Casting Stones Quotes

I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.

There will always be someone willing to hurt you, put you down, gossip about you, belittle your accomplishments and judge your soul. It is a fact that we all must face. However, if you realize that God is a best friend that stands beside you when others cast stones you will never be afraid, never feel worthless and never feel alone.

When you find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will stand in front of you when other’s cast stones, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in sweats, who will hold your hand when your sick, who thinks your pretty without makeup, the one who turns to his friends and say, ‘that’s her’, the one that would bear your rejection because losing you means losing his will to live, who kisses you when you screw up, watches the stars and names one for you and will hold and rock that baby for hours so you can sleep…..you marry him all over again.

They say let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And to be without sin requires absolute forgiveness. But when your memories are freshly opened wounds, forgiveness is the most unnatural of human emotions.

I had a vague memory of being that ridiculous at one time. Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone.

A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; A time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; A time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; A time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; A time of war, and a time of peace

Have your dream...What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone. (from Thailand)

We are all guilty of sin, error, and moments of sheer stupidity; none of us should be casting stones. The occasional arced pebble might be overlooked.

Shadows in shadows He watches through dreams Wings black as Africa Body strong as stone Done waiting The ravens call.

You must try, the voice said, to become colder. I understood at once. It's like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze, braced in stone. Only something heartless could bear the full weight.

Being alone is not the most awful thing in the world. You visit your museums and cultivate your interests and remind yourself how lucky you are not to be one of those spindly Sudanese children with flies beading their mouths. You make out To Do lists - reorganise linen cupboard, learn two sonnets. You dole out little treats to yourself - slices of ice-cream cake, concerts at Wigmore Hall. And then, every once in a while, you wake up and gaze out of the window at another bloody daybreak, and think, I cannot do this anymore. I cannot pull myself together again and spend the next fifteen hours of wakefulness fending off the fact of my own misery. People like Sheba think that they know what it's like to be lonely. They cast their minds back to the time they broke up with a boyfriend in 1975 and endured a whole month before meeting someone new. Or the week they spent in a Bavarian steel town when they were fifteen years old, visiting their greasy-haired German pen pal and discovering that her hand-writing was the best thing about her. But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to expose your bleak evening to a crowd of jeering trick-or-treaters. Or to have the librarian smile pityingly and say, ‘Goodness, you're a quick reader!’ when you bring back seven books, read from cover to cover, a week after taking them out. They don't know what it is to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand on your shoulder sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. I have sat on park benches and trains and schoolroom chairs, feeling the great store of unused, objectless love sitting in my belly like a stone until I was sure I would cry out and fall, flailing, to the ground. About all of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

If I’m the devil, amore mio, cast stones at the one who made me.

I'm afraid to write. It's so dangerous. Anyone who's tried, knows. The danger of stirring up hidden things - and the world is not on the surface, it's hidden in its roots submerged in the depths of the sea. In order to write I must place myself in the void. In this void is where I exist intuitively. But it's a terribly dangerous void: it's where I wring out blood. I'm a writer who fears the snare of words: the words I say hide others - Which? maybe I'll say them. Writing is a stone cast down a deep well.

After all this time, she still had not found an end to her grief. It was a dark well, an echoing place into which she’d once cast a stone, sure that it would strike bottom and she would stop hurting. Instead, it just kept falling. She forgot about the stone, forgot about the well, sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. Then she would think Liliyana’s name, or her eye would pause on the little boat painted on her bedroom wall, its two-starred flag frozen in the wind. She’d sit down to write a letter and realize she had no one to write to, and the quiet that surrounded her became the silence of the well, of the stone still falling.

For the Jesus Revolutionaries, the answer was clear: Jesus would not be out waging "preventative" wars. Jesus would not be withholding medicine from people who could not afford it. Jesus would not cast stones at people of races, sexual orientatons, or genders other than His own. Jesus would not condone the failing, viperous, scandalplagued hierarchy of some churches. Jesus would welcome everyone to his his table. He would love them, and he would find peace.

Let him who has not a single speck of migration to blot his family escutcheon cast the first stone...if you didn't migrate then your father did, and if your father didn't need to move from place to place, then it was only because your grandfather before him had no choice but to go, put his old life behind him in search of the bread that his own land denied him...

I never knew a woman could be fierce and beautiful and smart before I met you. Every time I see you I think of a hawk, beautiful and deadly.

To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else.

He felt he had lost it for good, he knew what it was to have been in communication with her, and to be cast off again. In misery, his heart like a heavy stone, he went about unliving.

I decided that I was supposed to be here to catch some of the stones people cast at each other.

Why is society so comfortable with casting stones? Are that many of you without sin? It is not okay to drag a person’s name while his family mourns, even if that person is a “celebrity”.

A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death. There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine - a Speaker for the Dead - has told me of two other Rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you. The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. 'Is there any man here,' he says to them, 'who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?' They murmur and say, 'We all know the desire, but Rabbi none of us has acted on it.' The Rabbi says, 'Then kneel down and give thanks that God has made you strong.' He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, 'Tell the Lord Magistrate who saved his mistress, then he'll know I am his loyal servant.' So the woman lives because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder. Another Rabbi. Another city. He goes to her and stops the mob as in the other story and says, 'Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.' The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. ‘Someday,’ they think, ‘I may be like this woman. And I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her as I wish to be treated.’ As they opened their hands and let their stones fall to the ground, the Rabbi picks up one of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head and throws it straight down with all his might it crushes her skull and dashes her brain among the cobblestones. ‘Nor am I without sins,’ he says to the people, ‘but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead – and our city with it.’ So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance. The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis and when they veer too far they die. Only one Rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation. So of course, we killed him. -San Angelo Letters to an Incipient Heretic

Your name is a -- bird in my hand a piece of -- ice on the tongue one single movement of the lips. Your name is: five signs, a ball caught in flight, a silver bell in the mouth a stone, cast in a quiet pool makes the splash of your name, and the sound is in the clatter of night hooves, loud as a thunderclap or it speaks straight into my forehead, shrill as the click of a cocked gun. Your name -- how impossible, it is a kiss in the eyes on motionless eyelashes, chill and sweet. Your name is a kiss of snow a gulp of icy spring water, blue as a dove. About your name is: sleep.

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country--indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky--provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut... ...Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that.

