Creature Rejection Quotes

Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take…If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation…It takes a lifetime to learn another person…When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

This is what it means to be an adventurer in our day: to give up creature comforts of the mind, to realize the possibilities of imagination. Because everything around us says no you cannot do this, you cannot live without that, nothing is useful unless it's in service to money, to gain, to stability. The adventurer gives in to tides of chaos, trusts the world to support her - and in doing so turns her back on the fear and obedience she has been taught. She rejects the indoctrination of impossibility.

The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies; but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.

This is why tyrants of all stripes, infernal servants, have such deep-seated hatred for the nomads - this is why they persecute the Gypsies and the Jews, and why they force all free peoples to settle, assigning the addresses that serve as our sentences. What they want is to create a frozen order, to falsify time's passage. They want for the days to repeat themselves, unchanging, they want to build a big machine where every creature will be forced to take its place and carry out false actions. Institutions and offices, stamps,newsletters, a hierarchy, and ranks, degrees, applications and rejections, passports, numbers, cards, elections results, sales and amassing points, collecting, exchanging some things for others. What they want is to pin down the world with the aid of barcodes, labelling all things, letting it be known that everything is a commodity, that this is how much it will cost you. Let this new foreign language be illegible to humans, let it be read exclusively by automatons, machines. That way by night, in their great underground shops, they can organize reading of their own barcoded poetry. Move. Get going. Blesses is he who leaves.

Just as life is made up of day and night, and song is made up of music and silence, friendships, because they are of this world, are also made up of times of being in touch and spaces in-between. Being human, we sometimes fill these spaces with worry, or we imagine the silence is some form of punishment, or we internalize the time we are not in touch with a loved one as some unexpressed change of heart. Our minds work very hard to make something out of nothing. We can perceive silence as rejection in an instant, and then build a cold castle on that tiny imagined brick. The only release from the tensions we weave around nothing is to remain a creature of the heart. By giving voice to the river of feelings as they flow through and through, we can stay clear and open. In daily terms, we call this checking in with each other, though most of us reduce this to a grocery list: How are you today? Do you need any milk? Eggs? Juice? Toilet paper? Though we can help each other survive with such outer kindnesses, we help each other thrive when the checking in with each other comes from a list of inner kindnesses: How are you today? Do you need any affirmation? Clarity? Support? Understanding? When we ask these deeper questions directly, we wipe the mind clean of its misperceptions. Just as we must dust our belongings from time to time, we must wipe away what covers us when we are apart.

But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature. To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take. If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.

God wants man to be His creature. Furthermore, He wants him to be His PARTNER. There is a causa Dei in the world. God wants light, not darkness. He wants cosmos, not chaos. He wants peace, not disorder. He wants man to administer and to receive justice rather than to inflict and to suffer injustice. He wants man to live according to the Spirit rather than according to the flesh. He wants man bound and pledged to Him rather than to any other authority. He wants man to live and not to die. Because He wills these things God is Lord, Shepherd, and Redeemer of man, who in His holiness and mercy meets His creature; who judges and forgives, rejects and receives, condemns and saves.

And so these refined parents rejected their five-year-old girl to all kinds of torture. They beat her, kicked her, flogged her, for no reason that they themselves knew of. The child’s whole body was covered in bruises. Eventually they devised a new refinement. Under the pretext that the child dirtied her bed (as though a five-year-old deep in her angelic sleep could be punished for that), they forced her to eat excrement, smearing it all over her face. And it was the mother that did it! And that woman would lock her daughter up in the outhouse until morning and she did so even on the coldest nights, when it was freezing. Just imagine the woman being able to sleep with the child’s cries coming from that outhouse! Imagine that little creature, unable to even understand what is happening to her, beating her sore little chest with her tiny fist, weeping hot, unresentful, meek tears, and begging ‘gentle Jesus’ to help her… ...let’s assume that you were called upon to build the edifice of human destiny so that men would finally be happy and would find peace and tranquility. If you knew that, only to attain this, you would have to torture just one single creature, let’s say the little girl who beat her chest so desperately in the outhouse, and that on her unavenged tears you could build that edifice, would you agree to do it?

To demand of the loveless and the self-imprisioned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven…Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye'll accept no salvation which leaves one creature in the dark outside. But watch the sophistry or ye'll make a Dog in the Manger the tyrant of the universe.

It’s simple, Miss Philpot. This is one of God’s early models, and He decided to give the subsequent ones smaller eyes.” I raised my eyebrows. “Do you mean God rejected it?” “I mean God wanted a better version—the crocodile we know now—and replaced it.

Equal rights should extend to everyone. Homosexuals cannot be excluded because their relationship is unavoidable conspicuous. Same-sex couples are entitled to the same discreet displays of intimacy that heterosexuals entertain. Handholding and kissing are not viewed as vulgar among masses and should not solely determine acceptance or rejection. People need to be viewed as human, sentient, and feeling creatures in their pursuit for love. Until we acknowledge that, no gay-straight alliance will succeed. Because it's not about being gay or straight, it's about being human.

Monster stories are powerful. They explore prejudice, rejection, anger and every imaginable negative aspect of living in society. However, only half of society is reflected in the ranks of the people who create these monsters. Almost every single iconic monster in film is male and was designed by a man: the Wolfman, Frankenstein, Dracula, King Kong. The emotions and problems that all of them represent are also experienced by women, but women are more likely to see themselves as merely the victims of these monsters. Women rarely get to explore on-screen what it's like to be a giant pissed-off creature. Those emotions are written off. If a woman is angry or upset, she'll be considered hysterical and too emotional. One of the hardest things about misogyny in the film industry isn't facing it directly, it's having to tamp down your anger about it so that when you speak about the problem, you'll be taken seriously. Women don't get to stomp around like Godzilla. Someone will just ask if you're on your period.

The sulker is a complicated creature, giving off messages of deep ambivalence, crying out for help and attention, while at the same time rejecting it should it be offered, wanting to be understood without needing to speak.

To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch fr warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things - but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by the thousands; a houseless rejected creature.

I am one of the scums of this earth, a creature rejected and ridiculed by university professors, professors who later came sneaking into my home seeking the very information that they ridiculed me for revealing.

Though reason must guide us in laying down standards and laws regarding animals, and in examining the arguments of those who reject such standards, it is usually best in any moral inquiry to start with the original motivation, which in the case of animals we may without embarrassment call love. Human beings love animals as only the higher love the lower, the knowing love the innocent, and the strong love the vulnerable. When we wince at the suffering of animals, that feeling speaks well of us even when we ignore it, and those who dismiss love for our fellow creatures as mere sentimentality overlook a good and important part of our humanity.

I tell you that man has no more tormenting care than to find someone to whom he can hand over as quickly as possible that gift of freedom with which the miserable creature is born. But he alone can take over the freedom of men who appeases their conscience. With bread you were given an indisputable banner: give man bread and he will bow down to you, for there is nothing more indisputable than bread. But if at the same time someone else takes over his conscience - oh, then he will even throw down your bread and follow him who has seduced his conscience. In this you were right. For the mystery of man's being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him. That is so, but what came of it? Instead of taking over men's freedom, you increased it still more for them! Did you forget that peace and even death are dearer to man than free choice in the knowledge of good and evil? There is nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either. And so, instead of a firm foundation for appeasing human conscience once and for all, you chose everything that was unusual, enigmatic, and indefinite, you chose everything that was beyond men's strength, and thereby acted as if you did not love them at all - and who did this? He who came to give his life for them! Instead of taking over men's freedom, you increased it and forever burdened the kingdom of the human soul with its torments. You desired the free love of man, that he should follow you freely. seduced and captivated by you. Instead of the firm ancient law, men had henceforth to decide for himself, with a free heart, what is good and what is evil, having only your image before him as a guide - but did it not occur to you that he would eventually reject and dispute even your image and your truth if he was oppressed by so terrible a burden as freedom of choice? They will finally cry out that the truth is not in you, for it was impossible to leave them in greater confusion and torment than you did, abandoning them to so many cares and insoluble problems. Thus you yourself laid the foundation for the destruction of your own kingdom, and do not blame anyone else for it.

