Yearning

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

  In the period before us, however, the abolition of slavery, save isolated cases of manumission, was utterly out of question, considering only the enormous number of the slaves. The world was far from ripe for such a step. The church, in her persecuted condition, had as yet no influence at all over the machinery of the state and the civil legislation. And she was at that time so absorbed in the transcendent importance of the higher world and in her longing for the speedy return of the Lord, that she cared little for earthly freedom or temporal happiness. Hence Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, counsels servants to serve only the more zealously to the glory of the Lord, that they may receive from God the higher freedom; and not to attempt to be redeemed at the expense of their Christian brethren, lest they be found slaves to their own caprice. From this we see that slaves, in whom faith awoke the sense of manly dignity and the desire of freedom, were accustomed to demand their redemption at the expense of the church, as a right, and were thus liable to value the earthly freedom more than the spiritual. Tertullian declares the outward freedom worthless without the ransom of the soul from the bondage of sin. "How can the world," says he, "make a servant free? All is mere show in the world, nothing truth. For the slave is already free, as a purchase of Christ; and the freedman is a servant of Christ. If thou takest the freedom which the world can give for true, thou hast thereby become again the servant of man, and hast lost the freedom of Christ, in that thou thinkest it bondage." Chrysostom, in the fourth century, was the first of the fathers to discuss the question of slavery at large in the spirit of the apostle Paul, and to recommend, though cautiously, a gradual emancipation.

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

  The substance of these epistles (with the exception of that to the Romans, in which, singularly enough, not a word is said about bishops189), consists of earnest exhortations to obey the bishop and maintain the unity of the church against the Judaistic and docetic heresies. With the near prospect and the most ardent desire for martyrdom, the author has no more fervent wish than the perfect inward and outward unity of the faithful; and to this the episcopate seems to him indispensable. In his view Christ is the invisible supreme head, the one great universal bishop of all the churches scattered over the earth. The human bishop is the centre of unity for the single congregation, and stands in it as the vicar of Christ and even of God.190 The people, therefore, should unconditionally obey him, and do nothing without his will. Blessed are they who are one with the bishop, as the church is with Christ, and Christ with the Father, so that all harmonizes in unity. Apostasy from the bishop is apostasy from Christ, who acts in and through the bishops as his organs. We shall give passages from the shorter Greek text (as edited by Zahn):

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  Mike brought two gross boxes from one of the packing crates and placed them at her feet, like he was one of the wise men in the school Christmas pageant. —Not enough, she said. —No way, Wendy. My dad’ll see. You know? He’s keeping an eye out— —So he chews it too? —It’s not that, it’s— —Mikey, you’re making me mad. Forget it. You’re insulting me. I want the whole thing. I want a whole crate full. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. In Wendy’s social studies class they were doing skits about ethical dilemmas in November, and this would have made a fine one. Wendy did hers on President Nixon’s agonizing decision about whether or not to burn the tapes rather than turn them over to the special prosecutor. What Mike didn’t realize was that Wendy would have done it for nothing. Now, in November, it was wet and cold and he was late. He should have had time to stow his soccer clothes and make it to Silver Meadow. He should have had time to put everything else out of his mind except her, except the things about her—her hair in the wind, the way she hugged harder than anyone else, her devotion. In summer it was easy, and just a look at her body was enough to get him to put aside boyish things. The moment came, that first moment, gratis, at the country club. They were behind the snack bar, about to go their separate ways, to their separate bathhouses. Such a small parting. But she felt as though she were losing an heirloom at that moment, as if the memory of her lost grandparents had vanished somehow, or a friend who died in childhood of leukemia had just been laid to earth, so she held him by his shoulder and with one hand tugged down the bottom of her American stars-and-stripes two-piece bathing suit and revealed the blond, almost hairless pubic bone underneath. Because the town was as barren as a rock face. Because her family was chilly and sad. It had come over her that fast. That’s why she did it. Or if love existed, it was buried so far down in work and politeness that its meager nectar could never be pumped to the surface. She had never seen her parents embrace. Her mother had actually once denied loving her father—she’d said she liked him all right . Her dad said these were subjects for encounter groups, for religious cults, and for the inmates over at Silver Meadow, but not for families. Wendy yearned for vulgarity, for all this sloppy stuff. She yearned for some impolite rustling or a torn piece of fabric; for some late-night moaning, for some Swedish Super-8 movies: Biology Class or Madame Ovary . For anything that didn’t have the feelings bleached out of it. She would have made out with their retriever to learn a little bit about love.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  The trauma had lodged in this woman, Wendy thought, the way a germ lodges in a dead body, to begin its fervent decomposition. The trauma might be wrestled into a repose, at a place like Silver Meadow, but it was never going to disappear. Wendy had on her poncho and her skintight ski pants before the credits were even rolling. Her imagination had gotten the best of her. She needed a change. Her imagination wheeled around the house like an additional poltergeist. Wendy wanted to read Nancy Drew and have training wheels. She wanted deviled ham on white bread or sloppy joes or Twinkies. She wanted a mom who said that soup was good food and who reminded her to chew each bite thirty-two times. She wanted the basic food groups and a program of fitness. She wanted a childhood in which she was a kid. The storm was in its second phase. Like wage-and-price controls. The methodical roar of the wind leveled out all unusual night sounds. The whole environment, the ecosystem , had become this one thing. Wendy felt she was at the center of it as she walked up the driveway, that she was the last girl on earth, that God had selected her and New Canaan as the center of His attention. The trees were doubled over, weary with wind and ice. The snow fell like jagged hunks of glass onto crusty, sheer surfaces. Wendy sank through the rippling, drifting expanses of crystallized stuff halfway to her knees. The crust scored her ankles and calves, drenched through the layers of her socks. On the main roads, the state of emergency cranked itself up. The mechanized and hydraulic progress of plows and sanding and salting vehicles was somber and methodical. Their lights lingered in the air like the afterglow of bombardment. Wendy could walk in the narrow tracks of these vehicles without coming upon any other fearless traveler. Up the hill, she passed back over the path she had already marked out twice that day. Past Silver Meadow. She called Mike’s name at the Williamses’ front door. Called it lustily and desperately. Called it as though she were pronouncing the exact whereabouts of her most secret longitudes. Called it as though if she were alone another minute she would have to be dragged down the road to the hospital and straitjacketed. She beseeched, she argued. No answer came. But the door was open and the front hall invitingly lit. She entered and crept around the house room by room. She was curious like any kid her age. She searched for Mike around the dining room table, in the living room, out on the patio—Mrs. Williams seemed to have given up halfway the process of moving her house-plants in for the winter. She looked for him in the kitchen, and stole a pair of Devil Dogs from the counter.

