Crooked Path Quotes

Don’t you understand? When you’re standing on their side, you’re the bizarre genius, the miraculous hero, the force of the rebellion, the flower that blooms alone. But the second your voice differs from theirs, you’ve lost your mind, you’ve ignored morality, you’ve walked the crooked path.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.

What a lousy earth! He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused, or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, and rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to bodyguards, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people? When you added them all up and then subtracted, you might be left with only the children, and perhaps with Albert Einstein and an old violinist or sculptor somewhere.

Wei WuXian smiled again, “Do you know why I’m not carrying my sword? It wouldn’t make a difference if I told you anyways.” He turned around, stating one word at a time, “Because I want you to know that even if I don’t use my sword, with nothing but what you call a ‘crooked path,' I will still rise unparalleled and leave all of you staring at me from behind.

The silence between them was dark water. He could not cross it. He couldn’t walk the line between the decency she deserved and the violence this path demanded. If he tried, it might get them both killed. He could only be who he truly was—a boy who had no comfort to offer. So he would give her what he could

I saw that I’d get nowhere on the straight path, and that to go crookedly was straighter.

The straight path must sometimes be crooked.

How much do you love me?' and "Who's in charge?" ....these two questions of LOVE and CONTROL undo us ALL, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering. People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or most appropriate -- and all reach You, just as rivers enter the ocean.

The life of a mother is the life of a child: you are two blossoms on a single branch.

You don't have to wait for happiness, because there's no time but now to be happy. You don't have to go somewhere else, because there's no place but here to find it. You don't have to do something else, because there's nothing more to it. You don't have to get something else, because everything you already have is enough. You just have to be happy. ...

…time has a way of leading a person along a crooked path. Sometimes the path is hard to hold to and people fall off along the way. They curse the road for its steep grades and muddy ruts and settle themselves in hinterlands of thorn and sorrow, never knowing or dreaming that the road meant all along to lead them home. Some call that road a tragedy and lose themselves along it. Others, those that see it home, call it an adventure.

Your life is your practice. Your spiritual practice does not occur someplace other than in your life right now, and your life is nowhere other than where you are. You are looking for answers, insight, and wisdom that you already possess. Live the life in front of you, be the life you are, and see what you find out for yourself.

Who can ever know what path to walk on when all of them are either crooked or broken? One just has to walk.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God... It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this but actually they are disdaining God's "crooked but straight path". It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.

Every spell is a journey.

I believe in love. And beauty. I believe that every single person has something they find beautiful and that they truly love. The smell of their child's hair, the silence of a forest, their lover's crooked grin. Their country, their religion, their family. And I believe that if you follow this love all the way to its end, if you start with the thing you find most beautiful and trace it's perfume back to its essence, you will perceive an intangible presence, a swath of stillness that allows the thing you love to be visible like the openness of the sky reveals the presence of the moon.

Oh. It’s Fraser. James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.” He pronounced it formally, each name slow and distinct. Completely flustered, I said “Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp,” and stuck out my hand idiotically. Apparently taking this as a plea for support, he took the hand and tucked it firmly into the crook of his elbow. Thus inescapably pinioned, I squelched up the path to my wedding.

As they split to prepare for the meeting with the Ravkans, Jesper followed Wylan down the hall. “Hey.” Wylan kept going. Jesper jogged past him and cut off his path, walking backward. “Listen, this thing with Kuwei isn’t a thing.” He tried again. “There is no thing with Kuwei.” “You don’t owe me an explanation. I’m the one who interrupted.” “No, you didn’t! Kuwei was sitting at the piano. It was an understandable mistake.” Wylan stopped short. “You thought he was me?” “Yes!” Jesper said. “See? Just a big mis—” Wylan’s gold eyes flashed. “You really can’t tell us apart?” “I … I mean, usually I can, but—” “We’re nothing alike,” Wylan said indignantly. “He’s not even that good at science! Half his notebooks are full of doodles. Mostly of you. And those aren’t good either.

In the construction of houses, choice of woods is made. Straight un-knotted timber of good appearance is used for the revealed pillars, straight timber with small defects is used for the inner pillars. Timbers of the finest appearance, even if a little weak, is used for the thresholds, lintels, doors, and sliding doors, and so on. Good strong timber, though it be gnarled and knotted, can always be used discreetly in construction.

Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three-year-old. Throughout this fresh, if common, pursuit of knowledge, one conviction crowned her efforts: ...she knew there was nothing to fear.

γραφέων ὁδὸς εὐθεῖα καὶ σκολιὴ μία ἐστί, φησί, καὶ ἡ αὐτή (The path of writing is crooked and straight)

Hidden by diaphanous clouds of mist and fog floating gracefully over vales of heather and flowing runnels, she began to dance.

