Fabric Of Our Souls Quotes

... the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.

The Fabric of our Souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly.

Late modern society is principally concerned with purchasing things, in ever greater abundance and variety, and so has to strive to fabricate an ever greater number of desires to gratify, and to abolish as many limits and prohibitions upon desire as it can. Such a society is already implicitly atheist and so must slowly but relentlessly apply itself to the dissolution of transcendent values. It cannot allow ultimate goods to distract us from proximate goods. Our sacred writ is advertising, our piety is shopping, our highest devotion is private choice. God and the soul too often hinder the purely acquisitive longings upon which the market depends, and confront us with values that stand in stark rivalry to the only truly substantial value at the center of the social universe: the price tag.

Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.

The true fabric of our soul is when we look in the mirror, and the person starring crystal clear back at us seems to be so very familiar!

Fear in its most wicked, powerful form cripples our souls and warps the very fabric of our true hearts.

Our clothes are too much a part of us for most of us ever to be entirely indifferent to their condition: it is as though the fabric were indeed a natural extension of the body, or even of the soul.

I was born with a bad heart—literally and figuratively. But you gave your heart to me, and because of you, I will live. Because of you, I will never take my life for granted ever again.

No one leaves his or her world without being transfixed by its roots, or with a vacuum for a soul. We carry with us the memory of many fabrics, a self soaked in our history, our culture; a memory, sometimes scattered, sometimes sharp and clear, of the streets of our childhood, of our adolescence; the reminiscence of something distant that suddenly stands out before us, in us, a shy gesture, an open hand, a smile lost in time and misunderstanding, a sentence, a simple sentence, possibly now forgotten by the one who said it. A word for so long a time attempted and never spoken, always stifled in inhibition, in the fear of being rejected- which as it implies a lack of confidence in ourselves, also means refusal to risk.

I’ll stop you in your darkest hours. Do you promise to do the same for me?

You hear my heartbeat?” I nod, cheek rubbing the fabric of his shirt. “It’s beating for you, little bird,” he murmurs, holding me closer. “That can be our music.” “But you can’t hear mine,” I whisper, voice cracking. He pauses. “I can hear it, Phoebe. I hear it in my soul. I set my life by its every beat.

For the broken ones who are in need of something dark, morbid, and beautiful.

I saw a young woman. A confused little flower trying to bloom in the daylight when you were always meant to thrive beneath the stars, unlike those around you.

The men hunched around, talking with the gaiety of souls about to eat plentifully, with the empty dark country about us, and the strange fabric of frost and frozen wind falling on our shoulders, and the great black sky of stars above us like a huge tray of gems and diamonds.

Liam?” “Yeah?” “If I’m tragic, what does that make you?” I think about that for a second. “Cruel.

And just like that, I think I’ve found something as compelling as death.

Till death do us part, sunshine.

I want to know her completely, so much so that we’ll never be able to untwine our vines.

She’s the image of heartache—and I want the pain she instills inside my heart forever.

The fabric of our souls is thin—we’ve been wandering this world just to unite in this small corner of the universe.

You should wait… and it doesn’t have to be for anything specific. I’m just saying—wait for the weight of the world to pass. Wait until the tremors that wrack through your skull drift into the depths again. Wait until the sun rises, and the light makes you feel a little less pointless.

He is my home. I don’t care that we aren’t heart-fated like he was with the mate he lost. I’ll tear the fabric of our souls and make knots in it to capture this moment for keeping. He’s mine by my demand alone, and I will not forfeit any ground.

It was a reminder to me of what His salvation really means. I think...I think too often we compare our souls and our sins to a grass stain. We think that His sacrifice is sufficient to knock off the clumps and blades clinging to the outside of us, but not quite strong enough to get rid of the stain in the fabric.

The threads of logic, intuition, and humanity should be beautifully interwoven through the fabric of our world.

I’m burning inside, and it hurts. I just want to stop hurting.

Liam presses a kiss to my lips. “Thank you for the happiest moments of my life.

My eyes drift down to his junk. I mean, come on, he’s wearing gray sweatpants—I can’t be blamed for noticing his package. Fall is gray sweatpants season, after all.

Remedium meum,” he says and a vulnerable smile crosses his lips. “My cure,

My mind is a plague that needs to be cured and people like me are damned to chase this mysterious elixir.

