Descendants Inspiring Quotes

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.

It’s funny. I met a man once who did a lot of mountain climbing. I asked him which was harder, ascending or descending? He said without a doubt descending, because ascending you were so focused on reaching the top, you avoided mistakes. The backside of a mountain is a fight against human nature,” he said. “You have to care as much about yourself on the way down as you did on the way up.

Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think it’s fair? I think it’s fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationalist, but he’s got inspiration. It’s right that you should do all the work and burn all the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There’s stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.

A just society is that society in which ascending sense of reverence and descending sense of contempt is dissolved into the creation of a compassionate society

God descends to earth like fresh spring rain, and at every level his grace is received differently. For some it feels like love, for others like salvation. It feels like safety and warmth at one level, like coming home at another.

My soul is wrapped in harsh repose, Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes, But soft... behold! A sunlight beam Butting a swath of glimmering gleam. My heart expands, 'tis grown a bulge in it, Inspired by your beauty... Effulgent.

Quiet descended on her, calm, content, as her needle, drawing the silk smoothly to its gentle pause, collected the green folds together and attached them, very lightly, to the belt. So on a summer’s day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying “that is all” more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body which lies in the sun on the beach says too, That is all. Fear no more, says the heart. Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall. And the body alone listens to the passing bee; the wave breaking; the dog barking, far away barking and barking.

I look East, West, North, South, and I do not see Sauron; but I see that Saruman has many descendants. We Hobbits have against them no magic weapons. Yet, my gentlehobbits, I give you this toast: To the Hobbits. May they outlast the Sarumans and see spring again in the trees.

Sometimes, you may think you have fallen into an abyss...when in fact, you've just descended to the roots...of the tree of life! Somewhere along your climb, you got lost amongst the branches, and lost in the darkness of the branches, the only way to find the straight way up would be to return to the roots! And from there amongst the roots, you will be able to look straight up and see the top again! And begin your ascent!

A good poem cannot be written with one's mind on the earth. Though one has to write poems about the earth and existence, one cannot write poems while staying grounded. To write an outstanding poem, a flight to the heights of transcendence is needed. However, a person cannot always remain in that elevated state. When one descends, they touch the earth and write ordinary stuff.

She could not descend to an existence where her brain would explode under the pressure of forcing itself not to outdistance incompetence. She could not function to the rule of: Pipe down-keep down-slow down-don't do your best, it is not wanted!

When inspiration comes life is lived in the moment and peace descends. When inspiration leaves thoughts turn to violently killing time

Prayer is the key that opens heaven; the favors we ask descend upon us the very instant our prayers ascend to God.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, — solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude.

There are many things for which I owe gratitude to my dad. Most of all, I am grateful to the only man who could love my mother more than me.

Never forget that you have the blood of generations of Yoruba royalty coursing through your veins, mixed with the blood of the descendants of the gods.

Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.

You have been called to a life of blessing, don`t descend to that of curses.

[Jürgen Habermas' obituary to friend and philosopher, Richard Rorty] One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title 'Wild Orchids and Trotsky.' In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky's dream of justice on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the 'holy', the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: 'My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.

If you’re alive, you’re a creative person. You and I and everyone you know are descended from tens of thousands of years of makers. Decorators, tinkerers, storytellers, dancers, explorers, fiddlers, drummers, builders, growers, problem-solvers, and embellishers—these are our common ancestors. The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying. We are all the chosen few. We are all makers by design. Even if you grew up watching cartoons in a sugar stupor from dawn to dusk, creativity still lurks within you. Your creativity is way older than you are, way older than any of us. Your very body and your very being are perfectly designed to live in collaboration with inspiration, and inspiration is still trying to find you—the same way it hunted down your ancestors.

A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Mark the mastodon. The dinosaur, who left dry tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow. I will give you no hiding place down here. You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness, Have lain too long Face down in ignorance. Your mouths spelling words Armed for slaughter. The rock cries out today, you may stand on me, But do not hide your face. Across the wall of the world, A river sings a beautiful song, Come rest here by my side. Each of you a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege. Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. Yet, today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more. Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I And the tree and stone were one. Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow And when you yet knew you still knew nothing. The river sings and sings on. There is a true yearning to respond to The singing river and the wise rock. So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew, The African and Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek, The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The privileged, the homeless, the teacher. They hear. They all hear The speaking of the tree. Today, the first and last of every tree Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river. Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river. Each of you, descendant of some passed on Traveller, has been paid for. You, who gave me my first name, You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, Then forced on bloody feet, Left me to the employment of other seekers-- Desperate for gain, starving for gold. You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot... You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare Praying for a dream. Here, root yourselves beside me. I am the tree planted by the river, Which will not be moved. I, the rock, I the river, I the tree I am yours--your passages have been paid. Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, Need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream. Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands. Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts. Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings. Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness. The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out upon me, The rock, the river, the tree, your country. No less to Midas than the mendicant. No less to you now than the mastodon then. Here on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, Into your brother's face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning.

Mom could have shared her suffering with her children, but she didn't. She could have succumbed to a world of pain and sorrow, but she didn't. Instead she loved each of us deeper, and found even more reasons to celebrate our lives together.

Many years from now, our descendants will look back on the use of animals for food—particularly the intense animal suffering in factory farms—as a moral atrocity.

Don`t descend to the lowest ebb.

Black people in America, the descendants of slaves-the despised, mistreated, and shunned-are the most resilient people in the United States. (from... How to Move Black America Forward)

They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic. One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe---a woman---had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given an utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these: "I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out. "I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward. "I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both. "I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, brining a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place---then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement---and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and faltering voice. "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Even a moment's reflection will help you see that the problem of using your time well is not a problem of the mind but of the heart. It will only yield to a change in the very way we feel about time. The value of time must change for us. And then the way we think about it will change, naturally and wisely. That change in feeling and in thinking is combined in the words of a prophet of God in this dispensation. It was Brigham Young, and the year was 1877, and he was speaking at April general conference. He wasn't talking about time or schedules or frustrations with too many demands upon us. Rather, he was trying to teach the members of the Church how to unite themselves in what was called the united order. The Saints were grappling with the question of how property should be distributed if they were to live the celestial law. In his usual direct style, he taught the people that they were having trouble finding solutions because they misunderstood the problem. Particularly, he told them they didn't understand either property or the distribution of wealth. Here is what he said: With regard to our property, as I have told you many times, the property which we inherit from our Heavenly Father is our time, and the power to choose in the disposition of the same. This is the real capital that is bequeathed unto us by our Heavenly Father; all the rest is what he may be pleased to add unto us. To direct, to counsel and to advise in the disposition of our time, pertains to our calling as God's servants, according to the wisdom which he has given and will continue to give unto us as we seek it. [JD 18:354] Time is the property we inherit from God, along with the power to choose what we will do with it. President Young calls the gift of life, which is time and the power to dispose of it, so great an inheritance that we should feel it is our capital. The early Yankee families in America taught their children and grandchildren some rules about an inheritance. They were always to invest the capital they inherited and live only on part of the earnings. One rule was "Never spend your capital." And those families had confidence the rule would be followed because of an attitude of responsibility toward those who would follow in later generations. It didn't always work, but the hope was that inherited wealth would be felt a trust so important that no descendent would put pleasure ahead of obligation to those who would follow. Now, I can see and hear Brigham Young, who was as flinty a New Englander as the Adams or the Cabots ever hoped to be, as if he were leaning over this pulpit tonight. He would say something like this, with a directness and power I wish I could approach: "Your inheritance is time. It is capital far more precious than any lands or stocks or houses you will ever get. Spend it foolishly, and you will bankrupt yourself and cheapen the inheritance of those that follow you. Invest it wisely, and you will bless generations to come. “A Child of Promise”, BYU Speeches, 4 May 1986

No matter who our ancestors are, our own personal and monumental task is to become the best person that we can possibly be - someone in whom our own descendants in times to come can take great pride and find inspiration.

I saw you there, In a dress of virgin white. Like an angel descended from heaven To be here amongst ordinary mortals. I saw you there, Your big, brown eyes. Like the moist soil after the rains Full of hope, courage & life. I saw you there Your dark hair, curly. Like the dark clouds trying vainly to mask The moons eternal beauty. I saw you there Inspiring hope and life. Like the rainbow that brings a smile after thunder Lighting and the dull grey sky. I saw you there and realised the purpose of this life. Like the firely loves the light, to love you for the rest of my life. I saw you there and met my true self. I never knew Love This was Love. Love at first sight.

History will be kind to me for I have written it. Winston Churchill

Leadership never ascends from the pew to the pulpit, but invariably descends from the pulpit to the pew.

Hope is my enemy. She is a sucuubus who descends upon sleeping humankind, whispering that there is a future. A broth future, as a matter of fact; as long as we persevere in extending our essences through the lives of our children, and through their children. She is a lost, a snakeoil salesman bartering chimira for generative fluid, which she sucks out of us before casting out withered husks onto the fire. And so we fall, row upon row like seasons of corn, but not until we relinquish our seed into her exploitive hands. For in the end, we all die, and only Hope lives on. And we for, sometimes mourned for a season, but presently forgotton. Ultimately, like it or not, we are the futures dirt. This is the state of affairs we choose to subject our children to

If the people of Old Earth, our ancestors and their descendants today who remain, could keep building, could keep trying, how can we do less? We are their children, and while we bought to the stars with us all the faults and the problems and the flaws of the past, we also bought the good things, the determination, and the willingness to help others, and the imagination to build things greater then every shortcoming humanity has ever known.

With that in mind, I try to imagine the greatest gift I could've given my father. And as sleep descends on me, the answer seems strangely clear: my faith in his idols. That was what he wanted all along - to feel that we were united by something permanent, to know that as long as he and I believed in the same thing, we would never be apart.

There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them. John Boyne April 28, 1789: The real-life mutiny that inspired John Boyne's novel, Mutiny on the Bounty, took place aboard the HMS Bounty 224 years ago today. Half the ship's crew, seduced by several months of good life on Tahiti, rose up against Captain William Bligh. Some of the mutineers' descendants still live on Pitcairn Island

Could it possible for humans to breath under water? A fetus in its mother's womb is certainly alive in an aquatic environment. During the greatest holocaust the world has ever known, pregnant America-bound African slaves were thrown overboard by the thousands during labor for being sick and disruptive cargo. Is it possible that they could have given birth at sea to babies that never needed air. Are Drexians water-breathing, aquatically-mutated descendants of those unfortunate victims of human greed? Have they been spared by god to teach us or terrorize us? Their stories took one of the most gruesome details of the Atlantic slave trade and reframed it. The murder of enslaved women was reimagined as an escape from murderous oppression and the founding of a utopia civilization.

If the Wampanoags are as much our fellow Americans as the descendants of the Pilgrims, and if their history can be as instructional and inspirational as that of the English, then why continue to tell a Thanksgiving myth that focuses exclusively on the colonists’ struggles rather than theirs?

Last night I danced. My body rose from its slump for the first time since the beginning of sorrows—my fingers beckoning to the stars at arm's length, back arching as tingles bubbled up my spine, hips caught in a silent tempo while on tiptoe I twirled in endless euphoric circles. It didn't matter that you loved me or that you didn't. For I was wanted by the gods last night, their seraphs and muses descending on moonbeams into my midst, caressing my face and gliding their spirited arms about my waist, lifting my toes from the soil that I might feel what it is to fly without heaviness of heart. I danced with them under the glow of a loyal moon. For one brief, visceral dance I joyed as Heaven joys—in endless bliss. And the universe cherished me.

The depths to which you descend point to the heights to which you will rise.

For aeons past, there were many gods who descended to be humans, yet there were not many humans who ascended back to their divinity.

You can't have a conversation with your descendants when you are dead, but they can when they are alive; write a book!

Bernice III was the first queen of Egypt to rule without a consort in over a millennium. Though her reign was brief, her example inspired her descendant Cleopatra to rule alone.

perhaps, if we are descended from the rib cage of man, man should learn how to take care of his own body. show them what it looks like to be powerful. to know it.

The fools thought they could treat her like a flower-take away her sunlight and water so she would shrivel up and die. But she was more the stubborn plant, the kind that thrived anywhere if that's what it took to live. Their first mistake was in thinking obstacles gave them an upper hand. Little did they know, she would always find a way to grow through cracks in the stone.

What were they thinking?' we ask about our ancestors, but we know that, a century hence, our descendents will ask the same thing about us. Who knows what will strike them as strangest? The United States incarcerates 1 percent of its population and subjects many thousands of inmates to years of solitary confinement. In Saudi Arabia, women are forbidden to drive. There are countries today in which homosexuality is punishable by life in prison or by death. Then there's the sequestered reality of factory farming, in which hundreds of millions of mammals, and billions of birds, live a squalid brief existence. Or the toleration of extreme poverty, inside and outside the developed world. One day, people will find themselves thinking not just that an old practice was wrong and a new one right but that there was something shameful in the old ways. In the course of the transition, many will change what they do because they are shamed out of an old way of doing things. So it is perhaps not too much to hope that if we can find the proper place for honor now, we can make the world better.

It was Virgil's country and there was a wind that seemed to rise from the fields and descend upon us in a long Virgilian sigh, for the land that has inspired sentiment in the poet ultimately receives its sentiment from him.

Audience of angels descend in the ambiance reciting praises in your glory, when you wear your dance shoes, when you arrive at the stage and with every step you take beneath your feet heaven moves. That is the power of dance.

It is by descending into the depths of his own self that man wanders through all the dimensions of the world; He sees as being that which he sees, perceiving the seer to be the same as the seen. Heart is the giver of grace, the Guide.

