Easter Day Quotes

I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate.

Then came the healing time, hearts started to shine, soul felt so fine, oh what a freeing time it was.

Here the whole world (stars, water, air, And field, and forest, as they were Reflected in a single mind) Like cast off clothes was left behind In ashes, yet with hopes that she, Re-born from holy poverty, In lenten lands, hereafter may Resume them on her Easter Day." (Epitaph for Joy Davidman)

...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entrophy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there's nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present...is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.

Easter is… Joining in a birdsong, Eying an early sunrise, Smelling yellow daffodils, Unbolting windows and doors, Skipping through meadows, Cuddling newborns, Hoping, believing, Reviving spent life, Inhaling fresh air, Sprinkling seeds along furrows, Tracking in the mud. Easter is the soul’s first taste of spring.

Someone should tell you you're beautiful every time the sun comes up. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Wednesdays. And at teatime. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve and the evening before Christmas Eve, and on Easter. He should tell you on Guy Fawkes Night and on New Year's, and on the eigth of August, just because.

The italian nanny was attempting to answer the teachers latest question when the moroccan student interupted, shouting "Excuse me, What is an easter?" it would seem that depsite having grown up in a muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean it," She said. " I have no idea what you people are talking about." The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain. The poles led the charge to the best of their ability. It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of god who call his self jesus and... oh shit." She faltered and her fellow country man came to her aid. He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two... morsels of... lumber." The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm. he die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father." he weared of himself the long hair and after he die. the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples." he Nice the jesus." he make the good things, and on the easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.

As is your sort of mind, So is your sort of search: You will find what you desire.

Just the other day the AP wire had a story about a man from Arkansas who entered some kind of contest and won a two-week vacation--all expenses paid--wherever he wanted to go. Any place in the world: Mongolia, Easter Island, the Turkish Riviera . . . but his choice was Salt Lake City, and that's where he went. Is this man a registered voter? Has he come to grips with the issues? Has he bathed in the blood of the lamb?

Some people don't believe in God but they color eggs at Easter just to change the pattern of their days.

This is an ode to all of those that have never asked for one. A thank you in words to all of those that do not do what they do so well for the thanking. This is to the mothers. This is to the ones who match our first scream with their loudest scream; who harmonize in our shared pain and joy and terrified wonder when life begins. This is to the mothers. To the ones who stay up late and wake up early and always know the distance between their soft humming song and our tired ears. To the lips that find their way to our foreheads and know, somehow always know, if too much heat is living in our skin. To the hands that spread the jam on the bread and the mesmerizing patient removal of the crust we just cannot stomach. This is to the mothers. To the ones who shout the loudest and fight the hardest and sacrifice the most to keep the smiles glued to our faces and the magic spinning through our days. To the pride they have for us that cannot fit inside after all they have endured. To the leaking of it out their eyes and onto the backs of their hands, to the trails of makeup left behind as they smile through those tears and somehow always manage a laugh. This is to the patience and perseverance and unyielding promise that at any moment they would give up their lives to protect ours. This is to the mothers. To the single mom’s working four jobs to put the cheese in the mac and the apple back into the juice so their children, like birds in a nest, can find food in their mouths and pillows under their heads. To the dreams put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement of all priority. This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the happily married. To the young mothers and those that deal with the unexpected announcement of a new arrival far later than they ever anticipated. This is to the mothers. This is to the sack lunches and sleepover parties, to the soccer games and oranges slices at halftime. This is to the hot chocolate after snowy walks and the arguing with the umpire at the little league game. To the frosting ofbirthday cakes and the candles that are always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts, the slip-n-slides and the iced tea on summer days. This is to the ones that show us the way to finding our own way. To the cutting of the cord, quite literally the first time and even more painfully and metaphorically the second time around. To the mothers who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers and if time is gentle enough, live to see the children of their children have children of their own. To the love. My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere only mothers have seen and know the secret location of. To the love that grows stronger as their hands grow weaker and the spread of jam becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier to find and sack lunches no longer need making. This is to the way the tears look falling from the smile lines around their eyes and the mascara that just might always be smeared with the remains of their pride for all they have created. This is to the mothers.

Easter Contemplations It does not concern me If this life is all I have. I do not need a resurrection Or reincarnation Or to live with the gods. It is enough to live With you here In the days of your presence. When my breathes Are complete, Lay me by your side In the dust. As in life, so in death. Let us become one With each other again.

Suppose that you didn’t make your Easter duty and it’s Pentecost Sunday, the last day, and you’re on a ship at sea. And the chaplain goes into a coma! But you wanted to receive. And then it’s Monday, too late… But then you cross the International Date Line! Would that then be a sin then, Father?

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder...but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject...we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history.

On Generosity On our own, we conclude: there is not enough to go around we are going to run short of money of love of grades of publications of sex of beer of members of years of life we should seize the day seize our goods seize our neighbours goods because there is not enough to go around and in the midst of our perceived deficit you come you come giving bread in the wilderness you come giving children at the 11th hour you come giving homes to exiles you come giving futures to the shut down you come giving easter joy to the dead you come – fleshed in Jesus. and we watch while the blind receive their sight the lame walk the lepers are cleansed the deaf hear the dead are raised the poor dance and sing we watch and we take food we did not grow and life we did not invent and future that is gift and gift and gift and families and neighbours who sustain us when we did not deserve it. It dawns on us – late rather than soon- that you “give food in due season you open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.” By your giving, break our cycles of imagined scarcity override our presumed deficits quiet our anxieties of lack transform our perceptual field to see the abundance………mercy upon mercy blessing upon blessing. Sink your generosity deep into our lives that your muchness may expose our false lack that endlessly receiving we may endlessly give so that the world may be made Easter new, without greedy lack, but only wonder, without coercive need but only love, without destructive greed but only praise without aggression and invasiveness…. all things Easter new….. all around us, toward us and by us all things Easter new. Finish your creation, in wonder, love and praise. Amen.

For a year she found an exquisite pain - almost pleasure - in facing the world as if she didn't care. Look at me, she would say to herself in the middle of a trying day. Look at me: I'm surviving; I'm coping; I'm in control of all this.

Two thousand years ago Jesus is crucified, three days later he walks out of a cave and they celebrate with chocolate bunnies and marshmallow Peeps and beautifully decorated eggs. I guess these were things Jesus loved as a child.

Principal Brill, those costumes were made by my mother. My mother, who has stage four small-cell lung cancer. My mother, who will never watch her little boy celebrate another Halloween again. My mother, who will more than likely experience a year of 'lasts'. Last Christmas. Last birthday. Last Easter. And if God is willing, her last Mother's Day. My mother, who when asked by her nine-year-old son if he could be her cancer for Halloween, had no choice but to make him the best cancerous tumor-riden lung costume she could. So if you think it's so offensive, I suggest you drive them home yourself and tell my mother to her face. Do you need my address?

Nevertheless, it is the free grace of the resurrected One that now also goes after the individual, overcomes the doubter, and creates in him the Easter faith.

Every day of our lives and in every season of the year (not just at Easter time), Jesus asks each of us, as he did following his triumphant entry into Jerusalem those many years ago, ‘What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?’ (Matt. 22:42.) We declare that he is the Son of God, and the reality of that fact should stir our souls more frequently. I pray that it will, this Easter season and always.

Though I adore the idea of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Sandman, the Tooth Fairy, and such luminary characters—especially their altruism and devotion—I still don't believe in them.  For I know the truth.  Only one such miracle worker exists who performs magic in my life, seeing to my wants and needs without fail.  That queen is my mother.  With unwavering faith I believe in her.

A few years before, it had taken her three days to dispose of the Easter chick she had found dead on the sawdust in the bottom of her wastebasket.

Easter is joy, hope, love, and renewal. Easter is proof that we can begin again.

I figure if Doc is right about the time I have left,I should wrap up my adolescence in the next few days, get into my early productive stages about the third week of school, go through my midlife crisis during Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, redouble my efforts at productivity and think about my legacy, say, Easter, and start cashing in my 401(k)s a couple weeks before Memorial Day.

From the sound of pattering raindrops I recaptured the scent of the lilacs at Combray; from the shifting of the sun's rays on the balcony the pigeons in the Champs-Elysées; from the muffling of sounds in the heat of the morning hours, the cool taste of cherries; the longing for Brittany or Venice from the noise of the wind and the return of Easter. Summer was at hand, the days were long, the weather was warm. It was the season when, early in the morning, pupils and teachers repair to the public gardens to prepare for the final examinations under the trees, seeking to extract the sole drop of coolness vouchsafed by a sky less ardent than in the midday heat but already as sterilely pure.

يا ملونين البيض في شم النسيـــــم لون الحنين و الشوق و خمر النديم ما تعرفوش سايق عليكو النبــــــي تلونوا الأيام بلون النعيــــــــــــــم ؟ عجبي!!

But a radical new body of evidence shows that people are at their best—physically harder, mentally tougher, and spiritually sounder—after experiencing the same discomforts our early ancestors were exposed to every day. Scientists are finding that certain discomforts protect us from physical and psychological problems like obesity, heart disease, cancers, diabetes, depression, and anxiety, and even more fundamental issues like feeling a lack of meaning and purpose.

