Father Ted Quotes

You can't fix grief,” said Simon. “A rabbi told me that when my father died. The only thing that fixes grief is time, and the love of the people who care about you, and Tavvy has that.” He squeezed Mark's shoulder briefly. “Take care of yourself,” he said. “Shelo ted'u od tza'ar, Mark Blackthorn.” “What does that mean?” said Mark. “It's a blessing,” said Simon. “Something else the rabbi taught me. ‘Let it be that you should know no further sorrow.

Grow up? Get herself straightened out? Her mind reeled from the verbal battering. No matter what she did, her father would tell her she was wrong. Worthless. Undeserving.

I have always known there is a difference between loneliness and aloneness. I am alone, but my father is lonely. And if I had to choose one, I would rather be alone.

You can't fix grief,” said Simon. “A rabbi told me that when my father died. The only thing that fixes grief is time, and the love of the people who care about you, and Tavvy has that.” He squeezed Mark's shoulder briefly. “Take care of yourself,” he said. “Shelo ted'u od tza'ar, Mark Blackthorn.” “What does that mean?” said Mark. “It's a blessing,” said Simon. “Something else the rabbi taught me. ‘Let it be that you should know no further sorrow.

Women could be quite crafty, he knew that much. His father said it often. Smarter than men, too, most of the time. You had to know your way around if you wanted to fall in love with a woman.

There's a reason that murderous hatred has to be taught- and not just taught, but forcibly implanted. It's not a naturally-occurring phenomenon. It is a lie. It is a lie told over and over again- often to people who have no resources and who are denied alternative views of the world. It's a lie my father believed, and one he hoped to pass on to me.

You can't fix grief,” said Simon. “A rabbi told me that when my father died. The only thing that fixes grief is time, and the love of the people who care about you, and Tavvy has that.” He squeezed Mark's shoulder briefly. “Take care of yourself,” he said. “Shelo ted'u od tza'ar, Mark Blackthorn.” “What does that mean?” said Mark. “It's a blessing,” said Simon. “Something else the rabbi taught me. Let it be that you should know no further sorrow.

These were his people--a strange thought. Maybe not his very own people, as in father, mother, brother, sister, but people just like him. He was lost but not so lost after all.

It is surrendering what we think we know about the Father so we can truly know him.

It was a saying about noble figures in old Irish poems—he would give his hawk to any man that asked for it, yet he loved his hawk better than men nowadays love their bride of tomorrow. He would mourn a dog with more grief than men nowadays mourn their fathers.

In the Russian Orthodox Church there is the concept of the Holy Fool. It means someone who is a fool to the ways of the world, but wise to the ways of God. I think that Ted, from the moment he saw the baby, knew that he could not possibly be the father. ...Perhaps he saw in that moment that if he so much as questioned the baby's fatherhood, it would mean humiliation for the child and might jeopardize his entire future. ...Perhaps he understood that he could not reasonably expect an independent and energetic spirit like Winnie to find him sexually exciting and fulfilling. ...And so he decided upon the most unexpected, and yet the simplest course of all. He chose to be such a Fool that he couldn't see the obvious.

When you have a desperate love for God,’ Father Micheal would say, ‘the comforts of this world feel like paper flowers. They are easily put aside. If you really have God’s love.

As Paul wrote, a love that is patient, showing no jealousy or arrogance, keeping no record of wrong, not seeking its own and not provoked by another’s behavior. These are the evidences of true love which flows from those who know the Father and His limitless love for them.

To be fair, something strange had happened. Donald Trump won the election. There was a Maya Angelou quote that ricocheted across social media during the 2016 election: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Trump showed us who he was gleefully, constantly. He mocked John McCain for being captured in Vietnam and suggested Ted Cruz’s father had helped assassinate JFK; he bragged about the size of his penis and mused that his whole life had been motivated by greed; he made no mystery of his bigotry or sexism; he called himself a genius while retweeting conspiracy theories in caps lock.

Ahmed is not a murderer like my father, but within the walls of our apartment—among people he claims to love—he is every inch a terrorist.