The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. Not to mention rumours which agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind, even in the interior of continents, seafaring men were particularly excited. Merchants, common sailors, captains of vessels, skippers, both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries, and the Governments of several States on the two continents, were deeply interested in the matter. For some time past vessels had been met by "an enormous thing," a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale. The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books) agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed. If it was a whale, it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science. Taking into consideration the mean of observations made at divers times—rejecting the timid estimate of those who assigned to this object a length of two hundred feet, equally with the exaggerated opinions which set it down as a mile

I had found a woman whom I had not known, and who from day to day had grown stranger to me, yet closer. Now she seemed to be slipping away from me again, into a realm where all names are forgotten, where there is only darkness and perhaps certain unknown laws of darkness. She rejected that dark realm; she came back, but she no longer belonged to me as I had tried to believe. Perhaps she had never belonged to me; who, after all, belongs to whom, and what is it to belong to someone, to belong to one another? Isn't it a forlorn illusion, a convention? Time and again she turned back, as she called it, for an hour, for the duration of a glance, for a night. And always I felt like a bookkeeper who is not allowed to audit. I could only accept without question whatever this unaccountable, unhappy, damned, and beloved creature chose to be and to tell me. ... Loneliness demands a companion and does not ask who it is. If you don't know that, you may have been alone, but you were never lonely.

If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above and against my own - I would refuse. I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it!

I reject ‛poor’ as the artificial creation of humans. Hunger exists, though, and a hungry creature is entitled to eat.

John saw only the linen cloths. He, Peter, also saw the linen cloths because we [Gentiles] do not reject the Old Testament, for as Luke says, "Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures" (Lk 24:45). But in addition Peter saw the napkin which had been on his head: "The head of Christ is God" (1 Cor 11:3). Thus to see the napkin which had been on the head of Jesus is to have faith in the divinity of Christ, which the Jews refused to accept. This napkin is described as not lying with the linen cloths, and rolled up, having a place by itself, because the divinity of Christ is covered over, and it is apart from every creature because of its excellence: "God who is over all be blessed for ever" (Rom 9:5); "Truly, you art a God who hides yourself" (Is 45:15).

In the American Grain" "Ninth grade, and bicycling the Jersey highways: I am a writer. I was half-wasp already, I changed my shirt and trousers twice a day. My poems came back...often rejected, though never forgotten in New York, this Jewish state with insomniac minorities. I am sick of the enlightenment: what Wall Street prints, the mafia distributes; when talent starves in a garret, they buy the garret. Bill Williams made less than Band-Aids on his writing, he could never write the King's English of The New Yorker. I am not William Carlos Williams. He knew the germ on every flower, and saw the snake is a petty, rather pathetic creature.

As man–creature He becomes a servant, for each man is God’s servant. This is the order of creation, the order of justice. Christ comes to renew this service (since man had rejected it), and therefore He undertakes this service Himself.

The wrath of God is simply the shadow side of the love of God for his wonderful creation and his amazing human creatures. Like a great artist appalled at the way his paintings have been defaced by the very people who were supposed to be looking after them, God’s implacable rejection of evil is the natural outflowing of his creative love. God’s anger against evil is itself the determination to put things right, to get rid of the corrupt attitudes and behaviors that have spoiled his world and his human creatures. It is because God loves the glorious world he has made and is utterly determined to put everything right that he is utterly opposed to everything that spoils or destroys that creation, especially the human creatures who were supposed to be the linchpins of his plan for how that creation would flourish. That’s why, as Paul’s argument progresses in this same letter, he frames its central passage not with God’s anger but with his powerful, rescuing love (Rom. 5:1–11; 8:31–39).

I answer that, God alone, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, is from eternity. Catholic Faith holds this without doubt; and everything to the contrary must be rejected as heretical. For God so produced creatures that He made them "from nothing"; that is, after they had not been.

Fathers and teachers, what is hell? I think it is the suffering of one who can no longer love. Once, in the infinity of existence unmeasurable by time or space, a spiritual creature, upon its appearance on earth, is given the power to say: "I am and I love." Once, and only for a moment, is that creature given the knowledge of active, living love, and this is why that creature was given life on earth, and with it, time and space. And what happens? The privileged creature rejects that priceless gift, fails to appreciate it, does not even like it, sneers at it, and remains unmoved. When such a creature leaves the earth, sees Abraham, and talks with him as in the parable about Lazarus and the rich man--when he is already in sight of heaven and is allowed into the presence of the Lord, he is filled with suffering at the thought that he will appear before the Lord never having loved and will be brought into the presence of those who have loved him but whose love he has scorned. For now he sees clearly and says to himself: "I now have the knowledge and I am yearning for love; but now that my earthly life is over, there can be no self-abnegation, no sacrifice in love, and Abraham will not come to me again and bring me even a tiny drop of living water (that is, the gift of life on earth, the active life which I possessed before); since I will never again be given life and time, I will never be able to quench the fiery thirst for love that burns within me, because I scorned love while I was on earth. I would be glad to give my life for the love of others, but it is too late now because I no longer have the life to sacrifice, and there is a chasm between that life and this existence.

. . . they who plead an absolute right cannot be satisfied with anything short of personal representation, because all natural rights must be the rights of individuals; as by nature there is no such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these things are mere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men as men are individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject the principle of natural and personal representation, are essentially and eternally at variance with those who claim it. As to the first sort of reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British constitution upon any or upon all of its bases; for they lay it down that every man ought to govern himself, and that where he cannot go himself he must send his representative; that all other government is usurpation; and is so far from having a claim to our obedience, it is not only our right, but our duty, to resist it.

But Talin was scared of him. She had told him that to his face, and the sharp knife of it was still buried in his heart. The man wasn’t sure he wanted to chance another rejection. Keeping the animal’s instincts in check, he finally stepped out of the shadows. “Do you want to be held, Talin?” Her damp eyes widened at the blunt question, then she nodded in a little jerking motion. Something in him quieted, waiting. “Then come here.” A pause during which the entire forest seemed to freeze, the night creatures aware of the leopard’s tense watchfulness. “Oh, God, Clay.” Suddenly her arms were wrapped around his back, her cheek pressed against the white cotton of his T-shirt. Hardly daring to breathe, he closed his own arms around her feminine warmth, blindingly aware of every inch of her pressed into him, every spot of wetness soaking through his T-shirt. She was so small, so damn soft, her humanity apparent in the delicacy of her skin, the lightness of her bones. The Psy might be fragile in comparison to changelings, but they had powers of the mind to compensate. Humans had the same fragility but none of the psychic abilities. A wave of protectiveness washed over him. “Shh, Tally.” He used the nickname because, at this moment, he knew her. She had always had a heart too big for her body, a heart that felt such pain for others while ignoring its own. “I’ll find your lost one.” She shook her head against him. “It’s too late. Three bodies already. Jonquil is probably dead, too.” “Then I’ll find who did this to them and stop him.” She stilled against him. “I didn’t come here to turn you into a killer again.

I'd never imagined that trees could be so weird and unearthly. I mean, the only plants I've ever really seen or touched till now are the city kind―neatly trimmed and cared-for bushes and trees. But the ones here―the ones living here―are totally different. They have a physical power, their breath grazing any humans who might chance by, their gaze zeroing in on the intruder like they've spotted their prey. Like they have some dark, prehistoric, magical powers. Like deep-sea creatures rule the ocean depths, in the forest trees reign supreme. If it wanted to, the forest could reject me―or swallow me up whole. A healthy amount of fear and respect might be a good idea.

Everyone is called to live their lives right now in the kingdom of God, to practice now as if they were already in the fullness of the presence of the God of peace. As we do, we will reject every form of violence, from war and executions to racism and sexism to nuclear weapons and corporate greed to destructive behavior to the creatures and Mother Earth.

Striking an average of observations taken at different times— rejecting those timid estimates that gave the object a length of 200 feet, and ignoring those exaggerated views that saw it as a mile wide and three long—you could still assert that this phenomenal creature greatly exceeded the dimensions of anything then known to ichthyologists, if it existed at all.

Like they have some dark, prehistoric, magical powers. Like deep-sea creatures rule the ocean depths, in the forest trees reign supreme. If it wanted to, the forest could reject me—or swallow me up whole. A healthy amount of fear and respect might be a good idea. I go back to the cabin, take my compass out of my backpack, and check that the needle’s showing north.

All the same, persons who base their calculations on the inexorable pressure of the force of circumstance assume, correctly, that such lives are doomed. The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies, but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heart-rending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.

