Emerald Isle Quotes

Ireland is probably named the “Emerald Isle” because there are lots of precious stones found there, such as sapphires and rubies.

To be certain you're consuming the real deal, look carefully at the label. W-h-i-s-k-e-y indicates the heavenly liquid from the Emerald Isle. Without the "e," it's from Scotland or some other godforsaken place.

You are my next breath. You are the reason I breathe at all. ~ Breandán Mac Liam

May I be excused, or would you like my assistance toweling off?" Ethan asked. "My grandmother is expecting me, and she hates when I'm late, although I'm willing to risk the wrath if you'd like to continue this conversation.

It's my job to worry about you. I'm in love with you, Stacy. I have been ever since I can remember. It's always been you.

It was hard to get ahead when your energy and time were dedicated to keeping a roof over your head and the utilities on.

Sand might shift with wind or tide, but it didn’t really change, it just rearranged itself.

I realized that with Chance and me, there were no secrets. Or at least none that I could otherwise explain. I said, "I trust you more than I trust my own family, you know that?" "Well, they don't set the bar real high." He smiled at me, a silly, playful smile. The kind of smile shared by people with a lot of history.

I clung tightly to Kwan’s mane as he propelled his great serpent body through the cloud banks. The cockatrice’s big green head dipped under the clouds, and I spotted an emerald island below, with dramatic peaks jutting up from the jungle. I asked the great cockatrice for the name of the isle, but he only laughed at me, saying that names changed faster than a century’s wind. That didn’t seem very fast to me, but I took his word for it.

That the greatest mistakes in life are not the ones we make, but the ones that never get made because we are too afraid to try.

You can’t swing a cat in Ireland without hitting a saint.

You're the most important person in my life," I whispered. "You're the only man I ever let in." "But I'm not in, Stace. I'm standing on the porch in the pouring rain, waiting for you to open the door. I've been waiting ever since you left after graduation, ever since you came back last year. Even now, you've let me into your bed, but not into your heart. I'm still waiting.

This Sarah Perez had the most beautiful eyes in the world, those green eyes spangled with gold that you love so much: the eyes of Antinous. In Rome, such eyes would have made her a concubine of Adrian; in Madrid they helped her become the princess of Eboli ensconced in the bed of the king. But Philip II was extremely jealous of those wonderful emerald eyes and their delicate transparency, and the princess - who was bored with the funereal palace and the even more funereal society of the king - had the fancy and the misfortune to cast her admirable gaze upon the Marquis de Posa while she was leaving church one day. It was on the threshold of the chapel, and the princess believed herself to be alone with her camarera mayor, but the vigilance of the clergy was equal to the challenge. She was betrayed, and that very evening, in the intimacy of their bedroom, in the course of some violent argument or tempestuous tussle, Philip threw his mistress to the floor. Blind with rage he leapt upon her, tore out her eye and devoured it in a single gulp. 'Thus was the princess covered in blood - a good title for a conte cruel, that, which Villiers de l'Isle Adam has somehow omitted to write! The princess was henceforth one-eyed: the royal pet had a gaping hole in her face. Philip II, who had the Jewess in his blood, could not cleave so closely to a princess who had only one eye. He made amends to her with some new titles and estates in the provinces and - regretful of the beautiful green eye that he had spoiled - he caused to be inserted into the empty and bloody orbit a superb emerald enshrined in silver, upon which surgeons then inscribed the semblance of a gaze. Oculists have made progress since then; the Princess of Eboli, already hurt by the ruination of her eye, died some little time afterwards, of the effects of the operation. The ways of love and surgery were equally barbarous in the time of Philip II! 'Philip, the inconsolable lover, gave the order to remove the emerald from the face of the dead princess before she was laid in the tomb, and had it mounted in a ring. He wore it about his finger, and would never take it off, even when he went to sleep - and when he died in his turn, he had the ring bearing the green tear clasped in his right hand.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” “Now, that’s beautiful.” “It’s Psalm 19. Verse 1.

Dealing with other people was often a crap shoot. Ultimately, you had to do what you had to do—what your conscience could live with.

