“
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?
I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? -
Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.
”
”
Sylvia Plath
“
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.
”
”
Pico Iyer
“
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: "I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.
Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions--predigested books and ideas...marrying early as an escape from real decisions, getting pregnant as an evasion of already existing problems. It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short...and this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be "different"...The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.
”
”
Adrienne Rich
“
To be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our own attraction to them. Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally 'together' - when subjectively we feel dispersed and confused. We would not love if there were no lack within us, but we are offended by the discovery of a similar lack in the other. Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem.
”
”
Alain de Botton (On Love)
“
Whatever happens, remember that I will love you forever,” he says. “Even if my spirit is dispersed and my consciousness released to the universe... whatever is left of me will never stop loving you.
”
”
Amy Plum (If I Should Die (Revenants, #3))
“
Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?
”
”
Sylvia Plath (Ariel)
“
All right.” Lucy shouldered her way to my side and made a waving motion as if they were annoying flies. “Shoo!” She narrowed her eyes. “I said shoo.”
They dispersed, mostly startled into moving. Only Logan remained, leaning casually against the wall.
“Darling, I’m not some insect to be chased away.”
“Darling?” She snorted amiably. “You’re not ninety years old, either.”
He straightened. “I’m charming,” he informed her. “And women like endearments.
”
”
Alyxandra Harvey (My Love Lies Bleeding (Drake Chronicles, #1))
“
If I should die...," I began to say.
Vincent cuts me off. "Stop, Kate!" And then he sighs and his shoulders hunch slightly. He knows it’s dishonest to pretend we’re all going to make it out alive. He shuts his eyes and, when he opens them, he looks resolute. “Whatever happens, remember that I will love you forever,” he says. “Even if my spirit is dispersed and my consciousness released to the universe . . . whatever is left of me will never stop loving you.
”
”
Amy Plum (If I Should Die (Revenants, #3))
“
Love is the force that brings us back together, in order to condense the experience dispersed in many lives and many parts of the world.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (Brida)
“
I told you,” he says as his physical form begins to fade away and the clouds disperse, the crystal blue form of the celestial sphere announcing its role on the stage of dawning awareness.
”
”
Kathy Martone (Victorian Songlight: The Birthings of Magic & Mystery)
“
Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.
”
”
George Eliot (Middlemarch)
“
The unsaid thing about funerals is that directly after the communal mourning for someone you love, after everyone is gone and the connected grief dispersed, comes a solitude beyond imagining. A great, gaping nothing where a whole person and life and future used to be. The other side of a funeral is abyss.
”
”
Tracy Deonn (Bloodmarked (The Legendborn Cycle, #2))
“
I didn’t know love could disperse
without making a single seed grow,
that longing after you in solitude
would become dearer to me
than being in your arms.
”
”
Tatjana Ostojic (Cacophony of My Soul: When Love Becomes Poetry)
“
Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally ‘together’ – when subjectively, we feel dispersed and confused.
”
”
Alain de Botton (Essays In Love)
“
Without love, things disperse around; love holds things tightly! It prevents them to move away and disappear on the horizons!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena's love of music, Pran's asthma, Maan's generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small unrung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar's great-grandchildren. Indeed, for all the Minsisster of Revenue's impatience with her, she was his regret.
And it was right that she should continue to be so, for he should have treated her better while she lived, the poor, ignorant, grieving fool.
”
”
Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy (A Bridge of Leaves, #1))
“
The limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favourite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centering in some long-recognisable deed.
”
”
George Eliot (Middlemarch)
“
What is the strongest pretext for loving?...If it is necessary, our atomized consciousness invents love, imagines it or feigns it, but does not live without it, since in the midst of infinite dispersion, love, even if as a pretext , gives us the measure of our loss.
”
”
Carlos Fuentes (The Old Gringo)
“
What is born will die What has been gathered will be dispersed What has been accumulated will be exhausted What has been built up will collapse And what has been high will be brought low. The only thing we really have is nowness, now.
”
”
Susan Anderson (The Journey from Abandonment to Healing: Revised and Updated: Surviving Through and Recovering from the Five Stages That Accompany the Loss of Love)
“
I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?
”
”
Sylvia Plath (Ariel)
“
There are quiet places also in the mind,” he said, meditatively. “But we build bandstand and factories on them. Deliberately—to put a stop to the quietness. We don’t like the quietness. All the thoughts, all the preoccupation in my head—round and round continually.” He made a circular motion with his hands. “And the jazz bands, the music hall songs, the boys shouting the news. What’s it all for? To put an end to the quiet, to break it up and disperse it, to pretend at any cost it isn’t there. Ah, but it is, it is there, in spite of everything, at the back of everything. Lying awake at night, sometimes—not restlessly, but serenely, waiting for sleep—the quiet re-establishes itself, piece by piece; all the broken bits, all the fragments of it we’ve been so busily dispersing all day long. It re-establishes itself, an inward quiet, like this outward quiet of grass and trees. It fills one, it grows –a crystal quiet, a growing expanding crystal. It grows, it becomes more perfect; it is beautiful and terrifying, yes, terrifying, as well as beautiful. For one’s alone in the crystal and there’s no support from outside, there’s nothing external and important, nothing external and trivial to pull oneself up by or to stand up, superiorly, contemptuously, so that one can look down. There’s nothing to laugh at or feel enthusiastic about. But the quiet grows and grows. Beautifully and unbearably. And at last you are conscious of something approaching; it is almost a faint sound of footsteps. Something inexpressibly lovely and wonderful advances through the crystal, nearer, nearer. And oh, inexpressibly terrifying. For if it were to touch you, if it were to seize and engulf you, you’d die; all the regular habitual, daily part of you would die. There would be and end of bandstands and whizzing factories, and one would have to begin living arduously in the quiet, arduously n some strange unheard-of manner. Nearer, nearer come the steps; but one can’t face the advancing thing. One daren’t. It’s too terrifying; it’s too painful to die. Quickly, before it is too late, start the factory wheels, bang the drum, blow up the saxophone. Think of the women you’d like to sleep with, the schemes for making money, the gossip about your friends, the last outrage of the politicians. Anything for a diversion. Break the silence, smash the crystal to pieces. There, it lies in bits; it is easily broken, hard to build up and easy to break. And the steps? Ah, those have taken themselves off, double quick. Double quick, they were gone at the flawing of the crystal. And by this time the lovely and terrifying thing is three infinities away, at least. And you lie tranquilly on your bed, thinking of what you’d do if you had ten thousand pounds and of all the fornications you’ll never commit.
”
”
Aldous Huxley
“
In the heart there is a dispersion
that is not collected except by
turning towards Allah.
And there is a loneliness that is not
removed except by the company of Allah
in seclusion.
And there is a sadness that is not
pushed away except by the happiness of
knowing Him and dealing with Him
truthfully.
And there is an anxiety that is not
stilled except by gathering yourself
to Him and fleeing from Him to Him.
And there are fires of remorse, that
are not extinguished except by
contentment with His commands,
prohibitions and decrees, and
embracing patience regarding that
until the time of meeting Him.
And there is severe desire, that will
not cease until He alone becomes the
desired.
And there is an emptiness, that is not
filled except by His love and
continuous remembrance of Him and
sincerity to Him, and if one were to
be given the entire world that
emptiness would not be filled ever!
”
”
ابن قيم الجوزية
“
Like the dandelion clocks, all blown and dispersed on the wind, my life has evaporated into the emptiness of a dream; for which I blame my betrayer, that dubious stranger wearing the mask of a once-loved face.
”
”
Anna Kavan (My Soul in China)
“
Stories never told,
disappeared in the dawn mist
and sunset blaze.
Like a movie kiss,
not real,
but still overwhelms and entices lustfulness,
turns me into pleasure
and a connoisseur of love.
Flying to the heavens above
followed by the yearning hope
that you will always be close to me,
that you will not disperse when
we revel in one another.
Secrets to be kept in one of these terracotta walls
that fade away through the dusk,
feeling the scented candles of musk,
just you and I,
two rebels of love,
that challenge the logic, the meaning, and sense.
”
”
Tatjana Ostojic (Baghdad Nights)
“
She captured the spot of my world’s centre and sent me in elliptic rings about it, causing the ground beneath me to vanish and the breath of my lungs to disperse. I was a rock locked in helpless orbit.
”
”
Richard Ronald Allan (Exit Eleonora)
“
Slowly what she composed with the new day was her own focus, to bring together body and mind. This was made with an effort, as if all the dissolutions and dispersions of her self the night before were difficult to reassemble. She was like an actress who must compose a face, an attitude to meet the day.