Do I feel empathy for Trump voters? That’s a question I’ve asked myself a lot. It’s complicated. It’s relatively easy to empathize with hardworking, warmhearted people who decided they couldn’t in good conscience vote for me after reading that letter from Jim Comey . . . or who don’t think any party should control the White House for more than eight years at a time . . . or who have a deeply held belief in limited government, or an overriding moral objection to abortion. I also feel sympathy for people who believed Trump’s promises and are now terrified that he’s trying to take away their health care, not make it better, and cut taxes for the superrich, not invest in infrastructure. I get it. But I have no tolerance for intolerance. None. Bullying disgusts me. I look at the people at Trump’s rallies, cheering for his hateful rants, and I wonder: Where’s their empathy and understanding? Why are they allowed to close their hearts to the striving immigrant father and the grieving black mother, or the LGBT teenager who’s bullied at school and thinking of suicide? Why doesn’t the press write think pieces about Trump voters trying to understand why most Americans rejected their candidate? Why is the burden of opening our hearts only on half the country? And yet I’ve come to believe that for me personally and for our country generally, we have no choice but to try. In the spring of 2017, Pope Francis gave a TED Talk. Yes, a TED Talk. It was amazing. This is the same pope whom Donald Trump attacked on Twitter during the campaign. He called for a “revolution of tenderness.” What a phrase! He said, “We all need each other, none of us is an island, an autonomous and independent ‘I,’ separated from the other, and we can only build the future by standing together, including everyone.” He said that tenderness “means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future.

As I knew my Father in a new way, I discovered who I was as His son. That I was already all I could hope to be because I was in Christ. All of my striving to *become* had actually hidden the truth from me, because in striving to become, I was only denying who I already was.

If enslaved to the desire for wealth, let this go. If enslaved by grievance, turn the cheek. If your significance is in being mother or father or wife or husband or child or in having any of these—indeed, if you cling even to your own life—these too let go. Have instead a new mind set upon the kingdom. Do not be anxious, but rather repent—see beyond your old mind, you see? Only have eyes to see what is true beyond what you think. Trust the Father. Then you will master this world with pleasure rather than be mastered by it. Then you will find the power to command any storm.

You can’t fix grief,” said Simon. “A rabbi told me that when my father died. The only thing that fixes grief is time, and the love of the people who care about you, and Tavvy has that.” He squeezed Mark’s shoulder briefly. “Take care of yourself,” he said. “Shelo ted’u od tza’ar, Mark Blackthorn.

The only correction you ever really need is in your perception of who you already are as a child of your Father.

was the bad, easy, faux-tough-guy type of racist stuff his father loved to say just to piss people off. Ted hated that shit, found it offensive. But sometimes, against his better judgment, Ted felt something like a ventriloquist’s dummy, involuntarily speaking his father’s words. He might adopt an attitude or phrase out of the blue, like some sort of paternal Tourette’s.

THE TRUTH 1. God is infinitely good, far more loving and gentle and kind to His children than any earthly mother or father imaginable. God is infinitely complete; nothing can threaten or disturb Him. Nothing can be taken away from Him, making Him less than complete, nor added to Him who is already complete. 2. You are remade in the likeness and glory of your Father, finite yet already complete in union with Yeshua—you in Him and He in you, risen with Him and seated in heavenly places. Nothing can separate you from His love. THE WAY 3. Your journey now is to see who you truly are. You are the light of the world, the son or the daughter of your Father, a new creature flowing with more beauty and power than you dared imagine possible. 4. You will only see who you are and thus be who you are as you surrender your attachment to all other identities, which are like gods of a lesser power that block your vision of your true identity and keep you in darkness. THE LIFE 5. Love, joy, and peace are the manifestation of your true identity and the Father’s realm, on earth as in heaven through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The only way to identify with your true identity is to let go of all other identities, and all offense that blocks your vision, and all vain imaginations of what else might fulfill you or save you from trouble in this life and that to come.” “This is true surrender,” I said. “Walking in the realm of the Father’s sovereign presence here on earth, we will find peace in the storms; we will walk on the troubled seas of our lives; we will not be poisoned by the lies of snakes; we will move mountains that appear insurmountable; we will heal all manner of sickness that has twisted minds and bodies.

They drove farther north like that. In perfect loving antagonism. It occurred to Ted that maybe Marty was like all the red and gold leaves he saw burning on the trees. In nature, it seems, things reached their most vibrant and beautiful right at the point of death, flaming out with all they had—why not natural man? His father was red, green, yellow, and gold, like a beautiful bird falling from the sky. Parodoxical undressing again.

It was real. Not your actual father, no, but the one who tells you that you’re not good enough. That you don’t belong. The one we all secretly fear when the lights are off. The one that religion has turned into a god made in their own image, capable of hatred.