We focus on Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, but we forget to pause in the stillness of the days between. Find time today to be present in that place of waiting. There is treasure to be found in the sacred peace that comes as you breathe in that place of quiet surrender. Don’t rush through the space called “Between.

There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have.

What we preach in church. We believe in the resurrection on the Day of Judgement and in eternal life. The reunion of loved ones is the essence of the Easter message.

On Easter day let us promise to resurrect, transcend, and transform our conscience for the happiness of mankind.

If it's easter than east and wester than west, it must be north.

The years came and went, the children came and left. The worst of getting old is not tiredness and aches and pains, but the time rushes on, so quickly that in the end it doesn't seem to exist.It's Christmas and then it's Easter. It's a clear winter's day and then a hot summer's day. In between it's a vacuum.

Strange as it may seem, the association of eggs and bunnies at Easter time are actually connected and, to discover more, we must once again turn our attention to the Saxon fertility Goddess, Eostre.

It isn’t Easter,” he said, “but this week has caused me to think a lot about the Easter story. Not the glorious resurrection that we celebrate on Easter Sunday but the darkness that came before. I know of no darker moment in the Bible than the moment Jesus in his agony on the cross cries out, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ Darker even than his death not long after because in death Jesus at last gave himself over fully to the divine will of God. But in that moment of his bitter railing he must have felt betrayed and completely abandoned by his father, a father he’d always believed loved him deeply and absolutely. How terrible that must have been and how alone he must have felt. In dying all was revealed to him, but alive Jesus like us saw with mortal eyes, felt the pain of mortal flesh, and knew the confusion of imperfect mortal understanding. “I see with mortal eyes. My mortal heart this morning is breaking. And I do not understand. “I confess that I have cried out to God, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ ” Here my father paused and I thought he could not continue. But after a long moment he seemed to gather himself and went on. “When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he’s led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame him and cry out against him for not caring? What’s left to us when that which we love most has been taken? “I will tell you what’s left, three profound blessings. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us exactly what they are: faith, hope, and love. These gifts, which are the foundation of eternity, God has given to us and he’s given us complete control over them. Even in the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. All this is in our control. God gave us these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them. “In your dark night, I urge you to hold to your faith, to embrace hope, and to bear your love before you like a burning candle, for I promise that it will light your way. “And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one. It may not be the miracle you’ve prayed for. God probably won’t undo what’s been done. The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day. “Jesus suffered the dark night and death and on the third day he rose again through the grace of his loving father. For each of us, the sun sets and the sun also rises and through the grace of our Lord we can endure our own dark night and rise to the dawning of a new day and rejoice. “I invite you, my brothers and sisters, to rejoice with me in the divine grace of the Lord and in the beauty of this morning, which he has given us.

There is never a right time to break someone's heart. And anyone with even a microgram of sensitivity in his or her body will agonise for an age over that timing. Only problem is there is always some reason not to make someone unhappy. The day a relationship end, if that relationship was at all important to the suckers involved, becomes as important an anniversary as a wedding day or birthday. Obviously, the average person doesn't want to kick someone they once loved while that person is down.   It's not just hard times when someone is down that become obstacles to making your getaway. After times of bereavement, unemployment and general unhappiness, those events that should be happy ones also make some times off limits for the eager would- be dumper. Christmas, birthdays, Easter  all impossible. A clever person with a sensitive lover that they sense is not quite as into them as he or she used to be, could starve off the inevitable for years by carefully spacing out this crucial dates.

There is a delightful story which tells of Eostre finding an injured bird on the ground and, in order to save its life, she transformed it into a hare. The transformation however was incomplete and, although the bird looked like a hare, it still retained the ability to lay eggs. Regardless of this slight mishap, the hare was so grateful for the goddess saving her life that on Eostre’s festival the hare would lay eggs, decorate them and leave them as a token of thanks. In Germany today, many young children still believe that their Easter eggs are laid and delivered by the Easter hare.

In the church I felt really angry when all the people came to shake our hands. This was the morning before the day of the funeral. We were sitting in the front row. We’d never seen these people when she was alive. I was angry they hadn’t helped us. Or her. I didn’t know who half of them were. And the ones I knew made me feel angrier. They’d known. Not the details. But they’d known. And they hadn’t done a thing, but came now to shake our hands and tell us how sorry they were for our loss. I was tempted to ask, Which loss in particular? We’ve more chance of actually raising our mother from the dead some Easter Sunday than ever getting back what we really lost. Which is ourselves, years before now.

She bought a chocolate bar and it tasted surprisingly good - as if, without her knowing it, sitting here and eating this chocolate was the one thing she had wanted to do all day.

Happy Easter to you, my friend! This day’s light shall have no end. For Christ did rise In the golden morn And by His life are we reborn. Happy Easter to one and all! The night is over, the sun is tall. The day did break with a tiny beam And flooded life with Light supreme.

Afterward, I felt it had been wrong not telling the family about the baby, because then I wanted them to know about the miscarriage, so that they knew the baby had existed. But when I told people, they seemed more interested in the fact that I'd kept the pregnancy a secret. They felt they'd been tricked. They said things like "Oh, I did wonder that day when you didn't drink at the Easter BBQ but you said you just didn't feel like drinking!” In other words, LIAR.

Mimba had been right about white people. The best thing was to treat them like ghosts and cannibals, not to be trusted. But sometimes, a white ghost would look at you straight on, with a full smile, eye to eye. The smile of the eye was the secret, Mimba had taught her. You had to be careful always, but every now and again you could act as though they had souls, too. Easter was one like that.

How late is it? How long have we been sitting here? I look at my watch – three thirty and the day is almost ending. It’s October. All those kids recently returned to classrooms with new bags and pencil cases will be looking forward to half term already. How quickly it goes. Halloween soon, then firework night. Christmas. Spring. Easter. Then there’s my birthday in May. I’ll be seventeen. How long can I stave it off? I don’t know. All I know is that I have two choices – stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.

To summarize, Easter Sunday is the most important Sunday. It is the Sunday of all Sundays. It is the day of the new beginning of the entire cosmos, the day of resurrection. In our worship we must be careful not to reduce our message to the Easter fact only. The Easter fact must include the message this fact proclaims: God makes all things new. It must also include the message that we have been raised with Christ. Calling God's people to die to sin and rise to the new life is central not only to Easter day but to the Easter season.

But as soon as we touched, I felt magic crackle over and through me, so strong that I tried to jerk my hand back. But he held tight until, finally, the crackling sensation stopped. My hand slid out of his, and I leaped up from the fountain."What the hell was-" Then I looked down and realized I was completely dry. Not only that, but my demure black dress had been replaced with...well, another black dress, but this one was a lot shorter, sparklier, and also rocking a very low neckline. Even my hair was different, transformed from a soggy braid to silky brown waves. Nick winked at me. "That's better. Now you look more like the Demon Who Would be Queen." He heaved himself out of the water and grabbed Jenna's hand. Within seconds, she went from drowned rat to hottie, her soaked clothes replaced with-what else?-a pink sundress. Of course it showed a lot more skin than anything Jenna would have picked out for herself. "Oh,lovely,Nick," Daisy said, rolling her eyes as he wrapped an arm around her waist. "What?" he asked once he laid a smacking kiss on her cheek. "They look better like that." Without thinking,I reached out and grabbed Nick's free arm. His wet white T-shirt and jeans rippled, and suddenly he was wearing a Day-Glo yellow tank top and acid-washed jeans. "And you look better like this." I wasn't sure if it was the ridiculous sight of Nick in those clothes, or the fact that I'd done a spell so easily-with absolutely no explosions-but I could feel my lips curving upward in a smile. As Daisy hooted with laughter, Nick narrowed his eyes at me. "Okay, now you're in for it." He waved his hand, and suddenly I was sweltering. When I glanced down, I saw that it was because I was now dressed like the Easter Bunny.But with the flick of one fuzzy paw,I'd transformed Nick's jeans and tank top into a snowsuit. Then I was in a bikini. So Nick was wearing a particularly poofy purple prom dress. By the time he'd turned my clothes into a showgirl's costume, complete with a feathery headdress, and I'd put him in a scuba suit, we were both completely magic drunk and giggling.

Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it's been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week - a miracle, people say, as if they've been educated from greeting cards. I'm sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word. Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It's true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying order and climbing up out of the grave - now there's a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of the earth. My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear mirales because they fear being changed - though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will.

How many beginnings can a story have, Daddy?" "As many as you can eat, my lamb. But only one ending. Or maybe it's the other way around: one beginning and a whole Easter basket of endings." "Papa, don't be silly... A story has to start somewhere. And then it has to end somewhere. That's the whole point. That's how it is in real life." "But that's not how it is in real life, Rinny. Real life is all beginnings. Days, weeks, children, journeys, marriages, inventions. Even a murder is the beginning of a criminal. Perhaps even a spree. Everything is prologue. Every story has a stutter. It just keeps starting and starting until you decide to shut the camera off. Half the time you don't even realize that what you're choosing for breakfast is the beginning of a story that won't pan out till you're sixty and staring at the pastry that made you a widower. No, love, in real life you can get all the way to death and never have finished one single story. Or never even get one so much as half-begun.