Ultimately, the roast turkey must be regarded as a monument to Boomer's love. Look at it now, plump and glossy, floating across Idaho as if it were a mammoth, mutated seed pod. Hear how it backfires as it passes the silver mines, perhaps in tribute to the origin of the knives and forks of splendid sterling that a roast turkey and a roast turkey alone possesses the charisma to draw forth into festivity from dark cupboards. See how it glides through the potato fields, familiarly at home among potatoes but with an air of expectation, as if waiting for the flood of gravy. The roast turkey carries with it, in its chubby hold, a sizable portion of our primitive and pagan luggage. Primitive and pagan? Us? We of the laser, we of the microchip, we of the Union Theological Seminary and Time magazine? Of course. At least twice a year, do not millions upon millions of us cybernetic Christians and fax machine Jews participate in a ritual, a highly stylized ceremony that takes place around a large dead bird? And is not this animal sacrificed, as in days of yore, to catch the attention of a divine spirit, to show gratitude for blessings bestowed, and to petition for blessings coveted? The turkey, slain, slowly cooked over our gas or electric fires, is the central figure at our holy feast. It is the totem animal that brings our tribe together. And because it is an awkward, intractable creature, the serving of it establishes and reinforces the tribal hierarchy. There are but two legs, two wings, a certain amount of white meat, a given quantity of dark. Who gets which piece; who, in fact, slices the bird and distributes its limbs and organs, underscores quite emphatically the rank of each member in the gathering. Consider that the legs of this bird are called 'drumsticks,' after the ritual objects employed to extract the music from the most aboriginal and sacred of instruments. Our ancestors, kept their drums in public, but the sticks, being more actively magical, usually were stored in places known only to the shaman, the medicine man, the high priest, of the Wise Old Woman. The wing of the fowl gives symbolic flight to the soul, but with the drumstick is evoked the best of the pulse of the heart of the universe. Few of us nowadays participate in the actual hunting and killing of the turkey, but almost all of us watch, frequently with deep emotion, the reenactment of those events. We watch it on TV sets immediately before the communal meal. For what are footballs if not metaphorical turkeys, flying up and down a meadow? And what is a touchdown if not a kill, achieved by one or the other of two opposing tribes? To our applause, great young hungers from Alabama or Notre Dame slay the bird. Then, the Wise Old Woman, in the guise of Grandma, calls us to the table, where we, pretending to be no longer primitive, systematically rip the bird asunder. Was Boomer Petaway aware of the totemic implications when, to impress his beloved, he fabricated an outsize Thanksgiving centerpiece? No, not consciously. If and when the last veil dropped, he might comprehend what he had wrought. For the present, however, he was as ignorant as Can o' Beans, Spoon, and Dirty Sock were, before Painted Stick and Conch Shell drew their attention to similar affairs. Nevertheless, it was Boomer who piloted the gobble-stilled butterball across Idaho, who negotiated it through the natural carving knives of the Sawtooth Mountains, who once or twice parked it in wilderness rest stops, causing adjacent flora to assume the appearance of parsley.

No one goes anywhere alone, least of all into exile—not even those who arrive physically alone, unaccompanied by family, spouse, children, parents, or siblings. No one leaves his or her world without having been transfixed by its roots, or with a vacuum for a soul. We carry with us the memory of many fabrics, a self soaked in our history, our culture; a memory, sometimes scattered, sometimes sharp and clear, of the streets of our childhood, of our adolescence; the reminiscence of something distant that suddenly stands out before us, in us, a shy gesture, an open hand, a smile lost in a time of misunderstanding, a sentence, a simple sentence possibly now forgotten by the one who had said it.

We began before words, and we will end beyond them. It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said ‘and’ meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words. If only words were a kind of fluid that collects in the ears, if only they turned into the visible chemical equivalent of their true value, an acid, or something curative – then we might be more careful. Words do collect in us anyway. They collect in the blood, in the soul, and either transform or poison people’s lives. Bitter or thoughtless words poured into the ears of the young have blighted many lives in advance. We all know people whose unhappy lives twist on a set of words uttered to them on a certain unforgotten day at school, in childhood, or at university. We seem to think that words aren’t things. A bump on the head may pass away, but a cutting remark grows with the mind. But then it is possible that we know all too well the awesome power of words – which is why we use them with such deadly and accurate cruelty. We are all wounded inside one way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people. Yes, the highest things are beyond words. That is probably why all art aspires to the condition of wordlessness. When literature works on you, it does so in silence, in your dreams, in your wordless moments. Good words enter you and become moods, become the quiet fabric of your being. Like music, like painting, literature too wants to transcend its primary condition and become something higher. Art wants to move into silence, into the emotional and spiritual conditions of the world. Statues become melodies, melodies become yearnings, yearnings become actions. When things fall into words they usually descend. Words have an earthly gravity. But the best things in us are those that escape the gravity of our deaths. Art wants to pass into life, to lift it; art wants to enchant, to transform, to make life more meaningful or bearable in its own small and mysterious way. The greatest art was probably born from a profound and terrible silence – a silence out of which the greatest enigmas of our life cry: Why are we here? What is the point of it all? How can we know peace and live in joy? Why be born in order to die? Why this difficult one-way journey between the two mysteries? Out of the wonder and agony of being come these cries and questions and the endless stream of words with which to order human life and quieten the human heart in the midst of our living and our distress. The ages have been inundated with vast oceans of words. We have been virtually drowned in them. Words pour at us from every angle and corner. They have not brought understanding, or peace, or healing, or a sense of self-mastery, nor has the ocean of words given us the feeling that, at least in terms of tranquility, the human spirit is getting better. At best our cry for meaning, for serenity, is answered by a greater silence, the silence that makes us seek higher reconciliation. I think we need more of the wordless in our lives. We need more stillness, more of a sense of wonder, a feeling for the mystery of life. We need more love, more silence, more deep listening, more deep giving.

