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.

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. ...

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

…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.

Every spell is a journey.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

How awful, that an honest man should feel compelled to travel such crooked paths!

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!

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.

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.

The path of faith was a crooked one.

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.

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.’ 

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.

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.

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?

Strange is the speech of spirits. They will send you by crooked paths.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

She prayed to the gods of love and the gods of destruction, for they are one and the same.

She looked at his face and saw a monk and a detective, both beautiful and bizarre.

Creativity is at the root of excitement.

Outside the store, beauty and mystery struggled to come together. Inside, they held hands, giggled to one another, and whispered secret messages.

Sacred signs always come when your soul calls out in pain or joy.

Sometimes the presence of a happy moment, one that won't fade, is all the comfort we need.

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

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

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

The crooked tree lives long, while the straight tree becomes lumber.

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...

On any given night the stars are endless losses or endless gains. One for the love you experience and one for the love you lose. One for the unfulfilled wish and one for the wish yet to come.

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

I inhale and a zephyr enters my body. The earth tilts its axis, changing my view of the heavens. Two clouds appear in the shape of trumpets. They part and rays of sunlight burst in. The sunlight speaks, 'Seek a new experience.

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.

That Rome, which made the world good, used to have two suns; and they made visible two paths—the world's path and the pathway that is God's. One has eclipsed the other; now the sword has joined the shepherd's crook; the two together must of necessity result in evil.

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.

There was something terribly wrong with the child, and simply by crossing paths with him, Phil had caught his attention. He felt trapped in a bizarre otherworld in which everything was crooked, but the harder he fought to extricate himself, the more tangled he became. So, in the absence of better options, he stopped struggling.

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.

The women sat with their jewelled boy-dolls in their arms. On the edge of the floor was the music, the tambours and the cytheras, the cymbals and Egyptian harps, the skirling pipes from the aulos to the little flute of ivory whose fine sound flickers like a snake’s forked tongue. The music shrilled, wounding the deathly silence in which the dark god stood waiting. And in the midst of the maze, strung along the crooked path of scoured white marble, hair and skirts and jewels swinging, arms entwined and slim waists swaying to the beat, was the wreath of women, weaving and twisting and turning on itself, like the house snake who sloughs his winter skin and is made new again. It bent about and came toward me. I saw her face, gay and flashing, touched by no dread, no shadow, leading the dance.

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.

I asked whether the High Fae came into the pub. Lulu gave me a crooked smile. “High Fae?” she asked. “You know. The gentry, elves, those posh gits with extradimensional castles, stone spears and unicorns.” “You mean them what step between worlds?” “Could be.” “Who walk on paths unseen and wax and wane with the moon?” “Them sort of people,” I said. “Yeah.” “Not in here, squire,” she said. “I run a respectable pub.

Rapidly then the lord’s courage and resplendent limbs grew; and when the due time came round, the great crooked-schemer Kronos, tricked by the cunning counsel of Earth, defeated by his son’s strength and stratagem, brought his brood back up. The first he spewed out was the stone, the last he swallowed. Zeus fixed it in the wide-pathed earth at holy Pytho,* in the glens of Parnassus, to be a monument thereafter and a thing of wonder for mortal men.

I don’t want to go running down some career path—supposedly such a grand enterprise. What’s so grand about it: people acquiring crooked backs at an early age from stooping at undersized desks, wrinkled hands, pale faces, mutilated workday trousers, trembling legs, fat bellies, sour stomachs, bald spots upon their skulls, bitter, snappish, leathery, faded, insipid eyes, ravaged brows and the consciousness of having been conscientious fools. No thank 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.

By labeling the different gods and spirits as the Devil, it created a catchall that coalesced their unique essences in a workable archetype that survived in the popular folklore. Author Gemma Gary captures this idea beautifully when she writes, “Ironically, it may perhaps be the Church, in its keenness to eradicate adherence to pagan divinity by grafting and projecting it onto the diabolical, that has, unwittingly, most thoroughly preserved the potency, liberation and illumination of the ‘Old One’ and handed him back to the Witches as the ‘Devil.

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

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. —

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.

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.

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.

HUGE BELL in the tower of the Council Edifice began to ring. The bell governed the people’s lives. It told them when to begin work and when to stop, when to gather for meetings, when to prepare for a hunt, celebrate an event, or arm for danger. Four bells—the third was resonating now—meant that the day’s business could end. For Kira, it meant the time to report to the Council of Guardians. She hurried toward the central plaza through the crowds of people leaving their workplaces. Matt was waiting on the steps as he had promised. Branch, beside him, was pawing excitedly at a large iridescent beetle, blocking its path again and again with a paw as the beetle tried unsuccessfully to waddle by. The dog looked up and wagged its crooked tail when Kira called a greeting. “What you got?” Matt asked, looking at the small bundle Kira carried on her back.

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.

I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of the Lord’s wrath. He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light; indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long. He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead. He has walled me in so I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains. Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. He has barred my way with blocks of stone; he has made my paths crooked. Like a bear lying in wait, like a lion in hiding, he dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help. He drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows. He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day long. He has filled me with bitter herbs and given me gall to drink. He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust. I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.

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.

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.