• From Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907)

  Paul says it can be done; the Christian slave is spiritually free in Christ and that ought to content him. Let him wear the badge of slavery with that inward sense of emancipation. There are other passages in the New Testament touching on the relations of Christian slaves to their masters. In heathen literature the commonest vice of slaves was stealing. The most serious danger of Christian slaves apparently was the independence and aggressiveness begotten of a new sense of equality and worth. Especially if their masters were also their brethren in Christ, the moral problem thereby created was not always satisfactorily solved. We have already touched on the views taken by Christians about the Roman Empire. These theoretical views were sure to manifest themselves at least occasionally in practical conduct. Christians were citizens of a higher kingdom. The Empire was not their highest good. It was soon to come to naught by God’s hand. Its laws were not to them the supreme laws, nor in any sense identical with the moral law. They were often placed in a position where it was their religious duty to disobey the commands of the public officers. Even Paul, who takes so respectful an attitude toward the moral value of government, had no real use for the State so far as Christians were concerned. He did not think of trying to bring Christian influences to bear on the State; but neither did he want any influence of the State in the affairs of Christians. If brethren had trouble between them, they were not to begin litigation before the courts of the Empire, but to settle by the arbitration of other brethren. Christians withdrew from the surrounding heathen life and minimized all contact with it. This involved that they had to reproduce and parallel the necessary institutions of society within their own community. The churches legislated for their members and exercised judicial functions, enforcing them with various grades of disciplinary punishments. In heathen life the religious and civil organizations were one; the officers of the State as such performed the public religious acts. Through the hostile relation of the Christian Church and the heathen State, which continued for nearly three centuries, the Church developed a permanent organization of its own, which controlled and directed the life of its members with a pressure often more insistent and searching than that of the State. The Church was, in fact, a State within the State. The ecclesiastical courts and the canon law of later times were an outgrowth of this situation. It was the realization of this which finally roused the Empire to active hostility against the Church.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Speaking for myself, I can honestly say that I never “felt like a woman” before my transition. Even as a preteen struggling with the inexplicable and persistent desire to be female, I understood how problematic that popular cliché was. After all, how can anyone know what it’s like to “feel like a woman” or “feel like a man” when we can never really know how anybody else feels on the inside? Most people whose physical and subconscious sexes coincide generally fall rather seamlessly into womanhood or manhood; as a result, they take for granted the identity of woman or man. My gender identity always felt more like a puzzle that I had to put together myself, one in which many of the pieces were missing, where I had no clue as to what the final picture was supposed to be. And the twenty years between my conscious recognition that I wanted to be female and my eventual decision to transition was a time when I painstakingly ruled out the possibilities that my female inclinations were merely a manifestation of my sexuality or a desire to express femininity. And after many years of exploring and experimenting with femininity, masculinity, and androgyny, with crossdressing and role-playing, and with heterosexuality and bisexuality, I realized that for me, being trans had little to do with sexual desire or social gender; it was primarily about the physical experience of being in my own body. People often assume that transsexuals have some kind of idealized and unrealistic image of what it’s like to be the other sex, and that transitioning is our attempt to achieve that fantasy. Nothing could be further from the truth for me. When I decided to transition, I had no idea what it would actually be like to live as a woman, nor did I have any preconceived notions about what type of woman I might actually become. Hell, at the time, I didn’t even dare call myself a woman. That word, like the word “man,” seemed to have way too much baggage associated with it. At the time, I preferred the word “girl,” which seemed more playful and open to interpretation. Or I might say that I identified as female, since the word is more commonly associated with one’s anatomy than with any specific gender roles or regulations. But I completely avoided the word “woman” because it seemed to be too weighed down with other people’s expectations—expectations that I wasn’t sure I was interested in, or capable of, meeting. My initial avoidance of the label “woman” was fostered even further by my decision to transition in “boy mode,” a strategy that many trans women feel is the safest and most effective.

