As Father's Day Approaches Quotes

When my daughter was a toddler, I used to take her to a park not far from our apartment. One day as she was playing in a sandbox, an ice-cream salesman approached us. I purchased her a treat, and when I turned to give it to her, I saw her mouth was full of sand. Where I had intended to put a delicacy, she had put dirt. Did I love her with dirt in her mouth? Absolutely. Was she any less of my daughter with dirt in her mouth? Of course not. Was I going to allow her to keep the dirt in her mouth? No way. I loved her right where she was, but I refused to leave her there. I carried her over to the water fountain and washed out her mouth. Why? Because I love her. God does the same for us. He holds us over the fountain. "Spit out the dirt, honey," our Father urges. "I've got something better for you." And so he cleanses us of filth; immorality, dishonesty, prejudice, bitterness, greed. We don't enjoy the cleansing; sometimes we even opt for the dirt over the ice cream. "I can eat dirt if I want to!" we pout and proclaim. Which is true—we can. But if we do, the loss is ours. God has a better offer.

One day Bird had approached his father with this question; he was six years old: Father, where was I a hundred years before I was born? Where will I be a hundred years after I die? Father, what will happen to me when I die? Without a word, his young father had punched him in the mouth, broke two of his teeth and bloodied his face, and Bird forgot the fear of death.

Okay," Christian said with a great show at maintaining his patience. "So you can't dance. But you could at least talk to the woman." Julius frowned and avoided his gaze. "I am talking." "You aren't," Christian insisted. "You haven't said more than a handful of words." Scowling, he admitted, "I'm practicing in my head." Christian blinked at this. "Practicing?" "Well, you don't just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind," Julius said with exasperation. "I have to approach this carefully, so I'm practicing." "In your head?" Christian clarified. "Yes." Julius nodded. "In my head." "Right....Good, good," he nodded, and then said "but you know what would be even better?" Julius raised his eyebrows with interest. "What?" "Talking to her OUT LOUD!" Christian snapped. "Jesus Christ, Father, you're as old as the earth. You run a huge corporation, dealing with people-even women-day in day out. Surely you can string a couple of words together and manage a little conversation with the woman?

Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domains, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father. But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore. Are those real islands?' asked the young prince. Of course they are real islands,' said the man in evening dress. And those strange and troubling creatures?' They are all genuine and authentic princesses.' Then God must exist!' cried the prince. I am God,' replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow. The young prince returned home as quickly as he could. So you are back,' said the father, the king. I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully. The king was unmoved. Neither real islands, nor real princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully. The king was unmoved. Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God exist.' I saw them!' Tell me how God was dressed.' God was in full evening dress.' Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?' The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled. That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived.' At this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress. My father the king has told me who you are,' said the young prince indignantly. 'You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician.' The man on the shore smiled. It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father's kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father's spell, so you cannot see them.' The prince pensively returned home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes. Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?' The king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves. Yes, my son, I am only a magician.' Then the man on the shore was God.' The man on the shore was another magician.' I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic.' There is no truth beyond magic,' said the king. The prince was full of sadness. He said, 'I will kill myself.' The king by magic caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses. Very well,' he said. 'I can bear it.' You see, my son,' said the king, 'you too now begin to be a magician.

My father took me aside one day soon after and told me this: The things you do in your twenties are just things you do. But as you approach thirty what you do starts to become who you are. And there are some things you do not want to be forever.

To what a world does the illustrious bard carry me! To wander over pathless wilds, surrounded by impetuous whirlwinds, where, by the feeble light of the moon, we see the spirits of our ancestors; to hear from the mountain-tops, mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds issuing from deep caverns, and the sorrowful lamentations of a maiden who sighs and expires on the mossy tomb of the warrior by whom she was adored. I meet this bard with silver hair; he wanders in the valley; he seeks the footsteps of his fathers, and, alas! he finds only their tombs. Then, contemplating the pale moon, as she sinks beneath the waves of the rolling sea, the memory of bygone days strikes the mind of the hero, days when approaching danger invigorated the brave, and the moon shone upon his bark laden with spoils, and returning in triumph. When I read in his countenance deep sorrow, when I see his dying glory sink exhausted into the grave, as he inhales new and heart-thrilling delight from his approaching union with his beloved, and he casts a look on the cold earth and the tall grass which is so soon to cover him, and then exclaims, "The traveller will come, -- he will come who has seen my beauty, and he will ask, 'Where is the bard, where is the illustrious son of Fingal?' He will walk over my tomb, and will seek me in vain!

Suddenly Yudhisthira saw a yaksha approaching him. The being sat in front of him and began firing questions rapidly at him. What is bigger than the Earth? the yaksha asked. "A mother" replied Yudhisthira. What is taller than the sky? "A father" What is faster than the wind? "The mind , of course". Yudhisthira smiled. What grows faster than hay? "Worry" What is the greatest dharma in the world? queried the yaksha "Compassion and conscience" With who is friendship never-ending? "With good people" responded Yudhisthira patiently. What is the secret to never feeling unhappy? "If one can control his or her mind, then that person will never feel sad" The yaksha increase his pace now. What is the greatest kind of wealth. "Education" What is the greatest kind of profit? "Health" What is the greatest kind of happiness? "Contentment" said Yudhisthira, ever prompt with his replies. What is man's worst enemy? "Anger" What disease will never have a cure? "Greed is incurable" The yaksha smiled again. A last question my friend. What is life's biggest irony? "It is the desire to live eternally. Every day, we encounter people dying but we always think that death will never come to us.

My son, you are just an infant now, but on that day when the world disrobes of its alluring cloak, it is then that I pray this letter is in your hands. Listen closely, my dear child, for I am more than that old man in the dusty portrait beside your bed. I was once a little boy in my mother’s arms and a babbling toddler on my father's lap. I played till the sun would set and climbed trees with ease and skill. Then I grew into a fine young man with shoulders broad and strong. My bones were firm and my limbs were straight; my hair was blacker than a raven's beak. I had a spring in my step and a lion's roar. I travelled the world, found love and married. Then off to war I bled in battle and danced with death. But today, vigor and grace have forsaken me and left me crippled. Listen closely, then, as I have lived not only all the years you have existed, but another forty more of my own. My son, We take this world for a permanent place; we assume our gains and triumphs will always be; that all that is dear to us will last forever. But my child, time is a patient hunter and a treacherous thief: it robs us of our loved ones and snatches up our glory. It crumbles mountains and turns stone to sand. So who are we to impede its path? No, everything and everyone we love will vanish, one day. So take time to appreciate the wee hours and seconds you have in this world. Your life is nothing but a sum of days so why take any day for granted? Don't despise evil people, they are here for a reason, too, for just as the gift salt offers to food, so do the worst of men allow us to savor the sweet, hidden flavor of true friendship. Dear boy, treat your elders with respect and shower them with gratitude; they are the keepers of hidden treasures and bridges to our past. Give meaning to your every goodbye and hold on to that parting embrace just a moment longer--you never know if it will be your last. Beware the temptation of riches and fame for both will abandon you faster than our own shadow deserts us at the approach of the setting sun. Cultivate seeds of knowledge in your soul and reap the harvest of good character. Above all, know why you have been placed on this floating blue sphere, swimming through space, for there is nothing more worthy of regret than a life lived void of this knowing. My son, dark days are upon you. This world will not leave you with tears unshed. It will squeeze you in its talons and lift you high, then drop you to plummet and shatter to bits . But when you lay there in pieces scattered and broken, gather yourself together and be whole once more. That is the secret of those who know. So let not my graying hairs and wrinkled skin deceive you that I do not understand this modern world. My life was filled with a thousand sacrifices that only I will ever know and a hundred gulps of poison I drank to be the father I wanted you to have. But, alas, such is the nature of this life that we will never truly know the struggles of our parents--not until that time arrives when a little hand--resembling our own--gently clutches our finger from its crib. My dear child, I fear that day when you will call hopelessly upon my lifeless corpse and no response shall come from me. I will be of no use to you then but I hope these words I leave behind will echo in your ears that day when I am no more. This life is but a blink in the eye of time, so cherish each moment dearly, my son.

[Robert's eulogy at his brother, Ebon C. Ingersoll's grave. Even the great orator Robert Ingersoll was choked up with tears at the memory of his beloved brother] The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead, and every sweet, unselfish act is now a perfumed flower. Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft promised he would do for me. The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend, died where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows still were falling toward the west. He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks the highest point; but, being weary for a moment, he lay down by the wayside, and, using his burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence and pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock; but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights, and left all superstitions far below, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning, of the grander day. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, the poor, and wronged, and lovingly gave alms. With loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully discharged all public trusts. He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote these words: 'For Justice all place a temple, and all season, summer!' He believed that happiness was the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, 'I am better now.' Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and tears, that these dear words are true of all the countless dead. And now, to you, who have been chosen, from among the many men he loved, to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his sacred dust. Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there is, no gentler, stronger, manlier man.

What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in the funds. He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clambrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas, a thing now of the past!), and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile but more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, to a tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night, first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer and the willed, and in an instant (fiat!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas done but - hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold! Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.

as I watched their approach I wondered whether the slow pace of a wedding march was for the benefit of a bride on her most beautiful day, or for the aging father preparing to give her away.

41Now Esau  bhated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself,  c“The days of mourning for my father are approaching;  dthen I will kill my brother Jacob.” 42But

At a lunchtime reception for the diplomatic corps in Washington, given the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, I was approached by a good-looking man who extended his hand. 'We once met many years ago,' he said. 'And you knew and befriended my father.' My mind emptied, as so often happens on such occasions. I had to inform him that he had the advantage of me. 'My name is Hector Timerman. I am the ambassador of Argentina.' In my above album of things that seem to make life pointful and worthwhile, and that even occasionally suggest, in Dr. King’s phrase as often cited by President Obama, that there could be a long arc in the moral universe that slowly, eventually bends toward justice, this would constitute an exceptional entry. It was also something more than a nudge to my memory. There was a time when the name of Jacobo Timerman, the kidnapped and tortured editor of the newspaper La Opinion in Buenos Aires, was a talismanic one. The mere mention of it was enough to elicit moans of obscene pleasure from every fascist south of the Rio Grande: finally in Argentina there was a strict ‘New Order’ that would stamp hard upon the international Communist-Jewish collusion. A little later, the mention of Timerman’s case was enough to derail the nomination of Ronald Reagan’s first nominee as undersecretary for human rights; a man who didn’t seem to have grasped the point that neo-Nazism was a problem for American values. And Timerman’s memoir, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, was the book above all that clothed in living, hurting flesh the necessarily abstract idea of the desaparecido: the disappeared one or, to invest it with the more sinister and grisly past participle with which it came into the world, the one who has been ‘disappeared.’ In the nuances of that past participle, many, many people vanished into a void that is still unimaginable. It became one of the keywords, along with escuadrone de la muerte or ‘death squads,’ of another arc, this time of radical evil, that spanned a whole subcontinent. Do you know why General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina was eventually sentenced? Well, do you? Because he sold the children of the tortured rape victims who were held in his private prison. I could italicize every second word in that last sentence without making it any more heart-stopping. And this subhuman character was boasted of, as a personal friend and genial host, even after he had been removed from the office he had defiled, by none other than Henry Kissinger. So there was an almost hygienic effect in meeting, in a new Washington, as an envoy of an elected government, the son of the brave man who had both survived and exposed the Videla tyranny.

Just about anything can become a spiritual practice,” Father Solomon suggested on my last day at the monastery. “If you approach it in the right way—with intentionality, humility, receptivity, hope. And of course with an attentive eye on the lookout for the activity of the divine.

Full disclosure. I approached your father once I knew who you were. I asked him to visit my territory and to bring you. I made my intentions clear from the start. He came up with the arranged mating thing." His lips twisted in annoyance. "But I didn't stop him because the thought of waking up to you every day...

The Latin Church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its occasional astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem. It is accused by Protestant dervishes of withholding the Bible from the people. To some extent this is true; to some extent the church is wise; again to the same extent it is prosperous. ... Rome indeed has not only preserved the original poetry of Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry -- for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself. A solemn high mass is a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big top by Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone. Preaching is not an essential part of the Latin ceremonial. It was very little employed in the early church, and I am convinced that good effects would flow from abandoning it today, or, at all events, reducing it to a few sentences, more or less formal. In the United States the Latin brethren have been seduced by the example of the Protestants, who commonly transform an act of worship into a puerile intellectual exercise; instead of approaching God in fear and wonder these Protestants settle back in their pews, cross their legs, and listen to an ignoramus try to prove that he is a better theologian than the Pope. This folly the Romans now slide into. Their clergy begin to grow argumentative, doctrinaire, ridiculous. It is a pity. A bishop in his robes, playing his part in the solemn ceremonial of the mass, is a dignified spectacle; the same bishop, bawling against Darwin half an hour later, is seen to be simply an elderly Irishman with a bald head, the son of a respectable police sergeant in South Bend, Ind. Let the reverend fathers go back to Bach. If they keep on spoiling poetry and spouting ideas, the day will come when some extra-bombastic deacon will astound humanity and insult God by proposing to translate the liturgy into American, that all the faithful may be convinced by it.

You are the son of a kind, strong, and engaged Father, a Father wise enough to guide you in the Way, generous enough to provide for your journey, offering to walk with you every step. This is perhaps the hardest thing for us to believe—really believe, down deep in our hearts, so that it changes us forever, changes the way we approach each day.

In 1858, during his debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln predicted a future crisis over “the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants.” But he also saw hope for a solution, right in front of all Americans: “When in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.”56 In other words, Lincoln came to Independence Hall with as clear a purpose as Thomas Jefferson had in 1776. He had spent his entire life approaching this stage.

Remember the infamous question that most of us learned back in the days of youth group powwow sessions? That’s right. How far is too far? Which is really a code question asking, “How much can I get away with and not make God mad?” Let’s start asking a new question: “How far can I possibly go to bring joy to the heart of my heavenly Father in this area of my life?

Approaching Em’s cottage, especially at night, always enchanted him. It was like walking into those fairy tales he’d read by flashlight under his bedcovers, full of rose-covered cottages and small stone bridges, glowing hearths and content couples hand in hand. His relieved father had thought he was reading Playboy but instead he was doing something infinitely more pleasurable and dangerous. He was dreaming of the day he’d create this fairy-tale world for himself, and he’d succeeded, at least in part. He had himself become a fairy. And as he looked at Em’s cottage, its buttery light beaconing, he knew he’d walked right into the book he’d used to comfort himself when the world seemed cold and hard and unfair. Now he smiled and walked toward the house, carrying his Christmas Eve offering.