That I haven’t told you the parable of the man, the boy, and the mule.” Cettie nodded eagerly. He stared down at the book, thumbing through its pages. “I heard this one when I first went away to study the Mysteries. It was shared with all of us, but I don’t think all of us heard it the same way. That’s the thing about stories. They can touch on truths that some people just are not ready to hear. The tale goes like this. Long before the first flying castles and sky ships and cauldrons of molten steel—before the Fells—life was simpler. A man and his son needed to sell their mule to buy food to last the winter. So they started walking to get to the market, which was very far. They met a fellow traveler along the way who criticized them for not riding the mule. So the man, realizing that his beast of burden wasn’t being used for its purpose, put his son on it to ride. But when they arrived at the first village on their path, some men in the square scoffed and said how inconsiderate the son was for making his father walk. They stopped and watered the beast, and so the father ordered the boy to walk while he rode. Again, they reached the next village, and what did they hear? Some washerwomen complained that the father must be evil to force his son to walk while he rode. Ashamed by their words, the father decided to change yet again. Do you know what he did?” Cettie shook her head no, eager for him to continue. Fitzroy wagged his finger at her. “So they both rode the mule into the next town. By this time, the mule was getting very tired, and when they reached the next village, they were ridiculed for being lazy and working the poor beast half to death! The market was in the very next town, and they feared they’d not be able to sell the poor creature, now it was so spent. And so the father and son cut down a sapling, lashed the mule to the pole, and carried it to the next town. You can imagine what the townsfolk thought as they saw the father and son laboring and exhausted as they approached the town. Who were these country bumpkins who carried a mule on their own shoulders? As they crossed the bridge into town, suffering the jeers and taunts of passersby, one of the ropes broke loose, and the mule kicked free. The boy dropped his end of the pole, and the beast fell into the river and drowned.” “No!” Cettie said, mouth wide open. Fitzroy nodded sagely. “A man with a crooked staff had been following them into town. As

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

Gods? Demons? Elixirs? Fuck all of that! Hadjar didn’t need any reasons to fight when he was called to battle by his honor. Even the word ‘honor’... Who had invented it? What had it meant to the previous generations? What would it mean to the generations after his? Fuck that shit as well! All of it was just nonsense. There were no causes, no consequences, no honor, and no rules. There was only a path. Ant it wasn’t the path of cultivation. It was the path of Life. The path Hadjar had chosen to take. It wasn’t crooked. It had no turns, no ups or downs. There were no stops or breaks. It was a straightforward journey. It led somewhere beyond the horizon, to a place where no man had gone before. His own way. That was all that mattered in this life. Hadjar didn’t have to justify himself if he followed it. The fact that he’d almost strayed off it only confirmed what he already knew, deep down. Hadjar had always done what he’d had to do. When everyone said it was impossible, he did it. When no one believed he would get back up, he rose. When everyone thought he was going to die, Hadjar survived. Because that was his path.

If we want to see God, we may have to see the Devil first. Hell precedes Heaven. There are no easy paths, no straight roads to Paradise. We have to wander along crooked tracks in dark woods and fall into bottomless abysses. Yet, in the end, our struggle makes us fit for Paradise.

She stared at the water until the sun’s reflection became too much, and then reached for her single bag of belongings. Digging around, she found the clay turtle. It was made of earth. It was tiny. She could use it for practice. Small, she thought as she cradled it with both hands. Precise. Silent. Small. She curled her lips in concentration. It was like crooking the tip of her pinky while wiggling her opposite ear. She needed a whole-body effort to keep her focus sufficiently narrow. There was another reason why she didn’t want to seek instruction from a famous bending master with a sterling reputation and wisdom to spare. Such a teacher would never let her kill Jianzhu in cold blood. Her hunger to learn all four elements had nothing to do with becoming a fully realized Avatar. Fire, Air, and Water were simply more weapons she could bring to bear on a single target. And she had to bring her earthbending up to speed too. Small. Precise. The turtle floated upward, trembling in the air. It wasn’t steady the way bent earth should be, more of a wobbling top on its last few spins. But she was bending it. The smallest piece of earth she’d ever managed to control. A minor victory. This was only the beginning of her path. She would need much more practice to see Jianzhu broken in pieces before her feet, to steal his world away from him the way he had stolen hers, to make him suffer as much as possible before she ended his miserable worthless life— There was a sharp crack. The turtle fractured along innumerable fault lines. The smallest parts, the blunt little tail and squat legs, crumbled first. The head fell off and bounced over the edge of the saddle. She tried to close her grip around the rest of it and caught only dust. The powdered clay slipped between her fingers and was taken by the breeze. Her only keepsake of Kelsang flew away on the wind.

[...] the crooked path uncoiling endlessly from the foot that treads it - this is the task of the sorcerer: a star-guided wanderer in the labyrinth of 'I'.

Aye,” Richard grumbled, “but it ruins the eeling, and there’ll be not so many birds. We live well enough now, with no drainage done, a goose to the table whenever we wish, eels and pike for the eating or the market, and our patches of crop land no tax gatherer can find. If the fens be drained, strangers will come in. Wild and lawless they say we be, and that we stink of our fens, but we are free men and better it is to remain so. “Once the gentry ken how rich is the land they’ll have it from us by hook or crook, or they’ll come on with their laws to interfere with the hunting, the digging of peat, or the cutting of thatch. They’d have us bound out to labor on their farms instead of us living free.

For Lincoln state constitutions were the key to abolition.

The path that leads to triumph is long, tedious, and crooked.

It was high summer now. The sky was almost shrouded by the canopy except for the trace of the trail I could see where the trees didn't quite meet. I always liked to look at that line, like a bright river above me to follow, how the path was written in the sky. Everything was lush and alive. I should have been happy. My mother would be gone for two weeks. Thomas and I would be home alone. Ellen would be safe. But instead I felt something I couldn't name, like grief.