Jagged needle, wicked lies From under the skin, pluck evil eyes. Destiny change from pain and cold Now that you pay in blood and soul.

This is me knowing that I have to let you go. That no matter how much I love you or how hard we work at this or how badly we both want each other to be happy, we are never going to be the right partners for each other. This is my acceptance that the best things are never straightforward and that I want you to take whatever crooked, twisted path you need to take if it will lead you towards your dreams. This is me knowing that I have to do what’s right. That sometimes the best thing you can do for someone you love is to let them go – to do more, feel more, be more than the person they ever could ever have become by your side.

Strength and struggle go together. The supreme reward of struggle is strength. Life is a battle and the greatest joy is to overcome. The pursuit of easy things makes men weak. Do not equip yourselves with superior power and hope to escape the responsibility and work. It cannot be done. It is following the path of least resistance that makes rivers and men crooked.

Most people live their lives laying prostrate before a false god, waiting for a cue to rise. There are no cues, only decisions. Shall I have dessert? Shall I have the best of the wine? Shall I love the person next to me? They can all be brought to your table. Rise, I say, rise and look within to the truth, to the light, and tell it your decision.

Only the ocean kept the same rhythm. Crashing in and slowly pulling back out, it never lied, never changed. It tried to teach them a life of romantic consistency.

May you be tired and afraid overwhelmed and ready to quit. Quit! Start over, over ten thousand times over roll out, get up, fall down break into tears open in laughter sing and dance be silly, be glad. May you forget most things, remember everything, come to know in your bones with your blood through your eyes from your lips out of earth deep below, well beyond you are love. You are just love. Amen.

I was told that this road would take me to the ocean of death, and turned back halfway. Since then crooked, round-about, godforsaken paths stretch out before me.

They were the kind of tears that come easily because earlier tears have already smoothed the path for them.

O crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul, which hoped, by forsaking Thee, to gain some better thing!

Ah, yes, crooked paths often end in quicksand.

You walk around in rags and yet it's your name that shames you?" "It isn't shame, Uncle," disagreed Arent. "That name runs ahead of me. It straightens crooked paths, and it's the crooked paths I wish to walk.

The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.

The path of least resistance doesn’t always mean taking the easiest option. Sometimes…it means that your soul finds its way home, towards something it loves, after you’ve held it back for too fucking long.

The earth is a mosaic, and most fail to notice the gossamer tesserae floating down from the realm of the mind that form its images of beauty and horror.

Sometimes we grieve the living more than the dead.

On a perfect day in your perfect little world (and it's always perfect) there is breakfast time, playtime, lunchtime, nap time, snack time, dinnertime, bath time, story time, and bedtime. There is time for everything when you are the timekeeper.

How awful, that an honest man should feel compelled to travel such crooked paths! How awful, that the most precious thing a man possesses, his own honor, should be sullied by such shabby dealings!

When you go into labor you see that you are not the captain of the ship. You are the ship. There is no captain. There are only the waves.

The path of faith was a crooked one.

The silence between them was dark water. He could not cross it. He couldn't walk the line between the decency she deserved and the violence this path demanded.

They kissed in the middle of the sidewalk, letting the crowds of people flow around them like water around an island.

She remembered something she overheard at a dinner party -- Everyone loses their mind at least once in this lifetime. Everyone.

Richter said, ‘Like a morning dream, life becomes more and more bright the longer we live, and the reason of everything appears more clear. What has puzzled us before seems less mysterious, and the crooked paths look straighter as we approach the end.’ 

So I added in all the pains I'd learned. Cooking blunders I'd had to eat anyways. Equipment and property constantly breaking down, needing repairs and attention. Tax insanity, and rushing around trying to hack a path through a jungle of numbers. Late bills. Unpleasant jobs that gave you horribly aching feet. Odd looks from people who didn't know you, when something less than utterly normal happened. The occasional night when the loneliness ached so badly that it made you weep. The occasional gathering during with you wanted to escape to your empty apartment so badly that you were willing to go out of the bathroom window. Muscle pulls and aches you never had when you were younger, the annoyance as the price of gas kept going up to some ridiculous degree, the irritation with unruly neighbors, brainless media personalities, and various politicians who all seemed to fall on a spectrum somewhere between the extremes of "crook" and "moron." You know. Life.

As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. Wherever a man separates from the multitude and goes his own way, there is a fork in the road, though the travelers along the highway see only a gap in the paling.

The statues were symbols. Symbols matter. We use them in telling the stories of our past and who we are, and we chose them carefully. Once I learned the real history of these statues, I knew there was only path forward, and that meant making straight what was crooked, making right what was wrong. It starts with telling the truth about the past.

