Calf Love Quotes

Calf love doesn't usually survive amputation, Your Majesty.

Now we'd known each other for two years, the side of my calf was touching his shins, and his stomach was against my ribs. He said, "I don't think it's end of world to be my girlfriend." I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. It took seven languages to make me; it would be nice if I could have spoken just one.

Cows are exceptionally gentle, loving beings who form strong bonds with their family and friends. Separating any mother from her child, as is routine practise within the dairy industry, inflicts upon both a cruelty beyond words.

Anyway... she's asleep, turned away from me on her side. The usual stratagems and repositionings have failed to induce narcosis in me, so I decide to settle myself against the soft zigzag of her body. As I move and start to nestle my shin against a calf whose muscles are loosened by sleep, she sense what I'm doing, and without waking reaches up with her left hand and pulls the hair off her shoulders on the top of her head, leaving me her bare nape to nestle in. Each time she does this I feel a shudder of love at the exactness of this sleeping courtesy. My eyes prickle with tears, and I have to stop myself from waking her up to remind her of my love. At that moment, unconsciously, she's touched some secret fulcrum of my feelings for her.

So you love her still?" She found herself asking. "Who?" "The vampire. Shamiya." His hand squeezed her calf in gentle reproof."A silly question, cher. You know love cannot survive where there is no light.

In that day the wolf and the lamb will live together; the leopard will lie down with the baby goat. The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion, and a little child will lead them all. —Isaiah 11:6

He keeps looking at me so oddly.” “Oddly? How? Give me an imitation.” Considering that she had only about a second and a half to do it in, I must say it was a jolly fine exhibition. She opened her mouth and eyes pretty wide and let her jaw drop sideways, and managed to look so like a dyspeptic calf that I recognized the symptoms immediately. “Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “No need to be alarmed. He’s simply in love with you.

There was nothing left for me to do, but go. Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-titled streetlight; a frozen clock, a bird visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; towering off one’s clinging shirt post-June rain. Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth. Someone’s kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease. A bloody ross death-red on a platter; a headgetop under-hand as you flee late to some chalk-and-woodfire-smelling schoolhouse. Geese above, clover below, the sound of one’s own breath when winded. The way a moistness in the eye will blur a field of stars; the sore place on the shoulder a resting toboggan makes; writing one’s beloved’s name upon a frosted window with a gloved finger. Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead. Goodbye, I must now say goodbye to all of it. Loon-call in the dark; calf-cramp in the spring; neck-rub in the parlour; milk-sip at end of day. Some brandy-legged dog proudly back-ploughs the grass to cover its modest shit; a cloud-mass down-valley breaks apart over the course of a brandy-deepened hour; louvered blinds yield dusty beneath your dragging finger, and it is nearly noon and you must decide; you have seen what you have seen, and it has wounded you, and it seems you have only one choice left. Blood-stained porcelain bowl wobbles face down on wood floor; orange peel not at all stirred by disbelieving last breath there among that fine summer dust-layer, fatal knife set down in pass-panic on familiar wobbly banister, later dropped (thrown) by Mother (dear Mother) (heartsick) into the slow-flowing, chocolate-brown Potomac. None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them. I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant. Goodbye goodbye good-

I recall how I suspected at the time that my young friend was indulging in her first bout of calf love.

They say men fall three times. First is calf love. Second is the one you marry. John And third? Jane Third. . . Third is your deathbed bride

So long as the love, even the smallest, of man toward woman is not destroyed, so long is his mind in bondage as the calf that drinks milk is to his mother. —Translated by F. Max Müller

I sit on the bed and kick off my shoes, and he kneels before me and takes the riding boots, holding one open for my bare foot. I hesitate; it is such an intimate gesture between a young woman and a man. His smiling upward glance tells me that he understands my hesitation but is ignoring it. I point my toe and he holds the boot, I slide my foot in and he pulls the boot over my calf. He takes the soft leather ties and fastens the boot, at my ankle, then at my calf, and then just below my knee. He looks up at me, his hand gently on my toe. I can feel the warmth of his hand through the soft leather. I imagine my toes curling in pleasure at his touch. ‘Anne, will you marry me?’ he asks simply, as he kneels before me.

Any objection to the carryings on of our present golden-calf Christianity is met with the triumphant reply, "But we are winning them!" And winning them to what? To true discipleship? To cross-carrying? To self-denial? To separation from the world? To crucifixion of the flesh? To holy living? To nobility of character? To a despising of the world's treasures? To hard self-discipline? To love for God? To total committal to Christ? Of course the answer to all these questions is no.

He closed his eyes. The insides of his eyelids were a brownish black, not at all the same as the thick purple of the night. Darkness had so many colors. It was strange, that, and perhaps a little disquieting. But— ―Oh!‖ A foot slammed into his left calf, and he opened his eyes just in time to see a woman tumbling backward. Right onto his blanket. He smiled. The gods still loved him.

It is never of the least use to be snide to boys suffering from calf-love: they seem to take it as a challenge. The only thing to do is be polite and elder-sisterly, and hope that they recover quickly.

who can describe beauty? The reader may smile at this as the far-off echo of a precocious calf love, but he will be wrong. There are beauties so unambiguous that they need no lens of that kind to reveal them; they are visible even to the careless and objective eyes of a child.

Rather than fall completely under his spell, she huffed, “I should like to see you submissively fond of your wife. Given your professed opinions, I cannot expect much fondness from you as a husband, can I?”   “Fondness, yes. Ridiculous, romantic, calf-eyed love, no, you may not,” he confirmed. “But when I am fond, Bess, I am very fond.

Rachel got up and did this happy little shuffle, like she was some cheerful farmer chick who'd just stepped outside to find the hick she was in love with coming up the road with a calf under his arm or whatever. Why was she dancing? No reason. Just alive, I guess.

A quiet but indomitable voice behind me said, “I believe this is my dance.” It was Ren. I could feel his presence. The warmth of him seeped into my back, and I quivered all over like spring leaves in a warm breeze. Kishan narrowed his eyes and said, “I believe it is the lady’s choice.” Kishan looked down at me. I didn’t want to cause a scene, so I simply nodded and removed my arms from his neck. Kishan glared at his replacement and stalked angrily off the dance floor. Ren stepped in front of me, took my hands gently in his, and placed them around his neck, bringing my face achingly close to his. Then he slid his hands slowly and deliberately over my bare arms and down my sides, until they encircled my waist. He traced little circles on my exposes lower back with his fingers, squeezed my waist, and drew my body up tightly against him. He guided me expertly through the slow dance. He didn’t say anything, at least not with words, but he was still sending lots of signals. He pressed his forehead against mine and leaned down to nuzzle my ear. He buried his face in my hair and lifted his hand to stroke down the length of it. His fingers played along my bare arm and at my waist. When the song ended, it took both of us a min to recover our senses and remember where we were. He traced the curve of my bottom lip with his finger then reached up to take my hand from around his neck and led me outside to the porch. I thought he would stop there, but he headed down the stairs and guided me to a wooded area with stone benches. The moon made his skin glow. He was wearing a white shirt with dark slacks. The white made me think of him as the tiger. He pulled me under the shadow of a tree. I stood very still and quiet, afraid that if I spoke I’d say something I’d regret. He cupped my chin and tilted my face up so he could look in my eyes. “Kelsey, there’s something I need to say to you, and I want you to be silent and listen.” I nodded my head hesitantly. “First, I want to let you know that I heard everything you said to me the other night, and I’ve been giving your words some very serious thought. It’s important for you to understand that.” He shifted and picked up a lock of hair, tucked it behind my ear, and trailed his fingers down my cheek to my lips. He smiled sweetly at me, and I felt the little love plant bask in his smile and turn toward it as if it contained the nourishing rays of the sun. “Kelsey,” he brushed a hand through his hair, and his smile turned into a lopsided grin, “the fact is…I’m in love with you, and I have been for some time.” I sucked in a deep breath. He picked up my hand and played with my fingers. “I don’t want you to leave.” He began kissing my fingers while looking directly into my eyes. It was hypnotic. He took something out of his pocket. “I want to give you something.” He held out a golden chain covered with small tinkling bell charms. “It’s an anklet. They’re very popular here, and I got this one so we’d never have to search for a bell again.” He crouched down, wrapping his hand around the back of my calf, and then slid his palm down to my ankle and attached the clasp. I swayed and barely stopped myself from falling over. He trailed his warm fingers lightly over the bells before standing up. Putting his hands on my shoulders, he squeezed, and pulled me closer. “Kells . . . please.” He kissed my temple, my forehead, and my cheek. Between each kiss, he sweetly begged, “Please. Please. Please. Tell me you’ll stay with me.” When his lips brushed lightly against mine, he said, “I need you,” then crushed his lips against mine.