I remembered that argument as being a turning point for me. I had imagined a narrative of redemption and self-improvement in which I was the heroic single father, rising to meet the challenge. But the reality was…what? How much of what had happened since then could I take credit for?

You know what Mrs. Shure, the librarian, told me?” “What’s that, Theo?” his father asked. “God does not make junk.” Ted stared into his tumbler, the dwindling ice cubes sloshing at the bottom of the glass. His fidget finger tapped at the glass. Knocking the ice against the wall of the tumbler and turning his face upward, Ted looked at Theo. “Therefore, I am not junk,” said Theo. “Yuh.” “And I came from you. You are not junk either, Dad. Just because you didn’t shoot a gun in France or just because you didn’t become an engineer, doesn’t mean you are any less than any other man. Dad, both you and I have made mistakes, but we are not junk.

In 1858, during his debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln predicted a future crisis over “the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants.” But he also saw hope for a solution, right in front of all Americans: “When in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.”56 In other words, Lincoln came to Independence Hall with as clear a purpose as Thomas Jefferson had in 1776. He had spent his entire life approaching this stage.

Consider the various ways in which Trump’s campaign represented a one-man campaign against established knowledge. He was one of the original “birthers” who demanded that Barack Obama prove his American citizenship. He quoted the National Enquirer approvingly as a source of news. He sided with antivaccine activism. He admitted that he gets most of his information on foreign policy from “the shows” on Sunday morning television. He suggested that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died from natural causes in early 2016, might have been murdered. And he charged that the father of one of his opponents (Ted Cruz) was involved in the Mother of All Conspiracy Theories, the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

...he could do anything he liked with a woman. The ContrOleur could not imagine what it was they saw in him. He was casual with them and rather brutal. He took what they gave him, but seemed incapable of gratitude. He used them for his pleasure and then flung them indifferently away. Once or twice this had got him into trouble, and Mr Gruyter had had to sentence an angry father for sticking a knife in Ginger Ted’s back one night, and a Chinese woman had sought to poison herself by swallowing opium because he had deserted her. Once Mr Jones came to the ContrOleur in a great state because the beachcomber had seduced one of his converts. The ContrOleur agreed that it was very deplorable, but could only advise Mr Jones to keep a sharp eye on these young persons.

I was about to search for information on forging a digital watermark to prove this video was faked, but I stopped myself, recognizing it as an act of desperation. I would have testified, hand on a stack of Bibles or using any oath required of me, that it was Nicole who’d accused me of being the reason her mother left us. My recollection of that argument was as clear as any memory I had, but that wasn’t the only reason I found the video hard to believe; it was also my knowledge that—whatever my faults or imperfections—I was never the kind of father who could say such a thing to his child. Yet here was digital video proving that I had been exactly that kind of father. And while I wasn’t that man anymore, I couldn’t deny that I was continuous with him. Even more telling was the fact that for many years I had successfully hidden the truth from myself. Earlier I said that the details we choose to remember are a reflection of our personalities. What did it say about me that I put those words in Nicole’s mouth instead of mine?

We discovered this when we invited the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman to TED. Known as the father of behavioral economics, he’s an extraordinary thinker with a toolkit of ideas that can change any worldview. We had originally asked him to speak in the traditional TED way. No lectern. Just stand on the stage, with some note cards if need be, and give the talk. But in rehearsal, it was clear that he was uncomfortable. He hadn’t been able to fully memorize the talk and so kept pausing and glancing down awkwardly to catch himself up. Finally I said to him, “Danny, you’ve given thousands of talks in your time. How are you most comfortable speaking?” He said he liked to put his computer on a lectern so that he could refer to his notes more readily. We tried that, and he relaxed immediately. But he was also looking down at the screen a little too much. The deal we struck was to give him the lectern in return for looking out at the audience as much as he could. And that’s exactly what he did. His excellent talk did not come across as a recited or read speech at all. It felt connected. And he said everything he wanted to say, with no awkwardness.

When Alice was young, she had no idea what a jag even was. In those early days of their love affair, Alice found Ted’s rogue demeanor attractive. He was a Snow. But he was a rebel. He stood up to his stern father, and no one in the Snow family did that. The Snows were all too afraid of losing their entitlements. Ted had a relaxed swagger in his walk. Alice loved his confidence, the fashion of his easy laughter. She had no idea, not even a suspicion, that it was drink that fueled his swagger as well as his gumption. He was almost always drunk. But she was a teenager and a dreamer, and she loved his seeming fearlessness. He was handsome as well, with soft eyes that had a happy mischief to them. His thick, curly hair bounced as he swaggered. He was a picture. She thought he was hardy and strong, but it was the heat of the alcohol that made his cheeks flush apple red. He appeared to be the picture of health, but indeed, he wasn’t. He never was.