The wise know how to counsel. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” He who serves well shall become a master. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” As the rate, so the work. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” Do not poke your finger into the wrong hole. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” It’s not the seriousness that defines the nature of a crime. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” Do not treat a boy as a man. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” Do not rush into judgement lest your ignorance is exposed or lest you do others an injustice. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” A bad master makes a bad servant. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” A man who is full of himself does not understand the world. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” He who would be great should first be humble. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” A child sees what adults have not even dreamt of. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” The man who fears makes himself secure. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” When hardened to a bad habit, we harden. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” Only those who have trodden the path can truly point the direction. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” When a crook keeps his promise, it is still a broken promise. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” He who doesn’t want to give has many excuses to give. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” Ignoring our problems will not make them vanish on their own. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” Gratitude is all that counts. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” Vanity provokes censure. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” Envy sees no good even in the best. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” A drinker justifies his drinking with reasons but gives only excuses. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” Make no rules about another’s habits. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights” To forgive is divine, but to keep on forgiving is bovine. Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, “Funeral Nights

Sonnet of The Benevolent Crook Politics doesn’t mean affairs of the people, It is but a telenovela of sectarian histrionics. Democracy doesn't mean rule of the people, It means a new dictatorship of the charismatic. A paradigm born of selfishness and greed, Is no place for an honest and innocent person. But if politics is the path you choose for reform, Leave theories outside before entering the dungeon. When you are compelled to be crooked, Make sure it is not for any benefit personal. Be the Godfather of crookedness if needed, And manipulate the system to lift the people. All abuse power of politics to climb the social ladder. Be the benevolent crook and use it as social leveler.

That’s because the Constitution—the Constitution as Lincoln and the Republicans understood it—was an antislavery document. To be sure, the founders had made compromises with slavery in order to create the Union, but those proslavery clauses were exceptions in a Constitution whose general rule was freedom. This was antislavery constitutionalism, and it saturated the Republican Party platforms of 1856 as well as 1860. Both platforms asserted that the principles of fundamental human equality and universal liberty “promulgated” in the Declaration of Independence were literally “embodied in the Constitution.” Debates over the meaning of the Declaration were commonplace

As accused Lancashire woman Margaret Johnson explained in 1633, whenever Witches desired to be somewhere, they would be transported in spirit upon a rod, dog, or other such item.69 The meeting itself often took place outside and in liminal settings such as churchyards (between the living and dead), mountaintops (between the land and sky), and fields (between one property and another). In many cases, these settings appeared as Otherworldly parallels to locations in the Midworld. It was claimed, for instance, that the accused Witches of Salem, Massachusetts, convened for their Sabbath in the Reverend Samuel Parris’s pasture.70 Meanwhile, the Witches of German folklore were said to gather on the Brocken, which is the highest peak of the Harz Mountains.71

Accused Witch Isobel Gowdie and her coven began each of their Sabbath meetings by recounting their various acts of magic while the Devil recorded them in his Black Book.72 At this time, the Devil would also instruct Witches on the use of different magical techniques. Moreover, Witches would work new spells and rituals with the assistance of their covenmates.

Recorded instructions for creating a Witch bottle advised one to “stop the urine of the Patient close up in a Bottle, and put into it three Nails, Pins, or Needles, with a little white Salt, keeping the urine always warm.” 33 The magical theory behind the bottle is that it acts as a representation of the ill-wisher’s bladder. The cork prevents them from passing urine while the pins cause them great pain, which would be exacerbated by the bottle being placed on a fire. It is thought that the guilty person would become so anguished that they would be forced to reverse their hex.

Edouard Drumont, a devout Roman Catholic, a professed lover of history, had observed the world about him and concluded that the sickness of modern France—by which he meant France since “La Débâcle”—was finance capitalism and that the nation’s most treacherous human foe was the Jew. The Jew by his very nature, said Drumont, had no sense of justice, none of the finer sensibilities that made civilization possible. Jews were carriers of disease, born criminals and traitors, who could be recognized by their “crooked nose, the eager fingers, the unpleasant odor.

This is me knowing that I have to let you go. That no matter how much I love you, 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, and be more than the person they could ever have become by your side.

They smiled and shook hands, then led Pickett back up the dock and along gracefully curving paths of crushed shell, punctuated by marble benches set into the foliage, heavy with tropical flowers. They climbed a set of marble stairs, went down another pathway, climbed again. Despite the sun, it was cool under the palms, and a gentle but constant breeze stirred the flower-fragrant air. Now and then, Pickett spied buildings between the trees: alabaster marble, like every other structure. Here and there a peacock strutted across the walk, and huge parrots stared down at them from bottlebrush trees.

I don’t conform to hierarchical ideology, Jarvis, I’m a human being. You’re a human being. We’re equals. I’m not going to bow in deference to you just because you’ve been a human being longer than I have, and you chose to pursue a path in life whereby you’re financially rewarded for sharing knowledge with me. That doesn’t make you any better than ma. Respect is earned. Me calling you by your first name has nothing to do with that in any way.

It’s as dark as the inside of a coffin as I pick my way through Sorsha Hall’s hedge maze, but I don’t need my heightened vision to know the way. All I need is memory, having wound through these paths so many times my feet know which turns to take. Water drips steadily from the castle’s eaves, left over from the rainfall earlier in the day. The scent of a bird’s nest crooked in the statue of Immortal Popelin hits my nose.