Most of us may intuitively agree about right and wrong, but we also, and far more significantly, differ enormously in the ways in which we rank the virtues and the vices. ... To put cruelty first is to disregard the idea of sin as it is understood by revealed religion. Sins are transgressions of a divine rule and offenses against God; pride - the rejection of God - must always be the worst one, which gives rise to all the others. However, cruelty - the willful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being in order to cause anguish and fear - is a wrong done entirely to another creature. When it is marked as the supreme evil it is judged so in and of itself, and not because it signifies a denial of God or any other higher norm. It is a judgment made from within the world in which cruelty occurs as part of our normal private life and our daily public practices. By putting it unconditionally first, with nothing above us to excuse or to forgive acts of cruelty, one closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality. To hate cruelty with utmost intensity is perfectly compatible with Biblical religiosity, but to put it first does place one irrevocably outside the sphere of revealed religion. For it is a purely human verdict upon human conduct, and so puts religion at a certain distance. The decision to put cruelty first is not, however, prompted merely by religious skepticism. It emerges, rather, from the recognition that the habits of the faithful do not differ from those of the faithless in their brutalities, and that Machiavelli had triumphed before he had ever written a line. To put cruelty first therefore is to be at odds not only with religion but with normal politics as well.

I love mockingbirds, but I cannot rehab them because they imprint, or bond, or whatever you choose to call it. Young ravens and crows are worse. In their quest for attention and affection, they are akin to domestic dogs. And when you placate young wild animals with a tender human touch, it changes them forever. So rehabbers have to reject the overtures of creatures who attempt to bond, to ensure they retain their wild nature. Some people are good at this. I am not. I have too much of what John Keats called negative capability as well as a close corollary, empathy. When birds arrive at my door lost, broken, and terrified, the distinctions between us fall away, and they are no longer wild animals separate from my humanity. Instead, I am right there with them, sharing their troubles, fear, and pain. I see myself in them and want to protect, love, and reassure them.

It has been said that the world of Proust was a world without a god. If that is true, it is not because God is never spoken of, but because the ambition of this world is to be absolute perfection and to give to eternity the aspect of man. Time Regained, at least in its aspirations, is eternity without God. Proust's work, in this regard, appears to be one of the most ambitious and most significant of man's enterprises against his mortal condition. He has demonstrated that the art of the novel can reconstruct creation itself, in the form that it is imposed on us and in the form in which we reject it. In one of its aspects, at least, this art consists in choosing the creature in preference to his creator. But still more profoundly, it is allied to the beauty of the world or of its inhabitants against the powers of death and oblivion. It is in this way that his rebellion is creative

Victor Frankenstein had assembled from the bodies of the dead and then jolted into life. Jared saw how Frankenstein felt pride in creating life, but how he feared and rejected the creature once that life had been given; how the creature lashed out, killing the doctor’s family and friends, and how creator and created were finally consumed in a pyre, their fates interlocked. The allusions between the monster and the Special Forces were all too obvious.

To those high creatures whose activity builds what we call Nature, nothing is “natural.” From their station the essential arbitrariness (so to call it) of every actual creation is ceaselessly visible; for them there are no basic assumptions: all springs with the wilful beauty of a jest or a tune from that miraculous moment of self-limitation wherein the Infinite, rejecting a myriad possibilities, throws out of Himself the positive and elected invention.

To those high creatures whose activity builds what we call Nature, nothing is 'natural.' From their station the essential arbitrariness (so to call it) of every actual creation is ceaselessly visible; for them there are no basic assumptions: all springs with the wilful beauty of a jest or a tune from that miraculous moment of self-limitation wherein the Infinite, rejecting a myriad possibilities, throws out of Himself the positive and elected invention.

What some people say on earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved." "Ye see it does not." "I feel in a way that it ought to." "That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it." "What?" "The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven." "I don't know what I want, Sir." "Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye'll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye'll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.

To survive is to strive. The problem is the tendency to strive for the wrong things, especially to emulate those who have found worldly success. The human creature is a search engine of great power and sophistication, but with little idea of how to choose search parameters or evaluate results. So, when misguided striving fails to provide satisfaction, there is a tendency to believe that the alternative must be a rejection of all striving, that the answer is to lie on a Caribbean beach lathered in coconut oil.

My thoughts continued to reject any precise outline of self acceptance. But that wasn’t something I could fight against; all I could do is hide until one day it blew up in my face. What terrified me was other peoples reactions, the way they spoke about something so lovely. The contempt in their voices, the repulsion they seemed to feel. It was those overheard conversations, the ones you pretend not to be listening to, that convinced me I was a creature who had to hide away. Discovering one’s self should be cause for celebration; the public release from a suffocating space should be met with hugs and relief. I discovered that, although elusive and fleeting, gender, euphoria did exist, and it was bursting out everywhere from inside me. In that bedroom, during that encounter, I didn’t want to be anyone else but me, for the first time in my life I never felt so strong and so vulnerable at the same time. How could something so beautiful, something so personal and so extraordinary to share with the world, something that vibrated with pure joy, be perceived with such hostility out there?

Love that is not free to choose is not love at all. For God to create an eternally loving family, God chose to create creatures who can choose freely to reject him and thwart his love. His good gifts, his prestige, his power can’t force our love. We must be free to choose. It’s risky business, because free-willed creatures who turn from God and thwart his love hurt each other. And when we get hurt, we often blame God and turn from the One who can heal us. Then hurting people hurt people, and evil propagates from person to person, all of us feeling justified.

The duties, which a man performs as a friend or parent, do not seem merely owing to his benefactor or children; nor can he be wanting to these duties, without breaking through all the ties of nature and morality. A strong inclination may prompt him to the performance: A sentiment of order and moral obligation joins its force to these natural ties: And the whole man, if truly virtuous, is drawn to his duty, without any effort or endeavour. Even with regard to the virtues, which are more austere, and more founded on reflection, such as public spirit, filial duty, temperance, or integrity; the moral obligation, in our apprehension, removes all pretension to religious merit; and the virtuous conduct is deemed no more than what we owe to society and to ourselves. In all this, a superstitious man finds nothing, which he has properly performed for the sake of his deity, or which can peculiarly recommend him to the divine favor and protection. He considers not, that the most genuine method of serving the divinity is by promoting the happiness of his creatures. He still looks out for some immediate service of the supreme Being, in order to allay those terrors, with which he is haunted. And any practice, recommended to him, which either serves to no purpose in life, or offers the strongest violence to his natural inclinations; that practice he will the more readily embrace, on account of those very circumstances, which should make him absolutely reject it. It seems the more purely religious, because it proceeds from no mixture of any other motive or consideration. And if, for its sake, he sacrifices much of his ease and quiet, his claim of merit appears still to rise upon him, in proportion to the zeal and devotion, which he discovers. In restoring a loan, or paying a debt, his divinity is nowise beholden to him; because these acts of justice are what he was bound to perform, and what many would have performed, were there no god in the universe. But if he fast a day, or give himself a sound whipping; this has a direct reference, in his opinion, to the service of God. No other motive could engage him to such austerities. By these distinguished marks of devotion, he has now acquired the divine favor; and may expect, in recompense, protection, and safety in this world, and eternal happiness in the next.

The Negro is for some people the archetypal image of "the dark primal creature" and thus a personification of certain contents of the unconscious. Perhaps this is one reason why the NEgro is so often rejected and feared by people of the white race. In him the white man sees his living counterpart, his hidden, dark side brought before his eyes. (This is just what most people try to avoid; they want to cut it off and repress it.) White men project onto the Negro the primitive drives, the archaic powers, the uncontrolled instincts that they do not want to admit in themselves, of which they are unconscious, and that they therefore designate as the corresponding qualities of other people.

From being a tiny, despised community, the Muslims were now a force with which the pagans of Arabia had to reckon—and they began to strike terror in the hearts of their enemies. Muhammad’s claim to be the last prophet of the One, True God appeared validated by a victory against enormous odds. With this victory, certain attitudes and assumptions were being planted in the minds of Muslims, which remain with many of them to this day. These include: Allah will grant victory to his people against foes that are superior in numbers or firepower, so long as they remain faithful to his commands. Victories entitle the Muslims to appropriate the possessions of the vanquished as booty. Bloody vengeance against one’s enemies belongs not solely to the Lord, but also to those who submit to him on earth. That is the meaning of the word Islam: submission. Prisoners taken in battle against the Muslims may be put to death at the discretion of Muslim leaders. Those who reject Islam are “the vilest of creatures” (Qur’an 98:6) and thus deserve no mercy. Anyone who insults or even opposes Muhammad or his people deserves a humiliating death—by beheading if possible. (This is in accordance with Allah’s command to “smite the necks” of the “unbelievers” (Qur’an 47:4)). Above all, the battle of Badr was the first practical example of what came to be known as the Islamic doctrine of jihad—a doctrine that holds the key to the understanding of both the Crusades and the conflicts of today.

