Alphabet Of Our Love Quotes

Love has its own communication. It's the language of the heart, while it has never been transcribed, has no alphabet, and can't be heard or spoken by voice, it is used by every human on the planet. It is written on our souls, scripted by the finger of God, and we can hear, understand, and speak it with perfection long before we open our eyes for the first time.

Oh, how scary and wonderful it is that words can change our lives simply by being next to each other.

After sex, after coffee, after everything there is to be said -- The hovering and beautiful alphabet as we form our first words after making love. And somehow I'm still alive.

Sorry, I said to myself, wondering how many times in my marriage I'd said that, how many times I'd meant it, how many times Claire had actually believed it, and, most important, how many times the utterance had any impact whatsoever on our dispute. What a lovely chart one could draw of this word Sorry.

Later I will see there is a poem on the back of each wing. Poems that are not about us, but are about trees and teacups, fields and glances. Not about us, but about the things we hold dear. The moments we both collect by living our lives, together and alone. Rearranged alphabets, dream-remnant wonder, the seat of our love.

Jonathan Sacks; “One way is just to think, for instance, of biodiversity. The extraordinary thing we now know, thanks to Crick and Watson’s discovery of DNA and the decoding of the human and other genomes, is that all life, everything, all the three million species of life and plant life—all have the same source. We all come from a single source. Everything that lives has its genetic code written in the same alphabet. Unity creates diversity. So don’t think of one God, one truth, one way. Think of one God creating this extraordinary number of ways, the 6,800 languages that are actually spoken. Don’t think there’s only one language within which we can speak to God. The Bible is saying to us the whole time: Don’t think that God is as simple as you are. He’s in places you would never expect him to be. And you know, we lose a bit of that in English translation. When Moses at the burning bush says to God, “Who are you?” God says to him three words: “Hayah asher hayah.”Those words are mistranslated in English as “I am that which I am.” But in Hebrew, it means “I will be who or how or where I will be,” meaning, Don’t think you can predict me. I am a God who is going to surprise you. One of the ways God surprises us is by letting a Jew or a Christian discover the trace of God’s presence in a Buddhist monk or a Sikh tradition of hospitality or the graciousness of Hindu life. Don’t think we can confine God into our categories. God is bigger than religion.

Speech therapy is an art that deserves to be more widely known. You cannot imagine the acrobatics your tongue mechanically performs in order to produce all the sounds of a language. Just now I am struggling with the letter l, a pitiful admission for an editor in chief who cannot even pronounce the name of his own magazine! On good days, between coughing fits, I muster enough energy and wind to be able to puff out one or two phonemes. On my birthday, Sandrine managed to get me to pronounce the whole alphabet more or less intelligibly. I could not have had a better present. It was as if those twenty-six letters and been wrenched from the void; my own hoarse voice seemed to emanate from a far-off country. The exhausting exercise left me feeling like a caveman discovering language for the first time. Sometimes the phone interrupts our work, and I take advantage of Sandrine's presence to be in touch with loved ones, to intercept and catch passing fragments of life, the way you catch a butterfly. My daughter, Celeste, tells me of her adventures with her pony. In five months she will be nine. My father tells me how hard it is to stay on his feet. He is fighting undaunted through his ninety-third year. These two are the outer links of the chain of love that surrounds and protects me. I often wonder about the effect of these one-way conversations on those at the other end of the line. I am overwhelmed by them. How dearly I would love to be able to respond with something other than silence to these tender calls. I know that some of them find it unbearable. Sweet Florence refuses to speak to me unless I first breathe noisily into the receiver that Sandrine holds glued to my ear. "Are you there, Jean-Do?" she asks anxiously over the air. And I have to admit that at times I do not know anymore.

These graces and favors that God grants us without our knowledge may be referred to by the Holy Spirit in the Canticle when he says to the bride: “How beautiful are you, my love, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are doves' eyes, besides what is hid within.” [110]  As doves' eyes are tearful, the eyes of devout persons, who are accustomed to weep, are compared to them. Such tears come from grace and virtue, especially if they are shed out of desire for our Lord's presence when he is absent; he gives them a secret grace for this of which even they themselves are unaware;

To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. To cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt. Well, true enough, any word worth repeating is greater than the sum of its parts; and the particular word-part Z can, from a certain perspective, appear anally wired. On those of us neither prosaic nor jaded, however, those whom the Fates have chosen to monitor such things, Z has had an impact above and beyond its signifying function. A presence in its own right, it’s the most distant and elusive of our twenty-six linguistic atoms; a mysterious, dark figure in an otherwise fairly innocuous lineup, and the sleekest little swimmer ever to take laps in a bowl of alphabet soup. Scarcely a day of my life has gone by when I’ve not stirred the alphabetical ant nest, yet every time I type or pen the letter Z, I still feel a secret tingle, a tiny thrill… Z is a whip crack of a letter, a striking viper of a letter, an open jackknife ever ready to cut the cords of convention or peel the peach of lust. A Z is slick, quick, arcane, eccentric, and always faintly sinister - although its very elegance separates it from the brutish X, that character traditionally associated with all forms of extinction. If X wields a tire iron, Z packs a laser gun. Zap! If X is Mike Hammer, Z is James Bond. If X marks the spot, Z avoids the spot, being too fluid, too cosmopolitan, to remain in one place. In contrast to that prim, trim, self-absorbed supermodel, I, or to O, the voluptuous, orgasmic, bighearted slut, were Z a woman, she would be a femme fatale, the consonant we love to fear and fear to love.