In this world, none of us have more than the moment we’re in. You’re here. I’m here. Tomorrow can take care of itself.

service—serving other people—is a gift to all if it’s done with a glad heart.

You have read New England history, dear, but you’ve let the ugly parts slip into the back of your mind. Your forefathers hanged helpless old women as witches.” “Yes, Lanny, but they believed the devil was in them.” “The Communists believe the devil is in the capitalists, the great landlords and others who monopolize the means of life and use them to exploit the laboring masses. It is a different set of ideas, but the fundamental attitude, the type of mind, is the same. Your forefathers put men in stocks, they ducked women in ducking stools, they drove Roger Williams, a gentle mystic, out into the wilderness.” “Surely they never murdered people wholesale as the Communists have done!” “Are you sure? Just go to your public library and get a history of Ireland, and see what Oliver Cromwell did to the Irish people, the names he called them, and the wholesale ferocious slaughter. Ireland is a smaller country than Russia, but proportionately I doubt if the Communists have killed as many people in Russia as the Roundheads killed in the Emerald Isle. You and I are used to seeing social progress made by means of the ballot, but we have to bear in mind that some peoples haven’t reached that stage of development and cannot get any sort of change without violence, and a lot of it.

Lastly, she thought on the Emerald Isle with new a lens, searching for their word, their shared meaning and faith in life that held them together. It arrived in her mind like a carriage on time: Connection, she realised. It all stems back to feeling connected, to being connected, with oneself, with others, with the earth and its cycles, and with the true essence of life.

Lastly, she thought on the Emerald Isle with new a lens, searching for their word, their shared meaning and faith in life that held them together. It arrived in her mind like a carriage on time: Connection, she realised. It all stems back to feeling connected, to being connected, with oneself, with others, with the earth and its cycles, and with the true essence of life.

One thing she’d learned was that until you accept what must be done, rise above yourself, and move forward to do it with a whole heart, you were stuck. It wasn’t enough to go through the motions; you had to be that new person. Until then, you couldn’t go anywhere, not even back. You were doomed to be stuck, blind, mired in your own misery and self-doubt.

It couldn’t possibly mean that his latest fling might be someone from Ireland. That would be too hurtful to imagine. Or someone that he was taking to Ireland on a magic trip. Some girl that he was going to impress with his fairytale ways in the Emerald Isle.

JUSTIFYING OPPRESSION While history has proven Malthusianism empirically false, however, it provides the ideal foundation for justifying human oppression and tyranny. The theory holds that there isn’t enough to go around, and can never be. Therefore human aspirations and liberties must be constrained, and authorities must be empowered to enforce the constraining. During Malthus’s own time, his theory was used to justify regressive legislation directed against England’s lower classes, most notably the Poor Law Act of 1834, which forced hundreds of thousands of poor Britons into virtual slavery. 11 However, a far more horrifying example of the impact of Malthusianism was to occur a few years later, when the doctrine motivated the British government’s refusal to provide relief during the great Irish famine of 1846. In a letter to economist David Ricardo, Malthus laid out the basis for this policy: “The land in Ireland is infinitely more peopled than in England; and to give full effect to the natural resources of the country, a great part of the population should be swept from the soil.” 12 For the last century and a half, the Irish famine has been cited by Malthusians as proof of their theory of overpopulation, so a few words are in order here to set the record straight. 13 Ireland was certainly not overpopulated in 1846. In fact, based on census data from 1841 and 1851, the Emerald Isle boasted a mere 7.5 million people in 1846, less than half of England’s 15.8 million, living on a land mass about two-thirds that of England and of similar quality. So compared to England, Ireland before the famine was if anything somewhat underpopulated. 14 Nor, as is sometimes said, was the famine caused by a foolish decision of the Irish to confine their diet to potatoes, thereby exposing themselves to starvation when a blight destroyed their only crop. In fact, in 1846 alone, at the height of the famine, Ireland exported over 730,000 cattle and other livestock, and over 3 million quarts of corn and grain flour to Great Britain. 15 The Irish diet was confined to potatoes because—having had their land expropriated, having been forced to endure merciless rack-rents and taxes, and having been denied any opportunity to acquire income through manufactures or other means—tubers were the only food the Irish could afford. So when the potato crop failed, there was nothing for the Irish themselves to eat, despite the fact that throughout the famine, their homeland continued to export massive amounts of grain, butter, cheese, and meat for foreign consumption. As English reformer William Cobbett noted in his Political Register: Hundreds of thousands of living hogs, thousands upon thousands of sheep and oxen alive; thousands upon thousands of barrels of beef, pork, and butter; thousands upon thousands of sides of bacon; and thousands and thousands of hams; shiploads and boats coming daily and hourly from Ireland to feed the west of Scotland; to feed a million and a half people in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in Lancashire; to feed London and its vicinity; and to fill the country shops in the southern counties of England; we beheld all this, while famine raged in Ireland amongst the raisers of this very food. 16 “The population should be swept from the soil.” Evicted from their homes, millions of Irish men, women, and children starved to death or died of exposure. (Contemporary drawings from Illustrated London News.)