This observation, then, holds universally: But still one may be at some loss to account for it. It is not sufficient to observe, that the people, everywhere, degrade their deities into a similitude with themselves, and consider them merely as a species of human creatures, somewhat more potent and intelligent. This will not remove the difficulty. For there is no man so stupid, as that, judging by his natural reason, he would not esteem virtue and honesty the most valuable qualities, which any person could possess. Why not ascribe the same sentiment to his deity? Why not make all religion, or the chief part of it, to consist in these attainments? Nor is it satisfactory to say, that the practice of morality is more difficult than that of superstition; and is therefore rejected. For, not to mention the excessive penances of the Brachmans and Talapoins5; it is certain, that the Rhamadan6 of the Turks, during which the poor wretches, for many days, often in the hottest months of the year, and in some of the hottest climates of the world, remain without eating or drinking from the rising to the setting sun; this Rhamadan, I say, must be more severe than the practice of any moral duty, even to the most vicious and depraved of mankind. The four Lents of the Muscovites, and the austerities of some Roman Catholics, appear more disagreeable than meekness and benevolence. In short, all virtue, when men are reconciled to it by ever so little practice, is agreeable: All superstition is forever odious and burthensome.

William sees it all happen again. The pain is not in the event. The subjection to it and his powerless state each time is where his anguish lies. He is unable to influence the situation, despite his desire. He sees the nest outside his house. He sees the baby bird that fell. The mother bird cries frantically for her lost chick. William knows as he approaches the chick that if he touches it his scent will linger, and the mother will reject it. Circling around the fallen creature William hopes it will flee from him, back toward the tree from which it had fallen. His presence only intensifies the creature’s fear. It speeds to his left, heading for the street. Again William tries to flank the bird, but it is too frightened to return to the nest. The chick’s mother wails vainly. William walks into the street trying to herd the bird to safety. The stop light a block away has just turned green. The driver accelerates. William moves from the car’s path and it runs over the bird. The momentum from its wake lifts the bird to the underside of the car, breaking its neck, but not killing it. William watches the bird roll helplessly. It is silent for a second, before it begins to whimper. Its contorted head dangles limply from its body. The noise is tragic. The bird’s mother hears the chick’s pain, but nothing can be done. She laments. A second speeder crushes the chick, leaving only a wet feathered spot in the street. As the cars continue to pass, only one bird is heard. A mother’s grief falls deafly on an unconcerned world.

As the red-haired female watched, it was obvious she could not process what was happening. It was as though she had never seen anything magical; her fear had her locked in place, unable to move. In her reality, humans didn’t “feed” off of other humans, but the Sluagh were not human. They were demons and ghosts that haunt and invade. They were your darkest fears. The nightmarish creatures were a part of folklore passed down from generation to generation. The Sluagh were in essence rejected by heaven and hell, existing in the human realm only to consume souls. Humans were blinded by the magic that existed in the world. They assumed fairytales were just someone’s wild imagination, creative tales told to delight and frighten children. It was this lack of acknowledgement that made humans the perfect prey for these outcasts.

The entire idea of it was arrogant and defiant and grandiose. Anna loved it. As she walked across a wide empty plain of steel that should have been covered in topsoil and crops, she thought that this audaciousness was exactly what humanity had lost somewhere in the last couple of centuries. When ancient maritime explorers had climbed into their creaking wooden ships and tried to find ways to cross the great oceans of Earth, had their voyage been any less dangerous than the one the Mormons had been planning to attempt? The end point any less mysterious? But in both cases, they’d been driven to find out what was on the other side of the long trip. Driven by a need to see shores no one else had ever seen before. Show a human a closed door, and no matter how many open doors she finds, she’ll be haunted by what might be behind it. A few people liked to paint this drive as a weakness. A failing of the species. Humanity as the virus. The creature that never stops filling up its available living space. Hector seemed to be moving over to that view, based on their last conversation. But Anna rejected that idea. If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they’d all still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another’s fur. Anna had walked on a moon of Jupiter. She’d looked up through a dome-covered sky at the great red spot, close enough to see the swirls and eddies of a storm larger than her home world. She’d tasted water thawed from ice as old as the solar system itself. And it was that human dissatisfaction, that human audacity, that had put her there. Looking at the tiny world spinning around her, she knew one day it would give them the stars as well.

Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall choose to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females." "I do assure you, sir, that I have no pretentions whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart.

Paradox is any self-contradictory proposition that, when investigated, may prove to be well-founded or true. Once understood, it opens the gateway to higher wisdom. But how can contradictory principles both be true? As the Buddhist Riddle of Five Truths puts it: “It is right. It is wrong. It is both right and wrong. It is neither right nor wrong. All exist simultaneously.” Charles Dickens expressed the paradox of his era, equally true today, when he wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,” going on to describe that time as one of belief and incredulity, light and darkness, hope and despair. Two opposing statements can each be true depending on the observer: it’s true that spiders are merciless killers from the viewpoint of tiny insects caught in their webs—but for most humans, nearly all spiders are harmless creatures. A story of the Sufi sage Mullah Nasruddin expresses the nature of paradox when he’s asked to arbitrate between two men with opposing views. Hearing the first man, he remarks, “You’re right.” When he hears the second man, he also says, “You’re right.” When a bystander points out, “They can’t both be right,” the mullah scratches his head and says, “You’re right.” Let’s go deeper and consider four central sets of paradoxical truths: * Time is real. It moves from past to present to future. * There is no time, no past, no future—only the eternal present. * You possess free will and can thus take responsibility for your choices. * Free will is an illusion—your choices are influenced, even predetermined, by all that preceded them. * You are, or possess, a separate inner self existing within a body. * No separation exists—you are a part of the same Consciousness shining through billions of eyes. * Death is an inevitable reality you’ll meet at the end of life. * The death of the inner self is an illusion. Life is eternal. Must you choose one assertion and reject the other? Or is there a way to meaningfully resolve and even reconcile such apparent contradictions?

Strong hate, the hate that takes joy in hating, is strong because it does not believe itself to be unworthy and alone. It feels the support of a justifying God, of an idol of war, an avenging and destroying spirit. From such blood-drinking gods the human race was once liberated, with great toil and terrible sorrow, by the death of a God Who delivered Himself to the Cross and suffered the pathological cruelty of His own creatures out of pity for them. In conquering death He opened their eyes to the reality of a love which asks no questions about worthiness, a love which overcomes hatred and destroys death. But men have now come to reject this divine revelation of pardon, and they are consequently returning to the old war gods, the gods that insatiably drink blood and eat the flesh of men. It is easier to serve the hate-gods because they thrive on the worship of collective fanaticism. To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective passion. To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one’s neighbor.

In my long life, Ryadd, I have seen many variations—configurations—of behaviour and attitude, and I have seen a person change from one to the other—when experience has proved damaging enough, or when the inherent weaknesses of one are recognized, leading to a wholesale rejection of it. Though, in turn, weaknesses of different sorts exist in the other, and often these prove fatal pitfalls. We are complex creatures, to be sure. The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.

God is not dead— She has forsaken us. We wipe our angry, hate-filled tears after another shooting, as a man polishes his gun outside a mosque. All those stolen lives—we scream for justice! But God has quietly left our temples and churches. She will not return, for what WE have done is much worse. We have murdered humanity. God has deserted even the devout of us who save our love and compassion for those good and righteous, as we abandon the bigots brimming with hate. Yes, those least deserving of love, but the most in need of it. God’s agony rings in our hearts. She wails for the future shooters. Though we reject them, God greets these cracked and confused creatures— the least deserving of compassion but the most in need of it! We’ve read their spiteful tweets, but when we pass them in classrooms, in trains and markets, we dismiss those seemingly small opportunities for kindness. We don’t know—and how ignorant we are— that every time we ignore them, we sharpen our daggers and stab humanity in its pink raw flesh, not in dark alleyways. No, we do this openly in broad daylight, for hating them shows how loving we are. For condemning them proves how moral we are. But every shooting illumines the failure of our collective duty to love as God loves, to be compassionate as God is compassionate. Your prayers heal, yes, but for God’s sake, let God be. I say: First, resurrect your humanity!

