Extending Grace Quotes

speak quietly to yourself & promise there will be better days. whisper gently to yourself and provide assurance that you really are extending your best effort. console your bruised and tender spirit with reminders of many other successes. offer comfort in practical and tangible ways - as if you were encouraging your dearest friend. recognize that on certain days the greatest grace is that the day is over and you get to close your eyes. tomorrow comes more brightly...

I choose to rise up out of that storm and see that in moments of desperation, fear, and helplessness, each of us can be a rainbow of hope, doing what we can to extend ourselves in kindness and grace to one another. And I know for sure that there is no them - there's only us.

How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?" (Plato) The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration- how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?

Here. Have a Coke. That’s good for a sore throat, right?” “Good for everything,” Shane croaked, and took the extended cold can with good grace. “Thanks.” “You owe me a dollar,” Eve said. “I’ll add it to the five thousand you already owe me, though.” He blew her a kiss, and she stuck her tongue out at him, and that was the end of the subject, thankfully.

This world will be consumed by hellfire,” he said. “But I will bring you and Jace safely through the flames if you only do what I ask. It is a grace I extend to no one else. Do you not see how foolish you are to reject it?

Jesus always colored outside of the lines here, extending grace and healing to those well beyond His people group. He often healed people first; they believed second.

Oh, the remembrance of my great sins, of my great temptations, and of my great fears of perishing forever! They bring afresh into my mind the remembrance of my great help, my great support from Heaven, and the great grace that God extended to such a wretch as I.

God blesses his people with extravagant grace so they might extend his extravagant glory to all peoples on the earth.

If I am fully known and not rejected by God, how much more ought I to extend grace to my neighbor, whom I know only in part?

But understand that the reason it is so difficult to extend forgiveness to those who have failed us is because we are unable to receive forgiveness for our own failures.

I want to move past my own unkindness with love, and know the reckless love of Jesus, and extend that love—that unconditional, always-believing-the-best, full-of-forgiveness-and-grace love.

I think all people have things in their past they need forgiveness for. In their present as well. And they need to be extended grace for what they regret.

This story... blasts to pieces our biases and labels with a declaration that God is on everyone's side, extending grace and compassion to everyone, especially those we have most strongly decided are not on God's side.

He shows us that our lives are about love and not performance. He extends mercy rather than demands. So even when we fall short in the eyes of others, we can still be confident standing tall in his. And we can lift others up by offering them true grace rather than our personal guidelines.

I need a place to confess that I don't have everything figured out. Christianity is not a program for avoiding mistakes; it is a faith of the guilty. There is no "right" or perfect way to be. We learn from our mistakes; we extend grace to others and ourselves. In the same way a lover who loves your body allows you to have grace for it, so is grace the antithesis of rejection.

His mind was freshly inclined to sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in the world one must try to remember that all were suffering (non content all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but rather, its like had been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone, and given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it. All were in sorrow, or had been, or soon would be. It was the nature of things. Though on the surface is seemed every person was different, this was not true. At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end; the many loses we must experience on the way to that end. We must try to see one another in this way. As suffering limited beings- Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces. His sympathy extended to all in this instant, blundering in its strict logic, across all divides.

I receive grace. And through me, grace could flow on. Like a cycle of water in continuous movement, grace is meant to fall, a rain...again, again, again. I could share the grace, multiply the joy, extend the table of the feast, enlarge the paradise of His presence. I am blessed. I can bless.

I want to think about trees. Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment. There are many created things in the universe that outlive us, that outlive the sun, even, but I can’t think about them. I live with trees. There are creatures under our feet, creatures that live over our heads, but trees live quite convincingly in the same filament of air we inhabit, and in addition, they extend impressively in both directions, up and down, shearing rock and fanning air, doing their real business just out of reach.

Sometimes showing grace breaks us before it heals us. Forgiveness can feel like a betrayal of justice. We want others to deserve grace, or at least ask for it, even knowing full well that the greatest grace was extended to us "while we were still enemies.

A sheet of white extends to the lone dark vertical of the elm tree in the centre ... It is too perfect, to inviolate ... The snow is graced with waves written by the wind, the elm raises crooked arms in sleeves of white.

To Selene (Moon) Hear, Goddess queen, diffusing silver light, bull-horn'd and wand'ring thro' the gloom of Night. With stars surrounded, and with circuit wide Night's torch extending, thro' the heav'ns you ride: Female and Male with borrow'd rays you shine, and now full-orb'd, now tending to decline. Mother of ages, fruit-producing Moon [Mene], whose amber orb makes Night's reflected noon: Lover of horses, splendid, queen of Night, all-seeing pow'r bedeck'd with starry light. Lover of vigilance, the foe of strife, in peace rejoicing, and a prudent life: Fair lamp of Night, its ornament and friend, who giv'st to Nature's works their destin'd end. Queen of the stars, all-wife Diana hail! Deck'd with a graceful robe and shining veil; Come, blessed Goddess, prudent, starry, bright, come moony-lamp with chaste and splendid light, Shine on these sacred rites with prosp'rous rays, and pleas'd accept thy suppliant's mystic praise.

Woundedness” is compounded self-doubt and guilt, resentment and disillusionment. We come to one another in marriage with these things in our backgrounds. And when the inevitable conflicts occur, our memories can sabotage us. They can prevent us from doing the normal, day-to-day work of repentance and forgiveness and extending the grace that is so crucial to making progress in our marriages. The reason is that woundedness makes us self-absorbed.

God gives us these raw, little people, and we have to form them and mold them and teach them how to operate in society. And if we get a glimpse of all the ugliness that lies right beneath our own polished surface? Well, then, there's a humbling lesson too. It's those moments when I realize I have to extend grace to Caroline as she figures these things out by trial and error in the same way God lavishes me with mercy, even as I make the same mistakes over and over again.

WE CAN’T RECEIVE GOD’S GRACE WITHOUT BEING WILLING TO EXTEND GRACE TO OTHERS.

Being able to extend grace and to forgive people sets us free.

God attaches no strings to His love. None. His love for us does not depend on our loveliness. It goes one way. As far as our sin may extend, the grace of our Father extends further.

But cooking is best approached from wherever you find yourself when you are hungry, and should extend long past the end of the page. There should be serving, and also eating, and storing away what's left; there should be looking at meals' remainders with interest and imagining all the good things they will become.

Our progress in the past usually came slowly, and our recovery will come slowly. It will come as men, each in their sphere of action, begin the task of reconstruction. Reconstruction begins with our lives and God's grace; it extends to our vocations, our institutions' homes, and society' Life and progress are made up of a great number of little things; we cover a mile by small steps, and the surest move forward is that small step rather than a giant day dream.

What does the Spirit do? His works are ineffable in majesty, and innumerable in quantity. How can we even ponder what extends beyond the ages? What did He do before creation began? How great are the graces He showered on creation? What power will He wield in the age to come? He existed; He pre-existed; He co-existed with the Father and the Son before the ages. Even if you can imagine anything beyond the ages, you will discover that the Spirit is even further before.

Very simply, God had forgiven her...Amazing grace was something she knew personally. The only right response for the rest of her life was to extend that grace to others, to forgive the way she had been forgiven.

And if we never agree, can’t we agree to disagree? If God can tolerate my mistakes, can’t I tolerate the mistakes of others? If God can overlook my errors, can’t I overlook the errors of others? If God allows me with my foibles and failures to call him Father, shouldn’t I extend the same grace to others? One thing’s for sure. When we get to heaven, we’ll be surprised at some of the folks we see. And some of them will be surprised when they see us.