Between the onion and the parsley, therefore, I shall give the summation of my case for paying attention. Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences. It can cost him time and effort, but it pays handsomely. If an hour can be spent on one onion, think how much regarding it took on the part of that old Russian who looked at onions and church spires long enough to come up with St. Basil's Cathedral. Or how much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the inside of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses and the juice of pine trees to realize he could turn them all into the first fiddle. No doubt his wife urged him to get up and do something useful. I am sure that he was a stalwart enough lover of things to pay no attention at all to her nagging; but how wonderful it would have been if he had known what we know now about his dawdling. He could have silenced her with the greatest riposte of all time: Don't bother me; I am creating the possibility of the Bach unaccompanied sonatas. But if man's attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly. Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him - every time he substitutes a conceit for a fact - he gets grease all over the kitchen of the world. Reality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol. Things must be met for themselves. To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods - to make them too important, and therefore to make them unimportant altogether. Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things. They made a calf in Horeb; thus they turned their Glory into the similitude of a calf that eateth hay. Bad enough, you say. Ah, but it was worse than that. Whatever good may have resided in the Golden Calf - whatever loveliness of gold or beauty of line - went begging the minute the Israelites got the idea that it was their savior out of the bondage of Egypt. In making the statue a matter of the greatest point, they missed the point of its matter altogether.

She straightened and crossed her arms. “I can’t sleep with you,” she blurted. … “As you please.” “As you please?” She stepped back, the rough wood of the bench bumping her upper calf. She’d braced herself for a battle and now felt oddly deflated. “You aren’t going to try to talk me into it?” “I need not talk women into lying with me.

She took refuge in her newborn son. she had felt him leave her body with a sensation of relief at freeing herself from something that did not belong to her and she had been horrified at herself when she confirmed that she did not feel the slightest affection for that calf from her womb the midwife showed her in the raw, smeared with grease and blood and with the umbilical cord rolled around his neck. But in her lonliness in the palace she learned to know him, they learned to know each other, and she discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but becuase of the friendship formed while raising them.

William Shakespeare: I have a wife, yes, and I cannot marry the daughter of Sir Robert De Lesseps. You needed no wife come from Stratford to tell you that, and yet, you let me come to your bed. Viola De Lesseps: Calf-love. I loved the writer and gave up the prize for a sonnet.

Humor, drama, romance, whatever genre of entertainment you create or consume is only effective if it is challenging to your sensibilities. When the sexuality of seeing a woman’s ankles became trumped by her calf, society changed. When the calf was later trumped by a woman offering shots of alcohol from her vagina on Rock of Love, society changed again. My hope for this world is that we can soon run out of shocking body parts and can finally see the humor in our ætheric bodies.

I have a birthmark on my calf that mimics the shape of a closed-mouth kiss. Most days, it is a reminder that I was built for love.

There is a level of reasoning within us when we decide which golden calf we’ll love on any given day.

An old woman and a newborn calf. Wretched little me, still containing multitudes.

On Women: "What do you mean?" Martin asked curiously, passing him a glass. "Here, down this and be good." "Because–" Brissenden sipped his toddy and smiled appreciation of it. "Because of the women. They will worry you until you die, as they have already worried you, or else I was born yesterday. Now there's no use choking me; I'm going to have my say. This is undoubtedly your calf love; but for Beauty's sake show better taste next time. What under heaven do you want with a daughter of the bourgeoisie? Leave them alone. Pick out some great, wanton flame of a woman, who laughs at life and jeers at death and loves one while she may. There are such women, and they will love you just as readily as any pusillanimous product of bourgeois-sheltered life.

I lick my lips as his teeth nibble on my earlobe. Between my muscles melting under his touch, my blood tingling with the teasing of my ear and the way my foot rubs against his calf, my thoughts become hazy. My shirt rides up and Isaiah rubs his thumb in small circles on the bare skin of my stomach. The sensation causes me to arch my back and Isaiah groans as I kiss his neck. I like these feelings. Actually, I more than like them. They’re addicting, and I love how every little thing I do causes Isaiah to kiss and touch me more. He rolls and I move with him. Our tangled legs become unraveled as my thighs fall open, accepting his weight. Isaiah’s body over mine is heavier than I would have imagined, but it’s a weight I craved without knowing it. Isaiah kisses up my neck and when his lips meet mine again, he rocks his hips. Suddenly very aware parts of him are touching very aware parts of me, and my head falls to the side as a new sensation spikes through my body.

The niggling idea of what she would do as Ray grew older and her husband worked increasingly long hours crept up the inside of her foot and along her calf to the back of her knee and began to climb into her lap

People talk of calf-love with wistful disdain, but mine was as intense as any emotion I knew until I crossed the frontier, years later, when I discovered that all loving is a loving of life in the midst of death.

Touch" You are already asleep. I lower myself in next to you, my skin slightly numb with the restraint of habits, the patina of self, the black frost of outsideness, so that even unclothed it is a resilient chilly hardness, a superficially malleable, dead rubbery texture. You are a mound of bedclothes, where the cat in sleep braces its paws against your calf through the blankets, and kneads each paw in turn. Meanwhile and slowly I feel a is it my own warmth surfacing or the ferment of your whole body that in darkness beneath the cover is stealing bit by bit to break down that chill. You turn and hold me tightly, do you know who I am or am I your mother or the nearest human being to hold on to in a dreamed pogrom. What I, now loosened, sink into is an old big place, it is there already, for you are already there, and the cat got there before you, yet it is hard to locate. What is more, the place is not found but seeps from our touch in continuous creation, dark enclosing cocoon round ourselves alone, dark wide realm where we walk with everyone.

I wonder if you really love me. Do you?” “Yeah.” “Do you think you can say it?” “I will sometime. Not on the bus.” “You don’t mind saying it in a song, why can’t you say it talking?” “A song is different. You’re just singing a song there.” “It’s not hard for people who really mean it to say it.” “It is if somebody’s trying to make you say it. When somebody gets your arm around behind you and wants to make you say ‘calf rope,’ well, you don’t want to say it then.

The term given to the way babies are brought up in elephant herds is allomothering, a fancy word for “It takes a village.” Like everything else, there is a biological reason to allow your sisters and aunts to help you parent: When you have to feed on 150 kilograms of food a day and you have a baby that loves to explore, you can’t run after him and get all the nutrition you need to make milk for him. Allomothering also allows young cows to learn how to take care of a baby, how to protect a baby, how to give a baby the time and space it needs to explore without putting it in danger. So theoretically you could say an elephant has many mothers. And yet there is a special and inviolable bond between the calf and its birth mother. In the wild, a calf under the age of two will not survive without its mother. In the wild, a mother’s job is to teach her daughter everything she will need to know to become a mother herself. In the wild, a mother and daughter stay together until one of them dies.

