Atonement Key Quotes

When he was left alone, when he had pulled out one stop after another (for the work required it), Stanley straightened himself on the seat, tightened the knot of the red necktie, and struck. The music soared around him, from the corner of his eye he caught the glitter of his wrist watch, and even as he read the music before him, and saw his thumb and last finger come down time after time with three black keys between them, wringing out fourths, the work he had copied coming over on the Conte di Brescia, wringing that chord of the devil’s interval from the full length of the thirty-foot bass pipes, he did not stop. The walls quivered, still he did not hesitate. Everything moved, and even falling, soared in atonement. He was the only person caught in the collapse, and afterward, most of his work was recovered too, and it is still spoken of, when it is noted, with high regard, though seldom played.

Moderation is the key of lasting enjoyment.

There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast. "The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways. "Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller. "I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state. "You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.

…We need to remember that the most significant events in the last 2,000 years were not the marvels of science, technology, and travel. They were the Savior’s Atonement and the restoration of the gospel, with the priesthood keys and authority. These two singular events will continue to be of transcendent importance to mankind as we move forward in time. The past, present, and future pivot on these marvelous divine interventions.

If the adversary should take you prisoner due to misconduct, I remind you that you hold the key that will unlock the prison door from the inside. You can be washed clean through the atoning sacrifice of the Savior Jesus Christ. You may in time of trouble think that you are not worth saving because you have made mistakes, big or little, and you think you are now lost. That is never true! …Repentance can heal what hurts, no matter what it is.

Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty—or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, shared in the general dispiriting move towards apolitical, atonal postmodernism. Regarding something magnificent, like the long-overdue and still endangered South African revolution (a jagged fit in the supposedly smooth pattern of axiomatic progress), one could see that Ariadne’s thread had a robust reddish tinge, and that potential citizens had not all deconstructed themselves into Xhosa, Zulu, Cape Coloured or ‘Eurocentric’; had in other words resisted the sectarian lesson that the masters of apartheid tried to teach them. Elsewhere, though, it seemed all at once as if competitive solipsism was the signifier of the ‘radical’; a stress on the salience not even of the individual, but of the trait, and from that atomization into the lump of the category. Surely one thing to be learned from the lapsed totalitarian system was the unwholesome relationship between the cult of the masses and the adoration of the supreme personality. Yet introspective voyaging seemed to coexist with dull group-think wherever one peered about among the formerly ‘committed’. Traditionally then, or tediously as some will think, I saw no reason to discard the Orwellian standard in considering modern literature. While a sort of etiolation, tricked out as playfulness, had its way among the non-judgemental, much good work was still done by those who weighed words as if they meant what they said. Some authors, indeed, stood by their works as if they had composed them in solitude and out of conviction. Of these, an encouraging number spoke for the ironic against the literal mind; for the generously interpreted interest of all against the renewal of what Orwell termed the ‘smelly little orthodoxies’—tribe and Faith, monotheist and polytheist, being most conspicuous among these new/old disfigurements. In the course of making a film about the decaffeinated hedonism of modern Los Angeles, I visited the house where Thomas Mann, in another time of torment, wrote Dr Faustus. My German friends were filling the streets of Munich and Berlin to combat the recrudescence of the same old shit as I read: This old, folkish layer survives in us all, and to speak as I really think, I do. not consider religion the most adequate means of keeping it under lock and key. For that, literature alone avails, humanistic science, the ideal of the free and beautiful human being. [italics mine] The path to this concept of enlightenment is not to be found in the pursuit of self-pity, or of self-love. Of course to be merely a political animal is to miss Mann’s point; while, as ever, to be an apolitical animal is to leave fellow-citizens at the mercy of Ideolo’. For the sake of argument, then, one must never let a euphemism or a false consolation pass uncontested. The truth seldom lies, but when it does lie it lies somewhere in between.