There’s twenty-six letters in the alphabet that can be arranged to express an infinity of emotions.” I shake my head. “But not mine, not for you. There are no words to express the way my whole world falls at your feet, staring up in awe at my best friend, my lover … my forever. The river of love for you that runs through me is deep and all consuming. I came alive for you. With the soft stroke of your brush, you painted my life a million shades of amazing and now my heart finds its rhythm from your love … our love … forever. So be my husband, Trick. Let our story be the only one that matters.

Death can prompt a slamming of the interior door. We don’t want to open it because doing so means living without the ones we love. Prayer helps loosen the lock. It allows oxygen to flow back into our spirits after being depleted by grief. We take that first deep breath when we accept what has happened. In doing so, we are no longer suffocated by our yearning for the past. Grateful for all that has been, for the beauty and love we have known, we can begin to live again.

The English word Atonement comes from the ancient Hebrew word kaphar, which means to cover. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit and discovered their nakedness in the Garden of Eden, God sent Jesus to make coats of skins to cover them. Coats of skins don’t grow on trees. They had to be made from an animal, which meant an animal had to be killed. Perhaps that was the very first animal sacrifice. Because of that sacrifice, Adam and Eve were covered physically. In the same way, through Jesus’ sacrifice we are also covered emotionally and spiritually. When Adam and Eve left the garden, the only things they could take to remind them of Eden were the coats of skins. The one physical thing we take with us out of the temple to remind us of that heavenly place is a similar covering. The garment reminds us of our covenants, protects us, and even promotes modesty. However, it is also a powerful and personal symbol of the Atonement—a continuous reminder both night and day that because of Jesus’ sacrifice, we are covered. (I am indebted to Guinevere Woolstenhulme, a religion teacher at BYU, for insights about kaphar.) Jesus covers us (see Alma 7) when we feel worthless and inadequate. Christ referred to himself as “Alpha and Omega” (3 Nephi 9:18). Alpha and omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Christ is surely the beginning and the end. Those who study statistics learn that the letter alpha is used to represent the level of significance in a research study. Jesus is also the one who gives value and significance to everything. Robert L. Millet writes, “In a world that offers flimsy and fleeting remedies for mortal despair, Jesus comes to us in our moments of need with a ‘more excellent hope’ (Ether 12:32)” (Grace Works, 62). Jesus covers us when we feel lost and discouraged. Christ referred to Himself as the “light” (3 Nephi 18:16). He doesn’t always clear the path, but He does illuminate it. Along with being the light, He also lightens our loads. “For my yoke is easy,” He said, “and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). He doesn’t always take burdens away from us, but He strengthens us for the task of carrying them and promises they will be for our good. Jesus covers us when we feel abused and hurt. Joseph Smith taught that because Christ met the demands of justice, all injustices will be made right for the faithful in the eternal scheme of things (see Teachings, 296). Marie K. Hafen has said, “The gospel of Jesus Christ was not given us to prevent our pain. The gospel was given us to heal our pain” (“Eve Heard All These Things,” 27). Jesus covers us when we feel defenseless and abandoned. Christ referred to Himself as our “advocate” (D&C 29:5): one who believes in us and stands up to defend us. We read, “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler” (Psalm 18:2). A buckler is a shield used to divert blows. Jesus doesn’t always protect us from unpleasant consequences of illness or the choices of others, since they are all part of what we are here on earth to experience. However, He does shield us from fear in those dark times and delivers us from having to face those difficulties alone. … We’ve already learned that the Hebrew word that is translated into English as Atonement means “to cover.” In Arabic or Aramaic, the verb meaning to atone is kafat, which means “to embrace.” Not only can we be covered, helped, and comforted by the Savior, but we can be “encircled about eternally in the arms of his love” (2 Nephi 1:15). We can be “clasped in the arms of Jesus” (Mormon 5:11). In our day the Savior has said, “Be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, and I will encircle thee in the arms of my love” (D&C 6:20). (Brad Wilcox, The Continuous Atonement, pp. 47-49, 60).

A woman was bargaining with the gardener for a piece of vine, half as big as her finger, for her miniature Japanese garden. It was just what she wanted to climb up the stone in her dish. I looked with wonder on the Japanese appreciation of all small things in nature. Is it because their country, beautifully and theatrically mountainous, hardly ever allows a long vista, letting them always see things at close range? Or have her strange and lovely mists some part in teaching them to see, falling often like a backdrop behind a single pine, separating it from the rest of the world? Or have the Japanese, from generations spent in one-story paper houses, learned a language, an alphabet of beauty in nature, that we, in our houses of brick and stone, have shut out? Or is it, again, only because they are always artists and see more than we do? If only I could stay here long enough, I would learn to see too. And after minutely watching the surface of things I would learn to see below the surface. I would see the essence of a thing.