In an age of nothing, at time when we stand at the brink of our own destruction. Strengthen your belief in yourself, in the future of humanity, in the things of this world which cannot easily be percieved, awaken that which lies dormant now within your soul. Re-ignite the flame of your consciousness, and measure the strength of your conviction. Reveal the lie, renounce your hatred. Seek, find and embrace the truths you are fortunate enough to discover. Cherish them, use them to anchor you in the sea of chaos that is the world we live in. When twilight drwas near, when you are pushed to the very limits of your soul, when it seems that all you have left are the dead remnants of the fabric of your life... Believe.

Google had discovered a way to translate its nonmarket interactions with users into surplus raw material for the fabrication of products aimed at genuine market transactions with its real customers: advertisers.94 The translation of behavioral surplus from outside to inside the market finally enabled Google to convert investment into revenue. The corporation thus created out of thin air and at zero marginal cost an asset class of vital raw materials derived from users’ nonmarket online behavior.

We all lie. We all guard secrets—sometimes terrible ones—a side to us so dark, so shameful, that we quickly avert our own eyes from the shadow we might glimpse in the mirror. Instead we lock our dark halves deep in the basement of our souls. And on the surface of our lives, we work industriously to shape the public story of our selves. We say, “Look, world, this is me.” We craft posts on social media . . . See this wonderful lunch I’m eating at this trendy restaurant with my besties, see my sexy shoes, my cute puppy, boyfriend, tight ass in a bikini. See my gloriously perfect life . . . see what a fucking fabulous time I’m having drunk and at this party with my boobs swelling out of my sparkly tank top. Just look at those hot guys draped all over me. Aren’t you jealous . . . And then you wait to see how many people LIKE this fabricated version of yourself, your mood hinging on the number of clicks. Comments. Who commented. But darkness has a way of seeping through the cracks. It seeks the light . . .

If this is all you read, if you put down this book at the end of this sentence, know that this is the most important message of Mary’s gospel: we are inherently good. Now, if you’re still with me, that goodness can never be lost. We can feel lost to it. But it is woven into the fabric of who we are; it’s our nature. Goodness. And the word that for me describes this experience, of knowing this inherent goodness, is soul. The word soul to me describes that eternal aspect of our being; an aspect that allows us to feel loved, and to experience that we are love. And that our humanity is not intrinsically sinful, or shameful. This human body is the soul’s chance to be here.

If we constantly apply ourselves to meditation practice during the course of our lives, we may be able, though with some difficulty, to strip away all the supports that maintain the illusion of the ego-self. However, the material fabric of the ego's support-bot the world and the physical body-is destroyed by death and all contact with its "friends" is severed. Now the mind is truly left to its own devices and its experience of reality is much more direct and immediate. The worldly concerns which formerly served as the support of the ego have all been stripped away and the insubstantial nature of its condition has been exposed in all its falsity. It was never really real at all, and the awesome power of this truth may strike the consciousness like a bombshell!

Narrative nonfiction is an act of conception and construction; it is formation of a personal legend from the mist of memory using mental hydraulics plied with the tools of logic, structure, design, and imagination. An engaged mind possesses a documentary sensibility that fabricates a memoirist identity, which alliance mollifies their bleak interior critic. A conscientious mind hews a residue of meaning from the verisimilitude of a person’s metafictional baggage. A basic impulse of all free people is to speak to an appreciative audience. Writing the story of our life constitutes asserting the universal human right to declare and define who we are. When we write our story, we become a stakeholder of our place in the world, we affirm the right to shape our future, and avow the verity to heal our torn souls.

To move more into living in love, we need to see how we are substituting for love and truth in our life. We create substitutes to stop us from feeling our deeper wounds, and these substitutes, needs and addictions keep us circling round and round in the effects of these deep seated emotions that form the very fabric of our wounded soul. The more we circle, the more frustrated we can become at our lack of progress, at our own unwillingness to feel deeper, until something has got to give. We fill the holes of our wounds with cheap, pale imitations and substitutes from the world and other people around us. All these substitutes are medications for the causal wound underneath. It is like covering over a bleeding, cut-off stump of an amputated arm with a piece of tissue paper, and hoping it will stick and do the job.