The paradox of creation, the coming of the forms of time out of eternity, is the germinal secret of the father. It can never be quite explained. Therefore, in every system of theology, there is an umbilical point, an Schillies tendon, which the finger of mother life has touched, and where the possibility of perfect knolwege has been imparted. The problem of the hero is to pierce himself (and therewith his world) precisely through that point; to shatter and annhilate the key knot of his limited existence. The problem of the hero going to meet the father is open to his soul beyon terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and rutheless comsmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands - and the two are atoned.

The Lord Jesus Christ, who is Himself God in human flesh (John 1:1-3, 14), came to earth and lived in perfect obedience to every law of God, thus perfectly fulfilling the divine standard. Jesus lived sinlessly (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15; 1 Pet. 2:22), and thereby gave Himself up to be killed as an atoning sacrifice—a propitiation—for sin (1 John 2:2). Being the only acceptable sacrifice for sin, Jesus Christ died in the place of sinners as a substitute (1 Pet. 2:24), paying a ransom to the Father; redeeming us from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13). Through the sacrificial death of Jesus, we can have our sins forgiven by God (Col. 2:13), and we are justified—declared pardoned and righteous by God, even though we’re guilty and unrighteous (Rom. 3:28; Gal. 2:16). It

The AIDS obsession doubtless arises from the fact that the exceptional destiny of the sufferers gives them what others cruelly lack today: a strong, impregnable identity, a sacrificial identity -- the privilege of illness, around which, in other cultures, the entire group once gravitated, and which we have abolished almost everywhere today by the enterprise of therapeutic eradication of Evil [le Mal]. But in another way, the whole strategy of the prevention of illness merely shifts the problem [le mal] from the biological to the social body. All the anti-AIDS campaigns, playing on solidarity and fear -- `Your AIDS interests me' -- give rise to an emotional contagion as noxious as the biological. The promotional infectiousness of information is just as obscene and dangerous as that of the virus. If AIDS destroys biological immunities, then the collective theatricalization and brainwashing, the blackmailing into responsibility and mobilization, are playing their part in propagating the epidemic of information and, as a side-effect, in reinforcing the social body's immunodeficiency -- a process that is already far advanced -- and in promoting that other mental AIDS that is the Aids-athon, the Telethon and other assorted Thanatons -- expiation and atonement of the collective bad conscience, pornographic orchestration of national unity. AIDS itself ends up looking like a side-effect of this demagogic virulence. `Tu me préserves actif, je te préservatif' ['You keep me active, I condom you']: this scabrous irony, heavy with blackmail, which is also that of Benetton, as it once was of the BNP, in fact conceals a technique of manipulation and dissolution of the social body by the stimulation of the vilest emotions: self-pity and self-disgust. Politicians and advertisers have understood that the key to democratic government -- perhaps even the essence of the political? -- is to take general stupidity for granted: `Your idiocy, your resentment, interest us!' Behind which lurks an even more suspect discourse: `Your rights, your destitution, your freedom, interest us!' Democratic souls have been trained to swallow all the horrors, scandals, bluff, brainwashing and misery, and to launder these themselves. Behind the condescending interest there always lurks the voracious countenance of the vampire.

The Bible reveals that sin is not a matter of knowing better, if it were, we would not need grace through the atoning savior Jesus Christ. Sin is deceptive, it takes people captive. Sin is more then a bad idea over which you have complete control.

Washington went to churches where the leaders had to affirm the key doctrines of the Christian Church. Furthermore, he was elected a lay-leader in the Church and as a leader, he had to take oaths affirming foundational Christian doctrines, which included these points and more: • Christ was fully God and fully man •   Christ died on the cross to atone for sins. • He rose bodily from the dead. •   He ascended into heaven and now sits at the right hand of God the Father. •   History is moving toward the climax of the return of Jesus Christ. • The Bible is the Word of God. •   Sinners need to repent and believe in Jesus Christ for salvation, etc.