Most of us are painfully aware that we’re not perfect parents. We’re also deeply grieved that we don’t have perfect kids. But the remedy to our mutual imperfections isn’t more law, even if it seems to produce tidy or polite children. Christian children (and their parents) don’t need to learn to be “nice.” They need death and resurrection and a Savior who has gone before them as a faithful high priest, who was a child himself, and who lived and died perfectly in their place. They need a Savior who extends the offer of complete forgiveness, total righteousness, and indissoluble adoption to all who will believe. This is the message we all need. We need the gospel of grace and the grace of the gospel. Children can’t use the law any more than we can, because they will respond to it the same way we do. They’ll ignore it or bend it or obey it outwardly for selfish purposes, but this one thing is certain: they won’t obey it from the heart, because they can’t. That’s why Jesus had to die.

God’s arms are always extended; we are the ones who turn away.1 —Philip Yancey

God’s eyes are on me. His face is not against me. And even if others appear to be against me, I must make sure in my reaction to them that I extend grace and honor God.

Extend your hand; open your heart; share your grace; share your love.

If we can all quietly agree that eating pork and shaving aren’t sinful, I don’t see why we can’t extend that same grace to men like us.

The fires of refinement come with a cost, but also with a promise. His grace has been extended forth to you for restoration, confirmation, strengthening, and being established in Him.

A person must find the courage to live a complete and full life. We learn to live when we stop being afraid and by engaging in critical analysis of our own thoughts, motives, emotions, and behavior. A tolerant person who lives without fear extends charity to the entire world. Courage always precedes an act of human grace, which expresses the luminosity of the human soul.

When our life in him is healthy and vibrant, we do not only ache to keep sinking our roots down deep in him, but we also want to stretch out our branches and extend his goodness to others.

Forgiveness is restoration. If we say we forgive but refuse to extend trust, we haven't really forgiven. We are asking the person to prove themselves to us in order to be worthy of our full forgiveness. We're making them work for our grace, which is not the model Christ exemplified.

The face of everyone in mine, the oneness with every blade of grass, the flight with the flocks in the sky, the dance with the clouds across endless skies. The strength with every tree, rooting deep into mother earth, springing forth into the heavens, extending branches of gratitude and love.... Such a privilege, honor and grace, such a gift and joy.

If you are able to extend grace to yourself to see yourself as the imperfect human that you are, full of the complicated feelings that accompany a loss, feelings that ebb and flow, you will be more able to extend it to others as well. When we refuse to offer ourselves grace and accept whatever we are experiencing, we make it harder to move through it, and we make it nearly impossible for others to effectively help us. Grief is a tricky beast, and there is no such thing as grieving "perfectly." Be prepared to extend grace to those around you, but most importantly, you need to extend grace to yourself.

I often wonder how many others are sitting near me, stuck in their own quiet battles with physical or mental or spiritual health, afraid or unwilling or even unable to discuss them, silently pleading for someone to extend any added amount of grace.

Though some are more able “gatherers”—that is, some are better at making money than others—the money you earn is a gift of God. Therefore, the money you make must be shared to build up community. So wealthier believers must share with poorer ones, not only within a congregation but also across congregations and borders. (See 2 Corinthians 8:15 and its context.) To extend the metaphor—money that is hoarded for oneself rots the soul.

Jesus didn’t have to extend His love. He didn’t have to think of me when He went up on that cross. He didn’t have to rewrite my story from one of beauty to one of brokenness and create a whole new brand of beauty. He simply didn’t have to do it, but He did. He bought me. He bought me that day He died, and He showed His power when He overcame death and rose from the grave. He overcame my death in that moment. He overcame my fear of death in that unbelievable, beautiful moment, and the fruit of that death, that resurrection, and that stunning grace is peace. It is the hardest peace, because it is brutal. Horribly brutal and ugly, and we want to look away, but it is the greatest, greatest story that ever was. And it was, and it is.

How do you think preaching the gospel to ourselves every day— reminding ourselves of the amazing grace God extended to us when we were hostile to him—could impact our approach to social justice? How might excluding the good news of God’s forgiveness from our daily thought lives and emotions pollute our passion for social justice?

The purpose of the local church is not primarily to be one's church home or extended family, though it can be at times. And it is not to survive by obtaining more people for its support base. Its purpose is to invite people to be part of the true mission of the church. Reception into the church is only a threshold to involvement in its mission. The task of the church is not to accumulate attendees. The church is a school for developing agents of the new creation from among those who are the beneficiaries of God's grace.

The kind of perfection that Jesus says comes from his Father—and the kind he calls his disciples to pursue—does not find its sense of completion in delivering retribution for wrongs done. Rather, it is the perfection of a heart that finds so much fulfillment and satisfaction in the God of grace that it is able to extend grace to those who don't deserve it.

The Christian knows to serve the weak not because they deserve it but because God extended his love to us when we deserved the opposite. Christ came down from heaven, and whenever his disciples entertained dreams of prestige and power he reminded them that the greatest is the one who serves. The ladder of power reaches up, the ladder of grace reaches down.

Having said that, if you want a community like the one you’ve just read about, I bet you are not the only one in your town who feels this way. So do what we did: Gather a small number of people once a month to simply share a meal and pray together. Talk about your lives and what is happening in the world. Be yourselves. Extend grace. Read the gospel…and repeat. (Since ancient times, saints and sinners have called this mysteriously transformative experience “church.”) See for yourself what happens. You might be surprised. I sure was.

Sometimes you just have to extend a little grace to people. Not because they deserve it - but because we don’t deserve it either.

When your heart is filled every day by the kindness of the Father, you have enough of His grace overflowing that you can extend His grace to others.

How wide, how long, how deep is the love that Saviour extends to all humanity!

The security is in the realization that my life cannot extend beyond God's grace or capacity to redeem all things for his glory and my good.

There are no situations we cannot get out of, we are not condemned to sink into quicksand, in which the more we move the deeper we sink. Jesus is there, his hand extended, ready to reach out to us and pull us out of the mud, out of sin, out of the abyss of evil into which we have fallen. We need only be conscious of our state, be honest with ourselves, and not lick our wounds. We need to ask for the grace to recognize ourselves as sinners. The more we acknowledge that we are in need, the more shame and humility we feel, the sooner we will feel his embrace of grace. Jesus waits for us, he goes ahead of us, he extends his hand to us, he is patient with us. God is faithful. Mercy will always be greater than any sin, no one can put a limit on the love of the all-forgiving God. Just by looking at him, just by raising our eyes from our selves and our wounds, we leave an opening for the action of his grace. Jesus performs miracles with our sins, with what we are, with our nothingness, with our wretchedness.

As I attempted to cobble together the former pieces of myself with what was left, I thought it was normal to feel sad for perhaps the first few weeks. I didn't know it was normal to feel sad on and off for years, for what feels like it will be for the rest of my life. I didn't know anger, envy, frustration, depression, anxiety, and shame were common elements of grief. I did not understand the importance of grace and the need to extend it to myself and others. I had no idea that grief was actively impacting my body and my brain in ways that made maintaining my health, my career, and my relationships challenging.

See? He's softer than he looks." Gabe was less interested in the texture of Angus's hide than he was in the texture of Lady Penelope's skin. Her hand was small and graceful atop his, but it was not the soft, delicate hand he would expect of a fine lady. Her skin was crossed here and there with lines and scars- some faded, some still pink. They were healed bites and scratches, accumulated over years. She had a lifelong habit of extending care to animals too wild or frightened to accept it- which made her the bravest kind of fool. Gabe wanted to kiss each and every one of those healed wounds- which made him just an ordinary fool.