Necessities 1 A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas, but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in. With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up. The green smear of the woods we first made love in. The yellow city we thought was our future. The red highways not traveled, the green ones with their missed exits, the black side roads which took us where we had not meant to go. The high peaks, recorded by relatives, though we prefer certain unmarked elevations, the private alps no one knows we have climbed. The careful boundaries we draw and erase. And always, around the edges, the opaque wash of blue, concealing the drop-off they have stepped into before us, singly, mapless, not looking back. 2 The illusion of progress. Imagine our lives without it: tape measures rolled back, yardsticks chopped off. Wheels turning but going nowhere. Paintings flat, with no vanishing point. The plots of all novels circular; page numbers reversing themselves past the middle. The mountaintop no longer a goal, merely the point between ascent and descent. All streets looping back on themselves; life as a beckoning road an absurd idea. Our children refusing to grow out of their childhoods; the years refusing to drag themselves toward the new century. And hope, the puppy that bounds ahead, no longer a household animal. 3 Answers to questions, an endless supply. New ones that startle, old ones that reassure us. All of them wrong perhaps, but for the moment solutions, like kisses or surgery. Rising inflections countered by level voices, words beginning with w hushed by declarative sentences. The small, bold sphere of the period chasing after the hook, the doubter that walks on water and treads air and refuses to go away. 4 Evidence that we matter. The crash of the plane which, at the last moment, we did not take. The involuntary turn of the head, which caused the bullet to miss us. The obscene caller who wakes us at midnight to the smell of gas. The moon's full blessing when we fell in love, its black mood when it was all over. Confirm us, we say to the world, with your weather, your gifts, your warnings, your ringing telephones, your long, bleak silences. 5 Even now, the old things first things, which taught us language. Things of day and of night. Irrational lightning, fickle clouds, the incorruptible moon. Fire as revolution, grass as the heir to all revolutions. Snow as the alphabet of the dead, subtle, undeciphered. The river as what we wish it to be. Trees in their humanness, animals in their otherness. Summits. Chasms. Clearings. And stars, which gave us the word distance, so we could name our deepest sadness.

If only I could coexist as peacefully with you as I do with my wolf,” Jaime said as they walked back to pack territory hand in hand. Dante frowned at her. “We coexist peacefully…when you’re not making a mess of our room and ignoring what I say.” “Maybe you could stop being a neat freak and ease off with barking orders at me.” “I resent the neat-freak statement. And I do not bark.” She snickered. “Sure you don’t, Popeye.” “And it wouldn’t kill you to use the shoe rack. I mean, it’s right by the door.” “Stop putting my CDs in chronological order, and I’ll work on the shoe rack thing.” A short pause. “How about alphabetical order?” “How about you go to therapy?” A frustrated growl escaped him. “How about I just shove my cock in your mouth? That should shut you up. Hey!” he whined when she drummed her fingers against his temple. “What’re you doing?” She shrugged. “I just felt like tapping some ass.” His mouth dropped open. Her smirk had him growling again. “Bitch.” “Jerk.” “Love you, baby.” “Love you, Popeye.

Truth About Love" I apologize for not being Gandhi or Tom the mailman who is always kind. He makes his way every day no matter the mood of the sky with our words in a sack and Gandhi made the English give India back without taking a gun for a wife. My contribution to the common good is playing with the alphabet in a little room while the world goes foraging for food. I’m a better poet than man and it’s well known how little my verbs are worth. I am my only subject, being the god of my horizons. What saves me is that just beyond my skin the world of yours is where I’d rather live. The AMA says you’ve added seven point six years to my life. In a phrase, love is a transfer of wealth. This is why Adam Smith gave up romantic verse. In trying to say what can’t be said I’ll take the Dragnet approach. Just the facts. I’d be dead sooner without you, you’ll die faster for being a Mrs., raw deal can’t be more clearly defined. To make amends I offer ten percent more kisses each year. Or do I do more harm the closer we become? If yes, leaving would be love and a better man might. But my thrills are selfishly domestic. I like sweeping words into piles and whispering good night.

ACORDING to the Apostle, “in many things we all offend” not only once but many times, for “the just man falls seven times a day”. To the wise it is evident that we offend greatly, for we should not commit even a venial sin for all the world could give us.[748] As we offend greatly and in many ways and things, we need to be constantly corrected. Therefore our Letter bids us to constantly correct our soul, lovingly and without anger.   Man should correct himself in two ways. The first and most necessary is to withdraw from evil to good as we are bound to do, for if fraternal correction is binding on a Christian, much more so is the correction of his own soul, with which he is in closer relation. Regarding this correction from evil to good, the wise man says: “The perverse are hard to be corrected.” [749]   One whose good habits are perverted and become evil requires more time to reform than he took to go wrong. For if he gave way to some vice for a year, he will need to practice the contrary virtue for two years in order to change his bad habits for good ones. Hence the sage declares that the perverse are hard to correct, for not only must they uproot the vice but must plant the virtue in its place and wait until it flourishes as the vice did.

I wrote that the sails are our desires that must be perfectly pure and clean, since the port we seek is the knowledge of God, which none can attain save the pure in heart.[291] Hence it is written of the ship of Tyre:  “Fine broidered linen . . . was woven for your sail.” [292]  The mast is the love of God, which the same prophet declares was made of cedar and incorruptible, as the soul should never fail in the practice of any exercise; the cedar must come from Libanus, which means ‘beatitude’, for infused charity is perfect love. To this mast must be fastened the ropes of peace and harmony with God, ourselves, and our neighbor, which in Holy Scripture are called ‘the bands of love.’ [293]  The mariner's compass is faith, by which the rudder must be directed, and the helm is prudence. The compass points to the North, for faith must rule us and raise us to contemplation between the two is discretion, which is very necessary. The pilot is good counsel: he must be guided by the mariner's chart, that is, the Holy Scriptures, if he wishes to avoid mistakes. The sounding-line is prudence, by which we must measure what is to be done if we wish to succeed: the pilot, or sage counsel, must plumb the water over which we sail, that is, our restless life.