On our particular mission, senior marines met with local school officials while the rest of us provided security or hung out with the schoolkids, playing soccer and passing out candy and school supplies. One very shy boy approached me and held out his hand. When I gave him a small eraser, his face briefly lit up with joy before he ran away to his family, holding his two-cent prize aloft in triumph. I have never seen such excitement on a child’s face. I don’t believe in epiphanies. I don’t believe in transformative moments, as transformation is harder than a moment. I’ve seen far too many people awash in a genuine desire to change only to lose their mettle when they realized just how difficult change actually is. But that moment, with that boy, was pretty close for me. For my entire life, I’d harbored resentment at the world. I was mad at my mother and father, mad that I rode the bus to school while other kids caught rides with friends, mad that my clothes didn’t come from Abercrombie, mad that my grandfather died, mad that we lived in a small house. That resentment didn’t vanish in an instant, but as I stood and surveyed the mass of children of a war-torn nation, their school without running water, and the overjoyed boy, I began to appreciate how lucky I was: born in the greatest country on earth, every modern convenience at my fingertips, supported by two loving hillbillies, and part of a family that, for all its quirks, loved me unconditionally. At that moment, I resolved to be the type of man who would smile when someone gave him an eraser. I haven’t quite made it there, but without that day in Iraq, I wouldn’t be trying. The

A Prayer of Commitment Dear Father, I need You. I cannot love or respect perfectly, but I know You hear me when I ask You for help. First, please forgive me for the times I’ve been unloving or disrespectful. And help me to forgive my spouse for being unloving or disrespectful toward me. I open my heart to You, Father. I will not be fearful or angry at You or my spouse. I’m seeing myself and my spouse in a whole new light, and I will appreciate my spouse as being different, not wrong. Lord, I also ask You to fill my heart with love and reverence for You. After all, this marriage is ultimately about You and me. It isn’t about my spouse. Thank You for helping me both understand this truth and realize that my greatest reward will come from being a spouse as unto You. Now prepare me this day for those inevitable moments of conflict. I especially ask You to put respect or love in my heart when I feel unloved or disrespected. I know there is no credit for loving or respecting when doing so is easy. Finally, I believe that You hear my prayer, and I anticipate Your response. I thank You in advance for helping me take the next loving or respectful step in my marriage. I believe You will empower me, bless me, and even reward me for my effort as I approach marriage as unto You. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

At Zuzanna’s urging, I approached him for advice about my being overwhelmed as a mother. With trying to juggle work, caring for a young daughter, and being a wife, I was often worn to a frazzle and lost my temper more and more. Father Skala suggested that, in addition to prayer, I might also wear a rubber band on my wrist and snap it every time I felt my temper getting the better of me. I wore the dull red band on my wrist and did a good deal of band-snapping each day. By week’s end, my wrist was raw from snaps.

When people say you can’t argue anyone into the kingdom, they usually have an alternative approach in mind. They might be thinking that a genuine expression of love, kindness, and acceptance, coupled with a simple presentation of the gospel, is a more biblical approach. If you are tempted to think this way, let me say something that may shock you: You cannot love someone into the kingdom. It can’t be done. In fact, the simple gospel itself is not even adequate to do that job. How do I know? Because many people who were treated with sacrificial love and kindness by Christians never surrendered to the Savior. Many who have heard a clear explanation of God’s gift in Christ never put their trust in him. In each case something was missing that, when present, always results in conversion. What’s missing is that special work of the Father that Jesus referred to, drawing a lost soul into his arms. Of this work Jesus also said, “Of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day” (John 6:39). According to Jesus, then, two things are true. First, there is a particular work of God that is necessary to bring someone into the kingdom. Second, when present, this work cannot fail to accomplish its goal. Without the work of the Spirit, no argument — no matter how persuasive — will be effective. But neither will any act of love nor any simple presentation of the gospel. Add the Spirit, though, and the equation changes dramatically. Here’s the key principle: Without God’s work, nothing else works; but with God’s work, many things work. Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, love persuades. By the power of God, the gospel transforms. And with Jesus at work, arguments convince. God is happy to use each of these methods.

At the Samarka Camp in 1946 a group of intellectuals had reached the very brink of death: They were worn down by hunger, cold, and work beyond their powers. And they were even deprived of sleep. They had nowhere to lie down. Dugout barracks had not yet been built. Did they go and steal? Or squeal? Or whimper about their ruined lives? No! Foreseeing the approach of death in days rather than weeks, here is how they spent their last sleepless leisure, sitting up against the wall: Timofeyev-Ressovsky gathered them into a “seminar,” and they hastened to share with one another what one of them knew and the others did not—they delivered their last lectures to each other. Father Savely—spoke of “unshameful death,” a priest academician—about patristics, one of the Uniate fathers—about something in the area of dogmatics and canonical writings, an electrical engineer—on the principles of the energetics of the future, and a Leningrad economist—on how the effort to create principles of Soviet economics had failed for lack of new ideas. Timofeyev-Ressovsky himself talked about the principles of microphysics. From one session to the next, participants were missing—they were already in the morgue.

As the third evening approached, Gabriel looked up blearily as two people entered the room. His parents. The sight of them infused him with relief. At the same time, their presence unlatched all the wretched emotion he'd kept battened down until this moment. Disciplining his breathing, he stood awkwardly, his limbs stiff from spending hours on the hard chair. His father came to him first, pulling him close for a crushing hug and ruffling his hair before going to the bedside. His mother was next, embracing him with her familiar tenderness and strength. She was the one he'd always gone to first whenever he'd done something wrong, knowing she would never condemn or criticize, even when he deserved it. She was a source of endless kindness, the one to whom he could entrust his worst thoughts and fears. "I promised nothing would ever harm her," Gabriel said against her hair, his voice cracking. Evie's gentle hands patted his back. "I took my eyes off her when I shouldn't have," he went on. "Mrs. Black approached her after the play- I pulled the bitch aside, and I was too distracted to notice-" He stopped talking and cleared his throat harshly, trying not to choke on emotion. Evie waited until he calmed himself before saying quietly, "You remember when I told you about the time your f-father was badly injured because of me?" "That wasn't because of you," Sebastian said irritably from the bedside. "Evie, have you harbored that absurd idea for all these years?" "It's the most terrible feeling in the world," Evie murmured to Gabriel. "But it's not your fault, and trying not to make it so won't help either of you. Dearest boy, are you listening to me?" Keeping his face pressed against her hair, Gabriel shook his head. "Pandora won't blame you for what happened," Evie told him, "any more than your father blamed me." "Neither of you are to blame for anything," his father said, "except for annoying me with this nonsense. Obviously the only person to blame for this poor girl's injury is the woman who attempted to skewer her like a pinioned duck." He straightened the covers over Pandora, bent to kiss her forehead gently, and sat in the bedside chair. "My son... guilt, in proper measure, can be a useful emotion. However, when indulged to excess it becomes self-defeating, and even worse, tedious." Stretching out his long legs, he crossed them negligently. "There's no reason to tear yourself to pieces worrying about Pandora. She's going to make a full recovery." "You're a doctor now?" Gabriel asked sardonically, although some of the weight of grief and worry lifted at his father's confident pronouncement. "I daresay I've seen enough illness and injuries in my time, stabbings included, to predict the outcome accurately. Besides, I know the spirit of this girl. She'll recover." "I agree," Evie said firmly. Letting out a shuddering sigh, Gabriel tightened his arms around her. After a long moment, he heard his mother say ruefully, "Sometimes I miss the days when I could solve any of my children's problems with a nap and a biscuit." "A nap and a biscuit wouldn't hurt this one at the moment," Sebastian commented dryly. "Gabriel, go find a proper bed and rest for a few hours. We'll watch over your little fox cub.

Lillian kept her face against Marcus’s shoulder. As mortified as she had been on the day that he had seen her playing rounders in her knickers, this was ten times worse. She would never be able to face Simon Hunt again, she thought, and groaned. “It’s all right,” Marcus murmured. “He’ll keep his mouth shut.” “I don’t care whom he tells,” Lillian managed to say. “I’m not going to marry you. Not if you compromised me a hundred times.” “Lillian,” he said, a sudden tremor of laughter in his voice, “it would be my greatest pleasure to compromise you a hundred times. But first I would like to know what I’ve done this morning that is so unforgivable.” “To begin with, you talked to my father.” His brows lifted a fraction of an inch. “That offended you?” “How could it not? You’ve behaved in the most highhanded manner possible by going behind my back and trying to arrange things with my father, without one word to me—” “Wait,” Marcus said sardonically, rolling to his side and sitting up in an easy movement. He reached out with a broad hand to pull Lillian up to face him. “I was not being high-handed in meeting with your father. I was adhering to tradition. A prospective bridegroom usually approaches a woman’s father before he makes a formal proposal.” A gently caustic note entered his voice as he added, “Even in America. Unless I’ve been misinformed?” The clock on the mantel dispensed a slow half-minute before Lillian managed a grudging reply. “Yes, that’s how it’s usually done. But I assumed that you and he had already made a betrothal agreement, regardless of whether or not it was what I wanted—” “Your assumption was incorrect. We did not discuss any details of a betrothal, nor was anything mentioned about a dowry or a wedding date. All I did was ask your father for permission to court you.” Lillian stared at him with surprised chagrin, until another question occurred to her. “What about your discussion with Lord St. Vincent just now?” Now it was Marcus’s turn to look chagrined. “That was high-handed,” he admitted.

One of Roosevelt's most entrenched beliefs, as a cowboy, a hunter, a soldier, and an explorer, was that the health of one man should never endanger the lives of the rest of the men in his expedition. Roosevelt had unflinchingly cast off even good friends like Father Zahm when it became clear that they could no longer pull their own weight or were simply not healthy enough to endure the physical demands of the journey. "No man has any business to go on such a trip as ours unless he will refuse to jeopardize the welfare of his associates by any delay caused by a weakness or ailment of his," he wrote. "It is his duty to go forward, if necessary on all fours, until he drops."... Roosevelt had even held himself to these unyielding standards after Schrank, the would-be assassin, shot him in Milwaukee. Few men would have even considered giving a speech with a bullet in their chest. Roosevelt had insisted on it. This was an approach to life, and death, that he had developed many years earlier, when living with cowboys and soldiers. "Both the men of my regiment and the friends I had made in the old days in the West were themselves a little puzzled at the interest shown in my making my speech after being shot," he wrote. "This was what they expected, what they accepted as the right thing for a man to do under the circumstances, a thing the nonperformance of which would have been discreditable rather than the performance being creditable.

A mundane lady had wandered up to them at Hatchard's book shop in London....James' family often went to Hatchard's all together, but when James and his father went alone, ladies quite often found a reason to wander over to them and strike up a conversation. Father told the lady that he spent his days hunting evil and rare first editions. Father could always find something to say to people, could always make them laugh. This seemed a strange, wondrous power to James, as impossible to achieve as it would be for him to shape-shift like a werewolf. James did not worry about ladies approaching Father. Father never once looked at any woman the way he looked at Mother, with joy and thanksgiving, as if she was a living wish, granted past all hope.

The first, and more traditional, involved the ingestion of mercury as well as the topical application of this liquid metal to chancres and lesions. The second, more modern theory favored other metals and chemicals—gold, silver, copper, bromine, iodine, and nitric acid—to be taken internally or applied in ointments. Both approaches were hazardous to patients’ health. Of these two methods, Gothenburg’s Kurhuset appears to have favored non-mercurial cures. Elisabeth, during her stay, was treated internally with hydroiodic acid, the main components of which are iodine and hydrogen; her genital warts would have been dehydrated with a cream or cut off. After receiving this cure for seventeen days, Elisabeth went into premature labor. On April 21, while under lock and key at the Kurhuset, she gave birth to a stillborn seven-month-old girl.* She did not cite the father’s name on the birth certificate.

Despite incessant disappointment, he doggedly pursued a position. Each morning, he left his boardinghouse at eight o’clock, clothed in a dark suit with a high collar and black tie, to make his rounds of appointed firms. This grimly determined trek went on each day—six days a week for six consecutive weeks—until late in the afternoon. The streets were so hot and hard that he grew footsore from pacing them. His perseverance surely owed something to his desire to end his reliance upon his fickle father. At one point, Bill suggested that if John didn’t find work he might have to return to the country; the thought of such dependence upon his father made “a cold chill” run down his spine, Rockefeller later said.27 Because he approached his job hunt devoid of any doubt or self-pity, he could stare down all discouragement. “I was working every day at my business—the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this every day.”28 He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking.

The morning after I received this message, I arose and resumed my usual occupations; but from whatever cause it may have proceeded, I felt a sense of approaching evil hang heavily upon me; the beats of my pulse were languid, and an undefinable feeling of anxiety pervaded my whole spirit; even my face was pale, and my eye so heavy, that my father and brothers concluded me to be ill; an opinion which I thought at the time to be correct; for I felt exactly that kind of depression which precedes a severe fever. I could not understand what I experienced, nor can I yet, except by supposing that there is in human nature some mysterious faculty, by which, in coming calamities, the approach throws forward the shadow of some fearful evil, and that it is possible to catch a dark anticipation of the sensations which they subsequently produce. For my part I can neither analyze nor define it; but on that day I knew it by painful experience, and so have a thousand others in similar circumstances.

Do you remember the old story of the house with the golden windows? It tells of a little boy who would look across the sprawling meadows outside his house every morning and see in the distance a house with golden windows. He would stare and revel in the radiant beams streaming his way from far away. He asked his father one day if they could visit the house with the golden windows. The father obliged, and they started to walk. They walked and walked until they approached the house. The young lad stood perplexed. He saw no windows of gold. But a little girl inside saw them staring at her home and came out to ask if they were looking for something. “Yes, ” replied the boy, “I wanted to see the house with the golden windows that I see every morning.” “Oh, you’ve come to the wrong place, ” she quickly said. “If you wait here a little while until sunset, I will show you the house with the golden windows that I see every evening.” She then pointed to a house in the distance — the home of the little boy.

We blasted out of the crater and rocketed around the moon’s opposite side, and the fragile Earth became visible to us once again, hovering in the blackness ahead. Over the comm channel, I heard my father gasp at the sight—one he hadn’t seen with his own eyes in an entire lifetime. My lifetime. “There it is,” he said softly. “Home sweet home. Man, I really missed it.” I’d missed it, too, I realized. And I’d been gone less than a day. As our five ships moved into formation and turned homeward, toward Earth, I checked my scope and saw that the three unmanned Interceptors were heading in the opposite direction, out into space, toward whatever destination my father had programmed into them. I turned my gaze back to Earth and watched it begin to grow in size as we approached, until its blue curve completely filled the view outside of my spacecraft. My father sent a tactical map to the display screens inside our cockpits. “They’re dividing their forces in half again,” my father said over the comm. “See?

He was fiddling with the harness on the lead horse when she approached him, and asked, "Do you have proof that our aunt sent you to escort us?" He glanced sideways at her,but then put his attention back on the horse. "I mentioned your aunt,you didn't," he pointed out,his tone indifferent. "Well,yes,you did,but everyone in this town knows that we recently lost our father and are traveling to live with our aunt." That got his eyes on her again with a narrowed frown. "I've never set foot in this town before." "So you say,but-" "Are you accusing me of sneaking into town in the last day or so,hearing your tale that 'everyone' knows about, and cooking up a plan to abscond with you and your sister?" Put that way,it sounded really horrible. He'd have to be the worst sort of person to cook up such a plan. She winced mentally. She should nod in agreement. She couldn't bring herself to do it.She didn't need to.He was already furious with her. He reached inside his vest to pull out a letter he had stuffed in a pocket there. He literally shoved the letter in Marian's face. "This is how I knew where to find you, Miss Laton,and having not found you where you were supposed to be,I've spent every day since tracking you down.