Consequently, when Muslims today say they revere Jesus and even that they recognize Christianity as a legitimate faith, they are being disingenuous. For the Christianity that the Koran recognizes is not Christianity as millions practice it around the world today. This is a key source of much of the enduring suspicion and mistrust between Muslims and Christians. The Saudi Sheikh Abd Al-Muhsin Al-Qadhi expatiated on the Koranic view of mainstream Christianity in a recent sermon, in which he also elaborated a contemptuous view of Christian charity:            Today we will talk about one of the distorted religions, about a faith that deviates from the path of righteousness . . . about Christianity, this false faith, and about the people whom Allah described in his book as deviating from the path of righteousness. We will examine their faith, and we will review their history, full of hate, abomination, and wars against Islam and the Muslims. In this distorted and deformed religion, to which many of the inhabitants of the earth belong, we can see how the Christians deviate greatly from the path of righteousness by talking about the concept of the Trinity. As far as they are concerned, God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three who are one.                   . . . They see Jesus, peace be upon him, as the son of Allah. . . . It is the Christians who believe Jesus was crucified. According to them, he was hanged on the cross with nails pounded through his hands, and he cried, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” According to them, this was so that he would atone for the sins of mankind. . . . Regardless of all these deviations from the path of righteousness, it is possible to see many Muslims . . . who know about Christianity only what the Christians claim about love, tolerance, devoting life to serving the needy, and other distorted slogans. . . . After all this, we still find people who promote the idea of bringing our religion and theirs closer, as if the differences were miniscule and could be eliminated by arranging all those [interfaith] conferences, whose goal is political.18 The idea that Christianity is a “distorted, deformed religion” created by people who were bent on rejecting the prophet Muhammad fuels a great deal of Muslim hatred for Christianity, Christians, and the West to this day.

He seemed to operate at half speed, taking his own time about everything. It made me aware of the usual tension with which I live, that keyed-up state of raw nerve that makes me grind my teeth in my sleep. Sometimes I get so wired that I forget to eat at all, only remembering at night, even then not being hungry but wolfing down food anyway as though the speed and quantity of consumption might atone for the infrequency. With Charlie, I could feel my time clock readjust, my pace slowing to match his. When I finished the second glass of wine, I heaved a sigh and only then did I realize that I’d been holding myself tensely, like a joke snake ready to jump out of a box.

Key Themes All people are sinners and need to be saved from their sin (1:18–3:20; 5:12–19). The Mosaic law is good and holy, but only Christ can remove sin and overcome its power (2:12–29; 3:9–20; 5:20; 7:1–25; 9:30–10:8). Through the righteousness of God, sin is judged and salvation is provided (3:21–26; 5:12–19; 6:1–10; 7:1–6; 8:1–4). With the coming of Jesus Christ, a new age of redemptive history has begun (1:1–7; 3:21–26; 5:1–8:39). The atoning death of Jesus Christ is central to God’s plan of salvation (3:21–26; 4:23–25; 5:6–11, 15–19; 6:1–10; 7:4–6; 8:1–4). Justification is by faith alone (1:16–4:25; 9:30–10:21). Those who are in Christ Jesus have a sure hope of future glory (5:1–8:39). By the power of the Holy Spirit, those who have died with Christ live a new life (2:25–29; 6:1–7:6; 8:1–39). God is sovereign in salvation. He works all things according to his plan (9:1–11:36). God fulfills his promises to both Jews and Gentiles (1:18–4:25; 9:1–11:36; 14:1–15:13). Because of God’s grace, Christians should be morally pure, should show love to their neighbors, should be good citizens, and should welcome their fellow believers into fullest fellowship (12:1–15:7).