The century of Einstein and Planck was also the century of Hitler. The Gestapo and the scientific renaissance were children of the same age. How humane the nineteenth century seemed, that century of naive physics, when compared with the twentieth century, the century that had killed his [Viktor's] mother. There is a terrible similarity between the principles of Fascism and those of contemporary physics. Fascism has rejected the concept of a separate individuality, the concept of "a man," and operates only with vast aggregates. Contemporary physics speaks of the greater or lesser probability of occurrences within this or that aggregate of individual particles. And are not the terrible mechanics of Fascism founded on the principle of quantum politics, of political probability? Fascism arrived at the idea of the liquidation of entire strata of the population, of entire nations and races, on the grounds that there was a greater probability of overt or covert opposition among these groupings than among others: the mechanics of probabilities and of human aggregates. But no! No! And again no! Fascism will perish for the very reason that it has applied to man the laws applicable to atoms and cobblestones! Man and Fascism cannot co-exist. If Fascism conquers, man will cease to exist and there will remain only man-like creatures that have undergone an internal transformation. But if man, man who is endowed with reason and kindness, should conquer, then Fascism must perish, and those who have submitted to it will once again become people.

Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story “The Fog Horn” in a high school reader. In my story, I had described a lighthouse as hav­ing, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a “God-Light.” Looking up at it from the view-point of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in “the Presence.” The editors had deleted “God-Light” and “in the Presence.” Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count ‘em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book? Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito—out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron’s mouth twitch—gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer—lost! Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like—in the finale—Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been ra­zored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant’s attention—shot dead. Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did I react to all of the above? By “firing” the whole lot. By sending rejection slips to each and every one. By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.

In my long life, Ryadd, I have seen many variations – configurations – of behaviour and attitude, and I have seen a person change from one to the other – when experience has proved damaging enough, or when the inherent weaknesses of one are recognized, leading to a wholesale rejection of it. Though, in turn, weaknesses of different sorts exist in the other, and often these prove fatal pitfalls. We are complex creatures, to be sure. The key, I think, is to hold true to your own aesthetics, that which you value, and yield to no one the power to become the arbiter of your tastes. You must also learn to devise strategies for fending off both attackers and defenders. Exploit aggression, but only in self-defence, the kind of self-defence that announces to all the implacability of your armour, your self-assurance, and affirms the sanctity of your self-esteem. Attack when you must, but not in arrogance. Defend when your values are challenged, but never with the wild fire of anger. Against attackers, your surest defence is cold iron. Against defenders, often the best tactic is to sheathe your weapon and refuse the game. Reserve contempt for those who have truly earned it, but see the contempt you permit yourself to feel not as a weapon, but as armour against their assaults. Finally, be ready to disarm with a smile, even as you cut deep with words.’ ‘Passive.’ ‘Of a sort, yes. It is more a matter of warning off potential adversaries. In effect, you are saying: Be careful how close you tread. You cannot hurt me, but if I am pushed hard enough, I will wound you. In some things you must never yield, but these things are not eternally changeless or explicitly inflexible; rather, they are yours to decide upon, yours to reshape if you deem it prudent. They are immune to the pressure of others, but not indifferent to their arguments. Weigh and gauge at all times, and decide for yourself value and worth. But when you sense that a line has been crossed by the other person, when you sense that what is under attack is, in fact, your self-esteem, then gird yourself and stand firm.

In Ahab and in his beatnik, quasi-criminal prototype, Jackson (in 'Redburn'), Melville gave expression both to the megatechnic 'Khans' of the global Pentagon and to the counter-forces they had brought into being. And the fact that Ahab's torment and hatred had gone so far that he had lost control of himself and, through his own mad reliance upon power, had become dominated completely by the creature that had disabled him, only makes Melville's story a central parable in the interpretation of modern man's destiny. In Ahab's throwing away compass and sextant at the height of the chase, Melville even anticipated the casting out of the orderly instruments of intelligence, so characteristic of the counter-culture and anti-life happenings of today. Similarly, by his maniacal concentration, Ahab rejects the inner change that might have saved the ship and the crew, when he turns a deaf ear to the pleas of love uttered by sober Starbuck in words and by Pip, a fright-shocked child and an African primitive, in dumb gesture. Outwardly mankind is still committed tot he grim chase Melville described, lured by the adventure, the prospect of oil and whalebone, the promptings of pride, an above all by a love-rejecting pursuit of power. But it has also begun consciously to face the prospect of total annihilation, which may be brought about by the captains who now have command of the ship. Against that senseless fate every act of rebellion, every exhibition of group defiance, every assertion of the will-to-live, every display of autonomy and self-direction, at however primitive a level, diminishes the headway of the doom-threatened ship and delays the fatal moment when the White Whale will shatter its planks and drown the crew. All the infantile, criminal, and imbecile manifestations in the arts today, everything that now expresses only murderous hatred and alienation, might still find justification if they performed their only conceivable rational function-that of awakening modern man sufficiently to his actual plight, so that he seizes the wheel and, guided by the stars, heads the ship to a friendlier shore.

It has to be said: there are too many great men in the world. There are too many legislators, organizers, founders of society, leaders of peoples, fathers of nations, etc., etc. Too many people put themselves above humanity in order to rule it and too many people think their job is to become involved with it. People will say to me: you yourself are becoming involved, you who talk about it. That is true. But they will agree that it is for a very different reason and from a very different point of view, and while I am taking on those who wish to reform, it is solely to make them abandon their effort. I am becoming involved with it not like Vaucanson with his automaton but like a physiologist with the human organism, in order to examine it and admire it. I am becoming involved with it in the same spirit as that of a famous traveler. He arrived among a savage tribe. A child had just been born and a host of fortune-tellers, warlocks, and quacks were crowding around it, armed with rings, hooks, and ties. One said, “This child will never smell the aroma of a pipe if I do not lengthen his nostrils.” Another said, “He will be deprived of the sense of hearing if I do not make his ears reach down to his shoulders.” A third said, “He will never see the light of the sun unless I make his eyes slant obliquely.” A fourth said, “He will never stand upright if I do not make his legs curve.” A fifth said, “He will never be able to think if I do not squeeze his brain.” “Away with you,” said the traveler. “God does His work well. Do not claim to know more than He does and, since He has given organs to this frail creature, leave those organs to develop and grow strong through exercise, experimentation, experience, and freedom.” [print edition page 146] God has also provided humanity with all that is necessary for it to accomplish its destiny. There is a providential social physiology just as there is a providential human physiology. The social organs are also constituted so as to develop harmoniously in the fresh air of freedom. Away with you, therefore, you quacks and organizers! Away with your rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with your artificial means! Away with your social workshop, your phalanstery, your governmentalism, your centralization, your tariffs, your universities, your state religion, your free credit or monopolistic banks, your constraints, your restrictions, your moralizing, or your equalizing through taxes! And since the social body has had inflicted on it so many theoretical systems to no avail, let us finish where we should have started; let us reject these and at last put freedom to the test, freedom, which is an act of faith in God and in His work.

It is natural for a man to desire what he reckons better than that which he has already, and be satisfied with nothing which lacks that special quality which he misses. Thus, if it is for her beauty that he loves his wife, he will cast longing eyes after a fairer woman. If he is clad in a rich garment, he will covet a costlier one; and no matter how rich he may be he will envy a man richer than himself. Do we not see people every day, endowed with vast estates, who keep on joining field to field, dreaming of wider boundaries for their lands? Those who dwell in palaces are ever adding house to house, continually building up and tearing down, remodeling and changing. Men in high places are driven by insatiable ambition to clutch at still greater prizes. And nowhere is there any final satisfaction, because nothing there can be defined as absolutely the best or highest. But it is natural that nothing should content a man's desires but the very best, as he reckons it. Is it not, then, mad folly always to be craving for things which can never quiet our longings, much less satisfy them? No matter how many such things one has, he is always lusting after what he has not; never at peace, he sighs for new possessions. Discontented, he spends himself in fruitless toil, and finds only weariness in the evanescent and unreal pleasures of the world. In his greediness, he counts all that he has clutched as nothing in comparison with what is beyond his grasp, and loses all pleasure in his actual possessions by longing after what he has not, yet covets. No man can ever hope to own all things. Even the little one does possess is got only with toil and is held in fear; since each is certain to lose what he hath when God's day, appointed though unrevealed. shall come. But the perverted will struggles towards the ultimate good by devious ways, yearning after satisfaction, yet led astray by vanity and deceived by wickedness. Ah, if you wish to attain to the consummation of all desire, so that nothing unfulfilled will be left, why weary yourself with fruitless efforts, running hither and thither, only to die long before the goal is reached? It is so that these impious ones wander in a circle, longing after something to gratify their yearnings, yet madly rejecting that which alone can bring them to their desired end, not by exhaustion but by attainment. They wear themselves out in vain travail, without reaching their blessed consummation, because they delight in creatures, not in the Creator. They want to traverse creation, trying all things one by one, rather than think of coming to him who is Lord of all. And if their utmost longing were realized, so that they should have all the world for their own, yet without possessing him who is the Author of all being, then the same law of their desires would make them contemn what they had and restlessly seek him whom they still lacked, that is, God himself.