As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed. The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts. The president does this at a high rate and at a fast pace. One attempt during the 2016 campaign to track his utterances found that 78 percent of his factual claims were false. This proportion is so high that it makes the correct assertions seem like unintended oversights on the path toward total fiction. Demeaning the world as it is begins the creation of a fictional counterworld. The second mode is shamanistic incantation. As Klemperer noted, the fascist style depends upon “endless repetition,” designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable. The systematic use of nicknames such as “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary” displaced certain character traits that might more appropriately have been affixed to the president himself. Yet through blunt repetition over Twitter, our president managed the transformation of individuals into stereotypes that people then spoke aloud. At rallies, the repeated chants of “Build that wall” and “Lock her up” did not describe anything that the president had specific plans to do, but their very grandiosity established a connection between him and his audience. The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction. The president’s campaign involved the promises of cutting taxes for everyone, eliminating the national debt, and increasing spending on both social policy and national defense. These promises mutually contradict. It is as if a farmer said he were taking an egg from the henhouse, boiling it whole and serving it to his wife, and also poaching it and serving it to his children, and then returning it to the hen unbroken, and then watching as the chick hatches. Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason. Klemperer’s descriptions of losing friends in Germany in 1933 over the issue of magical thinking ring eerily true today. One of his former students implored him to “abandon yourself to your feelings, and you must always focus on the Führer’s greatness, rather than on the discomfort you are feeling at present.” Twelve years later, after all the atrocities, and at the end of a war that Germany had clearly lost, an amputated soldier told Klemperer that Hitler “has never lied yet. I believe in Hitler.” The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims the president made when he said that “I alone can solve it” or “I am your voice.” When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience. What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent. Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant. At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that “understanding is useless, you have to have faith. I believe in the Führer.

He couldn’t walk the line between the decency she deserved and the violence this path demanded.

When you look at the world as it is, how can you not be racked with grief? But when you look closer, how can you not be overwhelmed with awe?

I’m just a broken girl who’s learned I can’t walk the crooked path of this life.

She felt the adagio from Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez strumming at her inner thighs like a guitar, and then slowly moving upwards until it wrapped around her heart in its denouement.

Would you teach me, Seth?’ Seth smiled and leaned back in his seat. ‘You do realise, of course, that you have no idea what you ask of me?’ Seth replied after a moment. ‘Of course,’ Christopher replied quietly. ‘Could you tell me?’ ‘No. That is the problem you see,’ Seth said. ‘Magic is something you can never prepare someone for. Magic will make you, Christopher. It will find all the secret empty places of longing in you and fill them more surely than any other love. And magic will break your heart.’ A slight, rather sad smile crossed Christopher’s face for a moment. ‘I know what you’re thinking. You think your heart is already broken, you think that this crooked and winding way is the only path left for you now. But you’re wrong. The heart breaks like every wave on the beach and there’s a darkness you’ll have to pass through that you can’t even see from where you are now.

How many crooked, out-of-the-way, narrow, impassable, and devious paths has humanity chosen in the attempt to attain eternal truth, while before it the straight road lay open...It is wider and more open and resplendent than all other paths, lying as it does in the full glare of the sun, and lit up by many lights in the night, but men have streamed past it in blind darkness. And how many times...have they still managed to swerve away from it and go astray, have managed in the broad light of day to get into the impassable out-of-the-way places again, have managed again to throw a blinding mist over each other's eyes, and running after will-o'-the-wisps have managed to reach the brink of the precipice only to ask themselves with horror: 'Where is the way out? Where is the road?' The present generation sees everything clearly, it is amazed and laughs at the folly of its ancestors...and self-confidently enters on a fresh set of errors at which their descendants will laugh again later on.

We can handle anything when we exchange our worries and fears for alertness and spontaneity, when we focus solely on what is in front of us, and when we leap into the sheer wonder of the unplanned life.

Now, Because I put you in the past, My life is like: A path paved, Fit for your feet. Now other women walk on it; And not one of them fits. Walking crooked, on a path that's straight. I watch them. They don't even have your gait.

In this world, the only easy path is the course of least resistance. This is the path always taken by a stream of water as it seeks lower and lower ground. It will never go over an obstacle, and even when it has to go around one, water will always find the easiest way around, the way that requires as little work as possible. This, you have have noticed, is what makes rivers crooked, and it makes men and women crooked too. The easy path never goes anywhere but downward, and spiritually, that is not the direction we want to go. Worthwhile destinations always take extra effort.