We should go back inside," she said, in a half whisper. She did not want to go back inside. She wanted to stay here, with Will achingly close, almost leaning into her. She could feel the heat that radiated from his body. His dark hair fell around the mask, into his eyes, tangling with his long eyelashes. "We have only a little time-" She took a step forward-and stumbled into Will, who caught her. She froze-and then her arms crept around him, her fingers lacing themselves behind his neck. Her face was pressed against his throat, his soft hair under her fingers. She closed her eyes, shutting out the dizzying world, the light beyond the French windows, the glow of the sky. She wanted to be here with Will, cocooned in this moment, inhaling the clean sharp scent of him., feeling the beat of his heart against hers, as steady and strong as the pulse of the ocean. She felt him inhale. "Tess," he said. "Tess, look at me." She raised her eyes to his, slow and unwilling, braced for anger or coldness-but his gaze was fixed on hers, his dark blue eyes somber beneath their thick black lashes, and they were stripped of all their usual cool, aloof distance. They were as clear as glass and full of desire. And more than desire-a tenderness she had never seen in them before, had never even associated with Will Herondale. That, more than anything else, stopped her protest as he raised his hands and methodically began to take the pins from her hair, one by one. This is madness, she thought, as the first pin rattled to the ground. They should be running, fleeing this place. Instead she stood, wordless, as Will cast Jessamine's pearl clasps aside as if they were so much paste jewelry. Her own long, curling dark hair fell down around her shoulders, and Will slid his hands into it. She heard him exhale as he did so, as if he had been holding his breath for months and had only just let it out. She stood as if mesmerized as he gathered her hair in his hands, draping it over one of her shoulders, winding her curls between his fingers. "My Tessa," he said, and this time she did not tell him that she was not his. "Will," she whispered as he reached up and unlocked her hands from around his neck. He drew her gloves off, and they joined her mask and Jessie's pins on the stone floor of the balcony. He pulled off his own mask next and cast it aside, running his hands through his damp black hair, pushing it back from his forehead. The lower edge of the mask had left marks across his high cheekbones, like light scars, but when she reached to touch them, he gently caught at her hands and pressed them down. "No," he said. "Let me touch you first. I have wanted...

Let those who have not walked as we have done, In the red fire of passion, those whose lives Are dull and colourless, in a word let those, If any such there be, who have not loved, Cast stones against you

If your enemy comes to speak bearing a sword, open your door to him and speak, but keep your own sword at hand. If he comes to you empty-handed, greet him the same way. But if he comes to you bearing gifts, stand on your walls and cast stones down on him.

There are no shy women,"announced the count. "The modest way they cast thier eyes down merely his their naivety." I was fast coming to the conclusion that there was no need to feel afraid of him. He was only a self-satisfied old git who hated women and liked the sound of his own voice.

I do not view suicide as wicked, just terribly sad. There is only one death, but it is like a stone cast into a pond - the ripples stretch far. Such an act must leave a burden of sorrow, guilt, shame and confusion on an entire family. A natural death, such as my father suffered, is hard enough to deal with. A decision to end one's life must be still more devastating for those left behind. I cannot imagine the degree of hopelessness someone must feel to contemplate such an act.

All these young children being sent to prison forever, all this grief and violence. Those judges throwing people away like they're not even human, people shooting each other, hurting each other like they don't care. I don't know, it's a lot of pain. I decided that I was supposed to be here [at the court] to catch some of the stones people cast at each other.' I chuckled when she said it. During the McMillian hearings, a local minister had held a regional church meeting about the case and had asked me to come speak. There were a few people in the African American community whose support of Walter was muted, not because they thought he was guilty but because he had had an extramarital affair and wasn't active in the church. At the church meeting, I spoke mostly about Walter's case, but I also reminded people that when the woman accused of adultery was brought to Jesus, he told the accusers who wanted to stone her to death, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.' The woman's accusers retreated, and Jesus forgave her and urged her to sin no more. But today, our self-righteousness, our fear, and our anger have caused even the Christians to hurl stones at the people who fall down, even when we know we should forgive or show compassion. I told the congregation that we can't simply watch that happen. I told them we have to be stonecatchers. When I chuckled at the older woman's invocation of the parable, she laughed, too. 'I heard you in that courtroom today. I've even seen you hear a couple of times before. I know you's a stonecatcher, too.

Such nights are possible, and we survive them. It is a matter of sleeping next to the adored body you no longer have the right or inclination to love. Whether you are the one who casts off, or are the cast of yourself; whether your arms are the recoilers, or the ones that reach wantingly, then pull back, remembering they are no longer wanted. Two bodies that are used to each other's rhythms and sleep sounds, that know the turnings and breathings, know not to worry about that cough or that brief garbled grunt, that wildly flung arm or that stone-cold foot. Bodies that soon will not know each other's night selves: will touch each other through jackets and jeans and the cooled-down air of reestablished acquaintance, if such a thing is possible between a given pair of ex-lovers.

Fearful that they would be caught, the young lovers cast themselves into the sea with their stone, saying these words, "May we ever be united in love and hidden as long as this stone hides in deep waters.

A stone has been cast into the reliable immutable pond of the past, and as the ripples subside everything appears different. The reflections are quite other; everything has swung and shattered, it is all beyond recovery

Light refracted off crystal platters piled with blooms the bright color of new blood, and flickering diyas cast smoke against the mirrors, leaving the halls a snarl of mist and petals. I touched the sharp corners. I like the feeling of stone beneath my fingers, of something that pushed back to remind me of my own solidity.

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping arch, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses, of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

But more to be dreaded than this tribulation was the strange spell of sadness which the unbroken solitude cast upon the minds of stone.

Maybe collecting bruises was the only way to learn how to fight.

The Bible says that it’s all right to cast the first stone if someone dead is telling you to do it

A dehoy who was terribly hobble, Cast only stones that were cobble And bats that were ding, From a shot that was sling, But never hit inks that were bobble.

The sun continued to rise, casting its light over the earth, brightening the darkness and chasing away the shadows of what had been. And every single day, it reminded me that though life could be lonely and painful, it was also filled with rainbows on water, with fields of daffodils, and angels that emerged from rock. It was filled with delicate flowers that, against all odds, found the strength to turn their faces to the sunshine and thrive. It was filled with miracles that arrived when you least expected them and the hard-won knowledge that healing, like stone, is just sand and pressure and time.

Orogene.” It’s petty, maybe. Because of Ykka’s insistence on making rogga a use-caste name, all the stills are tossing the word around like it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not petty. It means something. “Not ‘rogga.’ You don’t get to say ‘rogga.’ You haven’t earned that.

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race back over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country -- indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky -- provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut.

In the dream from which he'd wakened he had wandered in a cave where the child led him by the hand. Their light playing over the wet flowstone walls. Like pilgrims in a fable swallowed up and lost among the inward parts of some granitic beast. Deep stone flues where the water dripped and sang. Tolling in the silence the minutes of the earth and the hours and the days of it and the years without cease. Until they stood in a great stone room where lay a black and ancient lake. And on the far shore a creature that raised its dripping mouth from the rimstone pool and stared into the light with eyes dead white and sightless as the eggs of spiders. It swung its head low over the water as if to take the scent of what it could not see. Crouching there pale and naked and translucent, its alabaster bones cast up in shadow on the rocks behind it. Its bowels, its beating heart. The brain that pulsed in a dull glass bell. It swung its head from side to side and then gave out a low moan and turned and lurched away and loped soundlessly into the dark.

The tinkle of a wind chime stirred from over a window. Purple and white phlox cascaded cheerfully over the top of a nearby stone wall. Sunlight sifted through the weave of her straw hat, casting freckles of light on her nose and cheeks that shifted, out of focus, as she walked.