The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a surrogate father to start their family. On the day the surrogate father was to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife and said, "I'm off. The man should be here soon" Half an hour later, just by chance a door-to-door baby photographer rang the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. "Good morning, madam. I've come to...." "Oh, no need to explain. I've been expecting you," Mrs. Smith cut in. "Really?" the photographer asked. "Well, good. I've made a specialty of babies" "That's what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a seat" After a moment, she asked, blushing, "Well, where do we start?" "Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the couch and perhaps a couple on the bed. Sometimes the living room floor is fun too; you can really spread out!" "Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn't work for Harry and me" "Well, madam, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But, if we try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven different angles, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results" "My, that's a lot of....." gasped Mrs. Smith. "Madam, in my line of work, a man must take his time. I'd love to be in and out in five minutes, but you'd be disappointed with that, I'm sure"  "Don't I know it," Mrs. Smith said quietly. The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his baby pictures. "This was done on the top of a bus in downtown London" "Oh my God!" Mrs. Smith exclaimed, tugging at her handkerchief. "And these twins turned out exceptionally well, when you consider their mother was so difficult to work with" "She was difficult?" asked Mrs. Smith. "Yes, I'm afraid so. I finally had to take her to Hyde Park to get the job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep, pushing to get a good look" "Four and five deep?" asked Mrs. Smith, eyes widened in amazement. "Yes," the photographer said, "And for more than three hours too. The mother was constantly squealing and yelling. I could hardly concentrate. Then darkness approached and I began to rush my shots. Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just packed it all in." Mrs. Smith leaned forward. "You mean squirrels actually chewed on your, um......equipment?" "That's right. Well, madam, if you're ready, I'll set up my tripod so we  can get to work." "Tripod?????" "Oh yes, I have to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It's much too big for me to hold for very long. Madam? Madam? ....... Good Lord, she's fainted!!

She could sense the approach of land- taste when the waters changed, feel when currents turned cool or warm- but it didn't hurt to keep an eye on the shore now and then, and an ear out for boats. The slap of oars could be heard for leagues. Her father had told tales about armored seafarers in days long past, whose trireme ships had three banks of rowers to ply the waters- you could hear them clear down to Atlantica, he'd say. Any louder and they would disrupt the songs of the half-people- the dolphins and whales who used their voices to navigate the waters. Even before her father had enacted the ban on going to the surface, it was rare that a boat would encounter a mer. If the captain kept to the old ways, he would either carefully steer away or throw her a tribute: fruit of the land, the apples and grapes merfolk treasured more than treasure. In return the mermaid might present him with fruit of the sea- gems, or a comb from her hair. But there was always the chance of an unscrupulous crew, and nets, and the potential prize of a mermaid wife or trophy to present the king. (Considering some of the nets that merfolk had found and freed their underwater brethren from, it was quite understandable that Triton believed humans might eat anything they found in the sea- including merfolk.)

Before art school, I approached art as though it illustrated social relations and history, upholding or denouncing the political status quo. During my years in art school I increasingly concentrated on visual meaning, on how artwork looked—its composition, its color, its artist’s style, as separate from what it said about society. Critics call a preoccupation with appearance that ignores social meaning formalism, which carries a negative taint these days when formalism divorces art from the power relations surrounding its creation and circulation. Coming from the Left, I began as an anti-formalist. But as a maker of art, I moved toward formalism as I sought to discover processes of how art was made, a move prompted by the neglect of the formal qualities of the work of black artists, assumed to be important only according to the degree to which it critiqued American racism. Where Romare Bearden had figured in my mind as celebrating blackness and black Harlem, I now investigated how he made his work, step by step, how he decided what to depict and how to depict it. I was now seeing my father’s prized Sharecropper, by Elizabeth Catlett, which he bought from her in her studio in Mexico, less as a salute to black workers and more as a masterly lino print. From the opposite starting point, my relationship to Warhol encapsulated my trajectory.

THES. Ah me! what other evil is this in addition to evil, not to be borne, nor spoken! alas wretched me! CHOR. What is the matter? Tell me if it may be told me. THES. It cries out—the letter cries out things most dreadful: which way can I fly the weight of my ills; for I perish utterly destroyed. What, what a complaint have I seen speaking in her writing! CHOR. Alas! thou utterest words foreboding woes. THES. No longer will I keep within the door of my lips this dreadful, dreadful evil hardly to be uttered. O city, city, Hippolytus has dared by force to approach my bed, having despised the awful eye of Jove. But O father Neptune, by one of these three curses, which thou formerly didst promise me, by one of those destroy my son, and let him not escape beyond this day, if thou hast given me curses that shall be verified. CHOR. O king, by the Gods recall back this prayer, for hereafter you will know that you have erred; be persuaded by me. THES. It can not be: and moreover I will drive him from this land. And by one or other of the two fates shall he be assailed: for either Neptune shall send him dead to the mansions of Pluto, having respect unto my wish; or else banished from this country, wandering over a foreign land, he shall drag out a miserable existence. CHOR. And lo! thy son Hippolytus is present here opportunely, but if thou let go thy evil displeasure, king Theseus, thou wilt advise the best for thine house.

The Negro had never really been patient in the pure sense of the word. The posture of silent waiting was forced upon him psychologically because he was shackled physically. In the days of slavery, this suppression was openly, scientifically and consistently applied. Sheer physical force kept the Negro captive at every point. He was prevented from learning to read and write, prevented by laws actually inscribed in the statute books. He was forbidden to associate with other Negroes living on the same plantation, except when weddings or funerals took place. Punishment for any form of resistance or complaint about his condition could range from mutilation to death. Families were torn apart, friends separated, cooperation to improve their condition carefully thwarted. Fathers and mothers were sold from their children and children were bargained away from their parents. Young girls were, in many cases, sold to become the breeders of fresh generations of slaves. The slaveholders of America had devised with almost scientific precision their systems for keeping the Negro defenseless, emotionally and physically. With the ending of physical slavery after the Civil War, new devices were found to "keep the Negro in his place." It would take volumes to describe these methods, extending from birth in jim-crow hospitals through burial in jim-crow sections of cemeteries. They are too well known to require a catalogue here. Yet one of the revelations during the past few years is the fact that the straitjackets of race prejudice and discrimination do not wear only southern labels. The subtle, psychological technique of the North has approached in its ugliness and victimization of the Negro the outright terror and open brutality of the South. The result has been a demeanor that passed for patience in the eyes of the white man, but covered a powerful impatience in the heart of the Negro.

Each year before the first rain after the harvest in Spring, I would look at the dry peach tree that I know so well at our backyard and anticipating that in summer it will be covered in an overgrown hedge unless my father who was a committed gardner of note take a weekend off from Jo'burg during the pruning season to prune it. Even now, I still remember with crystal clarity my childhood mood - warm days in Schoonoord with rich nostalgia of green scenery and flowers flowering everywhere.  One evening I was sitting at the veranda of our firehut looking at the orange tree between the plat (flat - roofed) house and the big L - shaped house - the tree served as a shelter from the sun for the drinking water pot next to the plat house - suddenly the weather changed, the wind howled, the tree swayed, the loose corrugated iron sheets on roof of he house clattered and clanged, the open windows shuts with a bang and the sky made night a day, and I was overwhelmed with that feeling of childhood joy at the approaching rain. All of a sudden, the deafening of steady pouring rain. The raging storm beat the orange tree leaves while I sat there remembering that where the orange tree stood used to be our first house, a small triangular   shaped mokhukhu ((tin house) made of red painted corrugated iron sheets salvaged from demolishing site in Witbank, also remembering that my aunt's mokhukhu was also made of the same type and colour of corrugated iron sheets. The ashen ground drunk merily until it was quenched and the floods started rolling down Leolo Mountains, and what one could hear above the deafening steady pouring rain was the bellowing of the nearby Manyane Dale, and if it was daylight one could have seen the noble Sebilwane River rolling in sullen glide. After about fifteen minutes of steady downpour, and rumbling sounds, the storm went away in a series of small, badly lit battle scenes.

Dontchev was born in Bulgaria and emigrated to America as a young kid when his father, a mathematician, took a job at the University of Michigan. He got an undergraduate and graduate degree in aerospace engineering, which led to what he thought was his dream opportunity: an internship at Boeing. But he quickly became disenchanted and decided to visit a friend who was working at SpaceX. “I will never forget walking the floor that day,” he says. “All the young engineers working their asses off and wearing T-shirts and sporting tattoos and being really badass about getting things done. I thought, ‘These are my people.’ It was nothing like the buttoned-up deadly vibe at Boeing.” That summer, he made a presentation to a VP at Boeing about how SpaceX was enabling the younger engineers to innovate. “If Boeing doesn’t change,” he said, “you’re going to lose out on the top talent.” The VP replied that Boeing was not looking for disrupters. “Maybe we want the people who aren’t the best, but who will stick around longer.” Dontchev quit. At a conference in Utah, he went to a party thrown by SpaceX and, after a couple of drinks, worked up the nerve to corner Gwynne Shotwell. He pulled a crumpled résumé out of his pocket and showed her a picture of the satellite hardware he had worked on. “I can make things happen,” he told her. Shotwell was amused. “Anyone who is brave enough to come up to me with a crumpled-up résumé might be a good candidate,” she said. She invited him to SpaceX for interviews. He was scheduled to see Musk, who was still interviewing every engineer hired, at 3 p.m. As usual, Musk got backed up, and Dontchev was told he would have to come back another day. Instead, Dontchev sat outside Musk’s cubicle for five hours. When he finally got in to see Musk at 8 p.m., Dontchev took the opportunity to unload about how his gung-ho approach wasn’t valued at Boeing. When hiring or promoting, Musk made a point of prioritizing attitude over résumé skills. And his definition of a good attitude was a desire to work maniacally hard. Musk hired Dontchev on the spot.

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” —Mark 1:35 2. Have an honest heart. “Call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”—Jeremiah 29:12-13 3. Open your Bible. “The word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” —Hebrews 4:12 4. Have a genuine friend. “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”—Hebrews 10:24-25 God has not meant for our lives to be empty. His plan is for us to live full and abundant lives (see John 10:10). As Rick Warren explains in his book The Purpose-Driven Life, “The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.”8 God did not make you to be empty. Walk with and in the purpose He has planned for you. Prayer: Father God, lift me out of a life of emptiness. You didn’t make me to be there, and that’s not where I will remain. With Your Spirit and power I will rise above this phase of emptiness and live an abundant life. Thank You for giving me a gentle whisper. Amen.   Action: If you find yourself in an empty stage of life, put into action this week the four steps that are given.   Today’s Wisdom: Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. —JEREMIAH 17:7-8

You’re having a bad day. You mess up a few lines. You’re distracted. You’ve had this look about you all afternoon, like you’re not quite there. “Christ, Cunningham, get it together,” Hastings says, running his hands down his face. “If you can’t handle being Brutus—” “Fuck you.” You cut him off. “Don’t act like you’re perfect.” “I don’t make rookie mistakes,” Hastings says. “Maybe if you weren’t so preoccupied with trying to screw the new girl, you might—” BAM. You shut him up mid-sentence with a punch to the face, your fist connecting hard, nearly knocking him off his feet. He stumbles, stunned, as you go at him again, grabbing the collar of his uniform shirt and yanking him to you. “Shut your fucking mouth.” People come between the two of you, forcing you apart. Hastings storms out, shouting, “I can’t deal with him!” Drama Club comes to a screeching halt. You stand there for a moment, fists clenched at your side, calming down. You flex your hands, loosening them as you approach the girl. She’s watching you in silence, expression guarded. You sit down near her. There’s an empty seat between you today. It’s the first time you’ve not sat right beside her in weeks. You’re giving her space. It doesn’t take long before Hastings returns, but he isn’t alone. The administrator waltzes in behind him. The man heads for you, expression stern. “Cunningham, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t expel you.” “Because my father gives you a lot of money.” “That’s what you have to say?” “Is that not a good reason?” “You punched a fellow student!” “We were just acting,” you say. “I’m Brutus. He’s Caesar. It’s to be expected.” “Brutus stabs him. He doesn’t throw punches.” “I was improvising.” The girl laughs when you say that. She tries to stop herself, but the sound comes out, and the administrator hears it, his attention shifting to her. “Look, it won’t happen again,” you say, drawing the focus back to you. “Next time, I’ll stab him and be done with it.” “You better watch yourself,” the administrator says, pointing his finger in your face. “One more incident and you’re gone for good. Understand?” “Yes, sir.” “And rest assured, your father will be hearing about this

Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine, Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine! Oh the Earth was made for lovers, for damsel, and hopeless swain, For sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity made of twain. All things do go a courting, in earth, or sea, or air, God hath made nothing single but thee in His world so fair! The bride, and then the bridegroom, the two, and then the one, Adam, and Eve, his consort, the moon, and then the sun; The life doth prove the precept, who obey shall happy be, Who will not serve the sovereign, be hanged on fatal tree. The high do seek the lowly, the great do seek the small, None cannot find who seeketh, on this terrestrial ball; The bee doth court the flower, the flower his suit receives, And they make merry wedding, whose guests are hundred leaves; The wind doth woo the branches, the branches they are won, And the father fond demandeth the maiden for his son. The storm doth walk the seashore humming a mournful tune, The wave with eye so pensive, looketh to see the moon, Their spirits meet together, they make their solemn vows, No more he singeth mournful, her sadness she doth lose. The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride, Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide; Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true, And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue. Now to the application, to the reading of the roll, To bringing thee to justice, and marshalling thy soul: Thou art a human solo, a being cold, and lone, Wilt have no kind companion, thou reap'st what thou hast sown. Hast never silent hours, and minutes all too long, And a deal of sad reflection, and wailing instead of song? There's Sarah, and Eliza, and Emeline so fair, And Harriet, and Susan, and she with curling hair! Thine eyes are sadly blinded, but yet thou mayest see Six true, and comely maidens sitting upon the tree; Approach that tree with caution, then up it boldly climb, And seize the one thou lovest, nor care for space, or time! Then bear her to the greenwood, and build for her a bower, And give her what she asketh, jewel, or bird, or flower — And bring the fife, and trumpet, and beat upon the drum — And bid the world Goodmorrow, and go to glory home!

The wedding of David and Michal was a glorious affair. Though Saul was normally stingy with his money, he was not so with his daughters. Michal had started the day with a bath followed by a bodily anointing of oil. She wore a linen and silk dress with embroidered cloth of Phoenician purple. Her hair was brushed to a soft perfection and placed beneath her Tyrian style crown of gold. She was bedecked with gold and silver jewelry from Egypt. Bracelets, necklaces, ear coverings and a ring on her nose. She walked through the Gibeah streets in fine calf leather sandals, surrounded by a cadre of dozens of virgin bridesmaid companions dressed in white linen. A band of minstrels led her with rejoicing on tambourine, flute, and lyre. She felt like a queen. She would be a queen one day. She knew that she was marrying the mightiest warrior in all of Israel. The gibborim who had killed the giant Rephaim Philistine, who her own father, the anointed warrior king, could not conquer. All she could think of the entire journey to the palace were the lyrics she first heard her from the lips of her bridegroom upon their first acquaintance. She had never forgot them. They were burned into her heart. He had sung a song of virginal submission to a manly king as a sample of his musical talent to her father. But she knew he had sung those words for her. She knew by the look in his eyes, his unquenchable stare of desire for her. It was like a prophecy. Now those words were coming true, she was going to be living them out any moment. Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him. The people of Israel lined the streets and cheered their beautiful princess as she approached the entranceway to the palace. She could feel her heart pounding out of her chest. Would he sing to her on their wedding night? Would he seduce her with his musical talent before he ravished her? All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king.