If you corner him there will be bloodshed. And I do not like bloodshed.’ Dorin arched a brow. ‘Really. You don’t like bloodshed.’ ‘No. It’s messy and unsophisticated. There are better ways of doing things.’ ‘Such as?’ Wu brightened, flashed his yellowed crooked teeth. ‘My ways. Lying, trickery, deceit, cheating, or just plain patience. He will come to us.

For the wanderer astray, the hermit seeking the lost books To him the bitter path of knowledge is truly germane And to gaze at the grand canvas of depravity, the deified crooks All the depth of duplicity of the celestial rulers most profane.

So imagination crowns the experience of my hands. And they learned their cunning from the wise hand of another, which, itself guided by imagination, led me safely in paths that I knew not, made darkness light before me, and made crooked ways straight.

Don't call me that," Fox growled, forcing Brandt onto his back. "I'm not a child." Brandt hit the mattress with a dull thud, tracing the lines of Fox's face with the path of his gaze. "No, you aren't, are you," he agreed quietly. "But what will I call you, then?" It took a moment; Fox fought it as resolutely as he could. "Call me yours," he begged, burying his forehead in the crook of Brandt's shoulder so as not to see him refuse. Around him, Brandt's arms stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed. They slid tightly around Fox's ribs, holding him steady. "Some things are just facts," he said, and Fox wished desperately to believe him.

He smiled my favorite crooked smile, and then he disappeared into the darkness. With shaky legs, ignoring the fact that my action was useless, I followed him into the forest. The evidence of his path had disappeared instantly. There were no footprints, the leaves were still again, but I walked forward without thinking. I could not do anything else. I had to keep moving. If I stopped looking for him, it was over. Love, life, meaning ...over .... "Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.

Crooked is the path to eternity.

One cannot walk straight when the path is crooked. A BALDONI SAYING

We want to pin a reason to it or else we get terrified anyone else might do the same thing. Including us.

Sometimes the path of least resistance isn’t a straight line. It’s the way home.

She pushed up from the ground and ran. “What are you doing?” Pete shouted. “Getting that horse back!” Pete leaped to his feet, stepping hard into his boot to put it back on, as Beatriz had nearly pulled it off in her hurry to drag him free of the stampede’s path. Then he, too, broke into a run—only he ran for the Mercury. This was the moment their love story began.

...Would you like to know the view I have out of my window, since you love snow? So here you are: the broad whiteness of the Moldau, and along that whiteness, little black silhouettes of people cross from one shore to the other, like musical notes. For example, the figure of some boy is dragging behind him a D-sharp: a sledge. Across the river there are snowy roofs in a distant, lightweight sky... I walked around the cathedral along a slippery path between snowdrifts. The snow was light, dry: grab a handful, throw it up, and it disperses in the air like dust, as if flying back up. The sky darkened. In it appeared a thin golden moon: half of a broken halo. I walked along the edge of the fortress wall. Old Prague lay below in the thickening mist. The snowy roofs clustered together, cumbrous and dim. The houses seemed to have been piled anyhow, in a moment of terrible and fantastic carelessness. In this frozen storm of outlines, in this snowy semi-darkness, the streetlamps and windows were burning with a warm and sweet lustre, like well-licked punch lollipops. In just one place you could also see a little scarlet light, a drop of pomegranate juice. And in the fog of crooked walls and smoky corners I divined an ancient ghetto, mystical ruins, the alley of Alchemists...

What crooked, blind, narrow, impassable, far-straying paths mankind has chosen, striving to attain eternal truth, while a whole straight road lay open before it, like the road leading to a magnificent dwelling meant for a king's mansion! Broader and more splendid than all other roads it is, lit by the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in the blind darkness. So many times already, though guided by a sense come down from heaven, they have managed to waver and go astray, have managed in broad daylight to get again into an impassable wilderness, have managed again to blow a blinding fog into each other's eyes, and, dragging themselves after marsh-lights, have managed finally to reach the abyss, only to ask one another in horror: where is the way out, where is the path?

while men may meet with death in strange and obscure places which they might well have avoided it was more correct to say that no matter how hidden or crooked the path to their destruction yet they would seek it out.

Practice acceptance on yourself so you can be kinder with your child. Practice nonjudgmental awareness of your life so you can save your loved ones from the cruelty of your own impossible standards and your hard-hearted disappointment. Practice greater faith and lesser blame. Take this blink of time when you are still stumbling at the gate, still awkward at the tasks, to turn down the sound and tumble freely in a state of grace. Life

He sang like an angel, he was faithful to God and he waited honorably for the wife he believed God chose for him. He made two daughters who shone like mirrors in the direct sun; he blazed his path with a scythe and his broad shoulders, and he was who he chose to be, which is the hardest and bravest thing a man can do. He looked at us, his parents, his sisters, his whole crooked family, and he flexed his jaw muscles, packed up his truck, and drove away.