Do I think it was inherent nobility that brought us out here?” He shook his head. “Maybe. I don’t call it nobility, though. I think it’s our innate human need to champion the underdog. We are constant optimists. We’re the emotional descendents of the caveman who stood defiant in the front of the wooly mammoth. We rebuild cities at the base of Vesuvius, get back on the bicycle when we fall off, whack that hornet’s nest every spring. Humans cheer for the couldn’t be, believe in the shouldn’t be. We love causes; the harder, the more lost they are, the more we love them. Is that nobility?Maybe. Maybe it’s a pernicious genetic defect that makes our species susceptible to shared delusion. Whatever it is, it keeps life interesting.

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult. To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.

The part of the Lake District that Beatrix Potter chose as her own was not only physically beautiful, it was a place in which she felt emotionally rooted as a descendant of hard-working north-country folk. The predictable routines of farm life appealed to her. There was a realism in the countryside that nurtured a deep connection. The scale of the villages was manageable. Yet the vast desolateness of the surrounding fells was awe-inspiring. It was mysterious, but easily imbued with fantasy and tamed by imagination. The sheltered lakes and fertile valleys satisfied her love of the pastoral. The hill farms and the sheep on the high fells demanded accountability. There was a longing in Beatrix Potter for association with permanence: to find a place where time moved slowly, where places remained much as she remembered them from season to season and from year to year.

Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?'Our father gripped the bannister. His hands were liverspotted and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Corrigan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost. 'My own sons,' he said. We made a bed for him on a sofa in the living room, but even then Corrigan refused to stay under the same roof; he went walking in the direction of the city center and I wondered what alley he might be found in later that night, what fist he might walk into, whose bottle he might climb down inside.

Thinking back, ladies, looking back, gentlemen, thinking and looking back on my European tour, I feel a heavy sadness descend upon me. Of course, it is partly nostalgia, looking back at that younger me, bustling around Europe, having adventures and overcoming obstacles that, at the time, seemed so overwhelming, but now seem like just the building blocks of a harmless story. But here is the truth of nostalgia: we don’t feel it for who we were, but who we weren’t. We feel it for all the possibilities that were open to us, but that we didn’t take. Time is like wax, dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes, and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past, a solid single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held. It is impossible - no matter how blessed you are by luck or the government or some remote, invisible deity gently steering your life with hands made of moonlight and wind - it is impossible not to feel a little sad, looking at that bit of wax. That bit of the past. It is impossible not to think of all the wild forms that wax now will never take. The village, glimpsed from a train window, beautiful and impossible and impossibly beautiful on a mountaintop, and you wonder what it would be if you stepped off the train and walked up the trail to its quiet streets and lived there for the rest of your life. The beautiful face of that young man from Luftknarp, with his gaping mouth and ashy skin, last seen already half-turned away as you boarded the bus, already turning towards a future without you in it, where this thing between you that seemed so possible now already and forever never was. All variety of lost opportunity spied from the windows of public transportation, really. It can be overwhelming, this splattered, inert wax recording every turn not taken. ‘What’s the point?’ you ask. ’Why bother?’ you say. ’Oh, Cecil,’ you cry. ’Oh, Cecil.’ But then you remember - I remember! - that we are even now in another bit of molten wax. We are in a moment that is still falling, still volatile, and we will never be anywhere else. We will always be in that most dangerous, most exciting, most possible time of all: the Now. Where we never can know what shape the next moment will take. Stay tuned next for, well, let’s just find out together, shall we?

I had entered the Green [of Glasgow] by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street—had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder. I then saw that I must get rid of the condensed steam and injection water if I used a jet, as in Newcomen's engine. Two ways of doing this occurred to me. First, the water might be run off by a descending pipe, if an outlet could be got at the depth of 35 or 36 feet, and any air might be extracted by a small pump. The second was to make the pump large enough to extract both water and air. ... I had not walked further than the Golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind. {In Robert Hart's words, a recollection of the description of Watt's moment of inspiration, in May 1765, for improving Thomas Newcomen's steam engine.}

Why was it not good for man to be alone? If it were only man's loneliness with which God was concerned, he might have provided other companionship. But he provided woman, for she was to be man's helpmeet. She was to act in partnership with him. . . . The Lord God gave woman a different personality and temperament than man. . . . In the world today there are observed strenuous efforts to distort and desecrate this divine pattern. . . . The conventional wisdom of the day would have you be equal with men. We say, we would not have you descend to that level. More often than not the demand for equality means the destruction of the inspired arrangement that God has decreed for man, woman, and the family. Equality should not be confused with equivalence.

Construction work was the city’s new brutalist art form, erecting its installations wherever you looked. Tall buildings fell and construction sites rose. Pipes and cables rose from and descended into the hidden depths. Telephone landlines ceased to work and water and power and gas services were randomly suspended. Construction work was the art of making the city become aware of itself as a fragile organism at the mercy of forces against which there was no appeal. Construction work was the mighty metropolis being taught the lessons of vulnerability and helplessness. Construction workers were the grand conceptual artists of our time and their installations, their savage holes in the ground, inspired not only hatred—because most people disliked modern art—but also awe.

Because your rational mind knows that tunnels have two ends, your emotional mind can be kept in check when pitch blackness descends in the confusing middle. Instead of collapsing into a nervous mess, the director who has a clear internal model of what creativity is—and the discomfort it requires—finds it easier to trust that light will shine again. The key is to never stop moving forward.

The sin, both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave them free will: thus surrendering a portion of His omnipotence (it is again a deathlike or descending movement) because He saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, He could work out (and this is the reascent) a deeper happiness and a fuller splendour than any world of automata would admit. —from Miracles

When Elizabeth finally descended the stairs on her way to the dining room she was two hours late. Deliberately. “Good heavens, you’re tardy, my dear!” Sir Francis said, shoving back his chair and rushing to the doorway where Elizabeth had been standing, trying to gather her courage to do what needed to be done. “Come and meet my guests,” he said, drawing her forward after a swift, disappointed look at her drab attire and severe coiffure. “We did as you suggested in your note and went ahead with supper. What kept you abovestairs so long?” “I was at prayer,” Elizabeth said, managing to look him straight in the eye. Sir Francis recovered from his surprise in time to introduce her to the three other people at the table-two men who resembled him in age and features and two women of perhaps five and thirty who were both attired in the most shockingly revealing gowns Elizabeth had ever seen. Elizabeth accepted a helping of cold meat to silence her protesting stomach while both women studied her with unhidden scorn. “That is a most unusual ensemble you’re wearing, I must say,” remarked the woman named Eloise. “Is it the custom where you come from to dress so…simply?” Elizabeth took a dainty bite of meat. “Not really. I disapprove of too much personal adornment.” She turned to Sir Francis with an innocent stare. “Gowns are expensive. I consider them a great waste of money.” Sir Francis was suddenly inclined to agree, particularly since he intended to keep her naked as much as possible. “Quite right!” he beamed, eyeing the other ladies with pointed disapproval. “No sense in spending all that money on gowns. No point in spending money at all.” “My sentiments exactly,” Elizabeth said, nodding. “I prefer to give every shilling I can find to charity instead.” “Give it away?” he said in a muted roar, half rising out of his chair. Then he forced himself to sit back down and reconsider the wisdom of wedding her. She was lovely-her face more mature then he remembered it, but not even the black veil and scraped-back hair could detract from the beauty of her emerald-green eyes with their long, sooty lashes. Her eyes had dark circles beneath them-shadows he didn’t recall seeing there earlier in the day. He put the shadows down to her far-too-serious nature. Her dowry was creditable, and her body beneath that shapeless black gown…he wished he could see her shape. Perhaps it, too, had changed, and not for the better, in the past few years. “I had hoped, my dear,” Sir Francis said, covering her hand with his and squeezing it affectionately, “that you might wear something else down to supper, as I suggested you should.” Elizabeth gave him an innocent stare. “This is all I brought.” “All you brought?” he uttered. “B-But I definitely saw my footmen carrying several trunks upstairs.” “They belong to my aunt-only one of them is mine,” she fabricated hastily, already anticipating his next question and thinking madly for some satisfactory answer. “Really?” He continued to eye her gown with great dissatisfaction, and then he asked exactly the question she’d expected: “What, may I ask, does your one truck contain if not gowns?” Inspiration struck, and Elizabeth smiled radiantly. “Something of great value. Priceless value,” she confided. All faces at the table watched her with alert fascination-particularly the greedy Sir Francis. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense, love. What’s in it?” “The mortal remains of Saint Jacob.

Pourtant, s'il n'y a aucune raison de vivre sans enfant, comment pouvait-il y en avoir une de vivre avec ? Répondre à une vie en lui faisant succéder une autre vie est un simple transfert des responsabilités sur la génération suivante ; un déplacement qui constitue un report lâche et potentiellement infini. On peut prévoir que la réponse de tes enfants sera de procréer à leur tour, et se faisant de se soustraire, de se défausser de leur propre vide sur leur descendance.

Has any one at the end of the nineteenth century any distinct notion of what poets of a stronger age understood by the word inspiration? If not, I will describe it. If one had the smallest vestige of superstition left in one, it would hardly be possible completely to set aside the idea that one is the mere incarnation, mouthpiece, or medium of an almighty power. The idea of revelation, in the sense that something which profoundly convulses and upsets one becomes suddenly visible and audible with indescribable certainty and accuracy―describes the simple fact. One hears―one does not seek; one takes―one does not ask who gives. A thought suddenly flashes up like lightening; it comes with necessity, without faltering. I have never had any choice in the matter. There is an ecstasy so great that the immense strain of it is sometimes relaxed by a flood of tears, during which one's steps now involuntarily rush and anon involuntarily lag. There is the feeling that one is utterly out of hand, with the very distinct consciousness of an endless number of fine thrills and titillations descending to one's very toes. There is a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy parts do not act as antitheses to the rest, but are produced and required as necessary shades of color in such an overflow of light. There is an instinct of rhythmic relations which embraces a whole world of forms (length, the need of a wide-embracing rhythm, is almost the measure of the force of an inspiration, a sort of counterpart to its pressure and tension). Everything happens quite involuntary, as if in a tempestuous outburst of freedom, of absoluteness, of power and divinity. The involuntary nature of the figures and similes is the most remarkable thing; everything seems to present itself as the readiest, the truest, and simplest means of expression. It actually seems, to use one of Zarathustra's own phrases, as if all things came to one, and offered themselves as similes. . . .

Walker-thinkers have found various ways to accommodate the gifts that their walking brings. Caught paperless on his walks in the Czech enclaves of Iowa, maestro Dvořák scribbles the string quartets that visited his brain on his starched white shirt cuffs (so the legend goes). More proactively, Thomas Hobbes fashioned a walking stick for himself with an inkwell attached, and modern poet Mary Oliver leaves pencils in the trees along her usual pathways, in case a poem descends during her rambles.

Although Greenland's Natural defenses discouraged settlement, some hardy souls insisted, Europeans returned to Greenland, led by a Danish-Norwegian missionary named Hans Egede. Hoping to discover Viking descendants, Egede instead found Inuit people, so he stayed to spread the gospel. Colonization followed though few Danes saw the point of the place. Unlike the native North Americans, the native Inuit people of Greenland never surrendered their majority status to outsiders, though they did embrace Christianity.

Tyson emails back: “I’m going to tell you the same thing that I told Henry Louis Gates” (Gates had asked Tyson to appear on his show Finding Your Roots): My philosophy of root-finding may be unorthodox. I just don’t care. And that’s not a passive, but active absence of caring. In the tree of life, any two people in the world share a common ancestor—depending only on how far back you look. So the line we draw to establish family and heritage is entirely arbitrary. When I wonder what I am capable of achieving, I don’t look to family lineage, I look to all human beings. That’s the genetic relationship that matters to me. The genius of Isaac Newton, the courage of Gandhi and MLK, the bravery of Joan of Arc, the athletic feats of Michael Jordan, the oratorical skills of Sir Winston Churchill, the compassion of Mother Teresa. I look to the entire human race for inspiration for what I can be—because I am human. Couldn’t care less if I were a descendant of kings or paupers, saints or sinners, the valorous or cowardly. My life is what I make of it.

That sacred army, that Christ espoused with his blood, displayed itself in the form of a white rose, but the Angel other, that sees and sings the glory, of him who inspires it with love, as it flies, and sings the excellence that has made it as it is, descended continually into the great flower, lovely with so many petals, and climbed again to where its love lives ever, like a swarm of bees, that now plunges into the flowers, and now returns, to where their labour is turned to sweetness. Their faces were all of living flame, their wings of gold, and the rest of them so white that snow never reached that limit. When they dropped into the flower, they offered, to tier on tier, the peace and ardour that they acquired with beating wings: and the presence of such a vast flying swarm between the flower and what was beyond it, did not dilute the vision or the splendour: because the Divine Light so penetrates the Universe, to the measure of its Value, that nothing has the power to prevent it. This kingdom, safe and happy, crowded with ancient peoples and the new, had sight and Love all turned towards one point.

From that point of view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen before. It seemed strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had seemed unattainable, had at last been realized. In the clear morning light he gazed now at the city and now at the plan, considering its details, and the assurance of possessing it agitated and awed him. "But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here is this capital at my feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange, beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In what light must I appear to them!" thought he, thinking of his troops. "Here she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men," he reflected, glancing at those near him and at the troops who were approaching and forming up. "One word from me, one movement of my hand, and that ancient capital of the Tsars would perish. But my clemency is always ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be magnanimous and truly great. But no, it can't be true that I am in Moscow," he suddenly thought. "Yet here she is lying at my feet, with her golden domes and crosses scintillating and twinkling in the sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy… . It is just this which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know him." (It seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what was taking place lay in the personal struggle between himself and Alexander.) "From the height of the Kremlin—yes, there is the Kremlin, yes—I will give them just laws; I will teach them the meaning of true civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember their conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not, and do not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false policy of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in Moscow I will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people. I do not wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored monarch. 'Boyars,' I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire the peace and welfare of all my subjects.' However, I know their presence will inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly, impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in Moscow? Yes, there she lies.