In our healing and growing, we must, inevitably, make peace with our own stories and then tell them to at least one person. The telling is crucial. We must own our true stories. In doing so, we begin again to belong to the world in the way only we can. The door to soul opens […] Story is the very fabric of our lives. Every life begins and ends with a story and, taken as a whole, is a story. Every relationship is a story. Every dream. Every experience. Each soul — whether embodied or not in that person's life — is a story longing to be told. The world itself is a story; indeed, it might be more accurate to say the world is made up of stories than to say it is made up of atoms, earth, trees, and other things. The German philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein insisted the world divides up into facts, not things; I prefer to say stories, not facts. Storytelling has an enormous power over us. It conveys meaning in a way a mere explanation never could. Telling and listening to stories are essential tools in approaching the soul and embodying what we find there. There are many soulcraft skills and practices that incorporate storytelling.

He’d mentioned it a month before. A month. Not a good month, admittedly, but still—a month. That was enough time for him to have written something, at least. There was still something of him, or by him at least, floating around out there. I needed it. “I’m gonna go to his house,” I told Isaac. I hurried out to the minivan and hauled the oxygen cart up and into the passenger seat. I started the car. A hip-hop beat blared from the stereo, and as I reached to change the radio station, someone started rapping. In Swedish. I swiveled around and screamed when I saw Peter Van Houten sitting in the backseat. “I apologize for alarming you,” Peter Van Houten said over the rapping. He was still wearing the funeral suit, almost a week later. He smelled like he was sweating alcohol. “You’re welcome to keep the CD,” he said. “It’s Snook, one of the major Swedish—” “Ah ah ah ah GET OUT OF MY CAR.” I turned off the stereo. “It’s your mother’s car, as I understand it,” he said. “Also, it wasn’t locked.” “Oh, my God! Get out of the car or I’ll call nine-one-one. Dude, what is your problem?” “If only there were just one,” he mused. “I am here simply to apologize. You were correct in noting earlier that I am a pathetic little man, dependent upon alcohol. I had one acquaintance who only spent time with me because I paid her to do so—worse, still, she has since quit, leaving me the rare soul who cannot acquire companionship even through bribery. It is all true, Hazel. All that and more.” “Okay,” I said. It would have been a more moving speech had he not slurred his words. “You remind me of Anna.” “I remind a lot of people of a lot of people,” I answered. “I really have to go.” “So drive,” he said. “Get out.” “No. You remind me of Anna,” he said again. After a second, I put the car in reverse and backed out. I couldn’t make him leave, and I didn’t have to. I’d drive to Gus’s house, and Gus’s parents would make him leave. “You are, of course, familiar,” Van Houten said, “with Antonietta Meo.” “Yeah, no,” I said. I turned on the stereo, and the Swedish hip-hop blared, but Van Houten yelled over it. “She may soon be the youngest nonmartyr saint ever beatified by the Catholic Church. She had the same cancer that Mr. Waters had, osteosarcoma. They removed her right leg. The pain was excruciating. As Antonietta Meo lay dying at the ripened age of six from this agonizing cancer, she told her father, ‘Pain is like fabric: The stronger it is, the more it’s worth.’ Is that true, Hazel?” I wasn’t looking at him directly but at his reflection in the mirror. “No,” I shouted over the music. “That’s bullshit.” “But don’t you wish it were true!” he cried back. I cut the music. “I’m sorry I ruined your trip. You were too young. You were—” He broke down. As if he had a right to cry over Gus. Van Houten was just another of the endless mourners who did not know him, another too-late lamentation on his wall. “You didn’t ruin our trip, you self-important bastard. We had an awesome trip.” “I am trying,” he said. “I am trying, I swear.” It was around then that I realized Peter Van Houten had a dead person in his family. I considered the honesty with which he had written about cancer kids; the fact that he couldn’t speak to me in Amsterdam except to ask if I’d dressed like her on purpose; his shittiness around me and Augustus; his aching question about the relationship between pain’s extremity and its value. He sat back there drinking, an old man who’d been drunk for years.

Maxims & Other Quotes II Exactly how we deal with our souls was at this moment the only question I thought worth asking. 181 Borges: What I most admire about Whitman is that he created Walt Whitman, an ideal projection not of himself but someone like him, a character every reader could find in his heart and admire. 184 Borges: Mythos, in Greek, is not a story that is false, it’s a story that is more than true. Myth is a tear in the fabric of reality, and immense energies pour through those holy fissures. Our stories, our poems, are rips in these holy fissures, as well, however slight. 193 Borges: Don’t question survival, mine or yours. More powers lie at your disposal than you realize. 194 Parini: I just don’t know enough. Borges: Nor I. But we all proceed on insufficient knowledge. 195 Borges: I’ve found a name for myself. Borges the Reenactor! The problem is, one never wins old battles. The losses only mount. 250 Borges: Remember that the battle between good and evil persists, and the writer’s work is constantly to reframe the argument, so that readers make the right choices. Never work from vanity. … What does Eliot say? ‘Humility is endless’ … We fail, and we fail again. We pick ourselves up. I’ve done it a thousand times, Guiseppe. Borges only deepens. 251