At the moment of giving birth to a child, is the mother separate from the child? You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child. —Dogen Zenji, Mountains and Waters Sutra

you would sleep beneath a roof tonight, you must climb off your horses and cross the mud with me. The path of faith, we call it. Only the faithful may cross safely. The wicked are swallowed by the quicksands, or drowned when the tide comes rushing in. None of you are wicked, I hope? Even so, I would be careful where I set my feet. Walk only where I walk, and you shall reach the other side.” The path of faith was a crooked one, Brienne could not help but note.

You can hear a miracle a long way after dark. Miracles are very like radio waves in this way. Not many people realize that the ordinary radio wave and the extraordinary miracle have much in common. Left to their own devices, radio waves would not be audible for much more than forty or fifty miles. They travel on perfectly straight paths from their broadcast source, and because the Earth is round, it does not take them long to part ways with the ground and head out to the stars.

He wondered how many people were destitute that same night even in his own prosperous country, how many homes were shanties, how many husbands were drunk and wives socked, and how many children were bullied, abused or abandoned. How many families hungered for food they could not afford to buy? How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane? How many cockroaches and landlords would triumph? How many winners were losers, successes failures, rich men poor men? How many wise guys were stupid? How many happy endings were unhappy endings? How many honest men were liars, brave men cowards, loyal men traitors, how many sainted men were corrupt, how many people in positions of trust had sold their souls to blackguards for petty cash, how many had never had souls? How many straight-and-narrow paths were crooked paths? How many best families were worst families and how many good people were bad people?

am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration, but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation. I remember having repeated a hymn from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.”. . . [T]he wonderful doctrine preached in the Gita [says]: “Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths which in the end lead to me.

As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.” The

You have to get off that finite road that you’ve created from your transitional standpoint and onto the path of light. Onto the infinite road of eternal existence, the firm foundation of truth. This is where the crooked becomes straight, the lost get found, the blind see, and the dead live. Where the tangible reasoning of logical man loses credibility and is proven unrealistic. Where faith becomes active and the world of the supernatural becomes obvious. You have to accept Jesus. Accept it, accept Jesus.

Societies that robbed humans of what they had rightfully earned by the sweat of their brows paid a steep price for this theft. They destroyed the individual’s incentive to work, undermined the general prosperity, and thereby doomed themselves to poverty and famine.

It was a night filled with dreams of what was to come. Dreams were still possible here even though the paths to attain them weren't necessarily the best ones. But who can ever know what path to walk on when all of them are either crooked or broken? One just has to walk.

The sound of running footsteps made them all start. Then the refectory door opened and the round, freckled face of Sister Belinda appeared. She was breathing heavily, and her veil was crooked, showing short tufts of red hair sprouting around her glowing face like unruly weeds in a parched garden. “Excuse me, Mother, Sisters,” she said. “But there is a police car waiting at the gate and what looks like the Black Maria behind it. Also, another car approaching from the farm and a uniformed constable coming in via the beach path. It would appear that the filth have us surrounded.

Having conceived of a purpose, a maston should mentally mark out a straight pathway to achievement, looking neither to the right nor left. Doubts and fears should be zealously starved. They are disintegrating elements which break up the straight path, rendering it crooked, ineffectual, and useless. Thoughts of doubt and fear can never accomplish anything. They always lead to failure. Purpose, energy, power to do, and all strong thoughts cease when doubt and fear creep in. The will to do springs from the knowledge that we can do. He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failure.

It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this, but actually they are disdaining God’s “crooked yet straight path” (Gottfried Arnold). They do not want a life that is crooked and balked.

What you call your life is not yours at all--not yours to plan, manipulate, or control, at least not very often. . . . In fleeting moments of deep satisfaction and insight, I saw the absolute truth of life: the unbroken line of love that had led to my existence and would lead on through my daughter. My mother's love, her mother's love, her mother's love, and back and back forever ago. Love that is no mere word, love that goes beyond feeling, love that is life itself. . . . What miracles, what sacrifice, what love! . . . Can you imagine this love? Can you anticipate it, fabricate it, measure and evaluate it? No you can't, you can only be love, and your child will release its magnitude within you.

MARCH 30 I WILL GUIDE YOU CONTINUALLY I WILL BE your hiding place, and I will protect you from trouble. I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with My loving eye on you. I will always guide you and provide good things to eat when you are in the desert. I will make you healthy. You will be like a garden that has plenty of water or like a stream that never runs dry. I will clear a path in your desert and will make a straight road for you to follow. I am able to fill in every valley you face and to flatten every hill and mountain that seem to hinder your way. I will level the rough and rugged ground so that all may see that My glory surrounds your path. PSALM 32:7–8; ISAIAH 58:11; ISAIAH 40:1–4 Prayer Declaration Father, guide me continually with Your eye. Guide me by the skillfulness of Your hands. Lead me in a plain path because of my enemies. Make the crooked places straight and the rough places smooth before me. Send out Your light and truth, and let them lead me. Teach me to do Your will, and lead me into the land of uprightness.

