Confession Of Love To Him Quotes

Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky." "She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me. "Moderately," Holly confessed....Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc -- it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

A man will never love you or treat you as well as a store. If a man doesn’t fit, you can’t exchange him seven days later for a gorgeous cashmere sweater. And a store always smells good. A store can awaken a lust for things you never even knew you needed. And when your fingers first grasp those shiny, new bags…

Mine was the unbearable jealousy a cultured pearl must feel toward a genuine one. Or can there be such a thing in this world as a man who is jealous of the woman who loves him, precisely because of her love?

Finally, in a low whisper, he said, ‘I think I might be a terrible person.’ For a split second I believed him - I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.

I love you.” I stared stupidly at him. Was he joking again, reciting another line from my story? I didn’t remember writing this. He leaned in and kissed me. I didn’t respond for a few seconds. My mind lagged behind what my body was feeling. “Say it,” he whispered against my lips. “I know this is hard for you. Tell me.” “I love you.” Hearing my own words, I gasped at the rush of emotion. He put his hands on either side of my jaw and took my mouth with his.

The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness and sanctification center, where flawed people place their faith in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he designed.

Perhaps in another life, I am brave enough to confess that I love him. Perhaps in another life, I learn to love him from afar. And that is the most fearless thing of them all.

I Choose Love... No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves. I Choose Joy... I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God. I Choose Peace... I will live forgiven. I will forgive so I may live. I Choose Patience... I will overlook the inconveniences of the world. Instead of cursing the one who takes my place, I'll invite him to do so, Rather complain that the wait is to long, I will thank God for a moment to pray. Instead of clenching my fist at new assignments, I will face them with joy and courage. I Choose Kindness... I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone. Kind to the rich, for they are afraid. And kind to the unkind, for that is how God has treated me. I Choose Goodness... I will go without a dollar before I take a dishonest one. I will be overlooked before I will boast. I will confess before I accuse. I choose goodness. I Choose Faithfulness... Today I will keep my promises. My debtors will not regret their trust. My friends will not question my word. And my family will not question my love. I Choose Gentleness... Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it only be in praise. If I clench my fist, may it only be in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself. I Choose Self-Control... I refuse to let what will rot, rule the eternal. I choose self-control. I will be drunk only by joy. I will be impassioned only by my faith. I will be influenced only by God. I will be taught only by Christ. I choose self-control. Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self-Control. To these I commit my day. If I succeed, I will give thanks. If I fail, I will seek His grace. And then when this day is done I will place my head on my pillow and rest.

Father asks frequently in his letters whether I fancy any Ayorthaian young lady or any in our acquaintance at home. I say no I suppose I'm confessing another fault: pride. I don't want him to know that I love if my affections are not returned

I wonder if it is possible to have two boyfriends. I mean, times are changing. Relationships are more complicated. In France men always have mistresses and wives and so on. Henri probably has two girlfriends. He would laugh if you told him you just had one. He would say, 'C'est tres, tres tragique.'

He was my comfort. He was my solace. Nearly everything I had faced in my young life, I had gotten through because of him, because he was always there for me, with soft words and a tender heart. -Kiera Allen

Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her...and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being.

I waited for him to say something more, but he was quiet. "Was there something you wanted?" I asked. He didn't answer right away, but I could feel him struggling, so I waited. "If I asked you something, would you tell me the truth?" It was my turn to hesitate. "I don't know everything," I hedged. "You would know this. When we were walking... me and Jeb... he was telling me some things. Things he thought, but I don't know if he's right." Melanie was suddenly very in my head. Jamie's whisper was hard to hear, quieter than my breathing. "Uncle Jeb thinks that Melanie might still be alive. Inside there with you, I mean." Melanie sighed. I said nothing to either of them. "I didn't know that could happen. Does that happen?" His voice broke and I could hear that he was fighting tears. He was not a boy to cry, and here I'd grieved him this deeply twice in one day. A pain pierced through the general region of my chest. "Does it, Wanda?" "Why won't you answer me?" Jamie was really crying now but trying to muffle the sound. I crawled off the bed, squeezing into the hard space between the mattress and the mat, and threw my arm over his shaking chest. I leaned my head against his hair and felt his tears, warm on my neck. "Is Melanie still alive, Wanda? Please?" He was probably a tool. The old man could have sent him just for this, Jeb was smart enough to see how easily Jamie broke through my defenses. Jamie's body shook beside me. Melanie cried. She battered ineffectually at my control. But I couldn't blame this on Melanie if it turned out to be a huge mistake. I knew who was speaking now. "She promised she would come back, didn't she?" I murmured. "Would Melanie break a promise to you?" Jamie slid his arms around my waist and clung to me for a long time. After a few minutes, he whispered. "Love you, Mel." "She loves you, too. She's so happy that you're here and safe." He was silent long enough for the tears on my skin to dry, leaving a fine, salty dust behind.

For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friend, "Thou half of my soul"; for I felt that my soul and his soul were "one soul in two bodies": and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved. And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved should die wholly.

I know I want you," he heard himself say, all his vows and his honor all forgotten. She stood before him naked as her name day, and he was as hard as the rock around them. He had been in her half a hundred times by now, but always beneath furs, with others all around them. He had never seeen how beautiful she was. Her legs were skinny and well muscled, the hair at the juncture of her thighs a brighter red than that on her head. Does that make it even luckier? He pulled her close. "I love the smell of you," he said. "I love your red hair. I love your mouth, and the way you kiss me. I love your smile. I love your teats." He kissed them, one and then the other. "I love your skinny legs, and what's between them." He knelt to kiss her there, lightly on her mound at first, but Ygritte moved her legs apart a little, and he saw the pink inside and kissed that as well, and tasted her. She gave a little gasp. "If you love me all so much, why are you still dressed?" she whispered. "You know nothing, Jon Snow. Noth---oh. Oh. OHHH." Afterward, she was almost shy, or as shy as Ygritte ever got. "The thing you did," she said, when they lay together on their piled clothes. "With your...mouth." She hesistated. "Is that...is it what lordss do to their ladies, down in the south?" "I don't think so." No one had ever told Jon just what lords did with their ladies. "I only...wanted to kiss you there, that's all. You seemed to like it." "Aye. I...I liked it some. No one taught you such?" "There's been no one," he confessed. "Only you.

Sensuality does not wear a watch but she always gets to the essential places on time. She is adventurous and not particularly quiet. She was reprimanded in grade school because she couldn’t sit still all day long. She needs to move. She thinks with her body. Even when she goes to the library to read Emily Dickinson or Emily Bronte, she starts reading out loud and swaying with the words, and before she can figure out what is happening, she is asked to leave. As you might expect, she is a disaster at office jobs. Sensuality has exquisite skin and she appreciates it in others as well. There are other people whose skin is soft and clear and healthy but something about Sensuality’s skin announces that she is alive. When the sun bursts forth in May, Sensuality likes to take off her shirt and feel the sweet warmth of the sun’s rays brush across her shoulder. This is not intended as a provocative gesture but other people are, as usual, upset. Sensuality does not understand why everyone else is so disturbed by her. As a young girl, she was often scolded for going barefoot. Sensuality likes to make love at the border where time and space change places. When she is considering a potential lover, she takes him to the ocean and watches. Does he dance with the waves? Does he tell her about the time he slept on the beach when he was seventeen and woke up in the middle of the night to look at the moon? Does he laugh and cry and notice how big the sky is? It is spring now, and Sensuality is very much in love these days. Her new friend is very sweet. Climbing into bed the first time, he confessed he was a little intimidated about making love with her. Sensuality just laughed and said, ‘But we’ve been making love for days.

The truth is, I do expect a lot out of my love story and the man I’ll share it with. I expect passion and butterflies, and one or two fairy tale moments. When we fight, I want it to hurt. When we fuck, I want to feel it with every fiber of my being. When a man confesses his love to me, I expect him to mean it. I don’t want to question the words’ authenticity. I want to be claimed and owned and ruled and possessed by love.

Abruptly he thrust his snow-drenched leather gloves against my cheeks. I dodged. A raw carnal feeling blazed up within me, branding my cheeks. I felt myself staring at him with crystal clear eyes... From that time on I was in love with Omi.

Because I was dying. 　　And Warner could’ve let me die. He was angry and hurt and had every reason to be bitter. I’d just ripped his heart out; I’d let him believe something would come of our relationship. I let him confess the depth of his feelings to me; I let him touch me in ways even Adam hadn't. I didn't ask him to stop. 　　Every inch of me was saying yes. 　　And then I took it all back. Because I was scared, and confused, and conflicted. Because of Adam. 　　Warner told me he loved me, and in return I insulted him and lied to him and yelled at him and pushed him away. And when he had the chance to stand back and watch me die, he didn’t. 　　He found a way to save my life. 　　With no demands. No expectations. Believing full well that I was in love with someone else, and that saving my life meant making me whole again only to give me back to another guy. 　　And right now, I can’t say I know what Adam would do if I were dying in front of him. I’m not sure if he would save my life. And that uncertainty alone makes me certain that something wasn't right between us.

No matter how it seems now, I must confess: I loved him. I do not think that I will ever love anyone like that again. And this might be a great relief if I did not also know that, when the knife has fallen, Giovanni, if he feels anything will feel relief.

In words which can still bring tears to the eyes, St. Augustine describes the desolation into which the death of his friend Nebridius plunged him (Confessions IV, 10). Then he draws a moral. This is what comes, he says, of giving one’s heart to anything but God. All human beings pass away. Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose. If love is to be a blessing, not a misery, it must be for the only Beloved who will never pass away.

Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than they love the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest and sacrificial. God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idolized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands set up by their own law, and judge one another and God accordingly. It is not we who build. Christ builds the church. Whoever is mindful to build the church is surely well on the way to destroying it, for he will build a temple to idols without wishing or knowing it. We must confess he builds. We must proclaim, he builds. We must pray to him, and he will build. We do not know his plan. We cannot see whether he is building or pulling down. It may be that the times which by human standards are the times of collapse are for him the great times of construction. It may be that the times which from a human point are great times for the church are times when it's pulled down. It is a great comfort which Jesus gives to his church. You confess, preach, bear witness to me, and I alone will build where it pleases me. Do not meddle in what is not your providence. Do what is given to you, and do it well, and you will have done enough.... Live together in the forgiveness of your sins. Forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts.

He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!...He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love. ... He has carried me off for love!...He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!...But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!...And, when I stood up, Raoul, and told him that I could only despise him if he did not, then and there, give me my liberty...he offered it...he offered to show me the mysterious road...Only...only he rose too...and I was made to remember that, though he was not an angel, nor a ghost, nor a genius, he remained the voice...for he sang. And I listened ... and stayed!...That night, we did not exchange another word. He sang me to sleep.

You love Roth," he continued for me."You're in love with him." My eyes met his bright blue ones."Yes," I whispered, my lower lip trembling."It's him. It's always been him.

I regard myself as the most wretched of all men, stinking and covered with sores, and as one who has committed all sorts of crimes against his King. Overcome by remorse, I confess all my wickedness to Him, ask His pardon and abandon myself entirely to Him to do with as He will. But this King, filled with goodness and mercy, far from chastising me, lovingly embraces me, makes me eat at His table, serves me with His own hands, gives me the keys of His treasures and treats me as His favorite. He talks with me and is delighted with me in a thousand and one ways; He forgives me and relieves me of my principle bad habits without talking about them; I beg Him to make me according to His heart and always the more weak and despicable I see myself to be, the more beloved I am of God.

I love you." He pushes his nose into my hair and inhales deeply. "I love you so fucking much." "I know." I whisper, turning my head into him and capturing his lips.

There's an honesty to the wolf world that is liberating. There's no diplomacy, no decorum. You tell your enemy you hate him; you show your admiration by confessing the truth. That directness doesn't work with humans, who are masters of subterfuge. Does this dress make me look fat? Do you really love me? Did you miss me? When a person asks this, she doesn't want to know the real answer. She wants you to lie to her. After two years of living with wolves, I had forgotten how many lies it takes to build a relationship.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception…. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.

When did they stop putting toys in cereal boxes? When I was little, I remember wandering the cereal aisle (which surely is as American a phenomenon as fireworks on the Fourth of July) and picking my breakfast food based on what the reward was: a Frisbee with the Trix rabbit's face emblazoned on the front. Holographic stickers with the Lucky Charms leprechaun. A mystery decoder wheel. I could suffer through raisin bran for a month if it meant I got a magic ring at the end. I cannot admit this out loud. In the first place, we are expected to be supermoms these days, instead of admitting that we have flaws. It is tempting to believe that all mothers wake up feeling fresh every morning, never raise their voices, only cook with organic food, and are equally at ease with the CEO and the PTA. Here's a secret: those mothers don't exist. Most of us-even if we'd never confess-are suffering through the raisin bran in the hopes of a glimpse of that magic ring. I look very good on paper. I have a family, and I write a newspaper column. In real life, I have to pick superglue out of the carpet, rarely remember to defrost for dinner, and plan to have BECAUSE I SAID SO engraved on my tombstone. Real mothers wonder why experts who write for Parents and Good Housekeeping-and, dare I say it, the Burlington Free Press-seem to have their acts together all the time when they themselves can barely keep their heads above the stormy seas of parenthood. Real mothers don't just listen with humble embarrassment to the elderly lady who offers unsolicited advice in the checkout line when a child is throwing a tantrum. We take the child, dump him in the lady's car, and say, "Great. Maybe YOU can do a better job." Real mothers know that it's okay to eat cold pizza for breakfast. Real mothers admit it is easier to fail at this job than to succeed. If parenting is the box of raisin bran, then real mothers know the ratio of flakes to fun is severely imbalanced. For every moment that your child confides in you, or tells you he loves you, or does something unprompted to protect his brother that you happen to witness, there are many more moments of chaos, error, and self-doubt. Real mothers may not speak the heresy, but they sometimes secretly wish they'd chosen something for breakfast other than this endless cereal. Real mothers worry that other mothers will find that magic ring, whereas they'll be looking and looking for ages. Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.

I think I fell in love with you that amazing night on the kitchen floor. Or maybe it was the evening you stepped up and set my arm." Testing things, he reached for her hand, and, to his joy, she glared, but she let him take it. "Or maybe the night I knew I loved you was when I kissed you under the mistletoe on Christmas Eve. It's hard to say because I look at you now and it seems to me there's never been a time when I didn't love you.

I love the person I am with you. You recognize somebody in me who I want to be, who I wish I were, and I am him when I am around you.

Someone who knows enough to become the owner of a tree, and gives thanks to you for the benefits it brings him, is in a better state, even if ignorant of its height in feet and the extent of its spread, than another who measures and counts all its branches but neither owns it nor knows its creator nor loves him.

When a man confesses his love to me, I expect him to mean it. I don’t want to question the words’ authenticity. I want to be claimed and owned and ruled and possessed by love.

Why?" He stopped pacing and looked at her as if she'd just asked him to count every leaf on every tree in the Old Place. "Because... you're you.

The chances of him,” I told Rosie, “being actually serious are the same chances I have of having Chris Evans pop out of nowhere and confess his undying love for me.

Oh my God, she’d kissed him! She’d stuck her tongue inside a creature from hell. Oh jeez, this would sound great in confession. Say two Hail Marys and avoid further contact with the spawn of the devil.

I think about him all the time,” she said. “It’s awful. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.” “You mean Simon?” “Scrawny little mundane bastard,” she said, and took her hands off Jordan’s chest. “Except he isn’t. Scrawny, anymore. Or a mundane. And I like spending time with him. He makes me laugh. And I like the way he smiles. You know, one side of his mouth goes up before the other one—Well, you live with him. You must have noticed.” “Not really,” said Jordan. “I miss him when he’s not around,” Isabelle confessed.

I must admit,” he said in a low voice as though it were a confession, “if anyone had told me that you’d become so lovely, I would never have come near you. I was rather blindsided when I first saw you again.” She stared at him in confusion. “You’re like a rose in a graveyard,” he said, and his lips curved into a bitter smile. “I wonder what you could have turned into without the war.

What matters it to me if someone does not understand this? Let him too rejoice and say, “What is this?” Let him rejoice even at this, and let him love to find you while not finding it out, rather than, while finding it out, not to find you.

You like him, Rose. Why don't you just admit that, at least to me?

The antidote for pride is humility; meekness; submissiveness... Let us choose to be humble. We can choose to humble ourselves by conquering enmity toward our brothers and sisters, esteeming them as ourselves, and lifting them as high or higher than we are... We can choose to humble ourselves by receiving counsel and chastisement... We can choose to humble ourselves by forgiving those who have offended us... We can choose to humble ourselves by rendering selfless service... We can chose to humble ourselves by going on missions and preaching the word that can humble others... We can choose to humble ourselves by getting to the temple more frequently... We can choose to humble ourselves by confessing and forsaking our sins and being born of God... We can choose to humble ourselves by loving God, submitting our will to His, and putting Him first in our lives

a thing is good and pleasant only because it is connected to Him. Use it apart from its Source, and it will come to taste bitter. Since the good thing is His, how can it remain worth loving if you forsake Him to get it?

I always want to tell him everything. But instead I said, “What’s your advice, Horn - meister?” And he started doing pretend beard stroking and said, “Well, luuurve is a many trousered thing. . . .

Perhaps in another life, I am strong enough to never need proof of it. Perhaps in another life, I am brave enough to confess that I love him. Perhaps in another life, I learn to love him from afar. And that is the most fearless thing of them all.

I prefer your company, Em." He said it as if it were obvious. I snorted again, assuming he was teasing me. "Over the company of a tavern filled with a rapt and grateful audience? I'm sure you do." "Over anyone else's company." Again, he said it with some amusement, as if wondering what I was doing speculating about something so evident. "You are drunk," I said. "Shall I prove it to you?" "No, you shan't," I said, alarmed, but he was already sweeping to the floor, bending his knee and taking my hand between his. "What in God's name are you doing?" I said between my teeth. "And why are you doing it now?" "Shall I make an appointment?" he said, then laughed. "Yes, I believe you would like that. Well, name the time when it would be convenient for you to receive a declaration of love." "Oh, get up," I said, furious now. "What sort of jest is this, Wendell?" "You don't believe me?" He smiled, all mischief, a look I'd seen from other Folk, enough to know not to trust him one inch. "Ask for my true name, and I'll give it to you." "Why on earth would you do that?" I demanded, yanking my hand back. "Oh, Em," he said forlornly. "You are the cleverest dolt I have ever met." I stared at him, my heart thundering. Of course, I am not a dolt in any sense; I had supposed he felt something for me and had only hoped he would keep it to himself. Forever. Not that a part of me didn't wish for the opposite. But that was when I assumed his feelings in that respect were equivalent to what he felt for any of the nameless women who passed in and out of his bed. And why would I lower myself to that, when he and I already had something that was vastly more valuable?

OK, I confess. I Googled him once. Maybe twice. Oh, all right, so I've lost count over the years. But so what? Who hasn't gone home and Googled a man they're in love with? Hang on - did I just say the L word? - Lucy

I love you, Li. Christ, I fuckin' love you," he confessed. I could hear the disbelief and shock laced in his voice. My heart swelled and I began to think of a life with him. A life far from all I had been taught was true, but my soul was attached to his...joined, melded with his.

A minister friend of mine once said that as he carries his little girl around, she never has to say, “I confess with my mouth and believe in my heart that my dad will not drop me. And I confess with my mouth and believe in my heart that my dad’s going to feed me.” For that daughter, there is no striving to believe her father is going to be good to her. She just rests and relaxes in her loving relationship with him. She knows he is going to take care of her, because she knows him and his character.