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

  Perfectionism is on the rise. In a bold 2019 study, Dr. Thomas Curran, author of The Perfection Trap: Embracing the Power of Good Enough, and Dr. Andrew Hill examined perfectionism in over forty thousand college students over a generation, from 1989 to 2016, and discovered that perfectionism was on a steady upward march. Over the twenty-seven years of data, young people became more demanding of themselves, more demanding of others, and perceived that others were more demanding of them. Demanding a lot of yourself has probably gotten you a long way. I know it’s bought me a lot. Since you’re reading this book, I’ll bet it’s the same for you. But demanding a lot can also cost us. Perfectionism can take us down the road of Walt Disney—isolation, burn-out, chronic dissatisfaction. Luckily, it can also go the way of Fred Rogers—excellence, flexibility, magnanimity. And guess what? We can forge the path we take. We can learn to be good to ourselves even when we’re wired to be hard on ourselves. Ready? Let’s take a look. PART I Introducing Perfectionism 1 How We See Ourselves SINCE YOU PICKED up this book, I’ll bet you a jelly donut you identify with some part of Walt Disney’s or Fred Rogers’s high standards, intensity, work ethic, and commitment to doing things well. To outside observers, our lives make a lovely, framed photo of functionality, productivity, or having stuff figured out. The descriptions are flattering: overachiever, on top of everything, accomplished, successful. But I’ll bet you probably also identify with the hidden clutter just outside the frame of that lovely photo. I’m right there with you. We are our own toughest critics. Meeting our expectations for ourselves feels good temporarily but, like a burp, dissipates quickly. We have an internal cattle prod that drives us forward relentlessly, but we also get stuck in our own versions of reworking the size of Grumpy’s finger or typing anxious stream-of- consciousness notes when we’re supposed to be writing an episode script. Privately, we may feel like we’re falling behind, inadequate, left out, or not like everyone else. Despite our eagle-eyed inner quality control inspector ensuring we do things correctly, we worry about letting others down, being judged, or getting criticized. We get called some dubious labels: type A, intense, task-oriented, driven, workaholic, neat freak. Too often, we feel like Walt Disney— lonelier and more isolated than we’d like, a feeling of disconnection that goals and tasks never seem to fill. We yearn for the heaven of Fred Rogers— compassion, purpose, community, belonging. Don’t get me wrong. Perfectionism confers some magical superpowers like high standards, strong work ethic, reliability, and deep care of others. But gone awry, it can subject us to a powerful riptide of I should do more, do better, be more, be better.

• From Bold Move

  Stephanie wanted to be able to integrate the different parts of her culture within herself in such a way that she would be able to bring her whole self to the table. When we explored this further, Stephanie’s bold vision was related to authenticity. When I asked her what it meant to be authentic, Stephanie told me that she would like to embrace the East and West within her cultural identity and to not be compromised by the externalities of life. So, if she wanted to watch TV in Mandarin, she would do so—not because her parents would approve, but because she liked it. Alternatively, if she decided to dress more “American,” she would. She would have sets of friends that embraced both of her cultures and would mostly get to live according to her own internal compass instead of letting cultural norms tell her what was acceptable. Reflection The Magic Wand Anchor this reflection on the value that you identified in your sour moment reflection. Take a moment to imagine having a magic wand that could remove all the pain related to this value, and consider what it would take to Align your life to this value that is so important to you by answering the following questions: Where would you end up? [Your Notes] What is this life like? [Your Notes] What are you doing? [Your Notes] Who are you with? [Your Notes] What are the key values driving this bold life? [Your Notes] Please don’t censor yourself. I am not asking for a practical plan here (we have the next step to do that). I want to urge you to really see yourself accomplishing this bold vision. Again, I don’t care about the how yet, only the what. What does your bold vision look like? [Your Notes] Acculturation is challenging, but having gone through it myself, I could relate to Stephanie’s desire to always show up authentically, without feeling the need to apologize for the different, seemingly contradictory, parts of herself. A little secret: I still wear the corporate gray uniform, but not because I want to fit in. Nowadays, when I wear it, I do so because I feel more like my academic, studious self. Though of course, with the Latin touch of a red scarf! If I were to wave the magic wand for myself with a focus on well-being, my life would look very different. I would live a more balanced life, with less chaos and more time to actually create the well-being I so desire. I would engage in more physical activities, with and without my family, but I would also add joy to this by incorporating hikes, longer walks, and a deeper connection with nature. Courage would also be a value I would align myself with in this magical life. Courage to help me continue to move toward health, especially in moments of avoidance.

