Brighter Morning Quotes

Spring drew on...and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.

Wearily she went to bed, wearily she arose in four or five hours' time. But with the morning came hope, and a brighter view of things.

There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.

The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.

So the days slipped away, as each morning dawned bright and fair, and each evening followed cool and clear. But autumn was waning fast; slowly the golden light faded to pale silver, and the lingering leaves fell from the naked trees. A wind began to blow chill from the Misty Mountains to the east. The Hunter's Moon waxed round in the night sky, and put to flight all the lesser stars. But low in the South one star shone red. Every night, as the Moon waned again, it shone brighter and brighter. Frodo could see it from his window, deep in the heavens, burning like a watchful eye that glared above the trees on the brink of the valley.

The morning brought with it, if not a brighter outlook, at least a measure of control, some acceptance. Instinctively, I knew that the new tear in my heart would always ache. That was just going to be a part of me now.

...and on some nights in bed, in that moment before sleep erased the day, I would picture the way the sky in Lapland looked the morning I left, how the train had sped south beneath a sky that was brighter than it had been in weeks. It had pulsed with reds and oranges, as though hiding a beating heart.

The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders of the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the dacayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in the motionless rivers of light.

A beautiful day begins with a beautiful mindset. Every day you wake up, think about what a privilege it is to simply be alive and healthy. Stop focusing on the negatives and everything that could go wrong and start thinking about what could go right. Better yet, think of everything that already is right. Be thankful for nights that turned into mornings, friends who turned into family and past dreams and goals that turned into realities. Use this mindset of positivity to fuel an even brighter today and tomorrow.

Dear Yesteryear, I do not feel alone anymore. I have found love. Maybe I should say love has found me. Well, to be fair, we found each other. Yesterday, I didn’t have a home. Yesterday, I didn’t have a pillow where I could lay my head. Yesterday, it was hard to find peace. Yesterday, I wondered if morning would ever come. Yesterday, I was unable to love, dream, and trust. Yesterday, I didn’t understand life. Yesterday, I was walking in my shadow. I didn’t know if I had meaning or a purpose. I am healing from my yesteryears. However, I am still rough around the edges and still have a lot to learn. I used to be so empty inside, but now I have lovely people to fill my no-longer-empty arms. Yesterday, my path was different. I was confused, not knowing if I should go right or left— move forward or turn around. I do not know what life has in store, but I know for a fact that I do not have to worry about the deadly and narrow path anymore. Yesterday, my sun was blocked by my shadows and everything thing else that came along that didn’t serve me. However, today, the sun is shining brighter than it ever has in my entire life. Yesterday, I will never forget you. You’ve taught me many lessons. I was taught lessons that a young person should never experience or even know about. Some lessons in life leave permitted marks. There have been many lessons I’ve learned that have left so many scars on my heart, but life goes on. I use to be overwhelmed by hate, disbelief, and not knowing if I was going to make it. Now, I am surrounded by warm hugs, smiles, love, and peace. Yesteryear, you will never be forgotten. I am healing, and it is a beautiful thing.

She’s not the girl that you just forget about. She’s the sunrise That sneaks in through your window shutters On an early summer morning. And she sits there. Lingering. You think to yourself That maybe if you reversed the shutters, She’d go away. But you know That outside your window She’s even brighter. Outside your window, She’s not yours. Not anymore.

…though under temporary gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.

It grew harder and harder. Even within these four walls there was too much misery, too much seemingly pointless suffering. Every day something else failed to make sense, something else grew too heavy. Will You carry this too, Lord Jesus? But as the rest of the world grew stranger, one thing became increasingly clear. And that was the reason the two of us were here. Why others should suffer we were not shown. As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope. Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

The thing is I loved you so much and I would have done everything for you And it keeps me up on nights like this where the moon shines brighter than the sun’s glare in the morning sky that you’re not here with me And the thing is I loved you so much more than you deserved and it wasn’t enough I wasn’t enough.

Dad laughed, and despite two thousand volts of frustration tingling and twitching through my body, I laughed too. Everything about him that morning seemed relaxed and brighter than it had in months. He’d always been a moody guy. No one was funnier or more fun to play with than he was when in the right mood and you could feel the barometric pressure drop when he wasn’t.

FALLEN WINGS The beauty of being Fallen or broken into pieces or being rejected or feel misrable is that they all gives you "HOPE" to re-start in the brighter morning beacuse your're not alone, I feel it everyday. "Life Game" _ANKIT SINGH

In the morning he would sit down to work, finish his allotted task, then take the little lamp from the hook, put it on the table, get his book from the shelf, open it, and sit down to read. And the more he read, the more he understood, and the brighter and happier it grew in his heart.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.

Ray was looking extra Oompa-Loompa-like this morning with his fake tan a seemingly brighter shade of orange than usual. His brown hair matched his personality—slick and greasy. “Morning,

The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.

Not all was as it seemed, he realized in the simple rendering of a child’s comprehension. Not all was good and honorable in this world. And for young Robrecht, there was something thrilling in this simple fact. For him, it was as if on that morning long ago the colors of the sky and earth—the dirt road, the brick and plaster buildings, the gleaming sea—had suddenly become not just brighter and more vibrant but also richer—the deeper shades of a complex and multifarious world.

Don't leave. If you had any idea... any idea how much I want you here, Alice, that most nights I lie awake half crazy with it... I love you. Have done since the first day I laid eyes on you. When you're not around me it feels like I'm just wasting time. When you're here it's like... the whole world is colored just that little bit brighter. I want to feel your skin against mine. I want to see your smile and hear that laugh of yours when yo forget yourself and just let it burst straight out of you... I want to make you happy... I want to wake up every morning beside you and -- and -- and you're married. And I'm trying real hard to be a good man. SO until I can work a way around that, I can't. I just can't lay a finger on you. Now how I want to. All I can give you, Alice, is... words.