I've always been his favorite." "Is that so?" Lazily Shelby folded her arms behind her head. She could picture him as a boy,seeing beyond what other boys saw and storing it. "Why?" "If I weren't modest,I'd confess that I was always a well-mannered, even-tempered child who never gave my parents a moment's trouble." "Liar," she said easily. "How'd you get the broken nose?" The grin became rueful. "Rena punched me." "Your sister broke your nose?" Shelby burst out with delighted and unsympathetic laughter. "The blackjack dealer, right? Oh,I love it!" Alan caught Shelby's nose between two fingers and gave it a quick twist. "It was rather painful at the time." "I imagine." She kept right on laughing as he shifted to her side. "Did she make a habit of beating you up?" "She didn't beat me up," he corrected with some dignity. "She was trying to beat Caine up because he'd teased her about making calf's eyes at one of his friends." "Typical brotherly intimidation." "In any event," Alan put in mildly, "I went to drag her off him,she took another swing,missed him, and hit me. A full-power roundhouse,as I remember. That's when," he continued as Shelby gave another peal of laughter, "I decided against being a diplomat. It's always the neutral party that gets punched in the face." "I'm sure..." Shelby dropped her head on his shoulder. "I'm sure she was sorry." "Initially.But as I recall, after I'd stopped bleeding and threatening to kill both her and Caine, her reaction as a great deal like yours." "Insensitive." Shelby ran apologetic kisses over his face. "Poor baby. Tell you what, I'll do penance and see about fixing you breakfast.

A cowboy is someone who loves his work. Since the hours are long—ten to fifteen hours a day—and the pay is $30 he has to. What's required of him is an odd mixture of physical vigor and maternalism. His part of the beef-raising industry is to birth and nurture calves and take care of their mothers. For the most part his work is done on horseback and in a lifetime he sees and comes to know more animals than people. The iconic myth surrounding him is built on American notions of heroism: the index of a man's value as measured in physical courage. Such ideas have perverted manliness into a self-absorbed race for cheap thrills. In a rancher's world, courage has less to do with facing danger than with acting spontaneously—usually on behalf of an animal or another rider. If a cow is stuck in a bog hole he throws a loop around her neck, takes his dally (a half hitch around the saddle horn), and pulls her out with horsepower. If a calf is born sick, he may take her home, warm her in front of the kitchen fire, and massage her legs until dawn. One friend, whose favorite horse was trying to swim a lake with hobbles on, dove under water and cut her legs loose with a knife, then swam her to shore, his arm around her neck lifeguard-style, and saved her from drowning. Because these incidents are usually linked to someone or something outside himself, the westerner's courage is selfless, a form of compassion.

I am nine. We are bored and Karen is dying. We drove to Austin that summer so Sarah's dad- who described Karen as /the great and impossible love/ of his life, who taught us the word /lymphoma/ and then, the concept of the prefix, how it explains where the tumor lives- could say goodbye. The house is a rind spooned out by the onset of death, what's left in the medicine cabinet full of razors & we are hungry & alone & sitting on the living room floor where the light from a naked window slices the hardwood like a melon, brandishes each, individualfuzz on my scabbed calf a field of erect, yellow poppies & we have been alive as girls long enough to know to scowl at this reveal & what better time than now to practice removal. Once, I watched my mother skin a potato in six perfect strokes I remember this as Sarah teaches me to prop up my leg on the side of the tub and runs the blade along my thing, /See?/ she says, /Isn't that so much better?/ Before we left Albuquerque her father warned us, /She will have no hair/ a trait we have just begun to admire except, of course for the hair he is talking about we hold against our necks, that which will get us compliments or scouted in a mall, eventually cut off by our envious sisters while we sleep.

There is no universally valid idea from which man has not woven a rope to bind his own feet, and if possible, the feet of others as well, so that the free product of his creativity becomes a punitive power over him; no true, genuine relationship between people which they have not turned into mutual enslavement. Love, friendship, tribal loyalty, and finally even love of freedom have served as inexhaustible sources of moral oppression and servitude.... Humans are eternally on their knees before one or the other - the golden calf or duty imposed from outside.... It doesn't enter their heads that there is also something within them worthy of respect.

The soil from which all sin grows is unbelief. We sin because it is our nature to do so, but it’s not as if we always sin unintentionally, like depraved robots without the ability to behave according to reason. We are thoughtful with our rebellion. There is a level of reasoning within us when we decide which golden calf we’ll love on any given day.

I've learned that God sometimes allows us to find ourselves in a place where we want something so bad that we can't see past it. Sometimes we can't even see God because of it. When we want something so bad, it's easy to mistake what we truly need for the thing we really want. When this sort of thing happens, and it seems to happen to everyone, I've found it's because what God has for us is obscured from view, just around another bend in the road. In the Bible, the people following God had the same problem I did. They swapped the real thing for an image of the real thing. We target the wrong thing and our misdirected life's goal ends up looking like a girl or a wide-brimmed hat or a golden calf. All along, what God really wants for us is something much different, something more tailored for us. [...] And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don't think it looks like a series of folded-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead I think we'll conclude in the end that maybe we're all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better.

They came to a destroyed cabin and he pulled up and then went inside. Broken cups and pieces of dress material torn on a nail. A doll’s body without a head. He dug a .50-caliber bullet out of the wall with his knife and then carefully placed it on the windowsill as if for a memento. Here were memories, loves, deep heartstring notes like the place where he had been raised in Georgia. Here had been people whose dearest memories were the sound of a dipper dropped in the water bucket after taking a drink and the click of it as it hit bottom. The quiet of evening. The shade of the Devil’s trumpet vine over a window, scattered shadows gently hypnotic. The smell of a new calf, a long bar of sun falling into the back door over worn planks and every knot outlined. The familiar path to the barn walked for years by one’s father, grandfather, uncles, the way they called out, Horses, horses. How they swung the bucket by the handle as they went at an easy walk down the path between the trees, between here and there, between babyhood and adulthood, between innocence and death, that worn path and the lifting of the heart as the horses called out to you, how you knew each by the sound of its voice in the long cool evening after a day of hard work. Your heart melted sweetly, it slowed, lost its edges. Horses, horses. All gone in the burning.

Were men's knees supposed to be sexy? Their calves? One sight of Lucian's bony knee, delineated muscled thigh, and hard calf, lightly dusted with dark curling hair, made me want to reach out and stroke his leg, creep my hand under those shorts to cup what I knew would be firm and meaty and... damn. Keeping my hands to myself and my mind out of his pants was going to be difficult. Which was weird; I loved men and sex, but I'd never been preoccupied by either. Until him.

There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown-paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles disinterred. Valentin was a skeptic in the severe style of France, and could have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, and this one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real silver "with blue stones" in one of his brown-paper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels, and came back for his umbrella.

Everything the Kiowas had came from the buffalo.… Most of all, the buffalo was part of the Kiowa religion. A white buffalo calf must be sacrificed in the Sun Dance. The priests used parts of the buffalo to make their prayers when they healed people or when they sang to the powers above. So, when the white men wanted to build railroads, or when they wanted to farm or raise cattle, the buffalo still protected the Kiowas. They tore up the railroad tracks and the gardens. They chased the cattle off the ranges. The buffalo loved their people as much as the Kiowas loved them. There was war between the buffalo and the white men. The white men built forts in the Kiowa country, and the woolly-headed buffalo soldiers shot the buffalo as fast as they could, but the buffalo kept coming on, coming on, even into the post cemetery at Fort Sill. Soldiers were not enough to hold them back. Then the white men hired hunters to do nothing but kill the buffalo. Up and down the plains those men ranged, shooting sometimes as many as a hundred buffalo a day. Behind them came the skinners with their wagons. They piled the hides and bones into the wagons until they were full, and then took their loads to the new railroad stations that were being built, to be shipped east to the market. Sometimes there would be a pile of bones as high as a man, stretching a mile along the railroad track. The buffalo saw that their day was over. They could protect their people no longer.