For much of human history spurring the norms of one’s society was a risky proposition as it increased the chance of being rejected by one’s social group and so decreased the ability to survive and pass on one’s genes. Conformity, in other words, is a trait that was selected for through the process of evolution and this can help account for the strong pull we feel to be normal. Another factor that makes normality attractive is our tendency, like all biological creatures, to take the path of least resistance. Life is too complicated to improvise novel ways of dealing with all situations and so most of the time we just do as others do and think as others think. That mankind has this inborn disposition to conform is a good thing – it promotes social cohesion and cooperation and it allows a society to develop in complex ways that would be impossible were we not a conforming species.

Yes, few creatures were more natural than I. I was altogether in harmony with life, fitting into it from top to bottom without rejecting any of its ironies, its grandeur, or its servitude. In particular, the flesh, matter, the physical in short, which disconcerts or discourages so many me in love or in solitude, without enslaving me, brought me steady joys. I was made to have a body.

Western science has been our god. In the variety of its power it has preserved, comforted, healed, warmed, fed and entertained us and we have felt free to criticize and occasionally reject it as men have always rejected their gods, but in the knowledge that, despite our apostasy, this deity, our creature and our slave, would still provide for us; the anaesthetic for the pain, the spare heart, the new lung, the antibiotic, the moving wheels and the moving pictures.

Fear had been her cage, and it was time to set it aside. Time to shed her skin and bloom into the creature she’d always been meant to be. One that accepted her dangerous powers. One that knew she was different from the mortal world, and could never fit in. One that was not frightened of love, or rejection.

Let no lover hereafter follow my example, A woman rejected is an outrageous creature.

Safety is the preeminent concern of all creatures and it clearly justifies a seemingly abrupt and rejecting response from time to time. Anyway, rudeness is relative.

The monster of these ideas takes on a life of its own, popping into consciousness, criticizing and harassing you. Many of the messages are personal criticisms, such as, “You’re so weak, you can’t succeed without God’s help,” “You don’t matter to anybody,” and “You’re stupid.” Other negative thoughts can be about other people, life, the world, and the future. They also tend to be over-generalized and extreme, for example: “Life has no meaning anymore without God,” “There’s no such thing as real love; people are too selfish,” and “The world is dangerous.” Research has shown that this kind of negative thinking can have a devastating effect on mental health. A variety of terms have been used to describe it, such as “irrational beliefs,” “automatic thoughts,” “dysfunctional thinking,” and labels like “the judge” and “the critic.” The term I like to use for this negative voice is “idea monster,” because it implies a dangerous creature that is not you and that must be rejected.

Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence, immeasurable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given on his coming to earth the power of saying, "I am and I love." Once, only once, there was given him a moment of active lifting love, and for that was earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And that happy creature rejected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it not, scorned it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the earth, sees Abraham's bosom and talks with Abraham as we are told in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and beholds heaven and can go up to the Lord. But that is just his torment, to rise up to the Lord without ever having loved, to be brought close to those who have loved when he has despised their love. For he sees clearly and says to himself, "Now I have understanding, and though I now thirst to love, there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my love, for my earthly life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a drop of living water (that is the gift of earthly active life) to cool the fiery thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it on earth; there is no more life for me and will be no more time! Even though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for that life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is a gulf fixed between that life and this existence.

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: 'mythical' in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable Eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the Eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the Eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality.' There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be 'primarily' true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the 'turn' in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: 'mythical' in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable Eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of subcreation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the Eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the Eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality.' There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy story were found to be 'primarily' true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the 'turn' in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

He was holding me with those delicious arms, looking at me as if I was the most beautiful creature in existence, like I was ice cream and all-you-can-eat macaroni and cheese and a two-hour soak in a hot bathtub all rolled into one. I knew I was dreaming when I thought that; those were the exact ingredients of the dreams I’d had for years, except Luke had been in the bathtub with me.

What a creature of strange moods he is,” Max Aitken, later Lord Beaverbrook, wrote, “always at the top of the wheel of confidence or at the bottom of an intense depression.” In times of disappointment, rejection, or bereavement, feelings of hopelessness overwhelmed him. Thoughts of self-destruction were never far away. He told his doctor: “I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand back and if possible to get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything.” He also disliked sleeping near a balcony. He explained: “I’ve no desire to quit this world, but thoughts, desperate thoughts, come into the head.

For, apart from the fact that I am a decadent, I am also the reverse of such a creature. Among other things my proof of this is, that I always instinctively select the proper remedy when my spiritual or bodily health is low; whereas the decadent, as such, invariably chooses those remedies which are bad for him. As a whole I was sound, but in certain details I was a decadent. That energy with which I sentenced myself to absolute solitude, and to a severance from all those conditions in life to which I had grown accustomed; my discipline of myself, and my refusal to allow myself to be pampered, to be tended hand and foot, and to be doctored—all this betrays the absolute certainty of my instincts respecting what at that time was most needful to me. I placed myself in my own hands, I restored myself to health: the first condition of success in such an undertaking, as every physiologist will admit, is that at bottom a man should be sound. An intrinsically morbid nature cannot become healthy. On the other hand, to an intrinsically sound nature, illness may even constitute a powerful stimulus to life, to a surplus of life. It is in this light that I now regard the long period of illness that I endured: it seemed as if I had discovered life afresh, my own self included. I tasted all good things and even trifles in a way in which it was not easy for others to taste them—out of my Will to Health and to Life I made my philosophy.... For this should be thoroughly understood; it was during those years in which my vitality reached its lowest point that I ceased from being a pessimist: the instinct of self-recovery forbade my holding to a philosophy of poverty and desperation. Now, by what signs are Nature's lucky strokes recognised among men? They are recognised by the fact that any such lucky stroke gladdens our senses; that he is carved from one integral block, which is hard, sweet, and fragrant as well. He enjoys that only which is good for him; his pleasure, his desire, ceases when the limits of that which is good for him are overstepped. He divines remedies for injuries; he knows how to turn serious accidents to his own advantage; that which does not kill him makes him stronger. He instinctively gathers his material from all he sees, hears, and experiences. He is a selective principle; he rejects much. He is always in his own company, whether his intercourse be with books, with men, or with natural scenery; he honours the things he chooses, the things he acknowledges, the things he trusts. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that tardiness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him—he tests the approaching stimulus; he would not dream of meeting it half-way. He believes neither in "ill-luck" nor "guilt"; he can digest himself and others; he knows how to forget—he is strong enough to make everything turn to his own advantage. Lo then! I am the very reverse of a decadent, for he whom I have just described is none other than myself.

Safety is the preeminent concern of all creatures and it clearly justifies a seemingly abrupt and rejecting response from time to time.

A few people liked to paint this drive as a weakness. A failing of the species. Humanity as the virus. The creature that never stops filling up its available living space. Hector seemed to be moving over to that view, based on their last conversation. But Anna rejected that idea. If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they’d all still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another’s fur. Anna had walked on a moon of Jupiter. She’d looked up through a dome-covered sky at the great red spot, close enough to see the swirls and eddies of a storm larger than her home world. She’d tasted water thawed from ice as old as the solar system itself. And it was that human dissatisfaction, that human audacity, that had put her there. Looking at the tiny world spinning around her, she knew one day it would give them the stars as well.