The eyebrow pencil was no mere charcoal emphasis on blond eyebrows, but a design necessary to balance a chaotic asymmetry. Make up and powder were not simply applied to heighten a porcelain texture, to efface the uneven swellings caused by sleep, but to smooth out the sharp furrows designed by nightmares, to reform the contours and blurred surfaces of the cheeks, to erase the contradictions and conflicts which strained the clarity of the face’s lines, disturbing the purity of its forms.
She must redesign the face, smooth the anxious brows, separate the crushed eyelashes, wash off the traces of secret interior tears, accentuate the mouth as upon a canvas, so it will hold its luxuriant smile.
Inner chaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows of a peacefully ploughed field, awaited behind all disorders of face, hair, and costume, for a fissure through which to explode.
What she saw in the mirror now was a flushed, clear-eyed face, smiling, smooth, beautiful. The multiple acts of composure and artifice had merely dissolved her anxieties; now that she felt prepared to meet the day, her true beauty emerged which had been frayed and marred by anxiety.
”
”
Anaïs Nin (A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior, #4))
“
I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me; all day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Collected Poems)
“
We must live in stories. It must be a path we walk, part of the glue that holds us together. Individuals must unite themselves to a body well-formed in love so that we grow up into the logos himself, who is the head. Without that extra step, we will ultimately be dispersed like smoke like wax before the fire.
”
”
Jonathan Pageau
“
It was as if they'd discovered something that had once been there but had gotten hidden or misunderstood or forgotten over time, and they were charmed by it once more, and by one another. Which seems only right and expectable for married people. They caught a glimpse of the person they fell in love with, and who sustained life. For some, that vision must never dim - as is true of me. But it was odd that our parents should catch their glimpse, and have frustration, anxiety and worry pass away like clouds dispersing after a storm, refind their best selves, but for that glimpse to happen just before landing our family in ruin.
”
”
Richard Ford (Canada)
“
But what do I love, when I love You? Not beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time. Not the brightness of the light, so welcome to our eyes, Nor sweet melodies of varied songs, Nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments and spices. Not manna and honey, nor the embrace of arms in fleshly pleasure. None of these I love when I love my God. Yet this love is a kind of light and melody and fragrance and meat and embrace. When I love my God, the light, melody, fragrance, meat, and embrace is experienced by my inner man. Love shines into my soul, where space cannot contain it. Love speaks with sound that does not fade into silence with time. Its smells are not dispersed in breath, and its tastes do not grow stale. Love clings, and its satisfaction does not break my connection to the experience. This is it which I love, when I love my God.
”
”
Augustine of Hippo (The Confessions of St. Augustine: Modern English Version)
“
May the four winds gather & disperse the strength to grant me with all the same blessings once bestowed upon the goddess of Olympus.
”
”
Truth Devour (Unrequited (Wantin #2))
“
Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.
”
”
George Eliot (Middlemarch)
“
As I wait for the crowd to disperse, I take stock of the room. Levi’s team appears to be WurstFest™ material. The well-known Meatwave. A Dicksplosion in the Testosteroven. The good old Brodeo.
”
”
Ali Hazelwood (Love on the Brain)
“
Egotism is but the perversion of spiritual being. Ambition is the inversion of spiritual power. Passion is the distortion of love. The mortal is the limitation of the immortal. When these false images give place to true, then the spiritual man stands forth luminous, as the sun, when the clouds disperse. 4.
”
”
Patañjali (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: the Book of the Spiritual Man)
“
Memory revises me.
Even now a letter
comes from a place
I don’t know, from someone
with my name
and postmarked years ago,
while I await
injunctions from the light
or the dark;
I wait for shapeliness
limned, or dissolution.
Is paradise due or narrowly missed
until another thousand years?
I wait
in a blue hour
and faraway noise of hammering,
and on a page a poem begun, something
about to be dispersed,
something about to come into being.
”
”
Li-Young Lee (The City in Which I Love You)
“
From time to time I feel as though my books and figurines were with me still. But how could they be? Are they somehow floating around me or over my head? Have the figurines and books that I lost over the years dissolved into the air of Mexico City? Have they become the ash that blows through the city from north to south and from east to west? Perhaps. The dark night of the soul advances through the streets of Mexico City sweeping all before it. And now it is rare to hear singing, where once everything was a song. The dust cloud reduces everything to dust. First the poets, then love, then, when it seems to be sated and about to disperse, the cloud returns to hang high over your city or your mind, with a mysterious air that means it has no intention of moving.
”
”
Roberto Bolaño (Amulet)
“
assemble and disperse, everything changes and is transformed, but no-o-othing can ever change from being to not-being. Not even the tiniest hair growing on the tail of some virus. The concept of infinity is indeed open, infinitely open, but at the same time it is also closed and hermetically sealed. Nothing leaves and nothing enters.
”
”
Amos Oz (A Tale of Love and Darkness)
“
Jenny slowly awoke on the sacrificial altar to an Ethereal Light that flamed through the east wall, a radiant aura of love dispersing the frightful scene. A glow pulsating from Angeletta's body still burning in the fire pit slowly rose to join the Light. A Heavenly peace infused Jenny as she realized, "There's a man standing in the air straight above me!
”
”
Judy Byington (Twenty-Two Faces)
“
In a touch Buckland would have appreciated, this multipronged dispersal from Africa is sometimes called the Weak Garden of Eden theory. But this tale is actually better than the biblical version; we didn’t lose Eden but learned to make other Edens across the world.
”
”
Sam Kean (The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code)
“
When I missed the physical body of my partner, I meditated on its parts, tossed by the waves, torn, dispersed, and deteriorated. When memories of our lives together became acute and intense, I breathed. I breathed through each wave of yearning, of regret, of guilt, of what-could-have-been. Every time I asked him, “Where are you?” A quiet voice immediately responded, “I am here. I have never left you.” I did not only lose a partner. I lost my childhood all over again. I lost my soul mate. I lost the accepting father and the gentle mother that he was to me. I lost the dream of a “normal life,” which I had tried so hard to achieve. Now I had to face my own mind.
”
”
Dang Nghiem (Healing: A Woman's Journey from Doctor to Nun)
“
I too have known the inward disturbance of exile,
The great peril of being at home nowhere,
The dispersed center, the dividing love;
Not here, nor there, leaping across ocean,
Turning, returning to each strong allegiance;
American, but with this difference - parting.
”
”
May Sarton (Plant Dreaming Deep)
“
Leave-Taking"
I do not know where either of us can turn
Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other.
I do not know how we can bear
The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon,
Or many trees shaken together in the darkness.
We shall wish not to be alone
And that love were not dispersed and set free—
Though you defeat me,
And I be heavy upon you.
But like earth heaped over the heart
Is love grown perfect.
Like a shell over the beat of life
Is love perfect to the last.
So let it be the same
Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another;
Let us know this for leavetaking,
That I may not be heavy upon you,
That you may blind me no more.
Originally published in Poetry, August 1922.
”
”
Louise Bogan (Body of This Death)
“
In strokes of fresh blue, pink and orange dispersed with soft white kisses, the sky writes letters to me.
”
”
Meeta Ahluwalia
“
However deaf the ring of our love bells should strike they will eventually disperse this world’s emptiness clouds.
”
”
Sorin Cerin (Wisdom Collection: The Book of Wisdom)
“
Sometimes, when I am ready to commit suicide, she sings that air; and instantly the gloom and madness which hung over me are dispersed, and I breathe freely again.
”
”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Sorrows of Young Werther)
“
Telling has a way of dispersing things. It will allow your lover to stand closer inside the circle of you. Let him.
”
”
Cheryl Strayed (Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar)
“
I love you more
With every word
You say
And I can sense
That we have
The same soul
No matter
How dispersed
Our hearts
Have evolved
”
”
Jazalyn (Hollow: a Love Like a Life)
“
Our Chasers Aren’t Cheating! That was the stunned reaction of Quidditch fans across Britain last night when the so-called “Stooging Penalty” was announced by the Department of Magical Games and Sports last night. “Instances of stooging have been on the increase,” said a harassed-looking Departmental representative last night. “We feel that this new rule will eliminate the sever Keeper injuries we have been seeing only too often. From now on, one Chaser will attempt to beat the Keeper, as opposed to three Chasers beating the Keeper up. Everything will be much cleaner and fairer.” At this point the Departmental representative was forced to retreat as the angry crowd started to bombard him with Quaffles. Wizards from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement arrived to disperse the crowd, who were threatening to stooge the Minister of Magic himself. One freckle-faced six-year-old left the hall in tears. “I loved stooging,” he sobbed to the Daily Prophet. “Me and me dad like watching them Keepers flattened. I don’t want to go to Quidditch no more.” Daily Prophet, 22 June 1884
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Quidditch Through the Ages)
“
...Would you like to know the view I have out of my window, since you love snow? So here you are: the broad whiteness of the Moldau, and along that whiteness, little black silhouettes of people cross from one shore to the other, like musical notes. For example, the figure of some boy is dragging behind him a D-sharp: a sledge. Across the river there are snowy roofs in a distant, lightweight sky...