As we show in Astro-Theology and Sidereal Mythology and The Trees of Life, the Bible reveals its secrets to those skeptical and persistent enough to follow the twists and turns of its convoluted text. Every chapter and verse makes perfect sense to the man armed with symbolic literacy and the occult keys of decipherment. Academics concede that the Bible’s text is full of

In his own words Adorno said his music was Stalinist or Fascist and he used “big concepts to see if they sound right and fit the data.” In these words can be found the key to why he was engaged by Tavistock to write music based on the 12-atonal system of music that “sounded right” and he then “fit the data” namely, he wrote the lyrics to match, so that what emerged was an 18 album set he wrote for the Beatles. Underlying the whole Beatle music concept was Adorno’s long held belief that capitalism was evil, because it “fed the people with products of a culture industry to keep them passively satisfied and politically apathetic.” His “Beatle 12-atonal music” would throw a wrench into the works of the world’s biggest capitalist state, the United States of America.

Gestas asked Simon, “The demon in that girl you exorcised, how did it know our hearts?” Simon said, “The power of demons lies in the sins of mankind. Unconfessed or unatoned sin is the weapon that a spirit uses against its host and its enemies.” The implication was obvious to each of the brothers. They needed atonement. Demas thought, Why do I need atonement? Rome is the evil that has raped our land, enslaved our people, and stolen everything from me. I am the victim, not the perpetrator. I am fighting for righteousness. Gestas asked, “And what was all that Jesus said about the keys of the kingdom and the binding magic?” Simon smiled. “It is not magic. Jesus is binding the unclean spirits of this land by the finger of Yahweh, to make it holy. It is the spiritual consummation of herem, the Holy Wars of Yahweh from the time of Joshua. Jesus is binding the principalities and powers to prepare the land for Messiah. Remember the Lord’s prayer for his kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven?

April 19 MORNING “Behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.” — Matthew 27:51 NO mean miracle was wrought in the rending of so strong and thick a veil; but it was not intended merely as a display of power — many lessons were herein taught us. The old law of ordinances was put away, and like a worn-out vesture, rent and laid aside. When Jesus died, the sacrifices were all finished, because all fulfilled in Him, and therefore the place of their presentation was marked with an evident token of decay. That rent also revealed all the hidden things of the old dispensation: the mercy-seat could now be seen, and the glory of God gleamed forth above it. By the death of our Lord Jesus we have a clear revelation of God, for He was “not as Moses, who put a veil over his face.” Life and immortality are now brought to light, and things which have been hidden since the foundation of the world are manifest in Him. The annual ceremony of atonement was thus abolished. The atoning blood which was once every year sprinkled within the veil, was now offered once for all by the great High Priest, and therefore the place of the symbolical rite was broken up. No blood of bullocks or of lambs is needed now, for Jesus has entered within the veil with his own blood. Hence access to God is now permitted, and is the privilege of every believer in Christ Jesus. There is no small space laid open through which we may peer at the mercy-seat, but the rent reaches from the top to the bottom. We may come with boldness to the throne of the heavenly grace. Shall we err if we say that the opening of the Holy of Holies in this marvellous manner by our Lord’s expiring cry was the type of the opening of the gates of paradise to all the saints by virtue of the Passion? Our bleeding Lord hath the key of heaven; He openeth and no man shutteth; let us enter in with Him into the heavenly places, and sit with Him there till our common enemies shall be made His footstool.

The connections between them were like an atonal composition, no key, no rhythm, no form.

pitch axis theory, which I learned in high school from my music teacher Bill Westcott. It is a compositional technique that was actually developed at the turn of the last century, so this is something that had been around for a long time. I remember Bill saying, "I'm going to teach you this very cool compositional technique," and he sat me down at the piano, and he went, "Watch this: I'll hold this C bass note, and then I play these chords, and each chord will put me in a different key, but it will sound like C 'something' to you . . ." I was fascinated by it, because I thought, "That is the sound I'm hearing in my head." To me it sounded very "rock," because rock songs don't travel around in too many keys, and it was the antithesis of the modern pop music that had been around for fifty years. It was the total opposite of most commercial jazz, but not all jazz, as I learned when I started really listening closely to modern jazz. I realized, "Wow, John Coltrane is using pitch axis theory. Not only is he doing that, but he’s going beyond it with his 'sheets of sound' approach," where in addition to building modes in different keys off of one bass note, he was building modes off of notes outside the key structure as well. He had taken it a step further. But that’s not what I was looking for, except for in a song like "The Enigmatic," which has that sort of complete atonal-meetspsycho melodic approach. I was more interested in using the pitch axis where you really could identify with one key bass note, in a rock and R&B sort of fashion. Then all the chords that you put on top would basically put you in different keys. So on Not of This Earth, you have these pounding E eighth notes on the bass, and your audience says, "Okay, we're in the key of E." But the chords on top are saying, "E Lydian, E Minor, E Lydian, E Mixolydian in cyclical form." And I thought, "Well, this gives me great melodic opportunities, I'm not stuck with just the seven notes of one key. I've got seven notes for every different key that I apply on top of this bass note." And I just love that sound, so I applied it to quite a lot of my music.