In other words, you'll pretend to be someone else in order to snag a husband." "Oh, for heaven's sake," she said defensively, "it's no different than what half the women in society do to catch a man. I don't want to waste my time in pointless flirtation when a little knowledge will improve my aim on the targets." He flashed her a condescending smile. "What is it?" she snapped. "Only you would approach courtship as a marksman approaches a shooting match." He licked the tip of his pencil. "So who are these hapless targets?" "The Earl of Devonmont, the Duke of Lyons, and Fernandez Valdez, the Viscount de Basto." His jaw dropped. "Are you insane?" "I know they're rather beyond my reach, but they seem to like my company-" "I daresay they do!" He strode up to her, strangely angry. "The earl is a rakehell with a notorious reputation for trying to get beneath the skirts of every woman he meets. The duke's father was mad, and it's said to run in his family, which is why most women steer clear of him. And Basto is a Portuguese idiot who's too old for you and clearly trawling for some sweet young thing to nurse him in his declining years." "How can you say such things? The only one you know personally is Lord Devonmont, and you barely know even him." "I don't have to. Their reputations tell me they're utterly unacceptable." Unacceptable? Three of the most eligible bachelors in London? Mr. Pinter was mad, not her. "Lord Devonmont is Gabe's wife's cousin. The duke of Gabe's best friend, whom I've known since childhood, and the viscount...well..." "Is an oily sort, from what I hear," he snapped. "No, he isn't. He's very pleasant to talk to." Really, this was the most ridiculous conversation. "Who the devil do you think I should marry, anyway?" That seemed to take him aback. He glanced away. "I don't know," he muttered. "But no...That is, you shouldn't..." He tugged at his cravat. "They're wrong for you, that's all." She'd flustered Mr. Pinter. How astonishing! He was never flustered. It made him look vulnerable and much less...stiff. She rather liked that. But she'd like it even better if she understood what had provoked it. "Why do you care whom I choose, as long as you're paid? I'm wiling to pay extra to ensure that you find out everything I want to know." Once more he turned into Proud Pinter. "It isn't a matter of payment, madam. I choose my own assignments, and this one isn't to my taste. Good day," Turning on his heel, he headed for the door. Oh, dear, she hadn't meant to run him off entirely.

THE INSTRUCTION OF PTAHHOTEP Part III Report your commission without faltering, Give your advice in your master’s council. If he is fluent in his speech, It will not be hard for the envoy to report, Nor will he be answered, "Who is he to know it ?” As to the master, his affairs will fail If he plans to punish him for it. He should be silent upon (hearing): "I have told.” If you are a man who leads. Whose authority reaches wide, You should do outstanding things, Remember the day that comes after. No strife will occur in the midst of honors, But where the crocodile enters hatred arises. If you are a man who leads. Listen calmly to the speech of one who pleads; Don’t stop him from purging his body Of that which he planned to tell. A man in distress wants to pour out his heart More than that his case be won. About him who stops a plea One says: “Why does he reject it ?” Not all one pleads for can be granted, But a good hearing soothes the heart. If you want friendship to endure In the house you enter As master, brother, or friend, In whatever place you enter, Beware of approaching the women! Unhappy is the place where it is done. Unwelcome is he who intrudes on them. A thousand men are turned away from their good: A short moment like a dream, Then death comes for having known them. Poor advice is “shoot the opponent,” When one goes to do it the heart rejects it. He who fails through lust of them, No affair of his can prosper. If you want a perfect conduct, To be free from every evil, Guard against the vice of greed: A grievous sickness without cure, There is no treatment for it. It embroils fathers, mothers, And the brothers of the mother, It parts wife from husband; It is a compound of all evils, A bundle of all hateful things. That man endures whose rule is rightness, Who walks a straight line; He will make a will by it, The greedy has no tomb. Do not be greedy in the division. Do not covet more than your share; Do not be greedy toward your kin. The mild has a greater claim than the harsh. Poor is he who shuns his kin, He is deprived of 'interchange' Even a little of what is craved Turns a quarreler into an amiable man. When you prosper and found your house, And love your wife with ardor, Fill her belly, clothe her back, Ointment soothes her body. Gladden her heart as long as you live, She is a fertile held for her lord. Do not contend with her in court, Keep her from power, restrain her — Her eye is her storm when she gazes — Thus will you make her stay in your house. Sustain your friends with what you have, You have it by the grace of god; Of him who fails to sustain his friends One says, “a selfish ka". One plans the morrow but knows not what will be, The ( right) ka is the ka by which one is sustained. If praiseworthy deeds are done, Friends will say, “welcome!” One does not bring supplies to town, One brings friends when there is need. Do not repeat calumny. Nor should you listen to it, It is the spouting of the hot-bellied. Report a thing observed, not heard, If it is negligible, don’t say anything. He who is before you recognizes worth. lf a seizure is ordered and carried out, Hatred will arise against him who seizes; Calumny is like a dream against which one covers the face. If you are a man of worth, Who sits in his master’s council. Concentrate on excellence, Your silence is better than chatter. Speak when you know you have a solution, It is the skilled who should speak in council; Speaking is harder than all other work. He who understands it makes it serve.

I need to approach my Father in heaven as if I were three feet tall and short on life experience.

Introduction THE TRUTH of the Second Coming of Jesus at the end of time has proved to be difficult for many Catholics to relate to. It is an area of theology that many find irrelevant to their everyday lives; something perhaps best left to the placard-wielding doom merchants. However, the clarity of this teaching is to be found throughout the pages of Sacred Scripture, through the Tradition of the Church Fathers, notably St. Augustine and St. Irenaeus, and in the Magisterium of the popes. A possible reason for this attitude of incredulity is the obvious horror at the prospect of the end of the world. In envisioning this end, the focus of many consists of an image of universal conflagration where the only peace is the peace of death, not only for man but the physical world also. But is that scenario one that is true to the plans of Divine Providence as revealed by Jesus? In truth it is not. It is a partial account of the wondrous work that the Lord will complete on the last day. The destiny of humanity and all creation at the end of time will consist of the complete renewal of the world and the universe, in which the Kingdom of God will come. Earth will become Heaven and the Holy Trinity will dwell with the community of the redeemed in an endless day illuminated by the light that is God—the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I suspect that the ignorance of many stems from the lack of clear teaching coming from the clergy. There is no real reason for confusion in this area as the Second Vatican Council document, Lumen Gentium, and the Catholic Catechism make the authentic teaching very clear. With the knowledge that the end will give way to a new beginning, the Christian should be filled with hope, not fear, expectation, not apprehension. It is important to stress at this point that it is not my intention to speculate as to specific times and dates, as that knowledge belongs to God the Father himself; rather the intention is to offer the teachings and guidance of the recent popes in this matter, and to show that they are warning of the approaching Second Coming of the Lord. Pope Pius XII stated in his Easter Message of 1957: “Come, Lord Jesus. There are numerous signs that Thy return is not far off.” St. Peter warns us that “everything will soon come to an end” (1 Pet. 4:7), while at the same time exercising caution: “But there is one thing, my friends, that you must never forget: that with the Lord, a “day” can mean a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Pet. 3:8). So let us leave the time scale open, that way controversy can be avoided and the words of the popes will speak for themselves.

One of the students, whom I did not know well, approached me afterwards and complimented me on the exposé. He knew little about the Greek-Orthodox branch of Christianity and he thought that life in Romania gave me that background. He then invited me to his house, he and his wife, a young actress, lived close to Columbia. I enjoyed my lunch with them, on that spring day in April, 1948. The two of them invited me to visit them during the Easter vacation, at a prestigious university in New Hampshire, where his father was a professor.

cupcake. The sweetness is finally starting to overwhelm me, and my chewing begins to slow. I inwardly bemoan that I must be approaching my ultimate cupcake-capacity. “He’s wonderful,” my father says with a solemn gravity. “I am so thankful, every single day, that he came into Carmen’s life. And my life, too. He’s been a blessing. He’s been a true gentleman to your sister—he’s been the son I never had. I am sure that he will also be an excellent brother-in-law to you. I can’t wait for you to meet him.” I finish off my cupcake, and sigh in contentment. This news is inspiring. Since I returned home, I have been greeted with breathtaking smells, tastes, and heartwarming news. What more could anyone ask for in life? My thoughts return to Liam. I feel so grateful that he convinced me to participate in his research and helped me get back home in time for the wedding. I can’t even remember

Jesus said If you know me, you know the Father, so in revealing himself to us, He disclosed the heart of Father, God. Therefore, we can confidently know that a life modeled after Jesus is one that is fashioned after God. We can also know, with confidence, that whatever Jesus did was also the will of God. And what did He do? He went about healing all who would receive (healing is His will). He delivered all who came to Him (deliverance is His will). He fed all those who came to hear him, and there was much left over (prosperity is His will). When we know the will of God, we will have the confidence to approach His throne, for faith begins where the will of God is known.

consider a young Tunisian man pushing a wooden handcart loaded with fruits and vegetables down a dusty road to a market in the Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid. When the man was three, his father died. He supports his family by borrowing money to fill his cart, hoping to earn enough selling the produce to pay off the debt and have a little left over. It’s the same grind every day. But this morning, the police approach the man and say they’re going to take his scales because he has violated some regulation. He knows it’s a lie. They’re shaking him down. But he has no money. A policewoman slaps him and insults his dead father. They take his scales and his cart. The man goes to a town office to complain. He is told the official is busy in a meeting. Humiliated, furious, powerless, the man leaves. He returns with fuel. Outside the town office he douses himself, lights a match, and burns. Only the conclusion of this story is unusual. There are countless poor street vendors in Tunisia and across the Arab world. Police corruption is rife, and humiliations like those inflicted on this man are a daily occurrence. They matter to no one aside from the police and their victims. But this particular humiliation, on December 17, 2010, caused Mohamed Bouazizi, aged twenty-six, to set himself on fire, and Bouazizi’s self-immolation sparked protests. The police responded with typical brutality. The protests spread. Hoping to assuage the public, the dictator of Tunisia, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, visited Bouazizi in the hospital. Bouazizi died on January 4, 2011. The unrest grew. On January 14, Ben Ali fled to a cushy exile in Saudi Arabia, ending his twenty-three-year kleptocracy. The Arab world watched, stunned. Then protests erupted in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, and Bahrain. After three decades in power, the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak was driven from office. Elsewhere, protests swelled into rebellions, rebellions into civil wars. This was the Arab Spring—and it started with one poor man, no different from countless others, being harassed by police, as so many have been, before and since, with no apparent ripple effects. It is one thing to look backward and sketch a narrative arc, as I did here, connecting Mohamed Bouazizi to all the events that flowed out of his lonely protest. Tom Friedman, like many elite pundits, is skilled at that sort of reconstruction, particularly in the Middle East, which he knows so well, having made his name in journalism as a New York Times correspondent in Lebanon. But could even Tom Friedman, if he had been present that fatal morning, have peered into the future and foreseen the self-immolation, the unrest, the toppling of the Tunisian dictator, and all that followed? Of course not. No one could. Maybe, given how much Friedman knew about the region, he would have mused that poverty and unemployment were high, the number of desperate young people was growing, corruption was rampant, repression was relentless, and therefore Tunisia and other Arab countries were powder kegs waiting to blow. But an observer could have drawn exactly the same conclusion the year before. And the year before that. Indeed, you could have said that about Tunisia, Egypt, and several other countries for decades. They may have been powder kegs but they never blew—until December 17, 2010, when the police pushed that one poor man too far.

Humility in every area of life, in every relationship with other people, begins with a right concept of God as the One who is infinite and eternal in His majesty and holiness. We are to humble ourselves under God's mighty hand, approaching every relationship and every circumstance in reference to Him. When relationships with people are good and circumstances are favorable, we are to humbly receive these blessings from His gracious hand. When people are mistreating us and circumstances are difficult, we are to humbly accept them as from an infinitely wise and loving heavenly Father.

Listen, I haven’t even seen half of what there is to see in Hytanica. You could show me one day.” “You seem to be everywhere in this city,” I scoffed. “There can’t be much left for you to explore. Or have you just been following me around?” “Well, you’re the most interesting feature of the city I’ve come across.” He smirked, and I gave him a sideways glance. Was he admitting to stalking me? Then he chuckled. “As long as I’m assigned to oversee the city, we’re bound to run into each other. I would be lying, however, if I denied that I look forward to our encounters.” Heat again flooded my face. Saadi was making me uncomfortable. I was in danger of liking him too much. “That reminds me,” I said. “I owe you for a lock.” I glanced to see that Dahnath was still talking to Drael. He was holding her hands, preparing to depart. Knowing from the general length of their goodbyes that it would be at least five minutes more, I removed a coin from my pocket. Saadi grinned. “I thought you had forgotten.” “Not at all.” I pressed the coin into his hand. “But you have to go. My sister will be coming to find me at any moment. She can’t see us together or she’ll tell my mother and probably Cannan. We could both end up in dismal straits.” I expected him to ridicule me for being afraid of my mother, but he did not. “What do you say, Shaselle? Two days from now I’ll be off duty.” “You really want to see me?” “Yes,” he confirmed, pale blue eyes sparkling, his bronze hair sticking erratically up in front. “All right then.” “Wonderful. I can meet you whenever, wherev--” “On one condition.” His smile faded and his tone grew wary. “Which is?” “I’ll spend a day with you only if you can beat me in a horse race.” He laughed and shook his head. “Of course I can beat you.” “Then prove it. We’ll each pick a mount and race--I’ll need to borrow one from your Cokyrian stables. Take it or leave it. Either way, I have to go now. But I wouldn’t be so cocky if I were you, boy.” He smiled, intrigued by my challenge. “I’ll take it, but let’s raise the stakes. Make it more worthwhile.” Curious, I motioned for him to go on. “If I win, you agree to spend two days with me, when I’m off duty. If you win, you get to keep the horse you chose to ride.” I stared into his eyes for a long moment, until I was certain he wasn’t toying with me. He knew as well as I did that I would choose one of my father’s horses--one that had been stolen by his sister. He was giving me a chance to bring one of them home. My spirits soared, and I extended my hand. Saadi shook it, then shoved the basket at me, turning to stride away. Just in time, too, for Dahnath was approaching.