I walked around the cathedral along a slippery path between snowdrifts. The snow was light, dry: grab a handful, throw it up, and it disperses in the air like dust, as if flying back up. The sky darkened. In it appeared a thin golden moon: half of a broken halo. I walked along the edge of the fortress wall. Old Prague lay below in the thickening mist. The snowy roofs clustered together, cumbrous and dim. The houses seemed to have been piled anyhow, in a moment of terrible and fantastic carelessness. In this frozen storm of outlines, in this snowy semi-darkness, the streetlamps and windows were burning with a warm and sweet lustre, like well-licked punch lollipops. In just one place you could also see a little scarlet light, a drop of pomegranate juice. And in the fog of crooked walls and smoky corners I divined an ancient ghetto, mystical ruins, the alley of Alchemists...
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Letters to Vera)
“
I surrender my fears and burdens to God. I needn’t carry into my day the burdens of my existence. Rather, I surrender them into the hands of God. I know that they will be lifted from me, for what I place on the altar in my mind is then altered in my life. When I do not know what to say or do, He who is alive within me will illumine my thinking and guide my words. When a possible outcome makes me weak with fear, I will feel His arms around me. And when the road seems lonely and long before me, I will know I am not alone. Dear God, Please take from me the burdens that I carry. Please uplift my thinking and bring forth a miracle. Send a wave of love to disperse my fear. And so it is. Amen.
”
”
Marianne Williamson (A Year of Miracles: Daily Devotions and Reflections (The Marianne Williamson Series))
“
In every drop of water, gust of air, speck of earth, and crackle of lightning, she hears the same thing: This world is alive. And it loves her.
A little while later, the storm notices that Jael has fallen asleep. The rain tapers off. The clouds sneak away like they're trying not to wake her. The wind caresses her cheek one last time, then disperses in all directions. It carries with it the memory of this funny girl with the sad green eyes. And it carries with it a little bit of hope that things might change. That the world might become what it was supposed to be.
”
”
Kelley Skovron (Misfit)
“
My Floating Sea"
"Pastel colors reflect in my opening eyes and draw my gaze to a horizon where the waters both begin and end. This early in the day I can easily stare without blinking. The pale sea appears calm, but it is stormy just as often. I awe at the grandeur, how it expands beyond my sight to immeasurable depths. In every direction that I twist my neck, a beauteous blue is there to console me.
Flowing, floating ribbons of mist form on these pale waters. In harmony they pirouette, creating a stretch of attractive, soft swirls. Swoosh! The wind, its strength in eddies and twisters, smears the art of dancing clouds, and the white disperses like startled fairies fleeing into the forest. Suddenly all is brilliant blue.
The waters calm and clear. It warms me. Pleases me. Forces my eyes to close at such vast radiance. My day is spent surrounded by this ethereal sea, but soon enough the light in its belly subsides. Rich colors draw my gaze to the opposite horizon where the waters both begin and end. I watch the colors bleed and deepen. They fade into black.
Yawning, I cast my eyes at tiny gleams of life that drift within the darkened waters. I extend my reach as if I could will my arm to stretch the expanse between me and eons. How I would love to brush a finger over a ray of living light, but I know I cannot.
Distance deceives me.
These little breathing lights floating in blackness would truly reduce me to the tiniest size, like a mountain stands majestic over a single wild flower. I am overwhelmed by it all and stare up, in love with the floating sea above my head.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Making Wishes: Quotes, Thoughts, & a Little Poetry for Every Day of the Year)
“
God is not present everywhere by being identical to everything in the universe (as in pantheism). God is not dispersed through the universe like an invisible gas. Instead God is present in the universe by sustaining and affecting every part of it.
”
”
Trent Horn (Why We're Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, and Love)
“
—
If love wants you; if you’ve been melted
down to stars, you will love
with lungs and gills, with warm blood
and cold. With feathers and scales.
Under the hot gloom of the forest canopy
you’ll want to breathe with the spiral
calls of birds, while your lashing tail
still gropes for the waes. You’ll try
to haul your weight from simple sea
to gravity of land. Caught by the tide,
in the snail-slip of your own path, for moments
suffocating in both water and air.
If love wants you, suddently your past is
obsolete science. Old maps,
disproved theories, a diorama.
The moment our bodies are set to spring open.
The immanence that reassembles matter
passes through us then disperses
into time and place:
the spasm of fur stroked upright; shocked electrons.
The mother who hears her child crying upstairs
and suddenly feels her dress
wet with milk.
Among black branches, oyster-coloured fog
tongues every corner of loneliness we never knew
before we were loved there,
the places left fallow when we’re born,
waiting for experience to find its way
into us. The night crossing, on deck
in the dark car. On the beach wehre
night reshaped your face.
In the lava fields, carbon turned to carpet,
moss like velvet spread over splintered forms.
The instant spray freezes
in air above the falls, a gasp of ice.
We rise, hearing our names
called home through salmon-blue dusk, the royal moon
an escutcheon on the shield of sky.
The current that passes through us, radio waves,
electric lick. The billions of photons that pass
through film emulsion every second, the single
submicroscopic crystal struck
that becomes the phograph.
We look and suddenly the world
looks back.
A jagged tube of ions pins us to the sky.
—
But if, like starlings, we continue to navigate
by the rear-view mirror
of the moon; if we continue to reach
both for salt and for the sweet white
nibs of grass growing closest to earth;
if, in the autumn bog red with sedge we’re also
driving through the canyon at night,
all around us the hidden glow of limestone
erased by darkness; if still we sish
we’d waited for morning,
we will know ourselves
nowhere.
Not in the mirrors of waves
or in the corrading stream,
not in the wavering
glass of an apartment building,
not in the looming light of night lobbies
or on the rainy deck. Not in the autumn kitchen
or in the motel where we watched meteors
from our bed while your slow film, the shutter open,
turned stars to rain.
We will become
indigestible. Afraid
of choking on fur
and armour, animals
will refuse the divided longings
in our foreing blue flesh.
—
In your hands, all you’ve lost,
all you’ve touched.
In the angle of your head,
every vow and
broken vow. In your skin,
every time you were disregarded,
every time you were received.
Sundered, drowsed. A seeded field,
mossy cleft, tidal pool, milky stem.
The branch that’s released when the bird lifts
or lands. In a summer kitchen.
On a white winter morning, sunlight across the bed.
”
”
Anne Michaels
“
Where does the instability of the homogeneous come from? Why does it differentiate spontaneously? Why do things exist at all? Are they the fragile and mortal result of an injustice, a disequilibrium in the static equilibrium of forces between conflicting natural powers? Or do the forces that create and drive things exist autonomously—rival powers of love and hate leading to birth, growth, decline, and dispersion? Is change an illusion or is it, on the contrary, the unceasing struggle between opposites that constitutes things? Can qualitative change be reduced to the motion in a vacuum, of atoms differing only in their forms, or do atoms themselves consist of a multitude of qualitatively different germs, each unlike the others? And last, is the harmony of the world mathematical? Are numbers the key to nature?
”
”
Ilya Prigogine (Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature (Radical Thinkers))
“
Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aerie-light, from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapors bland, which the only sound
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan,
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song
Of birds on every bough; so much the more
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest: He, on his side
Leaning half raised, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamored, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces; then with voice
Mild, as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,
Her hand soft touching, whispered thus. Awake,
My fairest, my espoused, my latest found,
Heaven's last best gift, my ever new delight!
Awake: The morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tender plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed,
How nature paints her colors, how the bee
Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet.
”
”
John Milton (Paradise Lost)
“
Responsibility to yourself… means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in the places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be 'different'; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; to be able to demand of others that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons… The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.