His antipasto was the classic Roman fritto misto---tiny morsels of mixed offal, including slivers of poached brains and liver, along with snails, artichokes, apples, pears, and bread dipped in milk, all deep-fried in a crisp egg-and-bread-crumb batter. This was to be followed by a primo of rigatoni alla pajata---pasta served with intestines from a baby calf so young that they were still full of its mother's milk, simmered with onions, white wine, tomatoes, cloves, and garlic. For the secondo they would be having milza in umido--- a stewed lamb's spleen, cooked with sage, anchovies, and pepper. A bitter salad of puntarelle al' acciuga---chicory sprouts with anchovy---would cleanse the palate, to be followed by a simple dolce of fragole in aceto, gorella strawberries in vinegar.

9:20 Reversing Impending Judgment, INTERCESSION. Aaron had made the gold calf for the people to worship, and God had promised the judgment of death on him. As a result of Moses’ intercession, Aaron’s life was spared. Never underestimate the possibility of a reversal of God’s judgment through a loving intercessor. Is there a more awesome role? It has happened in the Bible and numbers of times since. Take note how the early disciples prayed during the night for Peter when he was in prison. It resulted in an escape with an angelic escort (Acts 12:7–12). Prepare to pay a price in intercession when friends or leaders are in crisis situations. We are to always pray for the seemingly impossible and never to limit God’s ability or minimize the effectiveness of our partnership with Him in prayer.

You, my dear, do not know how to have fun." "I do, too!" "You do not. You are as bad as Lucien. And do you know something? I think it's time someone showed you how to have fun. Namely, me. You can worry all you like about our situation tomorrow, but tonight ... tonight I'm going to make you laugh so hard that you'll forget all about how afraid of me you are." "I am not afraid of you!" "You are." And with that, he pushed his chair back, stalked around the table, and in a single easy movement, swept her right out of her chair and into his arms. "Gareth!  Put me down!" He only laughed, easily carrying her toward the bed. "Gareth, I am a grown woman!" "You are a grown woman who behaves in a manner far too old for her years," he countered, still striding toward the bed. "As the wife of a Den member, that just will not do." "Gareth, I don't want — I mean, I'm not ready for that!" "That? Who said anything about that?"  He tossed her lightly onto the bed. "Oh, no, my dear Juliet. I'm not going to do that —" She tried to scoot away. "Then what are you going to do?" "Why, I'm going to wipe that sadness out of your eyes if only for tonight. I'm going to make you forget your troubles, forget your fears, forget everything but me. And you know how I'm going to do that, O dearest wife?"  He grabbed a fistful of her petticoats as she tried to escape. "I'm going to tickle you until you giggle ... until you laugh ... until you're hooting so loudly that all of London hears you!" He fell upon the bed like a swooping hawk, and Juliet let out a helpless shriek as his fingers found her ribs and began tickling her madly. "Stop!  We just ate!  You'll make me sick!" "What's this? Your husband makes you sick?" "No, it's just that — aaaoooooo!" He tickled her harder. She flailed and giggled and cried out, embarrassed about each loud shriek but helpless to prevent them. He was laughing as hard as she. Catching one thrashing leg, he unlaced her boot and deftly removed it. She yelped as his fingers found the sensitive instep, and she kicked out reflexively. He neatly ducked just in time to avoid having his nose broken, catching her by the ankle and tickling her toes, her soles, her arch through her stockings. "Stop, Gareth!"  She was laughing so hard, tears were streaming from her eyes. "Stop it, damn it!" Thank goodness Charlotte, worn out by her earlier tantrum, was such a sound sleeper! The tickling continued. Juliet kicked and fought, her struggles tossing the heavy, ruffled petticoats and skirts of her lovely blue gown halfway up her thigh to reveal a long, slender calf sheathed in silk. She saw his gaze taking it all in, even as he made a grab for her other foot. "No!  Gareth, I shall lose my supper if you keep this up, I swear it I will — oooahhhhh!" He seized her other ankle, yanked off the remaining boot, and began torturing that foot as well, until Juliet was writhing and shrieking on the bed in a fit of laughter. The tears streamed down her cheeks, and her stomach ached with the force of her mirth. And when, at last, he let up and she lay exhausted across the bed in a twisted tangle of skirts, petticoats, and chemise, her chest heaving and her hair in a hopeless tumbled-down flood of silken mahogany beneath her head, she looked up to see him grinning down at her, his own hair hanging over his brow in tousled, seductive disarray.

Muhammad once was talking to a crowd of chieftains, princes with great influence, when a poor blind man interrupted him. Muhammad frowned and said to the man, "Let me attend to these visitors. This is a rare chance, whereas you are already my friend. We'll have ample time." Then somebody nearby said, "That blind man may be worth a hundred kings. Remember the proverb, Human beings are mines." World-power means nothing. Only the unsayable, jeweled inner life matters. Muhammad replied, "Do not think that I'm concerned with being acknowledged by these authorities. If a beetle moves toward rosewater, it proves that the solution is diluted. Beetles love dung, not rose essence. If a coin is eager to be tested by the touchstone, that coin itself may be a touchstone. A thief loves the night. I am day. I reveal essences. A calf thinks God is a cow. A donkey's theology changes when someone new pets it and gives it what it wants. I am not a cow, or thistles for camels to browse on. People who insult me are only polishing the mirror

It’ll Get Worse Before It Gets Worse" For Alexander Moysaenko The black heart of the moon’s visible through the trees from here. Where are you? I’m alone on the road with a dead phone. The birds are flapping overhead but there’s not much light to be guided by. If any horizon becomes visible enough to follow. Forget the rain’s smear, the chafe of fabric at the calf. The money ran out. The diners are stuffed and back for more. Each terrible thing I said to the child will get repeated hopefully as a joke. And like language, these gestures, or a certain way of nodding one’s head, it all eases in with less than a breath. Forget the song’s words, the order of the band’s set tonight. The black moon’s heart’s got that sinister bent and I want to get touched at by the snakes. One of the students in my class used to go bear hunting with his two uncles. They played recordings of distressed animals to lure in tentative animals to kill. This practice is illegal in many places. Because it’s so very effective. I split open the apple and hand the good half to a child on the bus nestled in under the arm of her sleeping mother. Love from here is a long way to go. Get on your bike and ride through the lights. Poetry (March 2019)

He was taller than Kay, which gave him just the geometric extent to wholly wrap her back. He could honestly say that he could not remember ever lying around her, beside her, or intertwined with her in a position that was slightly uncomfortable—that was, in fact, anything short of sumptuous. The earthy tones of his wife’s natural scent hit a descant note of sweetness, and featured the same subtle complexity that Kay savoured in red wine; thus he loved nothing better than nestling a cheek on her shoulder to inhale at the base of her neck, where the heady smell was distilled. She didn’t snore, but she did have an endearing habit of talking as she dreamt, which helped convey that the shifting and realigning of their bodies during the night were a form of conversation. Their sleep was best in winter and constituted the most winning aspect of the season (in comparison, sod Christmas), when they lowered the thermostat to 12°C and doubled the duvets, the air sharp and fresh in their lungs, their bodies in due course so indolently warm that it felt almost criminal. An instep cooled outside the duvet would slip bracingly against his calf; a hand warmed under the pillow would cup the side of his neck, making him feel not only safe and beloved, but more profoundly and perfectly present in the single beating moments of his life than he ever felt during the day.