work vehicles and a lone motorcycle, her SUV had the road to itself, which meant she would get there faster. Indeed, the familiarity of turning onto Caroline’s street was a lifeline. Once she parked in front of the mint-over-teal Victorian, she put Tad on her hip and hurried up the walk. The squeak of the screen was actually reassuring. And the smell of time when she stepped inside? Heaven. “Mom?” Caroline ran barefoot from the kitchen, stopped short, and put a hand to her heart. “Mother and child,” she breathed and slowly approached. Her hair was a wavy mess, and her face blushed in a way that made her look forty, but her eyes, moist now, held adoration. Wrapping a firm arm around Jamie, she said by her ear, “We will not mention the show. It has no place in this house with us right now, okay?” Jamie hadn’t even thought about the show, and certainly couldn’t think of it with Caroline’s soft, woodsy scent soothing her nerves and giving her strength. “Mom,” she began, drawing back, but Caroline was studying Tad. “Oh my. A real little boy. Hey,” she said softly and touched his hair. Jamie felt the warmth of the touch, but Tad just stared without blinking. “I think I know you. Aren’t you Theodore MacAfee the Second?” Those very big eyes were somber as he shook his head. “Who, then?” “Taddy,” came the baby voice. “The Taddy who likes cats?” Caroline asked, to which he started looking around the floor, “or the Taddy who likes pancakes?” “Pancakes, please,” Jamie inserted. “I promised him we’d eat here. Mom—” She broke off when Master meowed. Setting Tad on the floor, she waited only until he had run after the cat before turning back to her mother and holding out her left hand. Caroline frowned. “You’re shaking.” She had steadied the hand with her own before she finally focused on that bare ring finger. Wide eyes flew to Jamie’s. In that instant, with this first oh-so-important disclosure, it was real. Jamie could barely breathe. “I returned it. Brad and I split.” “What happened?” Caroline whispered, but quickly caught herself. Cupping Jamie’s face, she said, “First things first. I don’t have a booster seat for Tad.” “He’ll kneel on a chair. He looks like Dad. Do you hate him for that?” Tad was on his haunches on the other side of the room, waiting for Master to come out from under the spindle legs of a lamp stand. “I should,” Caroline confessed, “but how to hate a child? He may have Roy’s coloring, but he’ll take on your expressions, and soon enough he’ll look like himself. Besides,” she gave a gritty smirk, “it’s not like your father gets the last laugh. If he thought I was a withered-up old hag—” “He didn’t.” “Yes, he did. Isn’t that what booting me off Gut It! was about?” “You said we weren’t talking about that,” Jamie begged, knowing that despite this nascent reconciliation, Gut It! remained a huge issue. Not talking about it wouldn’t make it go away, but she didn’t want the intrusion of it now. Caroline seemed to agree. She spoke more calmly. “Your father’s opinion of me went way back to our marriage, so this, today, here, now, is satisfying for me. How happy do you think he is looking down from heaven to see his son at my house, chasing my cat and about to eat my grandmother’s pancakes, cooked by me in my kitchen and served on a table I made?” The part of Jamie that resented Roy for what he had made Caroline suffer shared her mother’s satisfaction. She might have said that, if Caroline hadn’t gone from bold to unsure in a breath. “I’m not equipped yet, baby. Does Tad need a bottle for his water?” “No. He’s done with bottles. Just a little water in a cup will do, since I forgot the sippy.” In her rush to get out of the house, she had also left Moose, which meant she would have to go back for him before dropping Tad off, which meant she would be late for her first appointment, which she couldn’t reschedule because she had back-to-backs all day, which meant she would have to postpone to another day, which

Cain complained to God, “My punishment is more than I can bear” (Gen. 4:13). Resolved to overcome his fate, he tried to build a comfortable life for himself. He started a family and began to build a city (Gen. 4:17). I must surrender my fascination with myself to a more worthy preoccupation with the character and purposes of God. I am not the point. He is. I exist for him. He does not exist for me. Without repenting, Cain set out to overcome the consequences of his sin and to provide comfortable circumstances for himself. In effect, Cain was saying, “Okay, I’m out of the Garden. Ever since you expelled Mom and Dad from Eden and placed that angelic bouncer at the gate to keep everyone out, I realized that I must come to terms with living in a world filled with weeds and thornbushes. But even though I am out of the Garden, I will not lead the miserable life of a nomad. I will do everything I can to recapture as much of the Garden experience as possible. I will build a city, plant a few flowers, and put in a recreation park for my children. I will not keep on wandering about without trying to settle down. I have no higher priority than arranging for my own comfort.” Because Cain passed on this attitude to his descendants, we are now able to contrast two ways of approaching life: Lamech’s (reflecting the ungodly influence of Cain) and Enoch’s (consistent with the godly line of Seth). Lamech declared: “I will build my city! I want my pleasures now.” Enoch said: “I will build God’s kingdom! And trust God to one day build a city for me to enjoy.” Because God cares deeply about his children, many times he chooses to relieve our suffering and solve our problems. But because his love is an intelligent love rooted in what he knows is best for us, he provides us with something more interesting to live for than ourselves. He catches us up in the supernatural reality of living for an eternal kingdom. The question we need to ask is this: Are we merely living, or are we walking with God? As we explore our own lives, we must never get so immersed in ourselves that we fail to remember that there is something far more wonderful to ponder. If I am to reject Lamech’s approach and come to God as Enoch came, I must surrender my fascination with myself to a more worthy preoccupation with the character and purposes of God. I am not the point. He is. I exist for him. He does not exist for me. The question we need to ask is this: Are we merely living, or are we walking with God?Are we merely committed to feeding our own souls, to arranging our lives around getting our needs met, to building our cities? Or are we committed to knowing God, to cooperating with him as loved participants in a plan larger than ourselves, to becoming like the Son whom the Father adores, and to waiting for the city that Christ is building right now? We must learn what it means to come to God, believing that he is good when life doesn’t show it, knowing that he graciously rewards honest seekers even when their souls ache relentlessly. But can we put the lessons of Hebrew 11 more practically? What would our lives look like if we were coming to God as Enoch did?

In 2008, the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, a remote part of northeastern Pakistan. They quickly implemented their Muslim extremist agenda. No television. No films. No women outside the house without a male escort. No girls attending school. By 2009, an eleven-year-old Pakistani girl named Malala Yousafzai had begun to speak out against the school ban. She continued to attend her local school, risking both her and her father’s lives; she also attended conferences in nearby cities. She wrote online, “How dare the Taliban take away my right for education?” In 2012, at the age of fourteen, she was shot in the face as she rode the bus home from school one day. A masked Taliban soldier armed with a rifle boarded the bus and asked, “Who is Malala? Tell me, or I will shoot everyone here.” Malala identified herself (an amazing choice in and of itself), and the man shot her in the head in front of all the other passengers.

She seemed sad and wise beyond her years. All the giddy experimentation with sex, recreational drugs, and revolutionary politics that was still approaching its zenith in countercultural America was ancient, unhappy history to her. Actually, her mother was still in the midst of it—her main boyfriend at the time was a Black Panther on the run from the law—but Caryn, at sixteen, was over it. She was living in West Los Angeles with her mother and little sister, in modest circumstances, going to a public high school. She collected ceramic pigs and loved Laura Nyro, the rapturous singer-songwriter. She was deeply interested in literature and art, but couldn’t be bothered with bullshit like school exams. Unlike me, she wasn’t hedging her bets, wasn’t keeping up her grades to keep her college options open. She was the smartest person I knew—worldly, funny, unspeakably beautiful. She didn’t seem to have any plans. So I picked her up and took her with me, very much on my headstrong terms. I overheard, early on, a remark by one of her old Free School friends. They still considered themselves the hippest, most wised-up kids in L.A., and the question was what had become of their foxy, foulmouthed comrade Caryn Davidson. She had run off, it was reported, “with some surfer.” To them, this was a fate so unlikely and inane, there was nothing else to say. Caryn did have one motive that was her own for agreeing to come to Maui. Her father was reportedly there. Sam had been an aerospace engineer before LSD came into his life. He had left his job and family and, with no explanation beyond his own spiritual search, stopped calling or writing. But the word on the coconut wireless was that he was dividing his time between a Zen Buddhist monastery on the north coast of Maui and a state mental hospital nearby. I was not above mentioning the possibility that Caryn might find him if we moved to the island.

WHY IS TODAY SPECIAL IN HINDUISM? Today is the day (as per Hindu calendar) that Abhirami Bhattar prayed to Parashakti and manifest Amavasya (new moon day) as full moon day (Poornima) Subramaniya Iyer, who was then known as Abhirami Bhattar, was an ardent devotee of Devi Parashakti from the village that was famous for its Shiva temple, called Amritaghateswarar-Abirami Temple, Thirukkadaiyur. Once when the Maratha rule, king Serfoji I visited the Thirukkadavur temple on the day of the new moon (Amavasya). On noticing the peculiar behaviour of Subramaniya Iyer who was a temple priest, he inquired the other priests about the individual. One of them remarked that he was a madman while another rejected this categorization explaining to the king that Subramaniya Iyer was only an ardent devotee of Goddess Abhirami. Seeking to know the truth himself, Serfoji approached the priest and asked him what day of the month it was. Whether it was a full-moon day(Poornima) or a new-moon day(Amavasy). At that moment, Subramaniya Iyer was doing the Tithi Nithya Aaradhana in the SriChakra Navaavarana krama and was worshipping the Devi as Poornima Tithi. Subramaniya Iyer who could see nothing else but the shining luminant form of the Goddess before him answered that it was a full-moon day (Poornima) while it was in fact a new-moon day(Amavasya). The king rode off informing the former that he would have his head cut off if the moon did not appear on the sky in the night. A huge fire was lit and Subramaniya Iyer was erected on a platform supported by a hundred ropes. He sat upon the platform and prayed to the Goddess Abhirami to save him. The ropes were cut off, one after another in succession on completion of each verse of his prayer. These hymns form the Abhirami Anthadhi. On completion of the 79th hymn, the Goddess Abhirami manifested herself before him and threw her earring over the sky such that it shone with bright light upon the horizon. The area around the temple sparkled with bright light. Overcome with ecstasy, Subramaniya Iyer composed 21 more verses in praise of the Goddess. The king repented his mistake and immediately cancelled the punishment he had given to Subramaniya Iyer. He also bestowed upon the latter the title of Abirami Pattar or "priest of Goddess Abhirami". There are a hundred stanzas plus a காப்பு (Kāppu, protection) verse for lord Ganesha and a final பயன் (Payaṉ, outcome), thus a total of 102 stanzas that are included in Abhirami Anthadhi. The author praises Abhirami as his own mother, regrets his mistakes, speaks of the divine play of mother and father Paramashiva, and her simplicity & mercy. It is believed that recitation of each stanza will result in the specific achievement of the devotees. Here is one of the famous stanzas of Abhirami Anthadhi: " மணியே, மணியின் ஒளியே, ஒளிரும் அணி புனைந்த அணியே, அணியும் அணிக்கு அழகே, அணுகாதவர்க்குப் பிணியே, பிணிக்கு மருந்தே, அமரர் பெரு விருந்தே. பணியேன், ஒருவரை நின் பத்ம பாதம் பணிந்தபின்னே." - செய்யுள் 24 " Maṇiyē, maṇiyiṉ oḷiyē, oḷirum aṇi puṉainta aṇiyē, aṇiyum aṇikku aḻakē, aṇukātavarkkup piṇiyē, piṇikku maruntē, amarar peru viruntē.- Paṇiyēṉ, oruvarai niṉ patma pātam paṇintapiṉṉē." - stanza 24 Pearl like you are, You who are the reddish aura of the pearl! You are like the pearl studded chain who adds beauty to the chain, You are pain to those who do not fall at your feet while the panacea for pains of those who fall at your feet, the nectar of Gods, After worshipping at thine lotus feet, Will I bow before any other, Now and now after. The beauty of Abhirami Anthathi: காப்பு starts as ″தார் அமர் கொன்றையும்...″ and பயன் ends as ″... தீங்கு இல்லையே″ (தாயே)

The large oak door to the house opened, and Alex looked up to see her father, silhouetted by the bright lights of the entryway. He looked nothing like a duke—without an overcoat or a waistcoat, without a cravat. His shirt was tucked into his buckskin breeches, but his sleeves were rolled up on his bronzed arms, and Alex chuckled to think of what London’s aristocracy would think to see him, one of the most powerful men in England, wandering about dressed like a “savage.” A flash of white appeared as he grinned down at the group on the drive. He called back into the house, “My word! It appears someone’s left a group of orphans at the door!” The four women laughed at his silly jest as he came bounding down the steps, taking Alex into his arms for a warm hug and a kiss on the forehead, and welcoming Vivi and Ella in turn. He then turned to help the duchess down from the carriage. When her feet touched the ground, she looked up at her husband and said, “Rather too old to be an orphan, I think.” Wrapping his arms around her, the duke replied lovingly, “Nonsense. You grow younger with each day,” and kissed her soundly on the mouth. Vivi and Ella turned away, blushing and leaving Alex shaking her head and teasing, “Your behavior really is too uncivilized. Shouldn’t you be setting a better example for the next generation?” “It looks like an excellent example to me.” The words sent a tingle up Alex’s spine as she recognized the warm, friendly voice. She turned to find Blackmoor, clad as casually as her father, coming down the steps to greet them. In the darkness, she couldn’t be sure, but he seemed to be looking straight at her. Her stomach turned over as she watched him approach, and she blushed deeply to think that he was discussing her parents’ actions so openly. “You could have this yourself, Gavin, if you would only take a wife!” her mother pointed out, kissing him on both cheeks in welcome. Vivi

Engineer’s fascination with CPVC began in the mid-1990s. During this period, in the construction and plumbing industry, pipes were still made of iron and copper. Engineer saw that corrosion was a major problem with galvanized pipes and India was materially behind the evolution curve in the use of plastics for pipes. In the United States, CPVC was the new anti-corrosion solution for plastic pipes, which was swiftly replacing metal (iron and copper) pipes in industrial applications. CPVC was also a superior product compared to PVC because of higher ductile strength, which gave it the ability to handle hot water up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93° Celsius) (PVC can handle hot water only up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit [60° Celsius]). B.F. Goodrich (now known as Lubrizol) held the patent for CPVC resin technology, and Engineer decided to tie up with them to bring CPVC to India. He travelled to the United States to forge a techno-financial joint venture (JV) deal with Thompson Plastics of USA, which provided Astral with the technical know-how for setting up the CPVC plant. Astral also acquired the licence for CPVC resin procurement from Lubrizol (the first Indian company to do so). With a JV partner on board and a licence in his hand, Engineer set up Astral Poly Technik in March 1996. Thompson put up 20 per cent of equity for the company and Engineer approached his uncle to fund another 20 per cent. For his personal equity contribution, Engineer sold his house in Ahmedabad. I met Engineer at Astral’s corporate office located off the bustling Sarkhej–Gandhinagar Highway and behind the prestigious Rajpath Club in Ahmedabad. Recalling those early days, Engineer told me, ‘There was a time when everything my father-in-law and I owned was mortgaged to build Astral.

A leader needs a balanced approach to time lest it become his bondage and downfall. Without a grip on time, the leader works under unnecessary strain. Even when the leader has done the utmost to fulfill daily obligations, vast areas of work always remain. Every call for help is not necessarily a call from God, for it is impossible to respond to every need. If the leader sincerely plans his day in prayer, then executes the plan with all energy and eagerness, that is enough. A leader is responsible only for what lies within the range of control. The rest he should trust to our loving and competent heavenly Father.

We turned onto the thoroughfare and walked north toward the palace, and my spirits lifted. Despite the destruction and death, this was a glorious day for Hytanica. I started to say something to this effect to Galen, but he halted, his face ashen, and the words died on my lips. His hand fell on my shoulder, and I looked at him in confusion, then followed his gaze farther up the road. My eyes fell on Steldor, who was kneeling on the unforgiving stone of the street, a few other men milling around him, and my confusion grew. Shouldn’t Galen be pleased to find his best friend? I couldn’t see what Steldor was doing, but after a moment he stood, and the men who were with him lifted a flat litter bearing a body. My eyes took in the height and build of the man lying unnaturally still, the nearly black hair, the officer’s insignia on the black leather jerkin, the blood--and my breath caught in my throat. I tried to run to Steldor, denials raging in my head, but Galen pulled me against his chest. I stared uncomprehendingly at the litter, the image burning itself into my brain, while tears stung my eyes. Cannan’s arms were folded over his chest, his sword tucked beneath his hands. It was really the only evidence any of us needed. As sobs shook me, Galen passed me into the arms of my suitor and advanced upon his best friend, his motion unnaturally stiff. Steldor turned his head at the sound of the approaching footsteps, his dark eyes dry but looking helpless, hopeless and alone. Cannan had been Galen’s father the same way he had been Steldor’s, and the young men stood side by side, watching the Hytanican soldiers carry the litter toward the palace, not moving until it was out of sight. Both of them seemed lost, not knowing what to do or say, then they wrapped their arms around one another in a fierce embrace, befitting the brothers that they were. They held each other for a long time, almost as unmoving as their deceased father. I fell back against Grayden, losing what little strength remained to me, and he hugged me, eventually leading me back to my house. Though I was only eighteen, I felt I had stumbled upon one of life’s few truisms: with every step forward came a step backward, with every gain came a loss and with every joy came tears. In the end, the best for which one could hope was to leave the world in better straits than existed on the day of your birth; to have truly lived. And oh, how Cannan, the Captain of the Guard, had lived.