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep blank space high up above many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived. It looked like a woman’s tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of dots. At length I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn’t find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn’t make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at that very moment with great emotion, in intricate, detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which wholly worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, “that was a good time then, a good time to be living.” And I began to remember our time. I recalled green fields with carrots growing, one by one, in slender rows. Men and women in bright vests and scarves came and pulled the carrots out of the soil and carried them in baskets to shaded kitchens, where they scrubbed them with yellow brushes under running water. I saw white-faced cattle lowing and wading in creeks. I saw May apples in forests, erupting through leaf-strewn paths. Cells on the root hairs of sycamores split and divided, and apples grew spotted and striped in the fall. Mountains kept their cool caves and squirrels raced home to their nests through sunlight and shade. I remembered the ocean, and I seemed to be in the ocean myself, swimming over orange crabs that looked like coral, or off the deep Atlantic banks where whitefish school. Or again I saw the tops of poplars, and the whole sky brushed with clouds in pallid streaks, under which wild ducks flew with outstretched necks, and called, one by one, and flew on. All these things I saw. Scenes grew in depth and sunlit detail before my eyes, and were replaced by ever more scenes, as I remember the life of my time with increasing feeling. At last I saw the earth as a globe in space, and I recalled the ocean’s shape and the form of continents, saying to myself with surprise as I looked at the planet, “yes, that’s how it was then, that part there was called France.” I was filled with the deep affection of nostalgia- and then I opened my eyes. We all ought to be able to conjure up sights like these at will, so that we can keep in mind the scope of texture’s motion in time.

Am I moving toward isolation and self-reliance or toward greater dependence on God and others?” We may think we need to deal with these things on our own. But really what we need is to allow God and his church to help us find answers. “We’ve been force-fed the doctrine of self-reliance for so long that it’s embedded into the very fabric of our souls,” say authors Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington.48 The irony, according to Bridges, is that the more God-given abilities we have, the more we’re prone to rely on them — rather than on God. The problem is this self-reliance is corrosive to our souls.

Men go to absurd lengths explaining the problem of evil. In the process they sound like half-wit attorneys defending a mass-murderer. They say happenstance is a robber, free will a mixed blessing, joy more abundant than pain. Look deeper. There is a mighty force opposing our every plan, a cruel gravity smothering us, the heel of a boot grinding out the embers of our souls, a sadist cloaked in the dark fabric of existence. It is the implacable colossus of Fate. We scarcely have time to stumble onto the battlefield, much less comprehend our plight and mount a counterattack. In a few twinklings of the sun, on a day no different than all that came before, the cosmic ogre squashes us. Those convulsive growls that rend the sky, they are not thunder. They are laughter.” He

Illusions are fabrications of fragmented data designed to appease the soul and entice the flesh. Even in the real world we're surrounded by illusions. Like false advertising and misrepresentations by people. Visual just created a world not so different from our own. Where such illusions are fulfilled and enjoyed vicariously.” Spiral explained.

Whirling around and around, these feelings are all centered upon our notion of self. Yet Buddhism teaches that our so-called self, the ego, is a parasitical illusion without and substantial existence, something that has been constructed as a defense mechanism to deal with the experience of impermanence. It is the illusory self that suffers the full onslaught of our emotional turmoil. As it strives to create itself out of empty space and become solid, the ego-self always feels paranoid that it will be discovered for what it is-a hollow illusion. It works hard to maintain its status of "self importance" and suffers greatly as the all-encompassing reality of great space continuously dissolves the fabric of its being. Having no basis in reality, the ego-self keeps crumbling away and must be constantly reinvented. It reacts with delight when it meets with a situation that seems to protect it from damage.

Plato spoke of the Sisters of Fate on the last 3 pages of his book, “The Republic” when he said:    “Then the Sisters of Fate take all of our choices and weave them on their loom into the fabric of destiny. Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honors’ or dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser — God is justified”     [Quote from Plato’s Republic written 360BCE In the Public Domain]