MISERABLE SCHOOLIE MODE DISENGAGED EASTER HOLIDAYS MODE INITIALIZING... COMMENCING CHOCOLATE-ANTICIPATION SQUEE IN 5 4 3 2 1 SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! TWO WEEKS OF FREEEEEEEDOM! OK, so actually more like two weeks of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEKDOM.

No one has ever told me that I'm beautiful before," Hazel said. She hadn't realized it was true until she said it out loud. Jack stood with his hands on either side of her face and stared at her for a few heartbeats. Then he leaned in and softly kissed both her eyelids. "Someone should tell you that you're beautiful every time the sun comes up. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Wednesdays. And at teatime. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve and the evening before Christmas Eve, and on Easter. He should tell you on Guy Fawkes Night and on New Year's, and on the eighth of August, just because." He kissed her lips once more, gently, and then pulled away and gazed into her eyes. "Hazel Sinnett, you are the most miraculous creature I have ever come across, and I am going to be thinking about how beautiful you are until the day I die.

I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. It is blood-red and men are walking about on rooftops. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the goal-the scales must be destroyed. Let me hear you promise again all those sunny things you carry inside you. Let me try to believe for one day, while I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me rot in splendor while the sun bursts in your womb. I believe all your lies implicitly. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of the soul, as the maharanee of the night. Tack your womb up on my wall, so that I may remember you. We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow...

Mary Magdalene With wandering eyes and aimless zeal, She hither, thither, goes; Her speech, her motions, all reveal A mind without repose. She climbs the hills, she haunts the sea, By madness tortured, driven; One hour's forgetfulness would be A gift from very heaven! She slumbers into new distress; The night is worse than day: Exulting in her helplessness; Hell's dogs yet louder bay. The demons blast her to and fro; She has not quiet place, Enough a woman still, to know A haunting dim disgrace. A human touch! a pang of death! And in a low delight Thou liest, waiting for new breath, For morning out of night. Thou risest up: the earth is fair, The wind is cool; thou art free! Is it a dream of hell's despair Dissolves in ecstasy? That man did touch thee! Eyes divine Make sunrise in thy soul; Thou seest love in order shine:- His health hath made thee whole! Thou, sharing in the awful doom, Didst help thy Lord to die; Then, weeping o'er his empty tomb, Didst hear him Mary cry. He stands in haste; he cannot stop; Home to his God he fares: 'Go tell my brothers I go up To my Father, mine and theirs.' Run, Mary! lift thy heavenly voice; Cry, cry, and heed not how; Make all the new-risen world rejoice- Its first apostle thou! What if old tales of thee have lied, Or truth have told, thou art All-safe with Him, whate'er betide Dwell'st with Him in God's heart!

I'll not forget that day nor the message of the Christian church that we celebrate each death as an Easter, each dying as a living, each soul, no matter how poor or sinful, as the child of royalty. At its best, the church treats people as beings of eternal worth, no less at their dying than at their birth, no less in their sins than in their virtue, no less for one than for another.

I tried to bend over and touch my toes this morning,” I tell the girls. “I tipped over, hit my head on the desk, and then had to call for Nana to get up. I’m literally the size of an Oompa Loompa.” “You’re the most beautiful Oompa Loompa in the world,” Hope declares. “Because she’s not orange.” “Oompa Loompas were orange?” I try to conjure up a mental picture of them but can only recall their white overalls. Carin purses her lips. “Were they supposed to be candies? Like orange slices? Or maybe candy corn?” “They were squirrels,” Hope informs us. “No way,” we both say at once. “Yes way. I read it on the back of a Laffy Taffy when I was like ten. It was a trivia question and I’d just seen the movie. I was terrified of squirrels for years afterwards.” “Shit. Learn something new every day.” I push my body upright, a task that takes a certain amount of upper body strength these days, and toddle over to inspect the crib. “I don’t believe you,” Carin tells Hope. “The movie is about candy. It’s called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Since when are squirrels candies? I can buy into a bunny because, you know, the chocolate Easter bunnies, but not a squirrel.” “Look it up, Careful. I’m right.” “You’re ruining my childhood.” Carin turns to me. “Don’t do this to your daughter.” “Raise her to believe Oompa Loompas are squirrels?” “Yes

Welsh Incident 'But that was nothing to what things came out From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.' What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?' Nothing at all of any things like that.' What were they, then?' 'All sorts of queer things, Things never seen or heard or written about, Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch, Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation, All various shapes and sizes, and no sizes, All new, each perfectly unlike his neighbour, Though all came moving slowly out together.' Describe just one of them.' 'I am unable.' What were their colours?' 'Mostly nameless colours, Colours you'd like to see; but one was puce Or perhaps more like crimson, but not purplish. Some had no colour.' 'Tell me, had they legs?' Not a leg or foot among them that I saw.' But did these things come out in any order?' What o'clock was it? What was the day of the week? Who else was present? How was the weather?' I was coming to that. It was half-past three On Easter Tuesday last. The sun was shining. The Harlech Silver Band played Marchog Jesu On thrity-seven shimmering instruments Collecting for Caernarvon's (Fever) Hospital Fund. The populations of Pwllheli, Criccieth, Portmadoc, Borth, Tremadoc, Penrhyndeudraeth, Were all assembled. Criccieth's mayor addressed them First in good Welsh and then in fluent English, Twisting his fingers in his chain of office, Welcoming the things. They came out on the sand, Not keeping time to the band, moving seaward Silently at a snail's pace. But at last The most odd, indescribable thing of all Which hardly one man there could see for wonder Did something recognizably a something.' Well, what?' 'It made a noise.' 'A frightening noise?' No, no.' 'A musical noise? A noise of scuffling?' No, but a very loud, respectable noise --- Like groaning to oneself on Sunday morning In Chapel, close before the second psalm.' What did the mayor do?' 'I was coming to that.

On Easter we wrap up pretty, little decorated eggs symbolizing life and renewal. We do this because of the intangibility of a promised gift, which is the eventual resurrection of the body, restored to its finest forever state. Easter celebrates life and the idea of its eternal value, most notably the life of the gift-giver who demands nothing in return. He is your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Want to know the coolest thing about the coming? Not that the One who played marbles with the stars gave it up to play marbles with marbles. Or that the One who hung the galaxies gave it up to hang doorjambs to the displeasure of a cranky client who wanted everything yesterday but couldn't pay until tomorrow. Not that he, in an instant, went from needing nothing to needing air, food, a tub of hot water and salts for his tired feet, and, more than anything, needing somebody - anybody - who was more concerned about where he would spend eternity rather than where he would spend Friday's paycheck. Or that he resisted the urge to fry the two=bit, self-appointed hall monitors of holiness who dared suggest that he was doing the work of the devil. Not that he kept his cool while the dozen best friends he ever had felt the heat and got out of the kitchen. Or that he gave no command to the angels who begged, "Just give us the nod, Lord. One word and these demons will be deviled eggs." Not that he refused to defend himself when blamed for every sin of every slut and sailor since Adam. Or that he stood silent as a million guilty verdicts echoed in the tribunal of heaven and the giver of light was left in the chill of a sinner's night. Not even that after three days in a dark hole he stepped into the Easter sunrise with a smile and a swagger and a question for lowly Lucifer - "Is that your best punch?" That was cool, incredibly cool. But want to know the coolest thing about the One who gave up the crown of heaven for a crown of thorns? He did it for you. Just for you.

There is a bench in the back of my garden shaded by Virginia creeper, climbing roses, and a white pine where I sit early in the morning and watch the action. Light blue bells of a dwarf campanula drift over the rock garden just before my eyes. Behind it, a three-foot stand of aconite is flowering now, each dark blue cowl-like corolla bowed for worship or intrigue: thus its common name, monkshood. Next to the aconite, black madonna lilies with their seductive Easter scent are just coming into bloom. At the back of the garden, a hollow log, used in its glory days for a base to split kindling, now spills white cascade petunias and lobelia. I can't get enough of watching the bees and trying to imagine how they experience the abundance of, say, a blue campanula blosssom, the dizzy light pulsing, every fiber of being immersed in the flower. ... Last night, after a day in the garden, I asked Robin to explain (again) photosynthesis to me. I can't take in this business of _eating light_ and turning it into stem and thorn and flower... I would not call this meditation, sitting in the back garden. Maybe I would call it eating light. Mystical traditions recognize two kinds of practice: _apophatic mysticism_, which is the dark surrender of Zen, the Via Negativa of John of the Cross, and _kataphatic mysticism_, less well defined: an openhearted surrender to the beauty of creation. Maybe Francis of Assissi was, on the whole, a kataphatic mystic, as was Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant momemnts: but the fact is, kataphatic mysticism has low status in religious circles. Francis and Thérèse were made, really made, any mother superior will let you know, in the dark nights of their lives: no more of this throwing off your clothes and singing songs and babbling about the shelter of God's arms. When I was twelve and had my first menstrual period, my grandmother took me aside and said, 'Now your childhood is over. You will never really be happy again.' That is pretty much how some spiritual directors treat the transition from kataphatic to apophatic mysticism. But, I'm sorry, I'm going to sit here every day the sun shines and eat this light. Hung in the bell of desire.