SO THIS IS HOW NOAH FELT. You wake up one morning and God has forgiven you and you walk around squinting all day because you’ve forgotten how sunlight feels warm and rough against your skin like a kiss on the cheek from your dad, and the whole world is brighter and cleaner than ever before,

Good morning. Is the sun a little brighter, there is Friendship? Is the air a little fresher? Is your home a little sweeter? Is your housework somewhat easier? Are the children- do you feel safer about them? Are their faces a little ruddier; are their legs a little sturdier? Do they laugh and play a lot louder in Friendship? Then I am content.

Consider this, believer. You have no right to heaven in yourself: your right lies in Christ. If you are pardoned, it is through his blood; if you are justified, it is through his righteousness; if you are sanctified, it is because he is made of God unto you sanctification; if you shall be kept from falling, it will be because you are preserved in Christ Jesus; and if you are perfected at the last, it will be because you are complete in him. Thus Jesus is magnified—for all is in him and by him; thus the inheritance is made certain to us—for it is obtained in him; thus each blessing is the sweeter, and even heaven itself the brighter, because it is Jesus our Beloved “in whom” we have obtained all.

When one is much alone one’s vision becomes more extensive; from the tide-wrack rubbish-heap of small bones and dry, crumpled wings, relics of lesser lives, rise images the brighter for being unconfined by the physical eye. From some feathered mummy, stained and thin, soars the spinning lapwing in the white March morning; in the surface crust of rotting weed, where the foot explodes a whirring puff of flies, the withered fins and scales hold still, intrinsically, the sway and dart of glittering shoals among the tide-swung sea-tangle; smothered by the mad parabolic energy of leaping sand-hoppers the broken antlers of a stag re-form and move again high in the bare, stony corries and the October moonlight.

The days passed. Viveca waited. Waited and slept. Every morning when she woke up, she felt a little brighter. She felt stronger, and when she caught her reflection in the mirror, she looked younger. And the hands of the clock kept on moving backwards, and in the end Viveca began to suspect what was happening in this house of stone: Time was moving backwards!

To youth and natural cheerfulness like Emma's, though under temporary gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.

Well,” I said, trying to keep my tone light as I walked over to put my arms around his neck, though I had to stand on my toes to do so. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? You told me something about yourself that I didn’t know before-that you didn’t, er, care for your family, except for your mother. But that didn’t make me hate you…it made me love you a bit more, because now I know we have even more in common.” He stared down at him, a wary look in his eyes. “If you knew the truth,” he said, “you wouldn’t be saying that. You’d be running.” “Where would I go?” I asked, with a laugh I hoped didn’t sound as nervous to him as it did to me. “You bolted all the doors, remember? Now, since you shared something I didn’t know about you, may I share something you don’t know about me?” Those dark eyebrows rose as he pulled me close. “I can’t even begin to imagine what this could be.” “It’s just,” I said, “that I’m a little worried about rushing into this consort thing…especially the cohabitation part.” “Cohabitation?” he echoed. He was clearly unfamiliar with the word. “Cohabitation means living together,” I explained, feeling my cheeks heat up. “Like married people.” “You said last night that these days no one your age thinks of getting married,” he said, holding me even closer and suddenly looking much more eager to stick around for the conversation, even though I heard the marina horn blow again. “And that your father would never approve it. But if you’ve changed your mind, I’m sure I could convince Mr. Smith to perform the ceremony-“ “No,” I said hastily. Of course Mr. Smith was somehow authorized to marry people in the state of Florida. Why not? I decided not to think about that right now, or how John had come across this piece of information. “That isn’t what I meant. My mom would kill me if I got married before I graduated from high school.” Not, of course, that my mom was going to know about any of this. Which was probably just as well, since her head would explode at the idea of my moving in with a guy before I’d even applied to college, let alone at the fact that I most likely wasn’t going to college. Not that there was any school that would have accepted me with my grades, not to mention my disciplinary record. “What I meant was that maybe we should take it more slowly,” I explained. “The past couple years, while all my friends were going out with boys, I was home, trying to figure out how this necklace you gave me worked. I wasn’t exactly dating.” “Pierce,” he said. He wore a slightly quizzical expression on his face. “Is this the thing you think I didn’t know about you? Because for one thing, I do know it, and for another, I don’t understand why you think I’d have a problem with it.” I’d forgotten he’d been born in the eighteen hundreds, when the only time proper ladies and gentlemen ever spent together before they were married was at heavily chaperoned balls…and that for most of the past two centuries, he’d been hanging out in a cemetery. Did he even know that these days, a lot of people hooked up on first dates, or that the average age at which girls-and boys as well-lost their virginity in the United States was seventeen…my age? Apparently not. “What I’m trying to say,” I said, my cheeks burning brighter, “is that I’m not very experienced with men. So this morning when I woke up and found you in bed beside me, while it was really, super nice-don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it very much-it kind of freaked me out. Because I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of thing yet.” Or maybe the problem was that I wasn’t prepared for how ready I was…

Very quietly, James slipped out of bed and shrugged into his bathrobe. The stone floor was cool under his feet as he stood and listened, tilting his head. He turned slowly, and as he looked toward the door, the figure there moved. He hadn’t seen it appear, it was simply there, floating, where a moment before there had been darkness. James startled and backed into his bed, almost falling backwards onto it. Then he recognized the ghostly shape. It was the same wispy, white figure he’d seen chase the interloper off the school grounds, the ghostly shape that had come to look like a young man as it came back to the castle. In the darkness of the doorway, the figure seemed much brighter than it had appeared in the morning sunlight. It was wispy and shifting, with only the barest suggestion of its human shape. It spoke again without moving.

She isn’t my equal because she makes me better―a better man, a better warrior. What man can boast about the ability to bring life into the world? What man can continue to love, setting aside all other negative feelings? What man can say that he understands a compassion that puts all others before himself? Elora, a woman, can bear my children, she can love me even if she loses all respect for me, and she will show compassion even to those that I would deem unworthy. She can do these things only because she is a woman and it is how she was created. The mere sight of her makes my day better and brighter. Even when she’s driving me crazy, she’s still the first thing I want to see in the morning and the last thing I want to see at night. How can someone who does those things be my equal? She is so much more than me and I esteem her as much as I love her. Does that mean she’s faultless?