”
”
Adrienne Rich
“
I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were prophesied for him, throws up his hands to heaven and kisses the ground by the well. Me Jewish, Celan Jewish, Oliver Jewish—we were in a half ghetto, half oasis, in an otherwise cruel and unflinching world where fuddling around strangers suddenly stops, where we misread no one and no one misjudges us, where one person simply knows the other and knows him so thoroughly that to be taken away from such intimacy is galut,Hebrew word for exile and dispersal. Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I’m with you and we’re well together, there is nothing more I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you’re with me, Oliver.
If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome.
It never occurred to me that if one word word from him could make me so happy, another could just as easily crush me, that if I didn’t want to be unhappy, I should learn to beware of such small joys as well.
”
”
André Aciman (Call Me by Your Name: A Novel)
“
And all my ethical reasoning crumbles to ash in the sheer fact of his presence. Because together, even in darkness, we light up a room; because the clotted guilt inside me breaks up and disperses before a surge of stupid happiness; because I love him, and I know I cannot leave him, am incapable of leaving him, unless he asks me to go. And he has not asked me. And that is the miracle which I live with, every day.
”
”
Anna Lyndsey (Girl in the Dark)
“
When a cloud comes between two beings filled with affection for each other and whose lives are in absolute unison, that cloud, though it may disperse, leaves in those souls a trace of its passage. Either love gains a stronger life, as the earth after rain, or the shock still echoes like distant thunder through a cloudless sky. It is impossible to recover absolutely the former life; love will either increase or diminish.
”
”
Honoré de Balzac (Works of Honore de Balzac)
“
Far from birds, from flocks and village girls, What did I drink, on my knees in the heather Surrounded by a sweet wood of hazel trees, In the warm and green mist of the afternoon? What could I drink from that young Oise, − Voiceless elms, flowerless grass, an overcast sky! − Drinking from these yellow gourds, far from the hut I loved? Some golden spirit that made me sweat. I would have made a dubious sign for an inn. − A storm came to chase the sky away. In the evening Water from the woods sank into the virgin sand, And God’s wind threw ice across the ponds. Weeping, I saw gold − but could not drink. − ——— At four in the morning, in the summer, The sleep of love still continues. Beneath the trees the wind disperses The smells of the evening feast. Over there, in their vast wood yard, Under the sun of the Hesperidins, Already hard at work − in shirtsleeves − Are the Carpenters. In their Deserts of moss, quietly, They raise precious panelling Where the city Will paint fake skies. O for these Workers, charming Subjects of a Babylonian king, Venus! Leave for a moment the Lovers Whose souls are crowned with wreaths. O Queen of Shepherds, Carry the water of life to these labourers, So their strength may be appeased As they wait to bathe in the noon-day sea.
”
”
Arthur Rimbaud (A Season in Hell)
“
Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone
Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
for all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.
If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?
Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.
There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.
There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.
There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.
You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.
And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.
At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.
”
”
Jorge Luis Borges
“
That wondrous instant of our meeting —
my mind’s eye sees you standing there,
a vision transient and fleeting,
true beauty’s spirit, pure and rare.
In toils of hopeless grief confounded,
amid life’s noise and stress it seems
for long that tender voice resounded
and those sweet features came in dreams.
Years passed; the storms that life engenders
dispersed my former hopes of grace
and I forgot those accents tender,
the heavenly beauty of your face.
And in my dark incarceration
my days passed like the clouds above,
bereft alike of inspiration,
of tears, of life itself, of love.
My soul awoke to new existence,
again you stood before me there,
a vision lasting but an instant,
true beauty’s spirit, pure and rare.
My heart relives the old sensation
and once more steal down from above,
God’s benediction, inspiration,
and tears, and life itself and love.
”
”
Alexander Pushkin
“
The whole of life but labours in the dark.
For just as children tremble and fear all
In the viewless dark, so even we at times
Dread in the light so many things that be
No whit more fearsome than what children feign,
Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
This terror then, this darkness of the mind,
Not sunrise with its flaring spokes of light,
Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse,
But only nature's aspect and her law.
”
”
Lucretius (Lucretius On the Nature of Things)
“
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again -- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.
”
”
William Wyatt (Travel: How to Drop Everything And Travel Around The World - How to Do It, Where to Go & Why It's Cheaper Than You Think (Travel, Travel Books, Happiness, ... Esteem, Self Confidence, 4 Hour Work Week))
“
Madness—the kind you lock away—breeds sophistries, and I haven’t avoided a single one. I could list them all: I’ve got them down.
My health suffered. Terror struck. I’d sleep for days, and, risen, such sad dreams would stay with me. I was ripe for death, and down a dangerous road my weakness drew me to the edges of the earth and on to Cimmeria, that dark country of winds.
I sought voyages, to disperse enchantments that had colonized my mind.
Above a sea I came to love as if it were rinsing me of stain, I watched a consoling cross rise. Damnation, in the shape of a rainbow. Bliss was my undoing, my remorse, my worm: my life would always be too ungovernable to devote to strength and beauty.
”
”
Arthur Rimbaud (A Season in Hell & Illuminations)
“
You are a three-part being - body, mind and spirit - and you never, ever are anything less or anything else. As you move from the metaphysical to the physical and back again, you simply disintegrate and reintegrate these aspects of Who You Are.
To help you understand how such a thing is possible, think of what you call "white light". This is actually a combination of lights of different wave-lenghts in the electromagnetic spectrum. If you send white light through a dispersive prism, you will see its spectral colors, which are its constituent parts.
Now think of physicality as the "prism" of Ultimate Reality. When the soul passes through the prism into physicality, it breaks into its constituent parts: body, mind and spirit. When it passes back through the prism the other way - or as humans put it, when you "pass away" - the soul becomes one element again.
That one element is You.
”
”
Neale Donald Walsch (Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue: Teaching Children Wisdom; The New Spiritual Politics)
“
I wanted to climb to the summit of challenges, attack my way through hardships as solid as granite, tempt all sorts of peril, and break through mysteries with science. I longed to inhale all sorts of experience and then explore the labyrinthine ins and outs of life that in the end cannot be guessed. I yearned for possibilities that react with each other, like the collision of uranium molecules: binding, multiplying, bursting, and dispersing in unexpected directions. I wanted to go to faraway places and meet with endless varieties of foreign languages and peoples. I wished to rove, finding my direction through reading the stars of constellations. I wanted to cross fields and deserts, to be burned by the sun until I blistered, to be shook by the assaulting wind, and shrink from being gripped by cold. I wanted a life that was thrilling, filled with conquest. I wanted to live! To feel the essence of being!
”
”
Andrea Hirataira
“
I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were prophesied for him, throws up his hands to heaven and kisses the ground by the well. Me Jewish, Celan Jewish, Oliver Jewish—we were in a half ghetto, half oasis, in an otherwise cruel and unflinching world where fuddling around strangers suddenly stops, where we misread no one and no one misjudges us, where one person simply knows the other and knows him so thoroughly that to be taken away from such intimacy is galut, the Hebrew word for exile and dispersal. Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I’m with you and we’re well together, there is nothing more I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you’re with me, Oliver. If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome.
”
”
André Aciman (Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1))
“
A Prayer for Grace and Illumination Stay with me, Lord, for it is necessary to have You present so that I do not forget You. You know how easily I abandon You. Stay with me, Lord, because I am weak and I need Your strength, that I may not fall so often. Stay with me, Lord, for You are my life, and without You, I am without fervor. Stay with me, Lord, for You are my light, and without You, I am in darkness. Stay with me, Lord, to show me Your will. Stay with me, Lord, so that I hear Your voice and follow You. Stay with me, Lord, for I desire to love You very much, and always be in Your company. Stay with me, Lord, if You wish me to be faithful to You. Stay with me, Lord, for as poor as my soul is, I wish it to be a place of consolation for You, a nest of Love. Stay with me, Jesus, for it is getting late and the day is coming to a close, and life passes, death, judgment, eternity approaches. It is necessary to renew my strength, so that I will not stop along the way and for that, I need You. It is getting late and death approaches. I fear the darkness, the temptations, the dryness, the cross, the sorrows. O how I need You, my Jesus, in this night of exile! Stay with me tonight, Jesus, in life with all its dangers, I need You. Let me recognize You as Your disciples did at the breaking of bread, so that the Eucharistic Communion be the light which disperses the darkness, the force which sustains me, the unique joy of my heart. Stay with me, Lord, because at the hour of my death, I want to remain united to You, if not by Communion, at least by grace and love. Stay with me, Jesus, I do not ask for divine consolation, because I do not merit it, but, the gift of Your Presence, oh yes, I ask this of You! Stay with me, Lord, for it is You alone I look for. Your Love, Your Grace, Your Will, Your Heart, Your Spirit, because I love You and ask no other reward but to love You more and more. With a firm love, I will love You with all my heart while on earth and continue to love You perfectly during all eternity. Amen. —Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
”
”
Patrick Madrid (A Year with the Bible: Scriptural Wisdom for Daily Living)
“
Sensuality is for you, not about you. It’s for you in a sense that you are allowed to indulge all of your senses and taste the goodness of this world and beyond. It’s also for you in a sense that you’re allowed to curate and express yourself in an authentic way (i.e. in the way you dress, communicate, live, love, play, etc.).
