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)

  Harnack: Das N. T. um das Jahr. 200, Freiburg, 1889 (against Zahn), and Zahn’s reply, Leipz., 1889. § 75. Rise of the Apostolic Literature. Christ is the book of life to be read by all. His religion is not an outward letter of command, like the law of Moses, but free, quickening spirit; not a literary production, but a moral creation; not a new system of theology or philosophy for the learned, but a communication of the divine life for the redemption of the whole world. Christ is the personal Word of God, the eternal Logos, who became flesh and dwelt upon earth as the true Shekinah, in the veiled glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. He spoke; and all the words of his mouth were, and still are, spirit and life. The human heart craves not a learned, letter-writing, literary Christ, but a wonder-working, cross-bearing, atoning Redeemer, risen, enthroned in heaven, and ruling the world; furnishing, at the same time, to men and angels an unending theme for meditation, discourse, and praise. So, too, the Lord chose none of his apostles, with the single exception of Paul, from the ranks of the learned; he did not train them to literary authorship, nor give them, throughout his earthly life, a single express command to labor in that way. Plain fishermen of Galilee, unskilled in the wisdom of this world, but filled with the Holy Spirit of truth and the powers of the world to come, were commissioned to preach the glad tidings of salvation to all nations in the strength and in the name of their glorified Master, who sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and has promised to be with them to the end of time. The gospel, accordingly, was first propagated and the church founded by the personal oral teaching and exhortation, the "preaching," "testimony," "word," "tradition," of the apostles and their disciples; as, in fact, to this day the living word is the indispensable or, at least, the principal means of promoting the Christian religion. Nearly all the books of the New Testament were written between the years 50 and 70, at least twenty years after the resurrection of Christ, and the founding of the church; and the Gospel and Epistles of John still later. As the apostles’ field of labor expanded, it became too large for their personal attention, and required epistolary correspondence. The vital interests of Christianity and the wants of coming generations demanded a faithful record of the life and teaching of Christ by perfectly reliable witnesses. For oral tradition, among fallible men, is liable to so many accidental changes, that it loses in certainty and credibility as its distance from the fountain-head increases, till at last it can no longer be clearly distinguished from the additions and corruptions collected upon it.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  A Deliverance, Billy Beer, and Tammy Faye The first Cracker President should have been a mixture of Jimmy and Billy [Carter] . . . Billy’s hoo-Lord-what-the-hell-get-out-the-way attitude heaving up under Jimmy’s prudent righteousness—or Jimmy’s idealism heaving up under Billy’s sense of human limitations—and forming a nice-and-awful compound like life in Georgia. —Roy Blount Jr., Crackers (1980) s identity politics rose as a force for good in the last decades of the twentieth century, authenticity was to be achieved by registering, and then heeding, the voices of previously marginalized Americans. Whites could no longer speak for people of color. Men could no long speak for women. The New Left, civil rights, and Black Power movements of the 1960s had helped to jump- start the second-wave feminist movement, yet identity politics was not the possession of the left alone. Richard Nixon rode into office in 1968 by claiming to represent the interests of the “Silent Majority” of Americans who saw themselves as hardworking, middle American homeowners dutifully paying their taxes and demanding little of the federal government. 1 One could argue that identity has always been a part of politics, that aspiring people adopt identities the same way that they change their style of dress. Yet this is only part of the story. Some people can choose an identity, but many more have an identity chosen for them. White trash folks never took on that name for themselves, nor did the rural poor describe their plight in recognition of having been cast out of society as “waste people,” “rubbish,” or “clay-eaters.” As we have seen, Union soldiers and Lincoln Republicans embraced the intended insult of “mudsill” when it was hurled at them from across the Mason-Dixon Line. But that was because they possessed the cultural power to shape political discourse. The dispossessed had no such power. Eventually, self-identified “white trash” who had come up in the world began defending their depressed class background as a distinct (and perversely noble) heritage. Before the end of the 1980s, “white trash” was rebranded as an ethnic identity, with its own readily identifiable cultural forms: food, speech patterns, tastes, and, for some, nostalgic memories. If immigrants had foreign origins to