There are these open spaces in life called "pauses" and it is most unfortunate how the majority of people do not bother themselves with the pauses of life in pursuit of their desire to fill every moment they experience WITH THEMSELVES. You need to take a few steps back and not feel the constant need to pour yourself into every space that life offers. The pauses are equally--if not more-- important as the active participations that you make. When we kiss, we remove a part of ourselves from the experience by closing our eyes; this removes the sense of sight, it allows for an open space for a pause to let life flow through it. When we make love, there are the pauses, the nothings, the gazing into the eyes; the removal of oneself from the experience. Why? Because we instinctively know that the best parts of life are not fully had in the absence of nothingness. Nothingness is vital, nothingness is essential. Have you ever just stopped in the middle of the day, crossed your arms in front of you, closed your eyes and paused? If you have, then you are one to know that when we remove ourselves from the equation sometimes, we will come to realise that there is actually a lot going on that does not require our deliberation or participation. There is laughter coming from somewhere, mixed with the sound of trains or motorcycles; there is a faint breeze moving its way over our skin; there's the way the fabric we wear hugs our body; there are sensations (sounds, smells, feelings and even visions) that are alive, they thrive in the pauses we do not partake in. There is such a rush amongst people to fill up every moment with the essence of themselves, but they forget to allow themselves to be filled with the essence of those moments! Do you see what I am saying here? They are empty, they feel empty; and why? Because in their desperation to fill up everything, they are not allowing themselves to be filled up by anything. They are truly empty. You will meet people obsessed with fulfilling something, or showing something, or doing something. They have no presence about them because their presence lies elsewhere, in other things, anywhere but within themselves. Then you will meet a person who's still and that stillness can be felt throughout every room she walks into. There's that strong presence because this person is filled up; not empty. When have you paused to let life in? When have you stopped scrambling to produce more social media content, stopped scrambling as though in a race to be unforgotten? Where are your pauses? Where are the spaces in your life where you let the light in? Where is your stillness? You are afraid of being forgotten, so, you scramble to impress yourself onto everything, everywhere... but what has been impressed into you? What do you feel like when the lights are off and nothing or nobody is near? What do you feel like when nobody is looking, when you might, for a while, actually be forgotten? What does that feel like? You need to be okay with that; you need to be okay with letting light enter into you, so it glows from within you. That is the kind of glow that reaches everywhere else without trying.

But I believe that love is more powerful than death. It has to be. I hope you can picture, like I do, that way down deep inside your heart, in the very fabric of your soul, there is a connection to another world. Love is a thread. A river. It connects those two worlds between your heart and Heaven. Even though I am going to be somewhere else, our love will still bind us together.

At the time of their invention, books were devices as crassly practical for storing and transmitting language, albeit fabricated from scarcely modified substances found in forest and field and animals, as the latest Silicon Valley miracles. But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.

And yet… the kindness I had witnessed in my time here; the drive to begin over, to build something worthwhile from the ashes of destruction seemed… unstoppable. I’d come to realize that the will to succeed, to create something bigger than ourselves was a basic drive woven deep within the very fabric of our humanity. We had all been given a second chance. A chance to try again. To make something… better. And so what if the Architect was AWOL? Who cared if there was no roadmap to follow? And as for the Adversary; well, it wouldn’t be the first time humanity had come face-to-face with a tyrant intent on subjugating all of us to his will. Throughout the history of our race, we had confronted those same trials and beaten them, time after time. There were two billion humans on this planet. Two billion hand-selected souls who shared the same drive and determination that had brought our species to dominance over every other living thing on this planet. This was our chance to build that brave new world that had haunted our species’ dreams for millennia. To rescue humanity from this fate. The Architect had chosen me. Had told me that I was the one it trusted. And if our theories were true, then the Architect knew more about me than I did. So, who was I to question its choice?

What made you come back?” Kitty jerked at his sudden question. She sputtered for a moment then laughed. “What made me come back? What do you mean?” He shrugged with one shoulder, never moving his gaze away from her. “At Eliza’s and Thomas’s wedding last year you were convinced that returning to Boston and living with your aunt was the best course to take. But it appears you have changed your mind. So, what made you come back?” “Is that why you followed me? To ask me that?” Her face burned, but she feigned composure and looked at him with as much ease as she could marshal. “Boston is too dangerous, you know that.” “’Tis true, I am well aware of what Boston and its residents suffer. But I cannot believe that was the only reason you returned.” Training her mouth to reveal nothing more than a slight grin, she strained to keep her pulse quiet. She stepped toward the fire, resting her hand atop the chair, acting more casual than she felt. “If there were any other reason, do you think that I would share such information with you? Surely, Nathaniel, I cannot share all my secrets.” “Secrets? Well, now I am curious.” Kitty rubbed the lace on her gloves and emitted a warm, genuine laugh that eased the strain in her voice. She offered an impish smile. “I came back for several reasons, if you must know. As I mentioned, ‘twas for matters of safety that Henry Donaldson insisted I return as well as—”  “Donaldson?” Kitty peered over her shoulder, hiding the grin that surged at the undeniable question in Nathaniel’s eyes. Could he be... nay, not possible. She kept her focus. “Aye, Henry Donaldson. You remember him, do you not?” “Aye, of course. I just... I just hadn’t known he was still... around. He was always a good friend and I admire him, despite his poor choice of allegiances.” Nathaniel’s interested expression stayed lifted, but the light in his eyes went flat. “Are you... have you been seeing much of him of late?” “I have,” she said. “He’s a close friend and I admire him very much.” Nathaniel’s expression didn’t change, but his Adam’s apple bobbed and he cleared his throat. “I see.”  She once again toyed with the fabric of her gloves, unsure what else to do with her hands. Quickly focusing on the subject of their conversation, she stared back into the fire. “Henry said it was too dangerous for me to stay despite my protestations. With Father gone and Eliza here—and since our home was destroyed that December… well, my home is here now.” The scent of smoke wafting from the fireplace in front of her snatched the horrid vision from its hiding place in her mind. Instantly she witnessed anew the roaring flames that devoured her treasured childhood home, taking with it all her cherished memories and replacing them with ash. She turned to Nathaniel, his face drawn as if he too relived the tragedy. The bond they’d shared that night had forged a friendship that could never be shaken.  Nathaniel stepped forward, the look of tenderness so rich in his eyes it wound around her shoulders like a warm cloak. “I can well understand that, Kitty. Donaldson was right in advising you to return.” Then, as if the heaviness were too much, he shrugged and sighed with added gaiety to his tone. “Well, I will admit that Sandwich didn’t feel the same with you gone, that’s for certain.” She tipped her head with a smirk. “You pined for my return?”  “With the pains of an anguished soul.” “Lying is a sin, Nathaniel,” she teased. Nathaniel laughed, his broad smile exposing his straight teeth. “All right, if you want the truth I pined more for your cooking, and more specifically for your carrot pudding. Are you satisfied?” “I knew it.