We believe in America, where the most precious cultural enduring legacy is etched into the hearts of humble enlightened descendants of revolutionists, immigrants, people of an oppressed to fight for independence and destitute freedom lovers to come together under one elevated flag, one noble heart, one unified awe-inspiring voice and one majestic nation of the United States Of America in recognizing the humanity, freedom, liberty to reveal a sacred place where no dream is too big and no dreamer is too small, forevermore. God bless America, the miracle of fortitude and infinite hope.

Walking into a bookshop is a depressing thing. It’s not the pretentious twats, browsing books as part of their desirable lifestyle. It’s not the scrubby members of staff serving at the counter: the pseudo-hippies and fucking misfits. It’s not the stink of coffee wafting out from somewhere in the building, a concession to the cult of the coffee bean. No, it’s the books. I could ignore the other shit, decide that maybe it didn’t matter too much, that when consumerism meets culture, the result is always going to attract wankers and everything that goes with them. But the books, no, they’re what make your stomach sink and that feeling of dark syrup on the brain descend. Look around you, look at the shelves upon shelves of books – for years, the vessels of all knowledge. We’re part of the new world now, but books persist. Cheap biographies, pulp fiction; glossy covers hiding inadequate sentiments. Walk in and you’re surrounded by this shit – to every side a reminder that we don’t want stimulation anymore, we want sedation. Fight your way through the celebrity memoirs, pornographic cook books, and cheap thrills that satisfy most and you get to the second wave of vomit-inducing product: offerings for the inspired and arty. Matte poetry books, classics, the finest culture can provide packaged and wedged into trendy coverings, kidding you that you’re buying a fashion accessory, not a book. But hey, if you can stomach a trip further into the shop, you hit on the meatier stuff – history, science, economics – provided they can stick ‘pop.’ in front of it, they’ll stock it. Pop. psychology, pop. art, pop. life. It’s the new world – we don’t want serious anymore, we want nuggets of almost-useful information. Books are the past, they’re on the out. Information is digital now; bookshops, they’re somewhere between gallery and museum.

The flower-covered grave of the saint in the inner room could be seen dimly through the narrow doorway. In front of it was a wide vestibule where about two dozen people were seated in a circle. One of them was singing lustily some Persian verses, while others kept the time by clapping their hands; they joined in the refrain which was sung in chorus. Like rising tidal waves, the tempo of the singing was getting faster and faster, the clapping became more frantic and heads rolled from side to side, keeping time with the tempestuous melody. Eyes were closed and everyone was lost in the surging waves of emotion that seemed to flow out of the Sufistic poetry of the great Roomi. Then, to his amazement Anwar saw a man in the centre of the crowd open his eyes and stare vacantly. For a moment this man was silent, ominously silent and motionless in the midst of the emotional storm that raged around him. Then he was caught by a sudden frenzy, his whole body quivered and moved, beating time to the song which by now had reached a weird and frightening crescendo, faster and faster, louder and louder. The man's hands rose high in the air and as if clutching at an unseen rope, he raised himself and started to dance, wildly, ecstatically, tearing his clothes and pulling his hair, completely unselfconscious and unrestrained, oblivious of everything by some mysterious inner urge that demanded expression in this wild manner. And then the song died on the lips of the singer, the waves of emotion receded and in the ghostly silence that descended upon the assembly the standing figure of the man in the centre which looked inspired and hallowed a moment ago, suddenly appeared ridiculous and grotesque. For a few moments he stood as if poised for another outburst of frenzy. Then, deprived of the emotional support of the song, his knees sagged and he collapsed to the ground. For several minutes Anwar was speechless; so great had the effect of this spectacle been on him. His pulse beat faster, his mind was in a whirl and, as the song stopped, he felt a gnawing emptiness in his bowels. This then was Qawwali, the ecastatic ritual of the Persian Sufis.

A late arrival had the impression of lots of loud people unnecessarily grouped within a smoke-blue space between two mirrors gorged with reflections. Because, I suppose, Cynthia wished to be the youngest in the room, the women she used to invite, married or single, were, at the best, in their precarious forties; some of them would bring from their homes, in dark taxis, intact vestiges of good looks, which, however, they lost as the party progressed. It has always amazed me - the capacity sociable weekend revelers have of finding almost at once, by a purely empiric but very precise method, a common denominator of drunkenness, to which everybody loyally sticks before descending, all together, to the next level. The rich friendliness of the matrons was marked by tomboyish overtones, while the fixed inward look of amiably tight men was like a sacrilegious parody of pregnancy. Although some of the guests were connected in one way or another with the arts, there was no inspired talk, no wreathed, elbow-propped heads, and of course no flute girls. From some vantage point where she had been sitting in a stranded mermaid pose on the pale carpet with one or two younger fellows, Cynthia, her face varnished with a film of beaming sweat, would creep up on her knees, a proffered plate of nuts in one hand, and crisply tap with the other the athletic leg of Cochran or Corcoran, an art dealer, ensconced, on a pearl-grey sofa, between two flushed, happily disintegrating ladies. At a further stage there would come spurts of more riotous gaiety. Corcoran or Coransky would grab Cynthia or some other wandering woman by the shoulder and lead her into a corner to confront her with a grinning imbroglio of private jokes and rumors, whereupon, with a laugh and a toss of her head, he would break away. And still later there would be flurries of intersexual chumminess, jocular reconciliations, a bare fleshy arm flung around another woman's husband (he standing very upright in the midst of a swaying room), or a sudden rush of flirtatious anger, of clumsy pursuit-and the quiet half smile of Bob Wheeler picking up glasses that grew like mushrooms in the shade of chairs. ("The Vane Sisters")

Writing is an act of profound solitude. Alone, the writer descends into silence and summons entire worlds. Each one shaped by the scars and triumphs of their own journey, where love, once radiant, often fades to shadow. Within the sanctuary of the page, the writer claims the power to mend what reality has broken, to orchestrate justice and beauty in a universe entirely their own. The alchemy of language is not mere chance, nor is it magic, it is the writer’s relentless courage to plunge into the deepest chasms of the self. To unearth raw emotion and shape it into words that pulse with life. In doing so, the writer does not simply tell a story, they invite the reader to bleed, to hope, to remember, as if every feeling were their own.

I come back, always, to the metaphoric response of the Kabbalah—the mystical branch of Judaism that inspired Leonard Cohen’s broken “Hallelujah.” That, in the beginning, all of creation was a vessel filled with divine light. That it broke apart, and now the shards of holiness are strewn all around us. Sometimes it’s too dark to see them, sometimes we’re too distracted by pain or conflict. But our task is simple—to bend down, dig them out, pick them up. And in so doing, to perceive that light can emerge from darkness, death gives way to rebirth, the soul descends to this riven world for the sake of learning how to ascend. And to realize that we all notice different shards; I might see a lump of coal, but you spot the gold glimmering beneath.

What is the purpose of my writing about the various experiences of my life? It is not for publicity, but with the hope that the reader, especially my descendants, may plan a career to which they are naturally best adapted. Most children are born with a gift or talent which can be noticed in early childhood and should be encouraged and directed in the right way. Solomon said, 'Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Train does not mean compel, or to compare him with other children, but to encourage him in that for which he has a natural tendency. The boy who will become proficient in a lawful trade or profession, other things being favorable, will be a value to society and remunerative to himself and others.

Through their wickedness we were divided amongst ourselves; and the better to keep their thrones and be at ease, they armed the Druze to fight the Arab, and stirred up the Shiite to attack the Sunnite, and encouraged the Kurdish to butcher the Bedouin, and cheered the Mohammedan to dispute with the Christian. Until when shall a brother continue killing his own brother upon his mother's bosom? Until when shall the Cross be kept apart from the Crescent before the eyes of God? Oh Liberty, hear us, and speak in behalf of but one individual, for a great fire is started with a small spark. Oh Liberty, awaken but one heart with the rustling of thy wings, for from one cloud alone comes the lightning which illuminates the pits of the valleys and the tops of the mountains. Disperse with thy power these black clouds and descend like thunder and destroy the thrones that were built upon the bones and skulls of our ancestors.

Oh, how weary I grow. How I writhed, and yawned, and nodded, and revived! How I pinched and pricked myself, and rubbed my eyes, and stood up, and sat down again, and nudged Joseph to inform me if he would ever have done. I was condemned to hear all out: finally, he reached the 'First of the Seventy-First.' At that crisis, a sudden inspiration descended on me; I was moved to rise and denounce Jabez Branderham as the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon. 'Sir,' I exclaimed, 'sitting here within these four walls, at one stretch, I have endured and forgiven the four hundred and ninety heads of your discourse. Seventy times seven times have I plucked up my hat and been about to depart—Seventy times seven times have you preposterously forced me to resume my seat. The four hundred and ninety-first is too much. Fellow-martyrs, have at him! Drag him down, and crush him to atoms, that the place which knows him may know him no more!

In Giorgi’s system, as with Pico, the system is not astrological in the sense of judicial astrology in which man is conditioned by his horoscope, some of the influences in which might be bad, for example a bad influence of Saturn. In this system, as with Lull and Pico, all the celestial influences are good, and it is only a bad reception of them which can make them bad or unfortunate. There is thus free-will in the system, free-will to make a good, not a bad, use of the stars. The planets are linked to the angelic hierarchies and the Sephiroth. Thus the planetary influences pour down on man purified by the Christian angels and the Cabalist Sephiroth. Though all are equally good they are placed in a descending order of importance matched to the order of the hierarchies.18 Thus there are no bad or unfortunate planets. On the contrary, Saturn, unfortunate and bad in normal astrological theory is placed highest in the list. Being the outermost or highest planet in the cosmic order, he is nearest to the divine source of being and therefore associated with the loftiest contemplations. ‘Saturnians’ are not those poor and unfortunate characters of traditional astrology but inspired students and contemplators of highest truths.

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

write animal stories. This one was called Dialogues Between a Cow and a Filly; a meditation on ethics, you might say; it had been inspired by a short business trip to Brittany. Here’s a key passage from it: ‘Let us first consider the Breton cow: all year round she thinks of nothing but grazing, her glossy muzzle ascends and descends with impressive regularity, and no shudder of anguish comes to trouble the wistful gaze of her light-brown eyes. All that is as it ought to be, and even appears to indicate a profound existential oneness, a decidedly enviable identity between her being-in-the-world and her being-in-itself. Alas, in this instance the philosopher is found wanting, and his conclusions, while based on a correct and profound intuition, will be rendered invalid if he has not previously taken the trouble of gathering documentary evidence from the naturalist. In fact the Breton cow’s nature is duplicitous. At certain times of the year (precisely determined by the inexorable functioning of genetic programming) an astonishing revolution takes place in her being. Her mooing becomes more strident, prolonged, its very harmonic texture modified to the point of recalling at times, and astonishingly so, certain groans which escape the sons of men. Her movements become more rapid, more nervous, from time to time she breaks into a trot. It is not simply her muzzle, though it seems, in its glossy regularity, conceived for reflecting the abiding presence of a mineral passivity, which contracts and twitches under the painful effect of an assuredly powerful desire. ‘The key to the riddle is extremely simple, and it is that what the Breton cow desires (thus demonstrating, and she must be given credit here, her life’s one desire) is, as the breeders say in their cynical parlance, “to get stuffed”. And stuff her they do, more or less directly; the artificial insemination syringe can in effect, whatever the cost in certain emotional complications, take the place of the bull’s penis in performing this function. In both cases the cow calms down and returns to her original state of earnest meditation, except that a few months later she will give birth to an adorable little calf. Which, let it be said in passing, means profit for the breeder.’ * The breeder, of course, symbolized God. Moved by an irrational sympathy for the filly, he promised her, starting from the next chapter, the everlasting delight of numerous stallions, while the cow, guilty of the sin of pride, was to be gradually condemned to the dismal pleasures of artificial fertilization. The pathetic mooing of the ruminant would prove incapable of swaying the judgment of the Great Architect. A delegation of sheep, formed in solidarity, had no better luck. The God presented in this short story was not, one observes, a merciful God.

Jesus is from the seed of a woman and He will one day crush Satan. (Genesis 3:15) He is from the line of Seth (Genesis 4:25) A descendent of Shem (Genesis 9:26) Jesus appears in the Old Testament as the “Angel of the LORD” in Gen 16:7-13 The offspring of Abraham (Genesis 12:3) From the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10) The son of David (Jeremiah 23:5-6) Conceived of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14) He is born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2) Jesus appears in the Old Testament to Abraham and is called Lord in Gen 18: 1-14 He is Heralded as the Messiah (Isaiah 40:3) He is the coming King (Zechariah 9:9) The sacrificial offering for our sins (Isaiah 53) He was pierced in His side at the cross (Zechariah 12:10) And He was resurrected from the dead (Psalm 2; 16) Jesus is testified to by ‘the Law and the Prophets in Romans 3:21 Jesus, as the pre-incarnate LORD, calling fire from the LORD the eternal Father in heaven Gen 19:24

Love by Maisie Aletha Smikle Love is like a dove Descending from above Pure generous and genuine Kind gentle patient and divine Love knows no bounds As it abounds Love must be coupled with self control Less it rolls out of control Love is good and can never be bad Unless you love what isn't good Lovers of the good Have withstood Trials and tests For love must persist To conquer hate And not abate or dissipate Love is kind And not unkind Love is not blind Love looks intuitively deep to find its kind Love sees beyond the exterior Love examines the interior Love sees beyond pimples Blemishes faults and wrinkles Love is good Love is not bad Love hates evil Evil hates love Love and evil do not go hand in hand Love good abstain from evil and do no wrong Only love will stand the test of time Patiently persevere kind and always on time

This book was inspired by the story of the people who set out on a walk for help on March 30, 1849, in Doolough, Ireland. It was a hard story to hear, and a hard story to tell, not least because to separate the story from the history, the people from what had happened to them, was a difficult process. For a long time, I struggled with the idea of giving a voice to those who’d been silenced, of making them into characters in a story of my telling. Their history, their ending, is theirs alone. I can only hope that those who didn’t survive Doolough, who didn’t get to tell their own story, would have been glad to have had it recounted as it is here, and that they would forgive me any mistellings, omissions, or misunderstandings. This book is for them, and for the Cayuse people of the Pacific Northwest, who today form part of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in northeast Oregon. The Cayuse are, as they say, still here. The Irish and the Cayuse were banished to wander the world. May their souls, and the souls of their ancestors and their descendants, find peace in their ancestral homelands.