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

  The exciting cause of this religious revolt is to be looked for in the worldliness and arrogance of the clergy, the formalism of the Church’s ritual, and the worldly ambitions of the papal policy. In their depositions before the Church inquisitors, the accused called attention to the pride, cupidity, and immorality of the priests. Tanchelm, Henry of Lausanne, and other leaders directed their invectives against the priests and bishops who sought power and ease rather than the good of the people. Underneath all this discontent was the spiritual hunger of the masses. The Bible was not an altogether forgotten book. The people remembered it. Popular preachers like Bernard of Thiron, Robert of Abrissel and Vitalis of Savigny quoted its precepts and relied upon its authority. There was a hankering after the Gospel which the Church did not set forth. The people wanted to get behind the clergy and the ritual of the sacraments to Christ himself, and, in doing so, a large body of the sectaries went to the extreme of abandoning the outward celebration of the sacraments, and withdrew themselves altogether from priestly offices. The aim of all the sects was moral and religious reformation. The Cathari, it is true, differed in a philosophical question and were Manichaeans, but it was not a question of philosophy they were concerned about. Their chief purpose was to get away from the worldly aims of the established church, and this explains their rapid diffusion in Lombardy and Southern France.944 A prominent charge made against the dissenters was that they put their own interpretations upon the Gospels and Epistles and employed these interpretations to establish their own systems and rebuke the Catholic hierarchy. Special honor was given by the Cathari to the Gospel of John, and the Waldensian movement started with an attempt to make known the Scriptures through the vulgar tongue. The humbler classes knew enough about clerical abuses from their own observation; but the complaints of the best men of the times were in the air, and these must also have reached their ears and increased the general restlessness. St. Bernard rebuked the clergy for ambition, pride, and lust. Grosseteste called clerics antichrists and devils. Walter von der Vogelweide, among the poets, spoke of priests as those — "Who make a traffic of each sacrament The mass’ holy sacrifice included." These men did not mean to condemn the priestly office, but it should occasion no surprise that the people made no distinction between the office and the priest who abused the office.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  I was starving for answers. Where was my mother? Why did she leave us? When was she coming home? She was coming home again, wasn’t she? No one would say. Whenever we had trouble, Sister told us to ask our guardian angels for help. Guardian angels, we learned, are invisible little creatures whose sole purpose is to protect us, like a celestial offensive lineman. Everyone has a guardian angel, Sister said. You must leave room in your life and at your desk for yours. This sounded like crazy talk to me, but I was yearning for anyone to watch over me, so I scooched over to the side of my desk and waited for my guardian angel to appear. Let’s not forget the saints, Sister said. They’ll protect you, too. Saints, we learned, are noble people, now long dead, with marvelous names like Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, and Cyprian. They knew how to joyfully embrace suffering as a way to share in Jesus’s death and resurrection, Sister told us. Suffering was good, Sister said. When we suffer, we are walking with Christ. Because they are so close to God, saints can advocate on our behalf, Sister said. Pray to them and ask them to whisper into God’s ear for what you need. We were told to thumb through a book of saints and find one that we liked the most. I found that I fancied Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. “The Little Flower,” as she was known, was a spitfire of a girl who’d grown up in France in the late 1800s, about the time that Grandma was born. This kid knew how to keep her piehole shut. Even when she developed tuberculosis and started coughing up blood, she simply spit it into her fancy lace handkerchief and hid the evidence under her pillow, never peeking at it, not telling a soul. I started praying to the Little Flower, asking her to help me figure out what was going on with my mother. Secrets fascinated me. What a thrill to know something that no one else does. You decide whom to tell and when to tell it. I used to spend hours collecting treasures from around the house—feathers, rocks from the beach, doll shoes, or my mother’s perfume bottles—and hiding them in a wooden box I called my “secret hiding place.” Then I’d try to get my brothers and sisters to guess where it was. Even if they said they weren’t interested, which was often, I’d tell them anyway. Then I’d start over again. But secrets also made me nervous. Secrets required discipline, a quality I knew that I sorely lacked. ON THE FRIDAY BEFORE Thanksgiving, my mother still missing in action, Sister Ann Christine’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker. Terrible news, children. Someone had shot the president in the head in Dallas. We dropped to our knees on the cold linoleum and prayed the rosary. Then the nuns sent us home early.

• From While You Were Out (2023)

  Ditto for the time Patty slammed the door on her hand and when I crashed into a tree on my bike and banged up my “private parts” so badly that I had to wear one of my mother’s cotton pads between my legs for a few days. Hark it up now and quit your bellyaching! Grandma would holler at us, grinning a little at the notion that one of her people might just have been accepted into heaven all the sooner for our suffering. Grandpa wasn’t much better company. He was a whiz at household chores, like tightening cabinet doors, and he once built shelving units in the basement for all our clutter. But he couldn’t hear very well, and his stories went on way too long. He was a small man with a flat face, high cheekbones, and, rumor had it, eleven toes. He carefully tore each sheet of Kleenex neatly in half any time he needed to blow his nose. For years, we operated under the misconception, advanced by Mary Kay, that Grandpa was part Potawatomi. He had a kind smile and was quick with puns, especially the double entendres that sailed right over our heads: Eat every piece of meat and pea on your plate! The man’s nuts … Grab ’em! Everyone seemed to love Grandpa, but I once overheard him snarling at Grandma out of the side of his mouth. Shut up, Alice, or I’ll cram this milk bottle down your throat. That was enough to scare the hell out of me. I wanted to know where my mother was. WHERE is my mother? Why wouldn’t anybody tell me? The nuns will want to know, I told Grandma, hoping that would get her to come clean. She was always sucking up to priests and nuns, having once nearly joined a convent herself. Grandma, née Alice Lynch, grew up on a farm twenty-seven miles west of Kalamazoo, the youngest daughter in a family of seven children. Her father, John Lynch, had come to America from county Meath, Ireland, in 1879. Alice was a pretty girl, like her sisters, but she was easily flustered, quick to tears, and given to fits of hysteria. She kept a rosary in her pocket at all times, something to calm her nerves, though it did no good. Grandma seemed destined for the convent, but even the nuns had no use for her, volatile as she was. Except for Margaret, the spinster (my namesake) who became a librarian, Grandma’s sisters married and moved on while Grandma stayed on the farm helping her parents cook and clean and tend to the animals—cows, chickens, and two mules named Jack and Jenny. She met my grandfather, Matthew Kissinger, a traveling salesman from Milwaukee, a few months shy of her thirtieth birthday. Grandpa’s first wife had died a few years earlier while giving birth to their first child, a girl named Violet.