Every lane in Nyons was crooked and slanting. “Perfect preparation for life,” Elsa had told Marie-Jeanne. “If you only ever walk along level paths, you’ll lose your balance when life gives you a shove—and I promise it will.

IN 1860 Abraham Lincoln ran for president on a Republican Party platform that proved Hale’s point by repeatedly invoking a Constitution that favored freedom over slavery. It proclaimed freedom to be the “normal condition of all the territory of the United States.” The Republicans did not directly call on Congress to pass a law banning slavery from the territories. What they actually said was that Congress had no authority “to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.” It wasn’t that Congress lacked the power to ban slavery, it was that Congress had no constitutional power to allow slavery into the territories.

proclaimed

…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.” ― A.S. Peterson, The Fiddler's Gun

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. So this is me unclasping my fingers. This is my parting, my reluctance, my heartache and my final gift to you. This is me letting you go.

Doubt is painful…but its pain is active rather than passive, purifying rather than stultifying. Far beneath it, no matter how severe its drought, how thoroughly your skepticism seems to have salted the ground of your soul, faith, durable faith, is steadily taking root.

1 My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments within thee, 2 And cause thine ears to hearken unto wisdom, and incline thine heart to understanding, 3 (For if thou callest after knowledge, and cryest for understanding: 4 If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for treasures, 5 Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. 6 For the Lord giveth wisdom, out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. 7 He preserveth the state of the righteous: he is a shield to them that walk uprightly, 8 That they may keep the ways of judgment: and he preserveth the way of his Saints) 9 Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity, and every good path. 10 When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge delighteth thy soul, 11 Then shall counsel preserve thee, and understanding shall keep thee, 12 And deliver thee from the evil way, and from the man that speaketh froward things, 13 And from them that leave the ways of righteousness to walk in the ways of darkness: 14 Which rejoice in doing evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked, 15 Whose ways are crooked and they are lewd in their paths. 16 And it shall deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger, which flattereth with her words. 17 Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. 18 Surely her house tendeth to death, and her paths unto the dead. 19 All they that go unto her, return not again, neither take they hold of the ways of life. 20 Therefore walk thou in the way of good men, and keep the ways of the righteous. 21 For the just shall dwell in the land, and the upright men shall remain in it. 22 But the wicked shall be cut off from ye earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.

Sophie was smiling at the baby, who was making a determined play for the cat’s nose. Vim expected the beast to issue the kind of reprimand children remembered long after the scratches had healed, but the cat instead walked away, all the more dignified for its missing parts. “He must go terrorize mice,” Sophie said, rising with the child in her arms. “You’re telling me that cat still mouses?” Vim asked, taking the baby from her in a maneuver that was beginning to feel automatic. “Of course Pee Wee mouses.” Sophie turned a smile on him. “A few battle scars won’t slow a warrior like him down.” “A name like Pee Wee might.” She wrapped her hand into the crook of his elbow as they started across the alley. “Elizabeth gets more grief over his name than Pee Wee does.” “And rightly so. Why on earth would you inflict a feminine name on a big, black tom cat?” “I didn’t name him Elizabeth. I named him Bête Noir, after the French for black beast. Merriweather started calling him Betty Knorr after some actress, which was a tad too informal for such an animal, and hence he became Elizabeth. He answers to it now.” Vim suppressed the twitching of his lips, because this explanation was delivered with a perfectly straight face. “I suppose all that counts is that the cat recognizes it. It isn’t as if the cats were going to comprehend the French.” “It’s silly.” She paused inside the garden gate, her expression self-conscious. He stopped with her on the path, cradling the baby against his chest and trying to fathom what she needed to hear at the moment. “To the cat it isn’t silly, Sophie. To him, your kindness and care are the difference between life and death.” “He’s just a cat.” But she looked pleased with Vim’s observations. “And this is just a baby. Come.

Come meet me in the middle, somewhere between day and night, the beginning and the end, some place where crooked paths and rocky trails weave together, where the sky is clear and we can share the stars from different places. I want to see your moon rise as my sun settles. I want to know the world as you see it, the place where you stand as you sip your morning coffee and the expression on your face as you watch waves cascading over the sand. I want to know all of the crinkles on your face right before you smile. It’s not enough to know what you like and enjoy; I want to feel it too; I want to feel it the way you feel it. I want to know what the air you breathe tastes like and I want to share a pillow while we sleep. I don’t only want to be with you. I want to meet you in the middle, the place where winding paths on this crazy journey join together, the place where we no longer travel alone.

This was because, despite the porch roof, it was raining on her. Rain originated from nowhere and spattered on her hair and face and shoulders and clothing, then ran off the stairs and formed a fast-running rivulet into the brush. Every part of her dress was covered with monarch butterflies, their orange-and-black stained-glass wings likewise soaked. They clung to her, unable to do anything but slowly move their wings or climb across the fabric. Butterflies are fragile fliers and cannot fly in the rain, or even in the dew. Too much water makes their wings too heavy to fly. This was Marisita Lopez, one of the pilgrims. It had stormed around her ever since she had experienced her first miracle, and now rain constantly poured on her head and out of her eyes. It was not as beatific as one might imagine to live under continuous precipitation in a desert. The ground, instead of enjoying the sudden influx of moisture, was ill-prepared to accept it. The water pooled and ran away, striking down seedlings in its path. Floods, not flowers, followed in Marisita’s wake. Here was a thing she wanted: to taste vanilla without crying. Here was a thing she feared: that the prettiest thing about her was her exterior.