However, sensuality is not ABOUT you, it’s about those to whom you were brought here to touch and inspire. It’s about the joy and pleasure you’re here to bring. You didn’t come here for yourself nor empty-handed, but you came here bearing special gifts. You were brought here to be a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures.
Your passion is an indication of the sensual gift(s) you were endowed with before you made your grand entry into this world. Your divine mandate now is to exploit every sensual gift you have to the fullest whether it’s music, photography, boudoir or fashion modeling, etc.
If you have a love for fashion, always dress impeccably well like my friend Kefilwe Mabote. If you have a love for good food and wine, create culinary experiences the world has never seen before like chef Heston Blumenthal whom I consider as one of the most eminent sensual innovators in the culinary field.
Chef Heston has crafted the most sensually innovative culinary experience where each sense has been considered with unparalleled rigour. He believes that eating is a truly multi-sensory experience. This approach has not only led to innovative dishes like the famous bacon and egg ice cream, but also to playing sounds to diners through headphones, and dispersing evocative aromas with dry ice.
Chef Heston is indeed a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven’s most deepest pleasures in his own right and field. So, what sensual gift(s) are you here to use? It doesn’t have to be a big thing. For instance, you may be a great home maker. That may be an area where you’re endowed with the most sensual innovative abilities than any other area in your life. You need to occupy and shine your light in that space, no matter how small it seems.
”
”
Lebo Grand
“
My mint chocolate is delicious----and not at all leafy. Benny has made a mixed-berries-and-cream concoction that is, I hate to admit upon tasting it, next level. Nia, Seb, and Lily are brought in as the blind taste testers, and while they stress that both ice creams were excellent, two out of three prefer Benny's.
He takes an obnoxious bow as the whole group---including me, grudgingly---gives him a round of applause. I try not to let my annoyance show until filming wraps up and most people disperse from the kitchen, at which point I take it out on a sticky spot on the counter where some batter spilled.
"I think you got it all." Benny's voice is so close behind me that I nearly jump out of my shoes. "Keep scrubbing that hard and you'll wear a hole through the counter."
"Keep minding your own business if you don't want me to wear a hole through your head, mister."
He laughs as he leans against the counter beside me, one muscular forearm making its way into my line of sight. "I'm not even sure what that means, but you're cute when you're grumpy. Relax, Reese's Pieces. It's still early in the season and we're only oh-and-one. Not that anyone's keeping score."
I grit my teeth but say no more, and soon enough he gets the picture and makes himself scarce. He's joking around, but I'm already all too aware of the score, picturing it in bold letters and neon lights:
Benny---1, Reese---0.
”
”
Kaitlyn Hill (Love from Scratch)
“
It is difficult to return to the places of one's early happiness. The young girls in the flower of their youth
still laugh and chatter on the seashore, but he who watches them gradually loses his right to love them,
just as those he has loved lose the power to be loved. This melancholy is the melancholy of Proust. It was
powerful enough in him to cause a violent rejection of all existence. But his passion for faces and for the
light attached him at the same time to life. He never admitted that the happy days of his youth were lost
forever. He undertook the task of re-creating them and of demonstrating, in the face of death, that the past
could be regained at the end of time in the form of an imperishable present, both truer and richer than it
was at the beginning. The psychological analysis of Remembrance of Things Past is nothing but a potent
means to an end. The real greatness of Proust lies in having written Time Regained, which resembles the
world of dispersion and which gives it a meaning on the very level of integration. His difficult victory, on
the eve of his death, is to have been able to extract from the incessant flight of forms, by means of
memory and intelligence alone, the tentative trembling symbols of human unity. The most definite
challenge that a work of this kind can give to creation is to present itself as an entirety, as a closed and
unified world. This defines an unrepentant work of art.
”
”
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
“
The softening of thought began with open-heart ideology: the New Philosophers. It continued with the New Romantics. Then the revival of philosophy in general. Then the euphoria of new enterprise and new business. The social 'naturalism' of neoliberalism. Everywhere face-lifted values have reinstalled themselves, a touching dynamism, a puerile religiosity, in which love resurfaces blithely. A way for the horde to close ranks at the time of the greatest dispersion of the species.
Zinoviev doesn't give a damn about the Western intelligentsia, with its subtlety and sophistication. He knows that the massive unintelligible reality on the other side of the iron curtain is more interesting than our dialectical, interactive processes. He draws the power of his irony from the power of stupidity. The gist of what he is saying is that if we have not conquered this stupidity, you are not going to overcome it. And he is only too damned right. Or he is saying this: you are behind us in absolute terms, because we have been through the worst, whereas you still have it to go through. You cannot argue with that. Dissidents? In the case of Sakharov, says Zinoviev, the Western world and the Eastern bloc derive equal benefit from this lamentable situation and are equally responsible for it. You have no hope of converting us for we are a more advanced form, the post-catastrophe social form, the form of survival. You are still in the realm of life, but we are already in the realm of afterlife - survival. In any case, your society is artificial: it goes to any lengths to sustain illusions from which we have already drawn all the possible consequences. Do not hope for communism to evolve, for it is you who quite peaceably will take the same path as we have. You are already a lot like us.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard (Cool Memories)
“
The dispersion of the daimonic by means of impersonality has serious and destructive effects. In New York City, it is not regarded as strange that the anonymous human beings secluded in single-room occupancies are so often connected with violent crime and drug addiction. Not that the anonymous individual in New York is alone: he sees thousands of other people every day, and he knows all the famous personalities as they come, via TV, into his single room. He knows their names, their smiles, their idiosyncrasies; they bandy about in a “we're-all-friends-together” mood on the screen which invites him to join them and subtly assumes that he does join them. He knows them all. But he himself is never known. His smile is unseen; his idiosyncrasies are important to no-body; his name is unknown. He remains a foreigner pushed on and off the subway by tens of thousands of other anonymous foreigners. There is a deeply depersonalizing tragedy involved in this. The most severe punishment Yahweh could inflict on his people was to blot out their name. “Their names,” Yahweh proclaims, “shall be wiped out of the book of the living.”
This anonymous man's never being known, this aloneness, is transformed into loneliness, which may then become daimonic possession. For his self-doubts—“I don't really exist since I can't affect anyone” —eat away at his innards; he lives and breathes and walks in a loneliness which is subtle and insidious. It is not surprising that he gets a gun and trains it on some passer-by—also anonymous to him. And it is not surprising that the young men in the streets, who are only anonymous digits in their society, should gang together in violent attacks to make sure their assertion is felt.
Loneliness and its stepchild, alienation, can become forms of demon possession. Surrendering ourselves to the impersonal daimonic pushes us into an anonymity which is also impersonal; we serve nature’s gross purposes on the lowest common denominator, which often means with violence.
”
”
Rollo May (Love and Will)
“
On the second Sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city of Weep, a girl fell from the sky.
Her skin was blue, her blood was red.
She broke over an iron gate, crimping it on impact, and there she hung, impossibly arched, graceful as a temple dancer swooning on a lover’s arm. One slick finial anchored her in place. Its point, protruding from her sternum, glittered like a brooch. She fluttered briefly as her ghost shook loose, and torch ginger buds rained out of her long hair.
Later, they would say these had been hummingbird hearts and not blossoms at all.
They would say she hadn’t shed blood but wept it. That she was lewd, tonguing her teeth at them, upside down and dying, that she vomited a serpent that turned to smoke when it hit the ground. They would say a flock of moths came, frantic, and tried to lift her away.
That was true. Only that.
They hadn’t a prayer, though. The moths were no bigger than the startled mouths of children, and even dozens together could only pluck at the strands of her darkening hair until their wings sagged, sodden with her blood. They were purled away with the blossoms as a grit-choked gust came blasting down the street. The earth heaved underfoot. The sky spun on its axis. A queer brilliance lanced through billowing smoke, and the people of Weep had to squint against it. Blowing grit and hot light and the stink of saltpeter. There had been an explosion. They might have died, all and easily, but only this girl had, shaken from some pocket of the sky.