There on my knees I closed my eyes and wept like a child. The sorrow I had carried for so many years was washed from my mind and heart, which were flooded instead with light and love. I knew without a shadow of doubt that I had found not only myself, but in Yeshua my master, and through him my Father. A groan broke from my throat and I began to shake with sobs, overwhelmed by such exquisite relief, for I, like the son in his parable, had been lost, but now I was found. Waves of light seemed to sweep over and through me, filling my veins and my bones with warm love. I was awash in the kingdom of heaven. And there was no end to those waves of light… they were eternal. Time had vanished. He was gone, I finally realized. And yet he was still with me, as near as my own breath. I don’t know how long I wept; I only know that when I then sighed a great breath and opened my eyes, morning had come. The sight offered to me by my two eyes was still blurred, but this was of no consequence. I was seeing with new eyes. Eyes that did not require the light of the sun in this sky. The light of the kingdom of heaven was bright within me.

I have lived long enough to see real, significant changes made for the good...and I have been fortunate enough to have participated in some of them...One person can make a difference! (Father Ted Hesburgh, C.S.C., quoted in our book, God's Icebreaker by Jill A. Boughton and Julie Walters)

the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  According to His great mercy, 

He adored telling this story of near disaster and how he had triumphed, just as he relished the report of how he went on stage every night on tour in his The Cosmic Dance of Shiva, requiring all manner of spinal flexibilities and related actions, while his sacroiliac was painfully out of place.

Ted did part of St. Denis's poetry tours with her.

Then I understood. Yeshua’s teaching: If anyone comes to me and does not hate their father and mother, their wife… I removed my hand. “I’m not your wife. And if I was, what does it mean to hate?” “To let go,” he said. “To make of no account…He speaks of the chains of affection for this world.” “Then you would make me of no account?” I had been so enraptured with Yeshua’s promise to save Talya that I’d given little thought to this difficult teaching. And thinking of it now, I was sure that Saba must be wrong. I was also hearing his confession that he found himself enslaved by affection for me. The former nagged at my mind; the latter did not bother me. “You are my closest companion, Saba, not my husband.” He glanced at me. “Yes…” But there was some pain in his eyes, and I regretted being so blunt. My words didn’t properly express my own affection for him. He was struggling with his emotions for me, thinking they distracted him from seeing Yeshua’s kingdom clearly. And had not my own desperate need to save Talya made me blind too? Yes, but there had to be another way of seeing such bonds. “Stephen says you cannot truly love someone unless you also hate them,” Saba said. “Only when you release all expectation of them can you love them without condition, as the Father loves all.” These teachings cut at my heart. You could not serve both the system of the world and the Father, Yeshua said. But wife and son? This was impossible. The teaching was opposite the way of the world—and my way as well. “You would hate me so you can love me,” I said, aggravated. He hesitated, then rose. “I don’t know…” He remained still for a moment, then turned. “I must leave.

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find.’ If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give to those who ask him!” My mind filled with

As it happened, 2009 coincided with the first tea party rallies in Texas. The tea party was a true phenomenon of people fed up with politicians from both parties who’d raised our taxes, spent us into debt, and refused to listen to the voters who’d elected them. My father and I both spoke at some of the first rallies.

My appointment with destiny was approaching. Raj's father was getting ready to leave for his office in Patna. "Come," he said. "We'll sit in the car." We sat turned towards each other, and he said: "Give me your hand." I held it out, and he grasped it as in a handshake, but held it in his grip for several moments. Then, releasing it, he gave my thumb a quick backward flip, and murmured: "Achcha! "You have a very determined soul. This also is reflected in your mind. "You are Jupiter...." Why not? I thought. I like the sound of that.

My son was singing to us of our Father! Of Yeshua…Of himself, the truest part of him, and of me, the me that was now risen and complete, joined in Yeshua’s identity, like water in a bowl and the bowl in the water at once. He was the Way. The Truth. Life. No one could know the Father without this joining. And the song said more, all at once, like the opening of eyes to see an entire landscape once darkened by blindness. The mystery Talya sang to me in that single note could fill a hundred scrolls. I stood high in that arena and I trembled with wonder.    TALYA

Therefore, •fear the Lord and worship Him in sincerity and truth.  Get rid of the gods your fathers worshiped  beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and worship •Yahweh. 15† But if it doesn’t please you to worship Yahweh, choose for yourselves today the one you will worship: the gods your fathers worshiped beyond the Euphrates River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.  As for me and my family, we will worship Yahweh.