authority. What we face now is the “sinner’s prayer.” And I am here to tell you, if there is anything I have declared war on, it is the sinner’s prayer. Yes, in the same way that dependence upon infant baptism for salvation,[29] in my opinion, was the golden calf [30] of the Reformation, the sinner’s prayer is the golden calf of today for the Baptists, the Evangelicals, and everyone else who has followed them. The sinner’s prayer has sent more people to hell than anything on the face of the earth! You say, “How can you say such a thing?” I answer: Go with me to Scripture and show me, please! I would love for you to show me where anyone evangelized that way. The Scripture does not tell us that Jesus Christ came to the nation of Israel and said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, now who would like to ask me into their hearts? I see that hand.” That is not what it says. He said, “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mar 1:15)! Men today are trusting in the fact that at least one time in their life they prayed a prayer, and someone told them they were saved because they were sincere enough. And so if you ask them, “Are you saved?” they do not say, “Yes I am, because I am looking unto Jesus and there is mighty evidence giving me assurance of being born again.” No!—they say instead, “One time in my life I prayed a prayer.” Now they live like devils, but they prayed a prayer!

Dr. Syngmann: But someone must have made it all. Don't you think so, John? Pastor Jón: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and so on, said the late pastor Lens. Dr. Syngmann: Listen, John, how is it possible to love God? And what reason is there for doing so? To love, is that not the prelude to sleeping together, something connected with the genitals, at its best a marital tragedy among apes? It would be ridiculous. People are fond of their children, all right, but if someone said he was fond of God, wouldn't that be blasphemy? Pastor Jón once again utters that strange word 'it' and says: I accept it. Dr. Syngmann: What do you mean when you say you accept God? Did you consent to his creating the world? Do you think the world as good as all that, or something? This world! Or are you all that pleased with yourself? Pastor Jón: Have you noticed that the ewe that was bleating outside the window is now quiet? She has found her lamb. And I believe that the calf here in the homefield will pull through. Dr. Syngmann: I know as well as you do, John, that animals are perfect within their limits and that man is the lowest rung in the reverse-evolution of earthly life: one need only compare the pictures of an emperor and a dog to see that, or a farmer and the horse he rides. But I for my part refuse to accept it. Pastor Jón Prímus: To refuse to accept it - what is meant by that? Suicide or something? Dr. Syngmann: At this moment, when the alignment with a higher humanity is at hand, a chapter is at last beginning that can be taken seriously in the history of the earth. Epagogics provide the arguments to prove to the Creator that life is an entirely meaningless gimmick unless it is eternal. Pastor Jón: Who is to bell the cat? Dr. Syngmann: As regards epagogics, it is pleading a completely logical case. In six volumes I have proved my thesis with incontrovertible arguments; even juridically. But obviously it isn't enough to use cold reasoning. I take the liberty of appealing to this gifted Maker's honour. I ask Him - how could it ever occur to you to hand over the earth to demons? The only ideal over which demons can unite is to have a war. Why did you permit the demons of the earth to profess their love to you in services and prayers as if you were their God? Will you let honest men call you demiurge, you, the Creator of the world? Whose defeat is it, now that the demons of the earth have acquired a machine to wipe out all life? Whose defeat is it if you let life on earth die on your hands? Can the Maker of the heavens stoop so low as to let German philosophers give Him orders what to do? And finally - I am a creature you have created. And that's why I am here, just like you. Who has given you the right to wipe me out? Is justice ridiculous in your eyes? Cards on the table! (He mumbles to himself.) You are at least under an obligation to resurrect me!

This Compost" Something startles me where I thought I was safest, I withdraw from the still woods I loved, I will not go now on the pastures to walk, I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea, I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me. O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken? How can you be alive you growths of spring? How can you furnish health you blood of herbs, roots, orchards, grain? Are they not continually putting distemper'd corpses within you? Is not every continent work'd over and over with sour dead? Where have you disposed of their carcasses? Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations? Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat? I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am deceiv'd, I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath, I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat. 2 Behold this compost! behold it well! Perhaps every mite has once form'd part of a sick person—yet behold! The grass of spring covers the prairies, The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden, The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward, The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches, The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves, The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree, The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests, The young of poultry break through the hatch'd eggs, The new-born of animals appear, the calf is dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare, Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato's dark green leaves, Out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards, The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strata of sour dead. What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, That all is clean forever and forever, That the cool drink from the well tastes so good, That blackberries are so flavorous and juicy, That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me, That when I recline on the grass I do not catch any disease, Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease. Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient, It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions, It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas'd corpses, It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor, It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops, It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.

As far as he was concerned, Testaccio, not the Via del Corso or the Piazza del Campidoglio, was the real heart of Rome. For centuries animals had been brought here to be butchered, with the good cuts going to the noblemen in their palazzos and the cardinals in the Vatican. The ordinary people had to make do with what little was left---the so-called quinto quarto, the "fifth quarter" of the animal: the organs, head, feet, and tail. Little osterie had sprung up that specialized in cooking these rejects, and such was the culinary inventiveness of the Romans that soon even cardinals and noblemen were clamoring for dishes like coda all vaccinara, oxtail braised in tomato sauce, or caratella d' abbachio, a newborn lamb's heart, lungs, and spleen skewered on a stick of rosemary and simmered with onions in white wine. Every part of the body had its traditional method of preparation. Zampetti all' aggro were calf's feet, served with a green sauce made from anchovies, capers, sweet onions, pickled gherkins, and garlic, finely chopped, then bound with potato and thinned with oil and vinegar. Brains were cooked with butter and lemon---cervello al limone---or poached with vegetables, allowed to cool, then thinly sliced and fried in an egg batter. Liver was wrapped in a caul, the soft membrane that envelops a pig's intestines, which naturally bastes the meat as it melts slowly in the frying pan. There was one recipe for the thymus, another for the ear, another for the intestines, and another for the tongue---each dish refined over centuries and enjoyed by everyone, from the infant in his high chair to the nonnina, the little grandmother who would have been served exactly the same meal, prepared in the same way, when she herself was a child.

That safe, rational world – without feeling, without love, without patriotism, without passion – is cowardly, and in the end this cowardice brings retreat. It results in the promotion of anti-generals, anti-patriots, who are very much alive, and have climbed into high office. They cannot reflect the sentiments of dead heroes. They are the opposite of heroes. Inwardly hollow, out-of-order, full of lies. Drunk on ideology and socialism. They worship an idol made in their own hollow likeness. These fragmented beings, made of hot air and cardboard, are at odds with themselves, unable to make sense of anything – they are our leaders, our pundits, our professors. Yes, and we have applauded them. We have made love to their Gold Calf.

case. They appeared to be the front legs of a calf starting just above the ankle joint. In the actual MRI, the dogs would be scanned in a sphinx position. Their heads would be upright, supported by a chin rest, and their front paws would be sticking straight forward. Andrew

At the end of that happy summer, Whitepaw came to his full size, as big as a calf, his tawny hair sleek and rich with a dark tingle, his breast white and fluffy, his slender legs remarkably white-tipped, his great, understanding, lively eyes radiant with the love he bore everybody, well-mannered, well-behaved, with a sense of humor as evident as the good-will that glowed all over him.

Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more. At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas. Usually so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three milleniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out. Yet it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction.