The second great change in human fitness began around 1850. It marked the start of the Industrial Revolution, and today just 13.7 percent of jobs require the same heavy work as our past days of farming.

Lent is a much-needed mentor in an age obsessed with visible, measurable, manageable, and tweetable increase, for it invites us to walk with Jesus and His disciples through darker seasons that we would rather avoid: grief, conflict, misunderstanding, betrayal, restriction, rejection, and pain. Then Easter leads us in celebration of salvation as the stunningly satisfying fruit of Jesus’ sacred decrease.

Это просто, как кровь и пот: Царь — народу, царю — народ. Это ясно, как тайна двух: Двое рядом, а третий — Дух. Царь с небес на престол взведён: Это чисто, как снег и сон. Царь опять на престол взойдёт — Это свято, как кровь и пот. 7 мая 1918, 3-ий день Пасхи (а оставалось ему жить меньше трёх месяцев!) It is simple, as blood and sweat: Tsar and people - in destiny wed. It is clear, as a secret shared Between two, an the Spirit- the third. Heaven summoned the tsar to his throne: It is spotless, as sleep as snow. And the tsar shall regain his throne yet: It is sacred, as blood and sweat. 24th April 1918 3rd day of Easter (and he had - less than three months to live!)

And thus it passed on from Candlemass until after Easter, that the month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom, and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in like wise every lusty heart that is in any manner a lover, springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds. For it giveth unto all lovers courage, that lusty month of May, in something to constrain him to some manner of thing more in that month than in any other month, for divers causes. For then all herbs and trees renew a man and woman, and likewise lovers call again to their mind old gentleness and old service, and many kind deeds that were forgotten by negligence. For like as winter rasure doth alway arase and deface green summer, so fareth it by unstable love in man and woman. For in many persons there is no stability; for we may see all day, for a little blast of winter's rasure, anon we shall deface and lay apart true love for little or nought, that cost much thing; this is no wisdom nor stability, but it is feebleness of nature and great disworship, whosomever useth this. Therefore, like as May month flowereth and flourisheth in many gardens, so in like wise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world, first unto God, and next unto the joy of them that he promised his faith unto; for there was never worshipful man or worshipful woman, but they loved one better than another; and worship in arms may never be foiled, but first reserve the honour to God, and secondly the quarrel must come of thy lady: and such love I call virtuous love. But nowadays men can not love seven night but they must have all their desires: that love may not endure by reason; for where they be soon accorded and hasty heat, soon it cooleth. Right so fareth love nowadays, soon hot soon cold: this is no stability. But the old love was not so; men and women could love together seven years, and no licours lusts were between them, and then was love, truth, and faithfulness: and lo, in like wise was used love in King Arthur's days. Wherefore I liken love nowadays unto summer and winter; for like as the one is hot and the other cold, so fareth love nowadays; therefore all ye that be lovers call unto your remembrance the month of May, like as did Queen Guenever, for whom I make here a little mention, that while she lived she was a true lover, and therefore she had a good end.

Sometimes I think Earth has got to be the insane asylum of the universe. . . and I'm here by computer error. At sixty-eight, I hope I've gained some wisdom in the past fourteen lustrums and it’s obligatory to speak plain and true about the conclusions I've come to; now that I have been educated to believe by such mentors as Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Pohl, (S. Fowler) Wright, Orwell, Taine, Temple, Gernsback, Campbell and other seminal influences in scientifiction, I regret the lack of any female writers but only Radclyffe Hall opened my eyes outside sci-fi. I was a secular humanist before I knew the term. I have not believed in God since childhood's end. I believe a belief in any deity is adolescent, shameful and dangerous. How would you feel, surrounded by billions of human beings taking Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy and the stork seriously, and capable of shaming, maiming or murdering in their name? I am embarrassed to live in a world retaining any faith in church, prayer or a celestial creator. I do not believe in Heaven, Hell or a Hereafter; in angels, demons, ghosts, goblins, the Devil, vampires, ghouls, zombies, witches, warlocks, UFOs or other delusions; and in very few mundane individuals--politicians, lawyers, judges, priests, militarists, censors and just plain people. I respect the individual's right to abortion, suicide and euthanasia. I support birth control. I wish to Good that society were rid of smoking, drinking and drugs. My hope for humanity - and I think sensible science fiction has a beneficial influence in this direction - is that one day everyone born will be whole in body and brain, will live a long life free from physical and emotional pain, will participate in a fulfilling way in their contribution to existence, will enjoy true love and friendship, will pity us 20th century barbarians who lived and died in an atrocious, anachronistic atmosphere of arson, rape, robbery, kidnapping, child abuse, insanity, murder, terrorism, war, smog, pollution, starvation and the other negative “norms” of our current civilization. I have devoted my life to amassing over a quarter million pieces of sf and fantasy as a present to posterity and I hope to be remembered as an altruist who would have been an accepted citizen of Utopia.

Why does there appear to be so little magic in the world these days? It is because people have stopped believing in it or lose touch with it as they grow up. It is because we have become so sophisticated and lost our ancient and natural roots. It is because religion, science and education have taught us that magic does not exist. That even supposing it does exist – which to many is far too big an 'if' – then it couldn't possibly work. Their self-fulfilling sophistry complete, they then turn round and say 'There you are you see, there is no magic in the world, just as we said.' And we and the world are all the poorer as a result of this. I mean, what are we left with? Santa, the Easter Bunny, Harry Potter and the Tooth Fairy.

These special holidays give rise to various liturgical calendars that suggest we should mark our days not only with the cycles of the moon and seasons, but also with occasions to tell our children the stories of our faith community's past so that this past will have a future, and so that our ancient way and its practices will be rediscovered and renewed every year.

Without thinking, I reached out and grabbed Nick's free arm. His wet white T-shirt and jeans rippled, and suddenly he was wearing a Day-Glo yellow tank top and acid-washed jeans. "And you look better like this." (…) As Daisy hooted with laughter, Nick narrowed his eyes at me. "Okay, now you're in for it." He waved his hand, and suddenly I was sweltering. When I glanced down, I saw that it was because I was now dressed like the Easter Bunny. But with the flick of one fuzzy paw, I'd transformed Nick's jeans and tank top into a snowsuit. Then I was in a bikini. So Nick was wearing a particularly poofy purple prom dress. By the time he'd turned my clothes into a showgirl's costume, complete with a feathery headdress, and I'd put him in a scuba suit, we were both completely magic drunk and giggling.

The day of resurrection is determined in this manner. The first Sunday after the full moon in Aries is celebrated as Easter. Aries begins on the 21st day of March and ends approximately on the 19th day of April. The sun’s entry into Aries marks the beginning of Spring The moon in its monthly transit around the earth will form sometime between March 21st and April 25th an opposition to the sun, which opposition is called a full moon, The first Sunday after this phenomenon of the heavens occurs Is celebrated as Easter; the Friday preceding this day is observed as Good Friday. This movable date should tell the observant one to look for some interpretation other than the one commonly accepted. These days do not mark the anniversaries of the death and resurrection of an individual who lived on earth.

People referred to the symbolism of the empty Cross more than once on its journey. It would seem obviously to point to our faith in Jesus’ resurrection. It’s not quite so simple though. The Cross is bare, but in and of itself the empty Cross does not point directly to the Resurrection. It says only that the body of Jesus was removed from the Cross. If a crucifix is a symbol of Good Friday, then it is the image of the empty tomb that speaks more directly of Easter and resurrection. The empty Cross is a symbol of Holy Saturday. It’s an indicator of the reality of Jesus’ death, of His sharing in our mortal coil. At the same time, the empty Cross is an implicit sign of impending resurrection, and it tells us that the Cross is not only a symbol of hatred, violence and inhumanity: it says that the Cross is about something more. The empty Cross also tells us not to jump too quickly to resurrection, as if the Resurrection were a trump card that somehow absolves us from suffering. The Resurrection is not a divine ‘get-out-of-jail free’ card that immunises people from pain, suffering or death. To jump too quickly to the Resurrection runs the risk of trivialising people’s pain and seemingly mapping out a way through suffering that reduces the reality of having to live in pain and endure it at times. For people grieving, introducing the message of the Resurrection too quickly cheapens or nullifies their sense of loss. The empty Cross reminds us that we cannot avoid suffering and death. At the same time, the empty Cross tells us that, because of Jesus’ death, the meaning of pain, suffering and our own death has changed, that these are not all-crushing or definitive. The empty Cross says that the way through to resurrection must always break in from without as something new, that it cannot be taken hold of in advance of suffering or seized as a panacea to pain. In other words, the empty Cross is a sign of hope. It tells us that the new life of God surprises us, comes at a moment we cannot expect, and reminds us that experiences of pain, grief and dying are suffused with the presence of Christ, the One Who was crucified and is now risen.