• From The Girls (2016)

  The looping horns of Paul Revere and the Raiders sounding from his bedroom, how he’d sometimes stumble around with a proud, overt secrecy, so I would know he had taken acid. Filling and refilling a glass of water in the kitchen with extravagant care. I’d gone into Peter’s bedroom while Connie was showering. It reeked of what I’d later identify as masturbation, a damp rupture in the air. All his possessions suffused with a mysterious import: his low futon, a plastic bag full of ashy-looking nugs by his pillow. Manuals to become a trainee mechanic. The glass on the floor, greased with fingerprints, was half-full of stale-looking water, and there was a line of smooth river stones on the top of his dresser. A cheap copper bracelet I had seen him wear sometimes. I took in everything as if I could decode the private meaning of each object, puzzle together the interior architecture of his life. So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play. Later I would see this: how impersonal and grasping our love was, pinging around the universe, hoping for a host to give form to our wishes. —When I was young, I’d seen magazines in a drawer of the bathroom, my father’s magazines, the pages bloated with humidity. The insides crowded with women. The tautness of mesh pulled across crotches, the gauzy light that made their skin illuminate and pale. My favorite girl had a gingham ribbon tied around her throat in a bow. It was so odd and stirring that someone could be naked but also wear a ribbon around her neck. It made her nakedness formal. I visited the magazine with the regularity of a penitent, replacing it carefully each time. Locking the bathroom door with breathless, ill pleasure that quickly morphed into rubbing my crotch along the seams of carpets, the seam of my mattress. The back of a couch. How did it work, even? That by holding the hovering image of the girl in my mind, I could build the sensation, a sheet of pleasure that grew until it was compulsive, the desire to feel that way again and again. It seemed strange that it was a girl I was imagining, not a boy. And that the feeling could be reignited by other oddities: a color-plate illustration in my fairy-tale book of a girl trapped in a spider’s web. The faceted eyes of evil creatures, watching her. The memory of my father cupping a neighbor’s ass through her wet swimsuit. I’d done things before—not quite sex, but close. The dry fumbles in the hallways of school dances. The overheated suffocation of a parent’s couch, the backs of my knees sweaty.

• From Blue Like Jazz (2003)

  I told Penny that I wanted to marry her, but she wasn’t interested. I propose to Penny once a month now on the phone, but she just changes the subject. The thing I have to work on in myself is this issue of belief. Gandhi believed Jesus when He said to turn the other cheek. Gandhi brought down the British Empire, deeply injured the caste system, and changed the world. Mother Teresa believed Jesus when He said everybody was priceless, even the ugly ones, the smelly ones, and Mother Teresa changed the world by showing them that a human being can be selfless. Peter finally believed the gospel after he got yelled at by Paul. Peter and Paul changed the world by starting small churches in godless towns. Eminem believes he is a better rapper than other rappers. Profound. Let’s all follow Eminem. Here is the trick, and here is my point. Satan, who I believe exists as much as I believe Jesus exists, wants us to believe meaningless things for meaningless reasons. Can you imagine if Christians actually believed that God was trying to rescue us from the pit of our own self-addiction? Can you imagine? Can you imagine what Americans would do if they understood over half the world was living in poverty? Do you think they would change the way they live, the products they purchase, and the politicians they elect? If we believed the right things, the true things, there wouldn’t be very many problems on earth. But the trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn’t like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them. It is so, so cumbersome to believe anything. And it isn’t cool. I mean it’s cool in a Reality Bites, Welcome to Sarajevo, Amnesty International sense, but that is only as good as dread-locks. Chicks dig it to a point, but you can’t be all about it; you also have to want a big house and expensive clothes because in the end, our beliefs are about as enduring as seasonal fashion. In the end, we like Ethan Hawke even though we don’t know what he believes. Even our beliefs have become trend statements. We don’t even believe things because we believe them anymore. We only believe things because they are cool things to believe. The problem with Christian belief—I mean real Christian belief, the belief that there is a God and a devil and a heaven and a hell—is that it is not a fashionable thing to believe. I had this idea once that if I could make Christianity cool, I could change the world, because if Christianity were cool then everybody would want to deal with their sin nature, and if everybody dealt with their sin nature then most of the world’s problems would be solved.

• From Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma (2007)

  If you arrange your sex life to avoid triggers, you’ll end up with no room left for your sex life.—Stephanie Many survivors feel understandably frustrated when it comes to triggers. You may be in a stage of sexual recovery in which you are dealing with them all the time. You may be so triggered sexually that you do not want to be sexual at all. Most survivors just want to get rid of triggers altogether. In this chapter, I want to introduce a different approach. What if triggers were not to be avoided but rather explored, felt, and healed? What if triggers were flags waving as if to say, “Hey, over here, there is something needing healing and attention”? Triggers are healable. You need not assume that because oral sex triggers you now, it always will. Once you have released the trauma from the area of your body where the trigger is stored and processed the experience emotionally, the trigger will fade. The intent in this work is to heal your sexuality to such an extent that you can fully make your own choices about sex. You get to choose your sexual expression based upon your own needs and desires, not those limits and traumas induced by childhood sexual abuse. This chapter tells you how to achieve this healing through your triggers. What Is a Trigger? Triggers are automatic responses connected to your past sexual abuse that can suddenly rush into the present. Certain acts, smells, words—perhaps even a tone of voice—can act as triggers that bring up images and feelings from the past. When you are in the middle of being triggered, it may be difficult to distinguish between the past and the present. I’ve never been one of those survivors who got triggered in the grocery store. My triggers are mostly connected to people and being close. Sex especially triggers me. Many times when having sex, images of my father will come rushing in and I can no longer tell the difference between him and my lover. I get terrified and shut down, then just try to hurry up and get sex over with. It’s awful.—Carla Triggers seem to arise unexpectedly. They can evoke images or memories of the abuse, emotions, or feelings in your body. Many survivors report being overwhelmed by a sense of not wanting their partner to touch them, or pulling away from physical or sexual touch out of an automatic fear that they will be hurt or betrayed. Sometimes my girlfriend reaches to touch me and I want to push her away. I don’t want her near me and I feel nauseated.—Kathy Triggers can also be sudden moods that seem to take over. You may be enjoying flirting or talking sexy with your partner and suddenly find yourself angry and annoyed, or grief-stricken. These are typical experiences for survivors.