We spent twenty days and endured three thousand miles of jolting, pounding, off-road bush driving. But we had a hard-won sense of accomplishment when we pulled up on the stunning cliff-side view of the Great Australian Bight, a huge open bay carved out of the southern coastline. We had made it. Below us, three hundred feet down a sheer rock face, was the Southern Ocean. A pod of southern right whales passed by, their calves following along with them. Steve and I and the crew watched the family dramas of the whales play out below us. A calf felt naughty and went darting away from his mother’s side. Come back, the mother called, come back, come back, you naughty little whale. When she was under the water, we couldn’t hear anything, but as she surfaced we could actually hear the whale song from our perch three hundred feet in the air. Mama scolded the calf, and we saw the young whale come dutifully shooting back over to follow his mother for a while. Sometimes the calf would approach his mama for a drink of milk and nurse for a few minutes. Then he would escape once more, and the whole scenario played itself out all over again. We watched the whales for hours. That night around the campfire, we discussed whaling, how sad and cruel and horrible it was. “If we killed cows the way we killed whales, people wouldn’t stand for it,” Steve said. “Imagine if you drove a truck with a torpedo gun off the back. When you saw a cow you fired at it, and then you either electrocuted it over the course of half an hour or the head of the torpedo blew up inside of it, rendering it unable to walk or move until it finally bled to death.” “We’ve got to get that message out,” I said to Steve. But his idea was to bring the beauty and joy of the whales to people, so that they would naturally fall in love with them and not want to hurt them. He didn’t want to dwell on images that would make people sad and upset. Steve remained thoughtful and silent as the fire died. The ocean sounded against the cliffs below. The games of the whale families played over and over in our minds. In spite of our extensive searching, we never saw a live dingo down the whole line of our journey. It was time to try a different approach. The next morning the helicopter pilot arrived early. Going up with him, Steve actually finally spotted some dingoes from the air. The beautiful, ginger-colored dogs played along the fence, jumping over it or skirting under it with effortless ease.

I came to see if we had any chance of starting over.” I flinched and caught my breath, his audacity slapping me with the force of an open hand. “Start over?” I felt Mama’s face fit over mine like a mask. That haughty look she reserved for those who addressed her in a manner less than respectful. “A fiancée ends things quite thoroughly.” And yet my heart lurched at the thought that he wanted me again. He leaned back in his chair, a tad more confident, it seemed. More like the Arthur I’d fallen in love with. “She and I were thrown together during the quarantine. It wasn’t like I went looking for another woman.” He shrugged. “Besides, with the war over, I’ll be discharged. We can be together much sooner than we thought possible.” “Be together? As in, get married?” Something in his manner alarmed me. I wasn’t sure what. The return of his arrogance, perhaps? Again his gaze skittered away. “Eventually.” The word barbed at my heart. “But you were going to marry her right away, weren’t you? You told me you were engaged.” He stared at the door that led outside. “She didn’t have any reason to wait. You have—” He swatted his hand toward the front of the house, where the children remained quiet. I stiffened. “I have responsibilities at the moment, yes.” “We’d have to wait, then. Until you get rid of them.” My eyebrows lifted. “Get rid of them? What do you mean? Are you saying you don’t want children? Or that you don’t want these children?” “We have our own life to lead, Rebekah. Children would . . . complicate things. Their daddy will be home soon, right? And then you’ll be free. Besides, I don’t remember you being eager for babies before.” I chewed the edge of my fingernail as I considered how to reply. “You’re right. I wasn’t. But things have changed. My mother has been ill. My brother is dying. I haven’t heard back from Fra—the children’s father. But it’s more than that.” My mouth proclaimed words I hadn’t even thought through completely, words that popped from the soil of my heart like green beans on a hot summer day. His mouth opened and shut, smooth words slithering from his grasp. That handsome face. Those deep blue eyes. They’d roped me in like a naïve calf. But I wasn’t as childlike as I’d once been.

Seeing him standing there in his boxers and hoodie with sticking-up hair, one sock pulled up to his calf, the other scrunched around his ankle, and his glasses just a tiny bit skew, my wildly beating heart falls in love with him all over again.

At dusk the four of them stopped en route home to sit on the riverbank under a canopy of cottonwood trees. Loretta hugged her bent knees, gazing at the reflection of leaves and fading sunlight on the water, only half-aware of Amy and Swift Antelope’s chatter. Hunter stretched out beside her, head propped on one hand, his eyes never leaving her. She was acutely conscious of his gaze, and when it started to unnerve her, she finally turned to look at him. Banked embers of passion glowed in his eyes. Smiling, he plucked a blade of grass and feathered it along her arm, reaching up under her loose sleeve. Next he directed his attention to her leg, tracing a circle around the top of her moccasin, grazing the curve of her calf, the back of her thigh beneath her skirt. Loretta’s belly knotted, and delicious shivers coursed down her spine. She felt a blush creeping up her neck. He was deliberately calling to her mind the things he had done to her last night, something a white man would never dream of doing, not in the company of others. Hunter had grown up running wild on the plains with other children, boys and girls alike, garbed in nothing but a string and cloth. She had been stifled by rules of propriety and layer upon layer of muslin. To him, making love was as natural as eating when one was hungry or drinking to slake one’s thirst. He felt no shame, no shyness, no sense of secrecy. I want, I take. It is a very simple thing. It wasn’t simple, though. Not for her.

Smiling, he plucked a blade of grass and feathered it along her arm, reaching up under her loose sleeve. Next he directed his attention to her leg, tracing a circle around the top of her moccasin, grazing the curve of her calf, the back of her thigh beneath her skirt. Loretta’s belly knotted, and delicious shivers coursed down her spine. She felt a blush creeping up her neck. He was deliberately calling to her mind the things he had done to her last night, something a white man would never dream of doing, not in the company of others. Hunter had grown up running wild on the plains with other children, boys and girls alike, garbed in nothing but a string and cloth. She had been stifled by rules of propriety and layer upon layer of muslin. To him, making love was as natural as eating when one was hungry or drinking to slake one’s thirst. He felt no shame, no shyness, no sense of secrecy. I want, I take. It is a very simple thing. It wasn’t simple, though. Not for her. Hunter grew amused, watching Loretta. When she threw him an accusing glance, he noted that her pupils had flared until her irises were almost black. Crimson rode her cheeks, and a rosy flush colored her slender throat. He wondered if her entire body was pink and wish they were alone so he could find out. Soon. Tonight he would build a fire so she couldn’t hide in shadows, and he would learn every inch of her, slowly.

The Last Ride of Grayson “Grady” Hale In the heart of the wild west, under the vast expanse of the azure sky, rode Grayson “Grady” Hale, a cowboy known for his unyielding spirit and his trusty steed, Bess. Grady’s life was woven into the fabric of the frontier, a tapestry of cattle drives, campfire tales, and the pursuit of freedom that only the open range could offer. Grady was born to the saddle, learning to ride before he could walk, and to rope not long after. His father, a seasoned rancher, had instilled in him the values of hard work and respect for the land. Grady’s mother, a woman of strength and grace, taught him the gentle touch needed to soothe a spooked calf or mend a broken wing. As the years passed, Grady’s reputation grew. He wasn’t the fastest gun nor the richest rancher, but he had something more valuable—integrity. Folks from miles around would seek his help when rustlers threatened or when a neighbor needed a hand. Grady never turned his back on those in need, and his word was as solid as the mountains framing the horizon. One fateful day, a telegram arrived, calling Grady to a distant town. A band of outlaws had taken over, and the people were desperate. Grady kissed his wife, Emma, goodbye, promising to return once peace was restored. With Bess beneath him, he rode out, the dust of the trail rising like a storm behind him. The confrontation was inevitable. Grady, with a handful of brave souls, stood against the outlaws. Words were exchanged, and then gunfire. When the smoke cleared, the outlaws were either captured or fled, and the town was saved. But victory came at a cost—Grady had taken a bullet. As he lay there, the townsfolk gathered, their faces etched with concern and gratitude. Grady knew his ride was coming to an end. With his last breath, he whispered a message to be given to Emma, a message of love and a promise kept. Back at the ranch, Emma received the news with a stoic heart. She knew the risks of loving a cowboy, the same risks that made her love him all the more. She gazed out at the sunset, the colors painting the sky like the wildflowers of their meadow. And in that moment, she felt Grady’s presence, like the gentle brush of a breeze, telling her he was home at last. Grady’s tale is one of courage, sacrifice, and the enduring legacy of a cowboy who lived by his own code. His story, like the trails he once rode, winds its way into the legend of the west, reminding us that some spirits are as untameable as the land they love.