She told me she met the love of her life,” Zohra says at last, still staring out the window. “You read poems about it, you hear stories about it, you hear Sicilians talk about being struck by lightning. We know there’s no love of your life. Love isn’t terrifying like that. It’s walking the fucking dog so the other one can sleep in, it’s doing taxes, it’s cleaning the bathroom without hard feelings. It’s having an ally in life. It’s not fire, it’s not lightning. It’s what she always had with me. Isn’t it? But what if she’s right, Arthur? What if the Sicilians are right? That it’s this earth-shattering thing she felt? Something I’ve never felt. Have you?” Less begins to breath unevenly. She turns to him: “What if one day you meet someone, Arthur, and it feels like it could never be anyone else? Not because other people are less attractive, or drink too much, or have issues in bed, or have to alphabetize every fucking book or organize the dishwasher in some way you just can’t live with. It’s because they aren’t this person. This woman Janet met. Maybe you can go through your whole life and never meet them, and think love is all these other things, but if you do meet them, God help you! Because then: ka-blam! You’re screwed. The way Janet is. She ruined our life for it! But what if that’s real?

The casual glimpses which the ordinary population bestowed upon that wondrous world of sap and leaves called the Hintock woods had been with these two, Giles and Marty, a clear gaze. They had been possessed of its finer mysteries as of commonplace knowledge; had been able to read its hieroglyphs as ordinary writing; to them the sights and sounds of night, winter, wind, storm, amid those dense boughs, which had to Grace a touch of the uncanny, and even the supernatural, were simple occurrences whose origin, continuance, and laws they foreknew. They had planted together, and together they had felled; together they had, with the run of the years, mentally collected those remoter signs and symbols which, seen in few, were of runic obscurity, but all together made an alphabet. From the light lashing of the twigs upon their faces, when brushing through them in the dark, they could pronounce upon the species of the tree whence they stretched; from the quality of the wind's murmur through a bough they could in like manner name its sort afar off. They knew by a glance at a trunk if its heart were sound, or tainted with incipient decay, and by the state of its upper twigs, the stratum that had been reached by its roots. The artifices of the seasons were seen by them from the conjuror's own point of view, and not from that of the spectator. "He ought to have married YOU, Marty, and nobody else in the world!" said Grace, with conviction, after thinking somewhat in the above strain. Marty shook her head. "In all our out-door days and years together, ma'am," she replied, "the one thing he never spoke of to me was love; nor I to him." "Yet you and he could speak in a tongue that nobody else knew—not even my father, though he came nearest knowing—the tongue of the trees and fruits and flowers themselves.

The woman glares at him and, after taking a breath, forges on. "One other issue I'd like to raise is how you have authors here separated by sex." "Yes, that's right. The person who was in charge before us cataloged these and for whatever reason divided them into male and female. We were thinking of recataloging all of them, but haven't been able to as of yet." "We're not criticizing you for this," she says. Oshima tilts his head slightly. "The problem, though, is that in all categories male authors are listed before female authors," she says. "To our way of thinking this violates the principle of sexual equality and is totally unfair." Oshima picks up her business card again, runs his eyes over it, then lays it back down on the counter. "Ms. Soga," he begins, "when they called the role in school your name would have come before Ms. Tanaka, and after Ms. Sekine. Did you file a complaint about that? Did you object, asking them to reverse the order? Does G get angry because it follows F in the alphabet? Does page 68 in a book start a revolution just because it follows 67?" "That's not the point," she says angrily. "You're intentionally trying to confuse the issue." Hearing this, the shorter woman, who'd been standing in front of a stack taking notes, races over. "Intentionally trying to confuse the issue," Oshima repeats, like he's underlining the woman's words. "Are you denying it?" "That's a red herring," Oshima replies. The woman named Soga stands there, mouth slightly ajar, not saying a word. "In English there's this expression red herring. Something that's very interesting but leads you astray from the main topic. I'm afraid I haven't looked into why they use that kind of expression, though." "Herrings or mackerel or whatever, you're dodging the issue." "Actually what I'm doing is shifting the analogy," Oshima says. "One of the most effective methods of argument, according to Aristotle. The citizens of ancient Athens enjoyed using this kind of intellectual trick very much. It's a shame, though, that at the time women weren't included in the definition of 'citizen.'" "Are you making fun of us?" Oshima shakes his head. "Look, what I'm trying to get across is this: I'm sure there are many more effective ways of making sure that Japanese women's rights are guaranteed than sniffing around a small library in a little town and complaining about the restrooms and the card catalog. We're doing our level best to see that this modest library of ours helps the community. We've assembled an outstanding collection for people who love books. And we do our utmost to put a human face on all our dealings with the public. You might not be aware of it, but this library's collection of poetry-related material from the 1910s to the mid-Showa period is nationally recognized. Of course there are things we could do better, and limits to what we can accomplish. But rest assured we're doing our very best. I think it'd be a whole lot better if you focus on what we do well than what we're unable to do. Isn't that what you call fair?