• From The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us (2023)

  feels safe, divorce can be catastrophic to the children. Judy knew that all too well, having put herself in Karen’s shoes to write It’s Not the End of the World. Despite the book’s sunny title and its optimistic ending, Judy recognized the pain that it took to get there. Still, she felt she had no other choice. A few years before she initiated the split, Judy felt herself, at the age of thirty-five, undergoing a massive change—one that she’d eventually describe as an adolescent rebellion, just delayed by twenty years. Essie, who she spoke to twice a day, became representative of Judy’s subtle, lifelong indoctrination into a role—the self-annihilating housewife—that no longer suited her. That perspective transformed John in her eyes from a good-enough spouse and a solid provider to a figurehead of her mother’s middle-class values. Judy was sick of it all: the PTA meetings, the dinners at the club, the aqua-lined pool in the backyard. Suddenly, she felt an overwhelming urge “to taste and experience life,” she said in Presenting Judy Blume. “I wasn’t terrible. I was responsible. I was working. I loved the kids. But I was rebelling... My divorce was all part of that rebellion.” Judy recognized a level of childishness in herself, which she came by honestly, having gone straight from her parents’ house to her husband’s. She felt immature in ways she didn’t like, and realized that John treated her in kind, like something delicate and unformed. Before the divorce, Judy had understood—with a level of dread—that she wanted desperately to take shape. She wished to be a person with edges and depth and firm, well-defined corners, just like one of her characters. John blamed Fear of Flying. Erica Jong’s unrestrained roman à clef, about marriage and a successful female writer’s messy interior life, came out in 1973, before the Blumes separated. Isadora White Wing is a twice-wed Jewish poet from New York who, five years into her second marriage to psychoanalyst Bennett Wing, finds herself desperate for adventure and sexual novelty. She still loves Bennett but can’t deny the sense of yearning that has cast a shadow over her daily life with him. “What was marriage anyway?” Wing wonders early in the novel. “Even if you loved your husband, there came that inevitable year when fucking him turned as bland as Velveeta cheese: filling, fattening even, but no thrill to the taste buds, no bittersweet edge, no danger.”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The arrangement with the Mayhews came to an unexpected and untimely end. Mayhew now and then had a tussle with another gambler and after I had been with him about three months, a gambler from Denver had a great contest with him and afterwards proposed that they should join forces and Mayhew should come to Denver. “More money to be made there in a week”, he declared, “than in Lawrence in a month.” Finally he persuaded Mayhew, who was wise enough to say nothing to his wife till the whole arrangement was fixed. She raved but could do nothing save give in, and so we had to part. Mayhew gave me one hundred dollars as a bonus, and Lorna one unforgettable, astonishing afternoon which I must now try to describe. I did not go near the Mayhews’ the day after his gift, leaving Lorna to suppose that I looked upon everything as ended. But the day after that I got a word from her, an imperious: “Come at once, I must see you!” Of course I went though reluctantly. As soon as I entered the room she rose from the sofa and came to me: “if I get you work in Denver, will you come out?” “How could I?” I asked in absolute astonishment, “you know I’m bound here to the University and then I want to go into a law-office as well: besides I could not leave Smith: I’ve never known such a teacher: I don’t believe his equal can be found anywhere.” She nodded her head: “I see”, she sighed, “I suppose it’s impossible; but I must see you”, she cried, “if I haven’t the hope, what do I say! the certainty of seeing you again, I shan’t go. I’d rather kill myself! I’ll be a servant and stay with you, my darling, and take care of you! I don’t care what I do so long as we are together: I’m nearly crazed with fear that I shall lose you.” “It’s all a question of money”, I said quietly, for the idea of her staying behind scared me stiff: “if I can earn money, I’d love to go to Denver in my holidays. It must be gorgeous there in summer six thousand odd feet above sea-level: I’d delight in it.” “If I send you the money, you’ll come?” she asked briefly. I made a face: “I can’t take money from—a love”, (I said “love” instead of “woman”: it was not so ugly) I went on, “but Smith says he can get me work and I have still a little: I’ll come in the holidays.” “Holy days they’ll be to me!” she said solemnly, and then with quick change of mood, “I’ll make a beautiful room for our love in Denver; but you must come for Christmas, I could not wait till midsummer: oh, how I shall ache for you—ache!”