• From Beyond Belief

  Title : Beyond Belief Author: Pulitzer, Lisa,Hill, Jenna Miscavige [image file=image_rsrc2TU.jpg] Dedication I would like to dedicate this book to my many good friends who are still in the Church. I love and miss you all and I truly hope you someday have the courage to stand up for yourselves and get the chance to leave and really live your life. You all deserve so much better. Contents Dedication Author’s Note Prologue 1 In the Name of the Church 2 LRH Drops His Body 3 The Greater Good 4 The Ranch 5 A Cadet’s Life 6 Being a Cadet, Part II 7 Runaway 8 “Dear Jenna . . .” 9 Clearwater 10 Key to Life 11 Back to the Drudgery 12 Flag Again 13 The Golden Age of Technology 14 CMO Training 15 Mom 16 On the EPF 17 “Handling” Family 18 The Questions Begin Photo Section 19 “Think for Yourself” 20 Punished 21 Security Checks 22 L.A. 23 My Choice 24 Dallas 25 The Celebrity Centre 26 A Secret Engagement 27 The Edge 28 A New Name 29 Australia 30 Lower Conditions 31 Gone 32 The Real World 33 Sharing the Truth 34 One Life Glossary Acknowledgments About the Author Credits Copyright About the Publisher Author’s Note TALKING ABOUT SCIENTOLOGY IS HARD—NOT JUST BECAUSE OF the memories that it stirs up or because Scientology itself is a complex and layered religion—but because in the past, Scientology’s practices have made it difficult for anyone to criticize or talk about life in the Church. The story in the pages that follow is true to the best of my recollection. The dialogue has been re-created to the best of my recollection. I have changed the names of some individuals in order to preserve their anonymity, and the goal in all cases was to keep certain names confidential without damaging the integrity of the story. Towards this end, the following names are pseudonyms: Joe Conte Karen Fassler Maria Parker Cathy Mauro Melissa Bell Eva Naomi Caitlin Teddy Blackman Sondra Phillips Sophia Townsend Olivia Julia Mayra Laura Rodriquez Kara Hansen Melinda Bleeker Steven Linda Charlie Molly Sylvia Pearl Tessa Mr. Wilson PROLOGUE RAYS OF MORNING SUN POKED THROUGH THE CLOUDS AS I STOOD toward the back of the line of children waiting to meet two important adults in the Church of Scientology. I didn’t know exactly how long I’d been there, but it seemed like forever. At seven years old, minutes seemed like hours when I was waiting for something. There were at least ten kids ahead of me, so my two friends and I were singing songs and playing handclap games to pass the time. Although I was certainly giggling along with them, I was mostly distracted and anxious. The two visitors were recruiters from the Church’s international headquarters in Hemet, California, and they were standing at folding tables that had been set up along the road to the School House.

• From Goddesses in Everywoman

  Moreover, a “Noah’s Ark” mentality prevails: people are expected to come in pairs, like shoes or socks. With this as a social norm, single women are made to feel that they are missing the boat. Thus the Hera archetype gets reinforced by negative consequences when she does not conform to Hera, as well as by positive validation if she does. Evidence that Hera might not be solely a creation of a patriarchal culture—a culture that devalues a woman unless she has been chosen by a man (the more powerful the man the better)—is suggested by a similar drive in many lesbian women. Many lesbians feel the same urge to have a mate, the same need for fidelity, the same expectation that fulfillment will come through her partner, and the same pressing desire for a ritual ceremony that will provide an outer acknowledgment of being paired. Most certainly, the lesbian woman who personifies Hera is not responding to cultural pressure or family expectations, both of which tend to condemn the relationship rather than support it. CAPACITY FOR COMMITMENT The Hera archetype provides the capacity to bond, to be loyal and faithful, to endure and go through difficulties with a partner. When Hera is a motivating force, a woman’s commitment is not conditional. Once married, she means to stay so, “for better or worse.” Without Hera, a woman may go through a series of short-lived relationships, moving on when the inevitable difficulties arise or the initial magic of falling in love wears off. She may never marry and may feel quite fine about her unmarried state. Or she may go through the motions—big church wedding and all—yet not feel connected, in the vital, Hera way, to the man she has married. When women marry without Hera, “Something’s missing.” These were the exact words used by a patient of mine, a forty-five-year-old photographer who lacked a sense of deep connection with her husband. “I like him fine and have been a good wife,” she said, “yet I often think living by myself would suit me better. If women flirt with him when I’m around, he sometimes encourages them—for my benefit, I think. He hopes I’ll get jealous and then gets upset because I don’t get upset. I suppose he suspects that he’s not essential to me—which is true. In my bones, I’m really not a devoted wife at all, though my behavior as a wife is beyond criticism.” Sadly for them both, even after twenty years of marriage, Hera was not an active archetype. THE SACRED MARRIAGE Two of the three meanings of marriage are as fulfillment of an inner need to be a mate and as an outer recognition of husband and wife.

