Cardinals In The Snow Quotes

Eskimos, it is said, have forty different words for snow. Never mind about snow, Cardinal mused, what people really need is forty words for sorrow. Grief. Heartbreak. Desolation

As they reached the entrance to the gardens, where more subjects were waiting, a cardinal flew down and landed on the stone steps that she had cleaned so many times in her life. It tweeted a song of happiness, and Snow could only imagine it saying one thing: I love you. For her mother would always be with her. "I feel as if I've been waiting for this moment forever," Snow confessed to Henri. But now there would be no more waiting. Snow White's moment had arrived. And if it wasn't quite "happily ever after," it was pretty close.

The differences between religions are reflected very clearly in the different forms of sacred art: compared with Gothic art, above all in its “flamboyant” style, Islamic art is contemplative rather than volitive: it is “intellectual” and not “dramatic”, and it opposes the cold beauty of geometrical design to the mystical heroism of cathedrals. Islam is the perspective of “omnipresence” (“God is everywhere”), which coincides with that of “simultaneity” (“Truth has always been”); it aims at avoiding any “particularization” or “condensation”, any “unique fact” in time and space, although as a religion it necessarily includes an aspect of “unique fact”, without which it would be ineffective or even absurd. In other words Islam aims at what is “everywhere center”, and this is why, symbolically speaking, it replaces the cross with the cube or the woven fabric: it “decentralizes” and “universalizes” to the greatest possible extent, in the realm of art as in that of doctrine; it is opposed to any individualist mode and hence to any “personalist” mysticism. To express ourselves in geometrical terms, we could say that a point which seeks to be unique, and which thus becomes an absolute center, appears to Islam—in art as in theology—as a usurpation of the divine absoluteness and therefore as an “association” (shirk); there is only one single center, God, whence the prohibition against “centralizing” images, especially statues; even the Prophet, the human center of the tradition, has no right to a “Christic uniqueness” and is “decentralized” by the series of other Prophets; the same is true of Islam—or the Koran—which is similarly integrated in a universal “fabric” and a cosmic “rhythm”, having been preceded by other religions—or other “Books”—which it merely restores. The Kaaba, center of the Muslim world, becomes space as soon as one is inside the building: the ritual direction of prayer is then projected toward the four cardinal points. If Christianity is like a central fire, Islam on the contrary resembles a blanket of snow, at once unifying and leveling and having its center everywhere.

By midafternoon soft snow is falling, muffling four voices that rise from the cardinal points around the circle, north, south, east, and west,intoning names from registration lists obtained by Rainer from museum archives in Berlin--long lists that represent but tiny fractions of that fraction of new prisoners who survived, however briefly, the first selections on this platform and were tattooed with small blue numbers. The impeccable lists include city and country of origin, arrival date, and date of death, not infrequently on that same day or the next. Column after column, page after page, of the more common family names ascend softly from the circle of still figures to be borne away on gusts of wind-whirled snow. Schwartz, Herschel; Schwartz, Isaac A.; Schwartz, Isaac D.; Schwartz, Isidor--Who? Isidor? You too? The voices are all but inaudible as befits snuffed-out identities that exist only on lists, with no more reality than forgotten faces in old photo albums--Who's this bald guy in the back? Stray faces of no more significance than wind fragments of these names of long ago, of no more substance than this snowflake poised one moment on his pen before dissolving into voids beyond all Knowing. In Paradise 87-88

As a child, crisp spring afternoons were spent wading along Reedy Creek just beyond the field. Then came the heavy breeze in the autumn, pushing off the almond, auburn, sugar-yellow and apple-red leaves into the creek, providing rafts for dragonflies. In winter, the snow upon the wood became an eerie deep, and the occasional gliding of an owl would be spotted from our bedroom. Then, to spend an afternoon walking in a snowy wood and find a scarlet red cardinal perched on a white limb, you would think God arranged that picture just for you.

There’s water in their lungs. Mr. Bell holds her now and afterward. There’s water in their ears and a voice warm as a mother’s should be. They fall toward the voice, through the deepest lake in the Adirondacks. “When you were a baby,” the voice says, “you used to point at birds.” The gesture of their hands entwined, reaching up through their descent, clawing for the disappearing surface, could be misconstrued as fingers pointing out a goldfinch on a branch, a red cardinal nosing the grass for some seeds. Later that night the lake freezes, sealing the scar under a dusting of snow.

in the snow with your camera and capture images of winter's quiet beauty, or take photos of your children or grandchildren playing in the snow. Build a snowman or make a snow angel. Find a pine bough covered in white powder. Wait patiently for a cardinal or a whitetail deer. The outdoors are full of beautiful sights that would be perfect for your holiday cards. Pressed leaves and flowers -- While flowers are more commonly associated with spring, pressed flowers can add a lovely touch of color your card recipients may appreciate at this sometimes drab time of year. Rubber stamps -- Find a rubber stamp, or a few, with a design you enjoy and stamp your cards. Fill in the lines with colored pencils or paint. Your imagination -- If you can dream it you can do it. Look around you for other ideas and let your imagination fly.