She had always looked like some confectioner's fantasia, a wee thing created of spun sugar, gossamer light, pale and shimmering, so fragile she might melt away in the morning dew. The years had made her seem even more unearthly. Yet, she looked older, too, riper, no longer sprite but faerie queen ... Everything about her was brighter, clearer, lighter. Everything but her eyes. They had darkened into something more complicated, deeper, more intense and intoxicating: pansies in shadow, the Cretan sea at midnight.

They were living to themselves: self, with its hopes, and promises, and dreams, still had hold of them; but the Lord began to fulfill their prayers. They had asked for contrition, and He sent them sorrow; they had asked for purity, and He sent them thrilling anguish; they had asked to be meek, and He had broken their hearts; they has asked to be dead to the world, and He slew all their living hopes; they had asked to be made like unto Him, and He placed them in the furnace, sitting by "as a refiner of silver," till they should reflect His image; they had asked to lay hold of His cross, and when He had reached it out to them, it lacerated their hands. They had asked they knew not what, nor how; but He had taken them at their word, and granted them all their petitions. They were hardly willing to follow so far, or to draw so nigh to Him. They had upon them an awe and fear, as Jacob at Bethel, or Eliphaz in the night visions, or as the apostles when they thought they had seen the spirit, and knew not that it was Jesus. They could almost pray Him to depart from them, or to hide His awefulness. They found it easier to obey than to suffer--to do than to give up--to bear the cross than to hang upon it: but they cannot go back, for they have come too near the unseen cross, and its virtues have pierced too deeply within them. He is fulfilling to them his promise, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. But now, at last, their turn is come. Before, they had only heard of the mystery, but now they feel it. He has fastened on them His look of love, as He did on Mary and Peter, and they cannot but choose to follow. Little by little, from time to time, by flitting gleams the mystery of His cross shines upon them. They behold Him lifted up--they gaze upon the glory which rays forth from the wound of His holy passion; and as they gaze, they advance, and are changed into His likeness, and His name shines out through them, for he dwells in them. They live alone with Him above, in unspeakable fellowship; willing to lack what others own, and to be unlike all, so that they are only like him. "Such are they in all ages who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. Had they chosen for themselves, or their friends chosen for them, they would have chosen otherwise. They would have been brighter here, but less glorious in His kingdom. They would have had Lot's portion, not Abraham's. If they had halted anywhere--if He had taken off His hand, and let them stray back--what would they have lost? What forfeits in the morning of the resurrection? But He stayed them up, even against themselves. Many a time their foot had well-nigh slipped; but He, in mercy, held them up; now, even in this life, they know all he did was done well. It was good for them to suffer here, for they shall reign hereafter--to bear the cross below, for they shall wear the crown above; and that not their will but His was done on them.

It's wonderful the way cats bound about, it's wonderful how men are not found out so far. It's miserable how many miserable are over the spread world at this tick of time. These mysteries that I'm rehearsing in the dark did brighter minds much bother through them ages, whom who finds guilty for failure? Up all we rose with the dawn, springy for pride, trying all morning. Dazzled, I subside at noon, noon be my gaoler and afternoon the deepening of the task poor Henry set himself long since to ask: Why? Who? When? --I don't know, Mr Bones. You asks too much of such as you & me & we & such fast cats, worse men.

Petra, people tell me that I will 'move on' and I can't believe it. But if it ever does happen, and I forget to feel this pressing absence of you, if I make it through a meaningless party and don't remember to hate everyone for their peaceful lives until the morning, please know that I am already sorry. I am going to try to be brave like you asked me to, but I don't have any idea yet what that means. Is it braver to allow the sadness of your leaving to spread into each of my bones until it is as big as you were to me? Or is it braver to let you drift out into what may very well be a brighter, finer place than this and be happy to think of your joy there? I hope, Petra, that I get it right.

Darkness Always Ends No matter how your day goes, the sun always rises the next day. You get a fresh start. Likewise, I’ve learned every dark season in life comes to an end. If you hang in there long enough, you’ll reach the dawn. I believe God created that sunrise-sunset pattern as a reminder for us when life gets difficult. For official records, we measure time by the midnight hour. Our calendar days go from midnight to midnight. We begin and end our days in darkness. And when we consider our days, we split them into two parts: daytime first, followed by nighttime. Light first, then the darkness. But not everyone views the cycle that way. The biblical account of creation reverses our cycle: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day” (Genesis 1:5). The Jewish calendar follows suit with that original creation account. That calendar runs from sunset to sunset. The full hours of darkness come first, followed by the full hours of light. In other words, from God’s perspective, each day ends with light. Year after year, I’ve derived such encouragement from that picture. I believe this is why the psalmist David wrote, “Weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). You have every reason to believe for a miracle. You have every reason to believe God won’t abandon you. Nothing in this life lasts forever. Your dark season will come to an end. And chances are, it won’t take until your dying day. It won’t kill you. Things might look bleak at first, but they can improve. With night and day, God has given us a picture of hope. The sun always rises. Things will always get brighter. “The end of a matter is better than its beginning” (Ecclesiastes 7:8). Whether it’s a day or a season in your life, it doesn’t matter how things look in the midst of it. What matters is how it ends. Oftentimes, for the circumstances to improve, we must take particular steps along the way. A bright outcome might depend, in part, on how we choose to respond to what has occurred. Or preemptive steps might put us at an advantage down the road. God give us a role to perform. But the breakthrough is available.

I think of you, my darling, in the most inconvenient of times. I think of you when I‘m talking to my friends when I‘m working when I‘m reading the news. I think of you when I‘m eating or taking a bath or when I‘m supposed to be writing. I think of you and how your smile makes my days brighter. I smile and think to myself how lucky I am to sometimes be the reason why you smile.I think of you and how you look when you‘re upset. I think of you and how I‘d love to have your voice lull me to sleep. I think of you and how I want to sleep next to you at night and wake up next to you and see your face the first thing in the morning. God, it drives everything that‘s a woman in me crazy. But then I‘ll think of you again, and I won‘t stop thinking of you unless I catch myself doing it.

