Confronted By None Quotes

The truth is that the world is full of dragons, and none of us are as powerful or cool as we’d like to be. And that sucks. But when you’re confronted with that fact, you can either crawl into a hole and quit, or you can get out there, take off your shoes, and Bilbo it up.

HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant. HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity. HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long. HELPED are those who love others unsplit off from their faults; to them will be given clarity of vision. HELPED are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize an partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful. HELPED are those who love the Earth, their mother, and who willingly suffer that she may not die; in their grief over her pain they will weep rivers of blood, and in their joy in her lively response to love, they will converse with the trees. HELPED are those whose ever act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or a child. HELPED are those who risk themselves for others' sakes; to them will be given increasing opportunities for ever greater risks. Theirs will be a vision of the word in which no one's gift is despised or lost. HELPED are those who strive to give up their anger; their reward will be that in any confrontation their first thoughts will never be of violence or of war. HELPED are those whose every act is a prayer for peace; on them depends the future of the world. HELPED are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgiveness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth. HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator's magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing. HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous. HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of the animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them. HELPED are those who love the lesbian, the gay, and the straight, as they love the sun, the moon, and the stars. None of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them. HELPED are those who love the broken and the whole; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them. HELPED are those who do not join mobs; theirs shall be the understanding that to attack in anger is to murder in confusion. HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another--plant, animal, river, or human being. They shall be joined by a multitude of the timid. HELPED are those who lose their fear of death; theirs is the power to envision the future in a blade of grass. HELPED are those who love and actively support the diversity of life; they shall be secure in their differences. HELPED are those who KNOW.

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be "healing." A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to "get through it," rise to the occasion, exhibit the "strength" that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves the for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief was we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.

We often hear of someone saying, ‘So you don’t trust me’ or ‘Are you questioning my integrity?’ or ‘You don’t believe me.’ They get defensive and angry because someone questions their actions, and they think they are above being questioned or having to prove their trustworthiness. But none of us is above questioning.

I am a stickler for good manners, and I believe that treating other people well is a lost art. In the workplace, at the dinner table, and walking down the street--we are confronted with choices on how to treat people nearly every waking moment. Over time these choices define who we are and whether we have a lot of friends and allies or none.

I opened the fire door to four lips none of which were mine kissing tightened my belt around my hips where your hands were missing and stepped out into the cold collar high under the slate grey sky the air was smoking and the streets were dry and I wasn't joking when I said Good Bye magazine quality men talking on the corner French, no less much less of them then us so why do I feel like something's been rearranged? you know, taken out of context I must seem so strange killed a cockroach so big it left a puddle of pus on the wall when you and I are lying in bed you don't seem so tall I'm singing now because my tear ducts are too tired and my brain is disconnected but my heart is wired I make such a good statistic someone should study me now somebody's got to be interested in how I feel just 'cause I'm here and I'm real oh, how I miss substituting the conclusion to confrontation with a kiss and oh, how I miss walking up to the edge and jumping in like I could feel the future on your skin I opened the fire door to four lips none of which were mine kissing I opened the fire door

All his plans were suddenly overthrown, and the existence, so elaborately pictured, was no more than a dream which would never be realized. He was free once more. Free! He need give up none of his projects, and life still was in his hands for him to do what he liked with. He felt no exhiliration, but only dismay. His heart sank. The future stretched out before him in desolate emptiness. It was as though he had sailed for many years over a great waste of waters, with peril and privation, and at last had come upon a fair haven, but as he was about to enter, some contrary wind had arisen and drove him out again into the open sea; and because he had let his mind dwell on these meads and pleasant woods of the land, the vast deserts of the ocean filled him with anguish. He could not confront again the loneliness and the tempest.

Williamson Starr doesn't use slang - if a rapper would say it, she doesn't say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her "hood". Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she's the "angry black girl". Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is no confrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn't give anyone a reason to call her ghetto. I can't stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway.

Every generation confronts the task of choosing its past. Inheritances are chosen as much as they are passed on. The past depends less on 'what happened then' than on the desires and discontents of the present. Strivings and failures shape the stories we tell. What we recall has as much to do with the terrible things we hope to avoid as with the good life for which we yearn. But when does one decide to stop looking to the past and instead conceive of a new order? When is it time to dream of another country or to embrace other strangers as allies or to make an opening, an overture, where there is none? When is it clear that the old life is over, a new one has begun, and there is no looking back? From the holding cell was it possible to see beyond the end of the world and to imagine living and breathing again?

None of us, I think, in the mid-’70s … would have thought we’d be devoting so much mental space now to confront religion. We thought that matter had long been closed. — Ian McEwan

None of it had prepared him, however, for this naked confrontation with gross injustice, this horrific reminder that despite all the honors with which we shower ourselves, we are, ultimately, fodder, mere meat for the inferior, soulless things of which I dreamt the night before, no less than us the Creator's children." - The Monstrumologist

My cheeks burned: with disillusionment, with the feverish afterglow of confrontation, but most hotly with embarrassment. I had perceived a closeness where none existed.

He gained height, grew thin, the hair on his temples had begun to grey, but, now as then, he had none of that useful sense of proportion, nor could he ever develop anything of the sort, which might have helped him distinguish between the continuous flux of the universe of which he constituted a part (though a necessarily fleeting part) and the passage of time, the perception of which might have led to an intuitive and wise acceptance of fate. Despite vain efforts to understand and experience what precisely his 'dear friends' wanted from each other, he confronted the slow tide of human affairs with a sad incomprehension, dispassionately and without any sense of personal involvement, for the greater part of his consciousness, the part entirely given over to wonder, had left no room for more mundane matters, and (to his mother's inordinate shame and the extreme amusement of the locals) had ever since then trapped him in a bubble of time, in one eternal, impenetrable and transparent moment. He walked, he trudged, he flitted - as his great friend once said, not entirely without point - 'blindly and tirelessly... with the incurable beauty of his personal cosmos' in his soul [...]

You must confront your past. At some time or other you must confront your past. It doesn't flash before your eyes, I knew that, but it's always there. We are our past. There is nothing else, and none of it can be undone.

The sadomasochistic mentality and movement assimilate women into a sexual liberation that is none other than the unrestrained expression of male-defined sexual behavior, where sexual liberation is tantamount to doing whatever one “feels” like doing. We confront again the tyranny of feelings, where feelings are portrayed almost as deterministic sexual drives that must be expressed at all costs. This is a very reactionary mentality which in one sense replicates the cultural conception of male sexuality. Men have always been portrayed as “needing” to express their “natural” sexual urges.

CEOs face this choice all the time. Should they confront their shortcomings or should they create a world where they have none? Lee Iacocca chose the latter. He surrounded himself with worshipers, exiled the critics—and quickly lost touch with where his field was going. Lee Iacocca had become a nonlearner.

Shirt off.” Neil stared at her. “Why?” “I can’t check track marks through cotton, Neil.” “I don’t do drugs.” “Good on you,” Abby said. “Keep it that way. Now take it off.” […] “I want to make this as painless as possible, but I can’t help you if you can’t help me. Tell me why you won’t take off your shirt.” Neil looked for a delicate way to say it. The best he managed was, “I’m not okay.” She put a finger to his chin and turned his face back toward her. “Neil, I work for the Foxes. None of you are okay. Chances are I’ve seen a lot worse than whatever it is you’re trying to hide from me.” Neil’s smile was humorless. “I hope not. “Trust me,” Abby said. “I’m not going to judge you. I’m here to help, remember? I’m your nurse now. That door is closed, and it comes with a lock. What happens in here stays in here.” […] “You can’t ask me about them,” he said at last. “I won’t talk to you about it. Okay?” “Okay,” Abby agreed easily. “But know that when you want to, I’m here, and so is Betsy.” Neil wasn’t going to tell that psychiatrist a thing, but he nodded. Abby dropped her hand and Neil pulled his shirt over his head before he could lose his nerve. Abby thought she was ready. Neil knew she wouldn’t be, and he was right. Her mouth parted on a silent breath and her expression went blank. She wasn’t fast enough to hide her flinch, and Neil saw her shoulders go rigid with tension. He stared at her face as she stared at him, watching her gaze sweep over the brutal marks of a hideous childhood. It started at the base of his throat, a looping scar curving down over his collarbone. A pucker with jagged edges was a finger-width away, courtesy of a bullet that hit him right on the edge of his Kevlar vest. A shapeless patch of pale skin from his left shoulder to his navel marked where he’d jumped out of a moving car and torn himself raw on the asphalt. Faded scars crisscrossed here and there from his life on the run, either from stupid accidents, desperate escapes, or conflicts with local lowlifes. Along his abdomen were larger overlapping lines from confrontations with his father’s people while on the run. His father wasn’t called the butcher for nothing; his weapon of choice was a cleaver. All of his men were well-versed in knife-fighting, and more than one of them had tried to stick Neil like a pig. And there on his right shoulder was the perfect outline of half a hot iron. Neil didn’t remember what he’s said or done to irritate his father so much.

Clinging to politics is one way of avoiding the confrontation with the devouring logic of civilization, holding instead with the accepted assumptions and definitions. Leaving it all behind is the opposite: a truly qualitative change, a fundamental paradigm shift. This change is not about: • seeking "alternative" energy sources to power all the projects and systems that should never have been started up in the first place; • being vaguely "post-Left", the disguise that some adopt while changing none of their (leftist) orientations; • espousing an "anti-globalization" orientation that's anything but, given activists' near-universal embrace of the totalizing industrial world system; • preserving the technological order, while ignoring the degradation of millions and the systematic destruction of the earth that undergird the existence of every part of the technoculture; • claiming-as anarchists-to oppose the state, while ignoring the fact that this hypercomplex global setup couldn't function for a day without many levels of government. The way is open for radical change. If complex society is itself the issue, if class society began with division of labor in the Neolithic, and if the Brave New World now moving forward was born with the shift to domesticated life, then all we've taken for granted is implicated. We are seeing more deeply, and the explorations must extend to include everyone. A daunting, but exciting opportunity!