There’s a simple joy in casting a rock into still waters and watching the ripples spread. It’s the thrill of destruction combined with the surety that all will be well again—everything as it was. A stone had fallen into my comfortable existence at court, so large that the waves washed me to the ends of the earth, but perhaps on my return I would find it as before, unchanged and waiting to receive me. Much of what men do in later life is just throwing stones, albeit bigger stones into different ponds.

Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.

A figure stood at the far end, cloaked in black and beckoning him.

We are all capable of doing every terrible thing that we are capable of doing.

Some men are more easily broken by kindness than censure.

I’d yank that damn Seer Stone off, find Aphrodite, and give it to her to keep it safe like she was my Frodo.

A wedding ritual in my part of Wales. A man and woman exchange vows with a stone held between their joined hands. After the ceremony, they go together to cast the stone into a lake, and the earth itself becomes part of their oath. From then on, they are bound to each other for as long as the world exists.

they cast the stones behind: The stones (a miracle to mortal view, But long tradition makes it pass for true) Did first the rigour of their kind expel, And suppled into softness, as they fell

And this is where I learned that sometimes our most holy mountain-moving faith looks more like spending our whole lives making that mountain move, rock by rock, pebble by pebble, unsexy day after daily day, casting the mountain to the sea stone by stone rather than watching a mountain suddenly rise up and cast itself.

You can see the same immorality or amorality in the Christian view of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is the one to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its context (Exodus 21). The second is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativistic and "nonjudgmental" that it would not allow the prosecution of Charles Manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and ultracompassion.

Each of her words was the skip of a stone across a lake, forming ripples of emotion. The Queen of Inys could not cast illusions, but her voice and bearing on this night had turned her into an enchantress.

Once sin is allowed to settle in your heart, it will not be turned out at your bidding. Custom becomes second nature, and its chains are not easily broken. The prophet has well said, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). Habits are like stones rolling down hill--the further they roll, the faster and more ungovernable is their course. Habits, like trees, are strengthened by age. A boy may bend an oak when it is a sapling--a hundred men cannot root it up, when it is a full grown tree. A child can wade over the Thames River at its fountain-head--the largest ship in the world can float in it when it gets near the sea. So it is with habits: the older the stronger--the longer they have held possession, the harder they will be to cast out.

The future wafts in and out of my world like a ghost - like a lumbering beast, begging to be tamed. For so long it sat locked in mystery, surrounding me, fickle as the wind. I see it now for the noose it is, the game that never satisfies, the warrior that always kills. The past proved to be set in stone, the immovable rock of my existence that cast its shadow into the valley of death. But it is the future’s bright light that draws me in, the blinding rays that pull me forward with bionic, magnetic, force. They row me towards my destiny with indescribable power, to a fate questionably determined - washed in the patina of hope.

Glowing like sunset, a red sword was raised in the hand of a blue-eyed king who cast no shadow. A cloth dragon swayed on poles amidst a cheering crowd. From a smoking tower, a great stone beast took wing, breathing shadow fire.…

the leaders arranged themselves near the mouth of the cave. They waited quietly for the attention of the assembled clans. The silence spread out like the ripples of a stone cast in a pond as the presence of the leaders was made known. Men moved quickly into positions defined by clan and personal rank. The women dropped their work, signaled suddenly well-behaved children, and silently followed suit. The Bear Ceremony was about to begin.

it has been and always will be my desire not to attack even those whom public repute disgraces. I am not delighted at the faults of any man, since I am very conscious myself of the great beam in my own eye, nor can I be the first to cast a stone at the adulteress.

The wafts in and out of my world like a ghost- like a lumbering beast, begging to be tamed. For so long it sat locked in mystery, surrounding me, fickle as the wind. I see it now for the noose it is, the game that never satisfies, the warrior that always kills. The past proved to be set in stone, the immovable rock of my existence that cast its shadow into the valley of death. But it is the future’s bright light that draws me in, the blinding rays that pull me forward with bionic, magnetic, force. They row me towards my destiny with indescribable power, to a fate questionably determined-washed in the patina of hope.

There are men that are birds, and their raiment is trembling feathers, for they show their souls to everyone and everything that is ungentle or untutored or evil or mockery is as a rude stone cast at them, and they suffer all day long, or as Paul remarks they are slain every moment.

Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. “For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see,” says Ruysbroeck, “and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else.” But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn’t make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn’t catch the consonant that shaped it into sense.

Once Errol righted himself into some semblance of horsemanship, they set off at an easy canter. That is, the other horses set off at a canter, while Errol's horse settled into a teeth-shattering trot. After a hundred paces he could feel Horace's backbone through the saddle. The other riders pulled ahead without a backward glance, leaving him to his four-footed torture.

He had scooped up another handful of sand and stared at each grain as it fell through his fingers. 'You are like these. Each a trifling speck. A hundred, many hundreds—what matter? Cast them into the air. You cannot even find them when they land upon the ground. But there are more grains than you can count. There is no end to them. You will pour across this land, and we will be smothered. Your stone walls, your dead trees, the hooves of your strange beasts trampling the clam beds. My uncle sees these things, here and now. And in his trance, he sees that worse is coming. You walls will rise everywhere until they shut us out. You will turn the land upside down with your ploughs until all the hunting grounds are gone. This, and more, my uncle sees.

You marvel that this matter, shuffled pell-mell at the whim of Chance, could have made a man, seeing that so much was needed for the construction of his being. But you must realize that a hundred million time this matter, on the way to human shape, has been stopped to form now a stone, now lead, now coral, now a flower, now a comet; and all because of more or fewer elements that were or were not necessary for designing a man. Little wonder if, within an infinite quantity of matter that ceaselessly changes and stirs, the few animals, vegetables, and minerals we see should happen to be made; no more wonder than getting a royal pair in a hundred casts of the dice. Indeed it is equally impossible for all this stirring not to lead to something; and yet this something will always be wondered at by some blockhead who will never realize how small a change would have made it into something else.

What falls on air yet's lighter than balloon? What betrays time yet folds into a cut? Who flutters at the sight of song then bellows into flight? What height is halved by precipice, what gorge dissolved by trill? Who telling tales upbraids a stump when prattle veils its want? Stone breaks it not, nor diamonds, yet splits with just one word: it's used for casting devils out; still, fools obey it first.

I have lived in important places, times When great events were decided, who owned That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims. I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!" And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen Step the plot defying blue cast-steel - "Here is the march along these iron stones." That was the year of the Munich bother. Which Was more important? I inclined To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind. He said: I made the Iliad from such A local row. Gods make their own importance.

The moon rose up that evening and shot her silver arrows at the house under the artu tree. The house was empty. Then the moon came across the sea and across the reef. She lit the lagoon to it's dark, dim heart. She lit the coral brains and sand spaces, and the fish casting their shadows on the sand and the coral. The keeper of the lagoon rose to greet her, and the fin of him broke her reflection on the mirror-like surface into a thousand glittering ripples. She saw the white staring ribs of the form on the reef. Then, peeping over the trees, she looked down into the valley, where the great stone idol had kept it's solitary vigil for five thousand years, perhaps, and more. At this base, in his shadow, looking as if under his protection, lay two human beings, naked, clasped in each other's arms and fast asleep. One could scarcely pity his vigil, had it been marked sometimes through the years by such an incident as this. The thing had been conducted just as the birds conduct their love affairs. An affair absolutely natural, absolutely blameless and without sin. A marriage according to Nature, without feasts or guests, consummated with accidental cynicism under the shadow of a religion a thousand years dead.