After you told me about the shirt cuff, I told you about the time I spilled ink on a map in my father's study." He shook his head, baffled. "It was a rare two-hundred-year-old map of the British Isles," Merritt explained. "I'd gone into my father's study to play with a set of inkwell bottles, which I'd been told not to do. But they were such tempting little etched glass bottles, and one of them was filled with the most resplendent shade of emerald green you've ever seen. I dipped a pen in it, and accidentally dribbled some onto the map, which had been spread out on his desk. It made a horrid splotch right in the middle of the Oceanus Germanicus. I was standing there, weeping with shame, when Papa walked in and saw what had happened." "What did he do?" Keir asked, now looking interested. "He was quiet at first. Waging a desperate battle with his temper, I'm sure. But then his shoulders relaxed, and he said in a thoughtful tone, 'Merritt, I suspect if you drew some legs on that blotch, it would make an excellent sea monster.' So I added little tentacles and fangs, and I drew a three-masted ship nearby." She paused at the flash of Keir's grin, the one that never failed to make her a bit light-headed. "He had it framed and hung it on the wall over his desk. To this day, he claims it's his favorite work of art." Amusement tugged at one corner of his mouth. "A good father," he commented.

Bean sídhe (banshee)—a female spirit associated with the ancestors of old Irish families, who wails terribly whenever someone in the family dies.

But life hands out some strange chances, and we don’t always make the best of choices.

Perhaps not looking for love is the best way to discover it.

forget what had gone

Since I left the United States in 1998, I've cast absentee ballots. Americans overseas vote from the last state they lived in, which for me was New York. Then we got the house on Emerald Isle and I changed my location to North Carolina, where I'm more inclined to feel hopeless. In 1996, in line at the grocery store in lower Manhattan, I'd look at the people in front of me, thinking, Bill Clinton voter, Bill Clinton voter, convicted felon, Bill Clinton voter, foreign tourist, felon, felon, Bill Clinton voter, felon. At the Emerald Isle supermarket that I stomp off to after the fight with my father, it's Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, and then the cashier, who also voted for him. Of course, these are just my assumptions. The guy in the T-shirt that pictures a semiautomatic rifle above the message COME AND TAKE IT, the one in fatigues buying two twelve-packs of beer and a tub of rice pudding, didn't necessarily vote Republican. He could have just stayed home on Election Day and force-fed the women he holds captive in the crawl space beneath his living room. The morning after our argument, I come downstairs to find my father in the kitchen. 'Are you still talking to me?' he asks. I look at him as if he were single-handedly responsible for the election of Donald Trump, as if he had knowingly cast the tiebreaking vote and all of what is to come is entirely his fault. Then I say, 'Yes. Of course I'm still talking to you.' He turns and plods into the living room. 'Horse's ass.

Ireland was a different place after the famine. The population was drastically reduced—an island of 8.2 million people in 1841 was reduced to 6 million in 1851. At least 1 million of those people had died. The rest fled the country, hoping for a new life in another land.