Over the next few days, Martha found that “eat-much-less” was even less popular than Petunia’s one question. “Why would we want to eat lots less?” asked one. “Every mouthful less is another mouthful for our young ones.” “Yes,” another responded. “But why would we steal food from ourselves?” Quite a few animals decided to think about it by running off to the feed, since the thought of starving made them hungrier. They didn’t want to leave it too late. Martha thought it strange that no-one liked her eat-much-less idea. Apologies aplenty. After much disappointment, she decided it was pointless. She would have to do it alone. Leave some food for her kin. Starting with herself, not starting with someone else. For her calf that she loved so much.

Here were memories, loves, deep heartstring notes like the place where he had been raised in Georgia. Here had been people whose dearest memories were the sound of a dipper dropped in the water bucket after taking a drink and the click of it as it hit bottom. The quiet of evening. The shade of the Devil’s trumpet vine over a window, scattered shadows gently hypnotic. The smell of a new calf, a long bar of sun falling into the back door over worn planks and every knot outlined. The familiar path to the barn walked for years by one’s father, grandfather, uncles, the way they called out, Horses, horses. How they swung the bucket by the handle as they went at an easy walk down the path between the trees, between here and there, between babyhood and adulthood, between innocence and death, that worn path and the lifting of the heart as the horses called out to you, how you knew each by the sound of its voice in the long cool evening after a day of hard work.

the event of the ‘golden calf ’ stands for love of this-worldly things as objects of worship (v. 51). This event happened soon after the great blessing of Bani Israel’s deliverance from the Pharaoh. The Book and the covenant had yet to come. This love, when it competes with and overwhelms the love for Allah, is the root cause of decadence.

I don’t know.” The cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” Many people today are like that. They have no idea where they are and no clue where they’re going. Their whole lives consist of wandering about aimlessly, without purpose, design, meaning, or significance. It’s one thing to be lost; it’s another to be lost and not know it. When a person is in that state, it is inevitable that they will experience a crisis and realize they have no idea where they are or how they got there. God puts a priority on seeking people like that. After the lost coin and the lost sheep, Jesus turns His attention to people. The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32) is a familiar story, and it’s important to keep the focus where it belongs: not on the lost son, but on the father and his great joy at the repentance and return of the son. When the father sees his son far off, he races down the road and embraces him, kills the fatted calf, gives the signet ring to him, and clothes him with a cloak of honor. As he says to the older brother, “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (v. 32). This parable tells us what God is like. He runs after the lost, and He rejoices when one person is redeemed. That is the mission of the church, and each of us has a responsibility to make sure that the lost are sought and found. We’re not dealing with coins or sheep, and we’re not dealing with dogs or keys. We are dealing with people whom Christ loves. He said so Himself. About the Author Dr. R.C. Sproul was founder of Ligonier Ministries, founding pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., first president of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. His radio program, Renewing Your Mind, is still broadcast daily on hundreds of radio stations around the world and can also be heard online. He was author of more than one hundred books, including The Holiness of God, Chosen by God, and Everyone’s a Theologian. He was recognized throughout the world for his articulate defense of the inerrancy of Scripture and the need for God’s people to stand with conviction upon His Word.

He did not care for a love that would save him alone, and send to the dust those thousands of calf-worshipping brothers and sisters.

The biblical King David was also a sacred shepherd. His sensual and ecstatic songs of earthly love, so untypical of the Bible, derive from the ancient love rites of the shepherd king and the Goddess—her Canaanite names were Asherah, Astarte, Ashtoreth. The settled people of the Old Testament, like everyone else in the Near East, practiced Goddess worship. The Old Testament is the record of the conquest and massacre of these Neolithic people by the nomadic Hebrews, followers of a Sky God, who then set up their biblical God in the place of the ancient Goddess. The biblical Hebrews were a nomadic pastoral and patriarchal people, tribes of sheepherders and warriors who invaded land belonging to the matriarchal Canaanites. Both Hebrews and Canaanites were Semitic people. The Canaanites lived in agricultural communities and worshiped the orgiastic-ecstatic Moon Mother Astarte. As Old Testament stories relate, the Hebrews sacked, burned, and destroyed village after village belonging to the Canaanites, massacring or enslaving the people—a series of brutal invasions and slaughters described typically by theologians and preachers as “a spiritual victory.” In this way the Hebrews established themselves on the land, along with the worship of their Sky-and-Thunder God Yahweh (Jehovah), calling themselves his “chosen people.” Yahweh’s male prophets and priests, however, despite their political victory over the Canaanites, had to carry on a continuous struggle and fulmination against their own people, who kept “backsliding” into worship of the Great Mother, the Goddess of all their Near Eastern neighbors. For she had originally been the Goddess of the Hebrews themselves. This constant fight against matriarchal religion and custom is the primary theme of the Old Testament. It begins in Genesis, with the takeover of the Goddess’s Garden of Immortality by a male God, and the inversion of all her sacred symbols—tree, serpent, moon-fruit, woman—into icons of evil. Of the two sons of Eve and Adam, Cain was made the “evil brother” because he chose settled agriculture (matriarchal)—the “good brother” Abel was a nomadic pastoralist (patriarchal). The war against the Goddess is carried on by the prophets’ rantings against the “golden calf,” the “brazen serpents,” the “great harlot” and “Whore of Babylon” (the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar), against enchantresses, pythonic diviners, and those who practice witchcraft. It is in the prophets’ war against the Canaanite worship of “stone idols”—the Triple Moon Goddess worshiped as three horned pillars, or menhirs. One of her shrines was on Mount Sinai, which means “Mountain of the Moon.” Moses was commanded by “the Lord” to go forth and destroy these “idols”—who all had breasts. We are told monotheism began with the Jews, that it was the great “spiritual invention” of the religious leader Moses. This is not so. The worship of one God, like everything else in religion, began with the worship of the Goddess. Her universality has been duly noted by everyone who has ever studied the matter. “Monotheism, once thought to have been the invention of Moses or Akhnaton, was worldwide in the prehistoric and early historic world,” i.e., throughout the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages. As E. O. James wrote in The Cult of the Mother Goddess, “It seems that Evans was correct when he affirmed that it was a ‘monotheism in which the female form of divinity was supreme.” The original monotheism of the Goddess is perhaps most clearly shown by the fact that, in Elizabeth Gould Davis’s words, “Almighty Yahweh, the god of Moses and the later Hebrews, was originally a goddess.” His name, Iahu ’anat, derives from that of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna.

He was now entirely disillusioned and his whole life shattered. His heart’s devotion had been at Mrs. Dean’s feet, and she had found it trying.

Earlier we discussed the dangers of using your digital space to spout off your complaints. Most of us are more discerning about what we divulge. We reveal what matters to us, what we think about often, what we love and like and hope to see happen soon. These tidbytes of information add up to a body of knowledge that offers clues or even clear windows to our core desires. This knowledge is invaluable where influence in concerned because, like the calf that just wanted more food, we only move toward what moves us.