Morning.” She blinks at me. Specifically at my abs, I think. “Where are your pajamas?” “Don’t own any.” I glance down at my boxers. All the important bits are covered. “Does it matter? I could put on my bathing suit instead. It’s more or less the same thing in a brighter color.” “Right.” She clears her throat. But I don’t miss her eyes making another quick sweep of my body. And I have to hold back a laugh. Could Alex be having a moment of regret? “Um…” She shakes her head once. “Thank you for dealing with the delivery.” “No problem.” I lift a hand to my chest and stroke a palm down my bare skin. And, yup, her eyes lock onto my fingers, and she follows my movements like a hungry dog eyes a piece of meat. How funny is this? Now I’m definitely not putting on a shirt this morning. Not until I absolutely have to. Why ruin the fun?

The Black Snake" When the black snake flashed onto the morning road, and the truck could not swerve-- death, that is how it happens. Now he lies looped and useless as an old bicycle tire. I stop the car and carry him into the bushes. He is as cool and gleaming as a braided whip, he is as beautiful and quiet as a dead brother. I leave him under the leaves and drive on, thinking about death: its suddenness, its terrible weight, its certain coming. Yet under reason burns a brighter fire, which the bones have always preferred. It is the story of endless good fortune. It says to oblivion: not me! It is the light at the center of every cell. It is what sent the snake coiling and flowing forward happily all spring through the green leaves before he came to the road. Mary Oliver, Twelve Moons. (Back Bay Books August 30, 1979)

Then she lay down in the street, Right before the horses' feet, Expecting, with a patient eye, Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy. When between her and her foes A mist, a light, an image rose, Small at first, and weak, and frail Like the vapour of a vale: 27 Till as clouds grow on the blast, Like tower-crowned giants striding fast, And glare with lightnings as they fly, And speak in thunder to the sky, 28 It grew -- a Shape arrayed in mail Brighter than the viper's scale, And upborne on wings whose grain Was as the light of sunny rain. 29 On its helm, seen far away, A planet, like the Morning's, lay; And those plumes its light rained through Like a shower of crimson dew. 30 With step as soft as wind it passed O'er the heads of men -- so fast That they knew the presence there, And looked, -- but all was empty air. 31 As flowers beneath May's footstep waken, As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken, As waves arise when loud winds call, Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall.

Next morning, when Semyon woke up, the children were still asleep and his wife had gone over to the neighbour's to borrow some bread. Only the stranger was sitting on the bench, wearing the old trousers and shirt and looking up. His face was brighter than the evening before. Semyon said, 'Well, my friend. The belly needs food and the body clothes. We all have to earn a living, so what sort of work can you do?' 'I can't do anything.' Semyon was amazed and replied, 'If a man has the will he can learn anything.' 'Yes, men work for their living, so I'll work too.' 'What's your name?' 'Mikhail.' 'Well, Mikhail, if you don't want to tell us about yourself that's your affair. But we have to earn our living. If you do as I tell you I'll see you have enough to eat.' 'God bless you! I'll learn how to work, just tell me what to do.' Semyon took a piece of yarn, wound it round his fingers and twisted it. 'It's not hard, just watch...' Mikhail watched and right away he caught the knack, winding the yarn and twisting it just like Semyon. Then Semyon showed him how to wax it and Mikhail understood at once. Then he showed him how to draw it through and how to stitch. Again Mikhail immediately understood. Whatever Semyon showed him he mastered right away and within three days was working as if he had been making shoes all his life. He would work without any let-up and ate very little. Only when one job was finished would he stop for a moment and silently look up. He never went out, only spoke when he really had to, and he never joked or laughed.

The boy's smile was a mockery of innocence. 'Are you frightened?' 'Yes,' I said. Never lie- that had been Rhys's first command. The boy stood, but kept to the other side of the cell. 'Feyre,' he murmured, cocking his head. The orb of faelight glazed the inky hair in silver. 'Fay-ruh,' he said again, drawing out the syllables as if he could taste them. At last, he straightened his head. ''Where did you go when you died?' 'A question for a question,' I replied, as I'd been instructed over breakfast. ... Rhys gave me a subtle nod, but his eyes were wary. Because what the boy had asked... I had to calm my breathing to think- to remember. But there was blood and death and pain and screaming- and she was breaking me, killing me so slowly, and Rhys was there, roaring in fury as I died. Tamlin begging for my life on his knees before her throne... But there was so much agony, and I wanted it to be over, wanted it all to stop- Rhys had gone rigid while he monitored the Bone Carver, as if those memories were freely flowing past the mental shields I'd made sure were intact this morning. And I wondered if he thought I'd give up then and there. I bunched my hands into fists. I had lived; I had gotten out. I would get out today. 'I heard the crack,' I said. Rhys's head whipped toward me. 'I heard the crack when she broke my neck. It was in my ears, but also inside my skull. I was gone before I felt anything more than the first lash of pain.' The Bone Carver's violet eyes seemed to glow brighter. 'And then it was dark. A different sort of dark than this place. But there was a... thread,' I said. 'A tether. And I yanked on it- and suddenly I could see. Not through my eyes, but- but his,' I said, inclining my head toward Rhys. I uncurled the finger of my tattooed hand. 'And I knew I was dead, and this tiny scrap was all that was left of me, clinging to the thread of our bargain.' 'But was there anyone there- were you seeing anything beyond?' 'There was only that bond in the darkness.' Rhysand's face had gone pale, his mouth a tight line. 'And when I was Made anew,' I said, 'I followed that bond back- to me. I knew that home was on the other end of it. There was light then. Like swimming up through sparkling wine-' 'Were you afraid?' 'All I wanted was to return to- to the people around me. I wanted it badly enough I didn't have room for fear. The worst had happened and the darkness was calm and quiet. It did not seem like a bad thing to fade into. But I wanted to go home. So I followed the bond home.' 'There was no other world,' the Bone Carver pushed. 'If there was or is, I did not see it.' 'No light, no portal?' Where is it that you want to go? The question almost leaped off my tongue. 'It was only peace and darkness.' 'Did you have a body?' 'No.' 'Did-' 'That's enough from you,' Rhysand purred- the sound like velvet over sharpest steel. 'You said a question for a question. Now you've asked...' He did a tally on his fingers. 'Six.' The Bone Carver leaned back against the wall and slid to a sitting position. 'It is a rare day when I meet someone who comes back from true death. Forgive me for wanting to peer behind the curtain.