Irish demographics reveal two startling facts: There are around 70 million people worldwide who claim Irish descent, and Ireland today has barely half the population that it had 160 years ago, a decline unmatched in the modern world. These facts are explained and connected by the undeniable social reality of nineteenth-century Ireland—emigration.

Most of the first voluntary Irish immigrants came from Ulster in the north of Ireland. These immigrants were generally, although not exclusively, Protestants. They were known as “Scotch-Irish” or “Scots Irish,

Interestingly, some of the worst anti-Irish discrimination came from the Scotch-Irish, who wanted to make clear that they were a different group from the impoverished newcomers.

Patrick's Day. So we're toasting the good folks on the Emerald Isle with a Car Lust look back at what may be the most famous motor vehicle ever assembled there. Of course we're

Natalie skimmed the left side of the book, then the right. Her eyes caught sight of a doodle she’d drawn in the margins; a heart with ND + JR written inside. Hell in a kettle, Goddess’s bloomers, and damn it all to hell. She casually covered the initials with her hand, shifted in her seat, and returned her eyes to the content of the page as if her life depended on it.

A fine bunch of humanity,” Natalie nodded. “I’d give anything to treat an ear infection right now.” “An infected cut,” Jules sighed wistfully. “Food poisoning,” Natalie said dreamily and lay next to him, intensely aware of the close distance between them.

One thing she’d learned was that until you accepted what must be done, rose above yourself, and moved forward to do it with a whole heart, you were stuck. It wasn’t enough to go through the motions; you had to be that new person. Until then, you couldn’t go anywhere, not even back. You were doomed to be stuck, blind, mired in your own misery and self-doubt.

Alas! for poor Erin that some are still seen, Who would dye the grass red from their hatred to green; Yet, oh! when you're up, and they're down, let them live, Then yield them that mercy which they would not give. Arm of Erin, be strong! but be gentle as brave; And uplifted to strike, be still ready to save; Let no feeling of vengeance presume to defile The cause of, or men of, the Emerald Isle.

Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.

was just bad-tempered. I stayed

was absolute, having built layers of snitches to watch his snitches to watch his crews. Politicians, police, even some members of the FBI were firmly in his back pocket, and he kept them there by bribery, extortion, and good old-fashioned threats of violence. Old Man O’Shea, as he was referred to by the locals, showed no mercy. To anyone. He ruled with an iron fist and had no softness within him for anyone, including his own sons. Kieran and Conall were born to him from his wife, Fiona, a raven-haired, blue-eyed beauty he’d met on the Emerald Isle. Rumor had it he beat her, degraded her, and eventually killed her spirit, which then killed her body. Paddy made sure nothing could ever be proven. Fionn and Shannon were his children by his lifelong mistress, Gillian. At least, it was suspected she was his longtime mistress. She hadn’t actually been seen for years. His sons had not been raised by their mothers. When each boy turned six, he was taken and raised

Cattle and metal treasure were the main forms of wealth in ancient Ireland—metal because it was rare, and cattle because they were useful. Cattle provided milk to drink and to make into cheese, and hide and meat after they were dead. If a king demanded tribute from his subjects, it would probably be in the form of cattle—in fact, a wealthy farmer was called a bóiare, or “lord of cows.” In the famous poem Táin Bó Cuailnge, a major war starts because Queen Mebd discovers that her husband has one more bull than she does. Celtic chieftains spent quite a bit of their energy stealing cattle from one another. They even had a special word for this activity, táin. (Cattle raiding wasn’t just an amusement for the ancient Irish; modern Irish people were stealing one another’s cattle well into the twentieth century.)

One of the most important functions of monasteries was as schools. Monastic schools were well attended (mostly by boys). Some of the students were treated as foster children by the monks, living in the care of another family until they were ready to return to their homes and adult responsibilities. Many noble warrior fathers seem to have thought that their sons would be safer in a monastery than at home. Students had to find and prepare food for the monks and help out with the business of running the monastery. But most of their time was spent studying and working.

The Irish mingled their Christianity with folk beliefs in fairies and changelings.