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The incident set me thinking. I made Kate promise to tell me if he ever failed again to pay what was due and I used the happening to excuse myself to Lorna. I went to see her and told her that I must think at once of earning my living. I had still some five hundred dollars left but I wanted to be beforehand with need: besides it gave me a good excuse for not visiting her even weekly. “I must work!” I kept repeating though I was ashamed of the lie. “Don’t whip me, dear!” she pleaded; “my impotence to help you is painful enough; give me time to think. I know Mayhew is quite well off: give me a day or two, but come to me when you can. You see, I’ve no pride where you are concerned: I just beg like a dog for kind treatment for my love’s sake. I wouldn’t have believed that I could be so transformed. I was always so proud: my husband calls me ‘proud and cold’, me cold! It’s true I shiver when I hear your voice, but it’s the shivering of fever. When you came in just now unexpectedly and kissed me, waves of heat swept over me: my womb moved inside me. I never felt that till I had loved you and now, of course, my sex burns—I wish I were cold: a cold woman could rule the world— “But no! I wouldn’t change. Just as I never wished to be a man, never; though other girls used to say they would like to change their sex; I, never! And since I’ve been married, less than ever. What’s a man? His love is over before ours begins—” “Really?” I broke in grinning. “Not you, my beloved!” she cried, “oh, not you; but then you are more than man! Come, don’t let us waste time in talk. Now I have you, take me to our Heaven. I’m ready, ‘ripe-ready’ is your word: I go to our bed as to an altar. If I’m only to have you even less than once a week, don’t come again for ten days: I shall be well again then and you can surely come to me a few days running: I want to reach the heights and hug the illusion, cramming one hot week with bliss and then death for a fortnight. What rags we women are! Come, dear, I will be your sheath and you shall be the sword and drive right into me—But I’ll help you”, she cried suddenly: “Was it that girl told you, you owed money for food? (I nodded and she glowed.) Oh, I’ll help, never fear! I never liked that girl: she’s brazen and conceited and—Oh! Why did you walk with her?”

• From The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure (1984)

  And yet it was in connection with this love, much more than with health (which also preoccupied them) and much more than with women and marriage (the orderliness of which they nevertheless sought to maintain), that they spoke of the need to practice the strictest austerities. To be sure, except in a few instances, they did not condemn it or prohibit it. And yet it is in the reflection on love of boys that one sees the principle of “indefinite abstention” formulated; the ideal of a renunciation, which Socrates exemplifies by his faultless resistance of temptation; and the theme that this renunciation has a high spiritual value by itself. In a way that may be surprising at first, one sees the formation, in Greek culture and in connection with the love of boys, of some of the major elements of a sexual ethics that will renounce that love by appealing to the above principle: the requirement of a symmetry and reciprocity in the love relationship; the necessity of a long and arduous struggle with oneself; the gradual purification of a love that is addressed only to being per se, in its truth; and man’s inquiry into himself as a subject of desire. One would be missing the crucial point if one imagined that the love of boys gave rise to its own interdiction, or that an ambiguity peculiar to philosophy accepted its reality only by demanding its supercession. One should keep in mind that this “asceticism” was not a means of disqualifying the love of boys; on the contrary, it was a means of stylizing it and hence, by giving it shape and form, of valorizing it. The fact remains, however, that within this asceticism total abstention was posited as a standard and privilege was given to the question of desire, so that elements were introduced that could not easily be accommodated in an ethics organized around a search for the right use of pleasures. * Which does not mean that the figures of male love disappeared entirely. 1 * After Phaedrus’ speeches, Socrates points out that there has to be in the mind of the speaker “knowledge of the truth about the subject of the speech.” 25 The History of Sexuality, Vol. 2: The Use of Pleasure Conclusion Thus, in the field of practices that they singled out for special attention (regimen, household management, the “courting” of young men) and in the context of the discourses that tended to elaborate these practices, the Greeks questioned themselves about sexual behavior as an ethical problem, and they sought to define the form of moderation that it required. This does not mean that the Greeks in general concerned themselves with sexual pleasure only from these three points of view. One would find in the literature that they have left us much evidence of other themes and preoccupations.

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  Nevertheless, this position above the battle was achieved at the cost of ignoring many of the most serious issues. Despite such occasional formulations as the asser tion that believers were, through union with the incar nate Lord, made to be like him and thus deified, the yearn ing for the transformation of the finite, passible human nature into an eternal, impassible, and divine nature was foreign to the thought, if not always to the language, of the theory we have been describing. On the other hand, THE PERSON OF THE GOD-MAN 260 its readiness to speak of the trials and temptations of Jesus—Matthew 4:1-11 was the Gospel lesson for the Leo M.Serm.39.3 (SC 49:29) first Sunday in Lent—must not be taken to mean that the moral struggles and growth of the Lord could have issued in anything but a foregone conclusion; for Christ permit ted himself to be tempted, not for his own sake, but so that he might support men in their temptations not only by his aid but also by his example. Neither the metaphysi cal profundity of the one alternative nor the moral ear nestness of the other was decisive for this theology, al though it was in many ways more moral than metaphysical in its own orientation. But in the dynamics of the polemi cal situation it was this christology of preexistence, keno- sis, and exaltation that provided the vocabulary for a solu tion that was almost automatically declared to be orthodox even though it was almost immediately acknowledged to be inadequate. The encounter between the theology of the hypostatic union and the theology of the indwelling Logos took place in the arena of the Council of Ephesus in 431. In stead of coining a new dogmatic formula in response to the conflict between christological systems, Ephesus re affirmed the authority of the confession of the Council of CEph.(431)^.43 (ACO . J , *■-,.• r 1-1-2:12-13) Nicea—as a christological, not only as a tnnitanan, for mula.