It was not as beatific as one might imagine to live under continuous precipitation in a desert. The ground, instead of enjoying the sudden influx of moisture, was ill-prepared to accept it. The water pooled and ran away, striking down seedlings in its path. Floods, not flowers, followed in Marisita's wake.

I knew you forever and you were always old, soft white lady of my heart. Surely you would scold me for sitting up late, reading your letters, as if these foreign postmarks were meant for me. You posted them first in London, wearing furs and a new dress in the winter of eighteen-ninety. I read how London is dull on Lord Mayor's Day, where you guided past groups of robbers, the sad holes of Whitechapel, clutching your pocketbook, on the way to Jack the Ripper dissecting his famous bones. This Wednesday in Berlin, you say, you will go to a bazaar at Bismarck's house. And I see you as a young girl in a good world still, writing three generations before mine. I try to reach into your page and breathe it back… but life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. This is the sack of time your death vacates. How distant your are on your nickel-plated skates in the skating park in Berlin, gliding past me with your Count, while a military band plays a Strauss waltz. I loved you last, a pleated old lady with a crooked hand. Once you read Lohengrin and every goose hung high while you practiced castle life in Hanover. Tonight your letters reduce history to a guess. The count had a wife. You were the old maid aunt who lived with us. Tonight I read how the winter howled around the towers of Schloss Schwobber, how the tedious language grew in your jaw, how you loved the sound of the music of the rats tapping on the stone floors. When you were mine you wore an earphone. This is Wednesday, May 9th, near Lucerne, Switzerland, sixty-nine years ago. I learn your first climb up Mount San Salvatore; this is the rocky path, the hole in your shoes, the yankee girl, the iron interior of her sweet body. You let the Count choose your next climb. You went together, armed with alpine stocks, with ham sandwiches and seltzer wasser. You were not alarmed by the thick woods of briars and bushes, nor the rugged cliff, nor the first vertigo up over Lake Lucerne. The Count sweated with his coat off as you waded through top snow. He held your hand and kissed you. You rattled down on the train to catch a steam boat for home; or other postmarks: Paris, verona, Rome. This is Italy. You learn its mother tongue. I read how you walked on the Palatine among the ruins of the palace of the Caesars; alone in the Roman autumn, alone since July. When you were mine they wrapped you out of here with your best hat over your face. I cried because I was seventeen. I am older now. I read how your student ticket admitted you into the private chapel of the Vatican and how you cheered with the others, as we used to do on the fourth of July. One Wednesday in November you watched a balloon, painted like a silver abll, float up over the Forum, up over the lost emperors, to shiver its little modern cage in an occasional breeze. You worked your New England conscience out beside artisans, chestnut vendors and the devout. Tonight I will learn to love you twice; learn your first days, your mid-Victorian face. Tonight I will speak up and interrupt your letters, warning you that wars are coming, that the Count will die, that you will accept your America back to live like a prim thing on the farm in Maine. I tell you, you will come here, to the suburbs of Boston, to see the blue-nose world go drunk each night, to see the handsome children jitterbug, to feel your left ear close one Friday at Symphony. And I tell you, you will tip your boot feet out of that hall, rocking from its sour sound, out onto the crowded street, letting your spectacles fall and your hair net tangle as you stop passers-by to mumble your guilty love while your ears die.

I will lead them in paths they have not known. I will make darkness light before them, and crooked places straight.These things I will do for them, and not forsake them. – Isaiah 42:16

As she slid into her fifties, with grace I might add, she learned the art of hatred, pulling on the pain from a broken heart. She kept this pain alive, growing on the outskirts of her soul, like a copse of trees that constantly needed pruning.

You see, Dr. Sherrington,' the devil said, 'we are more alike than you think.' He got up again on all fours looking in the direction of the voice. It was time to face the devil.

Perhaps she was happiest when she was out of control. She looked at the fates and said three little words, not one regret.

And he ate up all her vision, as he had done the first day she saw him so long ago.

The evening pulsed with omens gentle to the eyes, and Valentina had a romantic crush on it all, like every good witch should.

You are exposed ma chère.

Inspiration for my short stories grows from a psychic kernel, a vision of some sort or an eccentric, colorful dream.

There is a point where the universe can deliver you from the verge of regret. I know your love for me will take you there.