The Calf Path One day, through the primeval wood, A calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail all bent askew, A crooked trail as all calves do. Since then three hundred years have fled, And, I infer, the calf is dead. But still he left behind his trail, And thereby hangs my moral tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog that passed that way; And then a wise bell-wether sheep Pursued the trail o’er vale and steep, And drew the flock behind him, too, As good bell-wethers always do. And from that day, o’er hill and glade, Through those old woods a path was made. And many men wound in and out, And dodged, and turned, and bent about And uttered words of righteous wrath Because ’twas such a crooked path.15 But still they followed—do not laugh— The first migrations of that calf, And through this winding wood-way stalked, Because he wobbled when he walked. This forest path became a lane, That bent, and turned, and turned again; This crooked lane became a road, Where many a poor horse with his load Toiled on beneath the burning sun, And traveled some three miles in one. And thus a century and a half They trod the footsteps of that calf. The years passed on in swiftness fleet, The road became a village street; And this, before men were aware, A city’s crowded thoroughfare; And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis; And men two centuries and a half Trod in the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about; And o’er his crooked journey went The traffic of a continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf near three centuries dead. They followed still his crooked way, And lost one hundred years a day; For thus such reverence is lent To well-established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach, Were I ordained and called to preach; For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf-paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do. They keep the path a sacred groove, Along which all their lives they move. But how the wise old wood-gods laugh, Who saw the first primeval calf! Ah! Many things this tale might teach— But I am not ordained to preach. —Sam Walter Foss

I am talking about something more than just the gauzy circle of life. Sure, you're older now and one day you're going to die, but before that, you have to *die*. Your child has arrived and the battle has been joined. It is the battle to the death of your ego. The demise of your selfishness and impatience. The end of your idle distractions and carelessness. The decline and fall of Numero Uno. Or so you must pray, because in this contest, you must lose or lose quickly. Pray that you will never bear the shattered consequences of winning when your child's safety, trust, and happiness are the casualties.

That day in Chartres they had passed through town and watched women kneeling at the edge of the water, pounding clothes against a flat, wooden board. Yves had watched them for a long time. They had wandered up and down the old crooked streets, in the hot sun; Eric remembered a lizard darting across a wall; and everywhere the cathedral pursued them. It is impossible to be in that town and not be in the shadow of those great towers; impossible to find oneself on those plains and not be troubled by that cruel and elegant, dogmatic and pagan presence. The town was full of tourists, with their cameras, their three-quarter coats, bright flowered dresses and shirts, their children, college insignia, Panama hats, sharp, nasal cries, and automobiles crawling like monstrous gleaming bugs over the laming, cobblestoned streets. Tourist buses, from Holland, from Denmark, from Germany, stood in the square before the cathedral. Tow-haired boys and girls, earnest, carrying knapsacks, wearing khaki-colored shorts, with heavy buttocks and thighs, wandered dully through the town. American soldiers, some in uniform, some in civilian clothes, leaned over bridges, entered bistros in strident, uneasy, smiling packs, circled displays of colored post cards, and picked up meretricious mementos, of a sacred character. All of the beauty of the town, all the energy of the plains, and all the power and dignity of the people seemed to have been sucked out of them by the cathedral. It was as though the cathedral demanded, and received, a perpetual, living sacrifice. It towered over the town, more like an affliction than a blessing, and made everything seem, by comparison with itself, wretched and makeshift indeed. The houses in which the people lived did not suggest shelter, or safety. The great shadow which lay over them revealed them as mere doomed bits of wood and mineral, set down in the path of a hurricane which, presently, would blow them into eternity. And this shadow lay heavy on the people, too. They seemed stunted and misshapen; the only color in their faces suggested too much bad wine and too little sun; even the children seemed to have been hatched in a cellar. It was a town like some towns in the American South, frozen in its history as Lot's wife was trapped in salt, and doomed, therefore, as its history, that overwhelming, omnipresent gift of God, could not be questioned, to be the property of the gray, unquestioning mediocre.