There are more than enough reasons why you have the insecurities that you have, but none is big enough to justify why you cannot make an effort to confront and accept those flaws, and start working on them.

Look in it,' he said, smiling slightly, as you do when you have given someone a present which you know will please him and he is unwrapping it before your eyes. I opened it. In the folder I found four 8×10 glossy photos, obviously professionally done; they looked like the kind of stills that the publicity departments of movie studios put out. The photos showed a Greek vase, on it a painting of a male figure who we recognized as Hermes. Twined around the vase the double helix confronted us, done in red glaze against a black background. The DNA molecule. There could be no mistake. 'Twenty-three or -four hundred years ago,' Fat said. 'Not the picture but the krater, the pottery.' 'A pot,' I said. 'I saw it in a museum in Athens. It's authentic. Thats not a matter of my own opinion; I'm not qualified to judge such matters; it's authenticity has been established by the museum authorities. I talked with one of them. He hadn't realized what the design shows; he was very interested when I discussed it with him. This form of vase, the krater, was the shape later used as the baptismal font. That was one of the Greek words that came into my head in March 1974, the word “krater”. I heard it connected with another Greek word: “poros”. The words “poros krater” essentially mean “limestone font”. ' There could be no doubt; the design, predating Christianity, was Crick and Watson's double helix model at which they had arrived after so many wrong guesses, so much trial-and-error work. Here it was, faithfully reproduced. 'Well?' I said. 'The so-called intertwined snakes of the caduceus. Originally the caduceus, which is still the symbol of medicine was the staff of- not Hermes-but-' Fat paused, his eyes bright. 'Of Asklepios. It has a very specific meaning, besides that of wisdom, which the snakes allude to; it shows that the bearer is a sacred person and not to be molested...which is why Hermes the messenger of the gods, carried it.' None of us said anything for a time. Kevin started to utter something sarcastic, something in his dry, witty way, but he did not; he only sat without speaking. Examining the 8×10 glossies, Ginger said, 'How lovely!' 'The greatest physician in all human history,' Fat said to her. 'Asklepios, the founder of Greek medicine. The Roman Emperor Julian-known to us as Julian the Apostate because he renounced Christianity-conside​red Asklepios as God or a god; Julian worshipped him. If that worship had continued, the entire history of the Western world would have basically changed

Roman Centurion's Song" LEGATE, I had the news last night - my cohort ordered home By ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome. I've marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below: Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go! I've served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to the Wall, I have none other home than this, nor any life at all. Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour draws near That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here. Here where men say my name was made, here where my work was done; Here where my dearest dead are laid - my wife - my wife and son; Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory, service, love, Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how can I remove? For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and fields suffice. What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful Northern skies, Black with December snows unshed or pearled with August haze - The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June's long-lighted days? You'll follow widening Rhodanus till vine and olive lean Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps Nemausus clean To Arelate's triple gate; but let me linger on, Here where our stiff-necked British oaks confront Euroclydon! You'll take the old Aurelian Road through shore-descending pines Where, blue as any peacock's neck, the Tyrrhene Ocean shines. You'll go where laurel crowns are won, but -will you e'er forget The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in the wet? Let me work here for Britain's sake - at any task you will - A marsh to drain, a road to make or native troops to drill. Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or granite Border keep, Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old messmates sleep. Legate, I come to you in tears - My cohort ordered home! I've served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome? Here is my heart, my soul, my mind - the only life I know. I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it...We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be 'healing.' A Certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to 'get through it,' rise to the occasion, exhibit the 'strength' that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.

Rhine’s experiments confront us with the fact that there are events which are related to one another experimentally, and in this case meaningfully, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one, since the “transmission” exhibits none of the known properties of energy.

His instinct of a successful man had taught him long ago that, as a general rule, a reputation is built on manner as much as on achievement. And he felt that his manner when confronted with the telegram had not been impressive. He had opened his eyes widely, and had exclaimed 'Impossible!' exposing himself thereby to the unanswerable retort of a finger-tip laid forcibly on the telegram which the Assistant Commissioner, after reading it aloud had flung on the desk. To be crushed, as it were, under the tip of a forefinger was an unpleasant experience. Very damaging too! Furthermore, Chief Inspector Heat was conscious of not having mended matters by allowing himself to express a conviction. 'One thing I can tell you at once: none of our lot had anything to do with this.' He was strong in his integrity of a good detective, but he saw now that an impenetrably attentive reserve towards this incident would have served his reputation better. On the other hand, he admitted to himself that it was difficult to preserve one's reputation if rank outsiders were going to take a hand in the business. Outsiders are the bane of the police as of other professions.

Perhaps in trouble you run to other people, hoping that they can be your personal messiah. Perhaps you run to entertainment, hoping to numb your troubles away. Maybe you run to a substance, trying your best to turn off the pain. Maybe you are tempted to run to food or sex, fighting pain with pleasure. Since none of these things can provide the refuge that you seek, putting your hope there tends only to add disappointment to the trouble you’re already experiencing. God really is your refuge and strength. Only he rules every location where your trouble exists. Only he controls all the relationships in which disappointment will rear its head. Only he has the power to rescue and deliver you. Only he has the grace you need to face what you are facing. Only he holds the wisdom that, in trouble, you so desperately need. Only he is in, with, and for you at all times. He is the refuge of refuges.

Our internal boundaries define and contain the unique personal characteristics of our thoughts, feelings, opinions, behaviors, beliefs, and spirituality. Boundaries help us recognize, honor, and respect our individual wants, needs, and desires. They help us define our separateness and give us safety in our intimate communications with others. If someone verbally attacks us, we maintain our internal boundary and practice self-containment by moderately expressing our thoughts and feelings about their behavior using “I” statements. Or, we may choose not to respond and silently remind ourselves that how another person acts is about that person, not about us. If someone confronts us about our behavior, we use our internal boundary to listen to what they say. We do not internalize what is said before deciding if any of it rings true for us. If we have wronged the other person, we make amends. In either situation our self-worth is not diminished because we have maintained our internal boundaries. 110:2 We use internal boundaries in various ways. An example is deciding how much personal information, such as personal history or financial information, to share with others. Conversely, we refrain from delving into others’ personal business. We might really want to ask a question or say something to someone, yet we do not because we know that person’s private life is none of our business. 111:1 When we have healthy internal boundary systems, we recognize that each individual is responsible for his or her emotional, mental, and spiritual boundaries. We allow ourselves and others to have their own thoughts, feelings, opinions, behaviors, beliefs, and spirituality. With functional boundaries we are able to meet our needs without infringing on others’ abilities to meet their needs. Our internal boundaries can be flexible and we decide what is safe and comfortable for ourselves.

Now I see in that laughter a good deal of desperation and sadness. About to leave the haven of our separate universities and be thrown out onto the brutal free-spinning of the world, as we walked arm in arm through the snow, we carried with us, if only unconsciously, the knowledge that it would be our last holiday together; and we drank and laughed and sneered with the resolute sadness of men who knew that tomorrow we'd be trying to free our own mortgaged Buicks from our own snowlocked drives. That is what most of us ended up doing. I didn't; but I don't question that my friends were right and I wrong, that they were happy and I not, that theirs was the hard and mine the easy way. What always saddened me on confronting them was the surety that had I been foolish enough to bring up "old times," none would have allowed himself a memory of sticking his finger into the vaporous and flaky air and shouting, "Shovel, you f*cking dummies!" A self-destructively romantic man, I accepted our jeering defiance as a pact; forever.

There’s no resolution to the conflicts of our lives within ourselves, no freedom from wickedness to be sought in striving, no peace with God which is the fruit of moral effort. And the reason why there is none is that we are, indeed, defeated by sin. It’s not that we’re occasionally overcome, or even that more often than not we lose the battle with ourselves. It’s that we’re wholly defeated, ruined, “there is no health in us.” To look to ourselves, therefore, to try to sort ourselves out by doing an audit of our moral lives or a clean-up operation on our spirituality is, quite literally, a hopeless undertaking.

While all of us dread being blamed, we all would wish to be more responsible—that is, to have the ability to respond with awareness to the circumstances of our lives rather than just reacting. We want to be the authoritative person in our own lives: in charge, able to make the authentic decisions that affect us. There is no true responsibility without awareness. One of the weaknesses of the Western medical approach is that we have made the physician the only authority, with the patient too often a mere recipient of the treatment or cure. People are deprived of the opportunity to become truly responsible. None of us are to be blamed if we succumb to illness and death. Any one of us might succumb at any time, but the more we can learn about ourselves, the less prone we are to become passive victims. Mind and body links have to be seen not only for our understanding of illness but also for our understanding of health. Dr. Robert Maunder, on the psychiatric faculty of the University of Toronto, has written about the mindbody interface in disease. “Trying to identify and to answer the question of stress,” he said to me in an interview, “is more likely to lead to health than ignoring the question.” In healing, every bit of information, every piece of the truth, may be crucial. If a link exists between emotions and physiology, not to inform people of it will deprive them of a powerful tool. And here we confront the inadequacy of language. Even to speak about links between mind and body is to imply that two discrete entities are somehow connected to each other. Yet in life there is no such separation; there is no body that is not mind, no mind that is not body. The word mindbody has been suggested to convey the real state of things. Not even in the West is mind-body thinking completely new. In one of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates quotes a Thracian doctor’s criticism of his Greek colleagues: “This is the reason why the cure of so many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas; they are ignorant of the whole. For this is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the mind from the body.” You cannot split mind from body, said Socrates—nearly two and a half millennia before the advent of psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology!