• From Beyond Belief

  From Pennsylvania, we headed across New York and northeast through Vermont to New Hampshire, where we stayed with Aunt Lori and her family, and my dad’s mother, Grandma Loretta, at the old house my parents had left behind when they rejoined the Sea Org. Looking around the house, I found myself imagining what my life would have been like here, if my parents had decided to stay put. The relatives were all public Scientologists, and I would have grown up just like them. This would have been my home. Seeing my cousin Chrissie’s room, I thought that it likely would have been my room and my bed, that her closet filled with princess dresses in every color would have been mine. That her life was what might have been. For all the big differences between my life and theirs, I also came face-to-face with little things, too; in some ways the little things were the most striking. While we were in New Hampshire, we also stayed with Aunt Denise. Her house was amazing. Taylor and Whitney, Denise’s oldest daughters, had an unbelievable bedroom with big windows and skylights, and lots of pretty dolls and even a television in their room. It felt like paradise, but seeing all that they had didn’t make me envious; I always remembered my place in the Church. I was being raised to be a Sea Org member, and I had a mission to fulfill that was far more important than owning toys. Although it would have been nice to have a few, it was my duty to serve humankind like my parents did, and the thought of having so many toys seemed almost selfish, or at least that is what I told myself. During our visit, Chrissie and I went berry picking in her backyard just for fun, a concept that felt a bit strange, since any kind of work we did at the Ranch was always a chore. One day, there was a spirited argument between my cousins in the car about who got to sit next to me, and while I was flattered, I was also surprised because we never acted so childishly at the Ranch. My cousins’ behavior seemed a bit ridiculous. The Ranch had no tolerance for such behavior, so I’d never encountered it. I didn’t know that most kids bickered like this. I didn’t know what normal looked like.

• From 250 Contemporary Romance Outlines: Complete with prompts, settings, blurbs, conflict, character development and story arc (2024)

  - Shard of Glass: Emily's past relationship with Jack, which ended abruptly when he enlisted, left her with unresolved feelings and questions about their future. His sudden departure and the subsequent years of silence have built a wall around her heart, making her wary of reopening old wounds. Plot: Jack's return to Willow Bend stirs a mixture of emotions in Emily, reigniting past affections and unresolved tensions. As they navigate the familiar yet changed landscape of their relationship, they are forced to confront the reasons behind their separation and the impact of Jack's experiences on both their lives. Timeclock: The approaching winter holiday season, a time of community gatherings and festive celebrations in Willow Bend, serves as the timeclock, heightening the emotional stakes and providing a backdrop for Jack and Emily to rediscover each other and what they once shared. Internal Conflict: Jack struggles with the dual challenges of adjusting to civilian life and reconciling his feelings for Emily, weighed down by the guilt of his abrupt departure and the fear that his scars, both visible and hidden, have changed him too much to offer her the future she deserves. Emily battles her own heart, torn between the lingering hurt from Jack's departure and the undeniable pull she still feels toward him. She fears the vulnerability that comes with letting him back into her life, questioning if a future together is possible after so much has changed. External Conflict: Their rekindled relationship faces skepticism from friends and family, who remember the pain of their initial breakup and worry about the potential for further heartache. Additionally, Jack's reintegration into the community and Emily's protective nature create barriers to their reconciliation. Personal Consequences: Through their journey, Jack learns the importance of vulnerability and communication, understanding that true strength lies in facing one's struggles and allowing others to help. Emily discovers the power of forgiveness and the capacity of the heart to heal and love again, even after profound loss. Story Consequences: As the holiday season culminates in a festive celebration that brings the town together, Jack and Emily must decide if they're willing to embrace a second chance at love or if the remnants of the past are too formidable to overcome. Their choices will not only determine the future of their relationship but also set the course for their individual paths toward healing, growth, and possibly, a new beginning together. In "Homefront Hearts," the quaint setting of Willow Bend, with its enduring sense of community and tradition, provides the perfect backdrop for a contemporary romance that explores the themes of redemption, resilience, and the enduring power of love to heal the deepest of wounds and bridge the widest of divides. Outline #202Title: "Mistletoe Reunion" Setting: The novel unfolds in the bustling city of Chicago, specifically within the headquarters of a large marketing firm. The festive atmosphere of the city, with its twinkling lights, holiday markets, and snowy parks, contrasts with the corporate environment where the main characters reconnect. Main Characters:

