include, e.g., pro phets, thinkers, writers who are dead. What is th e point of my insisting that the thesis about interlocuti on holds in spite of this gap? The point is to insist on wh a t I might call this 'transc e ndental' condition of our having a grasp on our own language, that w e in some fashion confront it or relate it to the language of others. This is not just a recommended policy of the kin d that suggests if you check your beliefs against others' you'll avoid some falsehoods. In speaking of a 'transcendental' condition here, I am pointing to the way in which the very confidence that we know what we mean, and hence our having our own original language, depends on this relating. The original and (ontogenetically) inescapable context of such relatin g is the face-to-face one in which we actually agr e e. We are inducted into language by being bro ught to see thin gs as our tutors do. Later, and only for part of our language, we can deviate, and this thanks· to our relatin g to absent partners as well and to our confronting our thought with any partner in this new, indirect way, through a reading of the disagreement. And even here, not all the confronting can be through dissent. I stress the continuity between the later, higher, more independent stance and the earlier, more " p rimitive" form of immersion in community not just because the second is necessarily o ntogenetically prior, an d not even just because the first stance can never be adopted across the whole range of thought and language, so that our independent positions remain embedded, as it were, in relations of immersion.