I still remember a meeting in the early 1980s with a small group of younger high-level leaders of the East German system. They talked and drank the whole evening. And the longer they talked, the more evident it became how rotten the whole system was. At the end I confronted them with what they had said and asked why none of them was doing anything serious to address the real issues. At that moment the entire group fell silent. After a while one of them said what everybody else was thinking: ‘We are not going to sacrifice ourselves for this. It’s not worth it. We just want to get on with our lives. We aren’t martyrs.’” Heidemarie paused and then continued, “It was at that moment that I realized that the whole East German system was on autopilot heading toward collapse.

The problem of consciousness (more precisely, of becoming conscious of something) confronts us only when we begin to comprehend how we could dispense with it; and now physiology and the history of animals place us at the beginning of such comprehension (it took them two centuries to catch up with Leibniz’s suspicion which soared ahead). For we could think, feel, will, and remember, and we could also “act” in every sense of that word, and yet none of this would have to “enter our consciousness” (as one says metaphorically). The whole of life would be possible without, as it were, seeing itself in a mirror. Even now, for that matter, by far the greatest portion of our life actually takes place without this mirror effect; and this is true even of our thinking, feeling, and willing life, however offensive this may sound to older philosophers.

Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be “healing.” A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place. When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to “get through it,” rise to the occasion, exhibit the “strength” that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.           A

I was delighted to hear that a number of people returned to see Orphée (as much as five or six times), to the amazement of the managements. This is significant, for the cinema is usually regarded as a place where one drops in for a little entertainment as one would for a glass of beer. This is why film societies, those Courts of Appeal, have so important a part to play, and why they deserve all the support we can give them. This is why I accepted nomination as President of the fédération des Cinéclubs. But, alas, even film societies are sometimes unable to retrieve old films, which the industrial squall sweeps away in order to clear a space for new ones. We had imagined that great actresses like Greta Garbo would be granted the privilege which was denied to a Rachel or a Sarah Bernhardt. But we were wrong. Today it is impossible to show Garbo in The lady of the Camelias for instance, to the young people who could not see the film when it came out, for all the copies have been meticulously destroyed. The lady of the Camelias is to be remade with new stars and new methods, using all the latest technical inventions, colour, three dimensions, and what not. It is a real disaster. Mrs B., the head of the new York Film Library, finds herself confronted with the same difficulties as Langlois of the Cinémathèque française whenever she endeavours to save a film from oblivion. She finds that she cannot obtain a single copy. Chaplin alone escapes that terrible destruction, because he is his own firm and consequently would not fall victim to the perpetual clearing. It is none the less true that fabulous sums are demanded for the showing of any one of his films, and if his very early films are still available it is because the present destructive legislation had not come into force when they were made. This is why René Clair demands the passing of a law of copyright deposit.

Broken Wheel” explicitly rejects any spirituality of escape. There can be no bystanders, there is none who is without sin, and there can be no averting our gaze from the curse that our sin has caused. In this song we are called to engage the world in all of its pain precisely because it is only by embracing the brokenness of creation that we can begin to affirm the possibility of change. As Walter Brueggemann has put it, “Only grief permits newness.”[293] Those who do not want the new are afraid of grief; they deny it to themselves and repress it (or ignore it) in others. But grief permits newness because grief, mourning, and tears are not expressions of powerlessness. Rather, grief functions as a radical critique of the distortedness of our own lives by bringing what is wrong to conscious awareness. “Broken Wheel” refuses to cover up and insists that we confront the brokenness, oppression, failed expectations, and empty promises of our lives. If grief permits the newness of hope, then this song gives voice to a profound hope:

However, as I reread her words I was none the less a little disappointed to realize how little of our person remains in our correspondence. Of course the characters we trace express our thoughts, as do our features; it is always a process of thinking that confronts us. But even so, in a person, thought appears to us only after being filtered through the bloom of the face, flowering like a water-lily only on the surface. And this, it has to be said, does modify it considerably. And perhaps one of the causes of our perpetual disappointment in love is this perpetual slippage, which causes every anticipation of the ideal being whom we love to be confronted at each meeting by a flesh-and-blood person who already has little in common with our dream. And then, when we expect something from this person, what we receive from her is a letter where very little of the person herself remains, as in those letters used in algebraic formulae, where there remains none of the qualities characterized by the arithmetical numbers, which themselves already no longer encapsulated the properties of the fruit or the flowers that were being assessed.

The birth and growth of modern antisemitism has been accompanied by and interconnected with Jewish assimilation, the secularization and withering away of the old religious and spiritual values of Judaism. What actually happened was that great parts of the Jewish people were at the same time threatened by physical extinction from without and dissolution from within. In this situation, Jews concerned with the survival of their people would, in a curious and desperate misinterpretation, hit on the consoling idea that antisemitism, after all, might be an excellent means for keeping the people together so that the assumption of external antisemitism would even imply an external guarantee of Jewish existence. This superstition, a secularized travesty of the idea of eternity inherent in a faith in chosenness and a Messianic hope, has been strengthened through the fact that for many centuries the Jews experienced the Christian brand of hostility which was indeed a powerful agent of preservation, spiritually as well as politically. The Jews mistook modern anti-Christian antisemitism for the old religious Jew-hatred—and this all the more innocently because their assimilation had by-passed Christianity in its religious and cultural aspect. Confronted with an obvious symptom of the decline of Christianity, they could therefore imagine in all ignorance that this was some revival of the so-called "Dark Ages." Ignorance or misunderstanding of their own past were partly responsible for their fatal underestimation of the actual and unprecedented dangers which lay ahead. But one should also bear in mind that lack of political ability and judgment have been caused by the very nature of Jewish history, the history of a people without a government, without a country, and without a language. Jewish history offers the extraordinary spectacle of a people, unique in this respect, which began its history with a well-defined concept of history and an almost conscious resolution to achieve a well-circumscribed plan on earth and then, without giving up this concept, avoided all political action for two thousand years. The result was that the political history of the Jewish people became even more dependent upon unforeseen, accidental factors than the history of other nations, so that the Jews stumbled from one role to the other and accepted responsibility for none.

I had been thinking earlier that if I had not enjoyed my first experience of La Berma it was because, as with my earlier encounters with Gilberte in the Champs-Élysées, I had approached it with too strong a desire. Between these two disappointments there was perhaps not only this resemblance, but another, deeper one. The impression made upon us by a person or a work of strong character (or its interpretation) is intrinsic to them. We have brought along with us the ideas of “beauty,” “breadth of style,” “pathos,” which we might just possibly think we recognize in the banality of a passable talent or face, but our critical mind is confronted in fact with the nagging presence of a form for which it possesses no intellectual equivalent, the unknown part of which it needs to extricate. It hears a high-pitched sound, an oddly questioning intonation. It asks: “Is that good? Is it admiration I am feeling? Is this what is meant by richness of color, nobility, power?” And what answers back is a high-pitched voice, an oddly questioning tone, the despotic impression, wholly material, caused by a person we do not know, in which no scope is left for “breadth of interpretation.” And for this reason, really fine works of art, if they are given genuine attention, are the ones that disappoint us most, because in the sum total of our ideas there is none that responds to an individual impression.

So determined was Roosevelt that his children grow up to be strong, fearless adults that he had said that he would “rather one of them should die than have them grow up weaklings.” To ensure that none of them would ever be the kind of weakling he himself had been before he had resolved to “make” his body, Roosevelt had put his children through frequent and, for some of them, terrifying tests of physical endurance and courage. Most of these tests took place during what came to be known in the Roosevelt household as scrambles, long point-to-point walks led by Roosevelt himself. The only rule during these walks was that the participants could go through, over, or under an obstacle, but never around it. Roosevelt and his children, as well as a revolving crowd of cousins and friends, would not turn aside “for anything,” Ted Jr. would later write. “If a haystack was in the way we either climbed over it or burrowed through it. If we came to a pond we swam across.” Roosevelt used these scrambles, as well as other, separate excursions, to attack his children’s wilderness fears, which he referred to as buck fever—“a state of intense nervous excitement which may be entirely divorced from timidity.” Even the most courageous man, he believed, when confronted by real danger in the wilderness—whether it be an angry lion or a roaring river—could suffer from buck fever. “What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool-headedness,” he explained. “This he can get only by actual practice.

Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize. However, this is so only in appearance. The modern age has carried with it a theoretical glorification of labor and has resulted in a factual transformation of the whole of society into a laboring society. The fulfilment of the wish, therefore, like the fulfilment of wishes in fairy tales, comes at a moment when it can only be self-defeating. It is a society of laborers which is about to be liberated from the fetters of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won. Within this society, which is egalitarian because this is labor’s way of making men live together, there is no class left, no aristocracy of either a political or spiritual nature from which a restoration of the other capacities of man could start anew. Even presidents, kings, and prime ministers think of their offices in terms of a job necessary for the life of society, and among the intellectuals, only solitary individuals are left who consider what they are doing in terms of work and not in terms of making a living. What we are confronted with is the prospect of a society of laborers without labor, that is, without the only activity left to them. Surely, nothing could be worse. To

It seemed to me, of course, that it was a very long funeral. But it was, if anything, a rather shorter funeral than most, nor, since there were no overwhelming, uncontrollable expressions of grief, could it be called—if I dare to use the word—successful. The minister who preached my father’s funeral sermon was one of the few my father had still been seeing as he neared his end. He presented to us in his sermon a man whom none of us had ever seen—a man thoughtful, patient, and forbearing, a Christian inspiration to all who knew him, and a model for his children. And no doubt the children, in their disturbed and guilty state, were almost ready to believe this; he had been remote enough to be anything and, anyway, the shock of the incontrovertible, that it was really our father lying up there in that casket, prepared the mind for anything. His sister moaned and this grief-stricken moaning was taken as corroboration. The other faces held a dark, non-committal thoughtfulness. This was not the man they had known, but they had scarcely expected to be confronted with him; this was, in a sense deeper than questions of fact, the man they had not known, and the man they had not known may have been the real one. The real man, whoever he had been, had suffered and now he was dead: this was all that was sure and all that mattered now. Every man in the chapel hoped that when his hour came he, too, would be eulogized, which is to say forgiven, and that all of his lapses, greeds, errors, and strayings from the truth would be invested with coherence and looked upon with charity. This was perhaps the last thing human beings could give each other and it was what they demanded, after all, of the Lord.

The Japanese sense the presence of a divinity in every industrial object. For us, that sacred presence has been reduced to a tiny ironic glimmer, a nuance of play and distantiation. Though this is, none the less, a spiritual form, behind which lurks the evil genius of technology which sees to it itself that the mystery of the world is well-guarded. The Evil Spirit keeps watch beneath artefacts and, of all our artificial productions, one might say what Canetti says of animals: that behind each of them there is a hidden someone thumbing his nose at us. Irony is the only spiritual form in the modern world, which has annihilated all others. It alone is the guardian of the mystery, but it is no longer ours to exercise. For it is no longer a function of the subject; it is an objective function, that of the artificial, object world which surrounds us, in which the absence and transparency of the subject is reflected. The critical function of the subject has given way to the ironic function of the object. Once they have passed through the medium or through the image, through the spectrum of the sign and the commodity, objects, by their very existence, perform an artificial and ironic function. No longer any need for a critical consciousness to hold up the mirror of its double to the world: our modern world swallowed its double when it lost its shadow, and the irony of that incorporated double shines out at every moment in every fragment of our signs, of our objects, of our models. No longer any need to confront objects with the absurdity of their functions, in a poetic unreality, as the Surrealists did: things move to shed an ironic light on themselves all on their own; they discard their meanings effortlessly. This is all part of their visible, all too visible sequencing, which of itself creates a parody effect.

John Glen, the first American astronaut to orbit the earth, spent nearly a day in space still keeping his heart rate under a hundred beats per minute. That's a man not simply sitting at the controls but in control of his emotions. A man who had properly cultivated, what Tom Wolfe later called, "the Right Stuff." But you...confront a client or a stranger on the streets and your heart is liable to burst out of your chest; or you are called on to address a crowd and your stomach crashes through the floor. It's time to realize that this is a luxury, an indulgence of our lesser self. In space, the difference between life and death lies in emotional regulations. Hitting the wrong button, reading the instrument panels incorrectly, engaging a sequence too early- none of these could have been afforded on a successful Apollo mission- the consequences were too great. Thus, the question for astronauts was not How skilled a pilot are you, but Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus only on what you can change? On the task at hand? Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we'll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check- if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate. The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It's the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don't let the negativity in, don't let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can't afford to panic. This is the skill that must be cultivated- freedom from disturbance and perturbation- so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them. p28-9

While so many people floated on the sea, dying, most of the lifeboats did not sit idly by. They had to confront the excruciating moral question of whether to put their own lives at risk and row back to pick up survivors, or whether to preserve their safety at a distance, and either hope that a ship would arrive soon (doubtful, since none appeared to be on the horizon), or let the others die. Most opted for the latter. Famously, Margaret Brown (discussed above) forced her boat to return, but by the time she had taken charge, they were only able to pull a few people from the icy water. The rest had already perished.

Strength, moreover, could have been used in righteous causes with little risk of bloodshed. In their loss of purpose, in their abandonment even of the themes they most sincerely espoused, Britain, France, and most of all, because of their immense power and impartiality, the United States, allowed conditions to be gradually built up which led to the very climax they dreaded most. They have only to repeat the same well-meaning, short-sighted behaviour towards the new problems which in singular resemblance confront us to-day to bring about a third convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale.

That’s got to be right,” she heard Roo mumble. “Once they discovered she was a spy, she’d have been executed.” “And think of her career.” Ashley sighed. “The scandal.” Etienne’s tone was humorless. “Hell, in this town, the locals mighta strung her up. Me, I’d have taken that poison, too.” The mood around the table had gone somber, as though none of them really wanted to admit Miss Ellena’s guilt. Even Parker seemed to be considering Miranda’s theory. Leaning back in his chair, Etienne stroked his fingers along his chin. “She coulda gotten secrets from anybody. Or passed secrets to anybody. Especially if she was somebody’s mistress.” “Or many somebody’s mistress.” Parker chuckled. “It would have been so easy for her--men would have told her anything. They’d have given up secret information just like that.” Snapping her fingers, Ashley coolly confronted Parker’s indignation. “Come on, give us guys a little credit. Why would any high-ranking officer share classified information with his little groupie, huh?” “Because those high-ranking officers were men.” Roo’s stare was as condescending as her tone. “And men only think with their--” “Downstairs brain,” Ashley finished. While the guys conceded with slight embarrassment, Roo and Miranda laughed. “Good one, Ash.

He looked around for a plank he could lay down between the rooftops for her to walk across. But before he could think of some way of changing the subject- or staying on this one- the girl had found a pole of her own and leapt nimbly across to him. Far, far more gracefully than he had. Her robes swirled around her as she landed like a queen of the djinn alighting on the golden sands on the desert. "I learn pretty quickly," she said with mock haughtiness. Aladdin was once again speechless. What sort of rich girl was this? One who could leap like a mountain goat and play crazy at a moment's notice? Who had never seen poverty before and now, confronted with it, thought about it quietly rather than making rash statements? Who didn't care that Aladdin was a thief, except when he applied different standards to her? He was a loner, not a hermit; he had known other girls. Morgiana the Shadow, Abanbanu the tailor's daughter, Nefret with the strange green eyes, who came from the desert when the moon was new to trade trinkets from faraway lands. None of them was like this girl.

None of us were carried by our mothers as the child of God; indeed, for far too many parents, children are merely a burden. What we can do, provided we really want to, is learn from the attitude displayed by Joseph and Mary. They did not demand docility from their son, and they felt no urge to inflict violence on him. Only if we fear the confrontation with our own histories will we need to have power over others and cling to it with all our might. And if we do that it is because we feel too weak to be true to ourselves and our own feelings. But being honest to our children will make us strong. In order to tell the truth we do not need to have power over others. Power is something we only need in order to spread lies and hypocrisy, to mouth empty words and pretend they are true.

Why didn’t you go after her?” His father’s deep voice confronted his cowardice. Michael stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, slumping his shoulders in the process as a child being scolded. He could not look at his father, he knew all too well the disapproving glare that was bound to chastise him. “Love isn’t easy, Son.” His father’s hand on his shoulder offered understanding and friendship, far from the reprove he expected. “But it is for you and mom.” “No, Son, it isn’t.” His father admitted. “I think we need to talk. How about ordering us a pizza, while I settle in.” Guiding his son back to the house, Joseph felt the prick of thorns from the guilt of past mistakes. “I can’t believe you and mom almost divorced.” Michael shook his head in disbelief at the story his father had shared with him. “We came very close. Thankfully, my father, your grandfather, sat me down and shared his own marital struggles with me. None of us are exempt from them. I know you and Abigail are not talking marriage yet, but I see the way you look at her and I know, that it is just a matter of time. Love is a commitment, Michael, not a contract.” Joseph sat his empty coffee cup down on the table and spoke honestly with his son. “Either you love her enough to fight for her, or you don’t love her at all.” “I do love her.” “Then fight for her, Michael. That includes forgiving her, not just once, but each time she messes up.” Standing, Joseph handed Michael his Bible. “I have marked two passages I want you to read. Start with Isaiah 53 and end with 1 Corinthians 13. I think you will find your answers there.” Reaching his hand down to his boy, Joseph pulled him up into his embrace. “Sleep well, Son. Your mom and I are praying for you.

Since there were three of them, maybe this was a Trinity sort of thing. But two women and a man and none of them white? Then again, why had he naturally assumed that God would be white?

Many people today inside and outside the region are aware that many regimes, particularly in the Arab world, are cruel dictatorships unconstrained by any sense of higher law or justice.6 Westerners often think that the fusion of church and state is intrinsic to Islam while being foreign to Christian Europe, and that the kind of theocratic regime set up in Iran after the 1979 revolution somehow constitutes a reversion to a traditional form of Muslim rule. None of this is accurate. The emergence of modern Muslim dictatorships is a result of the accidents of the region’s confrontation with the West and subsequent transition to modernity. Political and religious authority were frequently united in Christian Europe. In the Muslim world, they were effectively separated through long historical periods. Law played the same function in Muslim lands that it did in Christian ones: acting as a check—albeit weaker—on the power of political rulers to do as they pleased. Rule of law is basic to Muslim civilization, and in fact defines that civilization in many respects.