When right-wing rock star Ted Nugent drew national ire for calling President Obama a “subhuman mongrel,” some prominent conservatives like Rick Perry initially came to his defense, while others dodged media questions about the racially charged insult. But after months of “listening sessions” with African American civic leaders, students, and government officials, Rand had come to appreciate how hurtful comments like those could be, even when coming from unserious celebrity provocateurs. One night after Nugent made the comment, Rand emailed Stafford saying he wanted to denounce the remark. Stafford was sympathetic, but he cautioned that, politically, it could cause problems on the right. As a father, doesn’t it offend you? Rand wrote back. Stafford glanced up from his phone at his adopted daughter, who was black, and then at his wife, who had been fuming about Nugent’s comment ever since she heard it. “You’re right,” he told Rand. That night the senator tweeted, “Ted Nugent’s derogatory description of President Obama is offensive and has no place in politics. He should apologize.

My journey wasn’t becoming more than I was, because I was already complete. Rather, it was to awaken to or see who I already was because when and as I did that, I found myself rushing to my Father’s table where His fruits were peace, love and power in limitless abundance. It is as Jesus taught: The eye (perception) is the lamp of our body (earthly experience.) If we see clearly, our earthly experience is full of light, but if our perception isn’t clear, the light within us is dark, and how deep is that darkness. We are the light of the world, but we cover up that truth and so cannot see it. This was why Jesus came to bring sight to the blind. He came to bring sight to me! I also discovered that the only way I could see (and be) who I truly am in this life is to let go of my attachment to all other identities. However alluring they are, they only block my sight to who I already am in the light. As I see who I am as my Father’s son and His extravagant love for me, my natural experience and expression of life always leads to a staggering kind of love, on earth as it is in heaven, right now, right here. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. In fact, love is surely the whole point of our union with and in Christ, even as He prayed: I have given them the glory that you gave me that they may be one, just as we are one. Why? So that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you have loved me. It is only in the awareness of how I am loved by the Father and of my union with Christ that I can share that same love… so that the world would know how they are loved, and that Jesus really was sent by the Father. All of this was incredibly good news to me, the one who seemed to fail every day in his own efforts to become worthy, just like the Pharisees did with all their laws. Perhaps this is why they called it gospel, which simply means “good news.” It was far better than I had dared hope. I can now see that my Father had been gently leading me to that place of surrender for over forty years. In fact, it was my own separation from my earthly father at age six that first set me on that journey. It is said that suffering gets our attention. So then, what a blessing, however much suffering I experienced on the path of awakening.

Our revelation is for the sons and daughters of God, realizing now that the greatest manifestation of the Spirit in our lives is love—the kind that holds no record of wrong—without which everything else we do is worthless, as Paul made so plain to the Corinthians. The Spirit of truth comes to show us the Father’s love and our union with and in Christ, because only in this awareness can we love as He loves and so show ourselves and the world the love of the Father.

Think of your life as a boat on the stormy seas. The boat represents all that you think will keep you safe from death by drowning. Dark skies block out the sun, winds tear at your face, angry waves rise to sweep you off your treasured boat and send you into a deep, watery grave. And so you cringe in fear as you cling to the boat that you believe will save you from suffering. But Yeshua is at peace. How can He be at rest in the midst of such a terrible threat? When you cry out in fear, He rises and looks out at that storm, totally unconcerned. Why are you afraid? He asks. Has He gone mad? Does He not see the reason to fear? Does He not see the cruel husband, the cancer, the terrified children, the abuse, the injustice, the empty bank account, the rejection at the hands of friends, the assault of enemies, the killing of innocents? How could He ask such a question? Unless what He sees and what you see are not the same. And what does He see instead of the storm? He sees another dimension to which this one is ultimately subject, though the two are also wholly integrated. He sees the Father, who offers no judgment nor condemnation. He sees life and love and joy and peace in an eternal union with His Father, manifesting now, on earth, in the most spectacular fashion. He sees peace in the storm. And so can we, if we only change our beliefs about what we are seeing; if we only, through faith, see as He sees. His question is still the same today. Why are you afraid, oh you of little faith? Yeshua shows us the Way to be saved from all that we think threatens us on the dark seas of our lives. Only when we, too, see what He sees can we leave the treasured boat that we think will save us and walk on the troubled waters that we thought would surely drown us. I wasn’t seeing what He saw, you see? I was seeing the storm clouds.