Grace rolled up her sleeves and joined the group in the kitchen, where Gladys, Pablo's wife, had worked all day directing many other women who kept food pouring out the front and side door, onto a long series of folding tables, all covered in checkered paper table cloths. While some of the women prepped and cooked, others did nothing but bring food out and set it on the table- Southern food with a Mexican twist, and rivers of it: fried chicken, chicken and dumplings, chicken mole, shrimp and grits, turnip greens, field peas, fried apples, fried calabaza, bread pudding, corn pudding, fried hush puppies, fried burritos, fried okra, buttermilk biscuits, black-eyed peas, butter bean succotash, pecan pie, corn bread, and, of course, apple pie, hot and fresh with sloppy big scoops of local hand-churned ice creams. As the dinner hours approached, Carter grabbed Grace out of the kitchen, and they both joined Sarah, Carter's friend, helping Sarah's father throw up a half-steel-kettle barbecue drum on the side of the house. Mesquite and pecan hardwoods were quickly set ablaze, and Dolly and the quilting ladies descended on the barbecue with a hurricane of food that went right on to the grill, whole chickens and fresh catfish and still-kicking mountain trout alongside locally-style grass-fed burgers all slathered with homemade spicy barbecue sauce. And the Lindseys, the elderly couple who owned the fields adjoining the orchard, pulled up in their pickup and started unloading ears of corn that had been recently cut. The corn was thrown on the kettle drum, too, and in minutes massive plumes of roasting savory-sweet smoke filled the air around the house. It wafted into the orchards, toward the workers who soon began pouring out of the house.

His meaning becomes clear if we recall the story recounted by all three Synoptic evangelists, in which children were brought to Jesus “that he might touch them”. Despite the resistance of the disciples, who wanted to protect him from this imposition, Jesus calls the children to himself, lays his hands on them, and blesses them. He explains this gesture with the words: “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mk 10:13-16). The children serve Jesus as an example of the littleness before God that is necessary in order to pass through the “eye of a needle”, the image that he used immediately afterward in the story of the rich young man (Mk 10:17-27). In the previous chapter we find the scene where Jesus responds to the disciples’ dispute over rank by placing a child in their midst, taking it into his arms and saying: “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me” (Mk 9:33-37). Jesus identifies himself with the child—he himself has become small. As Son he does nothing of himself, but he acts wholly from the Father and for the Father. The passage that follows a few verses later can also be understood on this basis. Here Jesus speaks no longer of children, but of “little ones”, and the term “little ones” designates believers, the company of the disciples of Jesus Christ (cf. Mk 9:42). In the faith they have found this true littleness that leads mankind into its truth. This brings us back to the children’s Hosanna: in the light of Psalm 8, the praise of these children appears as an anticipation of the great outpouring of praise that his “little ones” will sing to him far beyond the present hour. The early Church, then, was right to read this scene as an anticipation of what she does in her liturgy. Even in the earliest post-Easter liturgical text that we possess—the Didachē (ca. 100)—before the distribution of the holy gifts the Hosanna appears, together with the Maranatha: “Let his grace draw near, and let this present world pass away. Hosanna to the God of David. Whoever is holy, let him approach; whoever is not, let him repent. Maranatha. Amen” (10, 6). The Benedictus also entered the liturgy at a very early stage. For the infant Church, “Palm Sunday” was not a thing of the past. Just as the Lord entered the Holy City that day on a donkey, so too the Church saw him coming again and again in the humble form of bread and wine.

I grew up close to Bethlehem and the only branch where I could attend church was the BYU Jerusalem Center. Palestinians living in the West Bank are not allowed into Jerusalem, so for years, I had to sneak into Jerusalem, getting shot at sometimes and risking being arrested so I could attend church services. The trip would take three hours and would involve me climbing hills and walls and hiding from soldiers. I felt that each Sabbath I was given the strength and protection I needed to get to church. I remember one Sabbath in particular. I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting that week. However, the day before, we had curfew imposed on us by the Israeli soldiers. Curfew in Bethlehem is not something you want to break. It is an all-day long curfew and lasts for weeks sometimes. You are not allowed to leave your house for any reason. Anyone who leaves their house risks getting shot. For some reason, I felt that Heavenly Father wanted me to give that talk, but I wondered how He expected me to get to church! I mean, even if I were to manage to leave my house without getting shot, I did not have a car then. How would I find public transportation to get to Jerusalem? There was no one on the roads except soldiers. I decided to do all that I could. I knelt down and basically told Heavenly Father that all I can do is walk outside. That was the extent of what I could do. He had to do the rest. I did just that. I got dressed in my Sunday clothes, got out of our house and down the few steps out of our porch, and walked on to the road. Amazingly enough, there was a taxi right in front of my house! Now, we live on a small street. We never see taxis pass by our street, even during normal days. I approached the taxi driver and asked him where he was going. Guess where was he going? To Jerusalem, of course. Right where I wanted to go! He had others with him in the taxi, but he had room for one more person. The taxi driver knew exactly which roads had soldiers on them and avoided those roads. Then we eventually got to where there was only one road leading out of town, and that road had soldiers on it. The taxi driver decided to go off the road to avoid the soldiers. He went into a hay field. We drove in hay fields for about half an hour. It was very bumpy, dusty, and rocky. Finally, we found a dirt road. I was so thrilled to not be in a field! However, a few short minutes later, we saw a pile of rocks blocking that dirt road. I thought we would have to turn around and go back. Luckily, the taxi driver had more hope and courage than I did. He went off the dirt road and into an olive tree field. He maneuvered around the olive trees until he got us to the other side of the pile of rocks. I made it to church that day. As I entered the Jerusalem Center I reflected on my journey and thought, “That was impossible!” There was no way I could have made it to church by my efforts alone. The effort I made, just walking outside, was so small compared to the miracle the Lord provided. Brothers and sisters, we give up too easily, especially when something seems impossible or hard. In last week’s devotional, Brother Doug Thompson said that in order to complete our journey, we must avoid the urge to quit. We do this by seeking spiritual nutrients and seeking a celestial life. [5] If we continue trying, we will reach our goal. In your classes, make sure do your best! In your job, do your best! In your callings, in your home and in everything you do, do the best you can. The Lord will sanctify your efforts and make them enough if you approach Him in faith and ask for His power from on high.

A loud knock shook her door. Emma damn near jumped off the sofa. Her neck popped as she jerked her head around to stare at the door with wide eyes. Her heart began to slam against her ribs as fear trickled through her. Who the hell would be knocking on her door this late at night? Who the hell would be knocking on her door at any time of day or night? No one she knew would do so without calling first. And deliverymen and women didn’t drop off packages at freaking midnight. As quickly and quietly as a mouse, she darted into her bedroom and grabbed the 9mm her father had bought her and trained her to use. Flicking off the safety, she returned to the living room and swung by the coffee table to tuck her phone in her pajama pants pocket in case she needed to call 911. Only then did she cautiously approach the door. Another knock thundered through the house. Adrenaline spiking, she peered through the door’s peephole. Shock rippled through her. “Oh shit,” she whispered. Setting the gun on the coatrack bench beside her, she hastily unlocked the dead bolt, then the knob, and flung open the door. Cliff stood before her, his big body blocking her view of the yard. Emma gaped up at him. He wore the standard blacks of network guards covered with a long black coat similar to that of an Immortal Guardian. His face, neck, and hands were streaked with blood. His clothing glistened with wet patches. And his eyes shone bright amber. She had never seen them so bright and knew it meant that whatever emotion roiled inside him was intense. Panic consumed her. “Cliff,” she breathed. Stepping onto the porch, she swiftly glanced around, terrified she might see soldiers in black approaching with weapons raised. When none materialized, she grabbed his wrist and yanked him inside. Her hands shook as she closed and bolted the door, her fingers leaving little streaks of blood on the white surface. Spinning around, she stared up at him. “What happened? Are you hurt?” Her gaze swept over him, noting every wet patch on his clothing, every ruby-red splotch on his skin. Was that his blood or someone else’s? “How did you get here? Are you hurt?” Closing the distance between them, she began to run her hands over his chest in search of wounds. Cliff grabbed her wrists to halt her frantic movements. His glowing eyes dropped to the points at which they touched. He drew his thumbs over her skin as if to confirm she was real. Then he met her gaze. “I need your shower,” he said, voice gruff. Heart pounding, she nodded. As soon as he released her, she pointed. “It’s through there.” Without another word, he strode toward it. His heavy boots thudded loudly in the quiet as he entered the short hallway, then turned in to the bathroom. The door closed. Water began to pound tile. Emma didn’t move. Cliff was here. In her home. What the hell had happened?

I was about to head out of one polling site when a Black man my father’s age approached me. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” He was ushering an old woman dressed in her Sunday best, complete with a lavender hat, by the elbow. She pressed her cane into the ground as she repositioned her leg between strides. She trained her eyes on mine as she walked. I walked to meet her where she was. “Hello, ma’am. How are you?” I said, smiling, as she extended her warm, soft hand, contorted by arthritis. I clasped it between both of mine. She released her cane to the man who had introduced us, who must have been her son, placing her other hand on top of mine and squeezing. She shuffled closer, and I could instantly smell my own grandmother’s hair cream. I wondered how old she was. “You tell President Obama”—her words fired like a slow cannon as she patted the top of my hand with each syllable, lingering on the final word with a swallow—“that I voted for him and that he is making us proud. You tell him that I lived to see the day.” I indulged her willingly. “I sure will, ma’am.” “You tell him and those babies that we are prayerful. A Black man in the Oval Office. My God. We are prayerful.” “Yes, ma’am,” I said, still holding her hands. “My grandson brought me down here to vote today.” I was dying to ask her age now. “And he told me that we had a Black woman, a sister, making sure no one messed with our votes.” I nodded. “God bless you for coming. God bless President Obama for making it so. I always vote now. I always come out. Rain or shine. I’m here, isn’t that right?” she said, turning to her grandson. She must have been in her nineties if he was her grandson. “Yes. She wouldn’t miss it. Means too much. She was on the front lines. Been on the front lines,” he explained.

My Dear Benjamin Zander, You have just completed a presentation to the leadership of the North Shore–Long Island Jewish Health System. I “should” be immediately returning to my job as one of the System’s Vice Presidents (such a fancy title, no?), but not without first sitting down and briefly telling you of how your words, energy, and humour affected me this day. I am the man who approached you and told you of my emotional “reunion” with my father through your presentation. He was Swiss-German, and throughout my adult life I have struggled to explain to myself why, in the 25 years that he was with me, he could never, even once, say to me “I love you.” Oh, we did many things as a family, and I suppose his “teachings” in the form of admonishments have always remained with me, though softened, as I had the joy of becoming a father myself to 5 beautiful children. You told us, as you were about to play Chopin, to use the time to reflect on someone no longer in our lives. I thought about my father and again about that nagging question which I could never answer—why couldn’t he say “I love you”?

He stared out of the window, looking blank for a moment, the way he did when he thought about his grand-father. "I read once that there are three ways to protect yourself from the fear of death. One is repression, forgetting that death is approaching and acting like it doesn't exist, which is how most of us live. The second is never forgetting about it, living every day like it's the last day of your life. The last is acceptance: people who truly accept death aren't afraid of anything. You feel peaceful even when you're at the point of losing everything. But do you know what the three approaches have in common?" I shook my head. It would be easier to just keel over and die rather than worry about this. "They're all lies. They all are manifestations of fear." "Then what's true?" "Fear itself, I guess. That's the most honest emotion.

In 1962, the San Francisco Giants were preparing to host the LA Dodgers for a crucial three-game series, late in the season. The Dodgers, led by master base stealer Maury Wills, were five and a half games ahead of the Giants. Before the series began, the Giants manager approached Matty Schwab, the team’s head groundskeeper, and asked if anything could be done—wink wink—to slow down Wills. “Dad and I were out at Candlestick before dawn the day the series was to begin,” said Jerry Schwab, Matty’s son, as quoted by Noel Hynd in Sports Illustrated. “We were installing a speed trap.” Hynd continues: Working by torchlight, the Schwabs dug up and removed the topsoil where Wills would take his lead off first base. Down in its place went a squishy swamp of sand, peat moss and water. Then they covered their chicanery with an inch of normal infield soil, making the 5- by 15-foot quagmire visually indistinguishable from the rest of the base path. The Dodgers were not fooled. When the team began batting practice, the players and coaches noticed the quicksand, and so did the umpire, who ordered it removed. Schwab and the grounds crew came out with wheelbarrows, shoveled up the mixture, and returned soon after with reloaded wheelbarrows. It was the same bog. They’d just mixed in some new dirt, which made it even looser. Somehow the umpires were satisfied. Then Matty Schwab ordered his son to water the infield. Generously. By the time the game started, there was basically a swamp between first and second base. (“They found two abalone under second base,” wrote an irritated Los Angeles sports columnist.) Maury Wills, en route to an MVP season, stole no bases, and neither did his teammates, and the Giants won, 11–2. Pleased, the Schwab father-son team continued to conjure more marshy conditions, and the Giants swept the Dodgers—and went on to leapfrog them to win the National League pennant. There’s something admirably mischievous about this story. I mean, it’s cheating, let’s be clear, but it’s cheeky cheating. It’s fun to think that the father-son groundskeeping team pulled one over on the National League’s MVP. The underdogs won one—they tilted the odds in favor of their home team.

The Son of a vacuum Among the tall trees he sat lost, broken, alone again, among a number of illegal immigrants, he raised his head to him without fear, as nothing in this world is worth attention. -He said: I am not a hero; I am nothing but a child looking for Eid. The Turkmen of Iraq, are the descendants of Turkish immigrants to Mesopotamia through successive eras of history. Before and after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, countries crossed from here, and empires that were born and disappeared, and still, preserve their Turkish identity. Although, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the Arab world, they now live in one of its countries. Kirkuk, one of the heavens of God on earth, is one of the northern governorates of Iraq in which they live. The Kurdish race is shared with them, a race out of many in Iraq. Two children of two different ethnicities, playing in a village square in Kirkuk province when the news came from Baghdad, of a new military coup. Without delay, Saddam Hussein took over the reins of power, and faster than that, Iraq was plunged into successive wars that began in 1980 with its neighbor Iran, a war that lasted eight years. Iraq barely rested for two years, and in the third, a new war in Kuwait, which did not end in the best condition as the leader had hoped, as he was expelled from it after the establishment of an international coalition to liberate it, led by the United States of America. Iraq entered a new phase of suffering, a siege that lasted more than ten years, and ended up with the removal of Saddam Hussein from his power followed by the US occupation of it in 2003. As the father goes, he returns from this road, there is no way back but from it. As the date approaches, the son stands on the back of that hill waiting for him to return. From far away he waved a longing, with a bag of dreams in his hands, a bag of candy in his pocket, and a poem of longing by a Turkmen poet who absorb Arabic, whose words danced on his lips, in his heart. -When will you come back, dad? -On the Eid, wait for me on the hill, you will see me coming from the road, waving, carrying your gifts. The father bid his son farewell to the Arab Shiite city of Basra, on the border with Iran, after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, as the homeland is calling its men, or perhaps the leader is calling his subjects. In Iraq, as in many countries of the Arab world, the homeland is the leader, and the leader is the homeland. Months passed, the child eagerly anticipating the coming of the feast, but the father hurried to return without an appointment, loaded on the shoulders, the passion reached its extent in the martyr’s chest, with a sheet of paper in his pocket on which he wrote: Every morning takes me nostalgic for you, to the jasmine flower, oh, melody in the heart, oh balm I sip every while, To you, I extend a hand and a fire that ignites in the soul a buried love, night shakes me with tears in my eyes, my longing for you has shaped me into dreams, stretching footsteps to the left and to the right, gleam, calling out for me, you scream, waking me up to the glimpse of the light of life in your face, a thousand sparkles, in your eyes, a meaning of survival, a smile, and a glace, Eid comes to you as a companion, without, life yet has no trace, for roses, necklaces of love, so that you amaze. -Where is Ruslan? On the morning of the feast day, at the door of his house, the kids asked his mother, -with tears in her eyes: He went to meet his father. A moment of silence fell over the children, -Raman, with a little gut: Aunt, do you mean he went to the cemetery? -Mother: He went to meet him at those hills.