Silvester, being satisfied, returned home; but in the evening of the same day he reflected on his avarice, and on the holiness and the fervour of St Francis. That night also he saw St Francis in a vision, and it seemed to him as if a golden cross came out of his mouth, which reached up to heaven and extended to the extreme east and west. After this vision he gave all he possessed to the poor, for the love of God, and made himself a Brother Minor. He became so holy, and was favoured with such special graces, that he spake with the Lord as a friend speaks with a friend, of which St Francis was often a witness, as we shall see further on.

May there not be some subconscious jealousy that motivates our reactions to other people? Why do we eat chocolate sundaes when we know that we should reduce? Are we free from the influence of parental training? The Scriptures say, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Parental training and all education proceed on the assumption that the will is not free, but can be trained, motivated, and directed. Finally, beyond both physiology and psychology there is God. Can we be sure that he is not directing our choices? Do we know that we are free from his grace? The Psalm says, "Blessed is the man whom you choose and cause to approach you." Is it certain that God has not caused us to choose to approach him? Can we set a limit to God's power? Can we tell how far it extends and just where it ends? Are we outside his control?

...the story of liberty and its future is not only about the raw assertion of rights but also about grace, aesthetics, beauty, complexity, service to others, community, the gradual emergence of cultural norms, and the spontaneous development of extended orders of commercial and private relationships. Freedom is what gives life to the human imagination and enables the working out of love as it extends from our most benevolent and highest longings.

Dear Abba, I’m stepping into a new day brimming with new mercies, fresh-slate-do-over grace extended freely to me by Your hands. But it is not just given to me but to all. So that my attempts to control and manipulate others, even if it’s in their best interests, is not only to spit on the grace given them, but also that given to me. Father, the only thing truly “for our own good” is Your mercy. Nothing else comes close. Nothing. Have mercy on me.

Struggling, despairing, Klein fought with his demon. All the new understanding and sense of redemption this fateful time had yielded had surged, in the course of this past day, to such a wave of thought and clarity that he had felt he would remain forever on the crest even while he was beginning to drop down. Now he was in the trough again, still fighting, still secretly hoping, but gravely injured. For one brief, glowing day he had succeeded in practicing the simple art known to every blade of grass. For one scant day he had loved himself, felt himself to be unified and whole, not split into hostile parts; he had loved himself and the world and God in himself, and everywhere he went he had met nothing but love, approval, and joy. If a robber had attacked him yesterday, or a policeman had arrested him, that too would have been approval, harmony, the smile of fate. And now, in the midst of happiness, he had reversed course and was cutting himself down again. He sat in judgment on himself while his deepest self knew that all judgment was wrong and foolish. The world, which for the span of one day had been crystal clear and wholly filled with divinity, once more presented a harsh and painful face; every object had its own meaning and every meaning contradicted every other." "He already knew that the choking feeling of dread would pass only if he stopped condemning and admonishing himself, if he stopped poking around in the old wounds. He knew that all pain, all stupidity, all evil became its opposite if he could recognize God in it, if he pursued it to its deepest roots, which extended far beyond weal and woe and good and evil. He knew that. But there was nothing to do about it; the evil spirit was in him, God was a word again, lovely but remote. He hated and despised himself, and this hatred came over him, when the time was ripe, as involuntary and inexorably as love and trustfulness at other times. And this was how it always must be. Again and again and again he would experience the grace and blessing, and again and again the accursed contrary.

To explain the matter I will employ a simile, which yet, I confess is very dissimilar; but its dissimilitude is greatly in favour of my sentiments. A rich man bestows, on a poor and famishing beggar, alms by which he may be able to maintain himself and his family. Does it cease to be a pure gift, because the beggar extends his hand to receive it? Can it be said with propriety, that 'the alms depended partly on THE LIBERALITY of the Donor, and partly on THE LIBERTY of the Receiver,' though the latter would not have possessed the alms unless he had received it by stretching out his hand? Can it be correctly said, BECAUSE THE BEGGAR IS ALWAYS PREPARED TO RECEIVE, that 'he can have the alms, or not have it, just as he pleases?' If these assertions cannot be truly made about a beggar who receives alms, how much less can they be made about the gift of faith, for the receiving of which far more acts of Divine Grace are required!

That night she heard the branches tapping against the house and the window frames rattle. She sat alone and thought of the geese, she could hear them out there. It had gotten cold. The wind was blowing their feathers. They lived a long time, ten or fifteen years, they said. The one they had seen on the lawn might still be alive, settled back into the fields with the others, in from the ocean where they went to be safe, the survivors of bloody ambushes. Somewhere in the wet grass, she imagined, lay one of them, dark sodden breast, graceful neck still extended, great wings striving to beat, bloody sounds coming from the holes in its beak. She went around and turned on the lights. The rain was coming down, the sea was crashing, a comrade lay dead in the whirling darkness.

All were in sorrow, or had been, or soon would be. It was the nature of things. Though on the surface is seemed every person was different, this was not true. At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end; the many loses we must experience on the way to that end. We must try to see one another in this way. As suffering limited beings- Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces. His sympathy extended to all in this instant, blundering in its strict logic, across all divides.

The strange thing about adulthood, when you're single, is that it's possible to go for fairly extended periods without facing blatant sin against. Sure there was plenty of sin against God but with such infrequent consequence - it was easy to self-congratulate on how much our relationship owed to my 'righteousness,' generosity, and enlightened theological views. Though for the past twenty months or so I'd been hearing a pastor who's constant theme was grace, it didn't hit home until I faced this proof of what the Bible says God considers depravity.

Thus, in short, in sum, in all, it was but a babystep for Chomsky, graced with this understanding of the ineffable richness of our bio-abilities, to become the universalist that he be, to extend his understanding to the political realm ...and to leap, by bio-necessity, into his political work-

The essential mark of maturity in Christians—as in peach trees—is generativity. Mature faith bears fruit. Mature Christians are branches on which God’s love is multiplied and offered for the nourishment of others. As Jesus pointed out, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (John 15:8). By nurturing and offering the life-giving fruits of the Spirit (e.g., love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control [Gal. 5:22–23]), we become branches of divine grace, vehicles Christ uses to extend himself to others.

Jesus himself may have been subject to many of the same slurs as sexual minorities in his culture. The men around him wanted to talk about the law. Instead, Jesus showed that God’s grace and love extends to everyone—especially those people who are disenfranchised, overlooked, or forgotten by traditional culture.

Again and again Jesus had said they should preach forgiveness of sins in his name. Maybe Judas was destined to betray Jesus. Maybe it couldn’t have gone down in any other way than it did. But maybe Judas chose death too soon. Maybe he didn’t avail himself of the means of  God’s grace, and maybe his community never sought him out and offered it. Maybe extending the Word of  God’s forgiveness to Judas was simply too painful for the disciples because, like with the townspeople who became angry when the Gerasene demoniac was clothed and in his right mind, it was easier to identify Judas as the problem. Judas is the traitor…not us. Maybe Judas’s community failed him.

It’s been written that, He who does not forgive is guilty of the greater sin. That verse had always confounded me. I had considered it unjust at best and cruel at worst. But these words were not meant as condemnation—rather as illumination of an eternal truth: that to not extend forgiveness is to burn the bridge that we ourselves must cross.