Sometimes you must do things out of love that devastate the senses. This wasn't easy, Elymas. I know blindness. I know how suddenly the specks in the stones you can't see become something you would die for. From the way you grope this cloud of mist I know you're trying to imagine the color of the stars right now, the blue-white shine that once ignited your hands with power, but can conjur only the upturned bellies of poisoned frogs, your mother's dying lips. Don't you know how small this life is? Even the stars are just the sweat Christ shakes from his brow. When you make crooked the path to eternity, you send your brother to oblivion, to the buried speck in the midnight desert stone. This time, no magic will save you. You will have to find your life in the dark. Today you will have to be led by the hand.

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone" I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough to truly consecrate the hour. I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough to be to you just object and thing, dark and smart. I want my free will and want it accompanying the path which leads to action; and want during times that beg questions, where something is up, to be among those in the know, or else be alone. I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection, never be blind or too old to uphold your weighty wavering reflection. I want to unfold. Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent; for there I would be dishonest, untrue. I want my conscience to be true before you; want to describe myself like a picture I observed for a long time, one close up, like a new word I learned and embraced, like the everday jug, like my mother's face, like a ship that carried me along through the deadliest storm.

PROVERBS 2  u My son,  v if you receive my words         and treasure up my commandments with you, 2    making your ear attentive to wisdom         and inclining your heart to understanding; 3    yes, if you call out for insight         and raise your voice  w for understanding, 4    if you seek it like  x silver         and search for it as for  y hidden treasures, 5    then  z you will understand the fear of the LORD         and find the knowledge of God. 6    For  a the LORD gives wisdom;         from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; 7    he stores up sound wisdom for the upright;         he is  b a shield to those who  c walk in integrity, 8    guarding the paths of justice         and  d watching over the way of his  e saints. 9     f Then you will understand  g righteousness and justice         and equity, every good path; 10    for wisdom will come into your heart,         and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul; 11     h discretion will  i watch over you,         understanding will guard you, 12    delivering you from the way of evil,         from men of perverted speech, 13    who forsake the paths of uprightness         to  j walk in the ways of darkness, 14    who  k rejoice in doing evil         and  l delight in the perverseness of evil, 15    men whose  m paths are crooked,          n and who are  o devious in their ways.

THE FAIRY REEL If I were young as once I was, and dreams and death more distant then, I wouldn’t split my soul in two, and keep half in the world of men, So half of me would stay at home, and strive for Fäerie in vain, While all the while my soul would stroll up narrow path, down crooked lane, And there would meet a fairy lass and smile and bow with kisses three, She’d pluck wild eagles from the air and nail me to a lightning tree And if my heart would run from her or flee from her, be gone from her, She’d wrap it in a nest of stars and then she’d take it on with her Until one day she’d tire of it, all bored with it and done with it She’d leave it by a burning brook, and off brown boys would run with it. They’d take it and have fun with it and stretch it long and cruel and thin, They’d slice it into four and then they’d string with it a violin. And every day and every night they’d play upon my heart a song So plaintive and so wild and strange that all who heard it danced along And sang and whirled and sank and trod and skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they’d crumble into wheels of gold…. But I am young no longer now; for sixty years my heart’s been gone To play its dreadful music there, beyond the valley of the sun. I watch with envious eyes and mind, the single-souled, who dare not feel The wind that blows beyond the moon, who do not hear the Fairy Reel. If you don’t hear the Fairy Reel, they will not pause to steal your breath. When I was young I was a fool. So wrap me up in dreams and death.

O you mad, you superbly drunk! If you kick open your doors and play the fool in public; If you empty your bag in a night, and snap your fingers at prudence; If you walk in curious paths and play with useless things; Reck not rhyme or reason; If you break the rudder in two unfurling your sails before the storm: Then I will follow you, comrade, and be drunken and go to the dogs. I have wasted my days and nights in the company of steady wise neighbors. Much knowing has turned my hair grey, and much watching has made my sight dim. For years I have gathered and heaped all scraps and fragments of things; Crush them and dance upon them, and scatter them all to the winds! For I know ’tis the height of wisdom to be drunken and go to the dogs. Let all crooked scruples vanish, let me hopelessly lose my way. Let a gust of wild giddiness come and sweep me away from my anchors. The world is peopled with worthies, and workers useful and clever; There are men who are easily the first, and men who come decently next: Let them be happy and prosperous, and let me be foolishly futile. For I know ’tis the end of all works to be drunken and go to the dogs. I swear to surrender this moment all claim to the ranks of the sensible. I let go my pride of learning and judgment of right and of wrong. I’ll shatter the vessel of memory, scattering the last drop of tears; With the foam of the ruby red wine, I’ll bathe and brighten my laughter. The badge of the proper and prim I’ll tear into shreds for the nonce. I’ll take the holy vow of being worthless, and be drunken and go to the dogs.