Her feet were bare, her mouth stained damson. Her pockets were all full of plums. She was young and lovely and surprised and dead.
She was also blue.
Blue as opals, pale blue. Blue as cornflowers, or dragonfly wings, or a spring—not summer—sky.
Someone screamed. The scream drew others. The others screamed, too, not because a girl was dead, but because the girl was blue, and this meant something in the city of Weep. Even after the sky stopped reeling, and the earth settled, and the last fume spluttered from the blast site and dispersed, the screams went on, feeding themselves from voice to voice, a virus of the air.
The blue girl’s ghost gathered itself and perched, bereft, upon the spearpoint-tip of the projecting finial, just an inch above her own still chest. Gasping in shock, she tilted back her invisible head and gazed, mournfully, up.
The screams went on and on.
And across the city, atop a monolithic wedge of seamless, mirror-smooth metal, a statue stirred, as though awakened by the tumult, and slowly lifted its great horned head.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1))
“
If we consider the possibility that all women–from the infant suckling her mother’s breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmic sensations while suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her mother’s milk-smell in her own; to two women, like Virginia Woolf’s Chloe and Olivia, who share a laboratory; to the woman dying at ninety, touched and handled by women–exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify ourselves as lesbian or not. It allows us to connect aspects of woman-identification as diverse as the impudent, intimate girl-friendships of eight- or nine-year-olds and the banding together of those women of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries known as Beguines who “shared houses, rented to one another, bequeathed houses to their room-mates … in cheap subdivided houses in the artisans’ area of town,” who “practiced Christian virtue on their own, dressing and living simply and not associating with men,” who earned their livings as spinners, bakers, nurses, or ran schools for young girls, and who managed–until the Church forced them to disperse–to live independent both of marriage and of conventual restrictions. It allows us to connect these women with the more celebrated “Lesbians” of the women’s school around Sappho of the seventh century B.C.; with the secret sororities and economic networks reported among African women; and with the Chinese marriage resistance sisterhoods–communities of women who refused marriage, or who if married often refused to consummate their marriages and soon left their husbands–the only women in China who were not footbound and who, Agnes Smedley tells us, welcomed the births of daughters and organized successful women’s strikes in the silk mills. It allows us to connect and compare disparate individual instances of marriage resistance: for example, the type of autonomy claimed by Emily Dickinson, a nineteenth-century white woman genius, with the strategies available to Zora Neale Hurston, a twentieth-century black woman genius. Dickinson never married, had tenuous intellectual friendships with men, lived self-convented in her genteel father’s house, and wrote a lifetime of passionate letters to her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert and a smaller group of such letters to her friend Kate Scott Anthon. Hurston married twice but soon left each husband, scrambled her way from Florida to Harlem to Columbia University to Haiti and finally back to Florida, moved in and out of white patronage and poverty, professional success and failure; her survival relationships were all with women, beginning with her mother. Both of these women in their vastly different circumstances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and selfhood, and were later characterized as “apolitical ”. Both were drawn to men of intellectual quality; for both of them women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life.
”
”
Adrienne Rich (Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence)
“
You are routinely separated from things you enjoy. And someday that separation will be permanent. Friends drift away, children leave home, careers end, and eventually your own final breath comes and goes. Everything that begins must also cease. Everything that comes together must also disperse. Experiences are thus incapable of being completely satisfying. They are an unreliable basis for true happiness.
”
”
Rick Hanson (Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom)
“
Les 8 Vallées (les noms des paliers de profondeur du vagin)
1) La Corde du Luth, profonde de 1 pouce (2,5 cm)
2) Les Dents de la Châtaigne d’eau, 2 pouces
3) Le Ruisselet, trois pouces
4) La Perle Noire, 4 pouces
5) Le Propre de la Vallée, 5 pouces
6) La Chambre profonde, 6 pouces
7) La Porte Intérieure, 7 pouces
8) Le Pôle Nord, 8 pouces
Les 9 manières d'agiter la Tige de Jade
1) Frapper à gauche et à droite comme un guerrier courageux qui tenterait de disperser les rangs de ses ennemis
2) Mouvoir de haut en bas (la tige de jade) comme un cheval sauvage fit le saut de mouton pour passer une rivière
3) Se retirer et s’enfoncer comme une bande de mouettes jouant sur les vagues
4) Alterner rapidement pénétrations profondes et pénétrations superficielles comme un moineau bequetant les grains de riz
5) Enchaîner d’une façon régulière coups profonds et coups peu profonds comme de grosses pierres s’enfonçant dans la mer
6) Entrer avec lenteur comme un serpent se glisse dans son trou pour hiverner
7) Donner de petits coups rapides à la manière d’un rat effrayé qui se précipite dans son trou
8) S’élever lentement, puis foncer comme l’aigle attrapant une proie fuyante
9) S’élever puis piquer du nez comme un grand voilier bravant le coup de vent
Sou Nü, la conseillère de Huang Di (l'Empereur Jaune) ajoute:
«Profonde et superficielles, lentes et rapides, directes et obliques, toutes ces poussées ne sont nullement uniformes, et chacune possède ses propres effets et caractéristiques. Une poussée lente doit ressembler au mouvement d’une carpe jouant avec l’hameçon; une poussée rapide, au vol des oiseaux contre le vent. Introduisant et retirant, remuant de bas en haut, de gauche à droite, marquant des pauses ou bien en une succession rapide, tous ces mouvements doivent se correspondre. Il faut appliquer chacun d’eux au moment voulu et ne pas s’en tenir toujours à un seul et même style parce qu’on y trouve son bon plaisir»
”
”
Jolan Chang (The Tao of Love and Sex)
“
In contexts of massively unbalanced power, love seeks dispersed and accountable power. Mutuality recognizes common power to give to, receive from, learn from, and challenge. And it aims at common well-being.
”
”
Cynthia Moe-Lobeda
“
Unlike most of the other London trades, women were not barred from becoming ‘freemen’ of their chosen trade, so they could work within the City walls without prejudice. Elinor James was the widow of printer Thomas James but published a broadside under her own name circa 1715, titled Mrs. Elinor James’s Advice to All Printers in General and starting 'I have been in the element of printing for above forty years, and I have a great love for it.’ During her printing career, Elinor published around fifty pamphlets. Some transcripts of speeches she gave, including Mrs. Elinor James’s Speech to the Citizens of London at Guildhall (1705), show that she was not only politically active as a publisher, but also as a speaker. She addressed everyone from the King down, with what she believed was the correct way to carry on. More than once, Elinor’s efforts would lend her in Newgate 'for dispersing scandalous and reflecting papers’.
”
”
Lucy Inglis (Georgian London: Into the Streets)
“
Most but not all uncertainties in the minds of disciples—and this is only somewhat less so for people in general—are the result of unclarities and failures to understand. These shut down confidence and love, and we must never rest until they are cleanly dispersed from the mind.
”
”
Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God)
“
Albert Camus suggested that we fall in love with people because, from the outside, they look so whole, physically whole and emotionally “together,” when subjectively we feel dispersed and confused. We would not love if there were no lack within us, but we are offended by the discovery of a similar lack in the other. Expecting to find the answer, we find only the duplicate of our own problem.
”
”
Alain de Botton (On Love)
“
Wings of fire
It was a strange sight,
That brought feelings of excitement and fright,
A butterfly with wings of fire,
One representing wishes and the other meant to hoist her every desire,
There seemed to be no place where she could not go,
I had never seen her before, not even long ago,
Wherever she went, she set all flowers on fire,
Creating blazing gardens of endless desire,
Where wishes like pollen dust scattered everywhere,
Lifted by the ever rising flames and then dispersed here and there,
And wherever it fell,
There was no beauty to be felt and no stories to tell,
Because the flames turned the dust into a secret alchemy that resembled the inferno of hell,
Gardens burned, lands were parched, it was a diabolic sight that no words can explain well,
So, wherever the butterfly with wings of fire went,
It left trails of fire and devastation, with nature’s will broken and completely bent,
The butterfly used to be beautiful once,
It loved to fly and freely dance,
Until it was caught in a man made drought,
Leaving it exhausted and distraught,
As its wings stiffened and fell,
And it began collapsing into the hell,
There somehow she developed wings of fire,
To claim her unfulfilled wishes and her every desire,
And since then she has been on a rampage,
Nature too does not want to contain her in the cage,
Because she is avenging its losses,
So, now she recklessly all heights and every length crosses,
Wherever she goes the world of blazes and fires blooms,
With just one prospect, that of gloom and endless dooms,
Her desires are infinite, so her wings will never lose their fire now,
There is only one way to stop her, via a kiss of love,
But who would dare to kiss the wings of fire,
Let alone the act, the very thought does scare and tire,
Maybe the world, her world and our world will soon be reduced to cinders,
And we can only hope that someday she forgives us all, her offenders,
But behold the act of providence,
Her only means of guidance,
The wet drops of rain are soothing her hot and blazing wings,
And as her wings regain their natural and colourful shades, she once again sings,
Hopefully this spell of beauty lasts longer,
And humans and beautiful butterflies will once again learn to live together!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
This, Hazel knows, is the miracle of sisterhood. Of love itself. Death is cruel, and infinite, and inevitable, but it is not the end. Jenny exists in every room Hazel walks through. She fills, she shivers. She spreads, dispersing, until she is nowhere—until she is everywhere—until she lives wherever Hazel carries her.