My home was in turmoil. But the land, itself, was not. Have you ever noticed that trees fight not against the very ground that holds them. And the rocks of the mountains do not crumble to the rising rivers below. Only men do that. Only men fight for things beyond their power. And only men can be convinced that greatness comes from winning the fight.

I would like to believe there is more to this cursed life than just an honorable death.” “Like what?” Vegard said disdainfully. “Like peace.” “Peace? Peace you say? Dægan, you will spend a lifetime looking for peace! Where there is man, there is war. ‘Tis been that way since the dawn of time.

Sometimes people broke rules, important rules, if their need was great. It wasn’t always as simple as right and wrong. Sometimes it was just the way of the world.

Brighid, my friend, you will meet people in your life who will test your courage, question your wisdom, and challenge your beliefs. You can’t let those people squash your ambitions. They are not who defines us. But they are important.

Because they teach us to value what matters. When the battle is over and those people fade into mere memories, you are left holding on to the most important thing of all. And it isn’t fame, or conquest, or riches, it’s personal truth. Stay true to yourself, my dear, and you’ll never go wrong.

My Éireann by Stewart Stafford Éireann is my maiden, Titian grace spun gold, Fêted for her fairness, A goddess sacrificed. All-seeing eye of piety, But mauled with scars, In repose and melding, With the ire of the land. In perennial motion, Rivers meet the sea, Gaze upon a dark pool, Soubrette for new suitors. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

Gifts came in many ways and forms. Some were held close, some shared, but all were to be cherished.

That the ocean is. IS. It didn't think, it didn't care. It simply existed in a mindless state, performing to the laws of nature.

People might try to hold it back—time or nature—to keep what their hearts most desired, and might even succeed for a while, but no one could stop it cold. Even a long-lived life lasted only a moment in the span of time on earth.

Better no one than the wrong one,

Often what we don't want to face, is what we need to face the most.

controlled the shoes and clothing, Laurel

Make the decision to rejoice when things are happy, be patient when things are bad, and find your answers in prayer.

That it is important to be strong, courageous, and true to yourself, no matter what the rest of the world thinks. That the greatest mistakes in life are not the ones we make, but the ones that never get made because we are too afraid to try.

through a patch of vibrant trees glowing from the kiss of rain, reminding Siobhán why her home was called the Emerald Isle. The leaves indeed sparkled like precious emeralds. And she knew that, if forced to make a choice, she’d rather gaze upon this beautiful land than wear true emeralds around her neck.

card.

St. Brigid's Day is about spring. It's about life returning to the emerald isle. It's about why we are who we are and why it's so important to celebrate being Irish.

St' Patrick's Day is all about being Irish and celebrating life as only the Irish know how.

When at last they broke apart, Skylark looked different again, as he seemed to every time she laid her eyes upon him. A new character was there, a softer one, a stronger one, one with more empathy, hope, and faith in life. Her own feeling for him evolved and grew alongside it. She felt it bursting through the soil of her earthen heart just like the plants before them, unfurling up into the never-ending sky.

It was the place she had seemingly forever dreamed of being, and she wanted the world to know her hearts triumph.

She heard a few people around her gasp in surprise at such a display of respect from the King. She took in the magnitude of the moment with all the humility and grace she could call forth, letting his praise sing through her as if she were simply the voice of expression and not the song itself.

In her lust fuelled state, Aramida’s hands closed over top of his own, holding to it tightly. He turned one of them around to hold hers, a gesture that felt so oddly familiar and intimate all at once that it seemed to bind together the two worlds that they were torn between, melding duty and desire together in one single moment.

Yes, a few times a month, but always for business, not often for, ah…pleasure.” Aramida could not ignore the sweetness of his discomfiture at the apparently awkward choice of word. Nor could she miss the way he leaned his body away from hers as if he could feel their energy fields touching, just as she did.

She remembered how she had instinctively wanted to reach out and touch the warmth that was so achingly close. The years of pining for such intimacy had made it an enticing situation indeed, but then she did not know how to handle what she might want to do next, and that had unnerved her enough to stay her hand.