While all of us dread being blamed, we all would wish to be more responsible—that is, to have the ability to respond with awareness to the circumstances of our lives rather than just reacting. We want to be the authoritative person in our own lives: in charge, able to make the authentic decisions that affect us. There is no true responsibility without awareness. One of the weaknesses of the Western medical approach is that we have made the physician the only authority, with the patient too often a mere recipient of the treatment or cure. People are deprived of the opportunity to become truly responsible. None of us are to be blamed if we succumb to illness and death. Any one of us might succumb at any time, but the more we can learn about ourselves, the less prone we are to become passive victims. Mind and body links have to be seen not only for our understanding of illness but also for our understanding of health. Dr. Robert Maunder, on the psychiatric faculty of the University of Toronto, has written about the mindbody interface in disease. “Trying to identify and to answer the question of stress,” he said to me in an interview, “is more likely to lead to health than ignoring the question.” In healing, every bit of information, every piece of the truth, may be crucial. If a link exists between emotions and physiology, not to inform people of it will deprive them of a powerful tool. And here we confront the inadequacy of language. Even to speak about links between mind and body is to imply that two discrete entities are somehow connected to each other. Yet in life there is no such separation; there is no body that is not mind, no mind that is not body. The word mindbody has been suggested to convey the real state of things. Not even in the West is mind-body thinking completely new. In one of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates quotes a Thracian doctor’s criticism of his Greek colleagues: “This is the reason why the cure of so many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas; they are ignorant of the whole. For this is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the mind from the body.” You cannot split mind from body, said Socrates—nearly two and a half millennia before the advent of psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology!

Mothers are by nature very cautious in all things—particularly when it comes to our kids. We want to be savvy in our judgment and realistic about our expectations. We will be cautiously positive, cautiously optimistic because we know that the world is a terribly harsh place for us and for our kids. None of us wants to feel any more hurt than we need to. But the problem for most of us mothers is that we avoid hope. We refuse to be hopeful in the name of realism. We don’t want to believe false things; we want to confront life as it is. Since we see it as largely negative, we choose to see only negative. Life feels safer that way. The problem is, we lose hope because being hopeful feels frightening. And it can feel foolish. Having hope is an act of the will.

As we read the stories of [the] last week of the life of Christ…, we are not to think of what we read as the last days of a good man scandalously treated and slowly engulfed by powers too great for him. No, we’re to wonder at the majestic condescension of God, the unbroken movement of the will of God. At the Last Supper, faced with the presence of his betrayer, Jesus said, ‘the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!’ (Luke 22:22). These words—‘as it has been determined, but woe’—stand over the whole of the course of the passion. Holy Week is no accident and no tragedy. The betrayal of Judas, the abandonment of the disciples, the vacillation and weakness of Pilate, the self-protection of the leaders of the people—none of this corners Jesus or overtakes him. He is and remains Lord.

For the next six years, a cone of silence surrounded the ranch. Dozens of unusual events were observed. Animals were mutilated. Mysterious aircraft appeared and disappeared. Gunshots were fired at unknown creatures. And “the entity” manifested itself in ways that challenged and bewildered the NIDS team, but none of these events were made public.

Circles Circles, small, large and many circles, That is what our lives are like, Always moving and pacing in circles, Circles of love, circles of desire, circles of passion , too many circles, but none alike. Situations, circumstances presenting themselves in circles, With infinite loops, where we always end up where we began, With the only difference that we change circles, but never can we leave these circles, Even if we tried hard and we desperately ran. We always end up in a circle within many circles, But be assured these loops have been created on purpose by someone, Who enjoys watching us going in circles because for him/her life is a circus of circles, There is no regard for emotions, sentiments and human sensitivities, because this entity seems to care for no one. And casts us mercilessly and relentlessly in these vicious circles, Where the race begins never to end, because in a circle the end is unmarked, And ah the agony of living in ceaseless pain and its ever extending circles, Who shall we accuse, our fate or our destiny that we always get marked. To be a part of circles, in relentless motion and desperation, only to create new circles, And be cast in them remorselessly by this unknown entity, It has nothing to offer us, no joys, no celebrations, just the ceaseless circles, Where we always lie in the centre like a loathed deity! And if ever our circle intersects with a cluster of happy circles, We are cast away and shunned like a managed dog, Till there are no more happy circles left in our constellation of endless circles, And we get recast by fate once again , in the infinite circle of life where we belong. We, our circle, our lives, our pain, a little blend of joy, and our live’s moments going in circles, Often question us in our wakeful state, “What are we and who are we without these circles?” And the answer, “ a motion within a circle seeking its eternal kinetic state !” To love in a circle, to feel joy in a circle, to confront life within circles, And tread in a state of constantly moving inertia, Where the quantum of everything is defined by these ceaselessly evolving circles, With the purpose to attain panacea! And I have loved you even in these circles, Where the feelings of my mind and heart are these constantly geminating circles, Your circles, my circles, our circles, life’s circles, circles within circles, To be a part of that final circle, we call “life’s circles!” So, I have plucked this rose with infinite red petals, For when we enter the circle of life together, I shall shower these scented petals, In all our circles to create that quintessential and romantic weather. where we shall enjoy our life in these circles, without feeling their drag, For being with you in the life’s endless sequence of circles, Will be a moment of joy, where I would wish that time developed a perpetual lag, So that you and I , could feel the symphony of our rhythmically moving circles!

closely guarded secret in this country's military history. The function of SOE is to help facilitate that invasion and contribute towards its success.” It was quite a rousing little speech, and we all responded with a cheer of approval. I realised I hadn’t reasoned it through before. I thought agents worked individually to cause disruption and hinder the German war machine. I didn’t realise we were to be part of a coordinated invasion of Europe. Quite what my role might be, I hadn’t worked out yet. I suspect if I’d seriously thought about it, my confidence would have been dented enormously. Everything we had learned so far required fluent French, and try as I might, that was not going to be me. In the afternoon, we moved back outside again and quickly found ourselves standing in the firing range. Here we were introduced to weapons and explosives. If I tried to imagine a weapons expert, he wouldn’t have looked remotely like the instructor who met us. A grey-haired bespectacled man in his late fifties greeted us with a warm smile and a kind word. His soft voice belied the fact that anything he didn’t know about weapons, was not something worth knowing. He introduced us to the MK II Sten Gun. “Should any of you find yourself in a serious confrontation with the enemy, this is your weapon of choice. This is the MK II Sten Gun. This is a submachine gun, it fires a 9mm cartridge, and in the right hands it can fire 500 rounds a minute. As you can see, it is not a sophisticated weapon; it comes with many advantages as well as some disadvantages. Its light, compact design combined with the folding stock, make it ideal for subversive activities. It is also very cheap to produce, this

The other traffic issue concerned the park’s users. Vaux and Olmsted came up with three categories of roadway that they simply called the “Walk” (for pedestrians), the “Ride” (for horseback riding), and the “Drive” (for carriages). All together, there are today about seventy miles of Walk, Ride, and Drive wending through the park. In the master plan, none of these paths ever touched. If the Drive crossed the Walk, a bridge was constructed to pass pedestrian traffic below the carriages. Similarly, the Ride was kept separate from the other paths so that horseback riders would never have to rear up suddenly when confronted with an obstacle.

We are therefore dealing with a relatively consistent theme in which water and mist play an essential role. Graindor de Brie brings another sprite into the story, named Gringalet,3 who is described as the father of Chapalu, a monster with the head of a cat and the body of a horse. This is none other than the Cath Paluc (Paluc’s cat) of Celtic legends. According to several texts, King Arthur confronted this beast. In Li Romanz des Franceis (The Romance of the French), which was written by an individual named André before 1204, Capalu would have slain Arthur; according to the Vulgate Livre d’Artus, Capalu had been fishing in the Lake of Geneva and Arthur slew it on a mountain known today as the Cat’s Tooth.4 All of this reinforces the links between the waters and the sprites.

If our fellow men could be aware of our opinions about them, love, friendship, and devotion would be forever erased from the dictionaries; and if we had the courage to confront the doubts we timidly conceive about ourselves, none of us would utter an “I” without shame. Masquerade rules all the living, from the troglodyte to the skeptic. Since only the respect for appearances separates us from carrion, it is death to consider the basis of things, of beings; let us abide by a more agreeable nothingness: our constitution tolerates only a certain dosage of truth. . . .

It was time to confront the old bat with the damage she'd caused this time. Then, he promised himself, he'd strangle her for meddling in affairs that were none of her business, and kidnapping a goddamn innocent fairy.

If there are differences and divisions, let them be healed by counsel, by careful words of loving confrontation that bring repentance in the heart. May none of God’s people have to know what it is like to have someone they worship with turn on them with wounding words. If you have a complaint against anyone, you must, for the sake of your soul and the sake of gospel unity and the sake of Christ, go to them. May there be no gossip, no hidden anger or bitterness. “May our lives be all covered with that harvest of righteousness that Jesus Christ produces to the glory of God.” (Philippians 1:11) (Moffatt 1922).

The Difference Your Life Can Make He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. James 5:20 One of the Christian's greatest deterrents from sin is the life of another Christian. Some Christians maintain that it is none of their business if another chooses to sin. They are convinced that they are being judgmental if they respond to someone in sin. The world persuades them not to get involved, but this inaction prevents them from being an effective intercessor. As Christians we are aware that sin brings death (Rom. 6:23). Sin kills relationships, dismantles marriages, stifles joy, and destroys peace. When we see someone wander from the truth into error, how should we respond? When Jesus saw sin, it broke His heart. He wept over entire cities as He saw them rejecting the truth (Matt. 23:37–39). He prayed fervently for His disciples to be strong when they were tempted (John 17). He warned those who were heading toward spiritual failure (Matt. 26:20–25, 34). Jesus was even willing to die to save people from their sins because He knew the devastation that sin causes. Jesus never stood idle as those around Him were led astray by their sin. He always took an active role in turning them back to God. “Minding your own business” will save you some discomfort, but it will not help a brother or sister who needs to return to the Lord. If you are truly aware of the grave consequences for those who continue in sin, you will be moved to weep even as Jesus wept. Pray fervently for your friend. That will safeguard your motives and prepare you to minister to him. Be alert, in the event that God asks you to confront your friend. If you do so, be loving and gentle lest you, too, be tempted (Gal. 6:1).