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  But what if he had avoided that Hippo ordination? What if he had never come back to Africa? Freed of the gravitational pull of African Christianity, he would have had the time and inclination to develop the persona he had sought all his life. We can combine what we know of Pelagius, of the younger Jerome, and of Paulinus of Nola to help us imagine an Augustine who ended his career as he began it, elegant and knowing it,551 finding expression and social success for himself in adapting that elegance to a religious posture. For this, Augustine would have needed the wealthy patrons that Jerome and Pelagius found. That is where Augustine the Pelagian would have been: not marked (in all likelihood) as heretic or heresiarch, for doctrine was not the chief attraction in Pelagius’s case, and few besides Augustine could ever really see what was so odd or divergent about what Pelagius taught. Rather, Augustine would have been known as a discreet chaplain and guide to the Christian elite. He might very well have run afoul of the cantankerous Jerome in this role (most people did). Instead of Augustine and Jerome trying hard to be friends for political reasons despite their keen differences, we might have been able to see them genuinely at one another’s throats. If we grow weary at the thought of Augustine’s polemical books thrown back and forth to Julian of Eclanum, we should shudder and be amazed at the same time at the thought of the war that Augustine and Jerome could have had, fighting it out for the attentions of the same few wealthy Christian ladies, if only both had found it in good conscience necessary to do so. Here we come to imagining how Christianity would have been different if one of these other Augustines had prevailed over the one we know. To take away the pessimist and the pragmatist and leave behind an active, articulate optimist could well have thrown the balance a different way in western Christianity. Whether a Christianity less ardently monastic and world-weary would and could have survived, thrived, and shown such a flair for power as did the western Christianity we know well is a question that probably cannot be resolved, but it remains an intriguing possibility, forever lost. And so Pelagius came to Africa, crossed Augustine’s path, and the drama gradually began. No one doubted Pelagius’s zeal for Christianity or the orthodoxy of his intentions. Whenever pressed, Pelagius would find a way to say the things that pleased the most rigorous of questioners. Pelagius himself recognized Augustine as a like mind, even quoting Augustine’s early works in his own writing. When he came to Africa in 410, he attempted to pay a courtesy call on Augustine and, failing that, the two exchanged polite letters.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The mysterious, enchanting Kitty herself could not love such an ugly person as he conceived himself to be, and, above all, such an ordinary, in no way striking person. Moreover, his attitude to Kitty in the past—the attitude of a grown-up person to a child, arising from his friendship with her brother—seemed to him yet another obstacle to love. An ugly, good-natured man, as he considered himself, might, he supposed, be liked as a friend; but to be loved with such a love as that with which he loved Kitty, one would need to be a handsome and, still more, a distinguished man. He had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women. But after spending two months alone in the country, he was convinced that this was not one of those passions of which he had had experience in his early youth; that this feeling gave him not an instant’s rest; that he could not live without deciding the question, would she or would she not be his wife, and that his despair had arisen only from his own imaginings, that he had no sort of proof that he would be rejected. And he had now come to Moscow with a firm determination to make an offer, and get married if he were accepted. Or ... he could not conceive what would become of him if he were rejected. Chapter 7 On arriving in Moscow by a morning train, Levin had put up at the house of his elder half-brother, Koznishev. After changing his clothes he went down to his brother’s study, intending to talk to him at once about the object of his visit, and to ask his advice; but his brother was not alone. With him there was a well-known professor of philosophy, who had come from Harkov expressly to clear up a difference that had arisen between them on a very important philosophical question. The professor was carrying on a hot crusade against materialists. Sergey Koznishev had been following this crusade with interest, and after reading the professor’s last article, he had written him a letter stating his objections. He accused the professor of making too great concessions to the materialists. And the professor had promptly appeared to argue the matter out. The point in discussion was the question then in vogue: Is there a line to be drawn between psychological and physiological phenomena in man? and if so, where? Sergey Ivanovitch met his brother with the smile of chilly friendliness he always had for everyone, and introducing him to the professor, went on with the conversation.

• From Shunned (2018)

  I could walk the city streets and revel in fresh anonymity, free of concern about bumping into anyone who might inquire into my spiritual well-being. I had the emotional and spiritual space I’d yearned for. I was the auteur of a new life and a new persona. Regular calls from home were my only connection to my former life. Once a week, usually on Sundays, Mom would call and we’d talk until finally, at the end, Dad would come on the line. Never much of a phone talker, he would ask, “How you doin’, Lindy? Humidity melted you away yet?” When I asked about him, he’d reply, “Same old, same old.” It was the routine we’d always had—short but sweet. Lory called in the middle of the week and less often. In the early months, I found these calls comforting. We discussed how the tomatoes were thriving in the garden, Randy’s family camping trip to eastern Oregon, the deck Ove was building out back. Sometimes I admitted to being overwhelmed, experiencing brief periods of exhaustion and bouts of loneliness. But it was impossible to disguise my overriding enthusiasm when describing my latest adventures: scoring bleacher seats at Wrigley Field, watching Fourth of July fireworks with the masses at Grant Park, sitting three feet from Ahmad Jamal as he played piano at the Blackstone, and having tea with my next-door neighbor, a dancer with the Joffrey Ballet. In every conversation, specific things were left unsaid. A steady and affectionate relationship had developed between Steve and me, and we were spending time together on the weekends and occasionally during the week. My family would have been aghast just to think I was romantically involved with anyone, let alone someone I’d met on a blind date. One time I mentioned him by name and hinted he was a coworker. As a rule, I was vague about whom I spent time with, guiding my family to deduce I was with new girlfriends from the office. And when I had been with girlfriends, I would go into detail about the meal we’d shared but avoided mentioning how much fun we’d had later, dancing to Bob Marley songs at a reggae bar with a variety of attractive men. The calls left me conflicted. The joy of hearing mundane news was tempered by the need to hide much of the person I was becoming. I felt hollow and two-faced. These conversations lacked intimacy and were a steady reminder of the widening chasm between us. But I didn’t think I had a choice. If I told the fuller truth, the campaign for my salvation would intensify. I’d be questioned for signs of “repentance” but couldn’t locate any remorse. Then what? I wasn’t strong enough to face it. So I mourned the widening gap and carried on enjoying my clandestine, worldly ways. Chapter 11 [image "Images" file=Image00000.jpg] Sell your cleverness. Buy bewilderment. —Rumi F rom time to time, Ross phoned from Portland.