The Involuntary Princeling by Stewart Stafford The candle's blaze grows distant fast, Quenched to an ember spark, unseen, Carriage taken in larceny's grasp, Darkness made far bank unclean. Daubing a sovereign slogan, In violet shadows unmasked, A delinquent reunion reprieved, A doggerel name outcast. Trade winds howl to storming, As fireballs 'neath seas seek to atone, The red-crowned crest now stakes its claim, On writhed Rosetta's key stone. © Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.

THE MULADHARA PERSONALITY Someone ruled by the Muladhara chakra is often confronted with life lessons about security—or rather, the desire to be physically and financially secure. The behavior of these people is often compared to that of ants, which ardently work for their queen. Their sense of self is often based on gaining approval or following the laws. Thus, for these people, their lessons are often about confronting and freeing themselves from greed, lust, sensuality, and anger. Like the earth element, Muladhara personalities are physically strong and productive. They often win competitively because of their drive and strength. THE SVADHISTHANA PERSONALITY A Svadhisthana individual is most likely devoted to the higher things in life—art, music, poetry, and the jewels of creativity. While beautiful, this lushness also presents temptation away from the spiritual path, with the major diversions involving sexuality, sensuality, and indulgence. A second-chakra person is likely to experience mood swings or emotional inconsistency. Desire is rooted in the second chakra, and can lead to love and the enjoyment of pleasures, but also to frivolity or just plain selfishness. The Svadhisthana path is often called the way of the butterfly, for life is full of so many joys, it can be hard to remain in one place for long. It is important to develop discipline to balance the compulsion to experience. THE MANIPURA PERSONALITY This chakra embraces the planes of karma (the past), dharma (one’s purpose), and the celestial plane. Its focus is to atone for one’s past errors. Manipura is the fire chakra, and people who dwell here tend to be fiery; the key to joy lies in the application of the heat. Is it used to avoid the past—or to work toward a positive future? Third-chakra people tend to be temperamental but are also able to commit to their goals. They are often driven by the need to be recognized and to succeed. The chief issue to confront is ego. By confronting issues of pride and control, the Manipura person is able to embrace the best features of its major animal, the ram. The ram can walk nimbly into the highest of mountaintops; so can the third-chakra individual. THE ANAHATA PERSONALITY When the lotus unfolds, the twelve petals invite the movement of energy in twelve directions. This activates twelve mental capabilities: hope, anxiety, endeavor, possessiveness, arrogance, incompetence, discrimination, egoism, lustfulness, fraudulence, indecision, and repentance (as described in the Mahanirvana Tantra, a detailing of Tantric rituals and practices, edited for Western audiences by Arthur Avalon (pen name of Sir John Woodroffe) in 1913).25 Twelve divinities in the form of sound assist with the process involved in confronting, dealing with, and healing one’s way through these twelve qualities. A heart-based person might find him- or herself greatly challenged by the so-called negative qualities that stir in the heart. However,