”
”
Danya Kukafka (Notes on an Execution)
“
No one would doubt that I love my children, and even a quantitative social psychologist would find no fault with my list of loving behaviors: nurturing health and well-being protection from harm encouraging individual growth and development desire to be together generous sharing of resources working together for a common goal celebration of shared values interdependence sacrifice by one for the other creation of beauty If we observed these behaviors between humans, we would say, “She loves that person.” You might also observe these actions between a person and a bit of carefully tended ground and say, “She loves that garden.” Why then, seeing this list, would you not make the leap to say that the garden loves her back? The exchange between plants and people has shaped the evolutionary history of both. Farms, orchards, and vineyards are stocked with species we have domesticated. Our appetite for their fruits leads us to till, prune, irrigate, fertilize, and weed on their behalf. Perhaps they have domesticated us. Wild plants have changed to stand in well-behaved rows and wild humans have changed to settle alongside the fields and care for the plants—a kind of mutual taming. We are linked in a co-evolutionary circle. The sweeter the peach, the more frequently we disperse its seeds, nurture its young, and protect them from harm. Food plants and people act as selective forces on each other’s evolution—the thriving of one in the best interest of the other. This, to me, sounds a bit like love. I sat once in a graduate writing workshop on relationships to the land. The students all demonstrated a deep respect and affection for nature. They said that nature was the place where they experienced the greatest sense of belonging and well-being. They professed without reservation that they loved the earth. And then I asked them, “Do you think that the earth loves you back?” No one was willing to answer that. It was as if I had brought a two-headed porcupine into the classroom. Unexpected. Prickly. They backed slowly away. Here was a room full of writers, passionately wallowing in unrequited love of nature. So I made it hypothetical and asked, “What do you suppose would happen if people believed this crazy notion that the earth loved them back?” The floodgates opened. They all wanted to talk at once. We were suddenly off the deep end, heading for world peace and perfect harmony. One student summed it up: “You wouldn’t harm what gives you love.” Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.
”
”
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants)
“
According to the teachings of the Holy Bible and the Fathers of the Church, man is able to achieve Theosis because within the Orthodox Church of Christ the Grace of God is uncreated. God is not only essence, as the West thinks; He is also energy. If God was only essence, we could not unite with Him, could not commune with Him, because the essence of God is awesome and unapproachable for man, as was written: "Never will man see My face and live" (Exodus 33:20). Let us give a relevant example from things human. If we grasp a bare electric wire, we will die. However, if we connect a lamp to the same wire, we are illuminated. We see, enjoy, and are assisted by, the energy of electric current, but we are not able to grasp its essence. Let us say that something similar happens with the uncreated energy of God. If we were able to unite with the essence of God, we would become gods in essence. Then everything would become a god, and there would be confusion so that, essentially, nothing would be a god. In a few words, this is what they believe in the Oriental religions, e.g. in Hinduism, where the god is not a personal existence but an indistinct power dispersed through all the world, in men, in animals, and in objects (Pantheism). As St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and other holy Fathers repeatedly say, God is filled with a divine eros, a divine love for His creatures. Because of this infinite and ecstatic love of His, He comes out of Himself and seeks to unite with them. This is expressed and realised as His energy, or better, His energies. With these, His uncreated energies, God created the world and continues to preserve it. He gives essence and substance to our world through His essence-creating energies; He illuminates man with His illuminating energies; He sanctifies him with His sanctifying energies. Finally, He deifies him with His deifying energies. Thus, through His uncreated energies holy God enters nature, the world, history, and human life.
”
”
Archimandrite George (Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life)
“
According to the teachings of the Holy Bible and the Fathers of the Church, man is able to achieve Theosis because within the Orthodox Church of Christ the Grace of God is uncreated. God is not only essence, as the West thinks; He is also energy. If God was only essence, we could not unite with Him, could not commune with Him, because the essence of God is awesome and unapproachable for man, as was written: “Never will man see My face and live” (Exodus 33:20). Let us give a relevant example from things human. If we grasp a bare electric wire, we will die. However, if we connect a lamp to the same wire, we are illuminated. We see, enjoy, and are assisted by, the energy of electric current, but we are not able to grasp its essence. Let us say that something similar happens with the uncreated energy of God. If we were able to unite with the essence of God, we would become gods in essence. Then everything would become a god, and there would be confusion so that, essentially, nothing would be a god. In a few words, this is what they believe in the Oriental religions, e.g. in Hinduism, where the god is not a personal existence but an indistinct power dispersed through all the world, in men, in animals, and in objects (Pantheism). God, according to the Orthodox theological view, is One in a Trinity and a Trinity in One. As St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and other holy Fathers repeatedly say, God is filled with a divine eros, a divine love for His creatures. Because of this infinite and ecstatic love of His, He comes out of Himself and seeks to unite with them. This is expressed and realised as His energy, or better, His energies. With these, His uncreated energies, God created the world and continues to preserve it. He gives essence and substance to our world through His essence-creating energies; He illuminates man with His illuminating energies; He sanctifies him with His sanctifying energies. Finally, He deifies him with His deifying energies. Thus, through His uncreated energies holy God enters nature, the world, history, and human life.
”
”
Archimandrite George (Theosis: The True Purpose of Human Life)
“
Even though I was born and grew up in a country far removed from the horrors of the Holocaust, I have lived with its images for my entire life. My mother, Lilly (Frischmann) Kellermann, was a fully functioning and loving mother, and told me very little about her traumatic experiences. But her Holocaust trauma has painfully permeated my inner life. Imagining the Holocaust comes almost automatically to me. It’s as if I have been there and have seen that before. Gruesome Holocaust associations fill my waking, and sleeping life and human suffering is a constant companion. As have so many other children of survivors, I have apparently absorbed some of the psychological burdens of my parents and share their grief and terror as if I have experienced it myself. It is no coincidence that I became a psychologist and a psychodramatist and that much of my professional interest has focused on individual (Kellermann & Hudgins, 2000) and collective trauma (Kellermann, 2007). Because, like a nuclear bomb that disperses its radioactive fallout in distant places even a long time after the actual explosion, any major psychological trauma continues to contaminate those who were exposed to it in one way or another in the first, second, and subsequent generations.
”
”
Natan P.F. Kellermann (Holocaust Trauma)
“
Attachment strangles freedom and clarity and makes us a puppet to our desires and cravings; attachment is the root of suffering, a root that if left unattended grows into a tree which drops the fruits of anger, greed, envy, dispersion, competitiveness, ego and pain
”
”
Evan Sutter (Solitude: How Doing Nothing Can Change the World)
“
Finally, this parable is a reminder that when we proclaim the gospel or teach the Word of God to our neighbors and loved ones, the results will always vary according to the condition of the hearts of our hearers. Success or failure does not hinge on our skill as sowers. Some of the seed we disperse will fall on hard, shallow, or weedy ground. But there’s nothing wrong with the seed. If you are faithful at the task, some of the seed you throw will find well-cultivated soil, and the result will be abundant fruit.