Juniper doesn’t follow all the details—she stopped going to Miss Hurston’s one-room schoolhouse at ten because after her sisters left there was no one to make her go—but she understands what Miss Stone is asking. She’s asking: Aren’t you tired yet? Of being cast down and cast aside? Of making do with crumbs when once we wore crowns? She’s asking: Aren’t you angry yet? And oh, Juniper is. At her mama for dying too soon and her daddy for not dying sooner. At her dumbshit cousin for getting the land that should have been hers. At her sisters for leaving and herself for missing them. At the whole Saints-damned world. Juniper feels like a soldier with a loaded rifle, finally shown something she can shoot. Like a girl with a lit match, finally shown something she can burn.

The root of faults is nothing other than your ego-clinging, the attitude of deluded fixation, so cut the ties of ego-clinging! Cast away the fixation on enemy and friend! Forsake worldly concerns! Abandon materialistic pursuits! Engage in nothing but the Dharma from the core of your heart! Just as a seedling doesn't grow on a stone, there will be no enhancement without removing the fault of ego-clinging. You should therefore abandon the root of all evils, ego-clinging. (p. 90)

It looked like someone had been planting stars. The castle was in shreds, flagstone floors tiny islands in a sea of stones and wild grass, but clusters of lights were nestled on the castle floor and the earth of the cliffs alike, lanterns strung from the crumbling battlements. There were so many lights they cast a shimmering haze over everything, bathing the ruins in a pale glow. Mae walked, hardly aware that she was walking, through Tintagel Castle over stones washed in brightness

Jesus is the true and better Adam, who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us (1 Corinthians 15). Jesus is the true and better Abel, who, though innocently slain, has blood that cries out for our acquittal, not our condemnation (Hebrews 12:24). Jesus is the true and better Abraham, who answered the call of God to leave the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void “not knowing whither he went” to create a new people of God. Jesus is the true and better Isaac, who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us all. God said to Abraham, “Now I know you love me, because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love, from me.” Now we can say to God, “Now we know that you love us, because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love, from us.” Jesus is the true and better Jacob, who wrestled with God and took the blow of justice we deserved so that we, like Jacob, receive only the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us. Jesus is the true and better Joseph, who at the right hand of the King forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them. Jesus is the true and better Moses, who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant (Hebrews 3). Jesus is the true and better rock of Moses, who, struck with the rod of God’s justice, now gives us water in the desert. Jesus is the true and better Job—the truly innocent sufferer—who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends (Job 42). Jesus is the true and better David, whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves. Jesus is the true and better Esther, who didn’t just risk losing an earthly palace but lost the ultimate heavenly one, who didn’t just risk his life but gave his life—to save his people. Jesus is the true and better Jonah, who was cast out into the storm so we could be brought in.

We are talking about a cloak that really and truly renders the wearer completely invisible, and endures eternally, giving constant and impenetrable concealment, no matter what spells are cast at it. How many cloaks have you ever seen like that, Miss Granger?” Hermione opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again, looking more confused than ever. She, Harry, and Ron glanced at one another, and Harry knew that they were all thinking the same thing. It so happened that a cloak exactly like the one Xenophilius had just described was in the room with them at that very moment. “Exactly,” said Xenophilius, as if he had defeated them all in reasoned argument. “None of you have ever seen such a thing. The possessor would be immeasurably rich, would he not?” He glanced out of the window again. The sky was now tinged with the faintest trace of pink. “All right,” said Hermione, disconcerted. “Say the Cloak existed…what about the stone, Mr. Lovegood? The thing you call the Resurrection Stone?” “What of it?” “Well, how can that be real?” “Prove that it is not,” said Xenophilius. Hermoine looked outraged. “But that’s--I’m sorry, but that’s completely ridiculous! How can I possibly prove it doesn’t exist? Do you expect me to get hold of--of all the pebbles in the world and test them? I mean, you could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist!” “Yes, you could,” said Xenophilius. “I am glad to see that you are opening your mind a little.” “So the Elder Wand,” said Harry quickly, before Hermione could retort, “you think that exists too?

Of every aspect of the moor, the earth and stone and rain and fire, the wind is the strongest one in Near. Here on the outskirts of the village, the wind is always pressing close, making windows groan. It whispers and it howls and it sings. It can bend its voice and cast it into any shape, long and thin enough to slide beneath the door, stout enough to seem a thing of weight and breath and bone. “The wind was here when you were born, when I was born, when our house was built, when the Council was formed, and even when the Near Witch lived,

most common people oft he market-place much prefer light literature to improving books. The problem is, that so many romances contain slanderous anecdotes about sovereigns and ministers or cast aspersions upon man’s wives and daughters so that they are packed with sex and violence. Even worse are those writers of the breeze-and-moonlight school, who corrupt the young with pornography and filth. As for books of the beauty-and-talented-scholar type, a thousand are written to a single pattern and none escapes bordering on indecency. They are filled with allusions to handsome, talented young men and beautiful, refined girls in history; but in order to insert a couple of his own love poems, the author invents stereotyped heroes and heroines with the inevitable low character to make trouble between them like a clown in a play, and makes even the slave girls talk pedantic nonsense. So all these novels are full of contradictions and absurdly unnatural.

so evenly was strained their war and battle, till the moment when Zeus gave the greater renown to Hector, son of Priam, who was the first to leap within the wall of the Achaians. In a piercing voice he cried aloud to the Trojans: "Rise, ye horse-taming Trojans, break the wall of the Argives, and cast among the ships fierce blazing fire." So spake he, spurring them on, and they all heard him with their ears, and in one mass rushed straight against the wall, and with sharp spears in their hands climbed upon the machicolations of the towers. And Hector seized and carried a stone that lay in front of the gates, thick in the hinder part, but sharp at point: a stone that not the two best men of the people, such as mortals now are, could lightly lift from the ground on to a wain, but easily he wielded it alone, for the son of crooked-counselling Kronos made it light for him. And as when a shepherd lightly beareth the fleece of a ram, taking it in one hand, and little doth it burden him, so Hector lifted the stone, and bare it straight against the doors that closely guarded the stubborn-set portals, double gates and tall, and two cross bars held them within, and one bolt fastened them. And he came, and stood hard by, and firmly planted himself, and smote them in the midst, setting his legs well apart, that his cast might lack no strength. And he brake both the hinges, and the stone fell within by reason of its weight, and the gates rang loud around, and the bars held not, and the doors burst this way and that beneath the rush of the stone. Then glorious Hector leaped in, with face like the sudden night, shining in wondrous mail that was clad about his body, and with two spears in his hands. No man that met him could have held him back when once he leaped within the gates: none but the gods, and his eyes shone with fire. Turning towards the throng he cried to the Trojans to overleap the wall, and they obeyed his summons, and speedily some overleaped the wall, and some poured into the fair-wrought gateways, and the Danaans fled in fear among the hollow ships, and a ceaseless clamour arose.