change comes through brutal honesty and vulnerability before God. Only face to face with our deepest ruling passions is there hope of redeeming the fabric of our inner world.

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Through the windshield, he murders me with his eyes. He’s got his entire soul compressed right up against his irises and they’re the color of hatred. They desperately want telekinetic powers so they can blow me into the sky, through the fabric of our universe and into another one. I hope it’s a parallel universe with a parallel Nicholas and Naomi. I want to torture him with two of me.

Language has the power to weave inspiration into the fabric of our souls, painting vibrant pictures in our minds.

The buildings are the heart of a city. The people come and go and give it its soul, but the fabric of the buildings, the style and atmosphere they evoke – that’s what gives a city its character.

She’s beautiful. If I let her, she’ll break my heart a million times until she can no longer find a weak spot in my armor. We hurt each other. That’s what I’ve learned so far . We’re each other’s pain.

Men. They sure act tough, but the second they catch a cold or have to investigate a sinister dark basement for missing people, the charade is over—the cards are on the table.

Why is it so hard to show ourselves mercy? Did a part of me believe that I deserved what I endured, just as Liam does? Why didn’t anyone help me? Didn’t I ask more than once? Didn’t my eyes scream loud enough for those that observed me so callously to stop?

No—I knew the moment I saw you. You were not to be pitied. Your mind is a beautiful and dangerous thing, Wynn, sick as it may be. But your soul illuminates the world around you, setting all else ablaze with your inevitable anguish.

Yeah, her soul is like chiffon, with plenty of tattered rips and tears. The fabric of our souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly

Do you realize that our humanity creates an irresistible point of connection that cannot be severed despite how much we assail it with our fabricated divisions, our differing opinions, the neighborhoods that we live in, or the color of our skin. And if I dare to touch your humanity despite all of the differences that our worlds might thrust between us, I will live with the knowledge that the souls of two people are powerful enough to breech the differences of a million worlds.

In the grand tapestry of existence, we are faced with a profound choice: to believe in God or reduce ourselves to mere dust. Yet, in this choice lies the very essence of our potential and purpose. God, the eternal enigma, represents the boundless mysteries that surround us, the cosmic symphony of order and chaos. To believe in God is to embrace the unfathomable depths of our existence, to recognize the awe-inspiring beauty in every breath, and to find solace in the face of adversity. It is to acknowledge that we are part of something greater, intricately connected to the divine fabric of creation. On the other hand, to resign ourselves to dust is to surrender our capacity for wonder and curiosity. It is to reduce the majesty of life to a mere collection of atoms, devoid of meaning or significance. In the realm of dust, there is no purpose, no guiding light to illuminate our path, only the relentless march of time eroding all that we hold dear. But let us not forget that the choice between God and dust is not a binary one. It is a spectrum that spans the vast landscape of human belief and understanding. Some find solace in the embrace of a divine being, while others seek meaning in the interconnectedness of all things. And there are those who find their own truth, crafting a personal philosophy that resonates with their soul. Ultimately, whether we believe in God or embrace our dusty origins, let us remember that it is our capacity for reflection, compassion, and growth that defines us as sentient beings. It is through the pursuit of wisdom and the cultivation of love that we find the true essence of our existence, transcending the limitations of belief or disbelief. So, let us choose wisely, for in the contemplation of God or dust, we shape not only our own destiny but also the destiny of humanity itself. May we find the courage to explore the depths of our beliefs and the humility to appreciate the vastness of the unknown. And in doing so, may we discover the profound beauty that lies within the delicate balance between faith and reason.

In the tapestry of existence, music is the thread that weaves emotions into the fabric of our hearts, creating a symphony of peace that resonates through the soul.

Whoever coined the phrase “sticks and stones” is an asshole, don’t you think? Words indeed hurt more than stones. Thanks for trying to gaslight me out of it though. It didn’t work.

Avoidance has always been my coping mechanism. If I don’t think about it, it doesn’t matter. My day goes on.