To follow Yeshua’s Way is to let go of this world’s systems to see and experience a far greater one—one that is closer than our own breath. It is to surrender what we think we know about the Father, so that we can truly know Him. It is to let go of who we think we are to discover who we really are. It is to let go of our continued striving to invite Yeshua into our hearts and instead place our identity in the fact that He has already taken us into His heart. It is the great reversal of all that we think will give us significance and meaning in this life, so that we can live with more peace and love than we have yet imagined. As such, The Forgotten Way isn’t a set of facts or labels or dogma, but a living, breathing journey on which all Christians find themselves. A journey of experiencing great triumph in this life, not only in whatever life awaits us, by awakening to our true identity. The journey from hate to love. The journey from fear to faith. The journey from insecurity to rest and peace. The journey from crawling to flying. Being in the eternal realm of the Father’s sovereign presence here on earth, we will find peace in the storms; we will walk on the troubled seas of our lives; we will not be poisoned by the lies of snakes; we will move mountains which appear insurmountable; we will heal all manner of sickness that has twisted minds and bodies. Love will flow from us as living waters, because the manifestation of the kingdom of heaven on earth is love. And when we love, all will know, there goes one who can fly. In the end, the journey is letting go of who we think we are, to see and so be who we truly are right now, in this moment.

The path into this eternal realm is faith—belief in, not about, Yeshua. Intimately knowing the father, not merely knowing about him with the mind. Even the devils know all about God and it profits them nothing. Even calling him Lord and doing many miraculous works in his name means little. Only knowing him intimately, as an infant knows.

Finding Superman In today’s vernacular, Yeshua’s Way is indeed the way of superheroes. In this sense, was He not the first superhero, and we now His apprentices, born into His identity and learning to fly? Would we not rush to see and experience this truth about Yeshua, our Father, and ourselves through the power of the Holy Spirit? Think of yourself as Superman or Superwoman. If Superman were to forget that he’s Superman, he would only be Clark Kent and Clark Kent can’t fly. Only Superman can fly. And having forgotten that he’s actually Superman, Clark no longer knows he can fly. How then does Clark Kent go about flying again? Someone would need to tap Clark Kent on the shoulder and say, “Umm . . . excuse me, but you’re Superman. If you take off that shirt and tie (surrender them) you’ll find you’re clothed in another suit in which you can fly.” Then Clark Kent would need to believe this is true. Only then could he go about the business of rushing to the phone booth, letting go of his old Clark Kent costume, and fly once more as Superman. In the same way, we who are clothed in Christ have great power and none greater than to love—without which, to quote Paul, the rest is nothing. But only in surrendering the old business suit do we see who we really are. Who are you being right now, at this moment? Do you want to “fly” again? Or maybe you want to fly for the first time, because our life ‘flying’ is loving God with all your heart, loving yourself as you are loved, and loving all others as yourself. As much, it is operating in the dimension unbound by space and time, called the miraculous.

Your name will no longer be Abram,  but your name will be Abraham,  for I will make you the father of many nations.  6 I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you. 7 I will keep My covenant between Me and you, and your future •offspring throughout their generations, as an everlasting covenant  to be your God and the God of your offspring after you.

In Blackpool, that midsummer’s night, with Ted Watson, a man I ceased to call father a long time ago.