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

Earth’s not so bad—” “How would you know?” Tan’elKoth said acidly. “It is only in these past few days that you have had contact with the actual realities of Earth. Are you having fun?” He waved toward the window, where Kollberg now had one hand openly kneading his groin while he leaned one cheek and the side of his open mouth against the glass. Avery flinched and looked away. She hugged herself more tightly. “I don’t understand. If you hate what they’re going to do, why are you helping them?” “I am not helping them!” Suddenly he was on his feet, towering over her, shaking an enormous fist. “I am helping you. I am helping Faith. I am . . .” The passion drained out of him as swiftly as it had arisen. He let his fist open and fall limp against his thigh. “I am trying to go home.” Outside the window, Kollberg panted like an overheated dog. “Well,” Avery said finally. “I’m afraid you’re out of luck.” “How do you mean?” She shook her head. “You’re such a man, Professional. That’s why you can’t find this link of yours.” “I do not understand.” “Of course you don’t. That’s what I mean: You’re a man. You think this link is with the river. It wasn’t. Faith spoke of it, in the car on our way back to Boston when I first picked her up. She was quite clear about it. Her link was never with the river. It was with her mother.” “Her mother—?” “Her dead mother, now.” Tan’elKoth’s eyes narrowed. “I have been a fool,” he said. He spun and seated himself once again at Faith’s side, bending over her with redoubled energy. “Power,” he murmured. “All that is required is a usable source of power—” “What are you doing? She’s dead, Tan’elKoth. There is no link.” “Dead, yes—but the pattern of her consciousness persists, even as your son’s does within me. It was trapped at the instant of her passing. It is powerless, yes—having no body to inform it with will. It is analogous to a computer program stored on disk, you might say: a structure of information that requires only a computer on which to run, and the necessary power to activate.” “What kind of power?” From the doorway behind her, the soulless rasp of Arturo Kollberg said, “My kind of power.” DURING HIS YEARS of walking the world, the crooked knight came to find himself bemazed within a dark and trackless wood. In this wood, all paths led equally to death. The crooked knight did not lose hope; he turned to various guides for help and direction. His first guide was Youthful Dream. Later, he turned to Friendship, then Duty, and finally Reason, but each left him more lost than had the one before. So the crooked knight gave himself up for dead, and simply sat. He would be sitting there still, but for a breeze that came upon him then: a breeze that smelled of wide-open spaces, of limitless skies and bright sun, of ice and high mountains. It was the wind from the dark angel’s wings.

and down. “You must be my mummy, at least until dark.” Lady Bowen did not have the heart to refuse the boy’s touching request, even though she had experienced little of what a “happy family” was herself, so she smiled and nodded her head. “All right, so what do we do first?

Sanctified ignorance, the belief that if we love God and commit our lives to Him everything will just work out, is an immature theology. If you get up each morning with a clean slate, being open to whatever may happen that day, you will live a life of mediocrity. It is not the path of accomplishment, of excellence, of maximizing our impact and witness. The path of least resistance—just going where it seems easiest to go—creates very crooked streams and very frustrated people. The truly godly life is one of focused purpose, having, like the apostle Paul, defined the goal and created a plan for its accomplishment.

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 guess there’s nothing else to say.” “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, crooking a finger. “Come here.” Her throat went dry, and her heart gave a thud. On instinct, she shook her head. His expression turned ruthlessly intent. “Maddie, I’ve been thinking about that mouth of yours for almost twenty-four hours straight. You don’t think I’m going to let you go without touching you, do you?” Had it only been one day? How was that even possible? It seemed as though a lifetime had passed since she’d run out on her wedding. “Um . . .” She swallowed hard and squeaked out, “Yes?” A long pause filled with sexual awareness so thick it practically coated the air. How did he do it, flip the mood? Only moments ago, she’d felt bereft, but with one wicked glance she’d forgotten everything dogging her. “I’ll tell you what.” He smiled, and it was so filled with cunning that the fine hairs on her neck rose in anticipation. “Tell me you won’t regret it and we can end things right here with a friendly pat on the back.” “I-I d-don’t know what you mean,” she lied, loving and hating the direction the conversation had taken. “Do I need to spell it out?” “No?” The word was a question instead of the statement she’d intended. “You want to take care of yourself, right?” She nodded, sensing a trap but unable to stop playing into his hands. He leaned close, placing his elbow on the console, taking up every spare inch of breathing room. “You’re ready to ditch the good Catholic girl and start doing what you want?” The strange mixture of lust and irritation he evoked pulled in her stomach. “Well, when you put it that way.” The curve of his lips held a distinct sexual tilt. “If you get out of this car untouched, tell me you won’t lie in bed late at night and regret it. Tell me you won’t wonder and wish you’d done things differently.” Her pulse hammered and her throat dried up, leaving her unable to breathe, let alone speak. He stroked a path over the line of her jaw, and Maddie forced her eyes to stay open instead of fluttering closed from sheer desire. Why did it feel like an eternity since he’d touched her? Even more troubling, why did his hands feel so right? The slightly rough pads of his fingers trailed down the curve of her neck, leaving an explosion of tingles coursing through her. “And remember, Princess,” he said, in a deep rumble of a voice that vibrated through her as though he were her own personal tuning fork. “Lying is a sin.” She gasped, sucking in the last available bit of air left in the car. “That’s a low blow.” He gave a seductive laugh, filled with heat and promise and the kind of raw passion she’d always dreamed about. “I’m not above playing dirty.” A sly smirk as he rubbed a lazy circle over skin she hadn’t known was sensitive. “In fact, I think you prefer it that way.” “I do not!” Her heart beating far too fast, she clutched at the credit card hard enough to snap it in two. “Liar.” He slipped under the collar of her T-shirt to wrap a possessive hand around the nape of her neck. “I’m waiting.” She gritted her teeth to keep from moaning. How did one man feel so good? Hot and sinful. Irresistible. She whispered, “For what?” “My answer,” he said, inching closer. Their mouths mere inches away. She swallowed hard. The truth sat on the tip of her tongue, and for once in her life, she decided to speak it instead of stuffing it back down. “I’d regret it.” “Exactly,” he said, the word a soft breath against her skin. The pad of his thumb brushed over her bottom lip, sliding over the dampness until it felt swollen. Needy. “I can’t live with myself unless I’ve tasted this mouth.” This