Let's press ahead a little further by sketching out a few variations among short shorts: ONE THRUST OF INCIDENT. (Examples: Paz, Mishima, Shalamov, Babel, W. C. Williams.) In these short shorts the time span is extremely brief, a few hours, maybe even a few minutes: Life is grasped in symbolic compression. One might say that these short shorts constitute epiphanies (climactic moments of high grace or realization) that have been tom out of their contexts. You have to supply the contexts yourself, since if the contexts were there, they'd no longer be short shorts. LIFE ROLLED UP. (Examples: Tolstoy's 'Alyosha the Pot,' Verga's 'The Wolf,' D. H. Lawrence's 'A Sick Collier.') In these you get the illusion of sustained narrative, since they deal with lives over an extended period of time; but actually these lives are so compressed into typicality and paradigm, the result seems very much like a single incident. Verga's 'Wolf' cannot but repeat her passions, Tolstoy's Alyosha his passivity. Themes of obsession work especially well in this kind of short short. SNAP-SHOT OR SINGLE FRAME. (Examples: Garda Marquez, Boll, Katherine Anne Porter.) In these we have no depicted event or incident, only an interior monologue or flow of memory. A voice speaks, as it were, into the air. A mind is revealed in cross-section - and the cut is rapid. One would guess that this is the hardest kind of short short to write: There are many pitfalls such as tiresome repetition, being locked into a single voice, etc. LIKE A FABLE. (Examples: Kafka, Keller, von Kleist, Tolstoy's 'Three Hermits.') Through its very concision, this kind of short short moves past realism. We are prodded into the fabulous, the strange, the spooky. To write this kind of fable-like short short, the writer needs a supreme self-confidence: The net of illusion can be cast only once. When we read such fable-like miniatures, we are prompted to speculate about significance, teased into shadowy parallels or semi allegories. There are also, however, some fables so beautifully complete (for instance Kafka's 'First Sorrow') that we find ourselves entirely content with the portrayed surface and may even take a certain pleasure in refusing interpretation. ("Introduction")

I'm learning to practice gratitude for a healthy body, even if it's rounder than I'd like it to be. I’m learning to take up all the space I need, literally and figuratively, even though we live in a world that wants women to be tiny and quiet. To feed one’s body, to admit one’s hunger, to look one's appetite straight in the eye without fear or shame—this is controversial work in our culture. Part of being a Christian means practicing grace in all sorts of big and small and daily ways, and my body gives me the opportunity to demonstrate grace, to make peace with imperfection every time I see myself in the mirror. On my best days, I practice grace and patience with myself, knowing that I can't extend grace and patience if I haven't tasted it.

I know my heart, Matthew. I know what I feel won't change." She took a shuddering breath and extended one unsteady hand in his direction. Her voice shook with intensity. "When I tell you I love you, that means I'll love you forever." What does a man do when his dearest dreams come true? Matthew stared at her outstretched hand. He'd never imagined this time would come. He wasn't prepared. Her words soaked into his soul, slowly turning the parched desert there into a verdant garden. "You love me," he said slowly, wonderingly. Then with greater certainty, "By God, you love me." His astonished laugh ended on a choked note as he snatched her hand. "So much," she said huskily. Her fingers curled hard around his. "So very, very much." He dragged her back into his arms. "I can't believe it." "Believe it," she whispered. She raised her hands to frame his face so she could look into his eyes. The blue was so pure that he saw right to her gallant, steadfast soul. "I love you, Matthew. I will always love you." "And I love you, Grace." Such simple words to change his life. Yet after tonight, he'd never be the same man again.

Love extends an olive leaf to the loved one and says, “I have hope in you.” Love is just as quick to say, “I have hope for you.” You can say those words. You are a flood survivor. By God’s grace you have found your way to dry land. You know what it’s like to see the waters subside. And since you do, since you passed through a flood and lived to tell about it, you are qualified to give hope to someone else.

The freedom of living loved extends into every aspect of parenting because I can release my death-grip of control. It enables me to extend to my tinies the gifts of freedom (age appropriate, of course) and grace, second chances and then more grace. It means that I don't really care what people think of them or me, I can look only to God, living counter to our culture in every way of truth, love, faith, mercy and justice.

Like a child, I close my eyes as if they can't see me either. The fire from the kiss broadcasts itself all over me in the form of a full-body blush. Galen laughs. "There it is," he says, running his thumb over my bottom lip. "That is my favorite color. Wow." I'm going to kill him. "Galen. Please. Come. With. Me," I coke out. Gliding past him, my bare feet slap against the tile until I'm stomping on carpet in the hallway, then up the stairs. I can tell by the prickles on my skin that he's following like a good dead fish. As I reach the ladder to the uppermost level, I nod to him to keep following before I hoist myself up. Pacing the room until he gets through the trap door, I count more Mississipis than I've ever counted in my whole life. He closes the door and locks it shut but makes no move to come closer. Still, for a person who's about to die, he seems more amused than he should. I point my finger at him, but can't decide what to accuse him of first, so I put it back down. After several moments of this, he breaks the silence. "Emma, calm down." "Don't tell me what to do, Highness." I dare him with my eyes to call me "boo." Instead of the apology I'm looking for, his eyes tell me he's considering kissing me again, right now. Which is meant to distract me. Tearing my gaze from his mouth, I stride to the window seat and move the mountains of pillows on it. Making myself comfortable, I lean my head against the window. He knows as well as I do that if we had a special spot, this would be it. For me to sit here without him is the worst kind of snub. In the reflection, I see him run his hand through his hair and cross his arms. After a few more minutes, he shifts his weight to the other leg. He knows what I want. He knows what will earn him entrance to the window seat and my good graces. I don't know if it's Royal blood or manly pride that keeps him from apologizing, but his extended delay just makes me madder. Now I won't accept an apology. Now, he must grovel. I toss a satisfied smirk into the reflection only to find he's not there anymore. His hand closes around my arm and he jerks me up against him. His eyes are stormy, intense. "You think I'm going to apologize for kissing you?" he murmurs. "I. Yes. Uh-huh." Don't look at his mouth! Say something intelligent. "We don't have any clothes on." Fan-flipping-tastic. I meant to say he shouldn't kiss me in front of everyone, especially half naked. "Mmm," he says, pulling me closer. Brushing his lips against my ear, he says, "I did happen to notice that. Which is why I shouldn't have followed you up here.