He lost the popular vote due to massive voter fraud. He agreed with Infowars’ Alex Jones that Hillary Clinton might have taken some form of drugs to enhance her debate performance and demanded, “I think we should take a drug test prior to the debate. I do.”24 Trump attacked his primary opponent Senator Ted Cruz by linking his father to the JFK assassination. He has said that a pillow was found on the Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia’s face and he might have been murdered. He’s sided with the anti-vaccine conspiracy nuts. Most famously, he laid the groundwork for his campaign for the Republican nomination by promising he could prove President Barack Obama was born in Africa. He’s claimed President Obama wore a ring with an Arabic inscription. He’s said global warming is a “hoax,” that windmills cause cancer.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) estimates that there are 340 jurisdictions with sanctuary policies, located in forty-three states and the District of Columbia. CIS found that in just one eight-month period in 2014, more than 8,100 deportable aliens were released by sanctuary jurisdictions. Three thousand were felons and 62 percent had prior criminal records. Nineteen hundred were later rearrested a total of 4,300 times on 7,500 offenses including assaults, burglaries, sexual assaults, thefts, and even murders—none of which would have occurred except for these sanctuary policies! Such sanctuary policies are illegal under federal immigration law, which specifies that “no State or local government entity may be prohibited, or in any way restricted, from sending to or receiving from the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any alien in the United States.”9 But in accordance with its nonenforcement policy on immigration, the Obama administration announced in 2010 that it would not sue sanctuary cities for violating federal law. As Kate Steinle’s father, Jim Steinle, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 21, 2015: Everywhere Kate went throughout the world, she shined the light of a good citizen of the United States of America. Unfortunately, due to disjointed laws and basic incompetence at many levels, the U.S. has suffered a self-inflicted wound in the murder of our daughter by the hand of a person who should have never been on the streets of this country.10 Kate Steinle’s murderer had been deported five times, and kept reentering the country with no consequences. So on July 9, 2015, Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ) introduced H.R. 3011—Kate’s Law—to impose a five-year mandatory prison sentence on anyone arrested in the United States after having been previously deported. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). But the Obama administration made it clear it would not support such a bill if it passed Congress.

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great, and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.” —Patanjali, an Indian teacher often called the Father of Yoga.

She was halfway through the revolving door when the thought hit her; she was the one who had seen Junior and Luther fighting before the banquet. She was the one had told Detective Sullivan. Overcome with guilt, she grabbed Ted’s arm and faced him. “It’s because of me,” she said. “Junior was arrested because of me!

Your heart must not be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in Me. 2 In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if not, I would have told you. I am going away to prepare a place for you. 3 If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also. 4 You know the way to where I am going.

Whatever you ask in My name, I will do it so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14† If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.

A child born of this method would have no biological father.” “True, but the father’s biological contribution is of minimal importance here. The mother will think of her husband as the child’s father, so her imagination will impart a combination of her own and her husband’s appearance and character to the foetus. That will not change. And I hardly need mention that name impression would not be made available to unmarried women.

As for you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a whole heart and a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands the intention of every thought. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever. 10 Realize now that the Lord has chosen you to build a house for the sanctuary. Be strong, and do it.

Being a father transcends how we feel moment-to-moment. We have to remember that everything we do is being observed, recorded, and processed by our kids, and is important to their emotional development –– perhaps even more so for children of divorce.

We dared to think . . . this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But like his father,” Ted said, his voice catching, “he had every gift but length of years.

with saying it was Waldren who killed Callum, I wonder how sympathetic the public would be to helping find the killer of the bad man?’ She was gathering her things together again and preparing to leave. ‘Well, start with DC Winter, isn’t it, at South Manchester? Bring him in. And I promise to see what else I can do.’ Ted was hoping he wouldn’t be too late getting away. It was his night for self-defence and judo. He’d warned Trev he would be unlikely to make it in time for the juniors but that he would try his best to get there for judo. Now that things were back to normal between them and Ted’s face was looking much better, though was still painful, it would do no harm to remind Trev that he seldom let his guard down without good reason. It could make for a lively evening, which was what he needed. It was late afternoon when Jo came to find him, just before the planned end of day get-together. ‘I’m just back from seeing Páraic’s parish priest, Father Hughes. John,’ Jo told him.

if I hear Declan Cannavale’s voice or smell his sexy vampire scent or feel the warmth of his body in proximity to mine, my nipples respond with a fifteen-minute TED Talk on how hot his butt is.

UC Davis psychology professor Robert Emmons—who is considered the father of gratitude research—puts it this way: “Grateful living is possible only when we realize that other people and agents do things for us that we cannot do for ourselves. Gratitude emerges from two stages of information processing—affirmation and recognition. We affirm the good and credit others with bringing it about. In gratitude, we recognize that the source of goodness is outside of ourselves.

The real bond, however, that connects both Elvis, the rock-and-roll king, and Ted, the ribs king, is their sense of gratitude and giving back. Many modern performers command the headlines by doing things that are stupid and selfish. Elvis was generous to a fault. At his death, he was nearly broke after having sent Cadillac’s to random strangers. Elvis understood that he needed to give back to a world that had given him great riches. Since my father was close to Ted, I witnessed numerous instances where Ted helped people anonymously. He also participated in major Cincinnati charities, such as the Hope House. Ted developed his close friendship with Bob Hope when they served on the board of that charity. Ted told The Cincinnati Enquirer, “I’m a giver,” and it was an accurate self-assessment. Both kings were an important part of my growing years. As I get older and think about how to run my businesses, I realize that both kings gave me models and ideals to strive for.