In the morning sun, I see myself, my true Self I have served you and I have loved you My beloved Soul Who I was yesterday Who I am today and Who I become with the rising sun I rise with you beloved Soul, space within Tell me, whisper in my ear Your truth Tell me, when will the white buffalo come? The prayers, sweetest of dreams of those before us Of all here and now Of those yet to come I look to the sacred four directions Father Sky Mother Earth Together we breathe White buffalo calf woman return, we are ready Past, present, future To usher in new times and new energies Give us signs, show us the way Balance, Miracles We are ready Higher Self Greater forces of the Universe Breathe us forward We wait no longer We are the ones We call upon you White buffalo Higher Self Beloved Soul Secure us in your strength, faith Great will power We breathe We are ready For it is you and it is me We are white buffalo calf woman before you Wait no longer for the other Awaken Feel your great strength In the morning sun We see ourselves, our true Self Beloved, now we dance.

She's not young, but rather in the midst of that last and most confident beauty, like the mother of a schoolmate. You see her emerging from a car, the flash of an elegant calf, and you are tumbled into unbearable love.

The first dishes, carried out on Barroni's exquisite silver platters, were a selection of marzipan fancies, shaped into hearts and silvered; a mostarda of black figs in spiced syrup; skewers of prosciutto marinated in red wine that I had reduced until it was thick and almost black; little frittate with herbs, each covered with finely sliced black truffles; whole baby melanzane, simmered in olive oil, a recipe I had got from a Turkish merchant I had met in the bathhouse. I set about putting the second course together. I heated two kinds of biroldi, blood sausages: one variety I had made pig's blood, pine nuts and raisins; the other was made from calf's blood, minced pork and pecorino. Quails, larks, grey partridge and figpeckers were roasting over the fire, painted with a sauce made from grape molasses, boiled wine, orange juice, cinnamon and saffron. They blackened as they turned, the thick sauce becoming a lovely, shiny caramel. There were roasted front-quarters of hare, on which would go a deep crimson, almost black sauce made from their blood, raisins, boiled wine and black pepper. Three roasted heads of young pigs, to which I had added tusks and decorated with pastry dyed black with walnut juice so that they resembled wild boar, then baked. Meanwhile, there was a whole sheep turning over the fire, more or less done, but I was holding it so that it would be perfect. The swan- there had to be a swan, Baroni had decided- was ready. I attached it to the armature of wire I had made, so that it stood up regally. The sturgeon, which I had cooked last night at home, and had finally set in aspic at around the fourth hour after midnight, was waiting in a covered salver. There were black cabbage leaves rolled around hazelnuts and cheese; rice porridge cooked in the Venetian style with cuttlefish ink; and of course the roebuck, roasting as well, but already trussed in the position I had designed for it.

Whenever I have to pick something off the floor I bend down, keeping my legs straight. Dutifully touching your toes fifty times every day is a crashing bore. But there are almost as many times when something has to be picked up anyhow — or a lower drawer has to be opened — so I automatically do it in a manner that keeps me fit. I try to make a graceful gesture out of reaching for things on high shelves, too. I don’t make it easier by dragging out a little step stool. While I’m on the phone I take a small bottle — a Pepsi bottle, of course — and roll it back and forth under my instep. I touch first the heel to the floor, then the toe, ten times for each foot. [...] These exercises strengthen the foot, stretch the calf muscles, and result in lovely feet and legs. When I’m standing — scraping carrots, or just waiting somewhere — I dig my heels into the ground, draw myself up to my best posture, and pull my stomach muscles in hard. [...] When I’m dictating to my secretary I may raise my elbows level with my shoulders and press the heels of my hands hard against each other. (The whole idea behind isometrics is to make the muscles work against each other.) This exercise, lasting for just six to ten seconds, is wonderful for the inside of the upper arms — the place that can go flabby almost overnight and make it impossible to wear sleeveless dresses. For the backs of the upper arms, do the same exercise with the hands raised just above the level of the forehead.

As a calf nudges the cow’s udder to stimulate the flow of milk and maternal love, so Mahendra’s rage prodded Rajalakshmi into expressing her stifled maternal affection.

He orders an expensive bottle of Rioja and we begin our tapas extravaganza with plates of dates wrapped in bacon, langoustines in garlic and butter, chorizo in a tomatoey sauce, and a miniature Spanish tortilla (potato, egg, and onion). Our medium-rare steaks are set before us along with a basket of thinly sliced, golden crisped fries. I'm happy to see that Frank enjoys food- with no mention of any weird hang-ups or allergies. "I was hoping they'd have sweetbreads on the menu," Frank says. "You like sweetbreads?" I ask, my heart expanding at the mention of calf thymus. "I'm an organ man," Frank says, taking a sip of wine. "I know a place where they make great sautéed sweetbreads," I say. "You?" he asks, a look of pleased astonishment spreading across his face. "Love 'em," I say. This mutual infatuation with organs bodes well. Cutting into the steaks with sharp knives, we put morsels in our mouths, close our eyes as if we've died and gone to heaven, chew, and groan, the salty, bloody juices trickling down the backs of our throats.

I was in love with her. And I never got over it and I never will.” He turned to look at Leaphorn. “Can you understand that?” “Perfectly,” Leaphorn said. He had never gotten over being in love with Emma—not with her being dead all these years. And he never would. “Then I’ll tell you something that’s even harder to understand. It turned out it was mutual. She loved me, too. Can you believe that?” “How did you know?” “All sorts of little things,” Denton said. He thought about it, nodded, and decided to explain. “You might think I’m pretty easy to fool, letting this McKay thing go as far as I did. But that wasn’t normal. It was because I want that Golden Calf so damn bad, and I was getting so frustrated with hunting it, I just quit thinking. But you don’t make money in the mineral lease racket without being skeptical, and if you ain’t to start with, you get that way damn quick. You leave your trust at home in the closet. Your basic idea is that everybody is out to skin you, and so

In The Archangel Raphael Leaving Tobias' Family, Rembrandt leaves dirt on the shadowed soles of Raphael's feet as he flies off, illuminated in glory. Passing by the painting, one sees the dramatic action, the melodramatic emotions, and the re-created narrative events of the Bible. Slowed down a bit, the viewer sees light across a large muscular calf, a strong and sharply shaped ankle, and then dirty feet. The angel who tells us he only pretended to eat - this to explain away all traces of his apparent earthliness as a fallen creaturely being - is here on the canvas with dirty feet, carrying soil, the created, to the creator. Van Gogh had rightly said there are mysteries in these paintings. They are mysteries of device and design, not of messianic significance. They require a docent and not a priest, a creative critic to guide the view of specific images, not a guardian of mysteries and master of their enigmatic authority. Dirty feet on the soles of an archangel famous for his annunciations give the viewer a point of view on the inescapably human nature of the narrated God. Raphael may no eat. He may believe he creates an illusion to satisfy the religious desire for mythological consistency, but even archangels deceive themselves as well as others. Humans sometimes do the same in inventing the transcendence they need or think they want - creating a regime from which the priestly classes rule, even theorizing the alienation of the divine. Deceit is an essential device of cultural adaptation. It constructs needed beliefs that at high and low levels of thought or action complement their existence with modes of self-defense, which protect them from not only needed analysis but also the importance of failure.

The soil from which all sin grows is unbelief. We sin because it is our nature to do so, but it’s not as if we always sin unintentionally, like depraved robots without the ability to behave according to reason. We are thoughtful with our rebellion. There is a level of reasoning within us when we decide which golden calf we’ll love on any given day. With that said, the foundation of our idolatry, the sin begetting all others, is a specific belief about God.