I hear another man cry, “Oh, sir my want of strength lies mainly in this, that I cannot repent sufficiently!” A curious idea men have of what repentance is! Many fancy that so many tears are to be shed, and so many groans are to be heaved, and so much despair is to be endured. Whence comes this unreasonable notion? Unbelief and despair are sins, and therefore I do not see how they can be constituent elements of acceptable repentance; yet there are many who regard them as necessary parts of true Christian experience. They are in great error. Still, I know what they mean, for in the days of my darkness I used to feel in the same way. I desired to repent, but I thought that I could not do it, and yet all the while I was repenting. Odd as it may sound, I felt that I could not feel. I used to get into a corner and weep, because I could not weep; and I fell into bitter sorrow because I could not sorrow for sin. What a jumble it all is when in our unbelieving state we begin to judge our own condition! It is like a blind man looking at his own eyes. My heart was melted within me for fear, because I thought that my heart was as hard as an adamant stone. My heart was broken to think that it would not break. Now I can see that I was exhibiting the very thing which I thought I did not possess; but then I knew not where I was. Remember that the man who truly repents is never satisfied with his own repentance. We can no more repent perfectly than we can live perfectly. However pure our tears, there will always be some dirt in them: there will be something to be repented of even in our best repentance. But listen! To repent is to change your mind about sin, and Christ, and all the great things of God. There is sorrow implied in this; but the main point is the turning of the heart from sin to Christ. If there be this turning, you have the essence of true repentance, even though no alarm and no despair should ever have cast their shadow upon your mind.

And if the best you can do is quote the Bible in defence of your prejudice, then have the humility to be consistent. The same book that exhorts against the abomination of one man lying with another also contains exhortations against the eating of pork and shell-fish and against menstruating women daring to come near holy places. It’s no good functionalistically claiming that kosher diet had its local, meteorological purposes now defunct, or that the prejudice against ovulation can be dispensed with as superstition, the Bible that you bash us with tells you that much of what you do is unclean: don’t pick and choose with a Revealed Text — or if you do, pick and choose the good bits, the bits that say things like ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’, or ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’.

Life in the Church means experiencing leaders who are not always wise, mature, and deft. In fact, some of us are as bumpy and uneven as a sackful of old doorknobs. Some of the polishing we experience is a result of grinding against each other. How vital submissiveness is in such circumstances, especially if the lubrication of love is not amply present. In a church established, among other reasons, for the perfecting of the Saints--an ongoing process--it is naive to expect, and certainly unfair to demand, perfection in our peers. A brief self-inventory is wise before we "cast the first stone." Possessing a few rocks in our own heads, it is especially dangerous to have rocks too ready in our hands.

When human life lay foul for all to see Upon the earth, crushed by the burden of religion, Religion which from heaven’s firmament Displayed its face, its ghastly countenance, Lowering above mankind, the first who dared Raise mortal eyes against it, first to take His stand against it, was a man of Greece. He was not cowed by fables of the gods Or thunderbolts or heaven’s threatening roar, But they the more spurred on his ardent soul Yearning to be the first to break apart The bolts of nature’s gates and throw them open. Therefore his lively intellect prevailed And forth he marched, advancing onwards far Beyond the flaming ramparts of the world, And voyaged in mind throughout infinity, Whence he victorious back in triumph brings Report of what can be and what cannot And in what manner each thing has a power That’s limited, and deep-set boundary stone. Wherefore religion in its turn is cast Beneath the feet of men and trampled down, And us his victory has made peers of heaven.

She gasped when she exposed the wound, his flesh split open and brimming with blood. Swallowing her dread, she pressed her hand to it and in her other, she squeezed a Healer’s Touch spellstone. She cast it once, twice, three times, until all it’s magick had depleted. The blood stopped flowing. Still, the wound didn’t close. She moved on to the next stone. And the next one. “Come on, Al.” And the next. And the next. Finally the wound closed, and his broken patella was mostly set, but she exhausted the stones and Alistair hadn’t opened his eyes. Clutching his hand, Isobel rested her cheek against his chest, listening for a pulse. At first, all she heard was the noise of the forest crickets and owls. Then she finally made out his heartbeat—faint but there—and far beyond, the sound of approaching footsteps. Probably Finley and Elinor returning to finish her, too. “Seven letters,” she whispered to Alistair. “To endure.” “Survive,” she heard him rasp. She almost thought she’d imagined it at first, but then she lifted her head and realized his eyes were open, watching her. He let out a wheezy breath, then smiled. She realized she’d never seen Alistair smile in a way that wasn’t meant to be a threat. “Hello, rival,” he whispered.

I Knew a Woman" I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek). How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin; I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (But what prodigious mowing we did make). Love likes a gander, and adores a goose: Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize; She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose (She moved in circles, and those circles moved). Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I’m martyr to a motion not my own; What’s freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways).

The desire to know the future gnaws at our bones. That is where it started, and might have ended, years ago. I had cast the stones, seeing their faces flicker and fall: Death, Love, Murder, Treachery, Hope. We are a treacherous people - half of our stones show betrayal and violence and death from those close, death from those far away. It is not so with other peoples. I have seen other sets that show only natural disasters: death from sickness, from age, the pain of a broken heart, loss in childbirth. And those stones are more than half full with pleasure and joy and plain, solid warnings like "You reap what you sow" and "Victory is not the same as satisfaction." Of course, we live in a land taken by force, by battle and murder and invasion. It is not so surprising that our stones reflect our history.

My unforgettable delight! As long as the crooks of my arms remember you, as long as you're still on my hands and lips, I'll be with you. I'll shed tears about you in something worthy, abiding. I'll write down my memory of you in a tender, tender, achingly sorrowful portrayal. I'll stay here until I've done it. And then I'll leave myself. This is how I'll portray you. I'll set your features on paper, as, after a terrible storm that churns the sea to its bottom, the traces of the strongest, farthest-reaching wave lie on the sand. In a broken, meandering line the sea heaps up pumice stones, bits of cork, shells, seaweed, the lightest, most weightless things it could from the bottom. This is the line of the highest tide stretching endlessly along the shore. So the storm of life cast you up to me, my pride. And so I will portray you.