And that e-mail, Jesus, nothing brighter than sending a late-night drunken message, moron. It couldn’t be helped: The morning was going to be filled with feelings of longing and regret. Which is why if I was a real drinker, I would’ve gone right out for some kind of mimosa pick-me-up brunch.

Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good morning.

You belong to the day and the light not to the night and the dark. + But the path of righteous people is like the light of dawn that becomes brighter and brighter until it reaches midday.

The stars here are brighter than morning was and getting larger, as if we’re close enough to touch them. (Maybe we are. Maybe I understand what brought Fairuz to the desert at last; this way to make the world really wait for her, to never be out of time, to be outside it, to look straight through the sky and out the other side; this way to never be alone again.)

Tobacco,' Jig said. 'I used to raise tobacco once. But I quit. I was plowing one morning, and the Lord said, "Jig, how'd you like for your daughter to smoke?" And I said, "I wouldn't like it, Lord. It's a sin for a woman to smoke." And I unhitched the mule right there in the middle of the row and left.' 'You say you left?' 'Left,' Jig said. 'I went fishing then. You know that's where He called them from. From fishing. One of these mornings He'll come and stand on the riverbank and He'll say, "Jig." And I'll say, "Yes, Lord?" And He'll say, "Follow me, Jig." And I will arise and follow Him. Aw, He ain't come yet. But He's coming. He's got to get my mansion ready first, but He'll be here.' Then Jig told us about Heaven. He said it was a million miles square and a million miles high, and every street was gold and every house was a mansion. And at night every star was brighter than the sun. 'Do you know why He made the stars?' Uncle Burley said he didn't know. 'He liked to hear them sing,' Jig said.

What's that, mister?" "That's the green for the gentleman's coat. No--don't pinch it, or you'll get it all over you. Yes, you can put the cap on. Yes, that's to keep it from drying up. Yes, put it back in the box.... That's yellow. No, I know there isn't any yellow in the picture, but I want it to mix with the green to make it brighter. You'll see. Don't forget the cap. What? Oh, anywhere in the box. White--yes, it's a big tube, isn't it? You see, you have to put a little white into most of the colours--why? Well, they wouldn't come right without it. You'll see when I do the sky. What's that? You want the dog made white all over? No, I can't make it a picture of Scruggs. Why not? Well, Scruggs isn't the right sort of dog to take out shooting. Well, he's not, that's why. This has got to be a retriever. All right, well, I'll put in a liver-and-white spaniel. Oh, well, it's rather a pretty dog with long ears. Yes, I daresay it is like Colonel Amery's. No, I don't know Colonel Amery. Did you put the cap on that white paint? Dash it! if you go losing things like that I'll send you back to Mother and she'll spank you. What? Well, the gentleman has a green coat because he's a gamekeeper. Possibly Colonel Amery's gamekeeper doesn't, but this one does. No, I don't know why gamekeepers wear green coats--to keep them warm, I expect. No, I haven't got any brown paint same as that tree-trunk. I get that by mixing other colours. No, I've got all the colours I want now. You can put 'em away and shut the box. Yes, I can tell pretty well how much I want before I start. That's called a palette knife. No, it isn't meant to be sharp. It's meant for cleaning your palette and so on. Some people use a knife to paint with. Yes, it's nice and wiggly, but it won't stand too much of that kind of treatment, my lad. Yes, of course you can paint with a knife if you want to. You can paint with your fingers if it comes to that. No, I shouldn't advise you to try. Yes, well, it makes a rougher kind of surface, all blobs and chunks of paint. All right, I'll show you presently. Yes, I'm going to begin with the sky. Why? Well, why do you think? Yes, because it's at the top. Yes, of course that blue's too dark, but I'm going to put some white in it. Yes, and some green. You didn't know there was any green in the sky? Well, there is. And sometimes there's purple and pink too. No, I'm not going to paint a purple and pink sky. The gentleman and the dogs have only just started out. It's morning in this picture. Yes, I know, on the other side they're coming home with a lot of birds and things. I'll put a pink and purple sunset into that if you're good and don't ask too many questions. No, be a good girl and don't joggle my arm. Oh, Lord!

I had a fierce argument with nature about which one is more- brighter and refreshing: your smile or the morning? Nature lost. Keep Smiling.

Things always look brighter in the morning.

Do you not know that your faith never looks as good in summer as it does in winter? Love is too often like a glowworm, showing but little light unless it is surrounded by darkness. Hope itself is like a star—not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, and only to be discovered in the night of adversity. Afflictions are often the black foils in which God sets the jewels of His children’s graces, to make them shine brighter.

First and foremost, I am experiencing much better sleep, and I am actually dreaming vividly almost every night now! This began happening during the FIRST WEEK of use! I used to have dreams like this when I was a kid, but before using this appliance, not in YEARS! I am sleeping all the way through the night as well. I am so much more awake and alert in the mornings, and all the way throughout the day, for that matter. As for the side effects, I am seeing my skin glowing, my eyes are brighter, and the bags under my eyes are gone! I feel like my circulation all around is much better, and I do not “gasp” for air anymore. Before, I would take [various brand-named allergy medications], nasal spray and gels, humidifiers, tea kettles, exotic muds and salves—you name it! Nothing would prevent me from going to bed fine and waking up stuffed up like hell and feeling like I was going to suffocate! Oh, and that is during NON-allergy season. During allergy season (or a bad allergy day), I would just be stuffed up constantly and medicate myself to the point of exhaustion. Now, I take nothing. I now sleep all the way through the night, and I wake up renewed and refreshed. I was skeptical trying this out. I had braces in the past and did not offer any resistance to the plan to remove two of my front teeth and “shrink” my upper jaw, effectively shrinking the “tiger’s cage” too small to allow normal growth or function. When seeing Dr. Liao, he saw this right away and recommended strongly that I be tested for a narrowed airway. I did not come for this: I came to have mercury amalgam fillings removed, so I was unsure. Dr. Liao took the time to explain to me that, despite my legitimate concern about the fillings, my priority should be to open the airway that had become so narrow that it, unbeknownst to me, affected almost every area of my life. … I opted to have both upper and lower appliances made to increase the size of my jaws, and braces and two false teeth installed later on to hold the shape of my new bite pattern. This was to take place over the course of two to three years’ time, and was to cost a significant amount of money. The appliance(s) began to work immediately, and since they are to be adjusted weekly (easily by us right at home with a small tool provided), they continue to open the airway more and more every day, allowing me to experience these results to an even greater degree as I go. I even had a flight recently to California (from Virginia), and I had NO ear pain or discomfort! I used to have to take a bunch of pills and wear [earplugs for airplane travel], and it would STILL kill my ears to fly, but not now. I never knew that I was being deprived of the oxygen I needed to thrive, but now that I am experiencing it for the first time in my adult life, I regret not looking into having this done YEARS ago! I highly recommend this to anyone who feels stuffed up in the morning, tired and groggy all day, or any of the plethora of other symptoms associated with a narrowed airway. Thank you, Dr. Liao!