”
”
John F. MacArthur Jr. (Parables: The Mysteries of God's Kingdom Revealed Through the Stories Jesus Told)
“
my worshipers, the daughter of my dispersed ones, shall bring my offering. 11 z “On that day a you shall not be put to shame because of the deeds by which you have rebelled against me; for then b I will remove from your midst your proudly exultant ones, and c you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain. 12 But I will leave in your midst a people d humble and lowly. e They shall seek refuge in the name of the LORD, 13 f those who are left in Israel; they g shall do no injustice and speak no lies, h nor shall there be found in their mouth a deceitful tongue. i For they shall graze and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.” Israel’s Joy and Restoration 14[†] j Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! 15 The LORD has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies. k The King of Israel, l the LORD, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil. 16 z On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: “Fear not, O Zion; m let not your hands grow weak. 17 l The LORD your God is in your midst, n a mighty one who will save; o he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. 18 I will gather those of you who mourn p for the festival, so that you will no longer suffer reproach. [3] 19 Behold, at that time q I will deal with all your oppressors. And r I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change s their shame into t praise and renown in all the earth. 20 u At that time I will bring you in, at the time when I gather you together; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, v when I restore your fortunes before your eyes,” says the LORD.
”
”
Anonymous (ESV Gospel Transformation Bible)
“
The thoughts from a finite mind can at times be very similar to the clouds that move about over the surface of the earth. Both can cover a lot of ground, and can either disperse or increase in formation. Likewise—both are heavily influenced by the surrounding climate. Furthermore—a hard wind increases a fire’s spread, thunder proceeds a lightning strike, and when atmospheric water vapor accumulates, it produces clouds. Then, after an abundance of water has been condensed, the clouds will at some point release moisture; the rain/precipitation amount will range from the degree of abundance condensed.
Similarly: an abundance of thoughts can also accumulate—eventually resulting in an overflow of emotion. The overflow can either be positive or negative—the determining factor relying on the characterization of the thoughts—whether they be positive or negative.
”
”
Calvin W. Allison (Strong Love Church)
“
One cannot examine the actions of the Secret Service on November 22, 1963, without concluding that the Service stood down on protecting President Kennedy. Indeed, the 120-degree turn into Dealey Plaza violates Secret Service procedures, because it required the presidential limousine to come to a virtual stop. The reduction of the president’s motorcycle escort from six police motorcycles to two and the order for those two officers to ride behind the presidential limousine also violates standard Secret Service procedure. The failure to empty and secure the tall buildings on either side of the motorcade route through Dealey Plaza likewise violates formal procedure, as does the lack of any agents dispersed through the crowd gathered in Dealey Plaza. Readers who are interested in a comprehensive analysis of the Secret Service’s multiple failures and the conspicuous violation of longstanding Secret Service policies regarding the movement and protection of the president on November 22, 1963, should read Vince Palamara’s Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect. The difference in JFK Secret Service protection and its adherence to the services standard required procedures in Chicago and Miami would be starkly different from the arrangements for Dallas. Palamara established that Agent Emory Roberts worked overtime to help both orchestrate the assassination and cover up the unusual actions of the Secret Service in the aftermath. Roberts was commander of the follow-up car trailing the presidential limousine. Roberts covered up the escapades of his fellow secret servicemen at The Cellar, a club in downtown Ft. Worth, where agents, some directly responsible for the safety of President Kennedy during the motorcade, drank until dawn on November 22. He also ordered a perplexed agent Donald Lawton off the back of the presidential limousine while at Love Field, thus giving the assassins clearer, more direct shots and more time to get them off. Also, although Roberts recognized rifle fire being discharged in Dealey Plaza, he neglected to mobilize any of the agents under his watch to act. To mask the inactivity of his agents, Roberts, in sworn testimony, falsely increased the speed of the cars (from 9–11 mph to 20–25 mph) and the distance between them (from five feet to 20–25 feet).85 No analysis of the Secret Service’s actions on the day of the assassination can be complete without mentioning that Secret Service director James Rowley was a former FBI agent and close ally of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as well as a crony of Lyndon Johnson. Hoover was one of Johnson’s closest associates. The FBI Director would take the unusual step of flying to Dallas for a victory celebration in 1948 when Johnson illegally stole his Senate seat through election fraud. Johnson and Hoover were neighbors in the Foxhall Road area of the District of Columbia. Hoover’s budget would virtually triple during the years LBJ dominated the appropriations process as Senate Majority Leader. Rowley was a protégé of the director and one of the few men who left the FBI on good terms with Hoover. Rowley’s first public service job in the Roosevelt administration was arranged for him by LBJ. The neglect of assigning even one Secret Service agent to secure Dealey Plaza, as well as cleaning blood and other relatable pieces of evidence from the presidential limousine immediately following the assassination, seizing Kennedy’s body from Parkland Hospital to prevent a proper, well-documented autopsy, failing to record Oswald’s interrogation—all were important pieces of the assassination deftly executed by Rowley.
”
”
Roger Stone (The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ)
“
awake
you glide
upward
through glimmering light
your clothes
fall like feathers
from your shoulders
with them
the worries of day
fade
you are invited
by mystic sounds
in strange
comforting tongues
awake they call
eyes open
languid
before you
tiny creatures dance
tickling greens
and blues
from the aura
around you
chef mischief
their only game
you smile
warmth
across your gaze
again you float
to new shores
where you are clothed
in the sirens song
you relax deeper
aphrodites nymphs
send pleasure
like golden knives
into your chest
you rise up
stepping foot to sand
walking
to forest land
tribal drumming
moving with you
the very beat
of your own heart
beaded threads
drape you again
in deep red
the sound
ringing in your ears
move forth again
childlike curiosity
it leads you further
across desert sands
where the cherokee flute
paints tiny circles
in the palms of your hands
the min mins call
yet you cannot hear
for what was you
is no longer here
again you float
upward
gravity pulls you
back and forth
until deep within
a vibrating thunder
sounds its clapping hands
the fibers of your being
all the tendrils of love
come apart
and dissipate
you are dispersed
across all these worlds
unseen and unknown
yet you will assemble again
forget not
the way you have grown
pupps.
”
”
Pleasure Planet
“
Fog loves to cover; wind loves to disperse! Children of nature love having fun with each other!
”
”
Mehmet Murat ildan
“
The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: [She believes] in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father “to gather all things in one,” and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, “every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess” to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send “spiritual wickednesses,” and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning [of their Christian course], and others from [the date of] their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.
”
”
The Church Fathers (The Complete Ante-Nicene & Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Collection)
“
Offspring of some wretched tribe, he prowls the boulevards of the West. Cherishing one country after the next, he no longer hopes for any; stuck in a timeless twilight citizen of the world--and of no world--he is ineffectual, nameless, powerless... Peoples without a destiny cannot give one to their sons who, thirsting for other horizons, attach themselves to a fate and ultimately exhaust it to finish their days as ghosts of their admirations and their exhaustions. Having nothing to love at home, they locate their love elsewhere, in other lands, where their fervor astonishes the natives. Overworked, the feelings erode and disintegrate, admiration first of all... And the Alien who dispersed himself on so many highways of the world, exclaims: "I have set up countless idols for myself, have raised too many altars everywhere, and I have knelt before a host of gods. Now, weary of worship, I have squandered my share of delirium. One has resources only for the absolutes of one's breed; a soul--like a country--flourishes only within its frontiers. I am paying for having crossed them, for having made the Indefinite into a fatherland, and foreign divinities into a cult, for having prostrated myself before ages which excluded my ancestors. Where I come from I can no longer say: in the temples I am without belief; in the cities, without ardor; among my kind, without curiosity; on the earth, without certitudes. Give me a specific desire and I could shake the world to its foundations. Release me from this shame of actions which makes me perform, every morning, the farce of resurrection and, every night, that of entombment; in the interval, nothing but this torment in the shroud of ennui... I dream of wanting--and all I want seems to me worthless. Like a vandal corroded by melancholy, I proceed without a goal, self without a self, toward some unknown corner... in order to discover an abandoned god, a god who is his own atheist, and to fall asleep in the shadow of his last doubts and his last miracles.
”
”
Emil M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay)
“
Thus says YHVH, who gathers in all the dispersed people of Israel: I will gather still others to Him, beside those of [Israel] that are gathered! (Isaiah 56:8) Isaiah speaks of a time when God will gather in to the Land of Canaan all the dispersed people of Israel, but when He does so, He will gather others, too. They will all come in a grand procession: Also the Gentiles, that join themselves to accompany YHVH, to serve Him, and to love the name of YHVH… I will bring them all to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer (Isaiah 56:6–7)
”
”
David Fohrman (The Exodus You Almost Passed Over)
“
The unsaid thing about funerals is that directly after the communal mourning for someone you love, after everyone is gone and the connected grief dispersed, comes a solitude beyond imagining.
”
”
Tracy Deonn (Bloodmarked (The Legendborn Cycle, #2))