The recently ill display similar biases, possibly, Schaller theorizes, because their immune systems may still be run-down, so their minds compensate by ratcheting up behavioral defenses. In support of that contention, he points to a provocative study by evolutionary biologist Daniel Fessler and colleagues, who showed that pregnant women become more xenophobic in the first trimester, when their immune systems are suppressed to prevent rejection of the fetus, but not in later stages of gestation, when that danger has passed.

She threw the chains towards Leah who caught them in her hands as they coiled and wrapped themselves around her arm like a snake it was almost as if they were a living, breathing creature. Leah was unsure for a moment whether to embrace the strange, alien offer of friendship or reject it in fear in case it bore greater negative ramifications that would only be manifest at a later point in time.

In her room at the prow of the house Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden, My daughter is writing a story. I pause in the stairwell, hearing From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys Like a chain hauled over a gunwale. Young as she is, the stuff Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: I wish her a lucky passage. But now it is she who pauses, As if to reject my thought and its easy figure. A stillness greatens, in which The whole house seems to be thinking, And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor Of strokes, and again is silent. I remember the dazed starling Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago; How we stole in, lifted a sash And retreated, not to affright it; And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, We watched the sleek, wild, dark And iridescent creature Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top, And wait then, humped and bloody, For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits Rose when, suddenly sure, It lifted off from a chair-back, Beating a smooth course for the right window And clearing the sill of the world. It is always a matter, my darling, Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish What I wished you before, but harder.

We think that there are people who are normal over here, and then there’s the pathological ones who have depression, anxiety, addiction or schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder or ADHD or any number of other conditions. What I see is a continuum; that we are all on a continuum. These traits to one degree or another are present in almost everybody. And it’s a mythology to think that there’s the normal and then there’s the abnormal. According to the research the best place to be a schizophrenic in the world is not North America with all its pharmacopoeia. It’s actually a village in Africa or India - where there’s acceptance, where people make room for your differentness, where connection is not broken but is maintained, where you’re not excluded and ostracized but where you’re welcomed. And where there’s room for you to act out whatever you need to act out or to express whatever you need to express - where the whole community would sing with you or chant with you or hold ceremony with you, and maybe find some meaning in your “craziness”. So, it’s contextual and it’s cultural. So, disease is not an isolated phenomenon of an individual - it’s in fact culturally manufactured or culturally constructed. A society that cuts us off from our spirituality; that cuts us off from society by idealizing individualism, and by destroying social contexts (which is what our society does), ignoring our emotional needs - it’s going to be a society that generates pathology. And I think that has to do with the very nature of the economic system that says that what matters is not who you are, but how you’re valued by others. It’s a materialistic society, which specifically means that what we value is not who people are, but what they produce and what they consume. And the people that neither consume nor produce are shunned to the side and they’re totally devalued. Hence the rejection of the old and the poor because they no longer pursue to produce and they’re not rich enough to consume a lot either. So the very nature of this materialistic society dictates or generates and promotes the separation from ourselves. There is an intelligence - I’m not speaking of an operative creature up there or out there somewhere doing things and deciding things. But there is an intelligence in Nature and creation that if we ignore we create suffering for ourselves and other people. And aligning with that intelligence and aligning with that connection is really how we’re meant to be. Whether we do so consciously or whether we do so because we’re called to do that which manifests compassion, connection and love - that’s the way we’re meant to be. So, recognizing that and striving for that is what I call spirituality. Fundamentally, there’s this spiritual nature that if we ignore it we’re actually ignoring an essential part of ourselves.

The strange, striking, voluptuous woman glanced at her and laughed as she threw some iron chains towards her, Leah caught them in her hands as they coiled and wrapped themselves around her arms like a snake, it was almost as if they were a living, breathing creature; Leah was unsure for a moment whether to embrace the strange, alien offer of friendship or reject it in fear in case it bore greater negative ramifications that would only be manifest at a later point in time.

Walking through the halls of my son's high school during lunch hour recently, I was struck by how similar it felt to being in the halls and lunchrooms of the juvenile prisons in which I used to work. The posturing, the gestures, the tone, the words, and the interaction among peers I witnessed in this teenage throng all bespoke an eerie invulnerability. These kids seemed incapable of being hurt. Their demeanor bespoke a confidence, even bravado that seemed unassailable but shallow at the same time. The ultimate ethic in the peer culture is “cool” — the complete absence of emotional openness. The most esteemed among the peer group affect a disconcertingly unruffled appearance, exhibit little or no fear, seem to be immune to shame, and are given to muttering things like “doesn't matter,” “don't care,” and “whatever.” The reality is quite different. Humans are the most vulnerable — from the Latin vulnerare, to wound — of all creatures. We are not only vulnerable physically, but psychologically as well. What, then, accounts for the discrepancy? How can young humans who are in fact so vulnerable appear so opposite? Is their toughness, their “cool” demeanor, an act or is it for real? Is it a mask that can be doffed when they get to safety or is it the true face of peer orientation? When I first encountered this subculture of adolescent invulnerability, I assumed it was an act. The human psyche can develop powerful defenses against a conscious sense of vulnerability, defenses that become ingrained in the emotional circuitry of the brain. I preferred to think that these children, if given the chance, would remove their armor and reveal their softer, more genuinely human side. Occasionally this expectation proved correct, but more often than not I discovered the invulnerability of adolescents was no act, no pretense. Many of these children did not have hurt feelings, they felt no pain. That is not to say that they were incapable of being wounded, but as far as their consciously experienced feelings were concerned, there was no mask to take off. Children able to experience emotions of sadness, fear, loss, and rejection will often hide such feelings from their peers to avoid exposing themselves to ridicule and attack. Invulnerability is a camouflage they adopt to blend in with the crowd but will quickly remove in the company of those with whom they have the safety to be their true selves. These are not the kids I am most concerned about, although I certainly do have a concern about the impact an atmosphere of invulnerability will have on their learning and development. In such an environment genuine curiosity cannot thrive, questions cannot be freely asked, naive enthusiasm for learning cannot be expressed. Risks are not taken in such an environment, nor can passion for life and creativity find their outlets. The kids most deeply affected and at greatest risk for psychological harm are the ones who aspire to be tough and invulnerable, not just in school but in general. These children cannot don and doff the armor as needed. Defense is not something they do, it is who they are. This emotional hardening is most obvious in delinquents and gang members and street kids, but is also a significant dynamic in the common everyday variety of peer orientation that exists in the typical American home.

Being creatures means that we cannot re-create ourselves in any fashion or form that we desire by a simple act of the will or the complex work of a surgeon. When we as creatures reject the Creator's blueprint, we are both rebelling against the natural order of how things objectively are, and (thought it may not seem like it) we are rejecting the life that is going to be the highest good for us.

I can only thank the good Lord above,” she began after she turned back to him and Mr. Hodges assumed his usual stoic demeanor, “that your father and brother are away on business at the moment, because, well, I’m sure they’d have quite a bit to say regarding your current circumstance.” She released the tiniest of sighs. “Honestly, Edgar, one would have thought, considering you failed so spectacularly to win Wilhelmina’s hand the first time you proposed to her, that you would have tried a little more diligently to pull off a romantic moment the second time around.” “And one would have thought, considering how put out you’ve been at Wilhelmina over her rejecting my proposal all those years ago, that you would be trying to figure out a way to get me out of marrying her rather than marrying her.” “I’ve always adored Wilhelmina,” Nora said with a rattle of the paper she was still holding. “And while I’m sure I did lend the impression of being put out with her, that was mostly for your benefit, dear.” Edgar’s mouth dropped open. “Do not tell me that you’ve been holding out hope all these years for something like this to happen.” “I must admit that I have, and . . . now it would seem as if that hope was not misplaced if a wedding does indeed occur between the two of you in the foreseeable future.” Reaching for his tea again, Edgar drained the cup and set it aside. “I’m hesitantly optimistic that a wedding may soon take place, especially since I have come to realize that I still love Wilhelmina. I find her to be a most enchanting creature, and I would be a lucky gentleman indeed if she would truly agree to become my wife.” Nora frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand why you’re only hesitantly optimistic about marrying Wilhelmina. You’ve mentioned a time or two now that you told Mrs. Travers you were to be married, and while I know you’ve been away from society for quite some time, surely you haven’t forgotten that, as a gentleman, you have no choice but to go through with the wedding. And, as a lady, Wilhelmina can’t refute your declaration, not if she wants to keep her reputation, and . . . she can forget about continuing on as a social secretary if she doesn’t go through with the marriage because she’ll be looked at forevermore as a woman of loose moral values.” She rattled the paper again. “Add in the article Miss Quill published, and I can say with all certainty that there will be a wedding to plan, whether Wilhelmina has doubts or not.” Turning

Hell is the one place in the universe God created specifically for the purpose of being absent. Since God exists everywhere, and in all things, Hell had to be created for those creatures that have rejected God and his infinite love. Of course, Heaven is just the opposite. Those who find themselves there are fully immersed in the glory and love of God for all eternity.