It was like a page out of the telephone book. Alphabetically, numerically, statistically, it made sense. But when you looked at it up close, when you examined the pages separately, or the parts separately, when you examined one lone individual and what constituted him, examined the air he breathed, the life he led, the chances he risked, you saw something so foul and degrading, so low, so miserable, so utterly hopeless and senseless, that it was worse than looking into a volcano. Outwardly it seems to be a beautiful honeycomb, with all the drones crawling over each other in a frenzy of work; inwardly it’s a slaughterhouse, each man killing off his neighbor and sucking the juice from his bones. Superficially it looks like a bold, masculine world; actually it’s a whorehouse run by women, with the native sons acting as pimps and the bloody foreigners selling their flesh... The whole continent is sound asleep and in that sleep a grand nightmare is taking place… At night the streets of New York reflect the crucifixion and death of Christ. When the snow is on the ground and there is the utmost silence there comes out of the hideous buildings of New York a music of such sullen despair and bankruptcy as to make the flesh shrivel. No stone was laid upon another with love or reverence; no street was laid for dance or joy. One thing has been added to another in a mad scramble to fill the belly, and the streets smell of empty bellies and full bellies and bellies half full. The streets smell of a hunger which has nothing to do with love; they smell of the belly which is insatiable and of the creations of the empty belly which are null and void. Just as the city itself had become a huge tomb in which men struggled to earn a decent death so my own life came to resemble a tomb which I was constructing out of my own death. I was walking around in a stone forest the center of which was chaos; sometimes in the dead center, in the very heart of chaos, I danced or drank myself silly, or I made love, or I befriended some one, or I planned a new life, but it was all chaos, all stone, and all hopeless and bewildering. Until the time when I would encounter a force strong enough to whirl me out of this mad stone forest no life would be possible for me nor could one page be written which would have meaning… Everybody and everything is a part of life... As an individual, as flesh and blood, I am leveled down each day to make the fleshless, bloodless city whose perfection is the sum of all logic and death to the dream. I am struggling against an oceanic death in which my own death is but a drop of water evaporating. To raise my own individual life but a fraction of an inch above this sinking sea of death I must have a faith greater than Christ’s, a wisdom deeper than that of the greatest seer. I must have the ability and the patience to formulate what is not contained in the language of our time, for what is now intelligible is meaningless. My eyes are useless, for they render back only the image of the known. My whole body must become a constant beam of light, moving with an ever greater rapidity, never arrested, never looking back, never dwindling. The city grows like a cancer; I must grow like a sun. The city eats deeper and deeper into the red; it is an insatiable white louse which must die eventually of inanition. I am going to starve the white louse which is eating me up. I am going to die as a city in order to become again a man. Therefore I close my ears, my eyes, my mouth. Infinitely better, as life moves toward a deathly perfection, to be just a bit of breathing space, a stretch of green, a little fresh air, a pool of water. Better also to receive men silently and to enfold them, for there is no answer to make while they are still frantically rushing to turn the corner.

It’s difficult to move forward when we dwell on that which cannot be changed. If we remain too long in the shadow of what has happened, we can become shadows ourselves. Sometimes we are searching for our loved ones, sometimes for a part of ourselves, for the people we were before this loss. But our loved ones cannot be found in the darkness of never because they exist now in the light of eternity.

Our loved ones, however they might have died, are not constrained to their last moments on earth. They simply aren’t. So we should not keep them there either.

Our spirits are embroidered with silver threads stitching us to our loved ones. They are adorned with the jewels of every moment shared and all that we cherished about them. By our choosing to live on, they can live on. If we dissolve into the darkness of despair, they cannot shine. Our loved ones do not want us to stop living because they have died; they want us to live. They want us to bring them with us into each new day so that a part of them can remain on earth through the stories we share. After a time, however long that is (and it is different for different people), sorrow ceases to be a tribute to the deceased. It distracts from their stories and puts the focus on us, on our pain, on our lives. They have not moved on from us; they are living within and beyond us. And we have not moved on from them when we take a step toward happiness, acceptance, and peace. We live on together when we live on in love.

Death doesn’t feel like a wound; it feels more like an amputation. We cannot grow back the part of ourselves that we have lost. We cannot simply stitch together the hole left by our loved ones’ absence. We need to learn how to walk again. This takes time, yes, but time will not fix it. What it may do is allow scar tissue to form so that walking is not so painful.

Love never lets go of our hands. Never. We came into the world as individual souls—held, blessed, named, loved—and we have a responsibility to our souls to keep living, living until we make our own way back home. Those who have gone before us have left torches along the path in the form of lessons imparted, examples set, and people who need our help. When we are willing to embark again on the path, to grab on to whatever rope God throws us in our times of loneliness and despair, our loved ones will be there to guide

Memories are precious, but they are part of the past. The things we treasure, whether a facet of a memory, a particular aspect of a loved one, or a tangible talisman, we carry with us—always. They continue to inform us about our loved ones and remind us that life is ongoing, that we can still learn from those who have died and can still feel their presence. The smell of Old Spice will forever be my grandfather. My bony wrists and the veins in my hands are remnants of my grandmother. These small things are treasures that will never lose their value and cannot be taken from me.

When we stop asking why and instead begin to find our why, we can start mapping out our how. And something will begin to heal inside of us. Some people are afraid of healing. They mistakenly think healing means letting their loved ones go and leaving them in the past. This is not true. As we heal, we are better able to carry our loved ones with us because our arms are open. We are open. And in that openness the energy and love that is our son or daughter, our husband or sister will begin to seep in the cracks of our parched and weary hearts.

Holding on to the past is different from being grateful for it. If we view our present lives as but the charred remains of what was, something dies inside of us. And what was given to us by our loved ones, what we learned from them, and what we are able to carry with us in the embers are left to grow cold. We alone are able to keep the flames that were ignited by our relationships burning. To do this, we need to guard the sparks that remain and breathe new life into them by being open to the ongoing possibility of connection and happiness.