MARCH 31 I WILL MAKE THE CROOKED STRAIGHT AND THE DARKNESS LIGHT MY CHILD, I have taken hold of your hand and will guide you. Hold firmly to My Word, for it is the message that gives life. Encourage My people and give them comfort. I selected and sent you to bring light and My promise of hope to the nations. You will give sight to the blind; you will set prisoners free from dark dungeons. I will lead the blind on roads they have never known; I will guide them on paths they have never traveled. Their road is dark and rough, but I will give light to keep them from stumbling. PSALM 43:3–4; ISAIAH 40:1–4; 42:16–17 Prayer Declaration Lead me, and make Your way straight before my eyes. Make darkness light before me and crooked things straight. Teach me to light the way for the blind and to bring hope to the nations. Give me the treasure of darkness and Your riches, which are stored in secret places. Strengthen me so that men may know there is none beside You. You came to reveal the true light that gives light to every man who comes into the world.

I have great faith in natures that can take complete rest—men who can do nothing, absolutely nothing—and so create a reserve fund of fresh energy for the next hour of need. There is no strength in fidgety feverishness.

Tonight in Crooked Path, we’ll all visit our dear ones’ graves and lay wreaths made of apostrophes: the symbol of something missing.

Dear Daughter, Pray for God’s grace and seek His face. His presence is incredibly safe and He will make your crooked paths straight.

The crooked people conduct to a crooked path.

Dear Daughter, Pray for God’s Grace and seek His face. His presence is incredibly safe and He will make your crooked paths straight.

Upanishads suggests: “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.

With that uncanny awareness of her presence, he stopped exactly a foot short of charging right over her and sketched her a formal bow. “Good afternoon, Miss Wickersham. I hope my attire meets with your approval.” “You look quite the proper gentleman. Brummell himself would swoon with envy.” She reached up to gently tweak a crooked fold of his cravat before realizing how wifely the gesture was. She hastily lowered her hand. It was not her place. Or her right. Stepping away from him, she said with stilted formality, “Your guests have already arrived, my lord. They’re waiting for you in the library.” Gabriel turned in a half circle, betraying his first hint of uncertainty. Beckwith caught him by the elbow and angled him toward the library door. To Samantha, he looked terribly alone, marching into the unknown with nothing but his hope to guide him. She started after him, only to have Beckwith’s hand come down, gently but firmly, on her shoulder. “However dark, Miss Wickersham,” he murmured as Gabriel disappeared into the library, “there are some paths a man must travel alone.

The straight path gets ruined by crooked people.

Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” the Psalmist asks. Just as the glory of God was concealed beneath Jesus, a common-looking man; just as his victory over sin was hidden beneath the shame and blood and suffering of the cross; so God is also veiled beneath the darkness and grief as we travel the crooked path leading from brokenness to healing.

Lulu gave me a crooked smile. “High Fae?” she asked. “You know. The gentry, elves, those posh gits with extradimensional castles, stone spears and unicorns.” “You mean them what step between worlds?” “Could be.” “Who walk on paths unseen and wax and wane with the moon?” “Them sort of people,” I said. “Yeah.

If I lost my brother, I would chase his soul to the end of the world,” Lev said quietly, and Sasha stopped fighting for a moment, paused by the weary timbre of his voice. “If it were me, Sasha, I’d want to strike down everything in my path, just like this, so believe me, I understand—but if I can only have you as a fire, Sasha, as a flame of what you are, then I want you to burn for me. Do you understand? I’ll hold you if you want me to,” he whispered, his voice a crook of a finger to the tired tendrils of her heart. “Want me to keep you close, Sasha, keep you safe? I’ll do it. But if I’m going to know things—intimate things, like how you prefer to be touched,” he said, firmly, in a man’s voice—a lover’s voice—“things I know I’ll never be able to rid from my mind—then do me a favor and let me be selfish. Let me imagine you might have come to my bed for me, even if I can never h—” He broke off when she kissed him again, restless fingers tugging at his coat. “Take this off,” she said gruffly, and he stared down at her, indignant. “Haven’t you been listening?” he demanded, but she only stepped out of his arms, pulling her sweater over her head and watching his gaze drop. “I—Sasha, Sasha, I just said—” “You want me to burn for you?” she asked. “Then watch me burn.

to our congregation,” Savannah whispered leadenly as Bryant

Like the road that got you here, the road through parenthood is unmarked. You can’t cruise through it. Sometimes decisions are quick and instinctual, but often they’re not. Doubts and dilemmas block every straightaway. There’s only one directional sign along the way, and it reads, “Why not?

Without hope, the only thing that keeps you going is either momentum or fear.

The LORD says,   “I was ready to respond, but no one asked for help.        I was ready to be found, but no one was looking for me.   I said, ‘Here I am, here I am!’        to a nation that did not call on my name.[*] 2 All day long I opened my arms to a rebellious people.[*]        But they follow their own evil paths        and their own crooked schemes.

Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.

Remember, you have full control over your reaction.  Take ownership of your life and decide, intentionally, how you want to live your 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

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. Would we all, if we had the chance? What a shame that both miracles and radio waves are invisible, because it would be quite a sight: ribbons of marvel and sound stretching out straight and true from all over the world.

The path of least resistance makes all rivers, and some men, crooked.

Woven of fad and fancy, commerce and technology, war and revolution, freedom and necessity, our individual histories testify to the singular but crooked paths along which we traveled to the present.