Ungh,” Ryan said. “That shit is so hot.” Everyone turned to stare at him. He was bright red. “I said that out loud, didn’t I? Dammit.” “What?” I squeaked. “When you do magic, it turns me on,” Ryan said, shaking his head frantically. “Ah gods. I can’t—stop. Just stop. Ahhh, I get erections when you cast spells. Oh shit.” “Sweet molasses,” I managed to say. “This… this is not what I thought was going to happen today,” Gary said. “What you think happen?” Tiggy asked. “I thought Ryan and Sam would continue to ignore how much they want to bone each other and we would all be suffering in silence because Sam won’t pull his head out of his ass to see that Ryan wants to eat said ass for dinner.” “I do,” Ryan said through gritted teeth. “For breakfast, even. And lunch. And a midnight snack. Especially when you do magic.” “You have a magic kink?” I said, because that was the only thing I could focus on. “Yes. But only for you. Your magic gets me hard,” he said, looking like he wished he could be anywhere but where he was. “When you do anything, I get hard, really. Even your ridiculous sex puns. You remember when you wrapped those Dark wizards in stone at the restaurant?” “Yeah,” I managed to say. “I wanted to tell you that you gave me an e-rock-tion.” He bent over and banged his forehead against the table. “Why, why, why did I say that out loud? Please. Someone. Anyone. Kill me.” “Sex puns,” I breathed. “Knight Delicious Face said a sex pun.” “There it is again!” he exclaimed. “Knight Delicious Face. What is that?” “You’re a knight,” I said. “And your face is delicious.” “You think I’m delicious?” he said, suddenly shy. “Oh my gods,” Gary moaned. “This is so awkward I can’t even stand it. I physically hurt from how awkward this is. I don’t even care that we’re apparently in mortal danger. I just don’t want to listen to you two flirt anymore. Eloise? Yoo-hoo, Eloise? If you’re going to kill us, can you please do it now? I can’t take this anymore.

Back then, come July, and the blazers would again make their way out of the steel trunks and evenings would be spent looking at snow-capped mountains from our terrace and spotting the first few lights on the hills above. It was the time for radishes and mulberries in the garden and violets on the slopes. The wind carried with it the comforting fragrance of eucalyptus. It was in fact all about the fragrances, like you know, in a Sherlock Holmes story. Even if you walked with your eyes closed, you could tell at a whiff, when you had arrived at the place, deduce it just by its scent. So, the oranges denoted the start of the fruit-bazaar near Prakash ji’s book shop, and the smell of freshly baked plum cake meant you had arrived opposite Air Force school and the burnt lingering aroma of coffee connoted Mayfair. But when they carved a new state out of the land and Dehra was made its capital, we watched besotted as that little town sprouted new buildings, high-rise apartments, restaurant chains, shopping malls and traffic jams, and eventually it spilled over here. I can’t help noticing now that the fragrances have changed; the Mogra is tinged with a hint of smoke and will be on the market tomorrow. The Church has remained and so has everything old that was cast in brick and stone, but they seem so much more alien that I almost wish they had been ruined.’ ('Left from Dhakeshwari')

The Winding Stair My Soul. I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, 'Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul My Self. The consecretes blade upon my knees Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was, Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass Unspotted by the centuries; That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn From some court-lady's dress and round The wodden scabbard bound and wound Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn My Soul. Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war? Think of ancestral night that can, If but imagination scorn the earth And intellect is wandering To this and that and t'other thing, Deliver from the crime of death and birth. My Self. Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it Five hundred years ago, about it lie Flowers from I know not what embroidery - Heart's purple - and all these I set For emblems of the day against the tower Emblematical of the night, And claim as by a soldier's right A charter to commit the crime once more. My Soul. Such fullness in that quarter overflows And falls into the basin of the mind That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, For intellect no longer knows Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known - That is to say, ascends to Heaven; Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue's a stone. II My Self. A living man is blind and drinks his drop. What matter if the ditches are impure? What matter if I live it all once more? Endure that toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness; The finished man among his enemies? - How in the name of Heaven can he escape That defiling and disfigured shape The mirror of malicious eyes Casts upon his eyes until at last He thinks that shape must be his shape? And what's the good of an escape If honour find him in the wintry blast? I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul. I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot! When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest

Perched upon the stones of a bridge The soldiers had the eyes of ravens Their weapons hung black as talons Their eyes gloried in the smoke of murder To the shock of iron-heeled sticks I drew closer in the cripple’s bitter patience And before them I finally tottered Grasping to capture my elusive breath With the cockerel and swift of their knowing They watched and waited for me ‘I have come,’ said I, ‘from this road’s birth, I have come,’ said I, ‘seeking the best in us.’ The sergeant among them had red in his beard Glistening wet as he showed his teeth ‘There are few roads on this earth,’ said he, ‘that will lead you to the best in us, old one.’ ‘But you have seen all the tracks of men,’ said I ‘And where the mothers and children have fled Before your advance. Is there naught among them That you might set an old man upon?’ The surgeon among this rook had bones Under her vellum skin like a maker of limbs ‘Old one,’ said she, ‘I have dwelt In the heat of chests, among heart and lungs, And slid like a serpent between muscles, Swum the currents of slowing blood, And all these roads lead into the darkness Where the broken will at last rest. ‘Dare say I,’ she went on,‘there is no Place waiting inside where you might find In slithering exploration of mysteries All that you so boldly call the best in us.’ And then the man with shovel and pick, Who could raise fort and berm in a day Timbered of thought and measured in all things Set the gauge of his eyes upon the sun And said, ‘Look not in temples proud, Or in the palaces of the rich highborn, We have razed each in turn in our time To melt gold from icon and shrine And of all the treasures weeping in fire There was naught but the smile of greed And the thick power of possession. Know then this: all roads before you From the beginning of the ages past And those now upon us, yield no clue To the secret equations you seek, For each was built of bone and blood And the backs of the slave did bow To the laboured sentence of a life In chains of dire need and little worth. All that we build one day echoes hollow.’ ‘Where then, good soldiers, will I Ever find all that is best in us? If not in flesh or in temple bound Or wretched road of cobbled stone?’ ‘Could we answer you,’ said the sergeant, ‘This blood would cease its fatal flow, And my surgeon could seal wounds with a touch, All labours will ease before temple and road, Could we answer you,’ said the sergeant, ‘Crows might starve in our company And our talons we would cast in bogs For the gods to fight over as they will. But we have not found in all our years The best in us, until this very day.’ ‘How so?’ asked I, so lost now on the road, And said he, ‘Upon this bridge we sat Since the dawn’s bleak arrival, Our perch of despond so weary and worn, And you we watched, at first a speck Upon the strife-painted horizon So tortured in your tread as to soak our faces In the wonder of your will, yet on you came Upon two sticks so bowed in weight Seeking, say you, the best in us And now we have seen in your gift The best in us, and were treasures at hand We would set them humbly before you, A man without feet who walked a road.’ Now, soldiers with kind words are rare Enough, and I welcomed their regard As I moved among them, ’cross the bridge And onward to the long road beyond I travel seeking the best in us And one day it shall rise before me To bless this journey of mine, and this road I began upon long ago shall now end Where waits for all the best in us. ―Avas Didion Flicker Where Ravens Perch

Pirate and Osbie Feel are leaning on their roof-ledge, a magnificent sunset across and up the winding river, the imperial serpant, crowds of factories, flats, parks, smoky spires and gables, incandescent sky casting downward across the miles of deep streets and roofs cluttering and sinuous river Thames a drastic strain of burnt orange, to remind a visitor of his mortal transience here, to seal or empty all the doors and windows in sight to his eyes that look only for a bit of company, a word or two in the street before he goes up to the soap-heavy smell of the rented room and the squares of coral sunset on the floor-boards—an antique light, self-absorbed, fuel consumed in the metered winter holocaust, the more distant shapes among the threads or sheets of smoke now perfect ash ruins of themselves, nearer windows, struck a moment by the sun, not reflecting at all but containing the same destroying light, this intense fading in which there is no promise of return, light that rusts the government cars at the curbsides, varnishes the last faces hurrying past the shops in the cold as if a vast siren had finally sounded, light that makes chilled untraveled canals of many streets, and that fills with the starlings of London, converging by millions to hazy stone pedestals, to emptying squares and a great collective sleep. They flow in rings, concentric rings on the radar screens. The operators call them ‘angels.