What genre do you like?” He winks at me. “Dark romance where the heroine gets fucked by the psychopaths.

There’s a span of time in which you can learn someone’s name. After that window, if you don’t know their name but they know yours, it’s unspeakable to ask for it.

Monster. Demon. Evil. Insufferable child. Miserable bitch. Though they all hurt and damaged me in unique ways, I think one was worse. One broke me, unlike the rest. One made me realize that perhaps death would be the only cry loud enough to be heard. No one heard me. No one ever fucking heard me. “Being told that I was, inevitably, going to kill people. Being told that they could see the sinister evil inside my soul. That looking at me made them sick.” I choke on tears and swallow hard, blinking past the emotions and fighting all my inner safety walls to get the words out. “That I was better off dead. Because all my existence did was make them wish to die.

She’s special, Liam. I know you like her, but be careful. Her mind is her worst enemy and love might be too overbearing on fabric as thin as hers.” My brows pull together. “Fabric as thin as hers?” “Yeah, her soul is like chiffon, with plenty of tattered rips and tears. The fabric of our souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly.

Lanston Nevers “The Fabric of our Souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly.

That’s what the real world does to us, isn’t it? Grind, grind, grind for forty-plus hours a week just to stand at the grocery store and worry about whether you can afford food.

Yeah, her soul is like chiffon, with plenty of tattered rips and tears. The fabric of our souls is thin and worn. We must be gentle and love tirelessly.

I—I don’t want to be this character anymore.” I press my hand to my chest. “I can’t keep waking up and being disappointed with who I see in the mirror. I don’t want to be me.

Whoever coined the phrase “sticks and stones” is an asshole, don’t you think?

Why can’t you just… not be like this?

Lanston pulls him in for a tight hug and pats him on the shoulder before getting up to leave. Lanston has a harder time with tragic topics—even in group sessions, he excuses himself frequently.

It’s time to let go of the things that hurt.

The need to feel pain is almost completely gone when I’m with her.

I saw a young woman. A confused little flower trying to bloom in the daylight when you were always meant to thrive beneath the stars, unlike those around you. You’ve wilted enough for the world. Don’t you think?” Liam’s smile and question fill every part of my weary soul. “It’s time to let go of the things that hurt.

Hi, Wynn, my name is Poppie. I like reading books when I’m not dying inside.

I saw a young woman. A confused little flower trying to bloom in the daylight when you were always meant to thrive beneath the stars, unlike those around you. You’ve wilted enough for the world. Don’t you think?

We sit silently for a moment before I tap on the search bar and type in my name. Before I can hit search, Liam grabs my wrist and stops me. “I don’t want to know,” he says plainly. “Why not?” “I don’t want to know what made you want to die, Wynn.

So that I can love you the way you deserve to be loved.

Lanston Nevers. I like coffee and taking long naps, and I want to die.

Why did you do it?” he asks, not unkindly, but his voice is low and empty of warmth. “Because you were hurt and I—” “Not that,” he snipes. “Who… Who hurt you so bad that you wanted to die?” His eyes hold firm on mine. He’s leaning over me and has me pinned. I don’t think he intends on letting me sleep without an answer. “Well, it wasn’t just one person.” He looks at me expectantly. “Why do you want to know? I thought I repulsed you.” I try to wriggle from the blanket but he tightens his hold. “You do.” I fight the pain the insult threads through my chest. “But it only makes you all the more a wonder. So again, who could possibly plant such dark, sinister seeds into a heart like yours?” His eyes soften.

Why dull life with the bleary lines that the adult world draws for us? I want to be childish. I want to run free with all the dark things in the night.

For anything. Someone, something, anything. Wait for a devil like me if you have to.

You let me know and I’ll hold you until the darkness fades.

We’re the perfect elixir. I want to feel alive so fucking desperately—I’ll chase the high forever if I have to. Nothing’s worked for me yet.

Remedium meum,” he murmurs, a breath away from my lips, smiling as he gently runs his fingers up my arms.

My cure.” His voice is a mere whisper but it sinks into my bones. “I’ll stop you in your darkest hours. Do you promise to do the same for me?

I like pain. So don’t be afraid to bite my dick while you’re sucking it tonight.

His blue eyes sear into me like the coldest rain. “Because it looked so painful, and I want to take that pain from you. We can make better memories for you to play to, don’t you think?

But if you don’t exist, who will cure me?

He pulls me closer, holding me like I’ve always wished someone would.

I glance down at my hands. That itch pulls beneath my skin, the desire to feel pain, to hurt myself. I want to hurt as much as she and Lanston do; I want to feel the pain they experience. I want to punish myself for not being a better man… for not being good enough.

Please, please, please wait just a minute! At the time of their invention, books were devices as crassly practical for storing or transmitting language, albeit fabricated from scarcely modified substances found in forest and field and animals, as the latest Silicon Valley miracles. But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.