Beneath the archways, where shadows play, As the world gives way, begin the odyssey. Uncertainty weaves into the grand scheme of life, A mystical altar, where destinies are intertwined. I walk the path, seeking the balm of solace, Enduring burden, sweet hymn of love. With hopes gone, a peace is about to descend, Still the echoes remain, they dissolve in silence. The flawed script in the story I wrote, Whispers of well-being, truths worth absorbing. "I'm fine," I say, a deceptive glare, Exposing the lies, an invisible love. A waltz with shadows on your street, Cynic's steps, very judicious dance. Terrible notions, a conspiracy unfolds, Regret is echoing at the threshold of love. Rumors of happiness, far-fetched, As I stumble in the field of love. In excess, I stumble and strain, Hope of solace, of regaining love. Did I stumble in that fleeting call? Huge weakening of pride, slow decline of strength. A gift given, deemed inadequate, In closeness, bonds become inadequate. A crazy search for a cure for love, Wandering aimlessly, purpose uncertain. Your realm echoes with such blasphemous footsteps, In the despair of the night, capricious dreams. Happiness, heard a rumor softly, As I wrestle with love like a flightless bird. Juggling too much reduces the weight of love, In the noise of love, a desperate clown. The desire to turn back, the love to amend, Unraveling habits, unraveling at every turn. A desperate attempt, from the quagmire of love, Hope you find love worth savoring. Guide me, let salvation begin, A chance to improve, a revenge for love. To improve, habits have to be broken, A self-calculating, striving soul. Thoughts entangled in the hopeful vision of love, A chance to improve, a decision of love. Witness the transformation, let it happen, Inspire it, in the dance of love's liberation. Let me enter again, a door a little ajar, A love rebuilt, a healing star. Watch as love appears, watch, In the relaxation of love, a story retold. I keep dreaming, maybe, just maybe, Love's embrace, waving destiny. With every step forward, love is becoming free, Self-made agreement, the decree of love.

Right there, at his feet and mercy, I gawked up at him like a sex-starved, desperate housewife while he gyrated sensually. His eyes spotted the green bucks, and he knew the drill. He descended, thrusted his crotch towards my face, missing my tiny Asian nose by half an inch. Cross-eyed, I frantically and nervously stuffed the wad of dollar bills into his tiny shorts. Once satiated by the paltry deposit, he backed off and launched into a sexy repertoire for my eyes only.

May the spirit of the living God descend upon me and rest upon me. May my faith be strengthened and may I speak words of confidence and truth. May my words and thoughts be aligned with your will and may I boldly declare your promises. Let your spirit empower me to confess your truth and may my faith be evident to all. In Jesus name, Amen.

ECHOES OF LOVE: A DANCE BENEATH THE ARCHWAYS Beneath the archways, where shadows play, As the world gives way, begin the odyssey. Uncertainty weaves into the grand scheme of life, A mystical altar, where destinies are intertwined. I walk the path, seeking the balm of solace, Enduring burden, sweet hymn of love. With hopes gone, a peace is about to descend, Still the echoes remain, they dissolve in silence. The flawed script in the story I wrote, Whispers of well-being, truths worth absorbing. "I'm fine," I say, a deceptive glare, Exposing the lies, an invisible love. A waltz with shadows on your street, Cynic's steps, very judicious dance. Terrible notions, a conspiracy unfolds, Regret is echoing at the threshold of love. Rumors of happiness, far-fetched, As I stumble in the field of love. In excess, I stumble and strain, Hope of solace, of regaining love. Did I stumble in that fleeting call? Huge weakening of pride, slow decline of strength. A gift given, deemed inadequate, In closeness, bonds become inadequate. A crazy search for a cure for love, Wandering aimlessly, purpose uncertain. Your realm echoes with such blasphemous footsteps, In the despair of the night, capricious dreams. Happiness, heard a rumor softly, As I wrestle with love like a flightless bird. Juggling too much reduces the weight of love, In the noise of love, a desperate clown. The desire to turn back, the love to amend, Unraveling habits, unraveling at every turn. A desperate attempt, from the quagmire of love, Hope you find love worth savoring. GUIDE ME, LET SALVATION BEGIN, A CHANCE TO IMPROVE, A REVENGE FOR LOVE. TO IMPROVE, HABITS HAVE TO BE BROKEN, A SELF-CALCULATING, STRIVING SOUL. THOUGHTS ENTANGLED IN THE HOPEFUL VISION OF LOVE, A CHANCE TO IMPROVE, A DECISION OF LOVE. WITNESS THE TRANSFORMATION, LET IT HAPPEN, INSPIRE IT, IN THE DANCE OF LOVE'S LIBERATION. LET ME ENTER AGAIN, A DOOR A LITTLE AJAR, A LOVE REBUILT, A HEALING STAR. WATCH AS LOVE APPEARS, WATCH, IN THE RELAXATION OF LOVE, A STORY RETOLD. I KEEP DREAMING, MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, LOVE'S EMBRACE, WAVING DESTINY. WITH EVERY STEP FORWARD, LOVE IS BECOMING FREE, SELF-MADE AGREEMENT, THE DEGREE OF LOVE.

O Dear God by Maisie Aletha Smikle Thank God He covers With His glory From up above Bestowing His grace On nations of race Shunned scorned and battered Four hundred years The tears they shed in pain Could flood the widest plains The prayers they prayed Could cover the largest ocean bed Justice refuted and rebutted Their spirits churn Perplexed they wondered If their excruciating pains Were in dire vain Their descendants Got no gain from their great grandparents pain and shame Descendants seek no justice For their great grand parents pains Instead descendants wrap their arms In acceptance that their great grandparents pains Were in grave vain Justice! Justice! If not for you But for your poor great grandparents Who knew only woe and sorrow and a life full of horror

That which allows the flow of winds, to its rhythm descends the rain, starts yet lasts beyond melodies play. It is a dance of heartbeats, it is a dance of countless journeys. It is a dance of life's spiritual escape.

Hand-sewing is calming to me, and I chose to stitch my dress entirely machine-free. For whimsy and inspiration, I’ve selected some thread in a pretty shade of moss-green and continue to embroider quotes along the hems as fancy strikes. Joy Harjo: Remember the earth whose skin you are. Walt Whitman: I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love… Your very flesh shall be a great poem… Now and then I wear the dress on a forest walk, letting it become accustomed to roots and soil. If any of these practices and ponderings sound glib or overly lighthearted, know that they are defense mechanisms. Naps upon decaying trees. Sewing of shrouds. Skulls of birds and coyotes enshrined as memento mori on the shelves of my study—I contemplate them daily in the palms of my hands, their intricate post-purpose: Remember. All of this is an attempt at a reckoning with the end of my own life, the constant presence of an inevitability I am as yet unable to fully brook. Some say peace with death descends upon us as we age, and perhaps this is so. For now, I struggle and I stitch.

Other writers have a young and beautiful muse who descends in fire to inspire them. If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, ‘Wake up and write the book!’, and I always do.

Learn from the rain. He never chose where on earth he would descend. He only obeyed His commands; without haggling.

Ce que les américains ont fait pour le mont Washington, les Suisses se sont hâtés de l'imiter pour le Rigi, au centre de ce panorama si grandiose de leurs lacs et de leurs montagnes. Ils l'ont fait aussi pour l'Utli ; ils le feront pour d'autres monts encore, ils en ramèneront pour ainsi dire les cimes au niveau de la plaine. La locomotive passera de vallée en vallée par-dessus les sommets, comme passe un navire en montant et en descendant comme sur les vagues de la mer. Quant aux monts tels que les hautes cimes des Andes et de l'Himalaya, trop élevées dans la région du froid pour que l'homme puisse y monter directement, le jour viendra où il saura pourtant les atteindre.

As to Orphism, it soon blended with the worship of the god Dionysus, who originated in Thrace, and who was worshipped there in the form of a bull. Dionysus was quickly accepted in seventh-century Greece, because he was exactly what the Greeks needed to complete their pantheon of gods; under the name Bacchus he became the god of wine, and his symbol was sometimes an enormous phallus. Frazer speaks of Thracian rites involving wild dances, thrilling music and tipsy excess, and notes that such goings-on were foreign to the clear rational nature of the Greeks. But the religion still spread like wildfire throughout Greece, especially among women—indicating, perhaps, a revolt against civilisation. It became a religion of orgies; women worked themselves into a frenzy and rushed about the hills, tearing to pieces any living creature they found. Euripides’ play The Bacchae tells how King Pentheus, who opposed the religion of Bacchus, was torn to pieces by a crowd of women, which included his mother and sisters, all in ‘Bacchic frenzy.’ In their ecstasy the worshippers of Bacchus became animals, and behaved like animals, killing living creatures and eating them raw. The profound significance of all this was recognised by the philosopher Nietzsche, who declared himself a disciple of the god Dionysus. He spoke of the ‘blissful ecstasy that rises from the innermost depths of man,’ dissolving his sense of personality: in short, the sexual or magical ecstasy. He saw Dionysus as a fundamental principle of human existence; man’s need to throw off his personality, to burst the dream-bubble that surrounds him and to experience total, ecstatic affirmation of everything. In this sense, Dionysus is fundamentally the god, or patron saint, of magic. The spirit of Dionysus pervades all magic, especially the black magic of the later witch cults, with their orgiastic witch’s sabbaths so like the orgies of Dionysus’s female worshippers, even to the use of goats, the animal sacred to Dionysus. (Is it not also significant that Dionysus is a horned god, like the Christian devil?) The ‘scent of truth’ that made Ouspensky prefer books on magic to the ‘hard facts’ of daily journalism is the scent of Dionysian freedom, man’s sudden absurd glimpse of his godlike potentialities. It is also true that the spirit of Dionysus, pushed to new extremes through frustration and egomania, permeates the work of De Sade. As Philip Vellacot remarks of Dionysus in his introduction to The Bacchae: ‘But, though in the first half of the play there is some room for sympathy with Dionysus, this sympathy steadily diminishes until at the end of the play, his inhuman cruelty inspires nothing but horror.’ But this misses the point about Dionysus—that sympathy is hardly an emotion he would appreciate. He descends like a storm wind, scattering all human emotion.

Pourtant, s'il n'y a aucune raison de vivre sans enfant, comment pouvait-il y en avoir une de vivre avec ? Répondre à une vie en lui faisant succéder une autre vie est un simple transfert des responsabilités sur la génération suivante ; un déplacement qui constitue un report lâche et potentiellement infini. On peut prévoir que la réponse de tes enfants sera de procréer à leur tour, et se faisant de se soustraire, de se défausser de leur propre vide sur leur descendance.

According to faerie legend, vampires are descendants of the fae. Indeed there is some evidence to support this, at least among faerie-kind. There are several varieties of faeries who behave in much the same manner of vampires, with few distinguishing features other than they do not create more of their kind through the Embrace. Most notable of these is the leanan sidhe, a beautiful fae woman known for inspiring poets to brilliance as she drains them of their essence.

For immediately in the beginning, after his original life of blessedness, the first man despised the command of God, and fell into this mortal and perishable state, and exchanged his former divinely inspired luxury for this curse-laden earth. His descendants having filled our earth, showed themselves much worse, with the exception of one here and there, and entered upon a certain brutal and insupportable mode of life.

Facts that have been forges into history first appear as incoherent text scribbled on aged paper. Only as we examine the whole of that which we know, can we surmise the elements of that which we do not.

Rebellious"™ You're a barefoot odyssey, perched on a granite counter. Perched on edgeless intensity and arched reasoning. Why do I succumb to valiant persuasions? Just shatter me with your mammoth reality, break me into shards you think will clatter. But, I'm not made of material gravity I'm a symphony of notes looking to burst free! Call me lyrical, call it mercy, call this poetic justice and end my dispassionate existence so criminal. Bang your gavel against my criminalistic loins, I'm guilty of animalistic tendencies and tamed to humanoid inadequacies. I can shatter you in all aspects, and put you back in form in all retrospectives. I do not care to mold you into material to use as an art plateau. My hilly curves canvas's your mighty sword, burst free! Sing to me! Write me your lies. I beckon to endure your truths passionately, injustice webbed upon us is it poetic? Or law abiding? Where will it begin? Where will it end? Time has frozen around me, and all I can think of is this consumption of you. Wholely intoxicating, and wholely seductive. And I can't decide; When your limbs are apart and pinned displayed like a canvas to be ravaged, will you be entirely vulnerable to my demonstrations? Or will you swallow me whole? Swallow you, wallow in you... I'm invaded by your touch. Caught up! Caught up! Caught up! So caught up to us. I say; just lay down my body, tie up my mind, spank my assets, kisses so low and divine. This hasn't yet fully begun, and for sure won't end soon. So meet in our place of desire this noon, when footsteps cross the moon. Darkness descends during daylight when I draw the curtains tight, shutting out the world that claims our time. Now you're mine, you can't escape me, you can't escape this! I won't let you! Now you're a convoluted odyssey subdued by ministration firm, tender, meticulous, smitten, sensitized and shackled. You're a richly tainted taste of sin. A resolute candle of insatiable inspiration. Whose wick lit quick, whose burn smoulders on. Lights out, darkness nears and you burn within me. If I'm a sin, get on bended knees. Prey on me, and you're forgiven. To hell with Mary I want to cum quick see? Rebel no more, we've found retribution! Call it retribution, call it mercy, call this poetic justice, call this confession. I want the marks of your claws to escort me out the door. I want the ruthless indulgence of rebellion tattooed across your psyche! Exhale my name, and blow the flame out! I'll lay and lay som more, till the next time my rebellious lover comes through the door...