None of us is exempt; all of us have to realize that religion always carries with it the danger that we will make God into the likeness of something on earth, and in doing so we will lose faith, and lose God. What

Piers Morgan Piers Morgan is a British journalist best known for his editorial work for the Daily Mirror from 1995 through 2004. He is also a successful author and television personality whose recent credits include a recurring role as a judge on NBC’s America’s Got Talent. A controversial member of the tabloid press during Diana’s lifetime, Piers Morgan established a uniquely close relationship with the Princess during the 1990s. The conversation moved swiftly to the latest edition of “Have I Got News for You.” “Oh, Mummy, it was hilarious,” laughed William. “They had a photo of Mrs. Parker Bowles and a horse’s head and asked what the difference was. The answer was that there isn’t any!” Diana absolutely exploded with laughter. We talked about which was the hottest photo to get. “Charles and Camilla is still the really big one,” I said, “followed by you and a new man, and now, of course, William with his first girlfriend.” He groaned. So did Diana. Our “big ones” are the most intimate parts of their personal lives. It was a weird moment. I am the enemy, really, but we were getting on well and sort of developing a better understanding of each other as we went along. Lunch was turning out to be basically a series of front-page exclusive stories--none of which I was allowed to publish, although I did joke that “I would save it for my book”--a statement that caused Diana to fix me with a stare, and demand to know if I was carrying a tape recorder. “No,” I replied, truthfully. “Are you?” We both laughed, neither quite knowing what the answer really was. The lunch was one of the most exhilarating, fascinating, and exasperating two hours of my life. I was allowed to ask Diana literally anything I liked, which surprised me, given William’s presence. But he was clearly in the loop on most of her bizarre world and, in particular, the various men who came into it from time to time. The News of the World had, during my editorship, broken the Will Carling, Oliver Hoare, and James Hewitt scoops, so I had a special interest in those. So, unsurprisingly, did Diana. She was still raging about Julia Carling: “She’s milking it for all she’s worth, that woman. Honestly. I haven’t seen Will since June ’95. He’s not the man in black you lot keep going on about. I’m not saying who that is, and you will never guess, but it’s not Will.” William interjected: “I keep a photo of Julia Carling on my dartboard at Eton.” That was torture. That was three fantastic scoops in thirty seconds. Diana urged me to tell William the story of what we did to Hewitt in the Mirror after he spilled the beans in the ghastly Anna Pasternak book. I dutifully recounted how we hired a white horse, dressed a Mirror reporter in full armor, and charged Hewitt’s home to confront him on allegations of treason with regard to his sleeping with the wife of a future king--an offense still punishable by death. Diana exploded again. “It was hysterical. I have never laughed so much.” She clearly had no time for Hewitt, despite her “I adored him” TV confessional.

In the story, Ivan Ilyich is forty-five years old, a midlevel Saint Petersburg magistrate whose life revolves mostly around petty concerns of social status. One day, he falls off a stepladder and develops a pain in his side. Instead of abating, the pain gets worse, and he becomes unable to work. Formerly an “intelligent, polished, lively and agreeable man,” he grows depressed and enfeebled. Friends and colleagues avoid him. His wife calls in a series of ever more expensive doctors. None of them can agree on a diagnosis, and the remedies they give him accomplish nothing. For Ilyich, it is all torture, and he simmers and rages at his situation. “What tormented Ivan Ilyich most,” Tolstoy writes, “was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and he only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result.” Ivan Ilyich has flashes of hope that maybe things will turn around, but as he grows weaker and more emaciated he knows what is happening. He lives in mounting anguish and fear of death. But death is not a subject that his doctors, friends, or family can countenance. That is what causes him his most profound pain. “No one pitied him as he wished to be pitied,” writes Tolstoy. “At certain moments after prolonged suffering he wished most of all (though he would have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to pity him as a sick child is pitied. He longed to be petted and comforted. He knew he was an important functionary, that he had a beard turning grey, and that therefore what he longed for was impossible, but still he longed for it.” As we medical students saw it, the failure of those around Ivan Ilyich to offer comfort or to acknowledge what is happening to him was a failure of character and culture. The late-nineteenth-century Russia of Tolstoy’s story seemed harsh and almost primitive to us. Just as we believed that modern medicine could probably have cured Ivan Ilyich of whatever disease he had, so too we took for granted that honesty and kindness were basic responsibilities of a modern doctor. We were confident that in such a situation we would act compassionately. What worried us was knowledge. While we knew how to sympathize, we weren’t at all certain we would know how to properly diagnose and treat. We paid our medical tuition to learn about the inner process of the body, the intricate mechanisms of its pathologies, and the vast trove of discoveries and technologies that have accumulated to stop them. We didn’t imagine we needed to think about much else. So we put Ivan Ilyich out of our heads. Yet within a few years, when I came to experience surgical training and practice, I encountered patients forced to confront the realities of decline and mortality, and it did not take long to realize how unready I was to help them. *   *   *

None of this means of course that Robert E. Lee wasn't influenced by his father, or didn't inherit some of his better characteristics. Like Henry Lee, Robert was tall, physically strong, a born horseman and soldier, and so courageous that even his own soldiers often begged him to get back out of range, in vain of course. He had his father's gift for the sudden flank attack that would throw the enemy off balance, and also his father's ability to inspire loyalty--and in Robert's case, virtual worship--in his men. On the other hand, perhaps because of Henry Lee's quarrels with Jefferson and Madison, Robert had an ingrained distrust of politics and politicians, including those of the Confederacy. But the most important trait that influenced Robert was a negative one: his father had been voluble, imprudent, fond of gossip, hot-tempered, and quick to attack anybody who offended or disagreed with him. With Henry Lee, even minor differences of opinions escalated quickly into public feuds. Robert was, or forced himself to be, exactly the opposite. He kept the firmest possible rein on his temper, he avoided personal confrontations of every kind, and he disliked arguments. These characteristics, normally thought of as virtues, became in fact Robert E. Lee's Achilles' heel, the one weak point in his otherwise admirable personality, and a dangerous flaw for a commander, perhaps even a flaw that would, in the end, prove fatal for the Confederacy. Some of the most mistaken military decisions in the short history of the Confederacy can be attributed to Lee's reluctance to confront a subordinate and have it out with him on the spot, face to face.

Would that all was as well within the castle. Alas, that you have inflicted me with one Simus of the Hawk. Never mind the fact that Simus strides from his chambers to the mineral baths naked as a plucked chicken, smiling and greeting all and sundry with a cheerful smile. Never mind the fact that he and Warren have taken to weapons practice in the Great Hall, jumping from table to table swords in one hand, flagons in the other, fighting and laughing, and cursing each other, causing ladies to swoon and leaving heel marks on all the tables. Never mind that half the lords want to kill him, the other half want to befriend him and that all of the ladies seem entranced. Which includes my own Lady Wife, thank you very much. Oh no, the worst of it is that Simus is having relations with Dye-Mistress Mavis, or so the sounds echoing in the castle halls at all hours of the night announce to all and sundry. By his tradition, Simus does no wrong, or so Dye-Mistress Mavis has informed me, Warren, and the Archbishop. Further, when we confronted her, she told us in no uncertain terms that she is an adult and Master of her trade and that her behavior is none of our concern. She added something to the effect that you aren't the only one willing to make sacrifices for her guild. Which had the Archbishop clutching for his holy symbol. I think Dye-Mistress is only after the cloths that Simus wears like a peacock. I have tried to explain that to Simus, but he just smiles that wide smile of his and indicates that he sees no harm to being 'used'. The entire Court and Council is scandalized. They all come to me and complain, taking the greatest pleasure in going over every juicy detail.

Where was the Congressional hue and cry over “perfidious” American bankers? One member after another of the Senate and House banking committees clamored for the Swiss to “finally pay up.” None, however, called on the US to do so. Rather, a House Banking Committee member shamelessly averred – with Bronfman agreeing – that “only” Switzerland “has failed to show the courage to confront its own history.

Sometimes what stops us from admitting to ourselves that others hurt us as badly as they did is because we know, deep down, what we need to do next. It could be starting to build a boundary with them, which may lead to a more distant relationship or none. It could be immediately cutting them off. It could be confronting them about it. But we subconsciously avoid truly and clearly allowing ourselves to see the truth of what happened to shelter ourselves from the pain

Australian inland taipan is the most poisonous snake on earth—its bite will kill you in seconds. But none of this ought seriously to deter anyone from confronting the outback on foot, or even on all fours.