I suppose it is much the same of you,” he surprised her by commenting. “Not every young maiden could take the responsibility of her homeland upon her shoulders and voyage across the sea to encounter an unfamiliar culture and way of life. Your spirit, too, must have had some influence in the matter.” He took a measured sip of his tea while the three others present considered his application of thought. The frankness of his conversation seemed to startle them slightly as he so seldom spoke, and even less so with such gravity.

Aramida, however, saw it clear as day and felt it in her entire being. The girl was pure in love, if not simply infatuated with all the faith of an adolescent, with her guardian. Aramida watched as Fallon tore her eyes from the form in the mirror, clearly terrified of being caught, and plonked herself down onto the ground out of sight, her hands gripping her skirts.

I suppose it is much the same of you,” he surprised her by commenting. “Not every young maiden could take the responsibility of her homeland upon her shoulders and voyage across the sea to encounter an unfamiliar culture and way of life. Your spirit, too, must have had some influence in the matter.” He took a measured sip of his tea while the three others present considered his application of thought. The frankness of his conversation seemed to startle them slightly as he so seldom spoke, and even less so with such gravity. The young women sharing the table with him were looking at him intently, comprehending him in their own new way, turning their idea of him over in their minds to re-examine it and make sure it still fitted.

Aramida… I wanted to know why you were making those sounds…” he continued in a low voice. “I wanted to know what you were thinking about, Aramida… What you were doing to elicit such beautiful sounds… And I wanted to be a part of it, Aramida. More than anything I wanted to be a part of your pleasure…” His breath was hot on her neck now, his words whispered like a vow into her skin, and she could not think to speak, could not breathe to move.

It made her want to show him everything she had prepared for him in the years

Aramida…” he said hoarsely, breaking away for a moment to look at her intently, “I just want to be so close to you…do you understand that?” His voice was so soft and intimate and inviting, his sentiment so sincerely expressed, that Aramida’s whole body responded with a ferocity she did not know she possessed, and she found herself answering his question entirely with her own physicality.

And now you are here, in my arms again, and I’m not sure what to do to keep myself in check…being near you is so…overwhelming…” he added, closing his eyes with another low groan. “You have intoxicated me entirely.

Well maybe, if we just…lie together for a while…the feeling might…dissipate, and we might find we have better control of ourselves.” He looked at her for a moment with narrowed eyes, as if assessing her suggestion was truly a sincere one. She laughed again, this time at his suspicious expression, and said: “Humour me, it just might help.

She felt a tenseness suddenly enter his body before he spoke to her and urgently. “Did you not wonder, Aramida? Did you not wonder if I was thinking of you also?” She shivered in his arms, and he held her more tightly still.

His sucked in his breath through his teeth, as if thinking upon the image was enough to change his state of being. “Oh Aramida, I never knew a woman to look so beautiful, so full and rounded to perfection…

I’ll admit, hearing my Emerald Brothers speak of their own desire for you brought to life something within me that I had been denying for a long time, perhaps even since the very beginning…” he began, looking away from her and towards the window. “But I dare not let you think that they are the reason I seek you out now, Aramida…” She couldn’t have taken her eyes off him if she’d tried. Every word he spoke seemed to be falling perfectly into place in her inner world, creating ripples of feeling that left her breathless.

He was standing right behind her now, his words whispered into the bare skin of her shoulder, his lips inches away from brushing against her. Aramida tried to breathe, but it took more focus than she could ever remember it having done before. It felt laboured, cumbersome, her body unwilling to cooperate with the state she was in, as if one could not truly be alive at the same time as feeling such a multitude of emotions.

She looked up at last and into the window she had stood in front of, realising with a jolt that she could see the reflection of him standing behind her. Her whole body responded with a surge of unrecognisable feeling to the image of him, looking at her, yearning for her attention to be upon him. It was all she could do to suppress the shudder that ran through her entire being.

The care Skylark had nurtured for her as a person was suddenly exploding into something more, blossoming from the inside out with such an urgency it was taking over his entire being.