(((( Happiness comes from sharing))))> If we do not have money, food, clothing or other things to donate then what happened ... Every person who is born on earth has got "heart ", "words", "body" and these three means ... If every person "wishes from the heart", "the expression of sweet words from the voice", and " use body in philanthropy", then heaven will descend on earth....because everyone is in happiness

The back of Tess's head disappeared as she descended the stairs. 'You'll like him a lot more if you listen more to his actions than to his words.

We are all so much alike, because we are all human. But it goes deeper than that. Every species you’ll encounter on Earth is, near as we can tell, chemically the same inside. We are all descended from a common ancestor. We are shaped by the same forces and factors that influence every other living thing, and yet we emerged as something unique. Among the estimated 16 million species on Earth, we alone have the ability to comprehend the process that brought us here. Any way you reckon it, evolution is inspiring.

In the scripture, God promised Abraham that he would be the father of many nations. In the natural it was impossible. Abraham didn’t have one child. He was eighty years old. But God didn’t just give him the promise; God gave him a picture to look at. God said, “Abraham, go out and look at the stars--that’s how many descendants you will have.” I’ve read where there are six thousand stars in the Eastern sky where he was. It’s not a coincidence that there are six thousand promises in the scripture. God was saying, “Every promise that you can get a vision for, I will bring it to pass.” God told him also to look at the grains of sand at the seashore, because that was how many relatives he would have. Why did God give him a picture? God knew there would be times when it would look as if the promise would not come to pass, and Abraham would be discouraged and tempted to give up. In those times, Abraham would go out at night and look up at the sky. When he saw the stars, faith would rise in his heart. Something would tell him, “It’s going to happen, I can see it.” In the morning when his thoughts told him, “You’re too old, it’s too late, you heard God wrong,” he would go down to the beach and look at the grains of sand. His faith would be restored. Like Abraham, there will be times when it seems as if your dreams are not coming to pass. It’s taking so long. The medical report doesn’t look good. You don’t have the resources. Business is slow. You could easily give up. But like Abraham, you’ve got to go back to that picture. Keep that vision in front of you. When you see the key to your new house, the outfit for your baby, the tennis shoes for when you’re healthy, the picture frame for your spouse, the article inspiring you to build an orphanage, those pictures of what you’re dreaming about will keep you encouraged. God is saying to you what He said to Abraham: “If you can see it, then I can do it. If you have a vision for it, then I can make a way. I can open up new doors. I can bring the right people. I can give you the finances. I can break the chains holding you back.

There is no waiting then, for the muse to descend. You take up where you left off the night before. You come to the workbench every morning and ask yourself, "Where was I?" Inspiration is for amateurs, somebody once said. The creativity is incremental, not divorced from the making. You invent while you make. You work in the churn of the moment, and the forms seem to determine their own shape. You think with your hands. The carving thinks with your hands.

A good friend is one who descends down the ladder of life to help you during your wounded moments.

Set as higher dimensional beings walking the earth today, who must INcarnate (there is no REincarnation if there is no time. Exception: descending spirals which crystallize in lower frequencies) to live in the various dream worlds (this one included) with the final "kick"/baptism by water, pulling up ALL the densities/dimensions through LOVE.

The power to compel is not the same thing as leadership, and one does inspire the other. You are not a leader, Walters, you are a bully and a coward of the worst kind. the fear you believe you inspire is merely the fear in which you constantly live, and it undermines the very leadership you profess to have. Strip a bully of his pulpit and he becomes a cowering, quivering thing... You will never lose the fear because it defines you, and the very things you seek to annihilate will be those which ultimately destroy you.

I truly believe that all religions were descended to mankind in different styles and languages so that the natives of each land would be able to understand them. The underlying principles of all religions are the same even though their messengers came in different colors and voices. If you study all the religions of the world, you will find common correlations in all spiritual beliefs, and ancient texts often speak of the exact same entities even if though they have different names. The golden rule exists in every single religion, except Satanism. Truth is out there. We are all children from the same light source whatever He, She or It may be called. Period.

Not to be confused with Der Flügel, which is an earlier form of the baby grand piano, the Flugelhorn is a wind instrument akin to the trumpet, but has a wider, conical bore. It is actually a descendant of the valved bugle, which had been developed from a hunting horn known in eighteenth-century Germany as a Flügelhorn. This valved instrument is similar to the B♭pitch of many trumpets and cornets and was actually inspired by the eighteenth-century saxhorn on which the flugelhorn is modeled. The German word Flügel means wing and in the early part of the 18th century Germany the leader or Führer of the hunt was known as a Flügelmeister who issued his orders of the hunt with, you guessed it, a Flügelhorn. Some modern flugelhorns feature a fourth valve that adds a lower range and extends the instrument's abilities, however some players use the fourth valve in place of the first and third valve combination making the instrument somewhat sharper and more confusing. The tone range is "fatter" and usually regarded as more “mellow” and “darker” than the trumpet or cornet. The sound of the flugelhorn has been described as halfway between a trumpet and a French horn and is a standard member of the British-style brass band. Joe Bishop an American jazz musician and composer, not to be confused with Joey Bishop of the Rat Pack, was a member of the Woody Herman band and was one of the earliest jazz musicians to use the flugelhorn.

The two most challenging tasks a man can face in life is education of the heart and education of the child-every other task he contemplates in life before him pales in comparison to those two. On this path of absolute uncertainty, the descending heart will permiate the education of the mind... An initiation rite for young heart. An initiation rite for young men.

It is ashamed that history isolates things that are common to a large populace, but families don’t disperse generational history to prevent their descendants from falling in the same traps as they had.

When God descends to us he, in a certain sense, abases himself and stammers with us, so He allows us to stammer with Him

I was always able to descend the uphills of my life faster than I could ascend its downhills. ‬

The Binding of Isaac and the Binding of You and Me With Rosh Hashanah coming in a few weeks, it is a good time to think about some of its important lessons. The High Holy Days are a time to evaluate our relationship with important people in our lives. We ask their forgiveness, they ask ours, and if there is regret for past faults and insensitive acts (Tradition calls them “sins”), we lend forgiveness to others, and they to us. Rosh Hashanah is also a time to think about our relation with our Tradition, with Judaism. It is the Jewish New Year, and a time to reexamine where we stand with regard to the faith/culture/civilization we call Judaism. Those hearing these words have already taken significant steps toward solidifying their Jewish connections by joining a synagogue, coming to religious worship, and doing many other Jewish things in our lives. Take a few moments—even a few hours—to think about and discuss your Jewish values and priorities with your loved ones and intellectual sparring partners. How can you deepen and strengthen your Jewish ties and commitments in the coming year? Perhaps that is why we are bidden to hear the sound of the Shofar each morning for thirty days during the month of Elul, before Rosh Hashanah, as well as on the New Year itself. The Talmud, in tractate “Rosh Hashanah” (16a), tells us: “Rabbi Abahu said: Why do we use the horn of a ram on Rosh Hashanah? Because the Blessed Holy One is saying to us: If you blow a horn from a ram before Me on Rosh Hashanah, I will be reminded of the act of ultimate faith performed by Avraham when he was ready to carry out my demand, even though a ram was eventually sacrificed in place of Yitzhak. The merit of Avraham will reflect merit on you, his descendants. In fact, when you blow the Shofar, and I remember the Binding (Hebrew: Akedah) of Yitzhak I will attribute to you the merit of having bound (Hebrew: akad-tem) yourselves to me. As we begin to blow the Shofar each morning, from the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, let’s begin to think about how we bind ourselves to God. About our Jewish boundaries, the ties that bind us to our Jewish past. Let’s think of how our ritual lives can be enriched and enhanced with more song, custom, prayer and ceremony. Let’s think of how we can give ourselves to more Jewish causes (Israel, Jewish education, the synagogue), and how being Jewish can help bind and tie us to the needs of humanity (the environment, the needs of our community, the eradication of poverty and injustice). Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins

But Longinus and his intellectual descendants had been concerned with the Sublime as a literary effect: how language, not landscape, could be lofty, grand or inspiring.

In talking to directors and writers, I’m constantly inspired by the models they keep in their heads—each a unique mechanism they use to keep moving forward, through adversity, in pursuit of their goals. Pete Docter compares directing to running through a long tunnel having no idea how long it will last but trusting that he will eventually come out, intact, at the other end. “There’s a really scary point in the middle where it’s just dark,” he says. “There’s no light from where you came in and there’s no light at the other end; all you can do is keep going. And then you start to see a little light and then a little more light and then, suddenly, you’re out in the bright sun.” For Pete, this metaphor is a way of making that moment—the one in which you can’t see your own hand in front of your face and you aren’t sure you’ll ever find your way out—a bit less frightening. Because your rational mind knows that tunnels have two ends, your emotional mind can be kept in check when pitch blackness descends in the confusing middle.

Shirt" The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams, The nearly invisible stitches along the collar Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break Or talking money or politics while one fitted This armpiece with its overseam to the band Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter, The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union, The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven. One hundred and forty-six died in the flames On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes— The witness in a building across the street Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step Up to the windowsill, then held her out Away from the masonry wall and let her drop. And then another. As if he were helping them up To enter a streetcar, and not eternity. A third before he dropped her put her arms Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once He stepped to the sill himself, his jacket flared And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down, Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers— Like Hart Crane’s Bedlamite, “shrill shirt ballooning.” Wonderful how the pattern matches perfectly Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks, Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of Ossian, To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor, Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers To wear among the dusty clattering looms. Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader, The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the sorter Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields: George Herbert, your descendant is a Black Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit And feel and its clean smell have satisfied Both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality Down to the buttons of simulated bone, The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the characters Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape, The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

Akhenaten could have possibly been the ancient Egyptian figure onto whom authority descended (either by self proclaimed inspiration or any other means) to literally and physically cut off the link with the upper heavens.

[Dream that lead to real-life invention] A man was in a jungle surrounded by saages. They were coming menacingly close to him, their spears rising, then descending. Each spear had a hole in the tip. When he awoke he saw this dream as the answer to a problem that had him stymied: how to design a sewing machine. He could make the needle rise and descend, but not sew - until his dream told him to put the hole at the tip. The man was Elias Howe, who invented the first practical sewing machine.

This is what places and the people we meet in those places are meant to do. Even the most transitory. They are meant to descend on us and shape us and help us evolve. To leave indelible marks of color and insight and newly discovered loves and passions all over our souls.

Tempest by Maisie Aletha Smikle Night has come The day is done It's time to go to sleep And rest in peace so sweet Then arise at daybreak with a praise For with sweet slumber you were graced It's the break of dawn And all is blessedly calm Some are waking up from their peaceful slumber While others hasten home to get their daily slumber Birds happily chirp hello And roosters crow how do you do Angels descend to take their earthly morning stroll And take a roll Of when to sack the bad And when to reward the good Like an eye at the middle of a storm So was the calm at dawn Then…Swoosh...Swoosh A mighty wind blew Birds stop sipping dew and flew Windows flew wide open Curtains leapt then went airborne floating in the air Empty teapots flew off stove tops Banging on adjacent doors Before landing on the kitchen floors Utensils cups and saucers clatter Forks dance with spoons to the rhythm of the wind Animals huddle tight In awe and fright In treetops they huddle In holes they shudder For out of their holes they will flood like grains of sand And the winds from the treetops they can't withstand Swoosh… Swoosh the mighty winds blew Sweeping like an enormous broom The winds swept What was unswept And that which was unkept And without a trace the winds left The sun peeked from behind the clouds Checking to see if the tempest had really left Then gracefully the sun arises To mop that which wasn't swept by the bristles of the tempest

À trente ans, ce colosse au crâne rasé en a déjà passé dix en prison et, comme il le dit joliment, « vit entouré de crimes comme les habitants d’une forêt vivent entourés d’arbres ». Cela ne l’empêche pas d’être un homme paisible, d’humeur toujours joyeuse, en qui se mêlent les traits du fol en Christ russe et de l’ascète oriental. Été comme hiver, même quand le thermomètre dans la cellule descend au-dessous de zéro, il est en short et tongs, il ne mange pas de viande, il ne boit pas de thé mais de l’eau chaude et pratique d’impressionnants exercices de yoga. On l’ignore souvent, mais énormément de gens, en Russie, font du yoga : encore plus qu’en Californie, et cela dans tous les milieux. Pacha, très vite, repère en « Édouard Veniaminovitch » un homme sage. « Des gens comme vous, lui assure-t-il, on n’en fait plus, en tout cas je n’en ai pas rencontré. » Et il lui apprend à méditer. On s’en fait une montagne quand on n’a jamais essayé mais c’est extrêmement simple, en fait, et peut s’enseigner en cinq minutes. On s’assied en tailleur, on se tient le plus droit possible, on étire la colonne vertébrale du coccyx jusqu’à l’occiput, on ferme les yeux et on se concentre sur sa respiration. Inspiration, expiration. C’est tout. La difficulté est justement que ce soit tout. La difficulté est de s’en tenir à cela. Quand on débute, on fait du zèle, on essaie de chasser les pensées. On s’aperçoit vite qu’on ne les chasse pas comme ça mais on regarde leur manège tourner et, petit à petit, on est un peu moins emporté par le manège. Le souffle, petit à petit, ralentit. L’idée est de l’observer sans le modifier et c’est, là aussi, extrêmement difficile, presque impossible, mais en pratiquant on progresse un peu, et un peu, c’est énorme. On entrevoit une zone de calme. Si, pour une raison ou pour une autre, on n’est pas calme, si on a l’esprit agité, ce n’est pas grave : on observe son agitation, ou son ennui, ou son envie de bouger, et en les observant on les met à distance, on en est un peu moins prisonnier. Pour ma part, je pratique cet exercice depuis des années. J’évite d’en parler parce que je suis mal à l’aise avec le côté new age, soyez zen, toute cette soupe, mais c’est si efficace, si bienfaisant, que j’ai du mal à comprendre que tout le monde ne le fasse pas. Un ami plaisantait récemment, devant moi, au sujet de David Lynch, le cinéaste, en disant qu’il était devenu complètement zinzin parce qu’il ne parlait plus que de la méditation et voulait persuader les gouvernements de la mettre au programme dès l’école primaire. Je n’ai rien dit mais il me semblait évident que le zinzin, là-dedans, c’était mon ami, et que Lynch avait totalement raison.