Sissy had two great failings. She was a great lover and a great mother. She had so much of tenderness in her, so much of wanting to give of herself to whoever needed what she had, whether it was her money, her time, the clothes off her back, her pity, her understanding, her friendship or her companionship and love. She was mother to everything that came her way. She loved men, yes. She loved women too, and old people and especially children. How she loved children! She loved loved the down-and-outers. She wanted to make everybody happy. She had tried to seduce the good priest who heard her infrequent confessions because she felt sorry for him. She thought he was missing the greatest joy on earth by being committed to a life of celibacy. She loved all the scratching curs on the street and wept for the gaunt scavenging cats who slunk around Brooklyn corners with their sides swollen looking for a hole in which they might bring forth their young. She loved the sooty sparrows and thought that the very grass that grew in the lots was beautiful. She picked bouquets of white clover in the lots believing they were the most beautiful flowers God ever made...Yes, she listened to everybody's troubles but no one listened to hers. But that was right because Sissy was a giver and never a taker.

The flowers that I left in the ground, that I did not gather for you, today I bring them all back, to let them grow forever, not in poems or marble, but where they fell and rotted. And the ships in their great stalls, huge and transitory as heroes, ships I could not captain, today I bring them back to let them sail forever, not in model or ballad, but where they were wrecked and scuttled. And the child on whose shoulders I stand, whose longing I purged with public, kingly discipline, today I bring him back to languish forever, not in confession or biography, but where he flourished, growing sly and hairy. It is not malice that draws me away, draws me to renunciation, betrayal: it is weariness, I go for weariness of thee, Gold, ivory, flesh, love, God, blood, moon- I have become the expert of the catalogue. My body once so familiar with glory, My body has become a museum: this part remembered because of someone's mouth, this because of a hand, this of wetness, this of heat. Who owns anything he has not made? With your beauty I am as uninvolved as with horses' manes and waterfalls. This is my last catalogue. I breathe the breathless I love you, I love you - and let you move forever.

She tried to think of what to say to make it all better again, or at least the way it was before she'd made her confession, though she didn't regret having confessed. Perhaps that was what had been wrong with her all along. Now that the lie wasn't between them anymore, maybe she could love him again.

There is an old Eastern fable about a traveler who is taken unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveler hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And I try licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse – day and night – are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone. The delusion of the joys of life that had formerly stifled my fear of the dragon no longer deceived me. No matter how many times I am told: you cannot understand the meaning of life, do not thinking about it but live, I cannot do so because I have already done it for too long. Now I cannot help seeing day and night chasing me and leading me to my death. This is all I can see because it is the only truth. All the rest is a lie. Those two drops of honey, which more than all else had diverted my eyes from the cruel truth, my love for my family and for my writing, which I called art – I no longer found sweet.

But what do I love when I love my God? Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love Him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God.

Instead of saying, "Next time he does this, I will ... ", say, "Next time he does that, I will show him more patience and more love.

I saw it in his eyes, first. That hunger, that fire. And then I found it in myself. He's a flame, Waxillium is, and fire can be shared. When I'm out here, when I'm with him, I burn, Marasi. It's wonderful.

Alexa realized she’d always confessed everything to Maggie except for one event. The first time Nick kissed her. She’d known she loved him back then. Friendship turned to rivalry and then to a girlish crush. That first kiss twisted emotions so pure within her she believed it was love. Her heart beat for him, full of joy at the possibility of them being together, so she uttered the words, her voice echoing through the trees. “I love you.

I’m in love with you, you stupid arse, and I’m not losing you. Got it?” she whispered against his lips before kissing him again. Her confession had stolen his breath, so all he could do was nod. “Now, once again, how do we fix you?” she asked, when they finally parted. To

[H]is first purpose was to explain himself, and before they reached Mr. Allen's grounds he had done it so well that Catherine did not think it could ever be repeated too often. She was assured of his affection; and that heart in return was solicited, which, perhaps, they pretty equally knew was already entirely his own; for, though Henry was now sincerely attached to her, though he felt and delighted in all the excellencies of her character and truly loved her society, I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own.

That as he knew his obligation to love GOD in all things, and as he endeavored so to do, he had no need of a director to advise him, but that he needed much a Confessor to absolve him. That he was very sensible of his faults, but not discouraged by them; that he confessed them to GOD, but did not plead against Him to excuse them. When he had so done, he peaceably resumed his usual practice of love and adoration.

If the things of this world delight you, praise God for them but turn your love away from them and give it to their Maker, so that in the things that please you you may not displease him.

how shall I get through the months or years of my future life, in company with that man -- my greatest enemy -- for none could injure me as he has done? Oh! when I think how fondly, how foolishly I have loved him, how madly I have trusted him, how constantly I have laboured, and studied, and prayed, and struggled for his advantage, and how cruelly he has trampled on my love, betrayed my trust, scorned my prayers and tears, and efforts for his preservation --crushed my hopes, destroyed my youth's best feelings, and doomed me to a life of hopeless misery -- as far as man can do it -- it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband -- I HATE him! The word stares me in the face like a guilty confession, but it is true: I hate him -- I hate him!

I know girls aren't supposed to tell, but I've got to tell—just in case you should fail to love me because you never knew how much I loved you. I want not to have to say later—I wish I'd told him.

A providence is shaping our ends; a plan is developing in our lives; a supremely wise and loving Being is making all things work together for good. In the sequel of our life's story, we shall see that there was a meaning and necessity in all the previous incidents, except those that were the result of our own folly and sin, and that even these have been made to contribute to the final result. Trust Him, child of God: He is leading you by a right way to the celestial city of habitation; and as from the terrace of eternity you review the path by which you came from the morning-land of childhood, you will confess that He has done all things well.

Love? Yes, God loves us. But his love is passionate and seeks faithful, committed love in return. God does not want tame pets to fondle and feed; he wants mature, free people who will respond to him in authentic individuality. For that to happen there must be honesty and truth. The self must be toppled from its pedestal. There must be pure hearts and clear intelligence, confession of sin and commitment in faith.

Hippolytus: Do you believe in God? Priest: (Looks at him.) Hippolytus: I know what I am. And always will be. But you. You sin knowing you'll confess. Then you're forgiven. And then you start all over again. How do you dare mock a God so powerful? Unless you don't really believe. Priest: This is your confession, not mine. Hippolytus: Then why are you on your knees? God certainly is merciful. If I were him I'd despise you. I'd wipe you off the face of the earth for your dishonesty. Priest: You're not God. Hippolytus: No. A prince. God on earth. But not God. Fortunate for all concerned. I'd not allow you to sin knowing you'd confess and get away with it. Priest: Heaven would be empty. Hippolytus: A kingdom of honest men, honestly sinning. And death for those who try to cover their arse.

Most of the time now we settle for half and I like it better. But the truth is holy, and even as I known how wrong he was, and his death useless, I tremble, for I confess that something perversely pure calls to me from his memory- not purely good, but himself purely, for he allowed himself to be wholly known and for that I think I will love him more than all my sensible clients. And yet, it is better to settle for half, it must be! And so I mourn him- I admit -with a certain... alarm.

Maybe it was simply that falling in love wasn’t something Lori would ever be able to turn away from, regardless of just how much pain she knew would be coming down the pike. And maybe, just maybe, as long as she never actually confessed to him how she felt, that would make it okay to give in to what she felt for Grayson for one night, beneath the moon, with the smell of wild grass and the ocean all around them...

You'll love him to ruins. Unless you let him go.

I wish I had heard him more clearly: an oblique confession is always a plea.

I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange? BEATRICE As strange as the thing I know not. It were as possible for me to say I loved nothing so well as you: but believe me not; and yet I lie not; I confess nothing, nor I deny nothing. I am sorry for my cousin. BENEDICK By my sword, Beatrice, thou lovest me. BEATRICE Do not swear, and eat it. BENEDICK I will swear by it that you love me; and I will make him eat it that says I love not you. BEATRICE Will you not eat your word? BENEDICK With no sauce that can be devised to it. I protest I love thee. BEATRICE Why, then, God forgive me! BENEDICK What offence, sweet Beatrice? BEATRICE You have stayed me in a happy hour: I was about to protest I loved you. BENEDICK And do it with all thy heart. BEATRICE I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest. BENEDICK Come, bid me do any thing for thee.

Sissy had two great failings. She was a great lover and a great mother. She had so much of tenderness in her, so much of wanting to give of herself to whoever needed what she had, whether it was her money, her time, the clothes off her back, her pity, her understanding, her friendship or her companionship and love. She was mother to everything that came her way. She loved men, yes. She loved women too, and old people, and especially children. How she loved children! She loved the down-and-outers. She wanted to make everybody happy. She had tried to seduce the good priest who heard her infrequent confessions because she felt sorry for him. She thought he was missing the greatest joy on earth by being committed to a life of celibacy.

His Facebook post is pure Jamie: Hi all. I feel like a heel doing this over Facebook, but I can’t reach everyone by tomorrow. You’re all going to discuss me on Sunday, anyway. And in case you think my account was hacked, it wasn’t. As proof I’ll confess that I’m the one who broke Mom’s Christmas tree angel when I was seven. It was death by baseball, but I swear she didn’t suffer. Anyway, I have to catch you up on a few developments. I’ve taken the coaching job in Toronto, and I’ve declined my spot in Detroit. This feels like the right career move, but there’s something else. I’m living with my boyfriend (that was not a typo.) His name is Wes, and we met at Lake Placid about nine years ago. In case you were lacking something to talk about over dinner, I’ve fixed that problem. Love you all. Jamie

I'm Breanna Miller. The smart girl. The quiet girl. The one who belongs to a large family. I'm Breanna Miller. Number 5 in the line of 9. The girl who everybody knows and nobody sees. I'm Breanna Miller. A girl who went to Shamrock's and ended up falling in love with Thomas Turner-Razor of the Reign of Terror. The boy who everyone sees and nobody knows. I've been with him for months. I'm in love with him and I don't care who knows.

The blame of course belonged to Clyde, who just was not much given to talk. Also, he seemed very little curious himself: Grady, alarmed sometimes by the meagerness of his inquiries and the indifference this might suggest, supplied him liberally with personal information; which isn't to say she always told the truth, how many people in love do? or can? but at least she permitted him enough truth to account more or less accurately for all the life she had lived away from him. It was her feeling, however, that he would as soon not hear her confessions: he seemed to want her to be as elusive, as secretive as he was himself.

And I think he loves everyone, and he wants everyone to be okay, and I think almost everyone who is, like, earnestly seeking God—people aren’t seeking that out of ego; they’re looking for the meaning of life and they’re looking beyond themselves for it—and, I mean, I don’t know anything, except that I think God is the kind of guy who when someone dies, he’ll sit there and sift through every heartfelt thought, every drunken prayer, every desperate plea for help, every Mumford & Sons song that you’ve sung to look for a hint of a confession that you believe in him.

57. For which reason I should make return for all that he returns me. But what should I say, or what should I promise to my Lord, for I, alone, can do nothing unless he himself vouchsafe it to me. But let him search my heart and [my] nature, for I crave enough for it, even too much, and I am ready for him to grant me that I drink of his chalice, as he has granted to others who love him.

Even his highly emotional Italian mother didn't believe that true love could blossom overnight. Like his brothers and sisters-in-law, she wanted nothing more for him than to marry and start a family, but if he showed up at her doorstep and said that he'd met someone two days ago and knew she was the one for him, his mother would smack him with a broom, curse in Italian, and drag him to church, sure that he had some serious sins that needed confessing.

It isn’t Easter,” he said, “but this week has caused me to think a lot about the Easter story. Not the glorious resurrection that we celebrate on Easter Sunday but the darkness that came before. I know of no darker moment in the Bible than the moment Jesus in his agony on the cross cries out, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ Darker even than his death not long after because in death Jesus at last gave himself over fully to the divine will of God. But in that moment of his bitter railing he must have felt betrayed and completely abandoned by his father, a father he’d always believed loved him deeply and absolutely. How terrible that must have been and how alone he must have felt. In dying all was revealed to him, but alive Jesus like us saw with mortal eyes, felt the pain of mortal flesh, and knew the confusion of imperfect mortal understanding. “I see with mortal eyes. My mortal heart this morning is breaking. And I do not understand. “I confess that I have cried out to God, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ ” Here my father paused and I thought he could not continue. But after a long moment he seemed to gather himself and went on. “When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he’s led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame him and cry out against him for not caring? What’s left to us when that which we love most has been taken? “I will tell you what’s left, three profound blessings. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us exactly what they are: faith, hope, and love. These gifts, which are the foundation of eternity, God has given to us and he’s given us complete control over them. Even in the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. All this is in our control. God gave us these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them. “In your dark night, I urge you to hold to your faith, to embrace hope, and to bear your love before you like a burning candle, for I promise that it will light your way. “And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one. It may not be the miracle you’ve prayed for. God probably won’t undo what’s been done. The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day. “Jesus suffered the dark night and death and on the third day he rose again through the grace of his loving father. For each of us, the sun sets and the sun also rises and through the grace of our Lord we can endure our own dark night and rise to the dawning of a new day and rejoice. “I invite you, my brothers and sisters, to rejoice with me in the divine grace of the Lord and in the beauty of this morning, which he has given us.

I told him I loved him one day and he punched me in the mouth for it, claiming I just had to say it first like it was some competition. He basically beat the confession back into my mouth and then said it himself. He thought he’d won that fight, but I was happy enough to let him think that. We loved each other. We said it. It didn’t have to be this big thing. Done.

When we fight, I want it to hurt. When we fuck, I want to feel it with every fiber of my being. When a man confesses his love to me, I expect him to mean it. I don’t want to question the words’ authenticity. I want to be claimed and owned and ruled and possessed by love. Is that expecting too much?

There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes s twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon's jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me, ready to tear me to pieces; and I could not understand why I had fallen into such torment. I tried to lick the honey which formerly consoled me, but the honey no longer gave me pleasure, and the white and black mice of day and night gnawed at the branch by which I hung. I saw the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tasted sweet. I only saw the unescapable dragon and mice, and I could not tear my gaze from them. and this is not a fable but the real unanswerable truth intelligible to all. The deception of the joys of life which formerly allayed my terror of the dragon now no longer deceived me. No matter how often I may be told, "You cannot understand the meaning of life so do not think about it, but live," I can no longer do it: I have already done it too long. I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false. The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel truth longer than the rest: my love of family, and of writing -- art as I called it -- were no longer sweet to me. "Family"... said I to myself. But my family -- wife and children -- are also human. They are placed just as I am: they must either live in a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, guard them, bring them up, or watch them? That they may come to the despair that I feel, or else be stupid? Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them: each step in knowledge leads them to the truth. And the truth is death.

I Don’t Even Like Him—How Can I Pray for Him? Have you ever been so mad at your husband that the last thing you wanted to do was pray for him? So have I. It’s hard to pray for someone when you’re angry or he’s hurt you. But that’s exactly what God wants us to do. If He asks us to pray for our enemies, how much more should we be praying for the person with whom we have become one and are supposed to love? But how do we get past the unforgiveness and critical attitude? The first thing to do is be completely honest with God. In order to break down the walls in our hearts and smash the barriers that stop communication, we have to be totally up-front with the Lord about our feelings. We don’t have to “pretty it up” for Him. He already knows the truth. He just wants to see if we’re willing to admit it and confess it as disobedience to His ways. If so, He

When I come across one or other of my fellow Christians ignorant of astronomy, believing what is not so, I calmly look on, not thinking him the worse for mistaking the place or order of created things, so long as he holds nothing demeaning to you, Lord, the creator of all those things. But he is worse off if he holds that his error is a matter of religious faith, and persists stubbornly in the error. His faith is still a weak thing in its cradle, needing the milk of a mothering love, until the youth grows up and cannot be the play-thing, any more, of every doctrinal wind that blows. But one who ventures on the role of teacher, of leader and ruler of those under his spell, whose followers heed him not as a man only but as your very Spirit -- what are we to make of him when he is caught purveying falsehoods? Should we not reject and despise such madness?

You can’t keep a secret from the person you love and expect it not to change him, too. She doesn’t trust me with something, which makes me distrust her, and that makes our hands miss each other when we pass something over the table. It makes my mouth just miss hers when I lean to kiss her lips and end up with cheek instead.

I love you,” she said, speaking clearly so that there might be no confusion. “I love you utterly and completely. I love your elegant hands and the way you smile with only one side of your mouth — when you smile at all — and I love how grave your eyes are. I love that you let me invade your house with nearly my entire family and yours, and never even turned a hair. I love that you made love to me when I asked you, purely for politeness’ sake, and I love that you got mad at me later and made me make love to you. I love that you let Her Grace and her puppies construct a nest out of your shirts in your dressing room. I love that you’ve spent years selflessly saving people in St. Giles — although I want you to stop right now. I love that you killed a man for me, even if I’m still mad at you about it. I love that you saved my letters before we even knew each other well, and I love the curt, overly serious letters you wrote to me in return.” She looked at him very seriously. “I love you, Godric St. John, and now I’m breaking my word. I will not leave you. You may either come with me to Laurelwood or I’ll stay here with you in your musty old house in London and drive you mad with all my talking and relatives and… and exotic sexual positions until you break down and love me back, for I’m warning you that I’m not giving up until you love me and we’re a happy family with dozens of children.” She paused at that point because she’d run out of breath and looked at him. His face had gone still and for a moment her heart sank and she had to fortify herself for a battle. But then his mouth quirked like that and he said, “Exotic sexual positions?” And she knew even before he said anything else that it was all going to be fine—more than fine. It was going to be wonderful.

Theft is punished by Your law, O Lord, and by the law written in men's hearts, which iniquity itself cannot blot out. For what thief will suffer a thief? Even a rich thief will not suffer him who is driven to it by want. Yet had I a desire to commit robbery, and did so, compelled neither by hunger, nor poverty through a distaste for well-doing, and a lustiness of iniquity. For I pilfered that of which I had already sufficient, and much better. Nor did I desire to enjoy what I pilfered, but the theft and sin itself. There was a pear-tree close to our vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was tempting neither for its colour nor its flavour. To shake and rob this some of us wanton young fellows went, late one night (having, according to our disgraceful habit, prolonged our games in the streets until then), and carried away great loads, not to eat ourselves, but to fling to the very swine, having only eaten some of them; and to do this pleased us all the more because it was not permitted.Behold my heart, O my God; behold my heart, which You had pity upon when in the bottomless pit. Behold, now, let my heart tell You what it was seeking there, that I should be gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved to perish. I loved my own error— not that for which I erred, but the error itself. Base soul, falling from Your firmament to utter destruction— not seeking anything through the shame but the shame itself!

He asks me which of them two I liked best. Perhaps I liked Mr. Harry Carson once--I don't know--I've forgotten; but I loved James Wilson, that's now on trial, above what tongue can tell--above all else on earth put together; and I love him now better than ever, though he has never known a word of it till this minute... I never found out how dearly I loved another till one day, when James Wilson asked me to marry him, and I was very hard and sharp in my answer (for indeed, sir, I'd a deal to bear just then), and he took me at my word and left me; and from that day to this I've never spoken a word to him, or set eyes on him; though I'd fain have done so, to try and show him we had both been too hasty; for he'd not been gone out of my sight above a minute before I knew I loved--far above my life," said she, dropping her voice as she came to this second confession of the strength of her attachment. "But, if the gentleman asks me which I loved the best, I make answer, I was flattered by Mr. Carson, and pleased with his flattery; but James Wilson, I"-- She covered her face with her hands, to hide the burning scarlet blushes, which even dyed her fingers.