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  Eventually, in the sixth century, it did pronounce on them, condemning this version of universalism. The version of it propounded by Gregory of Nyssa, disen gaged from Origen's idea of preexistence but grounded in Gregory's definition of the vision of God as an eternal process in which "one never reaches satiety in his yearn ing for God," was not condemned, at least not formally; but it was also not made a dogma. A temporal creation THE FAITH OF THE CHURCH CATHOLIC 152 Just. 1 Apol.12.jo (Goodspeed 33) Just. i Apol.x6.14 (Goodspeed 37-38) 1 Clem.56.1-2 (Bihimeyer 55) and a temporal end of history were part of the church's official doctrine, as was Christ's victory over death and the devil. It was left to theology to ponder the various the ories about how the reconciliation of God with the world was achieved in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, as well as the various speculations about how the victory assured by this reconciliation would eventually be actual ized in history and beyond history. Roughly corresponding to these three themes of the life and teachings, the suffering and death, and the resur rection and exaltation of Christ as the means by which salvation was achieved were three ways of denning the content of the salvation which he brought: revelation of the truth; forgiveness of sins and justification; immortal ity and deification. These definitions are, if anything, even less discrete in the literature than are the atonement themes we have just examined. Nor is the correspondence between each of the definitions and its counterpart an exact one. There is, in fact, an even deeper, though largely unexamined, ambiguity in the doctrine of salva tion through Christ, running through both the atonement themes and the definitions of salvation. Was the work of Christ to be thought of as having accomplished the recon ciliation between God and the world or as having dis closed a reconciliation that had actually been there all along ? That ambiguity was especially palpable when the work of Christ was represented as that of the exemplar and teacher who brought the true revelation of God's will for man. His prophecies had come true in the past, Justin argued, and the reasonable man should therefore believe his teachings. To be a Christian meant to live in accord ance with these teachings. When Clement of Rome re ferred to Christ as "our salvation, the high priest who offers our gifts, the patron and helper in our weakness," he went on to specify the content of that salvation: "Through him the eyes of our heart were opened. Through him our unintelligent and darkened mind shoots up into the light. Through him the Master was pleased to let us taste the knowledge that never fades."