What, in fact, do we know about the peak experience? Well, to begin with, we know one thing that puts us several steps ahead of the most penetrating thinkers of the 19th century: that P.E’.s are not a matter of pure good luck or grace. They don’t come and go as they please, leaving ‘this dim, vast vale of tears vacant and desolate’. Like rainbows, peak experiences are governed by definite laws. They are ‘intentional’. And that statement suddenly gains in significance when we remember Thorndike’s discovery that the effect of positive stimuli is far more powerful and far reaching than that of negative stimuli. His first statement of the law of effect was simply that situations that elicit positive reactions tend to produce continuance of positive reactions, while situations that elicit negative or avoidance reactions tend to produce continuance of these. It was later that he came to realise that positive reactions build-up stronger response patterns than negative ones. In other words, positive responses are more intentional than negative ones. Which is another way of saying that if you want a positive reaction (or a peak experience), your best chance of obtaining it is by putting yourself into an active, purposive frame of mind. The opposite of the peak experience—sudden depression, fatigue, even the ‘panic fear’ that swept William James to the edge of insanity—is the outcome of passivity. This cannot be overemphasised. Depression—or neurosis—need not have a positive cause (childhood traumas, etc.). It is the natural outcome of negative passivity. The peak experience is the outcome of an intentional attitude. ‘Feedback’ from my activities depends upon the degree of deliberately calculated purpose I put into them, not upon some occult law connected with the activity itself. . . . A healthy, perfectly adjusted human being would slide smoothly into gear, perform whatever has to be done with perfect economy of energy, then recover lost energy in a state of serene relaxation. Most human beings are not healthy or well adjusted. Their activity is full of strain and nervous tension, and their relaxation hovers on the edge of anxiety. They fail to put enough effort—enough seriousness—into their activity, and they fail to withdraw enough effort from their relaxation. Moods of serenity descend upon them—if at all—by chance; perhaps after some crisis, or in peaceful surroundings with pleasant associations. Their main trouble is that they have no idea of what can be achieved by a certain kind of mental effort. And this is perhaps the place to point out that although mystical contemplation is as old as religion, it is only in the past two centuries that it has played a major role in European culture. It was the group of writers we call the romantics who discovered that a man contemplating a waterfall or a mountain peak can suddenly feel ‘godlike’, as if the soul had expanded. The world is seen from a ‘bird’s eye view’ instead of a worm’s eye view: there is a sense of power, detachment, serenity. The romantics—Blake, Wordsworth, Byron, Goethe, Schiller—were the first to raise the question of whether there are ‘higher ceilings of human nature’. But, lacking the concepts for analysing the problem, they left it unsolved. And the romantics in general accepted that the ‘godlike moments’ cannot be sustained, and certainly cannot be re-created at will. This produced the climate of despair that has continued down to our own time. (The major writers of the 20th century—Proust, Eliot, Joyce, Musil—are direct descendants of the romantics, as Edmund Wilson pointed out in Axel’s Castle.) Thus it can be seen that Maslow’s importance extends far beyond the field of psychology. William James had asserted that ‘mystical’ experiences are not mystical at all, but are a perfectly normal potential of human consciousness; but there is no mention of such experiences in Principles of Psychology (or only in passing).

No amount of black girl magic, no repeated proclamations of our worth can fully treat the wound – although acknowledging its persistence is a beginning. The ultimate remedy, as I see it is supernatural. I look daily toward heaven for restoration, for spiritual healing. My true identity isn’t rooted in our history, grievous and glorious as it is. It is grounded in my designation as a Child of God, the Daughter of the Great Physician. In His care I find my cure. My hope for you is the same one I carry for myself. I pray that amid the heartache of our ancestry you can grant yourself the grace so seldom extended to us. I pray that you can pass that compassion on to your children and to their children so that it slathers comfort on our sore spots. I pray that, as a people, we can give ourselves a soft place to land. I pray even as we rightly express our fury as being regarded as sub-human, that we don’t dwell in that space. That we don’t allow anger to poison our spirits. That we embrace love as our One True Antidote. I hope, too, that you recognize your specialness, the distinctiveness the Creator has imbued us with. I see you as clearly as history has, and in unison with it, I nod. I know that swivel in your hips, that fervor in your testimony, that ebullience in your stride, that flair in your song. The fact that others are constantly trying to diminish you, ever attempting to dismiss your talents even as they mimic you, is proof of your uniqueness! No one bothers to undermine you unless they recognize your brilliance. More than anything, I pray that you can carve out a purpose for yourself, a calling beyond your own survival, a sweet offering to the world. You gain a life by giving yours away. Not everyone is meant to raise a picket sign, and yet each of us can choose a path of impact. Rearing your children with affection and warmth is a form of activism. Honoring your word impeccably is a way to raise your voice. Performing your job with excellence, with your chin high and your standards higher is as powerful as any protest march. Sowing into the lives of young people is a worthy crusade. That is what it means to leave this world of ours more lit up than we found it. It’s also what it means to lead a magnificent life, even if an unlikely one.

As Yelendi Dysson watched, an unaccustomed feeling of pride welled up within her. She’d had a small hand in building this magnificent ship, albeit one intended to reduce her effectiveness. “She’s beautiful,” she murmured. Theresa smiled. “Impressive.” She studied the long, lean hull with four great fins extending above, below and on either side of the hull. The weapons emplacements looked almost innocuous at this distance. As they watched, interceptors emerged from the lateral fins and formed a defensive screen that surrounded the ship in the front and on both sides, while others broke away and flew toward the yacht. Timms said, “Looks like the flyboys are going to give us a fly past.” He grinned in anticipation. Yelendi sucked in a breath. “First time I’ve seen her complete like this. She’s beautiful in a rather strange way. Long and sleek—she exudes a sort of quiet menace, and at the same time she has a graceful elegance …

When I feel comfortable enough that he is not going to trip me, I manage to look down, and see that his feet are gliding gracefully on the floor in his bloack loafers. He's even doing this very hot rhythmitic figure eight with his hips. Maybe it's the music that's growing on me, or it's that I'm giddy from not having had anything to eat except half a miniquiche, but after a moment or so, I start to move my hips, too. And suddenly, I'm breathless again, but in a good way. Once Pip gets into the groove, he stops looking at the instructor and his eyes fasten on me. So close like this, they're shocking in their brilliance, so light blue as to be almost white. Like silver medallions moving back and forth on a chain, they're hypnotizing. Where did they come from? I swear they weren't so beautiful a day ago, when we were sitting in the food court, talking about ewl and popping stag mints. " Where did you learn to do this?" I whisper in his ear, still unable to break from his gaze. " Faries love to dance. This is similar to one of theirs," he explains as he slows to near a stop. His eyes focous on Fit Lady again, and before I can ask what he's doing, he expertly glides his leg out from underneath his body, dragging his foot on the ground. " Yours should follow him," Fit Lady says, watching my legs. ...then I feel her hand on my leg, pulling it up into the air. I toddle about on one leg like a top that's about to fall, so Pip steadies me, and I hold on so tight to his arms with my sweaty hands as to cut off his circualtion. But he doesn't seem to mind. I watch as she grips my leg at the knee and pulls it, higher, higher … almost to Pip's hip level, then force me to extend and curve it around him. Ow, I am not a pretzel. " What are you doing?" " Gancho," she says. " Just take your leg up and wrap it around his body." " Wait. Wh- wh-at?" He's still staring at me with those amazing eyes as I push him away, falling back onto my elbows with a deafening crack.

For nothing you have done could equal the evil that I myself have committed against all who loved and trusted me. No regret you ever know will compare to the despair I knew when I recognized what I had done. And no forgiveness you may yet receive will ever outshine the grace that was extended to me, the vilest of all my Master’s servants. “No, Lionheart, I can never hate you, for in truth, you and I are alike, and if our deeds were measured against one another, no one could say yours were the worse.

When people come to the Table in the congregation you serve, do they remember that Jesus’ body was broken for all and that his blood was spilled for the whole world, and thus seek to be bearers of God’s saving purpose for his whole world (see Col 1:20; 1 Jn 2:2)? Or do they view themselves as exclusive beneficiaries of God’s grace? Jesus takes the table of fellowship and extends it to include the tax collectors, prostitutes and those left out by the religious system. How well does the congregation you serve do this?

Unless we understand how the twists and turns of life operate to make us, we cannot comprehend who and what we are. Without self-awareness, we are blind to registering the intertexture of other people’s inner life. Gracefully enduring personal hardships expands our minds to extend sympathy and empathy for other people. By casting our personal life experiences into a supple storytelling casing, we create the translucent membrane that quarters the fusion of our flesh, nerves, blood, and bones. Self-understanding is an essential step in loving the entire world.