The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations.  He wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt.  He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love: he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise. I

Lucien?” “Yes, Alice?” Her heart was pounding, but she willed herself to muster the courage to reach out to him— unpredictable, dangerous as he was. “I think it’s real.

I know, I know. I was there, remember?" I love my husband, but he's such an Aquarian. Ask him the time, and he'll tell you how to make the watch.

I knew that his confession would be a tremendous relief to him but a burden to me. Such information, once shared, can never be retracted.

I love it when you look at me like that, Daddy," he confessed, voice soft. He touched his fingers to the scruff on Charlie's, cheek. "Like what?" Wren kissed him. It was the first kiss he'd initiated, and his throat tightened when Charlie lifted his face to receive it. "Like I'm the most valuable possession you own." Wren ducked his head, embarrassed that he'd said that. How presumptuous. Charlie lifted Wren's chin with his knuckle. "Do I own you, little bird?" Wren's smile spread slowly, and he nodded. "Oh, yeah." "Then that makes you the most valuable possession I own.

You speak as if you envied him." "And I do envy him, Emma. In one respect he is the object of my envy." Emma could say no more. They seemed to be within half a sentence of Harriet, and her immediate feeling was to avert the subject, if possible. She made her plan; she would speak of something totally different—the children in Brunswick Square; and she only waited for breath to begin, when Mr. Knightley startled her, by saying, "You will not ask me what is the point of envy.—You are determined, I see, to have no curiosity.—You are wise—but I cannot be wise. Emma, I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment." "Oh! then, don't speak it, don't speak it," she eagerly cried. "Take a little time, consider, do not commit yourself." "Thank you," said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not another syllable followed. Emma could not bear to give him pain. He was wishing to confide in her—perhaps to consult her;—cost her what it would, she would listen. She might assist his resolution, or reconcile him to it; she might give just praise to Harriet, or, by representing to him his own independence, relieve him from that state of indecision, which must be more intolerable than any alternative to such a mind as his.—They had reached the house. "You are going in, I suppose?" said he. "No,"—replied Emma—quite confirmed by the depressed manner in which he still spoke—"I should like to take another turn. Mr. Perry is not gone." And, after proceeding a few steps, she added—"I stopped you ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you pain.—But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation—as a friend, indeed, you may command me.—I will hear whatever you like. I will tell you exactly what I think." "As a friend!"—repeated Mr. Knightley.—"Emma, that I fear is a word—No, I have no wish—Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?—I have gone too far already for concealment.—Emma, I accept your offer—Extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend.—Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?" He stopped in his earnestness to look the question, and the expression of his eyes overpowered her. "My dearest Emma," said he, "for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved Emma—tell me at once. Say 'No,' if it is to be said."—She could really say nothing.—"You are silent," he cried, with great animation; "absolutely silent! at present I ask no more." Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most prominent feeling. "I cannot make speeches, Emma:" he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.—"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.—You hear nothing but truth from me.—I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.—Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a very indifferent lover.—But you understand me.—Yes, you see, you understand my feelings—and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.

The narcissist cannot admit that he had toiled and sweated to achieve his goal and, with this confession, shatter his alleged omnipotence and grandiose False Self. He must belittle every accomplishment of his and make it appear to have been a routine triviality. This is intended to support the dreamland quality of his fragmented personality. But it also prevents him from deriving the psychological benefits which usually accrue to to goal attainment… The narcissist is doomed to roam a circular labyrinth. When he does achieve something, he underestimates it in order to enhance his own sense of omnipotence, perfection, and brilliance. When he fails, he dare not face reality. He escapes to the land of no narratives where life is nothing but a meaningless wasteland. The narcissist whiles his life away.

Be honest with the Lord. If you’re afraid, say so. If you’re feeling abandoned, tell Him. He already knows every sin you’ve committed and He loves you anyway. Confess honestly. Beg for help. Converse with the Lord in reverence and respect, but not as if you were approaching a distant, uncaring being. Nothing could be further from the truth. All you have to do is reach out to feel the grasp of Christ’s hand.

For a moment he could do nothing but close his eyes. Was this a taste of the rest of his life as Billie Bridgerton’s husband? Was he destined to live in terror, wondering what sort of danger she’d thrown herself into that day? Was it worth it? “George?” she whispered. She sounded uneasy. Had she seen something in his expression? A sign of doubt? He touched her cheek, and he looked into her eyes. He saw his whole world there. “I love you,” he said. Someone gasped. It might have been his mother. “I cannot live without you,” he said, “and in fact, I refuse to do so. So no, you will not be going on some ill-advised mission to the coast to hand off a potentially dangerous package to people you don’t know. Because if anything happened to you…” His voice broke, but he didn’t care. “If anything happened to you, it would kill me. And I’d like to think you love me too much to let that happen.” Billie stared at him in wonder, her softly parted lips trembling as she blinked back tears. “You love me?” she whispered. He nearly rolled his eyes. “Of course I do.” “You never said.” “I must have done.” “You didn’t. I would have remembered.” “I would remember, too,” he said softly, “if you’d ever said it to me.” “I love you,” she said immediately. “I do. I love you so much. I —” “Thank God,” Lady Manston exclaimed. George and Billie both turned.

The closest analogue to a sociopath’s love is probably the love of a child: intense, accepting, selfish. And finally, like a child, the sociopath will be extremely loyal. A sociopath will never put you above himself, but if you’re worth it to him he will readily put you above all others. I confirmed this with my friend, that with regard to being friends with a sociopath, “the pros outweigh the cons.” This is not to say that my loved ones do not know who I am; most of them know me intimately and are well aware of the particular attributes that set me apart from them and most of humanity. In fact, many of the people dearest to me are extreme empaths, individuals who—with full knowledge of the tiny blackness of my heart—cannot help but place their soft, fragile hearts in my care. I reciprocate with my own brand of acceptance and devotion.

She kissed me,” he interrupted. “She made me think that I…” He trailed off, just short of confessing the brutal words that had been clinging to him since the moment he’d found out the truth. I could be in love with her.

The manner in which we speak is exceedingly important. An ancient sage once said, “A soft answer turns away anger.” When your spouse is angry and upset and lashing out words of heat, if you choose to be loving, you will not reciprocate with additional heat but with a soft voice. You will receive what he is saying as information about his emotional feelings. You will let him tell you of his hurt, anger, and perception of events. You will seek to put yourself in his shoes and see the event through his eyes and then express softly and kindly your understanding of why he feels that way. If you have wronged him, you will be willing to confess the wrong and ask forgiveness. If your motivation is different from what he is reading, you will be able to explain your motivation kindly. You will seek understanding and reconciliation, and not to prove your own perception as the only logical way to interpret what has happened. That is mature love—love to which we aspire if we seek a growing marriage.

When our hopes are most alive, it is less from a view of the imperfect beginnings of grace in our hearts, than from an apprehension of him who is our all in all. His person, his love, his sufferings, his intercession, his compassion, his fullness, and his faithfulness—these are our delightful themes, which leave us little leisure, when in our best frames, to speak of ourselves... If any people have contributed a mite to their own salvation, it was more than we could do. If any were obedient and faithful to the first calls and impressions of his Spirit, it was not our case. If any were prepared to receive him beforehand, we know that we were in a state of alienation from him. We needed sovereign, irresistible grace to save us, or we would be lost forever! If there are any who have a power of their own, we must confess ourselves poorer than they are. We cannot watch, unless he watches with us; we cannot strive, unless he strives with us; we cannot stand one moment, unless he holds us up; and we believe we must perish after all, unless his faithfulness is engaged to keep us. But this we trust he will do, not for our righteousness, but for his own name's sake, and because, having loved us with an everlasting love, he has been pleased in loving kindness to draw us to himself, and to be found by us when we sought him not.

If physical objects please you, praise God for them, but turn back your love to their Creator, lest, in those things which please you, you displease Him. If souls please you, let them be loved in God; for in themselves they are mutable, but in Him firmly established — without Him they would simply cease to exist. Book 4: Chapter 12

I consider myself as the most wretched of men, full of sores and corruption, and who has committed all sorts of crimes against his King; touched with a sensible regret, I confess to him all my wickedness, I ask His forgiveness, I abandon myself in His hands that He may do what he pleases with me. The King, full of mercy and goodness, very far from chastising me, embraces me with love, makes me eat at His table, serves me with His own hands, gives me the key of His treasures; He converses and delights Himself with me incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways, and treats me in all respects as His favorite. It is thus I consider myself from time to time in His holy presence.

When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power:—'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted.' This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God. When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other, swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt, and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters. Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God. While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend. It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch.

What he confessed was this. He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles. He had been on a satanic quest. These were some of James Jesus Angleton’s dying words. He delivered them between fits of calamitous coughing—lung-scraping seizures that still failed to break him of his cigarette habit—and soothing sips of tea. “Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars,” Angleton told Trento in an emotionless voice. “The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. . . . Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it.” He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day—Dulles, Helms, Wisner. These men were “the grand masters,” he said. “If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell.” Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup. “I guess I will see them there soon.

Safe relationships are centered and grounded in forgiveness. When you have a friend with the ability to forgive you for hurting her or letting her down, something deeply spiritual occurs in the transaction between you two. You actually experience a glimpse of the deepest nature of God himself. People who forgive can—and should—also be people who confront. What is not confessed can’t be forgiven. God himself confronts our sins and shows us how we wound him: “I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from me, and by their eyes, which played the harlot after their idols” (Ezek. 6:9 NASB). When we are made aware of how we hurt a loved one, then we can be reconciled. Therefore, you shouldn’t discount someone who “has something against you,” labeling him as unsafe. He might actually be attempting to come closer in love, in the way that the Bible tells us we are to do.

Dearest," she murmured, "as you know, there was a time when it didn't matter to me whether I married a man I loved or not... it seemed enough just to get my family out of the desperate situation we were in. But when I thought about what it would be like to share a bed with my husband... to spend the rest of my life with him... I knew Simon was the only choice." She paused, and sudden tears glittered her eyes. Beautiful, self-possessed Annabelle, who hardly ever cried. "When I'm ill," she continued in a husky voice, "when I'm afraid, when I need something, I know he will move heaven and earth to make everything all right. I trust him with every fiber of my being. And when I see the child we created, the two of us mingled forever in her... my God, how grateful I am that I married Simon.

For I wondered that others, subject to death, did live, since he whom I loved, as if he should never die, was dead; and I wondered yet more that myself, who was to him a second self, could live, he being dead. Well said one of his friends, “Thou half of my soul”; for I felt that my soul and his soul were “one soul in two bodies”: and therefore was my life a horror to me, because I would not live halved. And therefore perchance I feared to die, lest he whom I had much loved should die wholly. —Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book IV

His mouth comes down on mine, harder now, more demanding, a raw, hungry need in him rising to the surface. “You belong to me,” he growls. “Say it.” “Yes. Yes, I belong to you.” His mouth finds mine again, demanding, taking, drawing me under his spell. “Say it again,” he demands, nipping my lip, squeezing my breast and nipple, and sending a ripple of pleasure straight to my sex. “I belong to you,” I pant. He lifts me off the ground with the possessive curve of his hand around my backside, angling my hips to thrust harder, deeper. “Again,” he orders, driving into me, his cock hitting the farthest point of me and blasting against sensitive nerve endings. “Oh … ah … I … I belong to you.” His mouth dips low, his hair tickling my neck, his teeth scraping my shoulders at the same moment he pounds into me and the world spins around me, leaving nothing but pleasure and need and more need. I am suddenly hot only where he touches, and freezing where I yearn to be touched. Lifting my leg, I shackle his hip, ravenous beyond measure, climbing to the edge of bliss, reaching for it at the same time I’m trying desperately to hold back. Chris is merciless, wickedly wild, grinding and rocking, pumping. “I love you, Sara,” he confesses hoarsely, taking my mouth, swallowing the shallow, hot breath I release, and punishing me with a hard thrust that snaps the last of the lightly held control I possess. Possessing me. A fire explodes low in my belly and spirals downward, seizing my muscles, and I begin to spasm around his shaft, trembling with the force of my release. With a low growl, his muscles ripple beneath my touch and his cock pulses, his hot semen spilling inside me. We moan together, lost in the climax of a roller-coaster ride of pain and pleasure, spanning days apart, and finally collapse in a heap and just lie there. Slowly, I let my leg ease from his hip to the ground, and Chris rolls me to my side to face him. Still inside me, he holds me close, pulling the jacket up around my back, trailing fingers over my jaw. “And I belong to you.

My lord?” Nick turned at the tentative, feminine voice, to find two young women standing nearby, watching him eagerly. Nick spoke, wary. “Yes? ” “We—” one of them began to speak, then stopped, uncertain. The other nudged her toward him. “Yes?” “We are fans.” Nick blinked. “Of?” “Of yours.” “Of mine.” “Indeed!” The second girl smiled broadly and stepped closer, holding out what looked suspiciously like— Nick swore under his breath. “Would you be willing to autograph our magazine? ” Nick held up a hand. “I would, girls, but you’ve got the wrong brother.” He pointed to Gabriel. “That is Lord Nicholas.” Rock snorted as the two shifted their attention to the Marquess of Ralston, a dazzlingly handsome copy of their prey, and tittered their excitement. Gabriel instantly eased into his role, turning a brilliant smile on the girls. “I would be happy to autograph your magazine.” He took the journal and the pen they proffered and said, “You know, I must confess, this is the first time I’ve ever drawn the attention of ladies when in the company of my brother. Ralston has always been considered the more handsome of us.” “No!” the girls protested. Nick rolled his eyes. “Indeed. Ask anyone. They’ll tell you it’s the marquess who is the best specimen. Surely you’ve heard that.” He looked up at them with a winning smile. "You can admit it, girls. My feelings shan’t be hurt." Gabriel held up the magazine, displaying the cover, which boasted: Inside! London’s Lords to Land! “Yes … there’s no question that this is going to do wonders for my reputation. I’m so happy to see that it’s getting around that I’m on the hunt for a wife!” The girls nearly expired from delight.

I love you," he said. "Oh, dear God, Skye, you have to know it. And if you'd gone..." He saw Eriko lying dead. He felt the roughness of the rocks he had piled to make her grave. And he said good-bye to her. "Jamie," Skye said, shushing him as she put her hands on his head. "I—I...you're my brother in all things. And that how I love you, too." He froze as the meaning of her words penetrated the tidal wave of his emotions. "I'm not too late. I didn't tell you too late," he said desperately. She hesitated. And then she said, "Holgar." No. Jamie's world stopped.

It’s that time of the month again… As we head into those dog days of July, Mike would like to thank those who helped him get the toys he needs to enjoy his summer. Thanks to you, he bought a new bass boat, which we don’t need; a condo in Florida, where we don’t spend any time; and a $2,000 set of golf clubs…which he had been using as an alibi to cover the fact that he has been remorselessly banging his secretary, Beebee, for the last six months. Tragically, I didn’t suspect a thing. Right up until the moment Cherry Glick inadvertently delivered a lovely floral arrangement to our house, apparently intended to celebrate the anniversary of the first time Beebee provided Mike with her special brand of administrative support. Sadly, even after this damning evidence-and seeing Mike ram his tongue down Beebee’s throat-I didn’t quite grasp the depth of his deception. It took reading the contents of his secret e-mail account before I was convinced. I learned that cheap motel rooms have been christened. Office equipment has been sullied. And you should think twice before calling Mike’s work number during his lunch hour, because there’s a good chance that Beebee will be under his desk “assisting” him. I must confess that I was disappointed by Mike’s over-wrought prose, but I now understand why he insisted that I write this newsletter every month. I would say this is a case of those who can write, do; and those who can’t do Taxes. And since seeing is believing, I could have included a Hustler-ready pictorial layout of the photos of Mike’s work wife. However, I believe distributing these photos would be a felony. The camera work isn’t half-bad, though. It’s good to see that Mike has some skill in the bedroom, even if it’s just photography. And what does Beebee have to say for herself? Not Much. In fact, attempts to interview her for this issue were met with spaced-out indifference. I’ve had a hard time not blaming the conniving, store-bought-cleavage-baring Oompa Loompa-skinned adulteress for her part in the destruction of my marriage. But considering what she’s getting, Beebee has my sympathies. I blame Mike. I blame Mike for not honoring the vows he made to me. I blame Mike for not being strong enough to pass up the temptation of readily available extramarital sex. And I blame Mike for not being enough of a man to tell me he was having an affair, instead letting me find out via a misdirected floral delivery. I hope you have enjoyed this new digital version of the Terwilliger and Associates Newsletter. Next month’s newsletter will not be written by me as I will be divorcing Mike’s cheating ass. As soon as I press send on this e-mail, I’m hiring Sammy “the Shark” Shackleton. I don’t know why they call him “the Shark” but I did hear about a case where Sammy got a woman her soon-to-be ex-husband’s house, his car, his boat and his manhood in a mayonnaise jar. And one last thing, believe me when I say I will not be letting Mike off with “irreconcilable differences” in divorce court. Mike Terwilliger will own up to being the faithless, loveless, spineless, useless, dickless wonder he is.

THE CONFESSION OF AN INTERIOR MAN, LEADING TO HUMILITY Turning my gaze at myself and attentively observing the course of my interior life I am convinced, through experience, that I love neither God nor my neighbor, that I have no faith, and that I am full of pride and sensuality. This realization is the result of careful examination of my feelings and actions. I do not love God. For if I loved Him, then I would be constantly thinking of

I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instigated by Syrian and other agents. As the (literally) extorted confession unfolds, names begin to be named. Once a fellow-conspirator is identified, guards come to his seat and haul him from the room. The reclining Saddam, meanwhile, lights a large cigar and contentedly scans his dossiers. The sickness of fear in the room is such that men begin to crack up and weep, rising to their feet to shout hysterical praise, even love, for the leader. Inexorably, though, the cull continues, and faces and bodies go slack as their owners are pinioned and led away. When it is over, about half the committee members are left, moaning with relief and heaving with ardent love for the boss. (In an accompanying sequel, which I have not seen, they were apparently required to go into the yard outside and shoot the other half, thus sealing the pact with Saddam. I am not sure that even Beria or Himmler would have had the nerve and ingenuity and cruelty to come up with that.)

You didn’t want to put in the work to make us happen.” It was true. I had been so captivated by Duncan, so enamored, so infatuated, that I let his life drown mine for two years. I went along, and when I got tired of it, tired of it just being easy and comfortable and convenient but not love, I ended it. And that was why I had the man in my lobby looking at me like there were still places for us to go. I had let him believe that he was my whole world, let him be everything, and then one day just stopped loving him and walked away. It was something I did, something I had always done—poured on the charm, made myself into the ideal partner, lover, friend, indispensable and irreplaceable, and then, when I got bored or tired or tapped out, instead of fighting, I just quit. It was wildly unfair, and the only people I didn’t do it with were my family. Even my friends complained that I was always around and then just gone. Nathan Qells

Finally, in a low whisper, he said, “I think I might be a terrible person.” For a split second I believed him—I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before we ask someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing. “No,

God has made provision for our sin in Christ. So when we struggle to believe and obey, we should run to Him, not from Him--the opposite of our pattern, in contradiction to our feelings? Why? Because He already knows! See the gospel just keeps changing everything. The cross should continually testify to us that God fully knew we would need to be justified. Therefore, unconfessed sin is actually the foolish decision to run away from our healing and growth rather than toward it. We hang on to things we believe will satisfy us, thinking we need those more than what God offers to provide. But how can we rejoice in and worship the majesty of a loving and forgiving God if in practice we don't believe He loves and forgives, if in practice we don't believe the gospel? How can our churches rejoice and worship corporately when our collective energy is expended carrying around the saddle of unconfessed sin and shame? When people walk in honesty about their fears, shortcomings, and needs--not in thoughtless disobedience but in grace-based freedom and forgiveness--they reveal a deep understanding of the gospel. To confess our sins to one another is to violently pursue our own joy and the glory of God...and to exponentially increase our rejoicing and worship, both individually and corporately.