As a younger man, I burned with enthusiasm for my work: I was to be a warrior, the champion of reviled or exiled passions. I would assail the forces marshaled to enslave these passions, the tyrannies imposed in the name of factitious moralities, the sadistic compulsions disguised as highest law. I would be, in my silent, expensive way, the apostle of a thrilling freedom. When did it abandon me, that faith? How often have I heard it repeated, nearly verbatim, that commonplace of every educated, sophisticated patient: I don’t believe in judgment, in divine judgment; I don’t believe that someone is sitting up in the sky frowning down at me. In the past I would have thought: Yes, you do— and that is your problem. In the fullness of time I would assist them in shaking free of this secret conviction. Now, though, my calling has deserted me. The premise wasn’t wrong: most patients suffer more than they know from obscure inner persecutions. What I did not realize, however, was how deeply I myself believed in such a judgment, how along with my patients I embraced with inalienable fidelity that very conviction. This conviction did not presume a personified judge— bearded, severe, enthroned. It presumed instead a law, inhuman, abstract, and implacable, the law to which we owed our lives, the law to which we owed our reckoning. Failure, worth, crisis, potential, fulfillment. Every patient returns to these words again and again. They are the words from which my profession is made, and each of these words presumes a judgment, a mark attained or missed. No one enters my office who does not believe in his very marrow that judgment, some judgment, is absolute and fixed. The person I am meant to be: that mythical creature, that being whom each patient longs and dreads to become, is itself a judgment, a standard one does not devise but to which one must account. What or who set the standard? What or who measured the body for its soul? What or who meant them to be the people they were meant to be? I am certain: belief in judgment is not what my patients reject or grow out of. The belief in judgment is what they cling to. Beneath their affections and afflictions, judgment is their one true love.

ROM 8:18  For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. 19  For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation

When misunderstood autonomy governs our life, it is inevitable that the dignity of others must be rejected, for everyone else threatens our unchecked sovereignty. This terrible covenant is especially acute given the new power of technology. Not only have we freed ourselves from the bonds and bounds of creation, but we have alienated ourselves from them, declaring them enemy. Not only against the physical world, although that too, but also other persons and ourselves, as everything is bleached out and rendered defenseless against our frightful autonomy. Finding the world as nought, and ourselves as unchecked, we consume ourselves and all other creatures. To be free as we wish requires hatred of being, even hating life itself, just as Evagrius warned. As John Paul II recognized, this “encourages the ‘culture of death’ creating and consolidating actual ‘structures of sin’ which go against life. The moral conscience, both individual and social, is today subjected . . . to an extremely serious and mortal danger.”10

In short, the self-sufficient, wholly other, transcendent, and holy God condescended to create a world and creatures, knowing that they would reject him and rebel against him and that he would, because of his love, condescend to provide for their redemption.

It’s like Cole said at the rally,” Marcus explained. “Equal rights should extend to everyone. Homosexuals cannot be excluded because their relationship is unavoidably conspicuous. Same-sex couples are entitled to the same discreet displays of intimacy that heterosexuals entertain. Handholding and kissing are not viewed as vulgar among the masses and should not solely determine acceptance or rejection. People need to be viewed as human, sentient, and feeling creatures in their pursuit to love. Until we acknowledge that, no gay-straight alliance will succeed. Because it’s not about being gay or straight, it’s about being human.” Ellis

A few people liked to paint this drive as a weakness. A failing of the species. Humanity as the virus. The creature that never stops filling up its available living space. Hector seemed to be moving over to that view, based on their last conversation. But Anna rejected that idea. If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they’d all still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another’s fur. Anna had walked on a moon of Jupiter. She’d looked up through a dome-covered sky at the great red spot, close enough to see the swirls and eddies of a storm larger than her home world. She’d tasted water thawed from ice as old as the solar system itself. And it was that human dissatisfaction, that human audacity, that had put her there. Looking

Defenders of hell must overcome the prima facie absurdity of the following conjunction: God loves every one of His creatures with a profound and unwavering benevolence; and He wills upon some of these creatures the very worst kind of evil conceivable, and He wills that they suffer it for all eternity, even though it cannot possibly do them any good, since it never culminates in anything but more of the same. Defenders of [another] version of the doctrine of hell face different challenges. Because they hold that damnation originates in the creature’s own rejection of God, they must accept that some creatures freely reject God forever, and that God cannot legitimately overcome this free rejection of Him (despite potentially infinite time in which to work on their intransigence). That someone created in the divine image, and hence naturally ordered towards the good, should eternally reject the perfect good strikes us as prima facie unlikely, especially if God continues unremittingly to seek the creature’s repentance. Furthermore, that an omnipotent and omniscient God should eternally fail to find a morally legitimate way to transform an unwilling creature’s heart strikes us as prima facie dubious.

But here’s the thing: many guys find it difficult to genuinely love women. This is due to a few reasons: Bitterness. They’ve been rejected or hurt in the past, and now they hold a grudge against women. They want to “get back” at women for all the pain they’ve caused. Inexperience. They haven’t dealt with women enough, and so they struggle to understand them. Stubbornness. They refuse to acknowledge that women are emotional creatures. They deal with problems and decisions differently they men do. Stubborn men get bent out of shape when women don’t act logically. Insecurity. They’re pursuing women to “complete” themselves or make themselves feel like they’re “okay”.

Your kind shouldn’t come here. The change is too great for Seals. Yet you have chosen it and rejected your society, so you must learn quickly or perish.

The wrath of God is simply the shadow side of the love of God for his wonderful creation and his amazing human creatures. Like a great artist appalled at the way his paintings have been defaced by the very people who were supposed to be looking after them, God’s implacable rejection of evil is the natural outflowing of his creative love. God’s anger against evil is itself the determination to put things right, to get rid of the corrupt attitudes and behaviors that have spoiled his world and his human creatures. It is because God loves the glorious world he has made and is utterly determined to put everything right that he is utterly opposed to everything that spoils or destroys that creation, especially the human creatures who were supposed to be the linchpins of his plan for how that creation would flourish.

In her room at the prow of the house Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden, My daughter is writing a story. I pause in the stairwell, hearing From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys Like a chain hauled over a gunwale. Young as she is, the stuff Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: I wish her a lucky passage. But now it is she who pauses, As if to reject my thought and its easy figure. A stillness greatens, in which The whole house seems to be thinking, And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor Of strokes, and again is silent. I remember the dazed starling Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago; How we stole in, lifted a sash And retreated, not to affright it; And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door, We watched the sleek, wild, dark And iridescent creature Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove To the hard floor, or the desk-top, And wait then, humped and bloody, For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits Rose when, suddenly sure, It lifted off from a chair-back, Beating a smooth course for the right window And clearing the sill of the world. It is always a matter, my darling, Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish What I wished you before, but harder.

Humans alone of all living creatures can reject the law of the jungle and create a code of conduct based on empathy and directed at discovering the meaning of life.

Ode 4 No man can pervert Your holy place, O my God; nor can he change it, and put it in another place. Because he has no power over it; for Your sanctuary You designed before You made special places. The ancient one shall not be perverted by those which are inferior to it. You have given Your heart, O Lord, to Your believers. Never will You be idle, nor will You be without fruits; For one hour of Your faith is more excellent than all days and years. For who shall put on Your grace and be rejected? Because Your seal is known; and Your creatures are known to it. And Your hosts possess it, and the elect archangels are clothed with it. You have given to us Your fellowship, not that You were in need of us, but that we are always in need of You. Shower upon us Your gentle rain, and open Your bountiful springs which abundantly supply us with milk and honey. For there is no regret with You; that You should regret anything which You have promised; Since the result was manifest to You. For that which You gave, You gave freely, so that no longer will You draw back and take them again. For all was manifest to You as God, and was set in order from the beginning before You. And You, O Lord, have made all. Hallelujah.