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  She liked men with a rebellious streak, so, not surprisingly, all her boyfriends vigorously refused to be tied down. Yet in each she perceived a vulnerability that intrigued her. “In spite of their precious independence,” she once said, “they all looked to me for stability and understanding.” Maggie had always been an ultra-responsible “good girl” who always could be counted on to be cooperative, helpful, sensitive, and obedient. Consequently, although she felt miserable whenever lovers let her down, she admired their freedom to slough off so easily the obligations that dominated her. When it came to intimacy—what Maggie said she longed for most—all her lovers vacillated between openness and avoidance. The emotional expressiveness that excited her was always counterbalanced by a fear of being possessed. “It’s almost as if they see me as their mother,” she mused. During her first few months of therapy Maggie eagerly theorized about the psychology of each former lover, yet it was exceedingly difficult to get her to focus on herself. As is so often the case for those in the throes of longing, the other person held the key to everything. The goal was always the same: to identify and overcome their hangups. In a rare moment of self-reflection she acknowledged her motivations: “If I could just win them over I would feel loved.” “And what if a man didn’t need to be won?” I asked. “What if he wanted to love you?” After a long silence she answered, “I’m not sure I could handle it.” That’s when I knew Maggie was ready to direct the spotlight inward, a process that brought her face to face with her commitment to longing as her chief erotic stimulus as well as her reluctance to accept gratification. At first, Maggie described an almost idyllic childhood. But as she relaxed her automatic tendency to make things look good, a more realistic picture emerged. She never doubted her mother’s love, yet Mom usually seemed overwhelmed by responsibilities and duties. “I always had a sinking feeling that Mom was close to tears,” Maggie recalled. “I knew she was terribly unhappy and it was my job to make it all better,” a task at which she usually failed miserably despite her best efforts. Even as a small girl Maggie knew that a major reason for Mom’s unhappiness was that Dad worked long hours and was often on the road. When he was home be would be absorbed in the newspaper or TV. He generally rebuffed requests for companionship or conversation, whether from Maggie or her mom. Maggie later learned that her mom often suspected he was having an affair, although she never confronted him. Maggie too was unsure of her father’s love, since she rarely received more than perfunctory attention from him, and hardly any of the heartfelt affection she craved.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Repetitive, problematic attractions are not so easily modified, which is why some people have, in recent years, labeled them love addictions. Calling Maggie’s tragic search for love an addiction may provide an illusion of understanding. If, however, we genuinely wish to uncover the sources of difficult attractions we must reject easy labels and venture inward where the erotic mind has its own ways and reasons. Maggie first encountered longing in response to the pain of not feeling loved by her father.5 Unfulfilled cravings for affection defined the key problem her CET was trying to resolve. As her eroticism evolved she discovered—but only semiconsciously—that by continually placing herself in positions of longing she could convert her pain into passion. Logic suggests that someone in Maggie’s position might be drawn to men who, unlike her father, would be naturally warm and loving. And true enough, the men she found most irresistible were capable of great warmth and tenderness, but never consistently. To select a man who would love her wholeheartedly, Maggie would need to bypass the very dilemma her CET was designed to reverse: how to get someone who seems ambivalent to change his mind and love her without reservation. At her most passionate moments that’s exactly what happened—at least for a while. Unfortunately, her CET forced her to select men who were not readily available, otherwise she couldn’t anticipate the reversal that was the overriding goal of her eroticism. Her passion only sprang to life when fulfillment seemed possible but just beyond her grasp. In a moment of stunning clarity Maggie articulated the essence of her problem: “What really turns me on is almost being loved.” Maggie’s dilemma is far from unique. Millions of people gravitate toward partners who appear to possess characteristics similar to those of significant others—parents, siblings, special friends—who have let them down in the past. Their goal is not primarily to perpetuate the pain (although this tends to be the most frequent outcome) but rather to reenact hurtful situations in hopes they can be reversed—the pain transformed into passion. A complete understanding of Maggie’s determination to avoid fulfillment requires one more piece of the puzzle, one Maggie found very difficult to accept. It’s true that Maggie’s first object of longing was her father, but it was through her emotional alignment with her mother that she learned on a day-to-day basis the ways of longing and sadness. Remember how desperately Maggie struggled to make her mom feel better? While it doesn’t make sense logically, it is difficult for most of us to grow beyond our parents, particularly the one after whom we most model ourselves. For Maggie to receive the love she craved she had to follow a path radically different from her mother’s, which seemed to her a terrible act of disloyalty.

• From The Girls (2016)

  I’d gone only once with Suzanne, to pick up a pound of grass from a house she called, jokingly, the Russian Embassy. Some friends of Guy’s, I think, the old Satanist hangout. The front door was painted a tarry black—she saw my hesitation and hooked her arm through mine. “Doomy, huh?” she said. “I thought so too, at first.” When she hitched me closer, I felt the knock of her hipbones. These moments of kindness were never anything but dazzling to me. Afterward, she and I walked over to Hippie Hill. It was grayed-out, and drizzling, empty, except for the undead stumbling of junkies. I tried hard to squeeze out a vibe from the air, but there was nothing—I was relieved when Suzanne laughed, too, halting any labor for meaning. “Jesus,” she said, “this place is a dump.” We ended up back in the park, the fog dripping audibly from the eucalyptus leaves. I spent almost every day at the ranch, except for brief stopovers at my house to change clothes or leave notes on the kitchen table for my mother. Notes that I’d sign, “Your Loving Daughter.” Indulging the overblown affection my absence made room for. I knew I was starting to look different, the weeks at the ranch working me over with a grubby wash. My hair getting light from the sun and sharp at the edges, a tint of smoke lingering even after I shampooed. Much of my clothes had passed into the ranch possession, morphing into garments I often failed to recognize as my own: Helen clowning around in my once precious bib shirt, now torn and spotted with peach juice. I dressed like Suzanne, a raunchy patchwork culled from the communal piles, clothes whose scrappiness announced a hostility to the larger world. I had gone with Suzanne to the Home Market once, Suzanne wearing a bikini top and cutoffs, and we’d watched the other shoppers glare and grow hot with indignation, their sideways glances becoming outright stares. We’d laughed with insane, helpless snorts, like we’d had some wild secret, and we had. The woman who’d seemed about to cry with baffled disgust, clutching for her daughter’s arm: she hadn’t known her hatred only made us more powerful. I prepared for possible sightings of my mother with pious ablutions: I showered, standing in the hot water until my skin splotched red, my hair slippery with conditioner. I put on a plain T-shirt and white cotton shorts, what I might have worn when I was younger, trying to appear scrubbed and sexless enough to comfort my mother. Though maybe I didn’t need to try so hard—she wasn’t looking closely enough to warrant the effort. The times we did have dinner together, a mostly silent affair, she would fuss at her food like a picky child. Inventing reasons to talk about Frank, inane weather reports from her own life. I could have been anyone.