For what harm can come to you even if the world is most hostile to you, persecutes and torments you? You still know that you have Christ the Lord as your Friend, and not only Him but also the Father, who assures you and testifies through the mouth of His Son that He loves and cherishes you because of your faith in Christ, and your confession of Him. Now, since you have this Lord on your side, together with all the angels and saints, why should you worry about or fear the world's ire?

Now you love yourself suitably when you love God better than yourself. What, then, you aim at in yourself you must aim at in your neighbor, namely, that he may love God with a perfect affection. For you do not love him as yourself, unless you try to draw him to that good which you are yourself pursuing. For this is the one good which has room for all to pursue it along with thee. From this precept proceed the duties of human society, in which it is hard to keep from error. But the first thing to aim at is, that we should be benevolent, that is, that we cherish no malice and no evil design against another. For man is the nearest neighbor of man.

He had not stopped looking into her eyes, and she showed no signs of faltering. He gave a deep sigh and recited: "O sweet treasures, discovered to my sorrow." She did not understand. "It is a verse by the grandfather of my great-great-grandmother," he explained. "He wrote three eclogues, two elegies, five songs, and forty sonnets. Most of them for a Portuguese lady of very ordinary charms who was never his, first because he was married, and then because she married another man and died before he did." "Was he a priest too?" "A soldier," he said. Something stirred in the heart of Sierva María, for she wanted to hear the verse again. He repeated it, and this time he continued, in an intense, well-articulated voice, until he had recited the last of the forty sonnets by the cavalier of amours and arms Don Garcilaso de la Vega, killed in his prime by a stone hurled in battle.When he had finished, Cayetano took Sierva María's hand and placed it over his heart. She felt the internal clamor of his suffering. "I am always in this state," he said. And without giving his panic an opportunity, he unburdened himself of the dark truth that did not permit him to live. He confessed that every moment was filled with thoughts of her, that everything he ate and drank tasted of her, that she was his life, always and everywhere, as only God had the right and power to be, and that the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her. He continued to speak without looking at her, with the same fluidity and passion as when he recited poetry, until it seemed to him that Sierva María was sleeping. But she was awake, her eyes, like those of a startled deer, fixed on him. She almost did not dare to ask: "And now?" "And now nothing," he said. "It is enough for me that you know." He could not go on. Weeping in silence, he slipped his arm beneath her head to serve as a pillow, and she curled up at his side. And so they remained, not sleeping, not talking, until the roosters began to crow and he had to hurry to arrive in time for five-o'clock Mass. Before he left, Sierva María gave him the beautiful necklace of Oddúa: eighteen inches of mother-of-pearl and coral beads. Panic had been replaced by the yearning in his heart. Delaura knew no peace, he carried out his tasks in a haphazard way, he floated until the joyous hour when he escaped the hospital to see Sierva María. He would reach the cell gasping for breath, soaked by the perpetual rains, and she would wait for him with so much longing that only his smile allowed her to breathe again. One night she took the initiative with the verses she had learned after hearing them so often. 'When I stand and contemplate my fate and see the path along which you have led me," she recited. And asked with a certain slyness: "What's the rest of it?" "I reach my end, for artless I surrendered to one who is my undoing and my end," he said. She repeated the lines with the same tenderness, and so they continued until the end of the book, omitting verses, corrupting and twisting the sonnets to suit themselves, toying with them with the skill of masters. They fell asleep exhausted. At five the warder brought in breakfast, to the uproarious crowing of the roosters, and they awoke in alarm. Life stopped for them.

God makes a good use even of the wicked, and all things work together for good to them that love Him. [1245] For all the enemies of the Church, whatever error blinds or malice depraves them, exercise her patience if they receive the power to afflict her corporally; and if they only oppose her by wicked thought, they exercise her wisdom:

I do love it. That big, demonstrative moment where nothing else matters but making sure the person you care about knows it. That you’re in. You’re all in and you want everyone to know, no matter how wild or risky it is. Weddings are like that. The vows are, at least.” Something about the soft look in Annie’s eyes, wistful almost, compelled him to keep going. To confess what he’d never told anyone before. “I don’t have a single memory of my mom and dad saying I love you to each other.” Annie made a soft noise, but he soldiered on, wanting to get this out. “Maybe those movies aren’t perfect, but for most of my life, they were the best proof I had that people could wind up happy together.

Her grandmother spoke so softly that even Manon could barely hear over her own gasps for air. “As your mother labored to push you out, she confessed who your father was. She said you … you would be the one who broke the curse, who saved us. She said your father was a rare-born Crochan Prince. And she said that your mixed blood would be the key.” Her grandmother lifted her nails to her mouth and licked off Manon’s blue blood. No. No. “So you have been a Kin Slayer your whole life,” her grandmother purred. “Hunting down those Crochans—your relatives. When you were a witchling, your father searched the lands for you. He never stopped loving your mother. Loving her,” she spat. “And loving you. So I killed him.” Manon gazed at the drop below, the death that beckoned. “His despair was delicious when I told him what I’d done to her. What I would make you into. Not a child of peace—but war.” Made. Made. Made.

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes—he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face—and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.

to Russell Vernon Hunter New York Spring 1932 My dear Vernon Hunter Your letter gives me such a vivid picture of some thing I love in space — love almost as passionately as I can love a person — that I am almost tempted to pack my little bag and go — but I will not go to it right this morning — No matter how much I love it — There is some thing in me that must finish jobs once started — when I can —. So I am here — and what you write of me is there The cockscomb is here too — I put it in much cold water and it came to life from a kind of flatness it had in the box when I opened it — tho it was very beautiful as it lay in the box a bit wilted when I opened it —. I love it — Thank you. I must confess to you — that I even have the desire to go into old Mexico — that I would have gone — undoubtedly — if it were only myself that I considered — You are wise — so wise — in staying in your own country that you know and love — I am divided between my man and a life with him — and some thing of the outdoors — of your world — that is in my blood — and that I know I will never get rid of — I have to get along with my divided self the best way I can —. So give my greetings to the sun and the sky — and the wind — and the dry never ending land —Sincerely Georgia O'Keeffe

It was a lie, of course, and she was prepared to confess it to her priest. But she’d be damned if she’d tell him she’d been playing with his music. Her pride was worth the penance. He felt a quiver in his heart that he took for sympathy. “There, Brenna darling. Have you gone and fallen in love on me?” She jerked, whirled, gaped at him. He was watching her with such—such bloody affection, such patience and sympathy. She could have beaten him black and blue. Instead, she just shoved clear of him and snatched up her toolbox. “Shawn Gallagher, you are truly a great idiot of a man.” With her nose in the air and her tools clanking, she stalked out. He only shook his head, then went back to his cleaning up. With that little quiver around his heart again, he wondered who it was that O’Toole had set her sights on. Whoever, Shawn thought, slamming a cupboard door just a little too forcefully, the man had better be worthy of her.

I confess I like a woman to have a certain amount of temper. I can not endure your preternaturally amiable female, who can find nothing in the length or breath of the globe to move to any other expression than a fatuous smile. I love to see the danger flash in bright eyes, the delicate quiver in of pride in the lines of a lovely mouth, and the warm flush of indignation on fair cheeks. It all suggests spirit, and untamed will; and rouse in a man the love of mastery that is born in his nature, urging him to conquer and subdue that which seems unconquerable.

If what God says is the truest thing about us, then it makes sense to follow him and accept our As-Is condition as the starting point. Thomas Merton said, 'The reason we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with God is that we so seldom acknowledge our utter nothingness before him.' If we confess the truth about ourselves, there's every reason to fear God will say, 'Yeah, that's right; and anotherthing...' and we're fairly sure there will be another thing. We are like people afraid to tell the doctor where we really hurt because we fear we may be sicker than we think. We are sicker than we think. We're dying and, crazily, running from the healer because we're ashamed, because we hate ourselves for all we are and all we're not.

I love you, Althea—you are so beautiful,” murmured the young man into my ear. Well, I was willing enough. I looked up at him from under my eyelashes. “I love you too,” I confessed. I averted my gaze and added privately, “You are so rich.” Unfortunately, I apparently said this aloud, if just barely, and his hearing was sharper than one would expect, given his other attributes.

Confession I love you – I love you, e’en as I Rage at myself for this obsession, And as I make my shamed confession, Despairing at your feet I lie. I know, I know – It ill becomes me, I am too old, time to be wise … But how? … This love – it overcomes me, A sickness this in passion’s guise. When you are near I’m filled with sadness, When far, I yawn, for life’s a bore. I must pour out this love, this madness, There’s nothing that I long for more! When your shirts rustle, when, my angel, Your girlish voice I hear, when your Light step sounds in the parlour – strangely, I turn confused, perturbed, unsure. Your frown – and I’m in pain, I languish; You smile – and joy defeats distress; My one reward for a day’s anguish Comes when your, pale hand, love, I kiss. When you sit, bent over your sewing, Your eyes cast down and fine curls blowing. About your face, with tenderness I like childlike watch, my heart o’erflowing With love, in my gaze a caress. Shall I my jealousy and yearning Describe, my bitterness and woe When by yourself on some bleak morning Off on a distant walk you go, Or with another spend the evening And, with him near, the piano play, Or for Opochka leave, or, grieving Weep and in silence, pass the day? Alina! Pray relent have mercy! I dare not ask for love – with all My many sins, both great and small, I am perhaps of love unworthy! But if feigned love, if you would Pretend, you’d easily deceive me, For happily would I, believe me, Deceive myself if but I could!

I asked the earth and it answered, “I am not He”; and all things that are in the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they answered, “We are not your God, seek higher.” I asked the winds that blow, and the whole air with all that is in it answered, “Anaximenes was wrong; I am not God.” I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and they answered, “Neither are we God whom you seek.” And I said to all the things that throng about the gateways of the senses: “Tell me of my God, since you are not He. Tell me something of Him.” And they cried out in a great voice: “He made us.” My question was my gazing upon them, and their answer was their beauty. Man is a silent, incarnate word of God. The moon, the stars, the sun, the sea, the firmament are the visible proof of the existence and omnipotence of God, who created them out of sheer love. These creatures are the powerful, mysterious voice of God.

Every word that he had spoken amongst the amassed beauties of Macmaster furnishings had been a link in a love-speech. It was not merely that he had confessed to her as he would have to no other soul in the world - 'To no other soul in the world,' he had said! - his doubts, his misgivings, and his fears; it was that every word he uttered and that came to her, during the lasting of that magic, had sung of passion. If he had uttered the word 'Come', she would have followed him to the bitter ends of the earth; if he had said, 'There is no hope', she would have known the finality of despair. Having said neither, she knew: 'This is our condition; so we must continue!' And she knew, too, that he was telling her that he, like her, was… oh, say, on the side of the angels.

It is merely a lust of the blood and a permission of the will. Come, be a man: drown thyself! drown cats and blind puppies. I have professed me thy friend, and I confess me knit to thy deserving with cables of perdurable toughness; I could never better stead thee than now. Put money in thy purse; follow thou the wars; defeat thy favour with an usurped beard; I say, put money in thy purse. It cannot be that Desdemona should long continue her love to the Moor,—put money in thy purse,—nor he his to her: it was a violent commencement, and thou shalt see an answerable sequestration;—put but money in thy purse.—These Moors are changeable in their wills:—fill thy purse with money: the food that to him now is as luscious as locusts shall be to him shortly as acerb as the coloquintida. She must change for youth: when she is sated with his body, she will find the error of her choice: she must have change, she must: therefore put money in thy purse.—If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst; if sanctimony and a frail vow betwixt an erring barbarian and a supersubtle Venetian be not too hard for my wits and all the tribe of hell, thou shalt enjoy her; therefore make money. A pox of drowning thyself! it is clean out of the way: seek thou rather to be hanged in compassing thy joy than to be drowned and go without her.

He wanted it to be just right; he didn’t want to make the mistake of trying to tell her he loved her, and having the words come out confused or ending up saying something completely different. He changed into a fresh suit, checked his hair and took a few deep breaths to calm himself, before returning to Amelia’s chambers…only to find her gone. A sigh of frustration escaped him. It was so typical. He told her there was a surprise for her, she was excited, and he was about to confess that he loved her…of course it was only natural for her to ruin it by running off. It was so typically Amelia.

It is best if the guard is in love with America and wants to overawe the American by being a premium guard. This kind of guard thinks that he will encounter the American again one day in America, and that the American will offer to take him to a Chicago Bulls game, and buy him blue jeans and white bread and delicate toilet paper. This guard dreams of speaking English without an accent and obtaining a wife with an unmalleable bosom. This guard will confess that he does not love where he lives. The other kind of guard is also in love with America, but he will hate the American for being an American. This is worst. This guard knows he will never go to America, and knows that he will never meet the American again. He will steal from the American, and terror the American, only to teach that he can.

People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space. […] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!

He fills me with horror and I do not hate him. How can I hate him, Raoul? Think of Erik at my feet, in the house on the lake, underground. He accuses himself, he curses himself, he implores my forgiveness!... He confesses his cheat. He loves me! He lays at my feet an immense and tragic love... He has carried me off for love!... He has imprisoned me with him, underground, for love!... But he respects me: he crawls, he moans, he weeps!

First, we have to humble ourselves at the foot of the cross, confess that we have sinned and deserve nothing at his hand but judgment, thank him that he loved us and died for us, and receive from him a full and free forgiveness. Against this self-humbling our ingrained pride rebels. We resent the idea that we cannot earn – or even contribute to – our own salvation. So we stumble, as Paul put it, over the stumbling-block of the cross.

I had a conversation with someone the other day who said he wondered if perhaps LGBT Christians had a special role to play in teaching the church how to more thoughtfully engage issues surrounding gender and sexuality. I told him I didn’t think that went far enough, that ever since the Gay Christian Network conference, I’ve been convinced that LGBT Christians have a special role to play in teaching the church how to be Christian. Christians who tell each other the truth. Christians who confess our sins and forgive our enemies. Christians who embrace our neighbors. Christians who sit together in our pain, and in our healing, and wait for resurrection.

What makes my bed seem hard seeing it is soft? Or why slips downe the Coverlet so oft? Although the nights be long, I sleepe not tho, My sides are sore with tumbling to and fro. Were Love the cause, it's like I shoulde descry him, Or lies he close, and shoots where none can spie him? T'was so, he stroke me with a slender dart, Tis cruell love turmoyles my captive hart. Yeelding or striving doe we give him might, Lets yeeld, a burden easly borne is light. I saw a brandisht fire increase in strength, Which being not shakt, I saw it die at length. Yong oxen newly yokt are beaten more, Then oxen which have drawne the plow before. And rough jades mouths with stubburn bits are tome, But managde horses heads are lightly borne, Unwilling Lovers, love doth more torment, Then such as in their bondage feele content. Loe I confesse, I am thy captive I, And hold my conquered hands for thee to tie. What needes thou warre, I sue to thee for grace, With armes to conquer armlesse men is base, Yoke VenusDoves, put Mirtle on thy haire, Vulcan will give thee Chariots rich and faire. The people thee applauding thou shalte stand, Guiding the harmelesse Pigeons with thy hand. Yong men and women, shalt thou lead as thrall, So will thy triumph seeme magnificall. I lately cought, will have a new made wound, And captive like be manacled and bound. Good meaning, shame, and such as seeke loves wrack Shall follow thee, their hands tied at their backe. Thee all shall feare and worship as a King, Jo, triumphing shall thy people sing. Smooth speeches, feare and rage shall by thee ride, Which troopes hath alwayes bin on Cupids side: Thou with these souldiers conquerest gods and men, Take these away, where is thy honor then? Thy mother shall from heaven applaud this show, And on their faces heapes of Roses strow. With beautie of thy wings, thy faire haire guilded, Ride golden Love in Chariots richly builded. Unlesse I erre, full many shalt thou burne, And give woundes infinite at everie turne. In spite of thee, forth will thy arrowes flie, A scorching flame burnes all the standers by. So having conquerd Inde, was Bacchus hew, Thee Pompous birds and him two tygres drew. Then seeing I grace thy show in following thee, Forbeare to hurt thy selfe in spoyling mee. Beholde thy kinsmans Caesars prosperous bandes, Who gardes the conquered with his conquering hands. -- ELEGIA 2 (Quodprimo Amore correptus, in triumphum duci se a Cupidine patiatur)

Excellent,” says Gray, rubbing his hands together, a gleam in his eye. “The last person to sing gets to buy the drinks.” Ivy grins wide. “You’re on, Cupcake. I’m going to sing the house down.” We all pause, our gazes darting back and forth as a certain sense of terror falls over the table. Ivy sees us and slaps her palm onto the table. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I know what you twats are thinking! If I suck at dancing, I’ll suck at singing? Well, I don’t. I’m awesome.” Awkward silence ensues, and she snorts. “What? You think I don’t know I suck at dancing? I just don’t give a shit.” She glares at Gray, though there really isn’t any anger in the look. “So you can stop dancing like an ass now.” A strangled sound leaves him. “You knew?” “Of course.” She tosses a lock of her hair over her shoulder. “You’re too coordinated on the field, and you kind of forget to suck when you do those victory dances.” He gapes at her for a long second, then gives a bark of laughter. “I fucking love you, Special Sauce.” With that, he hauls Ivy into his lap and kisses her. Fi, however, finally snaps out of the trance she’s been in since Ivy confessed. “You sneaky shithead,” she shouts over the music. “All these years I’ve been covering for your craptacular dancing, and you knew!” She shakes a fist. “I swear to God, Ivy Weed…” “Oh, please,” Ivy counters. “You pretend you suck at baking so you don’t have to cook for family holidays.” Fi sniffs, looking guilty as hell. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ivy leans in, her eyes narrowed. “Midnight cookie baking ring a bell, Tink?” Fi’s cheeks flush, and she studies her nails with undue interest while muttering something about traitor sisters under her breath. “Those are for PMS cravings and nothing more. I was baking under duress.

His day is done. Is done. The news came on the wings of a wind, reluctant to carry its burden. Nelson Mandela’s day is done. The news, expected and still unwelcome, reached us in the United States, and suddenly our world became somber. Our skies were leadened. His day is done. We see you, South African people standing speechless at the slamming of that final door through which no traveller returns. Our spirits reach out to you Bantu, Zulu, Xhosa, Boer. We think of you and your son of Africa, your father, your one more wonder of the world. We send our souls to you as you reflect upon your David armed with a mere stone, facing down the mighty Goliath. Your man of strength, Gideon, emerging triumphant. Although born into the brutal embrace of Apartheid, scarred by the savage atmosphere of racism, unjustly imprisoned in the bloody maws of South African dungeons. Would the man survive? Could the man survive? His answer strengthened men and women around the world. In the Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, in Chicago’s Loop, in New Orleans Mardi Gras, in New York City’s Times Square, we watched as the hope of Africa sprang through the prison’s doors. His stupendous heart intact, his gargantuan will hale and hearty. He had not been crippled by brutes, nor was his passion for the rights of human beings diminished by twenty-seven years of imprisonment. Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom. When Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote we were enlarged by tears of pride, as we saw Nelson Mandela’s former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration. We saw him accept the world’s award in Norway with the grace and gratitude of the Solon in Ancient Roman Courts, and the confidence of African Chiefs from ancient royal stools. No sun outlasts its sunset, but it will rise again and bring the dawn. Yes, Mandela’s day is done, yet we, his inheritors, will open the gates wider for reconciliation, and we will respond generously to the cries of Blacks and Whites, Asians, Hispanics, the poor who live piteously on the floor of our planet. He has offered us understanding. We will not withhold forgiveness even from those who do not ask. Nelson Mandela’s day is done, we confess it in tearful voices, yet we lift our own to say thank you. Thank you our Gideon, thank you our David, our great courageous man. We will not forget you, we will not dishonor you, we will remember and be glad that you lived among us, that you taught us, and that you loved us all.