In the dim morning, the core was the red of old embers, pulsing and breathing beneath the brighter streams of light. Droplets of mist clung to the surface, twinkling like blood-red stars.

There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place were colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant than ever again.

My lord, is all well?” He offered her a brief, tired smile. “As well as can be expected, I imagine. I confess, I am happy to be here tonight.” “We are happy to host you. I imagine things will look better in the morning…or at least brighter.” “One can certainly hope.” “Neither my mother nor I would have stood for your being alone at Blackmoor House this evening.” Gavin smiled wearily. “The two of you are an irresistible force. I shan’t put up a fight.” In

Sir Joseph, good morning,” Louisa replied. “My compliments to your horse. That’s the same one you had at the Christmas meet, isn’t it?” “The selfsame. Sonnet, say good morning to the ladies.” The horse tucked a foreleg back and bowed his glossy head without any visible cue from the rider. Jenny’s smile could not have been brighter. “How marvelous! Louisa, we must expand your list to include Sonnet. He’s tall, dark, and handsome, and possessed of both good manners and the ability to dance.” “A list?” Sir Joseph petted his horse again, but this time it seemed to Louisa to be more of a caress down the gelding’s crest. “Are you looking for a new mount, Lady Louisa?” Jenny snorted, the wretch, then turned it into a coughing fit. “I am not. Genevieve, we’ve had our gallop, so why don’t you rescue His Grace from Lord Mannering? I’ll catch up in a moment.” Jenny

ANNA LÆTITIA BARBAULD. 3. Life. Animula, vagula, blandula. Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met, I own to me's a secret yet. But this I know, when thou art fled, Where'er they lay these limbs, this head, No clod so valueless shall be, As all that then remains of me. O whither, whither dost thou fly, Where bend unseen thy trackless course, And in this strange divorce, Ah tell where I must seek this compound I? To the vast ocean of empyreal flame, From whence thy essence came, Dost thou thy flight pursue, when freed From matter's base encumbering weed? Or dost thou, hid from sight, Wait, like some spell-bound knight, Through blank oblivious years the appointed hour, To break thy trance and reassume thy power? Yet canst thou without thought or feeling be? O say what art thou, when no more thou'rt thee? Life! we've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear; Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good morning. 1825 Edition.

Let us sit at the feet of Jesus and by earnest prayer call upon His blessed help, that our dull wits may grow brighter, and our feeble understandings may receive heavenly things.

Bittersweet" A little light looks through her bedroom window. She dances and I dream, she's not so far as she seems, Of brighter meadows, melting sunsets, Her hair blowing in the breeze. And she can't see me watching. And I'm thinking love... Love... Love... Love... It's bittersweet More sweet than bitter, Bitter than sweet. It's a bittersweet surrender. It's bittersweet More sweet than bitter, Bitter than sweet. It's a bittersweet surrender. I'm older now. I work in the city. We live together. But it's different than my dream. Morning light fills the room. I rise. She pretends she's sleeping. Are we everything we wanted? And I'm thinking love... Love... Love... Love... It's bittersweet More sweet than bitter, Bitter than sweet. It's a bittersweet surrender. It's bittersweet More sweet than bitter, Bitter than sweet. It's a bittersweet surrender. I know we don't talk about it. We don't tell each other. All the little things that we need. We work our way around each other. As we tremble and we As we tremble and we bleed. As we tremble and we As we tremble and we bleed. It's bittersweet More sweet than bitter, Bitter than sweet. It's a bittersweet surrender. It's bittersweet More sweet than bitter, Bitter than sweet. It's a bittersweet surrender. Big Head Todd & The Monsters, Sister Sweetly (1993)

In the morning, I am the victim and the crime is consciousness.

Circadian lighting, in essence, follows a "sunrise to sunset" cycle, according to which lights should be brighter and bluer in the morning (blue makes us feel alert), and warmer orange light that mimics dusk to facilitate sleep should be used in the evening.

The Joy of Self-Care It can be a joy to take care of yourself and you deserve it. You already know that you deserve to take a shower and brush your teeth. In fact, more self-care is deserved than that. You need to pay attention to your body, mind, and spirit. If you take time out every day to take care of yourself, you will be more productive, a brighter light and a support in the world. Gradual Morning Movement Get up early enough to have time to do a routine in the morning. At least, take a moment to rest before getting out of bed. Grab a couple of takes. Allow yourself in bed to wake up. Perform a few simple laps. Make sure you have time to eat a good breakfast when you get out of bed, clean and floss your teeth, and go out for a breath of fresh air before getting on with your busy day. Enjoying yourself before you prepare your day is good for you. It is said you are blocked from enlightened bliss by discontent and too much seriousness and are signals that you are attached to your physical body and the world's cares. Lightening is healthy for body, mind, and spirit all around. You can still participate in the world with more lightness and non-attachment to the results, and care about the state of affairs. In other words, do your world's best job without incentive aspirations. Let the job be where you find happiness. Let self-care be the same. Please take care of yourself. Eating the Rainbow When shopping for food, pick up food in all the rainbow colors. Look for recipes online if there's a food of a certain color and it's new to you. Ask friends and colleagues if they have any season and swap favorite recipes. Please try new things and see how many different colors in one day you can eat. For the Good of All You help yourself and those around you when you take care of yourself. You are a light for others by being healthy, and a model of how good health might look and feel. As you get healthy, others will wonder how you've done that. Taking pleasure in taking care of yourself makes it possible for others to see that it is possible and feel good doing the same thing. And, you have the energy and ability to give back when you're healthy.