The church’s standard canonical narrative, however, embodies structural supersessionism in the way that it construes (or, “structures”) this narrative unity. In the foreground, says Soulen, are the perceived key events of creation, fall, Christ’s incarnation, the inauguration of the church, and final consummation—what he calls the “four key episodes.” What is noticeable here, though, is that God’s engagement with the human story is being told in cosmic, universal terms: the Hebrew scriptures are almost completely omitted, save for Genesis 1–3. The God of Israel’s history with the Israel of God recedes into the background of the story and “God’s history with Israel plays a role that is ultimately indecisive for shaping the canonical narrative’s overarching plot.”523 Soulen notes that this omission is reflected in virtually every historic confession of Christian faith from the creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople to the Augsburg Confession and beyond.524

So what, in the light of all this, would Paul say had actually happened by six o’clock on the first Good Friday evening? If Romans 3:21–26 was all we had to go on, what might we conclude? First, he would say that the age-old covenant plan of the Creator, to rescue humanity and the world from sin and death, had been accomplished. The new Passover had taken place, in fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham. Second, he would say that this had been accomplished by God himself, in his act of covenant faithfulness (for which the shorthand is “love,” though Paul does not use that word until chapters 5 and 8), drawing together Israel’s vocation and his own deepest purposes in the faithful death of the Messiah. Third, as befits a “Passover” moment, he would say that people of all sorts—Jews and Gentiles alike—were now free, free from past sins, free to come into the single covenant family. They were “freely declared to be in the right,” to be within God’s justified people, able to look ahead to the final day without fear of condemnation (5:9; 8:1; 8:31–39). Fourth, as we have seen in all the other early Christian strands of thought we have studied, Paul saw the new Passover also as the “dealing with sins” through which exile was undone. This is where Passover and the “Day of Atonement” meet and merge. Fifth, and at the heart of it all, Paul saw Israel’s representative Messiah “handed over because of our trespasses,” in the sense intended in Isaiah 53. Dealing with sins robs the “powers” of their power; and this, as we have seen, is the key that unlocks all the other doors.

I smiled and we both just stood there. Neither one of us made a move to go, even though it was late. A mischievous grin crept across her face. “Are you tired?” I liked the glint in her eye and I had no intention of ending this night if she didn’t want to, no matter how tired I was. “No.” “Do you want to go TP Sloan and Brandon’s house?” My laugh made her eyes dance. “I know it’s a little tenth-grade retro,” she said. “But I’ve always wanted to do it. And you can’t TP a house alone—it’s a rule.” “We’ll have to show up there tomorrow and help them clean it up. Pretend it’s just a lucky coincidence,” I said. “Can you borrow a tool from Brandon? I can text Sloan in the morning to tell her we’re going to pick it up. She’ll cook if she knows we’re coming. Then we’ll get breakfast and atone for our sins.” She grinned. A half an hour later I was crouched behind my truck two houses down from Brandon’s, game-planning with Kristen. She still hadn’t taken out her curlers. “If they wake up,” she whispered, “we scatter and reconvene at the donut place on Vanowen.” “Got it. If you’re captured, no matter what they do to you, don’t break under interrogation.” She scoffed quietly. “As if. I can’t be broken.” She snatched her roll and darted from behind the truck. We made short work of it. Operation TP Sloan and Brandon’s was completed in less than five minutes. No casualties. We got back into the truck laughing so hard it took me three tries to get the key in the ignition. Then I noticed she’d lost a curler. I got unbuckled. “No curlers left behind. It’s Marine Corps policy.” We got out for a recon mission on Brandon’s lawn. I located the fallen curler under a pile of TP by the mailbox. “Hey,” I whispered, holding it up. “Found it.” She beamed and jogged across the toilet-papered grass, but when she reached for the curler, I palmed it. “You’re injured,” I whispered. “You’ve lost a curler. The medics can reattach it, but I’ll need to carry you out. Get on my back.” I was only about 50 percent sure she would go for this. I banked on her not wanting to break character. She didn’t skip a beat. “You’re right,” she whispered. “Man down. Good call.” She jumped up and I piggybacked her to the truck, laughing the whole way. Those thirty seconds of her arms around my neck made my entire night.