Might he ever see Jamie Fraser again? There was a good chance he would not. If chance did not kill him, cowardice might. The mania of confession was on him; best make the most of it. His quill had dried; he did not dip it again. I love you, he wrote, the strokes light and fast, making scarcely a mark upon the paper, with no ink. I wish it were not so. Then he rose, scooped up the scribbled papers, and, crushing them into a ball, threw them into the fire.

How were you naive enough to think you and Yash had a chance?" Naina said. "Because truth has to..." "... count for something," Yash and India said together. India spun toward him. And there it was, the endless peace of her gaze. Breath whooshed out of him, weight lifted off his shoulders. "Because love has to count for something." He took a step closer, and her body sagged, mirroring all the relief he was feeling. "I breathe differently when she's around. I feel... I feel alive in ways I never have.

Did he say anything to you?” “Just that I was supposed to watch you while he was gone. A hunt can take several days.” “Really? I had no idea it would take that long.” I hestitated, “So…he doesn’t mind you staying here while he’s gone.” “Oh, he minds,” he chuckled, “but he wants to make sure you’re safe. At least he trusts me that much.” “Well, I think he’s mad at both of us right now.” Kishan looked at me curiously with a raised eyebrow. “How so?” “Um…let’s just say we had a misunderstanding.” Kishan’s face turned hard. “Don’t worry, Kelsey. I’m sure that whatever he’s upset about is foolish. He’s very argumentative.” I sighed and shook my head sadly. “No, it’s really all my fault. I’m difficult, a hindrance, and I’m a pain to have around sometimes. He’s probably used to being around sophisticated, more experienced women who are much more…more…well, more than I am.” Kishan quirked an eyebrow. “Ren hasn’t been around any women as far as I know. I must confess that I’m now exceedingly curious as to what your argument was about. Whether you tell me or not, I won’t tolerate any more derogatory comments about yourself. He’s lucky to have you, and he’d better realize it.” He grinned. “Of course, if you did have a falling out, you’re always welcome to stay with me.” “Thanks for the offer, but I don’t really want to live in the jungle.” He laughed. “For you, I would even consider a change of residence. You, my lovely, are a prize worth fighting for.” I laughed and punched him lightly on the arm. “You, sir, are a major flirt. Worth fighting for? I think you two have been tigers for too long. I’m no great beauty, especially when I’m stuck out here in the jungle. I haven’t even picked a college major yet. What have I ever done that would make someone want to fight over me?” Kishan apparently took my rhetorical questions seriously. He reflected for a moment, and then answered, “For one thing, I’ve never met a woman so dedicated to helping others. You put your own life at risk for a person you met only a few weeks ago. You are confident, feisty, intelligent, and full of empathy. I find you charming and, yes, beautiful.” The golden-eyed prince fingered a strand of my hair. I blushed at his assessment, sipped my water, and then said softly, “I don’t like him being angry with me.” Kishan shrugged and dropped his hand, looking slightly annoyed that I’d steered the conversation back to Ren. “Yes. I’ve been on the receiving side of his anger, and I’ve learned not to underestimate his ability to hold a grudge.

There is a boy in the neighborhood...whom I have defended in some of his troubles with the law. He used to stop in often on Saturday mornings to shave and wash up, after having spent the week on the streets. He has been addicted for a long time. His father threw him out three years ago, when he was first arrested. He has contrived so many stories to induce clergy and social workers to give him money to support his habit that he is no longer believed when he asks for help...He is dirty, ignorant, arrogant, dishonest, unemployable, broken, unreliable, ugly, rejected, alone. And he knows it. He knows at last that he has nothing to offer. There is nothing about him that permits the love of another person for him. He is unlovable. Yet it is in his own confession that he does not deserve the love of another that he represents all the rest of us in this regard. We are all unlovable. More tan that, the action of this boy's life points beyond itself, it points to the Gospel, to God who loves us though we hate Him, who loves us though we do not please Him, who loves us not for our sake but for His own sake, who loves us freely, who accepts us though we have nothing acceptable to offer him. Hidden in the obnoxious existence of this boy is the scandalous secret of the Word of God.

Our contemporary Rousseau has a relevant maxim. He argues that true vengeance consists not of killing the antagonist, but forcing him to kill you. I confess that my own spirit is not sufficiently lofty for me to share this view with the sublime sage of Geneva. Yet the idea is strange and novel, and for those who subscribe to it, there is ample room for subtle and rather heroic argumentation, of the kind so frequently sought by our modern thinkers, who love nothing better than recycling paradoxes into aphorisms and vice-versa.

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.

At the heart of God is the desire to give and to forgive. Because of this, he set into motion the entire redemptive process that culminated in the cross and was confirmed in the resurrection. The usual notion of what Jesus did on the cross was something like this: people were so bad and so mean and God was so angry with them that he could not forgive them unless somebody big enough took the rap for the whole lot of them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Love, not anger, brought Jesus to the cross. Golgotha came as a result of God’s great desire to forgive, not his reluctance. Jesus knew that by his vicarious suffering he could actually absorb all the evil of humanity and so heal it, forgive it, redeem it. This is why Jesus refused the customary painkiller when it was offered him. He wanted to be completely alert for this greatest work of redemption. In a deep and mysterious way he was preparing to take on the collective sin of the human race. Since Jesus lives in the eternal now, this work was not just for those around him, but he took in all the violence, all the fear, all the sin of all the past, all the present, and all the future. This was his highest and most holy work, the work that makes confession and the forgiveness of sins possible…Some seem to think that when Jesus shouted “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” it was a moment of weakness (Mark 15:34). Not at all. This was his moment of greatest triumph. Jesus, who had walked in constant communion with the Father, now became so totally identified with humankind that he was the actual embodiment of sin. As Paul writes, “he made him to be sin who knew no sin (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus succeeded in taking into himself all of the dark powers of this present evil age and defeated every one of them by the light of his presence. He accomplished such a total identification with the sin of the race that he experienced the abandonment of God. Only in that way could he redeem sin. It was indeed his moment of greatest triumph. Having accomplished this greatest of all his works, Jesus then took refreshment. “It is finished,” he announced. That is, this great work of redemption was completed. He could feel the last dregs of the misery of humankind flow through him and into the care of the Father. The last twinges of evil, hostility, anger, and fear drained out of him, and he was able to turn again into the light of God’s presence. “It is finished.” The task is complete. Soon after, he was free to give up his spirit to the father. …Without the cross the Discipline of confession would be only psychologically therapeutic. But it is so much more. It involves and objective change in our relationship with God and a subjective change in us. It is a means of healing and transforming the inner spirit.

Her ravings were so crowded with recriminations and insults and petitions, with weeping and caterwauling and wild expressions of love, that it seemed bewildering to Bob and Charley that Jesse remained there for minutes, let alone hours; yet he did. She was four inches taller than Jesse, a giant of a woman, but she made him seem even smaller, made him seem stooped and spiritless. She made him kiss her on the mouth like a lover and rub her neck and temples with myrtleberry oil as he avowed his affection for her and confessed his frailties and shortcomings.

Let us see what words can do. Will you understand me, for a start, if I tell you that I have never known what I am? My vices, my virtues, are under my nose, but I can’t see them, nor stand far enough back to view myself as a whole. I seem to be a sort of flabby mass in which words are engulfed; no sooner do I name myself than what is named is merged in him who names, and one gets no farther. I have often wanted to hate myself and, as you know, had good reasons for so doing. But my attempted hatred of myself was absorbed into my insubstantiality and was nothing but a recollection. I could not love myself either, I am sure, though I have never tried to. But I was eternally compelled to be myself; I was my own burden, but never burdensome enough, Mathieu. For one instant, on that June evening when I elected to confess to you, I thought I had encountered myself in your bewildered eyes. You saw me, in your eyes I was solid and predictable; my acts and moods were the actual consequences of a definite entity. And through me you knew that entity. I described it to you in my words, I revealed to you facts unknown to you, which had helped you to visualize it. And yet you saw it, I merely saw you seeing it. For one instant you were the heaven-sent mediator between me and myself, you perceived that compact and solid entity which I was and wanted to be in just as simple and ordinary a way as I perceived you. For, after all, I exist, I am, though I have no sense of being; and it is an exquisite torment to discover in oneself such utterly unfounded certainty, such unsubstantiated pride. I then understood that one could not reach oneself except through another’s judgment, another’s hatred. And also through another’s love perhaps; but there is here no question of that. For this revelation I am not ungrateful to you. I do not know how you would describe our present relations. Not goodwill, nor wholly hatred. Put it that there is a corpse between us. My corpse.

Confession: I miss you." "Ian ..." "Confession: you're my best friend." "Please stop." "Confession: if you gave me the chance, I'd love you until forever." I swallowed hard as I watched him walk toward me. I was standing right in the middle of pig manure, doing the most disgusting job, looking as if I hadn't slept in days, and Ian Parker was telling me how he wanted to love me forever. He continued on. "Confession: you are my sun, my moon, and my stars. Confession: whatever's hurting you, we can fix together. Confession: I'm never going to give up on this." I didn't know how it happened. I didn't know how my hands found his or how our bodies became pressed together. I didn't know how his forehead fell to mine of how my heartbeats increased erratically. I didn't know how his lips fell so close to mine or how his exhalations became my inhalations. But there we were, seconds away from our lips locking together, and me falling into a drunkenness that I'd never be able to recover from. If I started kissing Ian, I knew I'd never be able to stop. He was it for me. He was the hook, the bridge, and the melody.

No woman in his history could compare to her. No woman in his future could replace her. She was what he wanted now, this moment and the next, and the one that followed that, each one that led to the end of his life. He would make it happen, by God. He would keep her with him. He didn't know how. He would lie, he would cheat, he would steal. If need be, he would murder. He'd confessed that she held his heart. He'd yet to tell her that she possessed his soul. He'd deceived himself when he began this journey believing that he sought justice. All along all he'd sought was her.

No one moved. No one spoke. They seemed be riveted by whatever it was they saw in his eyes. “Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.” A few gasps erupted. His voice rang out, bold, clear. “It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away.” It was safe to say everyone was awake now. He’d startled most of his parishioners and aroused the rest of them. “Evie Duggan …” And all the heads official swiveled to follow the beam of the reverend’s gaze. Then swiveled back to him. Then back to Eve. Whose heart was in her eyes. “ … You are the seal upon my heart. You are the fire and flame that warms me, heals me, burns me. You are the river that cools me and carries me. I love you. And love may be as strong as death, but you … I know now you are my life.” A pin would have echoed like a dropped kettle in the church then. Eve was absolutely riveted. Frozen, her eyes burning into his. “And though I wish I could have protected you and kept you safe from some of the storms of your life, I find cannot regret any part of your past. For it has made you who you are. Loyal, passionate, brave, kind, remarkable. You need repent nothing.” The last word fell like a gavel. Not a single person moved or breathed. “There are those who think good is a pastime, to engage in like embroidery or target shooting. There are those who think beauty is a thing of surface, and forget that it’s really of the soul. But good is something you are, not something you do. And by that definition, I stand before you today and declare that Evie Duggan is one of the best people I have ever had the privilege of knowing.

There is no set of rules that dictates what you owe someone you love. What parts of your past should be disclosed? Should you confess you are trans? Alcoholic? That you had a same-sex relationship? An abortion? That you were abused by the person you trusted most in the world? When, if ever, is the right time for that conversation: before your first date, before your first kiss, before you sleep together? Where is the line between keeping something private, and being dishonest? What if the worst happens? What if honesty is the thing that breaks you apart? “What’s her name?” Asher asks, drawing me out of my reverie. I cover the new hive. I’ve been thinking of Billie Eilish, but maybe not every queen needs to be a pop diva. “Lily?” I suggest. I sit down next to him in the field, as stragglers from the crate fly to the entrance of the hive. We watch the sun go down,

It is now that I must make a choice. Because of Calvary, I’m free to choose. And so I choose. I choose love . . . No occasion justifies hatred; no injustice warrants bitterness. I choose love. Today I will love God and what God loves. I choose joy . . . I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical . . . the tool of the lazy thinker. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God. I choose peace . . . I will live forgiven. I will forgive so that I may live. I choose patience . . . I will overlook the inconveniences of the world. Instead of cursing the one who takes my place, I’ll invite him to do so. Rather than complain that the wait is too long, I will thank God for a moment to pray. Instead of clinching my fist at new assignments, I will face them with joy and courage. I choose kindness . . . I will be kind to the poor, for they are alone. Kind to the rich, for they are afraid. And kind to the unkind, for such is how God has treated me. I choose goodness . . . I will go without a dollar before I take a dishonest one. I will be overlooked before I will boast. I will confess before I will accuse. I choose goodness. I choose faithfulness . . . Today I will keep my promises. My debtors will not regret their trust. My associates will not question my word. My wife will not question my love. And my children will never fear that their father will not come home. I choose gentleness . . . Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself. I choose self-control . . . I am a spiritual being. After this body is dead, my spirit will soar. I refuse to let what will rot, rule the eternal. I choose self-control. I will be drunk only by joy. I will be impassioned only by my faith. I will be influenced only by God. I will be taught only by Christ. I choose self-control. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. To these I commit my day. If I succeed, I will give thanks. If I fail, I will seek his grace. And then, when this day is done, I will place my head on my pillow and rest.

he confessed that he could not understand how he had learned to ride a bicycle—a veritable feat of balance, equilibrium, and coordinated motor function—without once having had to use his reason. How could his body think by itself? How could it figure out the complicated motions that it had to execute so as not to fall flat on his face? These simple activities, in which you actually had to stop thinking to fully accomplish them, would fascinate him for his entire life, and even though he loved sports when he was a boy, he avoided all forms of physical exertion when he became a man.

First of all I will confess quite simply—I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to enquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us. Of course it is also possible to read the Bible like any other book, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism, etc.; there is nothing to be said against that. Only that that is not the method which will reveal to us the heart of the Bible, but only the surface, just as we do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them, so that for days they go on lingering in our minds, simply because they are the words of a person we love; and just as these words reveal more and more of the person who said them as we go on, like Mary, “pondering them in our heart,” so it will be with the words of the Bible. Only if we will venture to enter into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves us and does not will to leave us along with our questions, only so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible. . . .

pure-hearted old man, and were both rebuked and saved; gifted men found a companion in him; ambitious men caught glimpses of nobler ambitions than their own; and even worldlings confessed that his beliefs were beautiful and true, although ‘they wouldn’t pay’. To outsiders, the five energetic women seemed to rule the house, and so they did in many things; but the quiet scholar, sitting among his books, was still the head of the family, the household conscience, anchor, and comforter; for to him the busy, anxious women always turned in troublous times, finding him, in the truest sense of those sacred words, husband and father. The girls gave their hearts into their mother’s keeping, their souls into their father’s; and to both parents, who lived and laboured so faithfully for them, they gave a love that grew with their growth, and bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life

On the switchboard of my memory two pair of gloves have crossed wires - those leather gloves of Omi's and a pair of white ceremonial gloves. I never seem to be able to decide which memory might be real, which false. Perhaps the leather gloves were more in harmony with his coarse features. And yet again, precisely because of his coarse features, perhaps it was the white pair which became him more. Coarse features - even though I use the words, actually such a description is nothing more than that of the impression created by the ordinary face of one lone young man mixed in among boys. Unrivaled though his build was, in height he was by no means the tallest among us. The pretentious uniform our school required, resembling a naval officer's, could scarely hang well on our still-immature bodies, and Omi alone filled his with a sensation of solid weight and a sort of sexuality. Surely I was not the only one who looked with envious and loving eyes at the muscles of his shoulder and chest, that sort of muscle which can be spied out even beneath a blue-serge uniform. Something like a secret feeling of superiority was always hovering about his face. Perhaps it was that sort of feeling which blazes higher and higher the more one's pride is hurt. It seemed that, for Omi, such misfortunes as failures in examinations and expulsions were the symbols of a frustrated will. The will to what? I imagined vaguely that it must be some purpose toward which his 'evil genius' was driving him. And i was certain that even he did not yet know the full purport of this vast conspiracy against him.

I think I’m drowning. But not into her blue eyes like I happily would. No, I’m sinking into the floor, letting it swallow me whole. I can hardly breathe under the crushing weight of Kitt’s words. My ears ring. My heart pounds. The command echoes in my skull, though I have no idea why he would want this. Why he would want her. Not now. Not after everything. I’m surrounded by the entire court and the only thing I can focus on is not falling to my knees beside her. Marriage. Marriage to someone who isn’t me. Marriage to someone I will spend the rest of my life serving. I’ll lose her forever while being forced to watch. I can’t even look at her. I’m a coward, morphing back into the monster I was when she found me. My vision is blurry, eyes fixed on the dais above. This is how I lose her. Not by death but by something just as binding. The command rings in my head. And to think I wasted so much time trying to hate her. To think I won’t have enough time to love her. My heart aches because every beat belongs to her. And I may never get to tell her that. Is this how she will remember me? Escorting her to this fate? Bound by duty alone? I could laugh. I could cry. I could burn this palace to the ground like I did her house, just for a chance to confess my love before the flames consumed me. Because I am bound to her very being. Hers until the day she realizes I don’t deserve to be. The king’s eyes are on me while mine are somewhere far away. Somewhere with her. A place where I am nothing and no one and happy being powerless, so long as she is beside me. My gaze falls from the fantasy, finding its way to her. This is not how I will remember us. Not as enemies or traitors or monsters, but as two people dancing in the dark, swaying beneath the stars. Her feet atop mine, her head on the heart that beats only for her. Just Pae and Kai. I step away from her kneeling form, masking every emotion with a blank stare. I’m leaving her to face him. Her future husband. I melt into the crowd, standing at a safe enough distance to prevent myself from stealing her away. This will be the rest of my life. Forced to love her from a distance. Mourn the loss of her each day. But I will. I will smother every emotion but the one that belongs to her. I will love her until I am incapable of the feeling. She is the torture I may not survive. Eagerly, she is my undoing. Her gaze lifts, meeting eyes that are not my own. Eyes of the man who gets to have her—if she allows it. She was supposed to be my forever. Now I’ll watch her become someone else’s. Because the beast doesn’t get the beauty.

I've been thinking," he said huskily. A tremulous smile curved her lips. "About what?" "Trust. When I told you I couldn't count on someone loving me..." "Yes, I remember." "I realized that before I can have trust... actually feel it... I'll have to start doing it. Trusting blindly. I'll have to learn how. It's... difficult." Her beautiful eyes shimmered. "I know, darling," she whispered. "But if I'm ever going to try it with anyone, it has to be you." Phoebe inched closer to him. Her eyes were so bright, they were like bottled lightning. "I've been thinking, too." "About?" "About surprises. You see, there was no way of knowing how much time Henry and I would have together before his decline started. As it turned out, it was even less time than we'd expected. But it was worth it. I would do it again. I wasn't afraid of his illness, and I'm not afraid of your past, or whatever might leap out at us. That's the chance everyone takes, isn't it? The only ironclad guarantee is that we'll love each other." Her voice thickened with emotion. "And I do, West. I love you so very much.