• From Chasing Beauty

  She put the notebook’s title on the next page: “List of Things for the Museum.” Ideas were coalescing in her mind. She needed a sequence or syntax for a vision as improbable as it was alluring—her very own museum. Both Gardners realized something needed to be done about how to keep and show their ever-growing collection. The previous September 1896, Isabella had met with the well-known Boston architect Willard T. Sears about the possibilities of expanding their Beacon Street residence. She knew Sears well after his work designing the house at Roque Island and the renovations and additions to the Gardners’ property at Green Hill. She went so far as to ask that Sears draw up preliminary plans . Maybe they could buy yet another townhouse on one side or the other, reserving the top floor for a private apartment. She made Sears promise to keep the project secret. But they ran into difficulties. Jack didn’t think a museum in the middle of a residential street was such a good idea. A friend remembered him saying that a building of that size would block out the neighbors’ light. He may have also worried about securing the collection from theft and fire, a particular concern after Boston’s Great Fire in 1872, when so many buildings, set close together, had been destroyed. The recent disaster at the Sargent estate was also a caution. Unlike adjoined townhouses, a freestanding building had the advantage of windows on all four sides, which would make it easier to see the art without electrification. Their Brookline neighbor Frederick Law Olmsted was in the midst of implementing his landscape design for newly filled-in marshland south of the Back Bay, which would become part of the city’s lush series of parks and waterways known as the Emerald Necklace . Real estate lots already had been sold to developers. For whatever reason, the timing for a real estate purchase wasn’t quite right, and a definite decision had to wait. Still, Isabella’s dream for a museum with many kinds of objects was coming into clear focus. She would have paintings, to be sure, but also furniture, textiles, sculpture, screens, lace, fabric, mirrors, ironwork, manuscripts, photographs, and so on. Her collection would be seen in situ, like the art at the Poldi Pezzoli, the house museum that had inspired her as a teenager, or like her idyll in Venice, the Palazzo Barbaro. Her homes on Beacon Street and at Green Hill had been a kind of laboratory, where she set up scenes and tableaux and combinations of textures and colors to fabricate a mood, a feeling, a memory. In the phrase of a contemporary scholar on collections, she was assembling a “homemade universe .” “Things to be taken for Museum from Green Hill,” she began in her notebook. “From Music Room—old Italian chimney piece and gilded iron brackets with tapestries . .

• From The Journals of Sylvia Plath (1982)

  in my head I know it is too simple to wish for war, for open battle, but one cannot help but wish for those situations that make us heroic. living to the hilt of our total resources. our cosmic fights, when I think the end of the world is come, are so many broken shells around our growth. sunday noon: very stingily blue whipped to white by wind from russian steppes. the mornings are god’s time, and after breakfast for those five hours somehow everything is all right and most things are even possible. the afternoons however slip away faster and faster and night cheats by coming shortly after four. the dark time, the night time is worst now. sleep is like the grave, worm-eaten with dreams. Excerpt from a letter to Richard Sassoon January 28it would be easy to say I would fight for you, or steal or lie; I have a great deal of that desire to use myself to the hilt, and where for men, fighting is a cause, for women, fighting is for men. in a crisis, it is easy to say: I will arise and be with thee. but what I would do … is the hardest thing for me, with my absurd streak of idealism and perfectionism: I do believe I would sit around with you and feed you and wait with you through all the necessary realms of tables and kingdoms of chairs and cabbage for those fantastic few moments when we are angels, and we are growing angels (which the angels in heaven never can be) and when we together make the world love itself and incandesce. I would sit around and read and write and brush my teeth, knowing in you there were the seeds of an angel, my kind of angel, with fire and swords and blazing power. why is it I find out so slowly what women are made for? it comes nudging and urging up in me like tulip bulbs in april. February 19, Sunday night . To whom it may concern: Every now and then there comes a time when the neutral and impersonal forces of the world turn and come together in a thundercrack of judgment. There is no reason for the sudden terror, the feeling of condemnation, except that circumstances all mirror the inner doubt, the inner fear. Yesterday, walking quite peacefully over the Mill Lane Bridge, after leaving my bike to be repaired (feeling lost, pedestrian, impotent), smiling that smile which puts a benevolent lacquer on the shuddering fear of strangers’ gazes, I was suddenly turned upon by little boys making snowballs on the dam. They began to throw them at me, openly, honestly, trying to hit. They missed every time, and with that wary judgment that comes with experience, I watched the dirty snowballs coming at me, behind and in front, and, sick with wonder, kept walking slowly, determinedly, ready to parry a good hit before it struck.