How could such a woman as she was be permitted to draw so near to Christ? Certain captious spirits will demand, “How should Jesus give to such unworthy ones such acceptance, such manifestations of himself, such privileges?” Our Lord took upon himself to defend her, and therefore she might well afford to hold her tongue. So shall it be with you. If Satan accuse you, and your enemies with loud-mouthed accusations cry out against you, you have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who will certainly plead your cause and clear you. Jesus by his defensive parable shows that he was justified in letting the woman approach, because great love prompted her. There was no sin in her approach, but much to commend, since her motive was excellent, and the motive is the true measure of a deed. She felt intense love and gratitude towards the person who had forgiven her; therefore, her acts were not to be forbidden , but commended. He justifies her and incidentally justifies himself. Had he not done well in having won a sinner’s heart to penitence and love? Was not election justified in having chosen one to such holy devotedness and fervency? At the last great day, the Lord will justify his grace before the eyes of the whole universe, for he will allow the grace-wrought virtues of his chosen ones to be unveiled, and all eyes shall see that grace reigns through righteousness. Then shall they for ever be silenced who accused the grace of God of leading to licentiousness, for they shall see that in every case free forgiveness led to gratitude, and gratitude to holiness. Thechosen shall be made choice men. Grace chose them notwithstanding all their deformities; but when it has cast about thema supernal beauty, they shall be the wonder and admiration of the universe, evidently made to be the noblest and best of mankind. Show me where grace ever created sin! You cannot, but lo, in what a manner has grace created holiness! It is not ashamed to let its chosen sheep appear before the great dividing Shepherd’s throne, for of them all it shall be said, “Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink.” Grace does not smuggle men into heaven, but brings them up to heaven’s requirements through the Spirit and the blood.

I have been to Mont Saint-Michel, which I had not seen before. What a sight, when one arrives as I did, at Avranches toward the end of the day! The town stands on a hill, and I was taken into the public garden at the extremity of the town. I uttered a cry of astonishment. An extraordinarily large bay lay extended before me, as far as my eyes could reach, between two hills which were lost to sight in the mist; and in the middle of this immense yellow bay, under a clear, golden sky, a peculiar hill rose up, sombre and pointed in the midst of the sand. The sun had just disappeared, and under the still flaming sky the outline of that fantastic rock stood out, which bears on its summit a fantastic monument. At daybreak I went to it. The tide was low as it had been the night before, and I saw that wonderful abbey rise up before me as I approached it. After several hours’ walking, I reached the enormous mass of rocks which supports the little town, dominated by the great church. Having climbed the steep and narrow street, I entered the most wonderful Gothic building that has ever been built to God on earth, as large as a town, full of low rooms which seem buried beneath vaulted roofs, and lofty galleries supported by delicate columns. I entered this gigantic granite jewel which is as light as a bit of lace, covered with towers, with slender belfries to which spiral staircases ascend, and which raise their strange heads that bristle with chimeras, with devils, with fantastic animals, with monstrous flowers, and which are joined together by finely carved arches, to the blue sky by day, and to the black sky by night. When I had reached the summit, I said to the monk who accompanied me: “Father, how happy you must be here!” And he replied: “It is very windy, Monsieur;

Find the loyal. Punish the wicked. I had a standard way of approaching the topic. I'd tell a joke about the king, something a little bawdy. Having to do with the rumors that the firstprince was sired by the king's sister and not the reverendmother. Those who go along with the humor reveal themselves to be unknowingly awaiting eventual execution. Your father actually didn't laugh, much to his credit. Instead he objected forcefully. He screamed at me for my rudeness on his land. He did not like the content or context and asked me to immediately apologize for the blasphemy and walk away from the home of his family. And I stood there looking at this small man, this farmer of rocks. Screaming at me about his service to the king and my betrayal of our sacred nation. Him making demands of me. knowing nothing of my life! my sacrifices for my king, my duty served so often. I wasn't on that field anymore. Instead I saw him in my mind's eye, years after this, bending down day after day, clearing the fields of their hard seeds. And all the while imagining himself my better. Because he didn't like a joke I told. I was lost in this vision, and when I found my way out, my sword was in his gut.

My father was quite the bachelor and hadn’t wanted to be tied down, but from the moment my mom approached him on his match day, he had eyes for only her. If I didn’t see the love they held for each other every day, I would’ve said that shit only happened in fairy tales or romance books.

For Calvin, then, a God-sized vision constitutes far more than having a “big” vision of God’s capacity to display great power in the world. Rather, it calls us to completely reorient our frame of reference through which we look at the world. Someone who lives with a God-sized vision affirms that gaining knowledge of God precedes gaining knowledge of man. To acquire this knowledge of God, we turn to Scripture. There we see Christ, and in reflecting on Christ, we gain more knowledge of God the Father. As Martin Luther observes, Christ is a mirror of our heavenly Father’s loving heart. Yet this Father will also judge according to his own standards of righteousness, not ours. This God holds the nations in his hands. He alone empowers our ministry. We must not depend on methods, cultural exegesis, strategies, and techniques (helpful though some of them can be) as our end-all approach to doing ministry. We desperately need to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit in our day-to-day lives. A God-sized vision helps us to understand that the Lord really does love us and care for us. He provides for us. The doctrine of God’s providence gives us both courage and comfort. Trusting that God as our loving heavenly Father wants our good, we can even dare to pray the Lord’s Prayer with sincerity, including the phrase “Thy will be done.

intricately patterned. There is nothing rustic here. Only when she looks at the paintings does Elizabeth remember the dark approach through the forest. These are outdoor paintings, trees and wild cliffs, huge sunsets. Elizabeth sits with Nina on a divan before a cluster of Bierstadts. Deep trees and cerebral winter skies. The museum is nearly empty this weekday morning. The elaborate gallery still. Elizabeth looks intently at the winter landscapes. And as she looks, she whispers to Nina, “It’s marvelous, just sitting here while the girls are at camp.” Nina looks at the floor. Renée is working as a junior counselor at the camp. It was Nina’s idea. She thought the job with the Lamkins would be good for her daughter, that it would teach her responsibility and how to care for children. But Renée made a fuss. Nina had to threaten and cajole and, in the end, force Renée to go. There were tears and threats up to the day she started. Even now, Renée is sulking about working there with the little children. “Renée doesn’t like the camp,” Nina says. “I think she’d rather waste her time wandering around, doing nothing, playing with that Arab girl. Andras doesn’t care. I hear the father owns a trucking business—he just drives trucks from New York to Montreal—” She breaks off, frustrated. “She’s a good child, really,” Elizabeth says. “But Andras spoils her,” says Nina. Then Elizabeth sees that Nina is really upset. There are tears in Nina’s eyes. It’s hard for her to speak. Elizabeth sees it, and doesn’t know what to do. They are close neighbors, but they are not intimate friends. Beautiful Nina in her crisp dress, downcast among all these paintings. “He’s very … indulgent of the children, both of them,” Nina says. “He used to take them to the warehouse and let them pick out any toys they liked.” “At least he’s not in the candy business,” Elizabeth says. “Toys won’t rot their teeth.” “He’s going to let Renée quit piano,” Nina says bitterly, utterly serious, “and she’ll regret it all her life.” Elizabeth tries to look sympathetic. She’s heard Renée play. “And now that Renée is working at the Lamkins’ camp, she wants to quit that too.” “He wouldn’t let her do that,” Elizabeth ventures. “I

Donald was stunned. They must be making a sensaysh out of it, to sacrifice so much time from even their ten-minute condensed-news cycle! His Mark II confidence evaporated. Euphoric from his recent eptification, he had thought he was a new person, immeasurably better equipped to affect the world. But the implications of that expensive plug stabbed deep into his mind. If State were willing to go to these lengths to maintain his cover identity, that meant he was only the visible tip of a scheme involving perhaps thousands of people. State just didn’t issue fiats to a powerful corporation like English Language Relay Satellite Service without good reason. Meaningless phrases drifted up, dissociated, and presented themselves to his awareness, all seeming to have relevance to his situation and yet not cohering. My name is Legion. I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts. The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children. Say can you look into the seeds of time? Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Struggling to make sense of these fragments, he finally arrived at what his subconscious might be trying to convey. The prize, these days, is not in finding a beautiful mistress. It’s in having presentable prodgies. Helen the unattainable is in the womb, and every mother dreams of bearing her. Now her whereabouts is known. She lives in Yatakang and I’ve been sent in search of her, ordered to bring her back or say her beauty is a lie—if necessary to make it a lie, with vitriol. Odysseus the cunning lurked inside the belly of the horse and the Trojans breached the wall and took it in while Laocoön and his sons were killed by snakes. A snake is cramped around my forehead and if it squeezes any tighter it will crack my skull. When the purser next passed, he said, “Get me something for a headache, will you?” He knew that was the right medicine to ask for, yet it also seemed he should have asked for a cure for bellyache, because everything was confused: the men in the belly of the wooden horse waiting to be born and wreak destruction, and the pain of parturition, and Athena was born of the head of Zeus, and Time ate his children, as though he were not only in the wooden horse of the express but was it about to deliver the city to its enemy and its enemy to the city, a spiralling wild-rose branch of pain with every thorn a spiky image pricking him into other times and other places. Ahead, the walls. Approaching them, the helpless stupid Odysseus of the twenty-first century, who must also be Odin blind in one eye so as not to let his right hand know what his left was doing. Odinzeus, wielder of thunderbolts, how could he aim correctly without parallax? “No individual has the whole picture, or even enough of it to make trustworthy judgments on his own initiative.” Shalmaneser, master of infinite knowledge, lead me through the valley of the shadow of death and I shall fear no evil … The purser brought a white capsule and he gulped it down. But the headache was only a symptom, and could be fixed.

Slow It Down God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. Genesis 1:5 by T. Suzanne Eller Everyone knows morning comes first, and then evening. Right? So I was surprised to read in Genesis 1:5 that the order was, in fact, reversed: “And there was evening, and there was morning.” God started with evening, a time of rest, and a day followed, in which he continued to create. We live in a culture where we work all day, and then eventually we might take time to rest. To order our days the way God does—with rest as a priority—is a challenge. I learned to prioritize God’s way when, at age 32, I was diagnosed with cancer. I told the doctor I didn’t have time for cancer, but cancer didn’t consult my schedule. My life changed while going through treatment as I put aside activities that previously had seemed vital. Out of that difficult time came a new list of priorities. At the top of the list: to balance my life. I learned to climb between the sheets and put aside my worries—to rest my body and mind. To slow down when life became crazy and assess what is important. I began to see evening as the first part of my day. This concept changed my life, physically and spiritually. Recently I had two speaking events sandwiched together. As the dates approached, time with my heavenly Father became “evening.” In preparation for my events, I listened to the heart of my Father instead of going over my notes. Out of that rest sprang fruitful ministry during the day. Learning to live with evening, or rest, as a top priority is an ongoing process. Many times I ask God to help me reprioritize, make time for physical rest and put “evening” back where it belongs. More Verses to Explore: Exodus 20:11 Psalm 91:1 Mark 6:30–31

At one point, Bill suggested that if John didn’t find work he might have to return to the country; the thought of such dependence upon his father made “a cold chill” run down his spine, Rockefeller later said.27 Because he approached his job hunt devoid of any doubt or self-pity, he could stare down all discouragement. “I was working every day at my business—the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this every day.

My Dad used to tell me not to wish my life away by praying it was Friday, or wishing for a day that was a ways off. Soon days will pass so fast you will pray for them to slow down. Nothing in life is promised. Each day is a valuable opportunity to play an important role in this world. Treat each moment like it's the performance of a lifetime; approach every show like it's your first, respect it as if you've invested years, appreciate it like it's your last.

I once heard a father tell his son, a recent college graduate, that he should approach the first day of his job with a proper attitude: “Don’t try to show them what you know. Instead, show them how much you want to learn.

4. Give recognition and show appreciation. “The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated,” wrote William James, the father of American psychology. It is impossible to be motivated and do great work if you don’t feel that somebody cares and appreciates what you do. Studies have shown that for people to be happy and productive at work, they need to experience positive interactions (appreciation, praise) vs. negative (reprimands, criticism) with their manager in a ratio of at least 3:1. (Watch out: For a marriage to work, you actually need a 5:1 ratio!!) So make it a simple habit to thank people each and every day — and that includes using the word generously in emails to your team. The way people want to receive recognition varies greatly: public vs. private, material vs. immaterial, from peers vs. from superiors, etc. Great managers test different approaches and observe reactions until they find the triggers that work best with each of their people. At MOM’s Organic Market, managers will sometimes publicly recognize employees who have performed well, but CEO Scott Nash has often found that one-on-one comments are most effective.

You are already choosing, in every moment of every day, what to give a fuck about, so change is as simple as choosing to give a fuck about something else. It really is that simple. It’s just not easy. It’s not easy because you’re going to feel like a loser, a fraud, a dumbass at first. You’re going to be nervous. You’re going to freak out. You may get pissed off at your wife or your friends or your father in the process. These are all side effects of changing your values, of changing the fucks you’re giving. But they are inevitable. It’s simple but really, really hard.

Dragged from her bed, Queen Alys saw her sisters killed before her eyes as they tried to protect her. Her father, inspecting the Tower of the Hand, was flung from its roof to smash upon the stones below. Harroway’s sons, brothers, and nephews were taken as well. Thrown onto the spikes that lined the dry moat around Maegor’s Holdfast, some took hours to die; the simpleminded Horas Harroway lingered for days. The twenty names on Queen Tyanna’s list soon joined them, and then another dozen men, named by the first twenty. The worst death was reserved for Queen Alys herself, who was given over to her sister-wife Tyanna for torment. Of her death we will not speak, for some things are best buried and forgotten. Suffice it to say that her dying took the best part of a fortnight, and that Maegor himself was present for all of it, a witness to her agony. After her death, the queen’s body was cut into seven parts, and her pieces mounted on spikes above the seven gates of the city, where they remained until they rotted. King Maegor himself departed King’s Landing, assembling a strong force of knights and men-at-arms and marching on Harrenhal to complete the destruction of House Harroway. The great castle on the Gods Eye was lightly held, and its castellan, a nephew of Lord Lucas and cousin to the late queen, opened his gates at the king’s approach. Surrender did not save him; His Grace put the entire garrison to the sword, along with every man, woman, and child he found to have any drop of Harroway blood. Then he marched to Lord Harroway’s Town on the Trident and did the same there. In the aftermath of the bloodletting, men began to say that Harrenhal was cursed, for every lordly house to hold it had come to a bad and bloody end.