... man is generous with the word "fool" and is ready to serve it up to his neighbor twenty times a day. It is enough to have one stupid side out of ten to be accounted a fool, aside from the nine good ones ... in the world chronicle of mankind there are many whole centuries which, it would seem, should be crossed out and abolished as unnecessary. There have been many errors in the world which, it would seem, even a child would not make now. What crooked, blind, narrow, impassable, far-straying paths mankind has chosen, striving to attain eternal truth, while a whole straight road lay open before it, like the road leading to a magnificent dwelling meant for a king's mansions! Broader and more splendid than all other roads it is, lit by the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in the blind darkness. So many times already, though guided by a sense come down from heaven, they have managed to waver and go astray, have managed in broad daylight to get again into an impassable wilderness, have managed again to blow a blinding fog into each other's eyes, and, dragging themselves after marsh-lights, have managed finally to reach the abyss, only to ask one another in horror: where is the way out, where is the path? The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.

You will promote harmony in your words and actions. You will not compete with other leaders or compare to them. You will work together with others to make meaningful changes. You will not measure success in numbers: dollars, followers, ranks, sales, reviews, Facebook likes. Rather, you will measure by people helped, connections made, and moments savoured. You will help people accept themselves by being real with them. You will not show up on the pulpit for attention or approval. You will show up because you have something important to say. You will build tribes instead of cults. You will see your followers as equals. You will learn with them, and they will trust you. And there is nothing like the trust of people who resonate with your most authentic, vulnerable self to push you, every day, to do your best. It will hold you to a higher standard of behaviour. As a self-aware leader, you can be honest. This is the missing element in so many ineffective and addictive doctrines. You can tell people the things that are true but hard to hear. Not everyone will be brave enough to sidestep idealism, but those who do will appreciate your honesty. If you do not describe the darkness and the light, the voyager who has followed in your footsteps will believe he is lost. He will blame himself or blame you for teaching him lies. By being honest about what the journey looks like—failures, warts, and all—your teachings will become sources of consolation rather than frustration. As that voyager travels down the crooked, lonely paths within him, he may find a dark, terrifying cave, but if you mentioned it, he will feel elated. Yes, he will think, it looks horrifying, but at least I’m on track if I’ve found this awful thing. Your honesty may be bitter medicine, but when it digests, it’ll provide such potent healing that its taste will become a distant memory.

Lottie pressed her face into the crook of his neck and shoulder. She had to stop him now, before her will was completely demolished. “No. Please stop. I’m sorry.” His hand slid from her blouse, and he touched her damp lips with his fingers. “Have I frightened you?” he whispered. Lottie shook her head, somehow resisting the urge to curl into his embrace like a sun-warmed cat. “No… I’ve frightened myself.” For some reason her admission made him smile. His fingers moved to her throat, tracing the fragile line with a sensitivity that made her breath catch. Tugging the peasant blouse back up to her shoulder, he retied the frayed ribbon that secured the neckline. “Then I’ll stop,” he said. “Come— I’ll take you to the house.” He stayed close to her as they continued through the forest, occasionally moving to push a branch out of the way, or taking her hand to guide her over a rough place on the path. As familiar as she was with the woods of Stony Cross Park, Lottie had no need of his assistance. But she accepted the help with demur. And she did not protest when he paused again, his lips finding hers easily in the darkness. His mouth was hot and sweet as he kissed her compulsively… swift kisses, languid ones, kisses that ranged from intense need to wicked flirtation. Drugged with pleasure, Lottie let her hands wander to the thick dishevelment of his hair, the iron-hard nape of his neck. When the blistering heat rose to an untenable degree, Lord Sydney groaned softly. “Charlotte…” “Lottie,” she told him breathlessly. He pressed his lips to her temple and cuddled her against his powerful body as if she were infinitely fragile. “I never thought I would find someone like you,” he whispered. “I’ve looked for you so long… needed you…” Lottie shivered and dropped her head to his shoulder. “This isn’t real,” she said faintly. His lips touched her neck, finding a place that made her arch involuntarily. “What’s real, then?” She gestured to the yew hedge that bordered the estate garden. “Everything back there.” His arms tightened, and he spoke in a muffled voice. “Let me come to your room. Just for a little while.” Lottie responded with a trembling laugh, knowing exactly what would happen if she allowed that. “Absolutely not.” Soft, hot kisses drifted over her skin. “You’re safe with me. I would never ask for more than you were willing to give.” Lottie closed her eyes, her head spinning. “The problem is,” she said ruefully, “I am willing to give you entirely too much.” She felt the curve of his smile against her cheek. “Is that a problem?” “Oh, yes.” Pulling away from him, Lottie held her hands to her hot face and sighed unsteadily. “We must stop this. I don’t trust myself with you.” “You shouldn’t,” he agreed hoarsely. -Lottie & Nick