There was a dreadful logic here - so obvious he had overlooked it. The real need was for a different kind of book altogether, a book for the times. Very well then, he would explore that infernal map, transcribe its morbid cartography; record the tale of a realm that was at once a city and Hell and himself. In this way Owen Maddock turned his back on the light and sought out the oracles that lurk in darkness. A feverish energy possessed him. He laboured as never before upon his given work. Now he would strive to be obscure, to lead his readers by crooked paths, baffle them with indecipherable mysteries. There would no delicacy of style, only 'thunder at midnight'. Little by little there rose up before his inner eye a new vision to replace that of the White Road that had led him nowhere: a Kingdom of Darkness, a crepuscular domain of monstrous cults that chanted, to the tolling of iron bells and the beating of brazen gongs, unpronounceable demonic litanies. He must familiarise himself with every aspect of this world, its endless roll-calls of Hell, the spells by which the doors of the pit might be opened. He must cast in awful detail the laws by which tortures were administered. He would write for days in a frenzy, his mind ranging on raven's wings through skies black as pitch. "The White Road

I didn’t come here to ruin your wedding, Cassandra.” Falco smiled crookedly. “When I saw you with Luca, it looked to me as if you were where you were supposed to be. I suppose I just had to lay eyes on you one last time to be certain, you understand?” “Oh, Falco.” Cass dropped his hands and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I will never forget you,” she murmured. “Nor I, you,” Falco said after they had broken apart. “I’m returning to Florence, but I truly hope our paths cross again.” He turned to leave, but then stopped. “Tell Luca that he’d better take good care of you. If he hurts you, I’ll come back for him.” He winked. “I’ll come back for both of you.” Cass watched his form retreat. As he turned into the hallway, she called out to him. “Falco.” He glanced back. “Yes?” “You can stay if you like,” she said. “For the wedding.” Falco smiled slightly. “I feel as if I’ve overstayed my welcome as it is.

Emptiness where you wouldn’t expect it speaks to you.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I can hear the sound of a victory parade. I can see the clouds of uncertainty dispersed, the valley of despair exalted, the mountain of obstacles brought low and the crooked path of disappointments made straight. Surely, these times have an expiry date. When they are gone, as they always do, I shall remain - stronger and more experienced.

Flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline. Your job, then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship—just so long as those prayers are sincere. As one line from the Upanishads suggests: “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.

HECATE TRIMORPHIS Antiquity provides the inspired Witch or Warlock with a vast body of knowledge concerning one of the most ancient, revered and feared deity known as Hecate. From ancient Greek and Greco-Roman myth, religion and magick traditions and her many epithets and masks, the Triple Goddess is incarnated in various forms and names in Celtic, Norse, Germanic, Thracian, Scythian and the Hellenistic world through the Christian period. The lore and wisdom of the circle reveals that the feminine and masculine powers which embody the Lord and Lady of the Sabbat are of equal quality. To be awakened as Baphomet – Cain, the Luciferian must attain a beginning of balance between Samael and Lilith. Be it known, these are Names of Power and there are numerous types of Deific Power within the elements and this world of flesh and spirit. Lilith is one mask of the goddess, representing a type of manifestation of that power. The goddess Hecate is another equally terrible and beautiful Deific Mask which is a foundation for the Luciferian Path. Hecate tests, challenges and reveals the complete circle of Above and Below. The Left-Hand Path is one of the Crooked Serpent; the Leviathanic-dragon which emerges from the deepest darkness, coiling upward to be Crowned in the Emerald and Amethyst brilliance of the sun. In this is found metaphor and knowledge, mark well the keys to your Apotheosis upon this path. You will not bow before another; all symbols and powers are incarnated in your flesh and spirit. To join the gods in the Sabbatic Circle of the Dream is to bring under your power the spirits of ancient forces which will be consumed in the diabolic ecstasies of nocturnal flight. Hecate has many faces, names and forms. To understand this great power, we must know her names and the whispers often too soft for the uninitiated to hear. In the Chaldean Oracles, Neoplatonism elevates Hecate to a goddess who has numerous incarnations and a wide authority of power. In the Oracles, Hecate is the Queen of Daimons; she personifies powers of matter and nature. The Chaldean Hecate reflects as a mirror the nature of the soul embodied in matter; she equals in approach the internal condition of the soul and matter. There are several traditions and variations of the Names of Power and Deific Masks Hecate assumes as a Triad, I have listed three examples. HECATE TRIODOTIS (of the Crossroads or Three-ways) Phoibie – Holds a key in her right hand and a blazing torch in her left hand. Dione – Holds a whip in her right hand and a burning torch in her left hand. Nychie – Holds a serpent in her right hand and dagger in her left hand. A second example of the Triad: HECATE TRIMORPHIS (Three-formed) Luna Lucifera (the Moon) in Heaven Diana Artemis on Earth, Hecate Phosphoros (Bringer of Light, Carrier of the Torch, the Morning Star) Hecate Chthonia (of the Underworld)

Expecting anything just gets in the way of the experience itself. And the experience itself is a stunner.

Following the path of least resistance is what makes rivers and men crooked.

Then,’ said Glorfindel, ‘let us cast it into the deeps, and so make the lies of Saruman come true. For it is clear now that even at the Council his feet were already on a crooked path. He knew that the Ring was not lost for ever, but wished us to think so; for he began to lust for it for himself. Yet oft in lies truth is hidden: in the Sea it would be safe.

Self-compassion is the ability to treat ourselves with forgiveness, kindness, and acceptance in a world that believes self-criticism is the quickest path to personal growth.