Today many families, dysfunctional or not, are without men. The worst learning situation for a boy is when he observes his own father ignoring his responsibilities, and that includes ignoring the needs of his son. The boy is left with a negative male image that is hard to overcome and even harder to accept, because it has been reinforced by his own father. The rage that begins with the absence of the father will continue to grow if there is also the absence of a mentor. A man who has compassion and respect for others can set a great example for a boy. To be an effective mentor, a man should spend time with a boy over a period of time, but even a “mentor moment” can be very powerful. Can you remember such a moment in your life when a mentor affected your life in such a way that you will always remember him? During the fifth game of the 1991 World Series between the Atlanta Braves and the Minnesota Twins, Joe Cozart took his son, Joe, Jr., to the parking lot of the Atlanta stadium to soak up the atmosphere even though they did not have tickets. The series was tied (two games each) and scalpers were selling tickets for as much as $700 a seat. A stranger approached the father and son and asked them if they would like to see the game from the inside. The man gave them two tickets five rows behind the Twins’ dugout. The stranger stopped by during the game to see how Mr. Cozart and Joe, Jr., were enjoying the game. When Joe and his son asked the man’s name, he told them to have a good time and walked away. That day a dream came true for a 10-year-old boy in Atlanta. His life was forever touched by a kind, generous stranger.

She'd been sent up to the field to fetch the mare, although perhaps "sent" was too strong a word. Her father had done nothing more than ask her if she'd go, because the mare would not come willingly to any of the men but led them all a tiring chase, whereas for Lydia she came directly, took the halter quietly, and let herself be led downhill as meekly as a lamb. To Lydia, it was a welcome chore. These first days of October had been busy ones that kept her in the garden cutting squash to dry and harvesting the beans for seed and digging her potatoes. There'd been pies to bake and pickles to be scalded- she had left the last to Violet, who made pickles best of any she had tasted- but the garden on its own had wanted more hours in the day than she could give it, and the digging left her shoulders sore, so it had been a great relief to start this day by simply walking up along the orchard wall into the upper field to find the mare. Her father had a mind to go to Hempstead to Aunt Hannah's, and the mare would take him there and back more swiftly than the wagon team. She was a gray, a four-year-old with something of a filly's mischief glinting in her eyes as she stopped grazing, raising her fine head, and watched Lydia approach. "There'd be no point," was Lydia's advice. "I've neither will nor energy to chase you so you'd have to play the game alone, which would be little fun." The mare flicked one ear in acknowledgement of this and gave in gracefully, and although she did not step forward, she at least stood still and did not run. Lydia wasn't entirely sure herself why the mare favored her, but they had shared this rapport from the very first day that her father had brought the mare home as a yearling. Just as a horse could sense a nervous rider or a cruel one, it appeared that the mare could sense Lydia already carried a full share of troubles and did not need more. Whatever the reason, the mare bent her head to the halter and made no complaint and submitted herself to be led.

The final reason we want to know the will of God is because we are cowardly. It’s true. Sometimes when we pray to know the will of God, we are praying a coward’s prayer: “Lord, tell me what to do so nothing bad will happen to me and I won’t have to face danger or the unknown.” We want to know everything is going to be fine for us or for those we love. But that’s not how God spoke to Esther. As a Jewish woman who won an unusual beauty contest to become Xerxe’s queen (see Esther 2:2-17), Esther would learn that God’ plans can include risk—and an opportunity to show courage. The king’s right-hand man, Haman, was the enemy of the Jews and devised a plot to kill all the Jewish people, and Xerxes, king of Persia, unwittingly signed this decree. When Mordecai, Esther’s older cousin and guardian, learned of this plot, he told Esther, knowing she was the only one in a position to save the Jewish people—her people. But she refused, telling him that if she visited King Xerxes without being summoned, she would, by Persian law, be killed—unless the king extended the golden scepter and spared her life. Entering the throne room on her own was very risky, which is why Esther sent people to Mordecai to say that she wouldn’t do it. The Scriptures give us Mordecai’s response to the words of Esther’s emissaries: Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14) So what would you do at this point? Pray for some sign from heaven? Wait for God’s will to be revealed? Question why God would put you in such a predicament? Do nothing, figuring that anything involving suffering and possible death must not be His plan for your life? Look at what Esther did: Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the Law, and if I perish, I perish.” (vv. 15-16).

Is there a better way to walk in the will of God? The answer is a resounding yes! There is most certainly a better way. It’s an old way. It’s a biblical way. It’s Jesus’ way. Listen to Jesus’ explanation of the way of God in the Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” (Matthew 6:25-34).

When he got out of the car to do his business, my mother stared straight ahead. But I turned to watch. There was always something wild and charismatically uncaring about my father’s demeanor in these moments, some mysterious abandonment of his frowning and cogitative state that already meant a lot to me, even though at that age I understood almost nothing about him. Paulie had long ago stopped whispering 'perv' to me for observing him as he relieved himself. She of course, kept her head n her novels. I remember that it was cold that day, and windy but that the sky had been cut from the crackling blue gem field of a late midwestern April. Outside the car, as other families sped past my father stepped to the leeward side of the open door then leaning back from the waist and at the same time forward the ankles. His penis poked out from his zipper for this part, Bernie always stood up at the rear window. My father paused fo a moment rocking slightly while a few indistinct words played on his lips. Then just before his stream stared he tiled back his head as if there were a code written in the sky that allowed the event to begin. This was the moment I waited for, the movement seemed to be a marker of his own private devotion as though despite his unshakable atheism and despite his sour, entirely analytic approach to every affair of life, he nonetheless felt the need to acknowledge the heavens in the regard to this particular function of the body. I don't know perhaps I sensed that he simply enjoyed it in a deep way that I did. It was possible I already recognized that the eye narrowing depth of his physical delight in that moment was relative to that paucity of other delights in his life. But in any case the prayerful uplifting of his cranium always seemed to democratize him for me, to make him for a few minutes at least, a regular man. Bernie let out a bark. ‘’Is he done?’’ asked my mother. I opened my window. ‘’Almost.’’ In fact he was still in the midst. My father peed like a horse. His urine lowed in one great sweeping dream that started suddenly and stopped just as suddenly, a single, winking arc of shimmering clarity that endured for a prodigious interval and then disappeared in an instant, as though the outflow were a solid object—and arch of glittering ice or a thick band of silver—and not (as it actually approximated) a parabolic, dynamically averaged graph of the interesting functions of gravity, air resistance, and initial velocity on a non-viscous fluid, produced and exhibited by a man who’d just consumed more than a gallon of midwestern beer. The flow was as clear as water. When it struck the edge of the gravel shoulder, the sound was like a bed-sheet being ripped. Beneath this high reverberation, he let out a protracted appreciative whistle that culminated in a tunneled gasp, his lips flapping at the close like a trumpeters. In the tiny topsoil, a gap appeared, a wisp entirely unashamed. Bernie bumped about in the cargo bay. My father moved up close to peer through the windshield, zipping his trousers and smiling through the glass at my mother. I realized that the yellow that should have been in his urine was unmistakable now in his eyes. ‘’Thank goodness,’’ my mother said when the car door closed again. ‘’I was getting a little bored in here.

Daniel.” “Ma.” “Are you well?” She was angry. If the straight-to-voicemail treatment for the last week hadn’t tipped me off, her tone now was a dead giveaway. “I’m great,” I lied. “And how are you?” “Fine.” I laughed, silently. If she heard me laugh, she’d have my balls. “Did you get my messages?” “Yes. Thank you for calling.” I waited for a minute, for her to say more. She didn’t. “I leave you twenty-one messages, three calls a day, and that’s all you got for me?” “I’m not going to apologize for needing some time to cool off and I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Who do you think I am? Willy Wonka? You missed my birthday.” She sniffed. And these weren’t crocodile tears either. I’d hurt her feelings. Ahh, there it is. The acrid taste of guilt. “Ma . . .” “I don’t ask for a lot. I love you. I love my children. I want you to call me on my birthday.” “I know.” I was clutching my chest so my heart didn’t fall out and bleed all over the grass. “What could have been so important that you couldn’t spare a few minutes for your mother? I was so worried.” “I did call you—” “Don’t shit on a plate and tell me it’s fudge, Daniel. You called after midnight.” I hadn’t come up with a plausible lie for why I hadn’t called on her birthday, because I wasn’t a liar. I hated lying. Premeditated lying, coming up with a story ahead of time, crafting it, was Seamus’s game. If I absolutely had to lie, I subscribed to spur-of-the-moment lying; it made me less of a soulless maggot. “That’s true, Ma. But I swear I—” “Don’t you fucking swear, Daniel. Don’t you fucking do that. I raised you kids better.” “Sorry, sorry.” “What was so important, huh?” She heaved a watery sigh. “I thought you were in a ditch, dying somewhere. I had Father Matthew on standby to give you your last rights. Was your phone broken?” “No.” “Did you forget?” Her voice broke on the last word and it was like being stabbed. The worst. “No, I sw—ah, I mean, I didn’t forget.” Lie. Lying lie. Lying liar. “Then what?” I grimaced, shutting my eyes, taking a deep breath and said, “I’m married.” Silence. Complete fucking silence. I thought maybe she wasn’t even breathing. Meanwhile, in my brain: Oh. Shit. What. The. Fuck. Have. I. Done. . . . However. However, on the other hand, I was married. I am married. Not a lie. Yeah, we hadn’t had the ceremony yet, but the paperwork was filed, and legally speaking, Kat and I were married. I listened as my mom took a breath, said nothing, and then took another. “Are you pulling my leg with this?” On the plus side, she didn’t sound sad anymore. “No, no. I promise. I’m married. I—uh—was getting married.” “Wait a minute, you got married on my birthday?” Uh . . . “Uh . . .” “Daniel?” “No. We didn’t get married on your birthday.” Shit. Fuck. “We’ve been married for a month, and Kat had an emergency on Wednesday.” Technically, not lies. “That’s her name? Cat?” “Kathleen. Her name is Kathleen.” “Like your great aunt Kathleen?” Kat wasn’t a thing like my great aunt. “Yeah, the name is spelled the same.” “Last month? You got married last month?” She sounded bewildered, like she was having trouble keeping up. “Is she—is she Irish?” “No.” “Oh. That’s okay. Catholic?” Oh jeez, I really hadn’t thought this through. Maybe it was time for me to reconsider my spur-of-the-moment approach to lying and just surrender to being a soulless maggot. “No. She’s not Catholic.” “Oh.” My mom didn’t sound disappointed, just a little surprised and maybe a little worried. “Daniel, I—you were married last month and I’m only hearing about it now? How long have you known this woman?” I winced. “Two and a half years.” “Two and a half years?” she screeched...

But the more Dirmit listened to her mother, the more panic-stricken she became. She started to tremble and shake and thought she might faint dead away. But Atiye was set upon giving her advice. She went to great lengths to explain how young girls shouldn't talk too much and how it was improper for them to stretch out their legs when they sat down. Dirmit felt a hot flush as Atiya ticked each item off on her list. First she turned red, then her hands and feet grew icy. Twitching and panting, she lost her color entirely and turned pale as ash. From that day on, Dirmit withdrew into herself. Obeying Atiye's warnings, she dared not ask questions or approach her brotehrs or her father. Her voice and breath were lost inside her.

Will you want an estimate of all the livestock, my lord?” “Naturally.” “Not my horse.” A new voice entered the conversation. All four men looked to the doorway, where Kathleen stood as straight and rigid as a blade. She stared at Devon with open loathing. “The Arabian belongs to me.” Everyone rose to his feet except for Devon, who remained seated at the desk. “Do you ever enter a room the ordinary way?” he asked curtly, “or is it your usual habit to slink past the threshold and pop up like a jack-in-the-box?” “I only want to make it clear that while you’re tallying the spoils, you will remove my horse from the list.” “Lady Trenear,” Mr. Fogg interceded, “I regret to say that on your wedding day, you relinquished all rights to your movable property.” Kathleen’s eyes narrowed. “I’m entitled to keep my jointure and all the possessions I brought to the marriage.” “Your jointure,” Totthill agreed, “but not your possessions. I assure you that no court in England will regard a married woman as a separate legal being. The horse was your husband’s, and now it belongs to Lord Trenear.” Kathleen’s face went skull-white, and then red. “Lord Trenear is stripping the estate like a jackal with a rotting carcass. Why must he be given a horse that my father gave to me?” Infuriated that Kathleen would show him so little deference in front of the others, Devon stood from the desk and approached her in a few strides. To her credit, she didn’t cower, even though he was twice her size. “Devil take you,” he snapped, “none of this is my fault.” “Of course it is. You’ll seize on any excuse to sell Eversby Priory because you don’t want to take on a challenge.” “It’s only a challenge when there’s some small hope of success. This is a debacle. The list of creditors is longer than my bloody arm, the coffers are empty, and the annual yields have been cut in half.” “I don’t believe you. You’re planning to sell the estate to settle personal debts that have nothing to do with Eversby Priory.” Devon’s hands knotted with the urge to destroy something. His rising bloodlust would only be satisfied with the sound of shattering objects. He had never faced a situation like this, and there was no one to give him trustworthy advice, no kindly aristocratic relation, no knowledgeable friends in the peerage. And this woman could only accuse and insult him.

Are there American variations of Solomon Slepak, those rendered so rigid by ideas that all reason fails them? Prudence, a cautious awareness of nuances, of complexities, of consequences, a perception of the unity of the American experience, and a saving sense of irony and humor—pervasive in the Founding Fathers and lacking in contemporary ideologues. Can we learn something from these chronicles about iron righteousness and rigid doctrine, about the stony heart, the sealed mind, the capricious use of law, and the tragedies that often result when theories are not adjusted to realities? Do the chronicles seem to reveal a glaring and almost obvious truth: the larger the nation, the more tumultuous its demise? Are we approaching the finale now to the bright possibilities once inherent in this land? Is that old America forever gone? Indeed, did it ever exist? Were we seduced as schoolchildren into a vision of a land green and golden from sea to shining sea, a land as illusory for many Americans as the Motherland of Solomon Slepak was for Volodya and Masha? Perhaps the more sensible question is not about what we once were but about what we intend ourselves to be one day. Things are happening to us today that we don’t seem able to explain. Can we enter the uncertain future without the corrosive cynicism, the clutching greed, the divisive self-interests—the beasts that destroyed the world of Solomon Slepak and rendered it uninhabitable to his family?

Time no longer means the same thing to her as it does to us; she no longer measures it out in hours and days. It is a river she walks from its source to its delta. There are moments when she is a child asking her mother for a new doll. In the next eye-blink she is a gardener concerned over her dahlias or a grandmother complaining that her grandchildren never come to see her. On several visits she has mistaken me for her husband, her best friend, my father, or a Rhodesian farmer named Philip who evidently was once her lover. I don’t know which part of the river I shall enter when I approach her wheelchair. The last time I saw her, she lifted her arms up to me and said in a quavering voice, “Oh, Daddy. Oh, Daddy.