I’ve spent a lot of my time alone, and I have learned to treat myself as if I were a family. I give myself dinner at night. I give myself breakfast in the morning. I like the process of deciding what to eat and putting it together and seeing how it works, and I like to experiment, and I like to eat. There’s nothing lonelier than some guy alone in the kitchen eating Chinese food out of the carton. “But cooking yourself a meal,” Susan said, “and sitting down to eat it with the table set, and maybe a fire in the fireplace . . .” “And a ball game on . . .” “And a half bottle of wine, perhaps.” I nodded. Susan smiled, the way she does when her face seems to get brighter. “You are the most self-sufficient man I have ever known,” she said.

Ah, do we really have to use that word? It’s trouble. Every gay person has his or her own take on it. For some it means strange and eccentric and kind of mysterious. That’s okay, we like that. But some gay girls and boys don’t. They think they’re more normal than strange. And for others “queer” conjures up those awful memories of adolescent suffering. Queer. It’s forcibly bittersweet and quaint at best—weakening and painful at worst. Couldn’t we just use “gay” instead? It’s a much brighter word and isn’t it synonymous with “happy”? When will you militants grow up and get over the novelty of being different? Well, yes, “gay” is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we’ve chosen to call ourselves queer. Using “queer” is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world. It’s a way of telling ourselves we don’t have to be witty and charming people who keep our lives discreet and marginalized in the straight world . . . it is also a sly and ironic weapon we can steal from the homophobe’s hands and use against him.

But as the rest of the world grew stranger, one thing became increasingly clear. And that was the reason the two of us were here. Why others should suffer we were not shown. As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope. Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” I would look about us as Betsie read, watching the light leap from face to face. More than conquerors. . . . It was not a wish. It was a fact. We knew it, we experienced it minute by minute—poor, hated, hungry. We are more than conquerors. Not “we shall be.” We are! Life in Ravensbruck took place on two separate levels, mutually impossible. One, the observable, external life, grew every day more horrible. The other, the life we lived with God, grew daily better, truth upon truth, glory upon glory.

Seven Days" First Day I sat in a room that was almost dark, looking out to sea. There was a light on the water that released a rainbow which landed near the stairs. I was surprised to discover you at the end of it. Second Day I sat in a beach chair surrounded by tall grass so that only the top of my hat showed. The sky kept shifting but the sunlight stayed. It was a glass pillar filled with bright dust, and you were inside. Third Day A comet with two tails appeared. You were between them with your arms outspread as if you were keeping the tails apart. I wished you would speak but you didn't. I knew then that you might remain silent forever. Fourth Day This evening in my room there was a pool of pink light that floated on the wooden floor and I thought of the night you sailed away. I closed my eyes and tried to think of ways we might be reconciled; I could not think of one. Fifth Day A light appeared and I thought the dawn had come. But the light was in the mirror and became brighter the closer I moved. You were staring at me. I watched you until morning but you never spoke. Sixth Day It was in the afternoon but I was sure there was moonlight trapped under the plates. You were standing outside the window, saying, "Lift them up." When I lifted them up the sea was dark, the wind was from the west, and you were gone. Seventh Day I went for a walk late at night wondering whether you would come back. The air was warm and the odor of roses made me think of the day you appeared in my room, in a pool of light. Soon the moon would rise and I hoped you would come. In the meantime I thought of the old stars falling and the ashes of one thing and another. I knew that I would be scattered among them, that the dream of light would continue without me, for it was never my dream, it was yours. And it was clear in the dark of the seventh night that my time would come soon. I looked at the hill, I looked out over the calm water. Already the moon was rising and you were here. Mark Strand, The Georgia Review Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer 1975), pp. 363-365

We are already acquainted with the phenomena of the growing sensitiveness of conscience. We know how we come to see sin, where we saw none before, and what a feeling of insecurity about the past that new vision has often given us. Yet death is a sudden stride into the light. Even in our General Confessions, the past was discernible in a kind of soft twilight; now it will be dragged out into unsheltered splendour. The dawn of the judgment, mere dawn though it will be, is brighter than any terrestrial noon; and it is a light which magnifies more than any human microscope. There lie fifty crowded years, or more. O, such an interminable-seeming waste of life, with actions piled on actions, and all swarming with minutest incredible life, and an element of eternity in every nameless moving point of that teeming wilderness! How colossal will appear the sins we know of, so gigantic now that we hardly know them again! How big our little sins! How full of malice our faults that seemed but half-sins, if they were sins at all. Then again, the forgotten sins, who can count them? Who believed they were half so many or half so serious? The unsuspected sins, and the sinfulness of our many ignorances, and the deliberateness of our indeliberations, and the rebellions of our self-will, and the culpable recklessness of our precipitations, and the locust-swarms of our thought-peopled solitudes, and the incessant persevering cataracts of our poisoned tongues, and the inconceivable arithmetic of our multiplied omissions—and a great solid neglected grace lying by the side of each one of these things—and each one of them as distinct, and quiet, and quietly compassed, and separately contemplated, and overpoweringly light-girdled, in the mind of God, as if each were the grand sole truth of His self-sufficing unity! Who will dare to think that such a past will not be a terrific pain, a light from which there is no terrified escape? Or who will dare to say that his past will not look such to him, when he lies down to die? Surely it would be death itself to our entrapped and amazed souls, if we did not see the waters of the great flood rising far off, and sweeping onward with noiseless, but resistless, inundation, the billows of that Red Sea of our salvation, which takes away the sins of the world, and under which all those Egyptians of our own creation, those masters whom we ourselves appointed over us, with their living hosts, their men, their horses, their chariots, and their incalculable baggage, will look in the morning- light of eternity, but a valley of sunlit waters.