Every Holy Saturday, the Church waits as it were beside the tomb, meditating on Christ's death while awaiting the announcement of his resurrection. Like John, we can take Mary into our homes and ponder with her the last words of Christ. Like her, we can rest in a place between anguish and joy, waiting in quiet hope. We can pray the Divine Office, which parts the veil to show us Christ defeating death and releasing sinners from captivity. The King is not dead; he rests from his work. A new day will come. His Cross is not defeat; it is victory!

I think it's important to explain that major depression is not even peripherally related to "sadness". Depression is the absence of emotion. I never cried during my darkest periods of depression. Crying would have been A HOLIDAY. It would have been FUCKING CHRISTMAS. A fight or a feeling of anger would have been AN EASTER EGG HUNT AT DISNEYLAND. I am vocal about my depression now because it was so fucking Satanically awful that I view it as one my life's primary missions to help other people understand and overcome it. Depression kills people because in the normal weather patterns of human emotion over a day or a week or a decade, actual unipolar major depressive disorder doesn't appear. It's like The Nothing in The NeverEnding Story. It eats your anger, your sadness, your happiness, your testicle and/or ovaries.

Let me say something about that word: miracle. For too long it’s been used to characterize things or events that, though pleasant, are entirely normal. Peeping chicks at Easter time, spring generally, a clear sunrise after an overcast week—a miracle, people say, as if they’ve been educated from greeting cards. I’m sorry, but nope. Such things are worth our notice every day of the week, but to call them miracles evaporates the strength of the word. Real miracles bother people, like strange sudden pains unknown in medical literature. It’s true: They rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in. Lazarus obeying orders and climbing up out of the grave—now there’s a miracle, and you can bet it upset a lot of folks who were standing around at the time. When a person dies, the earth is generally unwilling to cough him back up. A miracle contradicts the will of earth.

According to scientists at the University of Oregon, people who exercised in a 100-degree room for ten days, for example, increased their fitness performance markers significantly more than a group who did the exact same workout in an air-conditioned room. The hot exercise caused “inexplicable changes to the heart’s left ventricle.” This can improve the heart’s health and efficiency. Hot exercise also activates “heat shock proteins” and “BDNF.” The former are inflammation fighters linked to living longer, while the latter is a chemical that promotes the survival and growth of neurons. BDNF might be protective against depression and Alzheimer’s, according to the NIH.

Someone should tell you that you're beautiful every time the sun comes up. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Wednesdays. And at teatime. Someone should tell you you're beautiful on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve and the evening before Christmas Eve, and on Easter. He should tell you on Guy Fawkes Night and on New Year's, and on the eighth of August, just because.

Nobody in Faha could remember when it started. Rain there on the western seaboard was a condition of living. It came straight-down and sideways, frontwards, backwards and any other wards God could think of. It came in sweeps, in waves, sometimes in veils. It came dressed as drizzle, as mizzle, as mist, as showers, frequent and widespread, as a wet fog, as a damp day, a drop, a dripping, and an out-and-out downpour. It came the fine day, the bright day, and the day promised dry. It came at any time of the day and night, and in all seasons, regardless of calendar and forecast, until in Faha your clothes were rain and your skin was rain and your house was rain with a fireplace. It came off the grey vastness of an Atlantic that threw itself against the land like a lover once spurned and resolved not to be so again. It came accompanied by seagulls and smells of salt and seaweed. It came with cold air and curtained light. It came like a judgment, or, in benign version, like a blessing God had forgotten he had left on. It came for a handkerchief of blue sky, came on westerlies, sometimes—why not?—on easterlies, came in clouds that broke their backs on the mountains in Kerry and fell into Clare, making mud the ground and blind the air. It came disguised as hail, as sleet, but never as snow. It came softly sometimes, tenderly sometimes, its spears turned to kisses, in rain that pretended it was not rain, that had come down to be closer to the fields whose green it loved and fostered, until it drowned them.

Nothing in my life had prepared me for this.Not one single thing.I feel like a lad rat stuck in some horrible experiment meant to measure how I adapt to brutal forms of social segregation and weirdness.And the sad news is,I'm producing way below average results. I stand to the side of the lunchroom or cafeteria,or whatever they call it.The vegetarian lunch Paloma packed with great love and care tightly clutched in my fist,though I've no clue as to where I'm supposed to go eat it. Having already committed the most heinous crime of all by sitting at the wrong table, I'm not sure I'm up for trying again.I'm still shaken by the way those girls acted-so self-righteous and territorial,so burdened by my presence at the end of their bench. It's the seniors' table, I was told. I have no right to sit there. Ever. And that includes holidays and weekends. "Duly noted," I replied, grabbing my lunch and standing before them. "I'll do my best to steer clear of it on Christmas.Easter as well.Though Valentine's Day is a wild card I just can't commit to." And though it felt good at the time,I've no doubt it was a reckless act that only made things worse.

Like a great waterwheel, the liturgical year goes on relentlessly irrigating our souls, softening the ground of our hearts, nourishing the soil of our lives until the seed of the Word of God itself begins to grow in us, comes to fruit in us, ripens in us the spiritual journey of a lifetime. So goes the liturgical year through all the days of our lives. /it concentrates us on the two great poles of the faith - the birth and death of Jesus of Nazareth. But as Christmas and Easter trace the life of Jesus for us from beginning to end, the liturgical year does even more: it also challenges our own life and vision and sense of meaning. Both a guide to greater spiritual maturity and a path to a deepened spiritual life, the liturgical year leads us through all the great questions of faith as it goes. It rehearses the dimensions of life over and over for us all the years of our days. It leads us back again and again to reflect on the great moments of the life of Jesus and so to apply them to our own ... As the liturgical year goes on every day of our lives, every season of every year, tracing the steps of Jesus from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, so does our own life move back and forth between our own beginnings and endings, between our own struggles and triumphs, between the rush of acclamation and the crush of abandonment. It is the link between Jesus and me, between this life and the next, between me and the world around me, that is the gift of the liturgical year. The meaning and message of the liturgical year is the bedrock on which we strike our own life's direction. Rooted in the Resurrection promise of the liturgical year, whatever the weight of our own pressures, we maintain the course. We trust in the future we cannot see and do only know because we have celebrated the death and resurrection of Jesus year after year. In His life we rest our own. ― Joan D. Chittister, The Liturgical Year: The Spiraling Adventure of the Spiritual Life - The Ancient Practices Series

He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down… All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. Death has interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does. Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough. Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know. She is weeping. The executee helps her to stand up.

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theatres from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

He was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned, because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people, destined to found a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen these men, no one had heard their words and their voices.

That Easter Monday evening, Mrs Miggs, in her ninety-sixth year, rolled up her crochet, and took in her chair, at the end of the afternoon, and closed her door and went to bed, early, as she always did, in the room that used to be the parlour, for she had not been able to climb the stairs since breaking her hip five years before, and in the night, in her sleep, died. And so there was a funeral service at the church to follow the farrier’s wedding, and people in Barley felt saddened, for Mrs Miggs was so well-known and liked, such a familiar figure, she had seemed immortal, and another link with the old days, the old village life, was severed. Sad too, we said, that she did not reach her hundredth year, to which she was looking forward. There would have been a party for her and the children would have made posies and taken them, and sung to her outside her window in the early morning. But a good funeral service, at the peaceful end of a long life, is not altogether an occasion for mourning. This one felt fitting, and things were in their proper order.

No, you don't understand, naturally' said the second swallow. 'First, we feel it stirring within us, a sweet unrest; then back come the recollections one by one, like homing pigeons. They flutter through our dreams at night, they fly with us in our wheelings and circlings by day. We hunger to inquire of each other, to compare notes and assure ourselves that it was all really true, as one by one the scents and sounds and names of long-forgotten places come gradually back and beckon to us...'I tried stopping on one year,' said the third swallow. 'I had grown so fond of the place that when the time came I hung back and let the others go on without me. For a few weeks it was all well enough, but afterwards, O the weary length of the nights! The shivering, sunless days! The air so clammy and chill, and not an insect in an acre of it! No, it was no good; my courage broke down, and one cold, stormy night I took wing, flying well inland on account of the strong easterly gales. It was snowing hard as I beat through the passes of the great mountains, and I had a stiff fight to win through; but never shall I forget the blissful feeling of the hot sun again on my back as I sped down to the lakes that lay so blue and placid below me, and the taste of my first fat insect. The past was like a bad dream; the future was all happy holiday

Easter was late in April that year; my first three tours of trenches occupied me during the last thirty days of Lent. This essential season in the Church calendar was not, as far as I remember, remarked upon by anyone in my company, although the name of Christ was often on our lips, and Mansfield (when a canister made a mess of the trench not many yards away from him) was even heard to refer to our Saviour as ‘murry old Jesus!’ These innocuous blasphemings of the holy name were a peculiar feature of the War, in which the principles of Christianity were either obliterated or falsified for the convenience of all who were engaged in it. Up in the trenches every man bore his own burden; the Sabbath was not made for man; and if a man laid down his life for his friends it was no part of his military duties. To kill an enemy was an effective action; to bring in one of our own wounded was praiseworthy, but unrelated to our war-aims. The Brigade chaplain did not exhort us to love our enemies. He was content to lead off with the hymn ‘How sweet the name of Jesus sounds’!