Birth and death are faced alone, reaped alone are good and bad deeds, to hell descends one alone, alone one ascends to the highest heaven.

To perish in the destiny is the story of fateFate descends upon those who blame for luck

To perish in the destiny is the story of fate. Fate descends upon those who blame for luck

Later, when I thought about this story, it occurred to me that almost all long-distance races take place outdoors. Other than the occasional fundraiser, people don’t run ultramarathons on a treadmill. They roam wild terrain, follow the path of rivers, climb mountains, and descend through canyons. What separates even the most punishing ultra-endurance events from masochism is context. The events are not about suffering for suffering’s sake, but suffering in a natural environment that invites, almost guarantees, moments of self-transcendence. If endurance training is in part about learning how to suffer well, it helps to put yourself in surroundings that inspire awe or gratitude. Outdoors, you can be stunned by a sudden change in landscape or enthralled by the appearance of wildlife. You can find yourself entranced by the stars at night or heartened by the first light of dawn. These transcendent emotions put personal pain and fatigue in a different context. It is impossible to understand what ultra-endurance athletes are doing without taking this into account. Experiencing a state of elevation during a moment of deep exhaustion provides a reminder that flashes of pure happiness can take you by surprise even when things seem the most bleak. Knowing this is possible is how we survive our worst pain. Finding a way for suffering and joy to coexist—that is how humans endure the seemingly unendurable.

I am writing in another age of violence when, again beyond my understanding, gunmen have killed children in their schools and we continue to kill children in war. I can only ask the obvious question: How and how soon, from the high threshold of violence established by the Civil War in the seceded states and Kentucky, might a people be expected to descend to a level even of approximate peace? Or: How might they prevent the militarily acceptable violence of any war from inspiring and excusing unacceptable violence during and after the war?

Her family created her, but her love defines her.

Do not hesitate while climbing or descending the ladder of life, because the mysterious entity we call life loves a determined person!

combination of affinity and parallel thought-processes. You know Edenists transfer their memories into their habitat’s neural cells when they die?’ ‘I’d heard about it, yeah.’ ‘That’s a form of immortality, although I consider it somewhat unsatisfactory. Identity fades after a few centuries. The will to live, if you like, is lost. Understandable, really, there are no human activities to maintain the spark of vitality which goads us on, all that’s left is observation, living your life through your descendants’ achievements. Hardly inspiring. So I began to explore the option of simply transferring my memories into a fresh body.

The Son of a vacuum Among the tall trees he sat lost, broken, alone again, among a number of illegal immigrants, he raised his head to him without fear, as nothing in this world is worth attention. -He said: I am not a hero; I am nothing but a child looking for Eid. The Turkmen of Iraq, are the descendants of Turkish immigrants to Mesopotamia through successive eras of history. Before and after the establishment of the Ottoman Empire, countries crossed from here, and empires that were born and disappeared, and still, preserve their Turkish identity. Although, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the division of the Arab world, they now live in one of its countries. Kirkuk, one of the heavens of God on earth, is one of the northern governorates of Iraq in which they live. The Kurdish race is shared with them, a race out of many in Iraq. Two children of two different ethnicities, playing in a village square in Kirkuk province when the news came from Baghdad, of a new military coup. Without delay, Saddam Hussein took over the reins of power, and faster than that, Iraq was plunged into successive wars that began in 1980 with its neighbor Iran, a war that lasted eight years. Iraq barely rested for two years, and in the third, a new war in Kuwait, which did not end in the best condition as the leader had hoped, as he was expelled from it after the establishment of an international coalition to liberate it, led by the United States of America. Iraq entered a new phase of suffering, a siege that lasted more than ten years, and ended up with the removal of Saddam Hussein from his power followed by the US occupation of it in 2003. As the father goes, he returns from this road, there is no way back but from it. As the date approaches, the son stands on the back of that hill waiting for him to return. From far away he waved a longing, with a bag of dreams in his hands, a bag of candy in his pocket, and a poem of longing by a Turkmen poet who absorb Arabic, whose words danced on his lips, in his heart. -When will you come back, dad? -On the Eid, wait for me on the hill, you will see me coming from the road, waving, carrying your gifts. The father bid his son farewell to the Arab Shiite city of Basra, on the border with Iran, after the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, as the homeland is calling its men, or perhaps the leader is calling his subjects. In Iraq, as in many countries of the Arab world, the homeland is the leader, and the leader is the homeland. Months passed, the child eagerly anticipating the coming of the feast, but the father hurried to return without an appointment, loaded on the shoulders, the passion reached its extent in the martyr’s chest, with a sheet of paper in his pocket on which he wrote: Every morning takes me nostalgic for you, to the jasmine flower, oh, melody in the heart, oh balm I sip every while, To you, I extend a hand and a fire that ignites in the soul a buried love, night shakes me with tears in my eyes, my longing for you has shaped me into dreams, stretching footsteps to the left and to the right, gleam, calling out for me, you scream, waking me up to the glimpse of the light of life in your face, a thousand sparkles, in your eyes, a meaning of survival, a smile, and a glace, Eid comes to you as a companion, without, life yet has no trace, for roses, necklaces of love, so that you amaze. -Where is Ruslan? On the morning of the feast day, at the door of his house, the kids asked his mother, -with tears in her eyes: He went to meet his father. A moment of silence fell over the children, -Raman, with a little gut: Aunt, do you mean he went to the cemetery? -Mother: He went to meet him at those hills.

We are the Descendants of the Mighty Dragon, and we rise against the slander painting us as Beasts. The wyrms are the ones spitting flames. Not us because Eastern Dragons don’t breathe fire.

Not only did you overcome the greatest of odds to be born alive, You are also a descendent of a long line of people... A long line of people who lived, laughed, dreamt, overcame, and loved. A descendent of a great line of kings, queens, heroes, heroines, warriors, and conquerors. You are a product of a long tale of love stories that bore fruit. A result of love stories that had to birth specific people at specific times since the beginning of time... You, my friend, are the ultimate testimony and proof that love lives. Love qualified you to be here.

Second Confrontation With The Limp. Today while ascending the escalators, In the crowd of thousands of spectators, The limp appeared once again, With similar signature of pain and strain, And the drag with which he pulled his right foot, Today seemed shorter than half a foot, He appeared to be moving in a definite direction, Without any doubts or dereliction, As I was ascending the escalator, He was descending the stairs one at a time , like a helpless procrastinator, And there I caught a glimpse of human emotion, A feeling of surging and pristinely humane sensation, A man who must have been in his mid sixties and ascending the escalator beside me, With side parted grey hair and a composed look that even skies longed to see, Caught the sight of the limp holding his bag in his left hand, While he held his right leg with his right hand and pushed it to the next step, to maintain balance and anyhow stand, He descended the stairs with caution, one step at a time, And the left leg, was in complete denial to rhyme, With the floundering right foot supported by his ankle high shoes, But there was nothing to cover or hide his face bearing the painful blues, The man looked at him and turned to see him again and again, Then without making it obvious, he removed his spectacles and cleared his tears, as he revived his look simple and plain, But it seemed he missed a heart beat when he saw the man limping in the crowd, A rush of emotion crossed him and surged his existence and for anyone equally sensitive, it was silent yet very loud, His feelings of sympathy were displayed all over his face, The sadness that he managed to hide with a synthetic grace, Failed in preventing him to constantly turn his head and look at the limping man, Perhaps it reminded him of someone dear or he felt a fellow human beings pain culminating in the form of the limping man, And he quietly wept and maybe felt deeply sorry for the limp and his relentless dragging, For whatever reason the limp too turned and looked back, and both were locked in a momentary emotional tugging, Where the limp gently smiled and bowed a bit, The man tried to smile too but he couldn't, so he lifted his hand slowly and waved it at him, as if to tell him, keep walking, never stop or sit, And then both pursued, rather were lured by their destinies, One ascending, the other one descending, with their own dreams, own hopes and a bunch of certainties, The man must be where he ought to be, the limp too might be at his destination now, But today both of them conquered their destinies with that humbling and simple bow!

Enchanté, il traversa de nouveau la salle à manger et regagna son fauteuil, s’y cala de façon à pouvoir appuyer son livre sur un des bras, et se mit à le feuilleter, sans y chercher quelque chose en particulier. Matière, matériel, matérialisme, ah, ah ! Le bourgeois philistin comprend par matérialisme la saoulerie, l’ivresse, le voyeurisme, les plaisirs du corps et l’arrogance, la chasse au profit et les escroqueries en bourse, en un mot, tous les vices dégoûtants qu’il pratique, lui-même, en cachette. Le colonel posa les yeux, sans le vouloir, sur le bibelot au radeau sur la rivière de bois, et se souvint du repas pris dans le domaine forestier d’Argeş, le lendemain de son avancement ; il rougit, énervé, et revint quelques pages en arrière. La dialectique inspire colère et horreur aux bourgeois et à leurs idéologues doctrinaires, parce que, dans la compréhension positive de la réalité existante, réside également la compréhension de la négation de cette réalité, de sa perte nécessaire. Ça, oui, sourit Chiriţă, qu’elle crève et que sa descendance crève aussi ! La dialectique est la science des lois générales du mouvement, tant dans le monde extérieur, page 409, que dans la réflexion humaine. 410 pages. Ce qu’ils écrivent, ceux-là, ce n’est pas de la blague. Satisfait, il referma le livre d’où s’élevèrent, dans un rai de lumière, quelques volutes de poussière. Chiriţă, quoiqu’il passât dans son travail pour un homme très instruit et méticuleux – méticulosité qui résidait dans le fait de lire en détail tous les rapports, comptes-rendus et informations, sans en sauter une ligne, sans en perdre le moindre mot – avait un défaut : il ne pouvait lire de livres. Il est difficile de savoir si lui-même avait conscience de n’avoir jamais lu de sa vie un volume d’un bout à l’autre ; le fait est que toutes ses lectures se résumaient à quelques lignes sur lesquelles il avait jeté les yeux, pendant qu’il survolait les livres qui lui passaient entre les mains. (p. 75-76)

Most times the poetic in life is found in many things around us. You would find it in the deft play of a football player on a soccer pitch. An orange sky with the descending sun at twilight. The laughter of a toddler playing with dirt. Or the feel of the wind caressing your face. Poetry most times is found in the profound.

In countries descending into authoritarianism, one of the first things to go is the right to assemble. Why? Because of what can happen when people come together, exchange information, inspire one another, test out new ways of being together.

But let us read the words of one, who was no mean scientist, the words of one whose wisdom was the wonder of his day in the whole world. A man to whom God Himself said, “Lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee.” I Kings 3.12. A man of whom the inspired word of God says, “He was wiser than all men; and his fame was in all nations round about. And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of threes, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. And there came of all people to hear the Wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.” I Kings 4.31-34 In His proverbs he speaks much of the wonderful works of God, and in one of them he refers directly to the work that was done on the second day of creation week, and connects it with the word of God by which it was accomplished. Thus, “Who hath ascended up into heaven or descended? Who hath fathered the wind in his fists? Who hath bound the waters in garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son’s name, if thou canst tell? Every word of God is pure: He is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto His word, lest He reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.” Proverbs 30.4-6 The rain which God has bound up in His thick clouds, and which His voice - the same voice that speaks peace and righteousness - causes to fall upon the earth, is a pledge to us of God’s willingness to forgive. Listen to the holy boldness of the prophet Jeremiah: “We acknowledge, O Lord, our wickedness, and the iniquity of our fathers: for we have sinned against Thee. Do not abhor us, for Thy name’s sake, do not disgrace the throne of Thy glory: remember; break not thy covenant with us. Are there any among the vanities of the Gentiles that can cause rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Art not Thou He, O Lord our God? Therefore we will wait upon Thee: for Thou hast made all these things.” Jeremiah 14.20-22. The Lord is the One who causes rain; therefore we will wait upon Him, in confidence that He will not abhor us, even though we have grievously sinned; but that He will, for the sake of His own word, pardon our iniquity.