Then let humility grow in you, preparing you for justification, let your soul be like a steel mirror which receives the sunlight the better the more it is burnished. Know that if you are negligent, the splendor and beauty that God produces in the humble will not appear in you. The soul is like wax that, placed in the sunlight, melts for love of the ray that his Majesty infuses in it. Humility gives the soul strength to persevere, making known to it that as wax hardens when removed from the sunlight, so the soul, turning from God, will become hard again and lose the recollection and tender love it received from the Lord.   Those who make progress and grow in virtue prepare for God, but only if they are humble and know that the virtues, though good, do not by themselves suffice to save us. That men should I be circumcised was a mystery meant to teach us that even our  manly, virtuous actions are defective, and need to be circumcised by recollection and purified at the entrance of the heavenly Jerusalem.   Not

Immense is the love denoted by the two words ' Our Father’, but to avoid being tedious we will pass on to the next that declare he is in heaven, that is, in his lovers,  ‘whose conversation is in heaven’  on account of the sublimity of their lives. The Lord finds great repose in these heavens, which show forth the glory of God. He himself affirms this, saying that heaven is his throne and the soul of the just is the seat of wisdom, also: “His Spirit has adorned the heavens”, [911] and the Holy Spirit adorns the souls of those who love God with more virtues than there are stars in the heavens. Merely by dwelling in them, by his sublime intelligence he rules them, giving them the impulse to return to him who sets them in action.[912]

When God gives us consolations, he shows his love for us, and when he sends trials, he wants to see whether we love him; therefore the best advice is to receive all from him and derive love from it; that is, to look upon it as a test by which he seeks to prove our love. When he comforts us, let us think that he wishes to sec whether we shall care more for his gift than for him, and that his intention is to make us love him more.

Not only should you derive love from your own works, but also from those of others, loving him in their blessings, for love is like a bee that sucks honey for its hive from every flower. Additionally, love, solely by its gratitude and pleasure in its neighbor's goods, makes them its own and offers them as its sacrifice to the Lord. Hence Gregory says, “The graces that we cannot imitate but only love in others are ours, as our virtues become the property of those who love them. The envious should reflect upon the power of charity, which, with no labor we perform, makes ours the work of others. With neither effort nor fear, love gives us possession of the goods of others, for in our own good deeds we always feel vain-glory, but not in those of our neighbor. No one should refuse to believe that love for the good works of others makes us their owner, since love for other people's sins makes us sinners.

First, we should withdraw from all sin, even venial, for the true lover endeavors to avoid all offence, not thinking of the punishment due to it, but of the Beloved whom all evil offends, great and small. Secondly, we should cultivate every virtue, losing no occasion of doing good and being very zealous in acts of piety, which have great merit. Thirdly, we should not set our love on anything, but possess what we have as a loan, so that we may not fix our heart on that, but on God. Fourthly, let us arouse our heart from sleep, so that it may often make acts of tender love.[930]

The first of these actions will remove our fear of approaching God. The second will give us courage to go to him and even to embrace him. The third will give us strength to take the kingdom of heaven by violence with great impetus and strength of love. The fourth will make us swift and skilful to achieve this work easily, and if we wish to do it joyfully, let us think of what will arouse our love.

Although it is said that some sins come from ignorance or weakness, and others from malice, it would be better to say that they come from want of love for God, because charity has cooled. For if love increases, malice declines and virtue grows stronger and becomes easy, while our ignorance is enlightened.

Let us find ourselves, then, brother, in love; root ourselves in it like trees, build ourselves on it as a firm foundation founded on love for God which makes us his mansion and his temple in which he dwells; let us, rooted in love for our neighbor which makes us fruitful, give forth leaves of help and fruit of sustenance.[874]   Those who are thus founded and rooted can, to a certain extent, understand what is the length and breadth and depth and height of love. Its breadth extends to our enemies; its length perseveres to the end; its height makes it all powerful, and its depth makes us attribute nothing to ourselves but all to the love God bears for us.

Anjali is Guyanese, and her braid looks like a thick rope that lays heavy against her back, curly baby hairs tamed by coconut oil. Michaela is Haitian and likes to mimic her parents’ French accents on the school bus (Take zee twash out! she says, as we clutch our sides in laughter), and Naz’s family is from the Ivory Coast—I mean, we’re practically cousins, she says to Michaela. Our teachers snap at Sophie to STOP TALKING NOW, but call her Mae’s name. Sophie, who is Filipino, clamps a hand over her big-ass mouth, which is never closed—she loves to gossip and flirt with the boys we call “Spanish”—while Mae, who is Chinese and polite to teachers, at least to their faces, jolts from the bookshelf where she’s stealthily shuffling novels from their alphabetical spots, in order to disrupt our English class two periods later.

Most Americans—professing Christians—for a fairly long time thought that slavery was simply “where people are these days.” Is it really loving to set aside the truth about sin and judgment and even to downplay the person and work of Christ as its answer simply because these are not the questions that are being asked by unbelievers? Imagine our elementary school teachers deciding that they will no longer teach the alphabet because the children aren’t interested in learning it.

Though, according to the learned, grace is the same as charity, yet Holy Scripture compares it to many things because of the many effects it has on our soul. It is called a new spirit, for it renews man's heart; a fire, for it consumes sins, unction, because it heals spiritual wounds; light, for it illumines the mind; virtue, for it strengthens our weakness; water that quenches the thirst of our soul, and a lighted torch that inflames us with love for God; peace which pacifies and makes peace between sensuality and the intellect, and a ray of light that penetrates the earth from the Sun of Justice.