Did you think of me in the night-time?” she said. “Aramida…” he said, his voice low and intense. “How could I not… Your figure was teasing my mind in ways I did not know it could… I only knew I would not be able to think of anything but you, I knew I must get out, must get away from you and try to loosen the hold you had on me... It was unendurable, Aramida..." He paused, and gave her a searching look. He must have seen kindness in her expression, or understanding, because he pressed on.

She thought that perhaps earlier he could have withstood the feelings of rage or jealousy or whatever was overtaking him now, in fact, for a long time apparently he had, but now he knew what having her really meant, there was no way anyone was going to get close to her, not even in the realm of the mind.

Fallon, I could never have forgiven myself if you were hurt because I…because I…I couldn’t…” Aramida felt her face burning for the shame of the moment and tried to look away as if she weren’t witness to the intimacy of the conversation playing out before her. “Because I couldn’t be honest with myself,” he finished at last, “or with you…and you, you were so brave and bold and stupid coming to me like that…” His voice was coming out in a hoarse whisper now, and his eyes were on Fallon, completely ignoring the company of the other two in the emotion of what he had to speak. “You shouldn’t have come to me like that,” he finished darkly, tearing his gaze away from hers.

The glow about the pair of them must have been palpable, or maybe it was simply that they looked an exceptionally artistic piece, Aramida a walking waterfall surrounded by butterflies, Skylark somehow a forest of great elegance and peace, because the crowd below them broke into spontaneous applause, the musicians striking up a tune that seem to be playing on the very strings of Aramida’s crystalline heart.

She had never felt anything pull on her so deeply as the urge to be near Skylark, even before she knew anything about him. As she sought to win his trust, and the trust of his people, doing her best to follow the call of the Crystal Source within her, she had also moved ever closer to a deeply fulfilling kind of happiness that was to become the very making of who she was born to be. Now she was here, in front a crowd of adoring people, and she felt as unyieldingly pure and beautiful and resonant as the Sapphire Crystal itself. 

It was as if no moment before now had quite been the ‘right’ one, and, on reflection, Aramida felt that it really hadn’t been. She had thought she had been ready. She had thought her years of focus, study, and dedicated practice, paired with her innate willingness to love him, had made her so. But sitting opposite him now and feeling truly on equal footing with him at last, made everything that

If only trusting herself was as easy as just saying the words. Unfortunately, the dragon of self-doubt perched on her shoulders, it's claws firmly dug in.

Fate was heartless. Always.

At the Emerald Isle supermarket that I stomp off to after the fight with my father, it’s Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, and then the cashier, who also voted for him. Of course, these are just my assumptions. The guy in the T-shirt that pictures a semiautomatic rifle above the message COME AND TAKE IT, the one in fatigues buying two twelve-packs of beer and a tub of rice pudding, didn’t necessarily vote Republican. He could have just stayed home on Election Day and force-fed the women he holds captive in the crawl space beneath his living room.

If wishes were horses....

Make the decision to rejoice when things are happy, be patient when things are bad, and find your answers in prayer. You’ll be amazed at how different the world will look to you, it will even feel different, when you find that peace within yourself.

Well, it’s not really about forgiveness, is it? Deciding not to seek revenge or ‘get even’ and to leave it in God’s hands, to trust Him to handle it, is more about acceptance and moving forward. When you do that, the anger and poison inside you will be neutralized

Remember the old saying? Try to please everyone, and please no one, especially yourself.

will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: From whence shall my help come? My help cometh from God, Who made heaven and earth. Psalm 121.

Life is what you make of it. You can spend your time wishing for what isn’t, or find the good in what you have.

Given time and purpose, people are resilient. It’s faith that gets us through the bad times.

The doubt Aramida felt must have shown on her face for Avira continued with some persistence. “Trust me, you want to make the most of every moment Aramida. Take joy in it all and take the lessons where they are offered. You are still preparing yourself, always, even until you are my age and well beyond. The journey never ends, so do your best to keep your head and heart clear and present so your spiritual intentions can be channelled through them easily.

Her eyes were intense as she stared across the low table between them and Aramida felt some of her emotional burden lifting, shifting, and changing form, transmuting into something different, something lighter once again.