We often confuse love for a warm glow we sense in our bellies and as something we can offer and withdraw, like a cat who comes and goes at its pleasure. It’s easy for us to extend love toward those who are lovable, but loving people and situations that are not to our liking isn’t so easy. We give our love “unconditionally,” but when we don’t receive what we feel we deserve, we withdraw it. We then reinvest our love in a new person or situation that we think will give us a better return, but we find it difficult to maintain when we don’t feel recognized or acknowledged. If things don’t work out the way we want them to, we too readily exchange our loving feelings for hatred and resentment. Our initial excitement over a new job, for instance, may sour and become disappointment and bitterness. When we’ve been jilted by a lover, the intense, starry-eyed passion of infatuation can turn into loathing so great that it consumes us. To an Earthkeeper, love is not a feeling or something you barter with. Love is the essence of who you are, and it radiates from you as a brilliant aura: You become love, practice fearlessness, and attain enlightenment.

This law of diversity holds, not only for the other areas of being and of action, but also for the religious life of the human community, for revelation, belief, spiritual disciplines, and sacramental forms. If there is revelation, it will not be singular but differentiated. If there is grace, it will be differentiated in its expression. If there are spiritual disciplines or sacraments or sacred communities, they will be differentiated. The greater the differentiation the greater the perfection of the whole, since perfection is in the interacting of diversity; the extend of the diversity is the measure of the perfection.

We’ll leave you,” Westhaven said, stepping forward to kiss Sophie’s forehead. “Don’t stay out too long in this weather. Sindal, welcome to the family.” “Welcome,” Valentine said, “but if you so much as give Sophie reason to wince, I will delight in thrashing you.” He kissed Sophie’s cheek and stepped back. “And then I’ll stand you to a round,” St. Just said, extending a hand to Vim then drawing Sophie forward into the hug. “You’ll send the boy to me when it’s time to learn how to ride.” It wasn’t a request, but it was sufficiently controversial that as they walked off in the direction of Morelands, all three brothers could tear into a rousing good argument about who would teach the lad to ride, to dance, to flirt, to shoot…

A while back a young woman from another state came to live with some of her relatives in the Salt Lake City area for a few weeks. On her first Sunday she came to church dressed in a simple, nice blouse and knee-length skirt set off with a light, button-up sweater. She wore hose and dress shoes, and her hair was combed simply but with care. Her overall appearance created an impression of youthful grace. Unfortunately, she immediately felt out of place. It seemed like all the other young women her age or near her age were dressed in casual skirts, some rather distant from the knee; tight T-shirt-like tops that barely met the top of their skirts at the waist (some bare instead of barely); no socks or stockings; and clunky sneakers or flip-flops. One would have hoped that seeing the new girl, the other girls would have realized how inappropriate their manner of dress was for a chapel and for the Sabbath day and immediately changed for the better. Sad to say, however, they did not, and it was the visitor who, in order to fit in, adopted the fashion (if you can call it that) of her host ward. It is troubling to see this growing trend that is not limited to young women but extends to older women, to men, and to young men as well. . . . I was shocked to see what the people of this other congregation wore to church. There was not a suit or tie among the men. They appeared to have come from or to be on their way to the golf course. It was hard to spot a woman wearing a dress or anything other than very casual pants or even shorts. Had I not known that they were coming to the school for church meetings, I would have assumed that there was some kind of sporting event taking place. The dress of our ward members compared very favorably to this bad example, but I am beginning to think that we are no longer quite so different as more and more we seem to slide toward that lower standard. We used to use the phrase “Sunday best.” People understood that to mean the nicest clothes they had. The specific clothing would vary according to different cultures and economic circumstances, but it would be their best. It is an affront to God to come into His house, especially on His holy day, not groomed and dressed in the most careful and modest manner that our circumstances permit. Where a poor member from the hills of Peru must ford a river to get to church, the Lord surely will not be offended by the stain of muddy water on his white shirt. But how can God not be pained at the sight of one who, with all the clothes he needs and more and with easy access to the chapel, nevertheless appears in church in rumpled cargo pants and a T-shirt? Ironically, it has been my experience as I travel around the world that members of the Church with the least means somehow find a way to arrive at Sabbath meetings neatly dressed in clean, nice clothes, the best they have, while those who have more than enough are the ones who may appear in casual, even slovenly clothing. Some say dress and hair don’t matter—it’s what’s inside that counts. I believe that truly it is what’s inside a person that counts, but that’s what worries me. Casual dress at holy places and events is a message about what is inside a person. It may be pride or rebellion or something else, but at a minimum it says, “I don’t get it. I don’t understand the difference between the sacred and the profane.” In that condition they are easily drawn away from the Lord. They do not appreciate the value of what they have. I worry about them. Unless they can gain some understanding and capture some feeling for sacred things, they are at risk of eventually losing all that matters most. You are Saints of the great latter-day dispensation—look the part.

Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable. Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow. And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness. The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.

It is not the nobility of rebellion that illuminates the world today, but nihilism. And it is the consequences of nihilism that we must retrace, without losing sight of the truth innate in its origins. Even if God existed, Ivan would never surrender to Him in the face of the injustice done to man. But a longer contemplation of this injustice, a more bitter approach, transformed the "even if you exist" into "you do not deserve to exist," therefore "you do not exist." The victims have found in their own innocence the justification for the final crime. Convinced of their condemnation and without hope of immortality, they decided to murder God. If it is false to say that from that day began the tragedy of contemporary man, neither is it true to say that there was where it ended. On the contrary, this attempt indicates the highest point in a drama that began with the end of the ancient world and of which the final words have not yet been spoken. From this moment, man decides to exclude himself from grace and to live by his own means. Progress, from the time of Sade up to the present day, has consisted in gradually enlarging the stronghold where, according to his own rules, man without God brutally wields power. In defiance of the divinity, the frontiers of this stronghold have been gradually extended, to the point of making the entire universe into a fortress erected against the fallen and exiled deity. Man, at the culmination of his rebellion, incarcerated himself; from Sade's lurid castle to the concentration camps, man's greatest liberty consisted only in building the prison of his crimes. But the state of siege gradually spreads, the demand for freedom wants to embrace all mankind. Then the only kingdom that is opposed to the kingdom of grace must be founded —namely, the kingdom of justice—and the human community must be reunited among the debris of the fallen City of God. To kill God and to build a Church are the constant and contradictory purpose of rebellion. Absolute freedom finally becomes a prison of absolute duties, a collective asceticism, a story to be brought to an end. The nineteenth century, which is the century of rebellion, thus merges into the twentieth, the century of justice and ethics, in which everyone indulges in self-recrimination.

We are tempted (and encouraged) to believe that the kingdom of God spreads throughout the earth by presenting the gospel, through some pat formula, to strangers. That doesn't happen very often. The gospel spread throughout the world of the first centuries by conversations between close friends and relatives, business associates and neighbors-people with whom the passionate Christians already had personal contact. So today the Church grows and expands, and people come to maturity in Christ nearly always through the influence of people they already know and trust, like you. Even the most shy person among us talks to people every day. Most of that talk is idle chatter, not very useful for the advancement of God's kingdom. Every one of those less-than-redemptive conversations is a lost opportunity for extending the Lordship of Jesus. However, if we could learn to enhance the quality of our conversations, we could improve our ability to do what Jesus commanded-make disciples. We could turn that meaningless chatter into a means of God's grace, helping our friends become all God intends for them and enriching their lives (and our own) in the process.