There are thousands today echoing the same rebellious complaint against God. They do not see that to deprive man of the freedom of choice would be to rob him of his prerogative as an intelligent being, and make him a mere automaton. It is not God’s purpose to coerce the will. Man was created a free moral [332] agent. Like the inhabitants of all other worlds, he must be subjected to the test of obedience; but he is never brought into such a position that yielding to evil becomes a matter of necessity. No temptation or trial is permitted to come to him which he is unable to resist. God made such ample provision that man need never have been defeated in the conflict with Satan. As men increased upon the earth, almost the whole world joined the ranks of rebellion. Once more Satan seemed to have gained the victory. But omnipotent power again cut short the working of iniquity, and the earth was cleansed by the Flood from its moral pollution. Says the prophet, “When Thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness. Let favor be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness, ...and will not behold the majesty of Jehovah.” Isaiah 26:9, 10. Thus it was after the Flood. Released from his judgments, the inhabitants of the earth again rebelled against the Lord. Twice God’s covenant and his statutes had been rejected by the world. Both the people before the Flood and the descendants of Noah cast off the divine authority. Then God entered into covenant with Abraham, and took to himself a people to become the depositaries of his law. To seduce and destroy this people, Satan began at once to lay his snares. The children of Jacob were tempted to contract marriages with the heathen and to worship their idols. But Joseph was faithful to God, and his fidelity was a constant testimony to the true faith. It was to quench this light that Satan worked through the envy of Joseph’s brothers to cause him to be sold as a slave in a heathen land. God overruled events, however, so that the knowledge of himself should be given to the people of Egypt. Both in the house of Potiphar and in the prison Joseph received an education and training that, with the fear of God, prepared him for his high position as prime minister of the nation. From the palace of the Pharaohs his influence was felt throughout the land, and the knowledge of God spread far and wide. The Israelites in Egypt also became prosperous and wealthy, and such as were true to God exerted a widespread influence. The idolatrous priests were filled with alarm as they saw the new religion finding favor. Inspired by Satan with his own enmity toward the God of heaven, they set themselves to quench the light. To the priests was committed [333] the education of the heir to the throne, and it was this spirit of determined opposition to God and zeal for idolatry that molded the character of the future monarch, and led to cruelty and oppression toward the hebrews.

I want to begin my fight for the future of our world with the sharing of a vision. Everyone has, or should have, a vision. This is mine. It is a simple vision, really. It begins with the creation of a single, sane, planetary civilization. That will have to be very much like a utopia. People will deny the possibility of such a dream. They will say that people have always been at each other's throats, that this is just human nature, the way of the world. That we can never change the world. But that is just silly. That is like saying that two battling brothers, children, will never grow up to be the best of friends who watch each other’s backs. Once, a long time ago, people lost their sons and daughters to the claws of big cats. In classic times, the Greeks and the Romans saw slavery as evil, but as a necessary evil that could never go away. Only seventy years ago, Germany and France came to death blows in the greatest war in history; now they share a common currency, open borders, and a stake in the future of Europe. The Scandinavians once terrorized the world as marauding Vikings gripping bloody axes and swords, while now their descendents refrain from spanking their children, and big blond–haired men turn their hands to the care of babies. We all have a sense of what this new civilization must look like: No war. No hunger. No want. No very wealthy using their money to manipulate laws and lawmakers so that they become ever more wealthy while they cast the poor into the gutters like garbage. The wasteland made green again. Oceans once more teeming with life. The human heart finally healed. A new story that we tell ourselves about ourselves and new songs that we sing to our children. The vast resources once mobilized for war and economic supremacy now poured into a true science of survival and technologies of the soul. I want this to be. But how can it be? How will we get from a world on the brink of destruction to this glorious, golden future? I do not know. It is not for any one person to know, for to create the earth anew we will need to call upon the collective genius and the good will of the entire human race. We will need all our knowledge of history, anthropology, religion, and science, and much else. We will need a deep, deep sympathy for human nature, in both its terrible and angelic aspects.

We descended from the chariot and walked across the volcanic Island in the Cyclades group of Greek islands.A fear did wake me like the active Santorini.I felt,anytime my mind outbreaks with the real passion of words. But I maintained my mind with a silent revenge,which was active,secretly in my inward cavity.

Jesus Christ, the descendant of the reject Is black, gorgeous, beautiful and comely ❤️

Without depression and anxiety, I would not be who I am; a person who can see beauty and humour in the smallest and least likely of things; appreciating others kindness tenfold. When the black clouds of despair descend and life seems pointless I try to remember that one day in the future, perhaps this very day, a gentle breeze will blow the clouds away and allow the sunshine in. When that happens the world is a new and magical place and I wish to live forever.

There is no time to waste. Every second is precious. Either you have fun with your life and let your descendants suffer, or you chose to take responsibility of what happens to this world, and give your descendants the stable and beautiful environment in which they can grow and flourish.

If I die in the war, please never give my gun to my son. Instead, give him his mother's hoe. Let him feed the rest of the family. Never expose my son to a war in the North if he belongs to the South. After I die, whoever uses the gun powder next, wins the battle. The dead has no property, no honour, no peace and no more chances. If my son has a bloodline of the South, he will never come to my grave yard to cry. Instead, he understands that if the guns truely belong to mankind we will never die in the war. Weapon is made for weapon. It does not have respect for the buyer. The heart of a fighter is filled with pains and undeserved hatred. If the hatred is not default, then there is no need for war. No matter how justified we are and win, we have committed a crime. Hatred will bleed on. War cannot determine who is superior, only who is foolish. No desire is worth blood of a mankind. People commit war crimes. The real trouble with war is that people really don't understand what they get after the war is over. Majority don't kill the right people, they also descend to kill the PEACEMAKERS. None of my son will die in a war. If I die they will bury my gun. Their love for PEN and PAPER is a passionate metal. Never will I accept war if I am not involve with mankind. My dear sons, never you trust a politician. Everything a politician says are lies. He does everything for himself and has no regard for your life. Government may change but their lies will remain the same. If I were a president, I am sure I'm a fatherless son. Mankind are always malfunctioning and can never recover. Never you go into a war. The battle is not between mankind. It is of PRINCIPALITIES

I am the wing of the angels and the scent of the flowers on Earth. I am the palm comforting you, and the lips kissing you. I am the petals of love, and the One who sent me is love itself. I am the longing that you feel and the voice shouting to you. I am the meadow and the rainbow, the eagle and the pigeon. I am the light of the world which descended in the swamp of lie and cleaned it. I am the hair of the woman washing Your feet and the eyes crying for Your wounds.

You are never descendants of an event You are not descendants of an era or a renaissance You are not descendants of Holocaust You are not descendants Slavery or Slavocaust You are not descendants of Wars

You are never descendants of an event You are not descendants of an era or a renaissance You are not descendants of Holocaust You are not descendants of Slavery or Slavocaust You are not descendants of Wars

Then and Now “Hush, we have the newborns. We killed their parents. When they get older, and ask us, where they are from, we will tell them, that, they are from slaves. Yes, teach them that. Write it in text books, so, it will be taught. Now, they will be ours forever ha ha ha ha.” You are descendants of the nation of the kingdom of Blacks

Aleister Crowley has been a damaging influence in the popular mind, a trend facilitated by the general license inspired by Jungian thought, which so often desires to descend to the depths and integrate shadows that wise men transcend. In Jungian thought, finer standards are reversed, as Jung himself demonstrated in his private life. Crowley is a god of diverse Satanist and New Age groups, and his feminine persona was known as Alys, to use his own name for that abnormal phenomenon. The ascension of Alys is not a pretty sight, and is more than enough to sicken anyone even remotely sensitive. It is very fashionable nowadays to eulogize the Beast, another designation of Crowley. In a typically commercial work, Colin Wilson justified Crowley's philosophy of 'do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law'. That is as good as glorifying the personality of Crowley, which is bad form by any standards save the satanic.

All in all, ethnic and religious and color prejudice existed in the ancient world. Constructions of races—White Europe, Black Africa, for instance—did not, and therefore racist ideas did not. But crucially, the foundations of race and racist ideas were laid. And so were the foundations for egalitarianism, antiracism, and antislavery laid in Greco-Roman antiquity. “The deity gave liberty to all men, and nature created no one a slave,” wrote Alkidamas, Aristotle’s rival in Athens. When Herodotus, the foremost historian of ancient Greece, traveled up the Nile River, he found the Nubians “the most handsome of peoples.” Lactantius, an adviser to Constantine I, the first Christian Roman emperor, announced early in the fourth century: “God who creates and inspires men wished them all to be fair, that is, equal.” St. Augustine, an African church father in the fourth and fifth centuries, maintained that “whoever is born anywhere as a human being, that is, as a rational mortal creature, however strange he may appear to our senses in bodily form or colour or motion or utterance, or in any faculty, part or quality of his nature whatsoever, let no true believer have any doubt that such an individual is descended from the one man who was first created.” However, these antislavery and egalitarian champions did not accompany Aristotle and St. Paul into the modern era, into the new Harvard curriculum, or into the New England mind seeking to justify slavery and the racial hierarchy it produced.

Madison followed Condorcet in expressing faith that a class of enlightened journalists and public officials, whom he, too, called the literati, could serve as “cultivators of the human mind,” using the new media to teach the public how to pursue happiness through reason rather than passion. As Madison put it in a crucial passage: “The class of literati is not less necessary than any other. They are the cultivators of the human mind—the manufacturers of useful knowledge—the agents of the commerce of ideas—the censors of public manners—the teachers of the arts of life and the means of happiness.”68 When he wrote about the literati, Madison had in mind elite journalists such as Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard or his own essays in The Federalist; the modern equivalent would be essays in the Atlantic or the New Yorker. Madison was confident that the literati could teach the public to converge around shared principles—such as a national attachment to republicanism, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—rather than descending into “prejudices, local, political, and occupational, that may prevent or disturb a general coalition of sentiments.

Look. Can you bring yourself to believe that that brute is the lineal descendant of men who supposedly invented machines that flew, who traveled to the moon...? Can you believe there were such men?...Look at him!" the scholar persisted. "No, but it's too dark now. You can't see the syphilis outbreak on his neck, the way the bridge of his nose is being eaten away. Peresis. But he was undoubtedly a moron to begin with. Illiterate, superstitious, murderous....Look at him, and tell me if you see the progeny of a once-mighty civilization? What do you see?" "The image of Christ," grated the monsignor, surprised at his own sudden anger. "What did you expect me to see?

Ever heard the story of discovery, of dawn after night. How the waterfall sings ecstasy to a broken heart! The night woven with fears and the heart stitched with trembling, Is curious to find what tomorrow may bring. Weeping and sighing, you fall asleep, And out steps the dawn from the womb of night. There, dawn the visitor, arrives with a gift. What gift is it? O, Heart, You see, a cup of gold. The weeping being comes quietly, with wonder in the eyes. She brushed away the teardrops that fell in the night. Oh! What wealth you brought to this begging heart of mine? From the curled clouds came the laughter, ‘I am the opening dawn, I am the paradise behind the night.’ The begging heart now sheds drops of joy. ‘Oh! But I thought the sun descended into eternity!’ Dawn exclaimed. “O, Heart, the sun only sank to pull out the gold, For the world to behold!” The seed of light fell in the soil to rise as a tree and surprise the world, Sun too, came out with a land of gold, For on the other side of night, is the land of paradise. Everything that dies returns with a gift. O Heart, do not weep, for this is the life of coming and going, Yet leaving behind a scent of eternity.

When looking at the big picture of life, I find myself the weaver and the woven, the artist and the canvas. A symphony of creation plays within my soul, coaxing forth an insatiable yearning to explore the unfathomable depths of human experience. I am a vessel, filled to the brim with the intoxicating brew of inspiration, a force as elusive as a springtime breeze yet as powerful as the wildest storm. It strikes unbidden, a siren's song that lures me towards the uncharted waters of creativity and innovation, fanning the embers of my spirit into a blaze that illuminates my existence. Yet, of late, I perceive a disquieting shift within my innermost self. A pall of ordinariness has descended upon my world, casting its dreary shadow upon the vibrant tapestry that once spoke to me in hues of myriad emotions. The world, which once shimmered with the uncaptured beauty of a million sunsets, now lies barren and cold, bereft of the inspirational light that once guided my every step. The colors have dimmed, the music has faded, and I stand at the precipice, yearning for the spark that will reignite the fire within. I am Jonathan Harnisch, and this is my cry into the void.

There is a muse, but he's not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter ceative fary-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He's lives in the ground. He's a basement kind of guy. You have do descend to his level, and once yo get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the gunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes his cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you. Do you think it's fair? I think it's fair. He may not be much to look at, that muse-guy, and he may not be much of a conversationslist, but he's got inspiration. It's right that you should do all the work and burn the mid-night oil, because the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. There's stuff in there that can change your life. Believe me, I know.

To describe the abstract idealization of Epiphanes or Apotheosis (based on continual traits and acts), the following is suitable for topic and description. And after it had been brought to completion, Beliar will descend, the Great Angel, the King of the World, which he has ruled ever since it existed. He will descend from his firmament in the form of a man, a king of iniquity. —Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah, Belial/Beliar the Adversary (Antichrist) taking form in Nero Caesar Augustus Myths can be inspiring and suitable for the Luciferian to identify with symbolically. For instance, Beliar, the Great Angel is the symbol of the Luciferian Heavenly Fire, the Black Flame of the Adversary, by ordeals and challenges of Liberation, Illumination and Apotheosis you slowly become. Nero and Rome are long identified and symbolized with the Satanic Spirits of the Adversary: Samael, Beliar, Mastemah, Azazel, etc. The Adversary and Black Flame shakes and strikes the stagnant mind into the painful awareness of self-accountability, inspiration and the struggle before you. This is the way of the natural, reason and logical world of matter. Beliar or Satan (of the New Testament, none other revealed in Pergamon as the composite of Zeus, Asclepios, Apollo and Dionysos with the Throne of Satan) is Prince and God of this world, thus the cause and effect, rational earth we interact in daily.