• From Like Family

  [image "image" file=Image00003.jpg] ALL YOU HAD TO do was look at Hilde, her mouth in a hard line as if a ruler had slapped it there, arms crossed severely over her heart, to know there was no map, no access, no turnable knob to the door that was her—at least not for me and my sisters. She could be warm—I saw how eagerly she mothered Tina—but I didn’t feel any of that directed at me and didn’t see any warmth directed at Penny or Teresa. To us, she was a mom-size armadillo, all shell and no shelter—and it made me nuts. I simultaneously wanted her to love me and hated that I cared. I looked to my sisters to see how they were handling the problem of Hilde’s impenetrability, but found no help. As far as I could tell, Teresa didn’t give Hilde a moment’s thought. Maybe it was too late for her to want anything from a mother, all the comings and goings adding leathery layers to her own shell. And Penny, maybe Penny wasn’t protected enough. Although she wasn’t getting any more affection than Teresa or I, she didn’t stop trying to find it, cuddling up to the petrified log of Hilde on the couch after dinner, leaning forward to touch a fuzzy wand of Hilde’s hair in the car. And if she couldn’t get love from Hilde, then she would take it where she could get it. That’s why she called back to the Fredricksons’ house, and why she stayed after school every day to help her second-grade teacher, Mrs. Munoz, clap her erasers, following her from one corner of the classroom to another as if Mrs. Munoz had sugar in her pockets instead of chalk nubs. For Penny, even strangers would do. Once, when she was eight or nine, Penny had an ear infection that kept her up several nights running, the pain pounding and acute, her fever high. Finally, Hilde was forced to miss an afternoon at Noreen’s so she could take Penny down to the free clinic, where we received all of our checkups and shots. It was a busy day at the clinic, mid-flu season, and they had no choice but to stand in a line for several hours, Hilde tapping a foot on the dirt-tracked tile, pretending to read an issue of the Star (Lizard Boy Eats Four Pounds of Flies in One Sitting! Bigfoot Stole My Wife!) as Penny cried loudly. Nearby, an enormous black woman sat in one of the orange plastic chairs next to a gaggle of her own children, all coloring quietly in a ratty copy of the Storybook Bible. Penny wailed on; Hilde ignored her pointedly, and finally the big woman had seen enough. She went over to Penny, picked her right up and carried her back to the orange chair.

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  Space rarely opens up to us in one go. Even in the theatre when one more curtain needs to be raised, the process can be laborious, the heavy fabric rises slowly or, when the scene is still half hidden, the mechanism gets stuck and some occult resistance defers by a few seconds the spectator’s involvement and mental participation in the action. It is well known that we attach special importance to the times of transition and the places in which they took place. The sensuous pleasure I feel in airport lounges is perhaps a distant echo of the act of emancipation I achieved when I accepted Claude’s invitation to go with him, and stepped through the door with no knowledge of what the end of the journey would bring. But space is only ever an immeasurably large balloon with a hole. If you blow it up too fast, it will readily turn on you and deflate just as quickly.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  As a little girl, Miri had loved to jitterbug with her mother, but not anymore. Miri preferred to watch Steve Osner dancing with Phil Stein’s cousin Kathy, who wore a dark-green strapless velvet dress. She laughed a lot, and when she did, her dark eyes sparkled and crinkled up. You could tell Steve was gaga over her. Maybe she was gaga over Steve, too, even though she was a year ahead of him, already a college girl. Miri could recognize love now, or maybe it was attraction she recognized—either way, she knew it when she saw it. She could feel it when it was in the air and it was in the air around Steve Osner and Kathy Stein. Natalie gave her a nudge. They were sitting on the steps leading up to the kitchen. “See those earrings my mother’s wearing?” Corinne was dancing with Dr. O. “Daddy gave them to her for Hanukkah. She let me try them on. She said someday I’ll find a husband who’ll give me diamond earrings. Then she reminded me for the millionth time, it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich boy as a poor boy, which is interesting, considering Daddy was a poor boy who had to work his way all through school. She said even though some people say diamonds aren’t important, they are. I didn’t tell her I’m never getting married.” “Since when?” Miri asked, surprised. “Since I promised Ruby my career as a dancer would always come first.” “Do you think you should be making promises to someone who’s…” She stopped herself just in time. “I told you,” Natalie said, annoyed. “She’s not dead. She’s living inside me.” “But what does that mean?” Natalie shook her head. “You’re not even trying to understand.” Miri wanted to understand what Natalie was trying to tell her. For all she knew it was possible. Just because she’d never heard of having a dead person living inside you, didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. She’d read about spirits, about ghosts. Not that she believed they were real. No, she argued with herself, this thing with Natalie was crazy. It was impossible. Natalie was going nuts. Maybe she should tell someone. But Natalie trusted her with her secret. If she told, she’d be betraying her best friend, wouldn’t she? Or would she be helping her? Miri wasn’t sure. This was a secret she wished she’d never heard. The conga line zigzagged around the room, everyone laughing as they one, two, three, kicked! Dr. O led the way. Rusty was sandwiched between him and Tewky Purvis. Kathy Stein held on to Tewky’s waist, and Steve held hers, followed by Corinne, then Dr. Reiss. “Come on,” Natalie said, dragging Miri out to join the fun. They broke in between Dr. O and Rusty so that Miri held Natalie’s waist and Rusty held hers. Not the way she would have planned it. Dr.