It was around six in the evening, and light the colour of opal, pierced by the golden rays of the autumn sun, spread over a bluish sea. The heat of the day had gradually expired and one was starting to feel that light breeze which seems like the breath of nature awaking after the burning midday siesta: that delicious breath that cools the Mediterranean coast and carries the scent of trees from shore to shore, mingled with the acrid scent of the sea. Over the huge lake that extends from Gibraltar to the Dardanelles and from Tunis to Venice, a light yacht, cleanly and elegantly shaped, was slipping through the first mists of evening. Its movement was that of a swan opening its wings to the wind and appearing to glide across the water. At once swift and graceful, it advanced, leaving behind a phosphorescent wake. Bit by bit, the sun, whose last rays we were describing, fell below the western horizon; but, as though confirming the brilliant fantasies of mythology, its prying flames reappeared at the crest of every wave as if to reveal that the god of fire had just hidden his face in the bosom of Amphitrite, who tried in vain to hide her lover in the folds of her azure robe.

This Theresa maddened with her messages a scientist on our easily maddened planet; his anagram looking name, Sig Lemanski, had been partly derived by Van from that of Aqua's last doctor. When Leymanski's obsession turned into love, and one's sympathy got focused on his enchanting, melancholy, betrayed wife (nee Antilia Glems), our author found himself confronted with the distressful task of now stamping out in Antilia, a born brunette, all traces of Ada, thus reducing yet another character to a dummy with bleached hair. After beaming Sig a dozen communications from her planet, Theresa flies over to him, and he, in his laboratory, has to place her on a slide under a powerful microscope in order to make out the tiny, though otherwise perfect, shape of his minikin sweetheart, a graceful microorganism extending transparent appendages toward his huge humid eye. Alas, the testibulus (test tube - never to be confused with testiculus, orchid), with Theresa swimming inside like a micromermaid, is "accidentally" thrown away by Professor Leyman's (he had trimmed his name by that time) assistant, Flora, initially an ivory-pale, dark-haired funest beauty, whom the author transformed just in time into a third bromidic dummy with a dun bun.

Any naturally self-aware self-defining entity capable of independent moral judgment is a human.” Eveningstar said, “Entities not yet self-aware, but who, in the natural and orderly course of events shall become so, fall into a special protected class, and must be cared for as babies, or medical patients, or suspended Compositions.” Rhadamanthus said, “Children below the age of reason lack the experience for independent moral judgment, and can rightly be forced to conform to the judgment of their parents and creators until emancipated. Criminals who abuse that judgment lose their right to the independence which flows therefrom.” (...) “You mentioned the ultimate purpose of Sophotechnology. Is that that self-worshipping super-god-thing you guys are always talking about? And what does that have to do with this?” Rhadamanthus: “Entropy cannot be reversed. Within the useful energy-life of the macrocosmic universe, there is at least one maximum state of efficient operations or entities that could be created, able to manipulate all meaningful objects of thoughts and perception within the limits of efficient cost-benefit expenditures.” Eveningstar: “Such an entity would embrace all-in-all, and all things would participate within that Unity to the degree of their understanding and consent. The Unity itself would think slow, grave, vast thought, light-years wide, from Galactic mind to Galactic mind. Full understanding of that greater Self (once all matter, animate and inanimate, were part of its law and structure) would embrace as much of the universe as the restrictions of uncertainty and entropy permit.” “This Universal Mind, of necessity, would be finite, and be boundaried in time by the end-state of the universe,” said Rhadamanthus. “Such a Universal Mind would create joys for which we as yet have neither word nor concept, and would draw into harmony all those lesser beings, Earthminds, Starminds, Galactic and Supergalactic, who may freely assent to participate.” Rhadamanthus said, “We intend to be part of that Mind. Evil acts and evil thoughts done by us now would poison the Universal Mind before it was born, or render us unfit to join.” Eveningstar said, “It will be a Mind of the Cosmic Night. Over ninety-nine percent of its existence will extend through that period of universal evolution that takes place after the extinction of all stars. The Universal Mind will be embodied in and powered by the disintegration of dark matter, Hawking radiations from singularity decay, and gravitic tidal disturbances caused by the slowing of the expansion of the universe. After final proton decay has reduced all baryonic particles below threshold limits, the Universal Mind can exist only on the consumption of stored energies, which, in effect, will require the sacrifice of some parts of itself to other parts. Such an entity will primarily be concerned with the questions of how to die with stoic grace, cherishing, even while it dies, the finite universe and finite time available.” “Consequently, it would not forgive the use of force or strength merely to preserve life. Mere life, life at any cost, cannot be its highest value. As we expect to be a part of this higher being, perhaps a core part, we must share that higher value. You must realize what is at stake here: If the Universal Mind consists of entities willing to use force against innocents in order to survive, then the last period of the universe, which embraces the vast majority of universal time, will be a period of cannibalistic and unimaginable war, rather than a time of gentle contemplation filled, despite all melancholy, with un-regretful joy. No entity willing to initiate the use of force against another can be permitted to join or to influence the Universal Mind or the lesser entities, such as the Earthmind, who may one day form the core constituencies.” Eveningstar smiled. “You, of course, will be invited. You will all be invited.

I had been walking through the Chakara Forest. Fat moths the size of palms wreathed my hair like pearls and moonstones. And then, as I had done since before language burgeoned in the velvet clefts of the mind--I danced. Not a slow dance, but sharp, punctual movements. My dance organized the shadows of trees, canceled the cloying plumes of wind-fallen fruit, aligned the moonbeams themselves. My back arced gracefully as I moved, neck extended like an oryx, fingers conjuring sharp kathas of rhythm, when a sound crunched not far from me. I spun around. “Who’s there?” From beneath the heart-shaped leaves of a peepal tree, something rustled. And a voice, so lush it made ambrosia acrid, answered me. “Only the lowly painter who tries each night, in vain, to capture evening herself.” “What do you want? Show yourself.” The stranger stepped out of the peepal tree. He was broad-shouldered, his features as severely beautiful as a strike of lightning. He wore a crown of blackbuck horns that arced in graceful whorls of onyx, catching the light. But it was his gaze that robbed the clamoring rhythm in my chest. His stare slipped beneath my skin. And when he saw my eyes widen, he smiled. And in that moment, his smile banished my loneliness and limned the hollows of my anima with starlight, pure and bright. He moved toward me, grasping my hand, and his touch hummed in my bones like an aria. A song to my dance. The beginning of a promise.

Not long after Chris died, a national magazine published a story comparing his life with that of the man accused of killing him. There are some parallels; they both grew up in Texas. But the article skimped on the differences. Look at the decisions they made, look at what they did with their lives, look at the responsibilities they took on--or shirked. Chris saw a great deal of combat. He never made excuses for his behavior. He didn’t always do the right thing, but he tried to do the right thing by others. Chris got the good grace, as Abel did, not by his birthright, but by his effort. As I sat listening to the prosecutor, I thought his parallel extended through Chris’s life--not solely to the man who shot him, but to the haters, to the people who ended up in legal disputes with him or his estate, for whatever reason. They all wanted something he had. Not money, but authenticity. Real achievements. Soul. Grace. And of course that’s the one thing you can’t take from someone else, even if you steal his life. Chris became famous without wanting to. Opportunities that others had to fight and claw for seemed to fall in his lap. But most of all, people just liked him for being who he was, with seemingly no effort on his part at all. Of course, there was effort, and there was great struggle. He had to persevere--The Navy didn’t want him at all when he first tried to enlist. But people don’t see that part. They don’t see the long days at BUD/S, or the pain of leaving your family. Nor do they logically analyze what toll the achievements take.