Fear. Alex knew he was a fine one to pontificate about fear. He'd issued the world's most tepid, careful marriage proposal. Because he'd been afraid to tell Genevieve he loved her. Not that it would have made much of a difference. She loved Harry. Harry in his youthful innocence had put his finger right on it. And Moncrieffe pushed the realization away. He took in a sharp breath. Harry took Moncrieffe's silence as a reason to go on. "God help me, it was only because I was afraid of losing her. And I honestly didn't feel I deserved her, for I had nothing to give her. I simply needed to know whether she loved me. I'm not proud of it, but I have never loved anyone more." Moncrieffe could still scarcely get the words out. "I just can't believe you would 'do' such a thing to someone you... loved." Osborne was very, very drunk, but he wasn't stupid. "But I couldn't hurt her, could I, if she didn't love me?" And now Harry's blue eyes fixed on him almost searchingly. Moncrieffe couldn't believe he had almost shown his hand. "You just said you weren't certain whether she did love you. And if she does love you anywhere as much as you claim to love her, imagine the pain you may have caused her with your whole charade." Harry looked up at him and blinked. And as he thought about it, his face slowly went white. After a moment he swallowed. "'Gallant' of you," Moncrieffe drawled, twisting the knife. Moncrieffe knew a surge of hatred for himself for saying it. But he wanted Harry to feel what he'd done to Genevieve.

In his High Priestly prayer, he said, “I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do” (John 17:4). He could shout the word “tetelestai” because he was a faithful Savior who accomplished the Father’s will. Jesus was faithful in spite of satanic opposition, in spite of the blindness and disobedience of the religious leaders, even in spite of the stupidity and slowness to believe of his own disciples. When sinful people were doing their worst, Jesus Christ was giving his best; and he did it because he loved the Father and loved a world of lost sinners. Jesus Christ is still a faithful Servant. Having finished His work on earth, he is now faithfully serving his people in heaven as High Priest and Advocate (Heb. 4:14–16; 1 John 2:1–3). When we’re tempted, we can come to his throne and receive the grace and mercy we need. If we sin, we can come to our heavenly Advocate, confess our sins, and be forgiven (1 John 1:9–2:2). He is faithful to deliver us in times of temptation (1 Cor. 10:13), faithful to forgive us when we fall, and faithful to keep us until we meet him face to face (2 Tim. 1:12; Jude 24).

The first time that Raoul saw Christine at the Opera, he was charmed by the girl's beauty and by the sweet images of the past which it evoked, but was rather surprised at the negative side of her art. He returned to listen to her. He followed her in the wings. He waited for her behind a Jacob's ladder. He tried to attract her attention. More than once, he walked after her to the door of her box, but she did not see him. She seemed, for that matter, to see nobody. She was all indifference. Raoul suffered, for she was very beautiful and he was shy and dared not to confess his love, even to himself. And then came the lightning-flash of the gala performance: the heavens torn asunder and an angel's voice heard upon earth for the delight of mankind and the utter capture of his heart.

Everything fell together, confessed, explained, overwhelmed; leaving him most of all stupefied at the blindness he had cherished. The fate he had been marked for he had met with a vengeance—he had emptied the cup to the lees; he had been the man of his time, THE man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened. That was the rare stroke—that was his visitation. So he saw it, as we say, in pale horror, while the pieces fitted and fitted. So she had seen it while he didn’t, and so she served at this hour to drive the truth home. It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion. This the companion of his vigil had at a given moment made out, and she had then offered him the chance to baffle his doom. One’s doom, however, was never baffled, and on the day she told him his own had come down she had seen him but stupidly stare at the escape she offered him. The escape would have been to love her; then, then he would have lived. She had lived—who could say now with what passion?—since she had loved him for himself; whereas he had never thought of her (ah how it hugely glared at him!) but in the chill of his egotism and the light of her use.

And she does not feel jilted, even one year on. Ben was weak or, fatal combination, weak and good. Jilting implied, if not malice, then aforethought and he was considerate to a fault and not a planner. As he had confessed all those months ago he was not the powerful one in his marriage, not when Chloe was near enough to influence him. As the weeks wore on laura realised that whatever offstage battle had taken place, she had lost. Chloe might not love him more, but her love it seemed, had proved the most tenacious. And, who knew, perhaps she had surprised them both with her strength of feeling. Perhaps it had taken such a crisis for him finally to fall in love with her and he had woken to the novel wonder of her as a man returning from a fever would be astounded at the mundane pleasure of grapes or daisies.

Go ahead. Ask me who the father is.” He only smiled. “Do I look that stupid to you?” She pushed back her short hair with a sigh. “He doesn’t know, and you’re not to tell him. In English, Apache or Lakota,” she emphasized, covering all her bases. He nodded. “What are you going to do?” “I haven’t the slightest idea,” she confessed. “I only used the home-pregnancy test this morning, but I was pretty sure before then. I’ve got to find a place to live where Leta won’t see me for a while. I can’t risk having her tell Tate.” She glanced at him. “Where were you all this time?” she wanted to know. “Sitting calmly in a wing chair sipping coffee and trying to look invisible.” He lifted his eyebrows at her disbelieving expression. “Somebody had to keep his head.” “There’s an old saying that, if you can keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs, you don’t have a clue what’s going on,” she misquoted. “Could be. But I’m not sporting a bruised face, like some I could name.” He leaned forward. “Want to marry me?” “Thanks, Colby,” she said softly. “I really mean it. But it wouldn’t be fair to any of us. Especially you.” He folded his arms and leaned back. “The offer doesn’t have a time limit. I really do love children.

Whether she was engaged, married or single, nothing could or ever would come of the weakness he was forced to acknowledge that he had developed. He would re-establish the professional distance that had somehow ebbed away with her drunken confessions and the camaraderie of their trip up north, and temporarily shelve his half-acknowledged plan to end the relationship with Elin. It felt safer just now to have another woman within reach, and a beautiful one at that, whose enthusiasm and expertise in bed ought surely to compensate for an undeniable incompatibility outside it. He fell to wondering how long Robin would continue working for him after she became Mrs. Cunliffe. Matthew would surely use every ounce of his husbandly influence to pry her away from a profession as dangerous as it was poorly paid. Well, that was her lookout: her bed, and she could lie in it. Except that once you had broken up, it was much easier to do so again. He ought to know. How many times had he and Charlotte split? How many times had they tried to reassemble the wreckage? There had been more cracks than substance by the end: they had lived in a spider's web of fault lines, held together by hope, pain, and delusion. Robin and Matthew had just two months to go before the wedding. There was still time.

Lines that seemed unconnected gradually becomes part of a confession that had at its center rooms in the burning heat of August, where something has taken place, clearly sexual, but it is also the vacant streets of rural Texas, roads, forgotten friends, the slap of hands of rifle slings and forked pennants limp at parades. There are condoms, sun-faded cars, soiled menus with misspellings, a kind of pyre on which he had laid his life. That was why he seemed so pure – he had given all. Everyone lies about their lives, but he had not lied about his. He had made of it a noble lament, through it always running this thing you have had, that you will always have, but can never have. (There stood Erechteus, polished limbs and greaves....come to me, Hellas, I love for your touch.) I had met him at a party and only managed to say, – I read your beautiful poem.

And then he saw her burning eyes. They gazed at him calmly and he saw in them benediction. He fell to his knees before her, pressing his face to her purple-velvet-clad-belly. "Séraphine, Séraphine, Séraphine. O most beloved of women, most fiery of saints, never leave me, please. I'll erect columns of white marble to you, build gardens of delight for you, cause ships to sail and warriors to rise for you, if you'll only remain by my side." She smiled down at him and cupped his cheeks. "Valentine, do you love me?" Ah, God, it was like a shot to the gut. He squeezed tight his eyes. To come so close and lose her because of this. "If I were able I would love you as no man has ever loved a woman since the beginning of time." She knelt then to face him and whispered, "But you are able." He clutched her. He wouldn't let her go, no, not even when she realized... "Séraphine, my darling, burning one, do you not remember? I told you, so long ago now, that I lacked that part. I cannot-" "But you can, Valentine." She touched a finger to his cheek and then showed it to him. He blinked. Her finger was wet. His eyes were wet. She smiled at him, his burning Séraphine, and it was as if the night sky were ablaze. "You love me." "I love you," he said in wonder, and felt his chest fill with warmth. "I love you." "And I love you," she whispered, her hands cupping his face. So he kissed her until she was limp and pliable and so very hot against him, and then he purred into her ear, "Does that mean you'll become my duchess, darling Bridget Crumb?" And when she sighed back, "Oh, yes, Val," he picked her up and carried her off to have his wicked, wicked way with her. Because he might have a heart now but some things weren't ever going to change.

Rather than pulling away to walk back to the counter, he brings both his hands to my face and holds me still while he looks at me in silence for several seconds. His thumbs brush lightly across my jaw, and he releases a soft breath. His brows furrow, and his eyes close. He presses his forehead to mine, still holding on to my face, and I can feel his internal struggle. “Tate.” He says my name so quietly I can feel his regret in the words he hasn’t even spoken yet. “I like…” He opens his eyes and looks at me. “I like kissing you, Tate.” I don’t know why that sentence seemed hard for him to say, but his voice trailed off toward the end as though he was attempting to stop himself from finishing his words. As soon as the sentence leaves his mouth, he releases me and quickly steps around the partition as if he’s trying to escape from his own confession. I like kissing you, Tate.

A prison chaplain in the West of England confessed he had given up one prisoner as hopeless, so stubborn was he against any approach by him, and known throughout the jail as the most truculent and obstinate troublemaker. But one day the governor was told of a visitor who insisted on seeing him. To his surprise, it was a little girl. "He's my daddy," she explained, "It's his birthday." The governor allowed the prisoner to be sent for. "Daddy," said the child as he was brought in, "this was your birthday, so I wanted to come and see you." Then taking a lock of hair out of her pocket, she offered it to him. "I had no money to buy a present for you. But I brought this, a lock of my own hair." The prisoner broke down and clasped her in his arms, sobbing. He became a changed man after that and guarded, as his most precious possession, the lock of hair that reminded him that somebody still loved him.

Near the end of the session, a slight, middle-aged man in a dress shirt approached the microphone. “I’m here to ask your forgiveness,” he said quietly. “I’ve been a pastor with a conservative denomination for more than thirty years, and I used to be an antigay apologist. I knew every argument, every Bible verse, every angle, and every position. I could win a debate with just about anyone, and I confess I yelled down more than a few ‘heretics’ in my time. I was absolutely certain that what I was saying was true and I assumed I’d defend that truth to death. But then I met a young lesbian woman who, over a period of many years, slowly changed my mind. She is a person of great faith and grace, and her life was her greatest apologetic.” The man began to sob into his hands. “I’m so sorry for what I did to you,” he finally continued. “I might not have hurt any of you directly, but I know my misguided apologetics, and then my silent complicity, probably did more damage than I can ever know. I am truly sorry and I humbly repent of my actions. Please forgive me.” “We forgive you!” someone shouted from up front. But the pastor held up his hand and then continued to speak. “And if things couldn’t get any weirder,” he said with a nervous laugh, “I was dropping my son off at school the other day—he’s a senior in high school—and we started talking about this very issue. When I told him that I’d recently changed my mind about homosexuality, he got really quiet for a minute and then he said, ‘Dad, I’m gay.’ ” Nearly everyone in the room gasped. “Sometimes I wonder if these last few years of studying, praying, and rethinking things were all to prepare me for that very moment,” the pastor said, his voice quivering. “It was one of the most important moments of my life. I’m so glad I was ready. I’m so glad I was ready to love my son for who he is.

What about Sandridge?" McKenna asked. "Do you love him?" "Yes," Aline whispered. She loved Adam dearly- just not in the way he meant. "And yet you're here with me," he murmured. "Adam-" She stopped and cleared her throat. "Whatever I choose to do... he doesn't mind. This has nothing to do with him... you and I..." "No, it doesn't," he said with sudden anger. "My God, he should be trying to tear my throat out, instead of letting you go somewhere alone with me. He should be willing to do anything short of murder- hell, I wouldn't even stop at that- to keep other men away from you." Disgust thickened his voice. "You're lying to yourself, if you think that you'll ever be satisfied with the kind of bloodless arrangement your parents had. You need a man who will match your will, own you, occupy every part of your body, and every corner of your soul. In the eyes of the world, Sandridge is your equal- but you and I know better. He's as different from you as ice from fire." He leaned over her, his body forming a hard, living cage around her. "I'm your equal," he said harshly, "though my blood is red instead of blue, though I was condemned by my very birth never to have you... inside, we're the same. And I would break every law of God and man if-" McKenna stopped suddenly, biting back the words as he realized that he was revealing too much, allowing his rampaging emotions to get the better of him.

Anybody who lives beneath the Cross and who has discerned in the Cross of Jesus the utter wickedness of all men and of his own heart will find there is no sin that can ever be alien to him. Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother. Looking at the Cross of Jesus, he knows the human heart. He knows how utterly lost it is in sin and weakness, how it goes astray in the ways of sin, and he also knows that it is accepted in grace and mercy. Only the brother under the Cross can hear a confession. It is not experience of life but experience of the Cross that makes one a worthy hearer of confessions. The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants .to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ. It is not lack of psychological knowledge but lack of love for the crucified Jesus Christ that makes us so poor and inefficient in brotherly confession.

First of all I will confess quite simply—I believe that the Bible alone is the answer to all our questions, and that we need only to ask repeatedly and a little humbly, in order to receive this answer. One cannot simply read the Bible, like other books. One must be prepared really to enquire of it. Only thus will it reveal itself. Only if we expect from it the ultimate answer, shall we receive it. That is because in the Bible God speaks to us. And one cannot simply think about God in one’s own strength, one has to enquire of him. Only if we seek him, will he answer us. Of course it is also possible to read the Bible like any other book, that is to say from the point of view of textual criticism, etc.; there is nothing to be said against that. Only that that is not the method which will reveal to us the heart of the Bible, but only the surface, just as we do not grasp the words of someone we love by taking them to bits, but by simply receiving them, so that for days they go on lingering in our minds, simply because they are the words of a person we love; and just as these words reveal more and more of the person who said them as we go on, like Mary, “pondering them in our heart,” so it will be with the words of the Bible. Only if we will venture to enter into the words of the Bible, as though in them this God were speaking to us who loves us and does not will to leave us along with our questions, only so shall we learn to rejoice in the Bible. . . .

Quote from Father Tim during a sermon given after the former priest was found after a suicide attempt. "      'Father Talbot has charged me to tell you that he is deeply repentant for not serving you as God appointed him to do, and as you hoped and needed him to do.         'He wished very much to bring you this message himself, but he could not.  He bids you goodbye with a love he confesses he never felt toward you...until this day.  He asks--and I quote him--that you might find it in your hearts to forgive him his manifold sins against God and this parish.'         He felt the tears on his face before he knew he was weeping, and realized instinctively that he would have no control over the display.  He could not effectively carry on, no even turn his face away or flee the pulpit.  He was in the grip of a wild grief that paralyzed everything but itself.          He wept face forward, then, into the gale of those aghast at what was happening, wept for the wounds of any clergy gone out into a darkness of self-loathing and beguilement; for the loss and sorrow of those who could not believe, or who had once believed but lost all sense of shield and buckler and any notion of God's radical tenderness, for the ceaseless besettings of the flesh, for the worthless idols of his own and of others; for those sidetracked, stumped, frozen, flung away, for those both false and true, the just and the unjust, the quick and the dead.           He wept for himself, for the pain of the long years and the exquisite satisfactions of the faith, for the holiness of the mundane, for the thrashing exhaustions and the endless dyings and resurrectings that malign the soul incarnate.           It had come to this, a thing he had subtly feared for more than forty years--that he would weep before the many--and he saw that his wife would not try to talk him down from this precipice, she would trust him to come down himself without falling or leaping.         And people wept with him, most of them.  Some turned away, and a few got up and left in a hurry, fearful of the swift and astounding movement of the Holy Spirit among them, and he, too, was afraid--of crying aloud in a kind of ancient howl and humiliating himself still further.  But the cry burned out somewhere inside and he swallowed down what remained and the organ began to play, softly, piously.  He wished it to be loud and gregarious, at the top of its lungs--Bach or Beethoven, and not the saccharine pipe that summoned the vagabond sins of thought, word, and deed to the altar, though come to think of it, the rail was the very place to be right now, at once, as he, they, all were desperate for the salve of the cup, the Bread of Heaven.             And then it was over.  He reached into the pocket of his alb and wondered again how so many manage to make in this world without carrying a handkerchief.  And he drew it out and wiped his eyes and blew his nose as he might at home, and said, 'Amen.'                 And the people said, 'Amen.

I am seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. I have been delivered by the power in His name, the power of the Blood. God has shown Himself mighty on my behalf; no evil befalls me. I am victorious in Christ Jesus – I am the beloved of the Lord. I walk in love, I walk in His light. My path is set in the brightness of the lamp, and I will not stumble. My eyes behold the sun, and the Sun of righteousness arises over my household with healing in His wings. I am redeemed from affliction, depression, grief, ailments, sicknesses, diseases, death, and destruction. I have life eternal, I have life abundant, I have peace with God, and my ways are pleasing to Him. I am favoured by God; I break through on every side, and I am not restrained by any force. My days are prolonged. The pleasure of the Lord will prosper in my hand. I have my portion with the great and my share of the spoil with the strong. I walk about in His name. This is my season of possibilities, in Jesus’ name. I believe and I say amen.

She'd barely sat down when he reminded her of that kiss: "Couldn't find any mud?" He said it so casually, she couldn't tell if he was teasing. "Behave," she hissed at him. "Never." He grinned at her. That brought on a slight blush, which in turn brought back her earlier frustration. "If trying to punish me by making me want you,I won't fall for that again," she warned him. "Do you want me?" What a ridiculous question. How could she not want him? But she wasn't telling him that. For him to even ask proved his intent was wicked in some form. "Be at ease,Becca." Then he completely ruined that by adding, "I'm not going to ravish you here at the table, though I confess,I'll probably be thinking about nothing else." She could have melted off the chair right to the floor, and not just from the scalding blush that flew up her cheeks. She was seeing him in her mind making love to her on the table! She couldn't look down at the table without seeing it now! Oh,God... She had no iea how she got through that meal. She barely heard a word around her.

think I’m drowning. But not into her blue eyes like I happily would. No, I’m sinking into the oor, letting it swallow me whole. I can hardly breathe under the crushing weight of Kitt’s words. My ears ring. My heart pounds. The command echoes in my skull, though I have no idea why he would want this. Why he would want her. Not now. Not after everything. And yet, I still want her after everything. I’m surrounded by the entire court and the only thing I can focus on is not falling to my knees beside her. Marriage. Marriage to someone who isn’t me. Marriage to someone I will spend the rest of my life serving. I’ll lose her forever while being forced to watch. I can’t even look at her. I’m a coward, morphing back into the monster I was when she found me. My vision is blurry, eyes xed on the dais above. This is how I lose her. Not by death but by something just as binding. The command rings in my head. And to think I wasted so much time trying to hate her. To think I won’t have enough time to love her. My heart aches because every beat belongs to her. And I may never get to tell her that. Is this how she will remember me? Escorting her to this fate? Bound by duty alone? I could laugh. I could cry. I could burn this palace to the ground like I did her house, just for a chance to confess my love before the ames consumed me. Because I am bound to her very being. Hers until the day she realizes I don’t deserve to be. The king’s eyes are on me while mine are somewhere far away. Somewhere with her. A place where I am nothing and no one and happy being powerless, so long as she is beside me. My gaze falls from the fantasy, nding its way to her. This is not how I will remember us. Not as enemies or traitors or monsters, but as two people dancing in the dark, swaying beneath the stars. Her feet atop mine, her head on the heart that beats only for her. Just Pae and Kai. I step away from her kneeling form, masking every emotion with a blank stare. I’m leaving her to face him. Her future husband. I melt into the crowd, standing at a safe enough distance to prevent myself from stealing her away. This will be the rest of my life. Forced to love her from a distance. Mourn the loss of her each day. But I will. I will smother every emotion but the one that belongs to her. I will love her until I am incapable of the feeling. She is the torture I may not survive. Eagerly, she is my undoing. Her gaze lifts, meeting eyes that are not my own. Eyes of the man who gets to have her—if she allows it. She was supposed to be my forever. Now I’ll watch her become someone else’s. Because the beast doesn’t get the beauty.