Cancer is Everywhere I see cancer everywhere Everywhere… I see people carefully examining Food labels and ingredients, But cancer is everywhere… There are those jogging and those running, There are those spending hours at the gyms… And those increasing the amounts of veggies and fruits in their diets, But cancer is everywhere, everywhere… There are those totally cutting sugars and fats Those taking multivitamins and other supplements, But cancer is everywhere…everywhere! Many no longer have time to smile or greet others For they are occupied with eating more parsley and tomatoes Or perhaps increasing their intake of Blueberries, blackberries, or broccoli, But cancer is everywhere… You see them replace their water bottles and cookware With others made from non-cancerous materials, But cancer is everywhere… Cancer cases are almost higher than Refugees and alienation Higher than human cowardice, compromise, and conspiracies… Cancer cases are about to reach the levels Of human fear of confronting the ugliness of what’s happening in the world… I see everyone pretending That what’s going on is none of their business Just to stay afloat To avoid getting cancer, But cancer is everywhere Everywhere… [Original poem published in Arabic on October 30, 2022 at ahewar.org]

I’d killed one guy and blinded another. Now I’d have to confront my feelings. But I didn’t feel much at all. Nothing, in fact. No guilt, no remorse. None at all. I felt like I’d chased two roaches around that bathroom and stomped on them. But at least a roach is a rational, reasonable, evolved sort of a creature. Those Aryans in that bathroom had been worse than vermin.

Intelligent vs. unintelligent High strung vs. placid & laid back Extraverted vs. introverted Low psychic metabolism (low energy) vs. high psychic metabolism (high energy) Extraordinary talent (or accomplishment) vs. ordinary abilities & accomplishments Ambitious vs. content with status quo Attractive vs. unattractive Cultured vs. barbarian Spiritual vs. unspiritual (or different styles of spirituality) Philosophical vs. frivolous Risk taker vs. obsessed with safety Commitment to vigorous personal growth vs. content with the status quo Visionary vs. lives in the moment Scrupulously honest vs. morally flexible Wealth-acquisition mindset vs. poverty mindset Neat and organized vs. slovenly and disorganized Logical thinker vs. emotional, reactive thinker Couch potato vs. physically active Regular exercise regimen vs. none Involved in service outreaches vs. pursues only personal pleasuring Argumentative Andy vs. non-confrontational Carla Back packer Bert vs. five-star-hotel-connoisseur Connie Frugal Freddy vs. shop-‘til-you-drop Shelley

Jean-Paul Sartre is one of the most widely recognized and cited thinkers of existential philosophy. A movement of thinking that took form during the 19th century, fashioned by individuals like Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzche, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and then further popularized by individuals including Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, and of course, Sartre. In Sartre’s lecture, Existentialism is a Humanism, he famously summarized the primary existential principle with the line, “Existence precedes essence.” The essence here meaning the qualities of a thing that creates its purpose. For example, Sartre references how a paper-knife is designed with a specific purpose in mind before it is made. And only once it is given a predetermined purpose and designed accordingly, is it manufactured into being. In which case, its essence precedes its existence. With exception to itself, humanity does this with nearly everything it makes. As rational beings, we create out of reason. Even if the reason is to make the point that we can create things for no reason, we have merely found ourselves in the paradox of creating for the reason of having none, which remains a reason. We exist with the innate desire for a reason. What we do. Who we are. Why we are. And so on. And here lies the beginning of our existential problem. According to Sartre and many others, there is no predetermined meaning or reason to human life. There is no authority figure designing us or our lives. And there is no essence to our existence prior to our existence. But rather, life exists for itself, and beyond itself, it is intrinsically meaningless. Whenever our sense of reason and logic confront this potential realization, that the nature of life, including the most essential part of our life, our self, appears to not agree with the same order of reason, we can often find ourselves in a sort of existential crisis. However, Sartre and the existentialists don’t see this as despairing, but rather, justification for living.

These are in actual fact two particular uses of language which confront each other. But one of them has honours, law and force on its side. And this 'universal' language comes just at the right time to lend a new strength to the psychology of the masters: it allows it always to take other men as objects, to describe and condemn at one stroke. It is an adjectival psychology, it knows only how to endow its victims with epithets, it is ignorant of everything about the actions themselves, save the guilty category into which they are forcibly made to fit. These categories are none other than those of classical comedy or treatises of graphology: boastful, irascible, selfish, cunning, lecherous, harsh, man exists in their eyes only through the 'character traits' which label him for society as the object of a more or less easy absorption, the subject of a more or less respectful submission. Utilitarian, taking no account of any state of consciousness, this psychology has nevertheless the pretension of giving as a basis for actions a preexisting inner person, it postulates 'the soul': it judges man as a 'conscience' without being embarrassed by having previously described him as an object.

Medical science has discovered that the body’s nervous system that conveys pain to us is designed to save our lives. Scientific research on leprosy has revealed that most of the loss of fingers and toes is not caused by the disease but by the leper himself. Leprosy destroys the ability to sense pain. Hence the leper has no warning when he is in dangerous situations that can cause harm or even death to his body. For example, if one cannot feel pain, then he could be severely or fatally burned without even knowing it. Lesson Two: In order to save us from self-destruction the pain has to be strong enough. In addition, experiments done with lepers demonstrate some of pain’s main purposes. When lepers were equipped with bleeping devices to warn of pain, it was discovered that they did not work. Why? Because a bleep is not painful, it did not divert them from unwitting self-destructive activity. Lesson Three: In order for pain to work it has to be out of our control. Further, doctors learned that hooking up a shock mechanism did not work either. Once the leper learned he would be shocked by a sharp warning pain in certain situations, he would turn the system off so as not to be confronted with it again. Now, it is difficult to imagine a better way to utilize pain for our benefit than the world in which we live. Certainly the pain is strong enough, and it is often beyond our control. Rabbi Harold Kushner admitted this point in When Bad Things Happen to Good People: “I am a more sensitive person, a more effective pastor, a more sympathetic counselor because of [my son] Aaron’s life and death than I would have ever been without it” (133). But he added, “If I could choose, I would forgo all the spiritual growth and depth which has come my way” (ibid.). And that is the point: None of us will to go through suffering, and yet most of us admit we are better persons for having done so.

When investigative journalists David Kocieniewski and Peter Robinson broke the story about the ties between Donald Trump’s incoming national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and a company that sells brain wave technology to governments worldwide, surprisingly few people noticed.66 Serving alongside Flynn on Brainwave Science’s board of directors was Subu Kota, a software engineer who had pleaded guilty to selling highly sensitive defense technology to the KGB during the Cold War.67 Brainwave Science sells a technology called iCognative, which can extract information from people’s brains. Among its customers are the Bangladeshi defense forces as well as several Middle Eastern governments.68 Following some successful experiments at the Dubai Police Academy, Emirati authorities have recently deployed the technology in real murder investigations. At least two cases have successfully been prosecuted.69 In one case, the police were investigating a killing at a warehouse. Suspecting that an employee was involved, they forced the warehouse workers to don EEG headsets and showed them images of the crime. Purportedly, a photo of the murder weapon triggered a characteristic “recognition” pattern in one of the employee’s brains (the P300 wave), while none of the other employees showed a similar response. Confronted with that evidence, the suspect confessed, revealing details that only the guilty party could have known.

Oh creator of all things, help me. For this day I go out into the world naked and alone, and without your hand to guide me I will wander far from the path which leads to success and happiness. I ask not for gold or garments or even opportunities equal to my ability; instead, guide me so that I may acquire ability equal to my opportunities. You have taught the lion and the eagle how to hunt and prosper with teeth and claw. Teach me how to hunt with words and prosper with love so that I may be a lion among men and an eagle in the market place. Help me to remain humble through obstacles and failures; yet hide not from mine eyes the prize that will come with victory. Assign me tasks to which others have failed; yet guide me to pluck the seeds of success from their failures. Confront me with fears that will temper my spirit; yet endow me with courage to laugh at my misgivings. Spare me sufficient days to reach my goals; yet help me to live this day as though it be my last. Guide me in my words that they may bear fruit; yet silence me from gossip that none be maligned. Discipline me in the habit of trying and trying again; yet show me the way to make use of the law of averages. Favor me with alertness to recognize opportunity; yet endow me with patience which will concentrate my strength. Bathe me in good habits that the bad ones may drown; yet grant me compassion for weaknesses in others. Suffer me to know that all things shall pass; yet help me to count my blessings of today. Expose me to hate so it not be a stranger; yet fill my cup with love to turn strangers into friends. But all these things be only if thy will. I am a small and a lonely grape clutching the vine yet thou hast made me different from all others. Verily, there must be a special place for me. Guide me. Help me. Show me the way. Let me become all you planned for me when my seed was planted and selected by you to sprout in the vineyard of the world. Help this humble salesman. Guide me, God.

You are up to this, Jacques?” Jacques’ smile was a humorless promise of retaliation. “Have no worries about me. I am looking forward to this.” Mikhail sighed. “Two bloodthirsty savages thinking they are in the dark ages.” Jacques exchanged a humorless grin with Gregori. “The dark ages were not such a bad time. At least justice could be dispensed easily without worrying about what the women would think.” “You both have gone soft,” Gregori snickered. “No wonder our people have such problems. The women are ruling, and you two besotted idiots just follow along.” Jacques’ solid form wavered, became transparent. “We will see who proves to be the soft one, healer.” His body completely disappeared from sight. Mikhail glanced at Gregori, shrugged, then followed suit. None of this was to his liking. Gregori was a time bomb waiting to explode. And only God knew what Jacques was capable of. It seemed the worst possible time to confront an enemy, just as they were weakening from the light of day.