Therefore our Letter gives very salutary advice in bidding you correct the vagaries of your mind by love, without becoming angry or sad, for it is written that “whatsoever shall befall the just man, it shall not make him sad.

IT is written: ' The ransom of a man's life are his riches ' [862] (the love and redemption of the soul), and the ransom of our soul is love by which you can redeem it from all evils that have held it captive, like the Magdalene whose great love was a ransom for her many sins. [863] Its riches were so great that they redeemed her and set her at greater liberty than before she was made captive by her sins, to which it is believed, she did not return. As her evil life in the past earned her the special name of 'a sinner' in that malicious city, for it did not know the time of her visitation, so her deep love for our Lord won her the title to a special mansion in the city of God given her as a testimony by her Beloved. He chose to praise her for this above all others, for there are few people in Holy Scripture so praised for great love by him who gave the grand commandment of love as the Magdalene, who redeemed her sins by love.   Let

The proud never doubt that they are zealous and vigilant on their own behalf, like the insolent Aman who wished for honor and respect on all sides. Now they, desiring this from love of their own dignity, do not unite themselves wholly to God, but seek themselves in all things. This must be strictly avoided by him who serves God; he should repeat after the prophet: “The zeal of your house has eaten me up.” [1182]   Sometimes we are the dwelling-place of God, of ourselves, of the devil, and of the vices that exist in our heart. Now we must not be zealous to guard it for anything but for God's dwelling-place, sorrowing more for having offended him than for the punishment due to us. If we are zealous regarding ourselves for any other reason, we err greatly by a wrong use of the divine gift and deserve the execution of God's threat:  “My jealousy shall depart from you, and I will rejoice, and be angry no more.” [1183] The Lord deprives us of the zeal that brought about better things when he sees that we seek them, not for his sake, but for our own.

I am going to the City myself, human girl. After my mother was widowed, my siblings and I went each our separate ways: M-Through-S to be a governess, T-Through-Z to be a soldier, and I to seek our old grandfather—the Municipal Library of Fairyland, which owns all the books in all the world. I hope that he will accept me and love me as a grandson and teach me to be a librarian, for every creature must know a trade. I know I have bad qualities that stand against me—a fiery breath being chief among these—but I am a good beast, and I enjoy alphabetizing, and perhaps, I may get some credit for following in the family business.” The Wyverary pursed his great lips. “Perhaps we might travel together for a little while? Those beasts with unreliable fathers must stick together after all. And I may be a good deal of help in the arena of Locating Suppers.

Did you know, Hudson, that the word Yahweh is the Jewish name for God? When Moses asked God what his name was, he said, what translates to Yh Wh. The Hebrew alphabet added the rest to give it intonation. But if you stop and say that, it sounds exactly like breathing. Yh. Wh. Out. In. The scriptures say that in Him we live and move and have our being. He is the very air in our lungs. You literally cannot breathe without saying His name. God is life. God loves you, He made you, and He keeps you breathing, even when people we love have cancer. And it’s on this truth that you root your life.

Wanda, whatever she says, rides the same long breath whether she is greeting us or asking the existential questions no one else will dare. On sentences stripped of refinement and planed as smooth as wood, she does her best to navigate the changing currents in her yard and in ours. In this, she is true to her name as we pronounce it. In this part of America, “R’s” are the dissidents of the alphabet. They won’t be ruled. Behind closed doors, they conspire and print leaflets. They make love to many women. They smoke cigarettes in place of eating food. Then, in front of witnesses with no recourse to justice, they are pulled from their beds in the middle of the night. Some are imprisoned. Some silenced. Others go missing. A few reappear sealed up in the wall of another word if they are found at all. Thus, a thought that is valued is truly an “idear.

Once there was a single consciousness that unified everything. Within this consciousness were two beings: Shiva, the infinite supreme consciousness, and Shakti, the eternal supreme consciousness. Shiva represents time, and Shakti, space. Here is the yang of Oriental medicine, cloaked in the Shiva figure, and the yin shown within the Shakti. These two beings separated, creating a distinction between matter and consciousness within the universe—and within the children of the universe, including people. Shakti lies within us all, coiled within our root chakra in the guise of a serpent. In this form, she is the Kundalini Shakti, the “power at rest.”15 She only becomes manifest, however, when she moves—and that is her ultimate goal, to rise through the denseness of the body until she can rejoin her great love, Shiva, who resides in the seventh chakra. When unified, the two create through supreme consciousness. Shakti is not just an ethereal being. She is seen as the cause of prana, or life force. She has sound and form; she is composed of alphabet characters, or mantras. When Shiva and Shakti join, they create nada (pure cosmic sound) and maha bindu (the supreme truth that underlies all manifestation). What does this mean for the initiate who fuses these two beings—these two parts of him- or herself? The graduate is freed from the confines of the physical body. Innate powers—mystical, magical abilities—awaken. Moreover, the soul is freed from the wheel of life that forces reincarnation. Science tells a similar story, using different words. According to recent studies, the entire world can be reduced to frequency and vibration. As we saw in Part III, we are all composed of the L-fields and T-fields that form unified frequencies. We are all made of the “male” and the “female,” the electrical and the magnetic. If we can achieve the balance and blending of each, then there is harmony, and within that harmony, healing. To follow the path of kundalini is not “only” to achieve an enlightened state of mind. It is to heal the mind, soul, spirit—and body.

When David heard that I needed a stage name, he started with A and worked his way through the alphabet, ripping off names faster than I thought anyone could think and speak at the same time. When he got to W and said, “Wilder,” the bell went off . . . Thornton Wilder . . . Our Town. I wanted to be “Wilder.