• From Little Birds (1979)

  “What do you want, Lina, what do you want?” “I want you not to have lovers. I hate it when I see you with men.” “Why do you hate men so?” “They have something I don’t have. I want to have a penis so that I can make love to you.” “There are other ways of making love between women.” “But I won’t have it, I won’t have it.”

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  And a Merry Christmas to you.” “You, too, Billy.” MiriThat night, Suzanne’s father dropped Miri and Suzanne at Natalie’s house. Mrs. Osner answered the door. Small and pretty, she wore a single strand of pearls whether she was in a skirt and sweater, like tonight, or a cocktail dress on her way to the country club. Miri liked to think of her as Corinne. She liked thinking of all the adults in her life by their first names. It made them seem more interesting, less like parents and more like regular people with stories of their own. Steve and Fern were dark-haired like Dr. Osner, but Natalie was blond, with short, soft curls like her mother, and the same gray-blue eyes. Even though Natalie’s family was Jewish and attended Temple B’nai Israel on the High Holidays, same as Miri’s family, they had a big, beautiful tree in their living room, which they called a Hanukkah bush. It was decorated with handmade wooden animal ornaments. On Christmas Eve Natalie and Fern would hang up stockings by the fireplace and Fern would leave out milk and cookies for the Jewish Santa, who flew through the sky wearing a blue suit with silver Jewish stars. Instead of reindeer his cart was pulled by camels because he came from Israel, not the North Pole. Dr. Osner didn’t approve of celebrating this way, but Mrs. Osner, who came from Birmingham, Alabama, had grown up with the custom and refused to give it up. Miri wished her family celebrated the Jewish Santa, too. She would have enjoyed decorating a tree and leaving milk and cookies for him even though she was way too old to believe. “The young people are downstairs,” Corinne told Miri and Suzanne, as if they didn’t know. Natalie wasn’t the only one in their crowd to have a finished basement, but if they put it to a vote Natalie’s would win by a mile. It wasn’t just the red leather banquettes, the knotty-pine walls, the red and black floor tiles, or even the oval bar with its flip-top counter and glasses in every size imaginable lined up neatly on mirrored shelves. Forget all that. What made Natalie’s basement take the prize was the jukebox. “It’s not new,” Natalie always said, as if it would be a crime to have your own new jukebox, the kind with swirling colors and flashing lights. Natalie still got to change the records herself and nobody had to put in a coin to start it up. You just had to push the button. Dr. Osner brought home the jukebox with all the latest hits thanks to one of his patients who was in the music business. Some gangster, Natalie once confided to Miri. When Natalie pushed the button and the jukebox came to life, the dancing began with something swingy, something they could Lindy to—Hey good lookin’, whatcha got cookin’? It left them laughing, breathing hard, ready for more.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Desperately I tried to listen, but my heart beating in my ears took precedence over the words. With him, it became a game. “Okay, let’s see if the idiot picked up anything this time,” he’d announce. All eyes would turn to me while I sat as mute as ever. Sometimes I’d recite back fragments, trailing off after a bit and wondering why I couldn’t remember what he’d said. Fortunately, I did not have to deal with Don often, as he was a male demonstrator and usually oversaw the boys’ dorms. Years after I left Synanon, the constant probing into my psyche by the school staff and greater collective of the commune took the form of nightmares. In my dreams, I lay on an operating table surrounded by doctors dissecting my brain and discussing among themselves what they found. It was clear, one of the doctors always concluded, that my brain was no good at all. They would need to insert something into it to improve my intelligence and keep track of my whereabouts. The assassination of Theresa’s role as my mother succeeded only in creating a deeper longing to see her and venerate the mother’s role. I had no greater wish than to be with her and become a mother myself. By the close of my first year in the commune, I developed an all-encompassing desire to be in a nuclear family with a mom and dad and a hunger for traditional domesticity that was out of reach outside of the cult, and nonexistent within it. The TV show Little House on the Prairie put images to my longings, creating an idealized vision of American frontier life and later a deep desire for self-sufficient remote living. Not all Synanon children experienced my intense want for family life. Some had been born into the commune or arrived as babies, spending the first formative years of their lives in the Hatchery. For them, parents were of little consequence. The demonstrators, who were supposed to replace the role of parent, appeared, disappeared, reappeared and dropped out of the school and were replaced by new demonstrators, suddenly on hand. We children experienced this same randomness in our living arrangements through regular moves. I would live in one room for a while, and then move to a different room or different building, or another child would share my room, replacing the previous child. I also never knew what grade I was in because I usually found myself in two grades simultaneously. Years later, when I read old archives of Synanon school logs at a UCLA library, I learned in an entry dated August 13, 1977, that there were forty-four members on staff. Twenty-one of them where younger than twenty-one and a need was expressed for older, more mature adults. Half of the demonstrators responsible for raising the children were barely out of puberty themselves. Many were recently reformed drug addicts.