You are up to this, Jacques?” Jacques’ smile was a humorless promise of retaliation. “Have no worries about me. I am looking forward to this.” Mikhail sighed. “Two bloodthirsty savages thinking they are in the dark ages.” Jacques exchanged a humorless grin with Gregori. “The dark ages were not such a bad time. At least justice could be dispensed easily without worrying about what the women would think.” “You both have gone soft,” Gregori snickered. “No wonder our people have such problems. The women are ruling, and you two besotted idiots just follow along.” Jacques’ solid form wavered, became transparent. “We will see who proves to be the soft one, healer.” His body completely disappeared from sight. Mikhail glanced at Gregori, shrugged, then followed suit. None of this was to his liking. Gregori was a time bomb waiting to explode. And only God knew what Jacques was capable of. It seemed the worst possible time to confront an enemy, just as they were weakening from the light of day. Gregori waited until Mikhail and Jacques had disappeared before allowing his body to dissolve. He launched himself skyward, wincing as the sun’s light, penetrating the dark clouds, hit his eyes. He cursed silently. Raven was alone with a woman who knew next to nothing about their people’s capabilities. She was very weak. The child was his only hope, and it was stupidity to rescue a Carpathian male who was on the verge of turning. A few more years and Gregori would be hunting him.

You both have gone soft,” Gregori snickered. “No wonder our people have such problems. The women are ruling, and you two besotted idiots just follow along.” Jacques’ solid form wavered, became transparent. “We will see who proves to be the soft one, healer.” His body completely disappeared from sight. Mikhail glanced at Gregori, shrugged, then followed suit. None of this was to his liking. Gregori was a time bomb waiting to explode. And only God knew what Jacques was capable of. It seemed the worst possible time to confront an enemy, just as they were weakening from the light of day.

They said goodbye to Carita, who lay peacefully in a coffin full of rose petals, and watched her disappear behind the steel doors of the furnace. None of them was prepared for what came next. After a pause, they were led into a room on the other side of the building, and each given a pair of white gloves and chopsticks. In the room, on a steel sheet, were Carita's remains as they had emerged from the heat of the furnace. The incineration was incomplete. Wood, cloth, hair, and flesh had burned away, but the biggest bones, of the legs ans arms, as well as the skull, were cracked but recognizable. Rather than a neat box of ashes, the Ridgways were confronted with Carita's calcined skeleton. As the family, their task, a traditional part of every Japanese cremation, was to pick up her bones with the chopsticks and place them in the urn. "Rob couldn't handle it at all," Nigel said. "He thought we were monsters even to think of it. But perhaps it's because we were the parents, and she was our daughter... It sounds macabre, as I tell you about it now, but it didn't feel that way at the time. It was something emotional. It almost made me feel calmer. I felt as if we were looking after Carita." Nigel, Annette and Sam picked up the bigger bones and placed them in the urn with the ashes. The bigger pieces of the skull went on the top.

Diversity is what gives colour and texture to our life on earth. Art, architecture, music, stories, celebrations, food, drink, dance: all of these are particular. None of them is an abstract universal.

Happiness exists only at the price of a revolt. None of us has pleasure without confronting an obstacle, prohibition, authority, or law that allows us to realize ourselves as autonomous and free.

I drew encouragement from the fact that none of the member states openly expressed opposition. However, I was only too conscious of the fact that it has been the “ASEAN way” not to be confrontational and openly disagree.

the United States, allowed conditions to be gradually built up which led to the very climax they dreaded most. They have only to repeat the same well-meaning, short-sighted behaviour towards the new problems which in singular resemblance confront us to-day to bring about a third convulsion from which none may live to tell the tale.

I love you, Jacques. Do what you must, then hurry home to me. She released him with great reluctance, the warmth of her love lingering behind. Jacques shook his head to bring himself back to the present situation. Almost at once the earth moved beneath his feet, and the pain tried to hammer at him. But the vampire would not snag him twice in the same trap. He wrenched himself forward, concentrating on the way Shea’s mouth tasted, the curve of her hip beneath his hand, the way her eyes lit up just before she laughed. He held her close to his heart, kept the vision of her wild mane of hair in front of him as he pushed his way through the warp and out into the open land. “Good,” Gregori approved. “But this one is very adept. I am uneasy over the way this is going, Mikhail. Let us take to the air above the wires and approach from different directions. I will go in first. Our people cannot afford to lose either of you.” “Gregori,” Mikhail reminded him softly, “if the child is your lifemate, and you do something careless, you are condemning her to death. Keep that in mind when you enter this place of madness.” Gregori’s silver eyes slashed at his old friend. “Do you think I would chance harming her in any way? I have waited several lifetimes for her. These humans are nothing. They have persecuted our people for far too long. I mean it to stop.” Mikhail nodded, his dark eyes, so like his brother’s, black ice. “You are up to this, Jacques?” Jacques’ smile was a humorless promise of retaliation. “Have no worries about me. I am looking forward to this.” Mikhail sighed. “Two bloodthirsty savages thinking they are in the dark ages.” Jacques exchanged a humorless grin with Gregori. “The dark ages were not such a bad time. At least justice could be dispensed easily without worrying about what the women would think.” “You both have gone soft,” Gregori snickered. “No wonder our people have such problems. The women are ruling, and you two besotted idiots just follow along.” Jacques’ solid form wavered, became transparent. “We will see who proves to be the soft one, healer.” His body completely disappeared from sight. Mikhail glanced at Gregori, shrugged, then followed suit. None of this was to his liking. Gregori was a time bomb waiting to explode. And only God knew what Jacques was capable of. It seemed the worst possible time to confront an enemy, just as they were weakening from the light of day.

Mikhail glanced at Gregori, shrugged, then followed suit. None of this was to his liking. Gregori was a time bomb waiting to explode. And only God knew what Jacques was capable of. It seemed the worst possible time to confront an enemy, just as they were weakening from the light of day.

And the Enemy, the Destroyer, senses the surface truth that this Jesus is a threat, so he targets Him for destruction. Lucifer shows up in the desert to tempt a weakened Jesus using a trusted strategy—he will appeal to the same primal lust for power and control that bulldozed Adam and Eve into an unthinkable betrayal. But Jesus is having none of that. The Enemy is banished from His presence, where he stays until he sniffs an opportunity to launch a second assault in a lonely garden. In Mel Gibson’s brilliant portrayal of this tipping-point confrontation in The Passion of the Christ, the weight of the assault is palpable. Jesus is alone and tormented to the point of death on the eve of His crucifixion. The serpent moves through the Gethsemane garden toward the exposed feet of Jesus—now perilously within striking range. Everything hangs in the moment. And then, in a shocking burst of violence, Jesus stomps on the serpent’s head.3 It is sudden and brutal and … revelatory. It turns out that Jesus—sweating blood, abandoned, and apparently beaten—is no shrinking violet. The Great Surprise is that He cannot be leveraged and that He is no victim of circumstances. In this, He is not at all the way most Americans describe Him.

Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until one's midlife crisis, to the belief that existence consists of an eternal, upward spiral of achievement, dependent on will alone. This comforting illusion may be shattered by some urgent irreversible experience ... None more potently confronts us with finiteness and contingency than the imminence of our own death.

Major Plank?' he said. Plank, too, was goggling. 'Who on earth are you?' 'Chief Inspector Witherspoon, sir, of Scotland Yard. Has this man been attempting to obtain money from you?' 'Just been doing that very thing.' 'As I suspected. We have had our eye on him for a long time, but till now have never been able to apprehend him in the act.' 'Notorious crook, is he?' 'Precisely, sir. He is a confidence man of considerable eminence in the underworld, who makes a practice of calling at houses and extracting money from their owners with some plausible story.' 'He does more than that. He pinches things from people and tries to sell them. Look at that statuette he's holding. It's a thing I sold to Sir Watkyn Bassett, who lives at Totleigh-in-the-Wold, and he had the cool cheek to come here and try to sell it to me for five pounds.' 'Indeed, sir? With your permission I will impound the object.' 'You'll need it as evidence?' 'Exactly, sir. I shall now take him to Totleigh Towers and confront him with Sir Watkyn.' 'Yes, do. That'll teach him. Nasty hangdog look the fellow's got. I suspected from the first he was wanted by the police. Had him under observation for a long time, have you?' 'For a very long time, sir. He is known to us at the Yard as Alpine Joe, because he always wears an Alpine hat.' 'He's got it with him now.' 'He never moves without it.' 'You'd think he'd have the sense to adopt some rude disguise.' 'You would indeed, sir, but the mental processes of a man like that are hard to follow.' 'Then there's no need for me to phone the local police?' 'None, sir. I will take him into custody.' 'You wouldn't like me to hit him over the head first with a Zulu knobkerrie?' 'Unnecessary, sir.' 'It might be safer.' 'No, sir, I am sure he will come quietly.' 'Well, have it your own way. But don't let him give you the slip.' 'I will be very careful, sir.' 'And shove him into a dungeon with dripping walls and see to it that he is well gnawed by rats.' 'Very good, sir.

No solution has been found to the dramatic situation of the under-developed, and none will be found since their drama has now been overtaken by that of the overdeveloped, of the rich nations. The psychodrama of congestion, saturation, super-abundance, neurosis and the breaking of blood vessels which haunts us - the drama of the excess of means over ends - calls more urgently for attention than that of penury, lack and poverty. That is where the most imminent danger of catastrophe resides, in the societies which have run out of emptiness. Artificial catastrophes, like the beneficial aspects of civilization, progress much more quickly than natural ones. The under-developed are still at the primary stage of the natural, unforesee-able catastrophe. We are already at the second stage, that of the manufactured catastrophe - imminent and foreseeable - and we shall soon be at that of the pre-programmed catastrophe, the catastrophe of the third kind, deliberate and experimental. And, paradoxically, it is our pursuit of the means for averting natural catastrophe - the unpredictable form of destiny - which will take us there. Because it is unable to escape it, humanity will pretend to be the author of its destiny. Because it cannot accept being confronted with an end which is uncertain or governed by fate, it will prefer to stage its own death as a species.