Truth About Love" I apologize for not being Gandhi or Tom            the mailman who is always kind. He makes his way every day no matter            the mood of the sky with our words in a sack and Gandhi made the English            give India back without taking a gun for a wife. My contribution            to the common good is playing with the alphabet in a little room            while the world goes foraging for food. I’m a better poet than man            and it’s well known how little my verbs are worth. I am my only subject,            being the god of my horizons. What saves me is that just beyond my skin            the world of yours is where I’d rather live. The AMA says you’ve added            seven point six years to my life. In a phrase, love is a transfer of wealth.            This is why Adam Smith gave up romantic verse. In trying to say what can’t            be said I’ll take the Dragnet approach. Just the facts. I’d be dead            sooner without you, you’ll die faster for being a Mrs., raw deal can’t be more          clearly defined. To make amends I offer ten percent more kisses each year.            Or do I do more harm the closer we become? If yes, leaving would be love            and a better man might. But my thrills are selfishly domestic. I like sweeping words            into piles and whispering good night.

Truth About Love" I apologize for not being Gandhi or Tom            the mailman who is always kind. He makes his way every day no matter            the mood of the sky with our words in a sack and Gandhi made the English            give India back without taking a gun for a wife. My contribution            to the common good is playing with the alphabet in a little room            while the world goes foraging for food. I’m a better poet than man            and it’s well known how little my verbs are worth. I am my only subject,            being the god of my horizons. What saves me is that just beyond my skin            the world of yours is where I’d rather live. The AMA says you’ve added            seven point six years to my life. In a phrase, love is a transfer of wealth.            This is why Adam Smith gave up romantic verse. In trying to say what can’t            be said I’ll take the Dragnet approach. Just the facts. I’d be dead            sooner without you, you’ll die faster for being a Mrs., raw deal can’t be more          clearly defined. To make amends I offer ten percent more kisses each year.            Or do I do more harm the closer we become? If yes, leaving would be love            and a better man might. But my thrills are selfishly domestic. I like sweeping words            into piles and whispering good night. Bob Hicok, Insomnia Diary. (University of Pittsburgh Press. 2004)

Love has its own communication—one you can’t prove in a courtroom, in a lab experiment, or on a doctor’s chart. It’s the language of the heart, and while it has never been transcribed, has no alphabet, and can’t be heard or spoken by voice, it is used by every human on the planet. It is written on our souls, scripted by the finger of God, and we can hear, understand, and speak it with perfection long before we open our eyes for the first time.

First published in 2020 this book contains over 560 easily readable compact entries in systematic order augmented by an extensive bibliography, an alphabetical list of countries and locations of individuals final resting places (where known) and a day and month list in consecutive order of when an individual died. It details the deaths of individuals, who died too early and often in tragic circumstances, from film, literature, music, theatre, and television, and the achievements they left behind. In addition, some ordinary people who died in bizarre, freak, or strange circumstances are also included. It does not matter if they were famous or just celebrated by a few individuals, all the people in this book left behind family, friends and in some instances devotees who idolised them. Our heartfelt thoughts and sympathies go out to all those affected by each persons death. Whether you are concerned about yourself, a loved one, a friend, or a work colleague there are many helplines and support groups that offer confidential non-judgemental help, guidance and advice on mental health problems (such as anxiety, bereavement, depression, despair, distress, stress, substance abuse, suicidal feelings, and trauma). Support can be by phone, email, face-to-face counselling, courses, and self-help groups. Details can be found online or at your local health care organisation. There are many conspiracy theories, rumours, cover-ups, allegations, sensationalism, and myths about the cause of some individual’s deaths. Only the facts known at the time of writing are included in this book. Some important information is deliberately kept secret or undisclosed. Sometimes not until 20 or even 30 years later are full details of an accident or incident released or in some cases found during extensive research. Similarly, unsolved murders can be reinvestigated years later if new information becomes known. In some cases, 50 years on there are those who continue to investigate what they consider are alleged cover-ups. The first name in an entry is that by which a person was generally known. Where relevant their real name is included in brackets. Date of Death | In the entry detailing the date an individual died their age at the time of their death is recorded in brackets. Final Resting Place | Where known details of a persons final resting place are included. “Unknown” | Used when there is insufficient evidence available to the authorities to establish whether an individuals’ death was due to suicide, accident or caused by another. Statistics The following statistics are derived from the 579 individual “cause of death” entries included in this publication. The top five causes of death are, Heart attack/failure 88 (15.2%) Cancer 55 (9.5%) Fatal injuries (plane crash) 43 (7.4%) Fatal injuries (vehicle crash/collision) 39 (6.7%) Asphyxiation (Suicide) 23 (4%). extract from 'Untimely and Tragic Deaths of the Renowned, The Celebrated, The Iconic

Those we love will always be a part of us. Will we miss them? Of course we will! It is terribly painful to begin the journey of living without them. But refusing to take even one wobbly step toward a new way of experiencing all they have left us does not honor them and will not bring them close again. It may take time, maybe years, for us to take that first step out of the darkness of despair and the shadows of the past into the dawn of a new present. But when we do, we will not be disappointed. Our loved ones are waiting for us there, not just in the future when we join them in what is to come, but in the present, where their loving energy can still be felt.

The theologian Karl Barth said, “Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” If we can access our gratitude for having known and loved those we have lost, perhaps we can begin again to experience joy.