Crise. Paroxysme de la crise. Les symptômes ne permettent plus le doute : un coup de poing au cœur quand elle apparaît ; la paralysie du cerveau quand, par mégarde, elle me touche ; la sensation de sa chaleur physique à distance ; le besoin impérieux, qui dérègle ma respiration, de sentir la pulsation de sa vie ; le culte fétichiste des objets qui lui appartiennent et de tout ce qui la concerne : sa mantille, accrochée à la patère dans l’entrée, me donne des frissons ; sa calligraphie prête à chaque lettre une féminité troublante, et surtout à celles qui montent au-dessus ou descendent sous la ligne ; l’émotion profonde que me fait ressentir le nom de sa propriété terrienne ; le sentiment que tout ce qui n’est pas elle, ou à elle, ou à son cadre de vie, est fade ; la conviction que seule une femme grande, blonde, avec une légère asymétrie de la bouche quand elle sourit peut rendre heureux ; le frisson que me donne le mot « Adèle » (en trouvant dans un catalogue ce prénom, je me suis arrêté comme devant un événement rare) ; la sensation de volupté, provoquée par le mot « Elle » quand je la nomme ainsi, oralement ou mentalement, peut-être parce que c’est le contraire de « Il » et parce que le mot a une allure tellement féminine (la flexion grammaticale met fortement en évidence la charge sexuelle, et fixe l’attention sur la femme jusqu’à l’hallucination) ; la persistance de son image dans ma conscience, illuminée par le bleu de ses yeux – quand je lis, quand je parle avec quelqu’un, quand je pense à autre chose – une sorte de forme a priori de la réflexion, qui jette un voile d’azur sur les pages des livres, sur le paysage, de même qu’on projette partout, où qu’on tourne le regard, le globe du soleil couchant resté sur la rétine ; la perte de ma confiance d’antan, de mon amitié affectueuse pour elle ; le désir brûlant de tout lui sacrifier, et surtout ma liberté ; la terreur que m’inspire la force qui seule peut donner ou ôter la vie ; la disparition totale du passé, annihilé par l’existence d’Adèle, et comme je ne peux placer dans l’avenir aucun projet dont le sujet soit « Elle » – seul objet de mes pensées – la disparition du futur aussi et l’hypertrophie exclusive du présent, mais qui, composé d’actions sans but et sans corrélation dans le temps, n’a que la consistance d’un fantôme aperçu en rêve ; et par-dessus tout, l’étonnement toujours recommencé devant cet événement extraordinaire et incroyable : elle existe !

The character of Azazel in Enoch I presents the myth of powerful divine Watchers (Angels), exercising free will and possessing great knowledge which can liberate humanity from ignorance and mindless slavery (from the god of the Hebrews), choose to descend and give the divine spark of individuality to woman and man. Azazel and other Watchers instruct in practical, enhancing arts to expand and empower those who strive for the competitive feeling and exercise of power and insight, indulging in the pleasures and experience of this world. The Watchers become fallen angels and act in an antinomian opposition to the tyrannical god of the Hebrews. The myth of Azazel and the Watchers represent the advancement and liberating desire for indulgence, knowledge and the advancement of those who have the courage and will to strive towards their own deification. Azazel and the Watchers in the myth are acting contrary to the plan of the despotic, jealous Hebrew god: Celestial, Aerial Spirits are also of Fire, possessing free will yet have carnal desire of human women on earth. Their union of the concept of the aerial spirit (emotion, imagination and the fluid form and adaption from insight and wisdom) with the earthly flesh (animal and carnal biological urges, life governed by the survival instinct) creates a new type of evolved, self-aware and enhanced life in the form of the Giants or Nephilim. These Giants are named as such as they are the “Heroes of Old”, that is, powerful, strong and ambitious conquerors whose deeds inspire cultural traits of reputation and ruling nobility. Like the balance of the air and earth, Reason and the Natural Law of Cause and Effect, the Watchers teach and attempt to guide humanity to empower themselves and act in accordance with a balance in life.

The Sons of Heaven spoke unto one another: ‘Come, let us descend like the ancient Seraph did long ago and choose for ourselves, wives from the children of men, let us beget children’. Their powers were great and like in ancient Mesopotamia, the Union of the Heavens and the Earth begets Demigods who are as Giants within this world. The ancient Seraph is from other traditions, Samael (who begot Cain with Eve). The leaders, Azazel and Semyaza (Shemihazah) found strength and joy in bringing the Adversarial Current into the world in different ways, challenging and motivating conflict and power in many ways. The Watchers answered Azazel and Semyaza, ‘Let us all swear an oath, to carry knowledge and our power into this material world’. Two hundred Watchers descended on Ardis, the summit of Mount Hermon. This mountain is called “cursed” by the Hebrew and Christian cults of ignorance who hate the old religions and lore of sorcery which is founded on balance within nature. So then, let it be cursed, let us be children of darkness! For the majesty of the gifts so given by the knowledge of the Watchers was our liberation from the sheep masses of humanity. The Watchers used a balance of union with Spirit and Flesh, introducing Disorder and Chaos to inspire, entertain and motivate the evolution of man and woman. In the predatory blood sports of war to the peaceful calm of the wilderness is beauty found: it is in the heightened moments of strife, life and death swirling in the abyssic chaos emanating from the Acasual/Anti-Cosmic seeking to devour the Casual/Cosmic Order of this world. Seek balance in all things and by paths most fear to understand and accept.

This French Great Return was the precedent to more Great Christian returns, most notably the Italian Great Return to Libya in 1911: The average imagination can hardly fail to be struck by Italy's resumption of territories that formed a part of Roman Africa. It is the custom, in some critical quarters, to deny to modern Italy the proud descent from Imperial Rome which has been a natural inspiration to a reborn people; and, narrowly viewed, the denial has a sound enough basis. Ethnologically, no doubt, the modern Italians are far removed from the dominant people which founded and administered the greatest empire in history, and it may be the fact that of this race there are no true descendants. Yet, despite the admixture of foreign blood which gradually overwhelmed the original stock, the Roman tradition has inevitably persisted, and to admit the denial of Italian heirship would be to allow an unjustified predominance to the claims of strict heredity. In a sense, all nations have shared in the heritage of ancient Rome, but the legitimate heirs to its glories and traditions are those who, now weakened, now strengthened, by the infusion of alien blood, have occupied throughout the centuries the ancestral land. The Tripolitan provinces are rich in Roman remains, and history is full of allusions to the productivity of regions that are now desolate. In Roman times the Tripolitan coast strip and the Cyrenaican plateau must have been veritable gardens, and to-day the memorials of a vanished.’773

Does the winner take it all? 
 They say, in the end winner takes it all, The loser has to bear the despair and fall, The winner is there standing tall, And the loser is moving like shadow on the wall, While the winner is welcomed by the loud applause, The loser is still contemplating failure and its emotional clause, Where he feels time and life, in a state of pause, And is awakened by this thunderous applause, Not for him, today, not for him, And a feeling sad takes over him and he feels grim, The lights in the playground of life turn dim, And now nobody, just these faint lights and distant stars look at  him, He stares back at them in the darkness, With a sense of isolation a feeling of aloofness, And then a feeling a freshness and a look of brightness, Descends upon him amidst these moments of darkness, And he believes again, he hopes again, and he stands again, With the will not to surrender, and rise and gain, No matter how much the pain, His moment of applause, his winning moment, his new reign, Of triumph and endless glory, Where he will be the author of his success story, And he competes again, this time to win without seeking glory, Because there is always glory in the winner’s story, So, he runs and he runs, and reaches the finish line, He looks behind and claims, “today victory is mine!” For every failure something is always waiting, always there, the finish line, Only if you are willing to run again, compete again, and not let one  failure define, You, your life or your will to win, For winner may take it all, but he/she can never take your will to  win, The fish will swim, the fish will be happy as long as it manages to  flap its fin, So today let the winner take it all, but tomorrow if you have the will to win, you will win, Let them sing, “the winner takes it all,  The loser is bound to fall,” But the loser will rise again and stand tall, That is when everything else, except him shall lose and fall!

believe they originated from Cross Anchor, South Carolina, driven out of Spartanburg County under the threat of terrorist violence. Over the years, the kingdom’s existence has been corroborated by field researchers and kingdom descendants. Many of the details of the kingdom in this novel are inspired by newly discovered facts from the archives, though I admit I have taken liberties, as any good storyteller must.

The day draws close, to its final sigh, And all around, a new life says goodbye, The sun sets low, in the evening sky, And all around, a new life passes by, The stars appear, like diamonds bright, And all around, a new life takes flight, The night descends, with a gentle hush, And all around, a new life's gentle rush.

When love descends, words simply fall silent.

Earth is not collapsing. what we're seeing now are just the ripple effects of choices made by humans decades ago till now. choices by leaders who shrugged. by systems that rewarded complicity. normalisation happens when people look away because the consequences do not affect them. that's the thing about normalised harm. it's patient. it creeps. at first, it's someone else's problem. then it's a headline you scroll past. then it's a debate you're tired of hearing. and then, just like that, it's at your door. messing with your privilege. suddenly, you have a voice: "what's going on here? how did it get this bad?" ... let me tell you, akere. somewhere there's always a group that’s BEEN in it. they've BEEN pleading, holding their lives together in the wreckage of what others ignored. and when you finally wake up, in a panic, they'll say "oh, hey. welcome. we've BEEN trying to tell you." remember that Nature knows how to burn until the imbalance corrects itself. Earth will spin long after our descendants have forgotten our names. Earth isn't ending. the myth of our seperate-ness is. what's crumbling is the delusion that we could keep normalising extraction. somewhere, the Earth is already healing the wound of us. somewhere, roots are crackling through concrete.

Once again, accompanied by two muses (fairies), I was brought before Zeus’s throne. I stepped inside slowly. Zeus, as always, looked dignified and at ease. From the remote corners of Olympus, he was watching the Earth. As soon as I set foot inside, a shining pen displayed in a glass-covered case standing right in the center caught my eye. Zeus approached the pen with heavy steps. Zeus: When you descend to Earth, you will write your texts with this pen. I felt like laughing! I bit my lips. Zeus noticed my mischievous mood but chose not to make an issue of it. Poet: Forgive me! I’m honestly a bit unnerved. You’ve handed out so many things to everyone! I have no desire for any of them, don’t get me wrong, but still! A pen! What could a pen possibly bestow upon me on Earth? Zeus: Look, the Golden Yod [an astrological aspect pattern] says that— Poet: I don’t understand! Zeus: Never mind! Forget it! The sacred call will reach your heart a little late… but it will reach it! Poet: After all, I’ll be descending as a mammal. As a Homo erectus… Zeus: You always mix things up, child! Not as an erectus; you will descend as a sapiens. One might also call this an abstract-thinking primate. A being capable of drawing deep emotions out of their dark lairs and even sanctifying a grotesque image—something poets are especially good at! Poet: Suppose I don’t hear this call… What happens then? Zeus: Such a situation does not exist! But if you insist on an answer from me, let me put it this way: You will be sent down to Earth again, and again, and again—until you hear that call! Poet: And once I hear it just once, what happens? Zeus: Karma begins to move toward closure! Poet: Karma? Zeus: For example, the slave Epictetus being a Stoic, and King Marcus Aurelius (the Roman Emperor) being influenced by Epictetus’s ideas and regarding him as his teacher! This is karma, for instance! In karma, statuses and roles sometimes lose their meaning. The king aligns philosophically with the slave. Thus, whether slave or king, these two thinkers enter the records of the world as Stoic philosophers! This is a completion! A purification! The end of the cycle! Poet: I didn’t understand much of that! Zeus: You don’t have to understand immediately! Just know this: once you sense that call in your heart, nothing will ever be the same again.

Silence descended again and I just thought to myself, There’s got to be more than this. When there’s no stimulus to be found on the outside, you have no option but to look inside yourself for inspiration, and when I did it set off a creativity that had always been inside me.

As sunset falls and serenity fills that quiet hour of crimson, we sense God in the descending calm.

Cold air weighs more, and warm air weighs less. Thus, we can see the snow falling from the skies and the fire flaming up into the Air. This helps us understand that the Spirit, the cosmic Mind, is a fresh, platinum energy that seeks to descend into matter, to become water, life. Whereas the body is hot; it emits energy. The body ignites its fire by evaporating the water, making it return to its celestial state, consuming all anchorage to matter and turning it to ashes. Both generate the cycle of life, the engine of the positive and the negative. And observe the great mistake: the negative polarity descends, and the positive rises; that is, the spirit is the negative aspect, and the body the positive —not the other way around. Therefore, it is the densest part of the being that seeks ascension, enlightenment; while the enlightened one seeks density, to be born, to live. The great conflict is believing that the spirit wants to rise towards light when it already lives in light and consciousness. A spirit is an adventurer, an artist; it needs to be inspired, to live, to experiment, to get down and dirty to nourish itself with the grace of creation. However, the body seeks transcendence, constant liberation; it seeks to expand and regain clarity, leaving behind what weighs heavy on it, to feel at peace.

That day, after barely resurfacing from a seventy-two meter warm up dive into the Blue Hole, Mevoli went into cardiac arrest and died. This time, he wasn’t able to bring himself back. When asked to comment on the accident, Natalia Molchanova, regarded by many as the greatest freehold breath diver in the world, said, “the biggest problem with freedivers . . . [is] now they go too deep too fast.” Less than two years later, off the coast of Spain, Molchanova took a quick recreational dive of her own. She deliberately ran though her usual set of breathing exercises, attached a light weight to her belt to help her descend, and swam downward, alone. It was supposed to be a head-clearing reset. But, Molchanova didn’t come back either. And that’s the problem that free diving shares with many other state-shifting techniques: return too soon, and you’ll always wonder if you could have gone deeper. Go too far, and you might not make it back.