I’m always shocked when I run into people who don’t believe in God. I’ll even ask them, “How can you not believe that there’s a power greater than you who’s engineering this whole system of things?” Usually they’ll tell me something like, “Man, God is just some mythical fairy tale. God is no different than Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy.” I disagree wholeheartedly, but that mind-set is honestly one of the reasons I don’t sell that junk about holiday headliners to my daughters. Maybe it’s the Witness influence on me, but to this day I’m not a fan of holidays. I think it’s a mistake to hype your kids on Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy on one hand, and then try to sell them on God with the other. When they get older and realize Santa and the Easter Bunny aren’t real, it becomes too easy for them to dismiss God as well. “So you were lying to me about everybody else, but this God character is real?” they’ll say. “Yeah, right.” And then they’ll miss out on the affirmation, confidence, and faith that religion can provide when they’re older and really need it.

I don’t know how I didn’t see it for so many years of Bible reading, but I didn’t.  Paul didn’t teach the Gentiles not to follow the law, he didn’t teach people not to have their sons circumcised (in fact he himself had Timothy circumcised in Acts 16:3).  And Paul himself kept the law.  Otherwise, James would have been telling Paul to lie about what he was doing.   So we traded Christmas for Sukkot, the true birth of Messiah during the Feast of Tabernacles, which is a shadow picture of Him coming back to reign for a thousand years.  When we keep that feast, we are making a declaration that we believe He was, is, and is coming.  We keep Yom Kippur, which is a declaration that we believe that Yeshua is the salvation of the nation of Israel as a whole, that “all Israel shall be saved.”  We keep Yom Teruah, the day of Trumpets, which occurs on “the day and hour that no man knows” at the sighting of the first sliver of the new moon during the 7th biblical month of Tishri.  We traded Pentecost for Shavuot, the prophetic shadow picture of the spirit being poured out on the assembly, as we see in the book of Acts,  just as the law was given at Mt Sinai to the assembly, which according to Stephen was the true birth of the church (Acts 7:38) – not in Jerusalem, but at Sinai. We also traded Easter for Passover, the shadow picture of Messiah coming to die to restore us to right standing with God, in order to obey Him when He said, “from now on, do this in remembrance of Me.”  We traded Resurrection Sunday for First Fruits, the feast which served as a shadow of Messiah rising up out of the earth and ascending to be presented as a holy offering to the Father.  In Leviticus 23, these are called the Feasts of the LORD, and were to be celebrated by His people Israel forever, not just the Jews, but all those who are in covenant with Him. Just like at Mt Sinai, the descendants of Jacob plus the mixed multitude who came out of Egypt.    We learned from I John 3:4 that sin is defined as transgression of the law.  I John 1:10 says that if we claim we do not sin we are liars, so sin still exists, and that was written long after the death of the other apostles, including Paul.  I read what Peter said about Paul in 2 Peter 3:15-16 – that his writings were hard to understand and easily twisted.  And I began to see that Peter was right because the more I understood what everyone besides Paul was saying, the more I realized that the only way I could justify what I had been doing was with Paul’s writings.  I couldn’t use Yeshua (Jesus), Moses, John, Peter or any of the others to back up any of the doctrines I was taught – I had to ignore Yeshua almost entirely, or take Him out of context.  I decided that Yeshua, and not Paul, died for me, so I had to

In St. Patrick Town, we find the stubborn, sprightly residents all awake--the leprechaun I spoke to days before still in search of his lost pot of gold in the glen, rain clouds heavy in the distance, and rainbows gleaming above the treetops. In Valentine's Town, Queen Ruby is bustling through the streets, making sure the chocolatiers are busy crafting their confections of black velvet truffles and cherry macaroons, trying to make up for lost time, while her cupids still flock through town, wild and restless. The rabbits have resumed painting their pastel eggs in Easter Town. The townsfolk in Fourth of July Town are testing new rainbow sparklers and fireworks that explode in the formation of a queen's crown, in honor of the Pumpkin Queen who saved them all from a life of dreamless sleep. In Thanksgiving Town, everyone is preparing for the feast in the coming season, and the elves in Christmas Town have resumed assembling presents and baking powdered-sugar gingerbread cookies. And in Halloween Town, we have just enough time to finish preparations for the holiday: cobwebs woven together, pumpkins carved, and black tar-wax candles lit.

The four-week period of Advent before Christmas—and the six-week period of Lent before Easter—are times of penance and life change for Christians. In our book The Last Week, we suggested that Lent was a penance time for having been in the wrong procession and a preparation time for moving over to the right one by Palm Sunday. That day’s violent procession of the horse-mounted Pilate and his soldiers was contrasted with the nonviolent procession of the donkey-mounted Jesus and his companions. We asked: in which procession would we have walked then and in which do we walk now?

За Отрока — за Голубя — за Сына, За царевича младого Алексия Помолись, церковная Россия! Очи ангельские вытри, Вспомяни, как пал на плиты Голубь углицкий — Димитрий. Ласковая ты, Россия, матерь! Ах, ужели у тебя не хватит На него — любовной благодати? Грех отцовский не карай на сыне. Сохрани, крестьянская Россия, Царскосельского ягнёнка — Алексия! 4 апреля 1917, третий день Пасхи Pray for the Son - the Dove - the Adolescent, For the young Tsarevich, for the young Alexis - Russia, pray, who the true faith confessest! Wipe those angel eyes now, ponder deeply Him that fell upon the stones - think meetly On the dove of Uglich, on Dimitri. Gentle mother, Russia, kind, caressing! Is thy heart so hard as not to grace him With thy loving-kindness, with thy blessing? Visit not upon the son the father's trespass. Russia of the country folk - be his protectress: Spare the lamb of Tsarskoye Selo, Alexis! 4 April 1917 Third day of Easter

Eleven finally allowed to dye his own eggs, and then only in one color: red. All over the house red eggs gleam in lengthening, solstice rays. Red eggs fill bowls on the dining room table. They hang from string pouches over doorways. They crowd the mantel and are baked into loaves of cruciform tsoureki. But now it is late afternoon; dinner is over. And my brother is smiling. Because now comes the one part of Greek Easter he prefers to egg hunts and jelly beans: the egg-cracking game. Everyone gathers around the dining table. Biting his lip, Chapter Eleven selects an egg from the bowl, studies it, returns it. He selects another. “This looks like a good one,” Milton says, choosing his own egg. “Built like a Brinks truck.” Milton holds his egg up. Chapter Eleven prepares to attack. When suddenly my mother taps my father on the back. “Just a minute, Tessie. We’re cracking eggs here.” She taps him harder. “What?” “My temperature.” She pauses. “It’s up six tenths.” She has been using the thermometer. This is the first my father has heard of it. “Now?” my father whispers. “Jesus, Tessie, are you sure?” “No, I’m not sure. You told me to watch for any rise in my temperature and I’m telling you I’m up six tenths of a degree.” And, lowering her voice, “Plus it’s been thirteen days since my last you know what.” “Come on, Dad,” Chapter Eleven pleads.

Коли в землю солдаты всадили — штык, Коли красною тряпкой затмили — Лик*, Коли Бог под ударами — глух и нем, Коль на Пасху народ не пустили в Кремль — Надо бражникам старым засесть за холст, Рыбам — петь, бабам — умствовать, птицам — ползть, Конь на всаднике должен скакать верхом, Новорожденных надо поить вином**, Реки — жечь, мертвецов выносить — в окно, Солнце красное в полночь всходить должно, Имя суженой должен забыть жених… Государыням нужно любить — простых***. 3-ий день Пасхи 1918 *Красный флаг, к<отор>ым завесили лик Николая Чудотворца. Продолжение — известно (примеч. М. Цветаевой).↵ **Поили: г<оспо>жу де Жанлис. В Бургундии. Называлось «la miaulée». И жила, кажется, до 90-ста лет. Но был ужасная лицемерка (примеч. М. Цветаевой).↵ ***Любили (примеч. М. Цветаевой).↵ Now that the troops stick their bayonets - in the earth, that they wrap the Saint's Face - in a scarlet cloth, That, in face of these blows, God is - deaf and dumb, That at Easter the Kremlin admits no one - We shall soon see old revellers ply the loom, Fishes - sing, old wives - meditate, birds - creep, soon see the steed mount its rider and race away, see them start feeding wine to the new-born babe, Rivers - burn, windows - open to pass the dead, on the stroke of midnight - the sun rise, blood-red, the fiancé forget his beloved's name... and tsarinas - love commoners once again*. Third day of Easter, 1918 *They did love them (M.S.)