Old Time heaved a moldy sigh from tomb and arch and vault; and gloomy shadows began to deepen in corners; and damps began to rise from green patches of stone; and jewels, cast upon the pavement of the nave from stained glass by the declining sun, began to perish. Within the grill-gate of the chancel, up the steps surmounted loomingly by the fast darkening organ, white robes could be dimly seen, and one feeble voice, rising and falling in a cracked monotonous mutter, could at intervals be faintly heard. In the free outer air, the river, the green pastures, and the brown arable lands, the teeming hills and dales, were reddened by the sunset: while the distant little windows in windmills and farm homesteads, shone, patches of bright beaten gold. In the Cathedral, all became gee, murky, and sepulchral, and the cracked monotonous mutter went on like a dying voice, until the organ and the choir burst forth, and drowned it in a sea of music. Then, the sea fell, and the dying voice made another feeble effort, and then the sea rose high, and beat its life out, and lashed the roof, and surged among the arches, and pierced the heights of the great tower; and then the sea was dry, and all was still.

He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso's Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes 'with collars of real emeralds growing on their backs.' There was a gem in the brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and 'by the exhibition of golden letters and a scarlet robe' the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep and slain. According to the great alchemist, Pierre de Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India made him eloquent. The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her color. The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids. Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a newly killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. The bezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm that could cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the aspirates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any danger by fire.

Remember how those who bent on denying the truth plotted against you to imprison you or kill you or expel you: they schemed—but God also schemed. God is the best of schemers. 31 Whenever Our revelations are recited to them, they say, ‘We have heard them. If we wished, we could produce the like. They are nothing but the fables of the ancients.’ 32 They also said, ‘God, if this really is the truth from You, then rain down upon us stones from heaven, or send us some other painful punishment.’ 33 But God would not punish them while you [Prophet] were in their midst, nor would He punish them so long as they sought forgiveness. 34 Yet why should God not punish them when they debar people from the Sacred Mosque, although they are not its guardians? Its rightful guardians are those who fear God, though most of them do not realize it. 35 Their prayers at the Sacred House are nothing but whistling and clapping of hands. ‘So taste the punishment because of your denial.’ 36 Those who are bent on denying the truth are spending their wealth in debarring others from the path of God. They will continue to spend it in this way till, in the end, this spending will become a source of intense regret for them, and then they will be overcome. And those who denied the truth will be gathered together in Hell. 37 So that God may separate the bad from the good, He will heap the wicked one upon another and then cast them into Hell. These will surely be the losers. 38 Tell those who are bent on denying the truth that if they desist, their past shall be forgiven, but if they persist in sin, they have an example in the fate of those who went before.b 39 Fight them until there is no more [religious] persecution,c and religion belongs wholly to God: if they desist, then surely God is watchful of what they do, 40 but if they turn away, know that God is your Protector; the Best of Protectors and the Best of Helpers!

None of these men will bring about your death any time sooner, but rather they will teach you how to die. None of them will shorten your lifespan, but each will add the wisdom of his years to yours. In other words, there is nothing dangerous about talking to these people and it won’t cost you a penny. Take from them as much as you wish. It’s up to you to squeeze the most you can from their wisdom. What bliss, what a glorious old age awaits the man who has offered himself as a mate to these intellects! He will have mentors and colleagues from whom he may seek advice on the smallest of matters, companions ever ready with counsel for his daily life, from whom he may hear truth without judgment, praise without flattery, and after whose likeness he may fashion himself. They say ‘you can’t choose your parents,’ that they have been given to us by chance; but the good news is we can choose to be the sons of whomever we desire. There are many respectable fathers scattered across the centuries to choose from. Select a genius and make yourself their adopted son. You could even inherit their name and make claim to be a true descendant and then go forth and share this wealth of knowledge with others. These men will show you the way to immortality, and raise you to heights from which no man can be cast down. This is the only way to extend mortality – truly, by transforming time into immortality. Honors, statues and all other mighty monuments to man’s ambition carved in stone will crumble but the wisdom of the past is indestructible. Age cannot wither nor destroy philosophy which serves all generations. Its vitality is strengthened by each new generation’s contribution to it. The Philosopher alone is unfettered by the confines of humanity. He lives forever, like a god. He embraces memory, utilizes the present and anticipates with relish what is to come. He makes his time on Earth longer by merging past, present and future into one.

3. Alone The long march up the fulvous ridgebacks to The marches, the frontiers of difference -- Where flesh marches with bone, day marches with His wife the night, and country marches with Another country -- is accomplished best, By paradox, alone. A world of twos, Of yangs and yins, of lives and objects, of Sound grasses and deaf stones, is best essayed By sole infiltrators who have cast off Their ties to living moorings, and stand out Into the roads of noon approaching night Casting a single shadow, earnest of Their honorable intention to lay down Their lives for their old country, humankind, In the same selfish spirit that inspired Their lifelong journey, largely and at last Alone, across the passes that divide A life from every other, the sheer crags Of overweening will, the deepening scarps Like brain fissures that cunningly cut off Each outcrop from the main and make it one While its luck lasts, while its bravura holds Against all odds, until the final climb Across the mountains to the farther shore Of sundown on the watersheds, where self, Propelled by its last rays, sways in the sway Of the last grasses and falls headlong in The darkness of the dust it is part of Upon the passes where we are no more: Where the recirculating shaft goes home Into the breast that armed it for the air, And, as we must expect, the art that there Turned our lone hand into imperial Rome Reverts to earth and its inveterate love For the inanimate and its return. FINIS -- from 'Tras Os Montes

Let’s talk about ‘Coexist’ bumper stickers for a second. You’ve definitely seen them around. They’re those blue strips with white lettering that assemble a collection of religious icons and mystical symbols (e.g., an Islamic crescent, a Star of David, a Christian cross, a peace sign, a yin-yang) to spell out a simple message of inclusion and tolerance. Perhaps you instinctively roll your eyes at these advertisements of moral correctness. Perhaps you find the sentiment worthwhile, but you’re not a wear-your-politics-on-your-fender type of person. Or perhaps you actually have ‘Coexist’ bumper stickers affixed to both your Prius and your Beamer. Whatever floats your boat, man; far be it from us to cast stones. But we bring up these particular morality minibillboards to illustrate a bothersome dichotomy. If we were to draw a Venn diagram of (a) the people who flaunt their socially responsible “coexist” values for fellow motorists, and (b) the people who believe that, say, an evangelical Christian who owns a local flower shop ought to be sued and shamed for politely declining to provide floral arrangements for a same-sex wedding, the resulting circles would more or less overlap. The coexist message: You people (i.e., conservatives) need to get on board and start coexisting with groups that might make you uncomfortable. It says so right here on my highly enlightened bumper sticker. But don’t you dare ask me to tolerate the ‘intolerance’ of people with whom I disagree. Because that’s different.