Colby’s resourceful, I’ll give him that.” “You used to be good friends.” “We were, until he started hanging around Cecily,” came the short reply. “I’m not as angry at him as I was. But it seems that he has to have a woman to prop him up.” “Not necessarily,” Matt replied. “Sometimes a good woman can save a bad man. It’s an old saying, but fairly true from time to time. Colby was headed straight to hell until Cecily put him on the right track. It’s gratitude, but I don’t think he can see that just yet. He’s in between mourning his ex-wife and finding someone to replace her.” He leaned back again. “I feel sorry for him. He’s basically a one-woman man, but he lost the woman.” Tate packed back to the wing chair and sat down on the edge. “He’s not getting Cecily. She’s mine, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.” Matt stared at him. “Don’t you know anything about women in love?” “Not a lot,” the younger man confessed. “I’ve spent the better part of my life avoiding them.” “Especially Cecily,” Matt agreed. “She’s been like a shadow. You didn’t miss her until you couldn’t see her behind you anymore.” “She’s grown away from me,” Tate said. “I don’t know how to close the gap. I know she still feels something for me, but she wouldn’t stay and fight for me.” He lifted his gaze to Matt’s hard face. “She’s carrying my child. I want both of them, regardless of the adjustments I have to make. Cecily’s the only woman I’ve ever truly wanted.” Matt spread his hands helplessly. “This is one mess I can’t help you sort out,” he said at last. “If Cecily loves you, she’ll give in sooner or later. If it were me, I’d go find her and tell her how I really felt. I imagine she’ll listen.” Tate stared at his shoes. He couldn’t find the right words to express what he felt. “Tate,” his father said gently, “you’ve had a lot to get used to lately. Give it time. Don’t rush things. I’ve found that life sorts itself out, given the opportunity.” Tate’s dark eyes lifted. “Maybe it does.” He searched the other man’s quiet gaze. “It’s not as bad as I thought it was, having a foot in two worlds. I’m getting used to it.” “You still have a unique heritage,” Matt pointed out. “Not many men can claim Berber revolutionaries and Lakota warriors as relatives.

I fell in love with you, and I knew I could never have you. I couldn't pretend to be Pru any longer. I loved you so much, and I couldn't-" Her words were abruptly smothered. He was kissing her, she realized dazedly. What did it mean? What did he want? What... but her thoughts dissolved, and she stopped trying to make sense of anything. His arms had closed around her, one hand gripping the back of her neck. Shaken to her soul, she molded against him. Taking her sobs into his mouth, he licked deep, his kiss strong and savage. It had to be a dream, and yet her senses insisted it was real, the scent and warmth and toughness of him engulfing her. He pulled her even more tightly against him, making it difficult to breathe. She didn't care. The pleasure of the kiss suffused her, drugged her, and when he pulled his head back, she protested with a bewildered moan. Christopher forced her to look back at him. "Loved?" he asked hoarsely. "Past tense?" "Present tense," she managed to say. "You told me to find you." "I didn't mean to send you that note." "But you did. You wanted me." "Yes." More tears escaped her stinging eyes. He bent and pressed his mouth to them, tasting the salt of grief. Those gray eyes looked into hers, no longer bright as hellfrost, but soft as smoke. "I love you, Beatrix." Maybe she was capable of swooning after all. It certainly felt like a swoon, her knees giving way, her head lolling against his shoulder as he lowered them both to the threadbare carpet. Fitting his arm beneath her neck, Christopher covered her mouth with his again. Beatrix answered helplessly, unable to withhold anything. Their legs tangled, and he let his thigh nuzzle between hers.

French said: “It’s like this with us, baby. We’re coppers and everybody hates our guts. And as if we didn’t have enough trouble, we have to have you. As if we didn’t get pushed around enough by the guys in the corner offices, the City Hall gang, the day chief, the night chief, the Chamber of Commerce, His Honor the Mayor in his paneled office four times as big as the three lousy rooms the whole homicide staff has to work out of. As if we didn’t have to handle one hundred and fourteen homicides last year out of three rooms that don’t have enough chairs for the whole duty squad to sit down in at once. We spend our lives turning over dirty underwear and sniffing rotten teeth. We go up dark stairways to get a gun punk with a skinful of hop and sometimes we don’t get all the way up, and our wives wait dinner that night and all the other nights. We don’t come home any more. And nights we do come home, we come home so goddam tired we can’t eat or sleep or even read the lies the papers print about us. So we lie awake in the dark in a cheap house on a cheap street and listen to the drunks down the block having fun. And just about the time we drop off the phone rings and we get up and start all over again. Nothing we do is right, not ever. Not once. If we get a confession, we beat it out of the guy, they say, and some shyster calls us Gestapo in court and sneers at us when we muddle our grammar. If we make a mistake they put us back in uniform on Skid Row and we spend the nice cool summer evenings picking drunks out of the gutter and being yelled at by whores and taking knives away from greaseballs in zoot suits. But all that ain’t enough to make us entirely happy. We got to have you.” He stopped and drew in his breath. His face glistened a little as if with sweat. He leaned forward from his hips. “We got to have you,” he repeated. “We got to have sharpers with private licenses hiding information and dodging around corners and stirring up dust for us to breathe in. We got to have you suppressing evidence and framing set-ups that wouldn’t fool a sick baby. You wouldn’t mind me calling you a goddam cheap double-crossing keyhole peeper, would you, baby?” “You want me to mind?” I asked him. He straightened up. “I’d love it,” he said. “In spades redoubled.

I be loyal to my friends and generous to my opponents. May I face adversity with courage. May I not ask or expect too much for myself. Yet, Lord, do not let me rest content with an ideal of humanity that is less than what was shown to us in Jesus. Give me the mind of Christ. May I not rest until I am like him in all his fullness. May I listen to Jesus’ question: What are you doing more than others? And so may the three Christian graces of faith, hope, and love be more and more formed within me, until all I do and say brings honor to Jesus and his gospel. O God, you proved your love to us in the passion and death of Jesus Christ our Lord; may the power of his cross be with me today. May I love as he loved. May I be obedient even to death. As I lean on his cross may I not refuse my own; but rather may I bear it by the strength of his. O Lord, you have placed the solitary in families; I ask for your heavenly blessing for all the members of my household, all my neighbors, and all my fellow citizens. May Christ rule in every heart and his law be honored in every home. May every knee bend before him and every tongue confess that he is Lord. Amen.

From that first meeting he had loved this woman, but passionately as his feelings surged over him, following him even to his dreams, the crucial factor that would shake him to the core was still lacking - his conscious realization that what, denying his true feelings, he still called admiration, respect and devotion was in fact love - a burning, unbounded, absolute and passionate love. Some kind of servile instinct in him forcibly suppressed that realization; she was too distant, too far away, too high above him, a radiant woman surrounded by a circle of stars, armoured by her wealth and by all that he had ever known of women before. It would have seemed blasphemous to think of her as a sexual being, subject to the same laws of the blood as the few other women who had come his way during his youth spent in servitude [...]. No, this was different. She shone down from another sphere, beyond desire, pure and inviolable, and even in his most passionate dreams he did not venture so far as to undress her. In boyish confusion, he loved the fragrance of her presence, appreciating all her movements as if they were music, glad of her confidence in him and always fearing to show her any of the overwhelming emotion that stirred within him, an emotion still without a name, but long since fully formed and glowing in its place of concealment. But love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart.

In literature, plays, and cinema, substitutionary sacrifice is always the most riveting and moving plot point. In the movie The Last of the Mohicans, British major Duncan Heyward asks his Indian captors if he might die in the flames so that Cora, whom he loves, and Nathaniel can go free. When, as he is being dragged away, Duncan cries, “My compliments, sir! Take her and get out!” we are electrified by his unflinching willingness to die to save others, one of whom has been his rival. He dies with his arms bound and stretched out, as if he were on a cross. In Ernest Gordon’s memoir of being a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, he recounts how at the end of a day of forced labor the guards counted the shovels, and one was apparently missing. A furious guard threatened the British POWs that unless the guilty person confessed, he would kill them all. He cocked his gun to start shooting them one by one. At that moment, one prisoner stepped forward calmly and said, “I did it.” He stood quietly at attention, and “he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53: 7) as he was beaten to death. When they all got back to the camp and counted the shovels again, it turned out that they were all there. The man had sacrificed himself to save them all. In the first Harry Potter novel, the evil Lord Voldemort can’t touch Harry without being burned. Later Dumbledore explains it to him. “Your mother died to save you. . . . Love as powerful [as that] . . . leaves its own mark. . . . [T]o have been loved so deeply . . . will give us some protection forever.” Why do these stories move us? It’s because we know from the mundane corners of life to the most dramatic that all life-changing love is substitutionary sacrifice. We know that anybody who has ever done anything that really made a difference in our lives made a sacrifice, stepped in and gave something or paid something or bore something so we would not have to.

Ah! Gentle, gracious Dove, And art thou grieved in me, That sinners should restrain thy love, And say, “It is not free: It is not free for all: The most, thou passest by, And mockest with a fruitless call Whom thou hast doomed to die.” They think thee not sincere In giving each his day, “ Thou only draw’st the sinner near To cast him quite away, To aggravate his sin, His sure damnation seal: Thou show’st him heaven, and say’st, go in And thrusts him into hell.” O HORRIBLE DECREE Worthy of whence it came! Forgive their hellish blasphemy Who charge it on the Lamb: Whose pity him inclined To leave his throne above, The friend, and Saviour of mankind, The God of grace, and love. O gracious, loving Lord, I feel thy bowels yearn; For those who slight the gospel word I share in thy concern: How art thou grieved to be By ransomed worms withstood! How dost thou bleed afresh to see Them trample on thy blood! To limit thee they dare, Blaspheme thee to thy face, Deny their fellow-worms a share In thy redeeming grace: All for their own they take, Thy righteousness engross, Of none effect to most they make The merits of thy cross. Sinners, abhor the fiend: His other gospel hear— “The God of truth did not intend The thing his words declare, He offers grace to all, Which most cannot embrace, Mocked with an ineffectual call And insufficient grace. “The righteous God consigned Them over to their doom, And sent the Saviour of mankind To damn them from the womb; To damn for falling short, “Of what they could not do, For not believing the report Of that which was not true. “The God of love passed by The most of those that fell, Ordained poor reprobates to die, And forced them into hell.” “He did not do the deed” (Some have more mildly raved) “He did not damn them—but decreed They never should be saved. “He did not them bereave Of life, or stop their breath, His grace he only would not give, And starved their souls to death.” Satanic sophistry! But still, all-gracious God, They charge the sinner’s death on thee, Who bought’st him with thy blood. They think with shrieks and cries To please the Lord of hosts, And offer thee, in sacrifice Millions of slaughtered ghosts: With newborn babes they fill The dire infernal shade, “For such,” they say, “was thy great will, Before the world was made.” How long, O God, how long Shall Satan’s rage proceed! Wilt thou not soon avenge the wrong, And crush the serpent’s head? Surely thou shalt at last Bruise him beneath our feet: The devil and his doctrine cast Into the burning pit. Arise, O God, arise, Thy glorious truth maintain, Hold forth the bloody sacrifice, For every sinner slain! Defend thy mercy’s cause, Thy grace divinely free, Lift up the standard of thy cross, Draw all men unto thee. O vindicate thy grace, Which every soul may prove, Us in thy arms of love embrace, Of everlasting love. Give the pure gospel word, Thy preachers multiply, Let all confess their common Lord, And dare for him to die. My life I here present, My heart’s last drop of blood, O let it all be freely spent In proof that thou art good, Art good to all that breathe, Who all may pardon have: Thou willest not the sinner’s death, But all the world wouldst save. O take me at my word, But arm me with thy power, Then call me forth to suffer, Lord, To meet the fiery hour: In death will I proclaim That all may hear thy call, And clap my hands amidst the flame, And shout,—HE DIED FOR ALL

I saw you through your dreams- and I hoarded the images, sorting through them over and over again, trying to place where you you were, who you were. But you had such horrible nightmares, and the creatures belonged to all courts. I'd wake up with your scent in my nose, and it would haunt me all day, every step. But then one night, you dreamed of standing amongst green hills, seeing unlit bonfires for Calanmai.' There was such silence in my head. 'I knew there was only one celebration that large; I knew those hills- and I knew you'd probably be there. So I told Amarantha...' Rhys swallowed. 'I told her that I wanted to go to the Spring Court for the celebration, to spy on Tamlin and see if anyone showed up wishing to conspire with him. We were so close to the deadline for the curse that she was paranoid- restless. She told me to bring back traitors. I promised her I would.' His eyes lifted to mine again. 'I got there, and I could smell you. So I tracked that scent, and... And there you were. Human- utterly human, and being dragged away by those piece-of-shit picts, who wanted to...' He shook his head. 'I debated slaughtering them then and there, but then they shoved you, and I just... moved. I started speaking without knowing what I was saying, only that you were there, and I was touching you, and...' He loosed a shuddering breath. There you are. I've been looking for you. His first words to me- not a lie at all, not a threat to keep those faeries away. Thank you for finding her for me. I had the vague feeling of the world slipping out from under my feet like sand washing away from the shore. 'You looked at me,' Rhys said, 'and I knew you had no idea who I was. That I might have seen your dreams, but you hadn't seen mine. And you were just... human. You were so young, and breakable, and had no interest in me whatsoever, and I knew that if I stayed too long, someone would see and report back, and she'd find you. So I started walking away, thinking you'd be glad to get rid of me. But then you called after me, like you couldn't let go of me just yet, whether you knew it or not. And I knew... I knew we were on dangerous ground, somehow. I knew that I could never speak to you, or see you, or think of you again. 'I didn't want to know why you were in Prythian; I didn't even want to know your name. Because seeing you in my dreams had been one thing, but in person... Right then, deep down, I think I knew what you were. And I didn't let myself admit it, because it there was the slightest chance that you were my mate... They would have done such unspeakable things to you, Feyre. 'So I let you walk away. I told myself after you were gone that maybe... maybe the Cauldron had been kind, and not cruel, for letting me see you. Just once. A gift for what I was enduring. And when you were gone, I found those three picts. I broke into their minds, reshaping their lives, their histories, and dragged them before Amarantha. I made them confess to conspiring to find other rebels that night. I made them lie and claim that they hated her. I watched her carve them up while they were still alive, protesting their innocence. I enjoyed it- because I knew what they had wanted to do to you. And knew that it would have paled in comparison to what Amarantha would have done if she'd found you.' I wrapped a hand around my throat. I had my reasons to be out there, he'd once said to me Under the Mountain. Do not think, Feyre, that it did not cost me.

I notice that you’re wearing your wedding ring,” he said after I sat down. “Do you think you might be in denial?” I guess it was a fair question, but it caught me off guard. “I know Chris is gone,” I said. “But I do feel as if I’m still married to him.” I looked at my ring. It didn’t mean I was in denial; it meant I loved Chris. Yet the question bothered me. My husband is dead, and of course I acknowledge it. But that’s different than shouting about it. The ring is a symbol of our love as well as our marriage. How should I treat that symbol? Do I have a problem? I left the office in a quandary. The Bible says “until death do you part.” I know that means that marriage lasts only until one death, and that it’s okay for me to marry again. I know good friends wo are widows, and I’ve encouraged them to marry, feeling it was right for them. One of my dearest friends decided to do just that this past summer. It hadn’t been that long since her husband had died, but things had just come together, and her new love deserved to be acknowledged. It was another case, to me, of finding beauty through the ashes. “I kept asking God, why now? Why so soon?” she confessed. “The answer that came back was, timing doesn’t matter. Accept the gift.” She’s right. People may judge her, but she had the courage and strength to admit that she had something beautiful, and that the right thing to do was act on it. I know with certainty that not only was the man right but the timing was as well. They have strengthened each other, and I’m sure will have a life together many can only dream of.

Preaching that confronts racism: • Speaks up and speaks out. • Sees American racism as an opportunity for Christians honestly to name our sin and to engage in acts of detoxification, renovation, and reparation. • Is convinced that the deepest, most revolutionary response to the evil of racism is Jesus Christ, the one who demonstrates God for us and enables us to be for God. • Reclaims the church as a place of truth-telling, truth-embodiment, and truth enactment. • Allows the preacher to confess personal complicity in and to model continuing repentance for racism. • Brings the good news that Jesus Christ loves sinners, only sinners. • Enjoys the transformative power of God’s grace. • Listens to and learns from the best sociological, psychological, economic, artistic, and political insights on race in America, especially those generated by African Americans. • Celebrates the work in us and in our culture of a relentlessly salvific, redemptive Savior. • Uses the peculiar speech of scripture in judging and defeating the idea of white supremacy. • Is careful in its usage of color-oriented language and metaphors that may disparage blackness (like “washed my sins white as snow,” or “in him there is no darkness at all”). • Narrates contemporary Christians into the drama of salvation in Jesus Christ and thereby rescues them from the sinful narratives of American white supremacy. • Is not silenced because talk about race makes white Christians uncomfortable. • Refuses despair because of an abiding faith that God is able and that God will get the people and the world that God wants.

The dance began. Caran remained silent the entire time. When the instruments slowed to an end, a lute picking a light tune downward until there was no more music, Kestrel broke away. Caran gave her an awkward bow and left. “Well, that didn’t look very fun,” said a voice behind her. Kestrel turned. Gladness washed over her. It was Ronan. “I’m ashamed of myself,” he said. “Heartily ashamed, to be so late that you had to dance with such a boring partner as Caran. How did that happen?” “I blackmailed him.” “Ah.” Ronan’s eyes grew worried. “So things aren’t going well.” “Kestrel!” Jess threaded through milling people and came close. “We didn’t think you’d come. You should have told us. If we’d known, we’d have been here from the first.” Jess took Kestrel’s hand and drew her to the edge of the dance floor. Ronan followed. Behind them, dancers began the second round. “As it was,” Jess continued, “we barely made it into the carriage. Ronan was so listless, saying he saw no point in coming if he couldn’t be with you.” “Sweet sister,” said Ronan, “is it now my turn to share private things about you?” “Silly. I have no secrets. Neither do you, where Kestrel is concerned. Well?” Jess looked triumphantly between them. “Do you, Ronan?” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and thumb, brows rumpling into a pained expression. “Not anymore.” “You look lovely, Kestrel,” Jess said. “Wasn’t I right about the dress? And the color will go perfectly with the iced apple wine.” Kestrel felt giddy, whether form the relief of seeing her friends or because of Ronan’s forced confession, she wasn’t sure.