The habit of examining her conscience, instilled by the nuns when she was a child, hadn’t left her. Matelda reflected on past hurts done to her and took stock of those she had perpetrated on others. Tuscans might live in the moment, but the past lived in them. Even if that weren’t true, there were reminders tucked in every corner of her hometown. She knew Viareggio and its people as well as she knew her own body; in a sense, they were one. The mood turned grim in the village as the revelry of Carnevale ended and Lent began. The next forty days would be a somber time of reflection, fasting, and penance. Lent had felt like it lasted an eternity when she was a girl. Easter Sunday could not come soon enough. The day of relief. “You cannot have the joy of Easter Sunday without the agony of Good Friday,” her mother reminded them. “No cross, no crown,” she’d say in a dialect only her children understood. The resurrection of the Lord redeemed the village and set the children free. Black sacks were pulled off the statues of the saints. The bare altar was decorated anew with myrtle and daisies. Plain broth for sustenance during the fast was replaced with sweet bread. The scents of butter, orange zest, and honey as Mama kneaded the dough for Easter bread during Holy Week lifted their spirits. The taste of the soft egg bread, braided into loaves served hot from the oven and drenched in honey, meant the sacrifice was over, at least until

Having written some pages in favor of Jesus, I receive a solemn communication crediting me with the possession of a “theology” by which I acquire the strange dignity of being wrong forever or forever right. Have I gauged exactly enough the weights of sins? Have I found too much of the Hereafter in the Here? Or the other way around? Have I found too much pleasure, too much beauty and goodness, in this our unreturning world? O Lord, please forgive any smidgen of such distinctions I may have still in my mind. I meant to leave them all behind a long time ago. If I’m a theologian I am one to the extent I have learned to duck when the small, haughty doctrines fly overhead, dropping their loads of whitewash at random on the faces of those who look toward Heaven. Look down, look down, and save your soul by honester dirt, that receives with a lordly indifference this off-fall of the air. Christmas night and Easter morning are this soil’s only laws. The depth and volume of the waters of baptism, the true taxonomy of sins, the field marks of those most surely saved, God’s own only interpretation of the Scripture: these would be causes of eternal amusement, could we forget how we have hated one another, how vilified and hurt and killed one another, bloodying the world, by means of such questions, wrongly asked, never to be rightly answered, but asked and wrongly answered, hour after hour, day after day, year after year—such is my belief—in Hell.

And under the cicadas, deeper down that the longest taproot, between and beneath the rounded black rocks and slanting slabs of sandstone in the earth, ground water is creeping. Ground water seeps and slides, across and down, across and down, leaking from here to there, minutely at a rate of a mile a year. What a tug of waters goes on! There are flings and pulls in every direction at every moment. The world is a wild wrestle under the grass; earth shall be moved. What else is going on right this minute while ground water creeps under my feet? The galaxy is careening in a slow, muffled widening. If a million solar systems are born every hour, then surely hundreds burst into being as I shift my weight to the other elbow. The sun’s surface is now exploding; other stars implode and vanish, heavy and black, out of sight. Meteorites are arcing to earth invisibly all day long. On the planet, the winds are blowing: the polar easterlies, the westerlies, the northeast and southeast trades. Somewhere, someone under full sail is becalmed, in the horse latitudes, in the doldrums; in the northland, a trapper is maddened, crazed, by the eerie scent of the chinook, the sweater, a wind that can melt two feet of snow in a day. The pampero blows, and the tramontane, and the Boro, sirocco, levanter, mistral. Lick a finger; feel the now. Spring is seeping north, towards me and away from me, at sixteen miles a day. Along estuary banks of tidal rivers all over the world, snails in black clusters like currants are gliding up and down the stems of reed and sedge, migrating every moment with the dip and swing of tides. Behind me, Tinker Mountain is eroding one thousandth of an inch a year. The sharks I saw are roving up and down the coast. If the sharks cease roving, if they still their twist and rest for a moment, they die. They need new water pushed into their gills; they need dance. Somewhere east of me, on another continent, it is sunset, and starlings in breathtaking bands are winding high in the sky to their evening roost. The mantis egg cases are tied to the mock-orange hedge; within each case, within each egg, cells elongate, narrow, and split; cells bubble and curve inward, align, harden or hollow or stretch. And where are you now?

Kids didn’t just disappear unless someone made them disappear.‘Relax, mate,’ the head of security said. ‘We’ve never lost one yet.’ Lots of kids wandered off at the Easter Show, he told them. They were always found, usually somewhere near the food.Doug had tried to relax, to stay calm, but he could feel the panic building inside him.The place was too big.There were too many people.Lockie could be anywhere. The police were called. It took hours for everyone to leave the showgrounds because every family was stopped. Every parent was questioned and every child identified. It was way past midnight when everyone had finally gone home, and still they had not found Lockie.The head of security changed his tone. The police held whispered conversations in groups. They began to look at him with sympathy in their eyes.Doug felt his heart slow down. There was a ringing in his ears. He was underwater and he couldn’t swim.Lockie was gone.They had lost one.Sammy had gone from impatience to hunger to exhaustion. She didn’t understand what was happening.Sarah sat next to the pram twisting her hands. She did not cry. She didn’t cry for days, but every time Doug went near her he could hear her muttering the word ‘please’. ‘Please, please, please, please.’ It drove Doug mad and he had to move away because he wanted to hit her, to snap her out of her trance. He had never lifted a hand to his wife or his children, but now he had to close his fist and dig his nails into his palm to keep himself from lashing out Sarah didn’t believe in hitting children; she believed in time out and consequences. It was different to the way Doug had been raised but he had come around to the idea. The thought of anyone—especially himself—hurting Sarah and the kids was almost too much to bear.Doug sometimes wondered, after, if whoever had taken his son had hit him. When he did think about someone hurting his boy he could feel his hands curl into fists. He would embrace the rush of heat that came with the anger because at least it was a different feeling to the sorrow and despair. Anger felt constructive. He wanted to kill everyone, even himself. But as fast as the anger came it would recede and he would be back at the place he hated to be. Mired in his own helplessness. There was fuck-all he could do.

Eleven finally allowed to dye his own eggs, and then only in one color: red. All over the house red eggs gleam in lengthening, solstice rays. Red eggs fill bowls on the dining room table. They hang from string pouches over doorways. They crowd the mantel and are baked into loaves of cruciform tsoureki. But now it is late afternoon; dinner is over. And my brother is smiling. Because now comes the one part of Greek Easter he prefers to egg hunts and jelly beans: the egg-cracking game. Everyone gathers around the dining table. Biting his lip, Chapter Eleven selects an egg from the bowl, studies it, returns it. He selects another. “This looks like a good one,” Milton says, choosing his own egg. “Built like a Brinks truck.” Milton holds his egg up. Chapter Eleven prepares to attack. When suddenly my mother taps my father on the back. “Just a minute, Tessie. We’re cracking eggs here.” She taps him harder. “What?” “My temperature.” She pauses. “It’s up six tenths.” She has been using the thermometer. This is the first my father has heard of it. “Now?” my father whispers. “Jesus, Tessie, are you sure?” “No, I’m not sure. You told me to watch for any rise in my temperature and I’m telling you I’m up six tenths of a degree.” And, lowering her voice, “Plus it’s been thirteen days since my last you know what.” “Come on, Dad,” Chapter Eleven pleads. “Time out,” Milton says. He puts his egg in the ashtray. “That’s my egg. Nobody touch it until I come back.” Upstairs, in the master bedroom, my parents accomplish the act. A child’s natural decorum makes me refrain from imagining the scene in much detail. Only this: when they’re done, as if topping off the tank, my father says, “That should do it.” It turns out he’s right. In May, Tessie learns she’s pregnant, and the waiting begins.

Christmas In India Dim dawn behind the tamerisks -- the sky is saffron-yellow -- As the women in the village grind the corn, And the parrots seek the riverside, each calling to his fellow That the Day, the staring Easter Day is born. Oh the white dust on the highway! Oh the stenches in the byway! Oh the clammy fog that hovers And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and scarlet berry -- What part have India's exiles in their mirth? Full day begind the tamarisks -- the sky is blue and staring -- As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke, And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope or caring, To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke. Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly -- Call on Rama -- he may hear, perhaps, your voice! With our hymn-books and our psalters we appeal to other altars, And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!" High noon behind the tamarisks -- the sun is hot above us -- As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan. They will drink our healths at dinner -- those who tell us how they love us, And forget us till another year be gone! Oh the toil that knows no breaking! Oh the Heimweh, ceaseless, aching! Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain! Youth was cheap -- wherefore we sold it. Gold was good -- we hoped to hold it, And to-day we know the fulness of our gain. Grey dusk behind the tamarisks -- the parrots fly together -- As the sun is sinking slowly over Home; And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong tether. That drags us back how'er so far we roam. Hard her service, poor her payment -- she is ancient, tattered raiment -- India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind. If a year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we enter, The door is hut -- we may not look behind. Black night behind the tamarisks -- the owls begin their chorus -- As the conches from the temple scream and bray. With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years before us, Let us honor, O my brother, Christmas Day! Call a truce, then, to our labors -- let us feast with friends and neighbors, And be merry as the custom of our caste; For if "faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness follow after, We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.