We are wont to say that it was not in our power to choose the parents who fell to our lot, that they have been given to men by chance; yet we may be the sons of whomsoever we will. Households there are of noblest intellects; choose the one into which you wish to be adopted; you will inherit not merely their name, but even their property, which there will be no need to guard in a mean or niggardly spirit; the more persons you share it with, the greater it will become. These will open to you the path to immortality, and will raise you to a height from which no one is cast down. This is the only way of prolonging mortality—nay, of turning it into immortality. Honours, monuments, all that ambition has commanded by decrees or reared in works of stone, quickly sink to ruin; there is nothing that the lapse of time does not tear down and remove. But the works which philosophy has consecrated cannot be harmed; no age will destroy them, no age reduce them; the following and each succeeding age will but increase the reverence for them, since envy works upon what is close at hand, and things that are far off we are more free to admire. The life of the philosopher, therefore, has wide range, and he is not confined by the same bounds that shut others in. He alone is freed from the limitations of the human race; all ages serve him as if a god. Has some time passed by? This he embraces by recollection. Is time present? This he uses. Is it still to come? This he anticipates. He makes his life long by combining all times into one.

To Begin With, the Sweet Grass 1. Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat of the sweet grass? Will the owl bite off its own wings? Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or forget to sing? Will the rivers run upstream? Behold, I say—behold the reliability and the finery and the teachings of this gritty earth gift. 2. Eat bread and understand comfort. Drink water, and understand delight. Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds who are drinking the sweetness, who are thrillingly gluttonous. For one thing leads to another. Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot. Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in. And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star both intimate and ultimate, and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful. And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper: oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two beautiful bodies of your lungs. 3. The witchery of living is my whole conversation with you, my darlings. All I can tell you is what I know. Look, and look again. This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes. It's more than bones. It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse. It's more than the beating of the single heart. It's praising. It's giving until the giving feels like receiving. You have a life—just imagine that! You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe still another. 4. Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus, the dancer, the potter, to make me a begging bowl which I believe my soul needs. And if I come to you, to the door of your comfortable house with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails, will you put something into it? I would like to take this chance. I would like to give you this chance. 5. We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we change. Congratulations, if you have changed. 6. Let me ask you this. Do you also think that beauty exists for some fabulous reason? And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure— your life— what would do for you? 7. What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself. Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to. That was many years ago. Since then I have gone out from my confinements, though with difficulty. I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart. I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile. They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment somehow or another). And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope. I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is. I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned, I have become younger. And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know? Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.

Out beyond and way back and further past that still. And such was it since. But after all appearances and some afternoons misspent it came to pass not all was done and over with. No, no. None shally shally on that here hill. Ah, but that was idle then and change was not an old hand. No, no. None shilly shilly on that here first rung. So, much girded and with new multitudes, a sun came purple and the hail turned in a year or two. And that was not all. No, no. None ganny ganny on that here moon loose. Turns were taken and time put in, so much heft and grimace, there, with callouses, all along the diagonal. Like no other time and the time taken back, that too like none other that can be compared to a bovine heap raising steam, or the eye-cast of a flailing comet. Back and forth, examining the egg spill and the cord fray and the clowning barnacle. And all day with no break to unwrap or unscrew or squint and flex or soak the brush. No, no. None flim flim on that here cavorting mainstay. From tree to tree and the pond there deepening and some small holes appearing and any number of cornstalks twisting into a thing far from corn. That being the case there was some wretched plotting, turned to stone, holding nothing. No, no. None rubby rubby on that here yardstick. Came then from the region of silt and aster, all along the horse trammel and fire velvet, first these sounds and then their makers. When passed betwixt and entered fully, pails were swung and notches considered. There was no light. No, none. None wzm wzm on that here piss crater. And it being the day, still considered. Oh, all things considered and not one mentioned, since all names had turned in and handed back. Knowing this the hounds disbanded and knowing that the ground muddled headstones and milestones and gallows and the almond-shaped buds of freshest honeysuckle. And among this chafing tumult fates were scrambled and mortality made untidy and pithy vows took themselves a breather. This being the way and irreversible homewards now was a lifted skeletal thing of the past, without due application or undue meaning. No, no. None shap shap on that here domicile shank. From right foot to left, first by the firs, then by the river, hung and loitered, and the blaze there slow to come. All night waking with no benefit of sleeping and the breath cranking and the heart-place levering and the kerosene pervading but failing to jerk a flame from out any one thing. No, none. None whoosh whoosh on that here burnished cunt. Oh, the earth, the earth and the women there, inside the simpering huts, stamped and spiritless, blowing on the coals. Not far away, but beyond the way of return.

From the bonny bells of heather, They brewed a drink long syne, Was sweeter far than honey, Was stronger far than wine. They brewed it and they drank it, And lay in blessed swound, For days and days together, In their dwellings underground. There rose a King in Scotland, A fell man to his foes, He smote the Picts in battle, He hunted them like roes. Over miles of the red mountain He hunted as they fled, And strewed the dwarfish bodies Of the dying and the dead. Summer came in the country, Red was the heather bell, But the manner of the brewing, Was none alive to tell. In graves that were like children’s On many a mountain’s head, The Brewsters of the Heather Lay numbered with the dead. The king in the red moorland Rode on a summer’s day; And the bees hummed and the curlews Cried beside the way. The King rode and was angry, Black was his brow and pale, To rule in a land of heather, And lack the Heather Ale. It fortuned that his vassals, Riding free upon the heath, Came on a stone that was fallen And vermin hid beneath. Roughly plucked from their hiding, Never a word they spoke: A son and his aged father – Last of the dwarfish folk. The king sat high on his charger, He looked down on the little men; And the dwarfish and swarthy couple Looked at the king again. Down by the shore he had them: And there on the giddy brink – “I will give thee life ye vermin, For the secret of the drink.” There stood the son and father And they looked high and low; The heather was red around them, The sea rumbled below. And up spoke the father, Shrill was his voice to hear: “I have a word in private, A word for the royal ear. “Life is dear to the aged, And honour a little thing; I would gladly sell the secret”, Quoth the Pict to the King. His voice was small as a sparrow’s, And shrill and wonderful clear: “I would gladly sell my secret, Only my son I fear. “For life is a little matter, And death is nought to the young; And I dare not sell my honour, Under the eye of my son. Take him, O king, and bind him, And cast him far in the deep; And it’s I will tell the secret That I have sworn to keep.” They took the son and bound him, Neck and heels in a thong, And a lad took him and swung him, And flung him far and strong And the sea swallowed his body, Like that of a child of ten; And there on the cliff stood the father, Last of the dwarfish men. “True was the word I told you: Only my son I feared; For I doubt the sapling courage, That goes without the beard. But now in vain is the torture, Fire shall not avail: Here dies in my bosom The secret of the Heather Ale.