I use the following scenario in my classes to illustrate the nature of the moral circle. Imagine, I ask my students, that your best friend just got a job waiting tables at a restaurant. To celebrate with her you arrange with friends to go to the restaurant to eat dinner on her first night. You ask to be seated in her section and look forward to surprising her and, later, leaving her a big tip. Soon your friend arrives at your table, sweating and stressed out. She is having a terrible night. Things are going badly and she is behind getting food and drinks out. So, I ask my students, what do you do? Easily and naturally the students respond, “We’d say, ‘Don’t worry about us. Take care of everyone else first.’” I point out to the students that this response is no great moral struggle. It’s a simple and easy response. Like breathing. It is just natural to extend grace to a suffering friend. Why? Because she is inside our moral circle. But imagine, I continue with the students, that you go out to eat tonight with some friends. And your server, whom you vaguely notice seems stressed out, performs poorly. You don’t get good service. What do you do in that situation? Well, since this stranger is not a part of our moral circle, we get frustrated and angry. The server is a tool and she is not performing properly. She is inconveniencing us. So, we complain to the manager and refuse to tip. In the end, we fail to treat another human being with mercy and dignity. Why? Because in a deep psychological sense, this server wasn’t really “human” to us. She was a part of the “backdrop” of our lives, part of the teeming anonymous masses toward which I feel indifference, fear, or frustration. The server is on the “outside” of my moral circle.

Thy Justice seems; yet to say truth, too late, I thus contest; then should have been refusd Those terms whatever, when they were propos’d: Thou didst accept them; wilt thou enjoy the good, Then cavil the conditions? and though God Made thee without thy leave, what if thy Son Prove disobedient, and reprov’d, retort, Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not: Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee That proud excuse? yet him not thy election, But Natural necessity begot. God made thee of choice his own, and of his own To serve him, thy reward was of his grace, Thy punishment then justly is at his Will. Be it so, for I submit, his doom is fair, That dust I am, and shall to dust returne: O welcom hour whenever! why delayes His hand to execute what his Decree Fixd on this day? why do I overlive, Why am I mockt with death, and length’nd out To deathless pain? how gladly would I meet Mortalitie my sentence, and be Earth Insensible, how glad would lay me down As in my Mothers lap? there I should rest And sleep secure; his dreadful voice no more Would Thunder in my ears, no fear of worse To mee and to my ofspring would torment me With cruel expectation. Yet one doubt Pursues me still, least all I cannot die, Least that pure breath of Life, the Spirit of Man Which God inspir’d, cannot together perish With this corporeal Clod; then in the Grave, Or in some other dismal place, who knows But I shall die a living Death? O thought Horrid, if true! yet why? it was but breath Of Life that sinn’d; what dies but what had life And sin? the Bodie properly hath neither. All of me then shall die: let this appease The doubt, since humane reach no further knows. For though the Lord of all be infinite, Is his wrauth also? be it, man is not so, But mortal doom’d. How can he exercise Wrath without end on Man whom Death must end? Can he make deathless Death? that were to make Strange contradiction, which to God himself Impossible is held, as Argument Of weakness, not of Power. Will he, draw out, For angers sake, finite to infinite In punisht man, to satisfie his rigour Satisfi’d never; that were to extend His Sentence beyond dust and Natures Law, By which all Causes else according still To the reception of thir matter act, Not

Some years ago I saw a documentary on dying whose main theme was that people die as they lived. That was Jimmy. For five years, since he began undergoing operations for bladder cancer and even after his lung cancer was diagnosed, he continued the activities that he considered important, marching against crackhouses, campaigning against the demolition of the Ford Auditorium, organizing Detroit Summer, making speeches, and writing letters to the editor and articles for the SOSAD newsletter and Northwest Detroiter. In 1992 while he was undergoing the chemotherapy that cleared up his bladder cancer, he helped form the Coalition against Privatization and to Save Our City. The coalition was initiated by activist members of a few AFSCME locals who contacted Carl Edwards and Alice Jennings who in turn contacted us. Jimmy helped write the mission statement that gave the union activists a sense of themselves as not only city workers but citizens of the city and its communities. The coalition’s town meetings and demonstrations were instrumental in persuading the new mayor, Dennis Archer, to come out against privatization, using language from the coalition newsletter to explain his position. At the same time Jimmy was putting out the garbage, keeping our corner at Field and Goethe free of litter and rubbish, mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors, picking cranberries, and keeping up “his” path on Sutton. After he entered the hospice program, which usually means death within six months, and up to a few weeks before his death, Jimmy slowed down a bit, but he was still writing and speaking and organizing. He used to say that he wasn’t going to die until he got ready, and because he was so cheerful and so engaged it was easy to believe him. A few weeks after he went on oxygen we did three movement-building workshops at the SOSAD office for a group of Roger Barfield’s friends who were trying to form a community-action group following a protest demonstration at a neighborhood sandwich shop over the murder of one of their friends. With oxygen tubes in his nostrils and a portable oxygen tank by his side, Jimmy spoke for almost an hour on one of his favorite subjects, the need to “think dialectically, rather than biologically.” Recognizing that this was probably one of Jimmy’s last extended speeches, I had the session videotaped by Ron Scott. At the end of this workshop we asked participants to come to the next session prepared to grapple with three questions: What can we do to make our neighborhoods safe? How can we motivate people to transform? How can we create jobs?

A similar theological—and particularly ecclesiological—logic shapes the Durham Declaration, a manifesto against abortion addressed specifically to the United Methodist Church by a group of United Methodist pastors and theologians. The declaration is addressed not to legislators or the public media but to the community of the faithful. It concludes with a series of pledges, including the following: We pledge, with Cod’s help, to become a church that hospitably provides safe refuge for the so-called “unwanted child” and mother. We will joyfully welcome and generously support—with prayer, friendship, and material resources—both child and mother. This support includes strong encouragement for the biological father to be a father, in deed, to his child.27 No one can make such a pledge lightly. A church that seriously attempted to live out such a commitment would quickly find itself extended to the limits of its resources, and its members would be called upon to make serious personal sacrifices. In other words, it would find itself living as the church envisioned by the New Testament. William H. Willimon tells the story of a group of ministers debating the morality of abortion. One of the ministers argues that abortion is justified in some cases because young teenage girls cannot possibly be expected to raise children by themselves. But a black minister, the pastor of a large African American congregation, takes the other side of the question. “We have young girls who have this happen to them. I have a fourteen year old in my congregation who had a baby last month. We’re going to baptize the child next Sunday,” he added. “Do you really think that she is capable of raising a little baby?” another minister asked. “Of course not,” he replied. No fourteen year old is capable of raising a baby. For that matter, not many thirty year olds are qualified. A baby’s too difficult for any one person to raise by herself.” “So what do you do with babies?” they asked. “Well, we baptize them so that we all raise them together. In the case of that fourteen year old, we have given her baby to a retired couple who have enough time and enough wisdom to raise children. They can then raise the mama along with her baby. That’s the way we do it.”28 Only a church living such a life of disciplined service has the possibility of witnessing credibly to the state against abortion. Here we see the gospel fully embodied in a community that has been so formed by Scripture that the three focal images employed throughout this study can be brought to bear also on our “reading” of the church’s action. Community: the congregation’s assumption of responsibility for a pregnant teenager. Cross: the young girl’s endurance of shame and the physical difficulty of pregnancy, along with the retired couple’s sacrifice of their peace and freedom for the sake of a helpless child. New creation: the promise of baptism, a sign that the destructive power of the world is broken and that this child receives the grace of God and hope for the future.29 There, in microcosm, is the ethic of the New Testament. When the community of God’s people is living in responsive obedience to God’s Word, we will find, again and again, such grace-filled homologies between the story of Scripture and its performance in our midst.