My breath caught. Locks unsnapped. The door yawned open. This would end badly, I knew. “What?” she said. “I’m new,” I answered. “A new freshman.” “Yeah?” Her eyes were pale blue, her hair a black bowl cut. “Dolores Price? This is my dorm. Are you the house mother or something?” She let go a snort of laughter. “I’m the ‘or something.’ You’re a little early, ain’t you?” “I got this letter that said we should arrive somewhere between ten and four. It’s ten after four . . .” “Between ten and four next Thursday.” “I’m sure I have the right date.” I hadn’t gotten the dry heaves over September 7 for nothing. I was surer of that date than anything else in my whole life. “You can come in and put your stuff down for a minute, but you ain’t supposed to be here until next week. I got my orders. There’s no linens or nothing. Buildings and Grounds ain’t even sent over my new mattresses yet.” “Look, I have the right day. I can prove it.” “You do that then,” she said. “But hurry up. I got work to do.” Once you left Easterly, you saw the world was full of these people: ticket sellers, snack-bar clerks. They assumed they were better than you just because they knew their own routines.

No...I knew a Martin. And was he wiley? If there was one thing he wasn't was wiley, John. Oh? Poor Martin was an inordinately stupid man. He could barely tie his shoelaces. A ha'penny short? Ah listen. Martin kept animals had more wile in them. What kind of animals? He'd sheep. A few cattle, I suppose. Though they'd have been wind-bothered up that way. They'd have been... Bothered, John. By the wind coming in. The way it would unseat cattle. Unseat them? Cornelius lowers his sad eyes - In the mind. You mean you'd have a cow'd take a turn? Cornelius squares his jaw. Do you realise you're looking at a man who's seen a cow step in front of a moving vehicle? Purposefully. On account of? Wind coming easterly. That's the kind of thing that can leave a beast beyond despair. Because of the pure evil sound of it, John. The way it would play across the country in an ominous way. An easterly? If it was to come across you for a fortnight and it might? Sleep gone out the window and a horrible black feeling racing through your fucken blood. Day and night. All sorts of thoughts of death and hopelessness. This is what you'd get on the tail end of an easterly wind. Man nor animal wouldn't be right after it.

Right now he needed to concentrate on keeping himself under control. Inside, his gut churned. There was a war going on. The joy of holding his son again clashed with the waves of anger that rose higher and higher with each passing moment. He thought he had known why Pete had arrived at the farm. He had pushed the fork into the soil and watched the earth turn over sure that the truth of their tragedy was about to be laid before them. He had watched the dry earth give up the rich brown soil and wanted to stay there forever in the cold garden just watching his fork move the earth. He had not wanted to hear what Pete had to say. And now this..this..What did you call this? A miracle? What else could it be? But this miracle was tainted. He was not holding the same boy he had taken to the Easter Show. This thin child with shaved hair was not the Lockie he knew. Someone had taken that child. They had taken his child and he could feel by the weight of him they had starved him. Someone had done this to him. They had done this and god knew what else. Doug walked slowly into the house, trying to find the right way to break the news to Sarah. She was lying down in the bedroom again. These days she spent more time there than anywhere else. Doug walked slowly through the house to the main bedroom at the back. It was the only room in the house whose curtains were permanently closed. How damaged was his child? Would he ever be the same boy they had taken up to the Show ? What had been done to him? Dear God, what had been done to him? His ribs stuck out even under the jumper he was wearing. It was not his jumper. He had been dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, perfect for the warm day. He had a cap with a Bulldogs logo. What could have happened to his clothes? How long had he had the jumper?Doug bit his lip. First things first. He opened the bedroom door cautiously and looked into the gloom. Sarah was on her back. Her mouth was slightly open. She was fast asleep. The room smelled musty with the heater on. Sarah slept tightly wrapped in her covers. Doug swallowed. He wanted to run into the room whooping and shouting that Lockie was home but Sarah was so fragile he had no idea how she would react. He walked over to the window and opened the curtains. Outside it was getting dark already but enough light entered the room to wake Sarah up. She moaned and opened her eyes. ‘Oh god, Doug, please just close them. I’m so tired.’ Doug sat down on the bed and Sarah turned her back to him. She had not looked at him. Lockie opened his eyes and looked around the room. ‘Ready to say hello to Mum, mate?’ Doug asked. ‘Hi, Mum,’ said Lockie to his mother’s back. His voice had changed. It was deeper and had an edge to it. He sounded older. He sounded like someone who had seen too much. But Sarah would know it was her boy. Doug saw Sarah’s whole body tense at the sound of Lockie’s voice and then she reached her arm behind her and twisted the skin on her back with such force Doug knew she would have left a mark. ‘It’s not a dream, Sarah,’ he said quietly. ‘He’s home.’ Sarah sat up, her eyes wide. ‘Hi, Mum,’ said Lockie again. ‘Hello, my boy,’ said Sarah softly. Softly, as though he hadn’t been missing for four months. Softly, as though he had just been away for a day. Softly, as though she hadn’t been trying to die slowly. Softly she said, ‘Hello, my boy.’ Doug could see her chest heaving. ‘We’ve been looking for you,’ she said, and then she held out her arms. Lockie climbed off Doug’s lap and onto his mother’s legs. She wrapped her arms around him and pushed her nose into his neck, finding his scent and identifying her child. Lockie buried his head against her breasts and then he began to cry. Just soft little sobs that were soon matched by his mother’s tears. Doug wanted them to stop but tears were good. He would have to get used to tears.

Do not allow your children to celebrate the days on which unbelief and superstition are being catered to. They are admittedly inclined to want this because they see that the children of Roman Catholic parents observe those days. Do not let them attend carnivals, observe Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras), see Santa Claus, or observe Twelfth Night, because they are all remnants of an idolatrous papacy. You must not keep your children out of school or from work on those days nor let them play outside or join in the amusement. The Lord has said, “After the doings of the land of Egypt, where you lived, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, where I bring you, you shall not do: neither shall you walk in their ordinances” (Lev. 18:3). The Lord will punish the Reformed on account of the days of Baal (Hosea 2:12-13), and he also observes what the children do on the occasion of such idolatry (Jer. 17:18). Therefore, do not let your children receive presents on Santa Claus day, nor let them draw tickets in a raffle and such things. Pick other days on which to give them the things that amuse them, and because the days of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost have the same character, Reformed people must keep their children away from these so-called holy days and feast days.

..."facts" properly speaking are always and never more than interpretations of the data... the Gospel accounts are themselves such data or, if you like, hard facts. But the events to which the Gospels refer are not themselves "hard facts"; they are facts only in the sense that we interpret the text, together with such other data as we have, to reach a conclusion regarding the events as best we are able. They are facts in the same way that the verdict of a jury establishes the facts of the case, the interpretation of the evidence that results in the verdict delivered. Here it is as well to remember that historical methodology can only produce probabilities, the probability that some event took place in such circumstances being greater or smaller, depending on the quality of the data and the perspective of the historical enquirer. The jury which decides what is beyond reasonable doubt is determining that the probability is sufficiently high for a clear-cut verdict to be delivered. Those who like "certainty" in matters of faith will always find this uncomfortable. But faith is not knowledge of "hard facts"...; it is rather confidence, assurance, trust in the reliability of the data and in the integrity of the interpretations derived from that data... It does seem important to me that those who speak for evangelical Christians grasp this nettle firmly, even if it stings! – it is important for the intellectual integrity of evangelicals. Of course any Christian (and particularly evangelical Christians) will want to get as close as possible to the Jesus who ministered in Galilee in the late 20s of the first century. If, as they believe, God spoke in and through that man, more definitively and finally than at any other time and by any other medium, then of course Christians will want to hear as clearly as possible what he said, and to see as clearly as possible what he did, to come as close as possible to being an eyewitness and earwitness for themselves. If God revealed himself most definitively in the historical particularity of a Galilean Jew in the earliest decades of the Common Era, then naturally those who believe this will want to inquire as closely into the historical particularity and actuality of that life and of Jesus’ mission. The possibility that later faith has in some degree covered over that historical actuality cannot be dismissed as out of the question. So a genuinely critical historical inquiry is necessary if we are to get as close to the historical actuality as possible. Critical here, and this is the point, should not be taken to mean negatively critical, hermeneutical suspicion, dismissal of any material that has overtones of Easter faith. It means, more straightforwardly, a careful scrutiny of all the relevant data to gain as accurate or as historically responsible a picture as possible. In a day when evangelical, and even Christian, is often identified with a strongly right-wing, conservative and even fundamentalist attitude to the Bible, it is important that responsible evangelical scholars defend and advocate such critical historical inquiry and that their work display its positive outcome and benefits. These include believers growing in maturity • to recognize gray areas and questions to which no clear-cut answer can be given (‘we see in a mirror dimly/a poor reflection’), • to discern what really matters and distinguish them from issues that matter little, • and be able to engage in genuine dialogue with those who share or respect a faith inquiring after truth and seeking deeper understanding. In that way we may hope that evangelical (not to mention Christian) can again become a label that men and women of integrity and good will can respect and hope to learn from more than most seem to do today.