You will surely forget your trouble, recalling it only as waters gone by. Life will be brighter than noonday, and darkness will become like morning. —Job 11:16–17

Not a mark on her. Only—light. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes brighter than they’d been this morning. “I’m sorry I missed dinner,” was all she said. His reply was low, guttural. “Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?

Don't leave. If you had any idea... any idea how much I want you here, Alice, that most nights I lie awake half crazy with it... I love you. Have done since the first day I laid eyes on you. When you're not around me it feels like I'm just wasting time. When you're here it's like... the whole world is colored just that little bit brighter. I want to feel your skin against mine. I want to see your smile and hear that laugh of yours when you forget yourself and just let it burst straight out of you... I want to make you happy... I want to wake up every morning beside you and -- and -- and you're married. And I'm trying real hard to be a good man. So until I can work a way around that, I can't. I just can't lay a finger on you. Now how I want to. All I can give you, Alice, is... words.

It was precisely that optimism, however, that would earn Reagan the admiration of one of his successors, Barack Obama. One might be tempted to attribute the unrelenting faith in the future shared by the Illinois native Reagan and the Chicago transplant Obama to something in the Prairie State ground. But if there is something in the Illinois soil, then that something has spread to the other forty-nine United States, for Reagan and Obama are hardly alone in their outlooks. Reagan could earn a second term by promising that it was “morning in America,” because members of the electorate were susceptible to the idea that their country’s best days lay ahead and would only get brighter. Obama could secure another four years for himself by pledging to take the United States “forward,” because that is where the American people wanted to be.

He had made a very profitable killing on a certain trip which he took to Madeira, but coming back overland from Lisbon a sylph-like blonde detained him too long in Paris, and he woke up one morning to find that he was a full twenty pounds short of his fare to New York. He set out for London with this pressing need of capital absorbing his mind, and

The Beginning 1In the beginning God made from nothing the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was an empty waste and darkness was over the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was moving over the top of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good. He divided the light from the darkness. 5 Then God called the light day, and He called the darkness night. There was evening and there was morning, one day. 6 Then God said, “Let there be an open space between the waters. Let it divide waters from waters.” 7 God made the open space, and divided the waters under the open space from the waters above the open space. And it was so. 8 Then God called the open space Heaven. There was evening and there was morning, the second day. 9 Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place. Let the dry land be seen.” And it was so. 10 Then God called the dry land Earth. He called the gathering of the waters Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 Then God said, “Let plants grow from the earth, plants that have seeds. Let fruit trees grow on the earth that bring their kind of fruit with their own seeds.” And it was so. 12 Plants grew out of the earth, giving their own kind of seeds. Trees grew with their fruit, and their kind of seeds. And God saw that it was good. 13 There was evening and there was morning, the third day. 14 Then God said, “Let there be lights in the open space of the heavens to divide day from night. Let them tell the days and years and times of the year. 15 Let them be lights in the open space of the heavens to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 Then God made the two great lights, the brighter light to

The great forge produces mountains and waters, Containing therein the potential of creation. In the morning, greet the energy of the sun; At night, inhale the vitality of the moon. In time the elixir can be culled; With the years, the body naturally lightens. Where the original spirit comes and goes, Myriad apertures emit radiant light. Before our body existed, One energy was already there. Like jade, more lustrous as it's polished, Like gold, brighter as it's refined. Sweep clear the ocean of birth and death, Stay firm by the door of total mastery. A particle at the point of open awareness, The gentle firing is warm

Things look much brighter in the morning.

THE OLD CAR WAS SUNK TO THE BUMPERS WHEN I DISCOVERED IT, but my first thought was how good it would be to sleep in there and hear the rain drumming on steel rather than splattering against our tattered old tarp. I was Maggie back then. Maggie, the name my parents gave me. A nice name. But these weren’t nice times. We were tired and hungry, and the GreyDevil bonfires were burning brighter and the solar bear howls were getting closer, and every morning as I strapped my SpitStick across my back and set out to scavenge, I found myself thinking I needed a better name. A stronger name. I mean, the name Maggie was fine, it just seemed kinda underpowered. So when I scrubbed the moss from the side of that old car overlooking Goldmine Gully and saw the chrome letters—Ford Falcon—I climbed up on the hood and stood there with my steel-toed boots planted wide and I wedged my fists on my hips and I announced that Maggie was yesterday, and from this day forward I would answer only to Ford Falcon. Ford, because we had a lot of rivers to cross. Falcon, because, well, if you have a lot of rivers to cross, a pair of wings can’t hurt, and then once you get across the river it’s likely you will need sharp eyes and an even sharper beak. Yes. I know. I named myself after an old dead car. Worse yet, it’s not even a cool car. It’s a station wagon. Station wagons were how parents hauled kids around during the time between covered wagons and minivans. These days you won’t see a minivan unless it’s being pulled by a horse, and even horses are hard to come by. But if you see me you will know me because I wear a vest made from the hide of a beast that tried to kill me and lost. I skinned that beast myself, and also I skinned the lettering from that old dead car and stitched it to the vest across my shoulder blades using copper wire so that in polished chrome the world can read my name and know it: Ford Falcon.

The day, with all its pain ahead, is yours. The ceaseless creasing of the morning sea, the fluttering gamboge cedar leaves allegro, the rods of the yawning branches trolling the breeze, the rusted meadows, the wind-whitened grass, the coos of the stone-colored ground doves on the road, the echo of benediction on a house – its rooms of pain, its verandah of remorse when joy lanced through its open-hearted doors like a hummingbird out to the garden and the pool in which the sky has fallen. These are all yours, and pain has made them brighter as absence does after a death, as the light heals the grass.

She brought him into a quarter of the city that was full of small gardens and parks, the houses modest yet well kept. Firmly middle-class. It reminded him a bit of Rifthold and yet … Cleaner. Brighter. Even with the streets so quiet this morning, it teemed with life.