BROADBENT [stiffly]. Devil is rather a strong expression in that connexion, Mr Keegan. KEEGAN. Not from a man who knows that this world is hell. But since the word offends you, let me soften it, and compare you simply to an ass. [Larry whitens with anger]. BROADBENT [reddening]. An ass! KEEGAN [gently]. You may take it without offence from a madman who calls the ass his brother--and a very honest, useful and faithful brother too. The ass, sir, is the most efficient of beasts, matter-of-fact, hardy, friendly when you treat him as a fellow-creature, stubborn when you abuse him, ridiculous only in love, which sets him braying, and in politics, which move him to roll about in the public road and raise a dust about nothing. Can you deny these qualities and habits in yourself, sir? BROADBENT [goodhumoredly]. Well, yes, I'm afraid I do, you know. KEEGAN. Then perhaps you will confess to the ass's one fault. BROADBENT. Perhaps so: what is it? KEEGAN. That he wastes all his virtues--his efficiency, as you call it--in doing the will of his greedy masters instead of doing the will of Heaven that is in himself. He is efficient in the service of Mammon, mighty in mischief, skilful in ruin, heroic in destruction. But he comes to browse here without knowing that the soil his hoof touches is holy ground. Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven; and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse. It produces two kinds of men in strange perfection: saints and traitors. It is called the island of the saints; but indeed in these later years it might be more fitly called the island of the traitors; for our harvest of these is the fine flower of the world's crop of infamy. But the day may come when these islands shall live by the quality of their men rather than by the abundance of their minerals; and then we shall see. LARRY. Mr Keegan: if you are going to be sentimental about Ireland, I shall bid you good evening. We have had enough of that, and more than enough of cleverly proving that everybody who is not an Irishman is an ass. It is neither good sense nor good manners. It will not stop the syndicate; and it will not interest young Ireland so much as my friend's gospel of efficiency. BROADBENT. Ah, yes, yes: efficiency is the thing. I don't in the least mind your chaff, Mr Keegan; but Larry's right on the main point. The world belongs to the efficient.

America was sleeping when I crept into the hospital wing that night. She was cleaner, but her face still seemed worried, even at rest. "Hey, Mer," I whispered, rounding her bed. She didn't stir. I didn't dare sit, not even with the excuse of checking on the girl I rescued. I stood in the freshly pressed uniform I would only wear for the few minutes it took to deliver this message. I reached out to touch her, but then pulled back. I looked into her sleeping face and spoke. "I - I came to tell you I'm sorry. About today, I mean," I sucked in a deep breath. "I should have run for you. I should have protected you. I didn't, and you could have died." Her lips pursed and unpursed as she dreamed. "Honestly, I'm sorry for a lot more than that," I admitted. "I'm sorry I got mad in the tree house. I'm sorry I ever said to send in that stupid form. It's just that I have this idea..." I swallowed. " I have this idea that maybe you were the only one I could made everything right for. " I couldn't save my dad. I couldn't protect Jemmy. I can barely keep my family afloat, and I just thought that maybe I could give you a shot at a life that would be better than the one that I would have been able to give you. And I convinced myself that was the right way to love you." I watched her, wishing I had the nerve to confess this while she could argue back with me and tell me how wrong I'd been. " I don't know if I can undo it, Mer. I don't know if we'll ever be the same as we used to be. But I won't stop trying. You're it for me," I said with a shrug. "You're the only thing I've ever wanted to fight for." There was so much more to say, but I heard the door to the hospital wing open. Even in the dark, Maxon's suit was impossible to miss. I started walking away, head down, trying to look like I was just on a round. He didn't acknowledge me, barely even noticed me as he moved to America's bed. I watched him pull up a chair and settle in beside her. I couldn't help but be jealous. From the first day in her brother's apartment - from the very moment I knew how I felt about America - I'd been forced to love her from afar. But Maxon could sit beside her, touch her hand, and the gap between their castes didn't matter. I paused by the door, watching. While the Selection had frayed the line between America and me, Maxon himself was a sharp edge, capable of cutting the string entirely if he got too close. But I couldn't get a clear idea of just how near America was letting him. All I could do was wait and give America the time she seem to need. Really, we all needed it. Time was the only thing that would settle this.

Neliss, why is this rug wet?” Legna peeked around the corner to glance at the rug in question, looking as if she had never seen it before. “We have a rug there?” “Did you or did you not promise me you were not going to practice extending how long you can hold your invisible bowls of water in the house? And what on earth is that noise?” “Okay, I confess to the water thing, which was an honest mistake, I swear it. But as for a noise, I have no idea what you are talking about.” “You cannot hear that? It has been driving me crazy for days now. It just repeats over and over again, a sort of clicking sound.” “Well, it took a millennium, but you have finally gone completely senile. Listen, this is a house built by Lycanthropes. It is more a cave than a house, to be honest. I have yet to decorate to my satisfaction. There is probably some gizmo of some kind lying around, and I will come across it eventually or it will quit working the longer it is exposed to our influence. Even though I do not hear anything, I will start looking for it. Is this satisfactory?” “I swear, Magdelegna, I am never letting you visit that Druid ever again.” “Oh, stop it. You do not intimidate me, as much as you would love to think you do. Now, I will come over there if you promise not to yell at me anymore. You have been quite moody lately.” “I would be a hell of a lot less moody if I could figure out what that damn noise is.” Legna came around the corner, moving into his embrace with her hands behind her back. He immediately tried to see what she had in them. “What is that?” “Remember when you asked me why I cut my hair?” “Ah yes, the surprise. Took you long enough to get to it.” “If you do not stop, I am not going to give it to you.” “Okay. I am stopping. What is it?” She held out the box tied with a ribbon to him and he accepted it with a lopsided smile. “I do not think I even remember the last time I received a gift,” he said, leaning to kiss her cheek warmly. He changed his mind, though, and opted to go for her mouth next. She smiled beneath the cling of their lips and pushed away. “Open it.” He reached for the ribbon and soon was pulling the top off the box. “What is this?” “Gideon, what does it look like?” He picked up the woven circlet with a finger and inspected it closely. It was an intricately and meticulously fashioned necklace, clearly made strand by strand from the coffee-colored locks of his mate’s hair. In the center of the choker was a silver oval with the smallest writing he had ever seen filling it from top to bottom. “What does it say?” “It is the medics’ code of ethics,” she said softly, taking it from him and slipping behind him to link the piece around his neck beneath his hair. “And it fits perfectly.” She came around to look at it, smiling. “I knew it would look handsome on you.” “I do not usually wear jewelry or ornamentation, but . . . it feels nice. How on earth did they make this?” “Well, it took forever, if you want to know why it took so long for me to make good on the surprise. But I wanted you to have something that was a little bit of me and a little bit of you.” “I already have something like that. It is you. And . . . and me, I guess,” he laughed. “We are a little bit of each other for the rest of our lives.” “See, that makes this a perfect symbol of our love,” she said smartly, reaching up on her toes to kiss him. “Well, thank you, sweet. It is a great present and an excellent surprise. Now, if you really want to surprise me, help me find out what that noise is.

My friend Dr. Rod Rosenbladt told me the story of how he’d wrecked his car when he was sixteen years old after he and his friends had been drinking. Following the accident, Rod called his dad, and the first thing his dad asked him was, “Are you all right?” Rod said yes. Then he confessed to his father that he was drunk. Rod was naturally terrified about how his father might respond. Later that night after Rod had made it home, he wept and wept in his father’s study. He was embarrassed, ashamed. At the end of the ordeal, his father asked him this question: “How about tomorrow we go and get you a new car?” Rod now says that he became a Christian in that moment. God’s grace became real to him in that moment of forgiveness and mercy. Now nearly seventy, Rod has since spent his life as a spokesman for the theology of grace. Rod’s father’s grace didn’t turn Rod into a drunk—it made him love his father and the Lord he served. Now let me ask you: What would you like to say to Rod’s dad? Rod says that every time he tells that story in public, there are always people in the audience who get angry. They say, “Your dad let you get away with that? He didn’t punish you at all? What a great opportunity for your dad to teach you responsibility!” Rod always chuckles when he hears that response and says, “Do you think I didn’t know what I had done? Do you think it wasn’t the most painful moment of my whole life up to that point? I was ashamed; I was scared. My father spoke grace to me in a moment when I knew I deserved wrath … and I came alive.” Isn’t that the nature of grace? We know that we deserve punishment and then, when we receive mercy instead, we discover grace. Romans 5:8 reads, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God gives forgiveness and imputes righteousness to us even though we are sinful and while we were His enemies (vv. 6, 8, 10). Our offenses are infinitely greater than a sixteen-year-old getting drunk and wrecking his car, yet God’s grace is greater still.

Lachlan frowned as he misjudged the distance and his forehead hit Cormag's head with a bump. He wrapped his arms around his neck to steady himself, two big hands reaching up to hold onto his arms as if to offer extra support. “You,” he began, talking quietly into his ear, “are so beautiful,” he confessed, resting his heavy skull against Cormag's for a moment. He meant it as well. Cormag was stunning. He was taller and broader than he was, very much the fine figure of hotness. His dark hair was well kept, but a little messy, he had amazing bone structure; the type that made him look more like a model than a museum manager. A chiselled jaw, nicely defined cheekbones and a rugged quality that made him so appealing. He had never noticed how handsome a male face could be until those eyes drew him in. “And so are you,” his companion chuckled, “but we discussed this…I've ruined every relationship I've ever had. I get needy, possessive and my baggage gets in the way. Besides,” he lowered his voice to a whisper and brushed his hand over his upper arm, “You're not gay,” he protested, reminding him yet again that they were different. “Nope. Not gay,” he agreed with that, nodding his head as he pulled back a little to see him better. “But that doesn't make you any less beautiful. Why is it wrong that I can see how special you are?” he asked, having difficulty understanding why part of his brain was telling him he was being a drunken idiot and that the man before him wasn't attractive. But the rest of his brain – about ninety-eight percent of it – was telling him that he was the most attractive person he'd ever seen. “It's not, Lachlan. It really isn't.” “But it's somehow wrong for me to tell you?” Lachlan wondered, glancing across the bar to see Matteo smiling at him. He didn't know what it meant. Cormag cupped his face, capturing his undivided attention again. “No. Not that either. But it makes it hard for me to keep my distance. You're stunning. Inside and out,” he claimed, with chocolatey eyes that said he meant every word.

She blinked once before the most brilliant smile lit up her face. “Just when I think I can’t possibly love you even more, you do something incredibly unexpected. Thank you.” The ground shifted beneath him the tiniest bit every time she told him she loved him. She’d confessed the first time two days after he’d saved her from Einar. He’d been waiting for the right moment but she’d beat him to it. The only positive thing to come out of that bastard Einar infiltrating the mountain sector was that they’d patched up a security hole. He still wasn’t certain what the male had wanted; probably just to cause as much destruction as he could. It didn’t matter now. “I love you too.” He moved toward her, planning to show her just how much. But she shook her head and waved some wand thing at him. She used it to do something to her eyebrows. Since she’d moved all her stuff into his room he’d discovered that females took up a lot of space. “I know that look. We don’t have time.” She disappeared into the bathroom once again. This time he followed, his body already humming with the need to be inside her. “We have plenty of time.” She’d invited half a dozen females from their sector as well as their mates tonight to celebrate the unanimous change in the Ducereco law. They’d also started plans on her new project. Things were about to change for his people and he knew it was for the better. Shaking her head, she turned away from him and faced the mirror. That would not deter him. If anything, the sight of her pert ass made him even harder. Her tunic only covered the top half, making him crazy as he moved up behind her. He slid his hands up her hips and under her tunic until he grasped the thin scrap of material of her sheer panties and slid them down her legs. She’d paused what she was doing and watched him in the mirror, her own hunger sparking as wild as his. He moved in close, pressing his erection against her back. Leaning down, he brushed her hair to one side and nuzzled her neck. He never got tired of her sweet scent or the perfect way she fit right up against him. “Maybe we have some extra time,” she murmured, her eyes going heavy-lidded as they met his in the mirror. -Leilani & Con

She wasn’t sure when she realized that she wasn’t alone. She’d heard a louder murmur from the crowd outside, but she hadn’t connected it with the door opening. She looked over her shoulder and saw Tate standing against the back wall. He was wearing one of those Armani suits that looked so splendid on his lithe build, and he had his trenchcoat over one arm. He was leaning back, glaring at the ceremony. Something was different about him, but Cecily couldn’t think what. It wasn’t the vivid bruise high up on his cheek where Matt had hit him. But it was something…Then it dawned on her. His hair was cut short, like her own. He glared at her. Cecily wasn’t going to cower in her seat and let him think she was afraid to face him. Mindful of the solemnity of the occasion, she got up and joined Tate by the door. “So you actually came. Bruises and all,” she whispered with a faintly mocking smile, eyeing the very prominent green-and-yellow patch on his jaw that Matt Holden had put there. He looked down at her from turbulent black eyes. He didn’t reply for a minute while he studied her, taking in the differences in her appearance, too. His eyes narrowed on her short hair. She thought his eyelids flinched, but it might have been the light. His eyes went back to the ceremony. He didn’t say another word. He didn’t really need to. He’d cut his hair. In his culture-the one that part of him still belonged to-cutting the hair was a sign of grief. She could feel the way it was hurting him to know that the people he loved most in the world had lied to him. She wanted to tell him that the pain would ease day by day, that it was better to know the truth than go through life living a lie. She wanted to tell him that having a foot in two cultures wasn’t the end of the world. But he stood there like a painted stone statue, his jaw so tense that the muscles in it were noticeable. He refused to acknowledge her presence at all. “Congratulations on your engagement, by the way,” she said without a trace of bitterness in her tone. “I’m very happy for you.” His eyes met hers evenly. “That isn’t what you told the press,” he said in a cold undertone. “I’m amazed that you’d go to such lengths to get back at me.” “What lengths?” she asked. “Planting that story in the tabloids,” he returned. “I could hate you for that.” The teenage sex slave story, she guessed. She glared back at him. “And I could hate you, for believing I would do something so underhanded,” she returned. He scowled down at her. The anger he felt was almost tangible. She’d sold him out in every way possible and now she’d embarrassed him publicly, again, first by confessing to the media that she’d been his teenage lover-a load of bull if ever there was one. Then she’d compounded it by adding that he was marrying Audrey at Christmas. He wondered how she could be so vindictive. Audrey was sticking to him like glue and she’d told everyone about the wedding. Not that many people hadn’t read it already in the papers. He felt sick all over. He wouldn’t have Audrey at any price. Not that he was about to confess that to Cecily now, after she’d sold him out. He started to speak, but he thought better of it, and turned his angry eyes back toward the couple at the altar. After a minute, Cecily turned and went back to her seat. She didn’t look at him again.

To heal, men must learn to feel again. They must learn to break the silence, to speak the pain. Often men, to speak the pain, first turn to the women in their lives and are refused a hearing. In many ways women have bought into the patriarchal masculine mystique. Asked to witness a male expressing feelings, to listen to those feelings and respond, they may simply turn away. There was a time when I would often ask the man in my life to tell me his feelings. And yet when he began to speak, I would either interrupt or silence him by crying, sending him the message that his feelings were too heavy for anyone to bear, so it was best if he kept them to himself. As the Sylvia cartoon I have previously mentioned reminds us, women are fearful of hearing men voice feelings. I did not want to hear the pain of my male partner because hearing it required that I surrender my investment in the patriarchal ideal of the male as protector of the wounded. If he was wounded, then how could he protect me? As I matured, as my feminist consciousness developed to include the recognition of patriarchal abuse of men, I could hear male pain. I could see men as comrades and fellow travelers on the journey of life and not as existing merely to provide instrumental support. Since men have yet to organize a feminist men’s movement that would proclaim the rights of men to emotional awareness and expression, we will not know how many men have indeed tried to express feelings, only to have the women in their lives tune out or be turned off. Talking with men, I have been stunned when individual males would confess to sharing intense feelings with a male buddy, only to have that buddy either interrupt to silence the sharing, offer no response, or distance himself. Men of all ages who want to talk about feelings usually learn not to go to other men. And if they are heterosexual, they are far more likely to try sharing with women they have been sexually intimate with. Women talk about the fact that intimate conversation with males often takes place in the brief moments before and after sex. And of course our mass media provide the image again and again of the man who goes to a sex worker to share his feelings because there is no intimacy in that relationship and therefore no real emotional risk.

Early on it is clear that Addie has a rebellious streak, joining the library group and running away to Rockport Lodge. Is Addie right to disobey her parents? Where does she get her courage? 2. Addie’s mother refuses to see Celia’s death as anything but an accident, and Addie comments that “whenever I heard my mother’s version of what happened, I felt sick to my stomach.” Did Celia commit suicide? How might the guilt that Addie feels differ from the guilt her mother feels? 3. When Addie tries on pants for the first time, she feels emotionally as well as physically liberated, and confesses that she would like to go to college (page 108). How does the social significance of clothing and hairstyle differ for Addie, Gussie, and Filomena in the book? 4. Diamant fills her narrative with a number of historical events and figures, from the psychological effects of World War I and the pandemic outbreak of influenza in 1918 to child labor laws to the cultural impact of Betty Friedan. How do real-life people and events affect how we read Addie’s fictional story? 5. Gussie is one of the most forward-thinking characters in the novel; however, despite her law degree she has trouble finding a job as an attorney because “no one would hire a lady lawyer.” What other limitations do Addie and her friends face in the workforce? What limitations do women and minorities face today? 6. After distancing herself from Ernie when he suffers a nervous episode brought on by combat stress, Addie sees a community of war veterans come forward to assist him (page 155). What does the remorse that Addie later feels suggest about the challenges American soldiers face as they reintegrate into society? Do you think soldiers today face similar challenges? 7. Addie notices that the Rockport locals seem related to one another, and the cook Mrs. Morse confides in her sister that, although she is usually suspicious of immigrant boarders, “some of them are nicer than Americans.” How does tolerance of the immigrant population vary between city and town in the novel? For whom might Mrs. Morse reserve the term Americans? 8. Addie is initially drawn to Tessa Thorndike because she is a Boston Brahmin who isn’t afraid to poke fun at her own class on the women’s page of the newspaper. What strengths and weaknesses does Tessa’s character represent for educated women of the time? How does Addie’s description of Tessa bring her reliability into question? 9. Addie’s parents frequently admonish her for being ungrateful, but Addie feels she has earned her freedom to move into a boardinghouse when her parents move to Roxbury, in part because she contributed to the family income (page 185). How does the Baum family’s move to Roxbury show the ways Betty and Addie think differently from their parents about household roles? Why does their father take such offense at Herman Levine’s offer to house the family? 10. The last meaningful conversation between Addie and her mother turns out to be an apology her mother meant for Celia, and for a moment during her mother’s funeral Addie thinks, “She won’t be able to make me feel like there’s something wrong with me anymore.” Does Addie find any closure from her mother’s death? 11. Filomena draws a distinction between love and marriage when she spends time catching up with Addie before her wedding, but Addie disagrees with the assertion that “you only get one great love in a lifetime.” In what ways do the different romantic experiences of each woman inform the ideas each has about love? 12. Filomena and Addie share a deep friendship. Addie tells Ada that “sometimes friends grow apart. . . . But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how far apart you live or how little you talk—it’s still there.” What qualities do you think friends must share in order to have that kind of connection? Discuss your relationship with a best friend. Enhance