Sandeep Jauhar is the bestselling author of three acclaimed books, Intern, Doctored, and Heart: A History, which was named a best book of 2018 by Science Friday, The Mail on Sunday, and the Los Angeles Public Library, and was a PBS NewsHour / New York Times book club pick; it was also a finalist for the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize. A practicing physician, Jauhar writes regularly for the opinion section of The New York Times. His TED Talk on the emotional heart was one of the ten most watched of 2019. To learn more about his work, follow him on Twitter: @sjauhar. You can sign up for email updates here.

How are you gonna make that happen?” Daddy would ask. “You gotta set your intentions, BK. You got to know what you want and believe in it. Speak it into being.” Way before tech-age gurus were making millions for TED talks speaking the same truth, my father taught me the power of intention: You can’t be it unless you can believe it.

This was what Alvin Finch had learned: you can break their bones, but it is far better to break their heart. Suffice it to say that he had broken the father’s heart.

Rose was sixteen, and the only light in her dark world had been extinguished. She’d tried to kill herself with a rusty nail that night. Sylous had come to her for the first time then. Whispered to her about how he could protect her, save her, and set her on a different path. A chosen path on which she would be safe from all the cruel people who lived in sin. All she had to do was agree. Would she? She had. And as his first show of power, Sylous had killed her father in his home office as Rose looked on. He showed Pastor monsters terrifying enough to send him into cardiac arrest. It was the first time Rose had seen a Fury—the true wrath of God, not the manipulated version Pastor used to justify his violence.

You don’t know who they are? I thought. She looked in their direction and frowned. “No, but that’s not the point. Your only concern is keeping your baby safe.” I looked back at the visitors and saw the man was straightening. Then looking at me with kind eyes. For a moment, he held my gaze as I took in his face. Something about it pulled at my curiosity. A distant memory, something I might have known once and had long forgotten. But it captured me. And then the old memory sharpened, and recognition surged through my mind. “You know him?” Bobbie asked. The round shape of his face, soft jawline and light brown eyes. The same shaggy hair. Wide shoulders, tall and thin, like Jamie. The man before me hadn’t always been a stranger. Ben. My father.

Be careful, Grace, Bobbie’s familiar voice warned. An echo in my mind alone. And then she was there, standing across the street, hidden in shadow, invisible to others because she was there only for me. To protect me, I thought. Against things coming. My father had come and brought the boy, Eli. Protect your heart. Even from the boy? From everything. Yes, I thought, protect my heart from everything.

On the other hand, Alvin was looking for the perfect daughter who would love him with complete devotion, the way he loved himself. Unable to find such a daughter, he’d killed all of the girls, satisfied that he was at least punishing the fathers.

Consider the question posed at the beginning of this book’s penultimate chapter: how much do parents really matter? The data have by now made it clear that parents matter a great deal in some regards (most of which have been long determined by the time a child is born) and not at all in others (the ones we obsess about). You can’t blame parents for trying to do something — anything — to help their child succeed, even if it’s something as irrelevant as giving him a high-end first name. But there is also a huge random effect that rains down on even the best parenting efforts. If you are in any way typical, you have known some intelligent and devoted parents whose child went badly off the rails. You may have also known of the opposite instance, where a child succeeds despite his parents’ worst intentions and habits. Recall for a moment the two boys, one white and one black, who were described in chapter 5. The white boy who grew up outside Chicago had smart, solid, encouraging, loving parents who stressed education and family. The black boy from Daytona Beach was abandoned by his mother, was beaten by his father, and had become a full-fledged gangster by his teens. So what became of the two boys? The second child, now twenty-eight years old, is Roland G. Fryer Jr., the Harvard economist studying black underachievement. The white child also made it to Harvard. But soon after, things went badly for him. His name is Ted Kaczynski.

Only knowing the Father matters,” she said, as if this truth was plain. “But to Yeshua this knowledge is not like common knowledge. It is to know intimately, as a woman knows a man. I think this truth is more easily seen by women than men.” “How so?” She shrugged. “Men rule over women with judgment.” She frowned and continued in a stern voice. “Walk this way. Don’t be seen! Be silent! Shame on you! And they make God in the same stern image. They respect written codes and abounding knowledge. Women live more from the heart, don’t you think?” “I would say yes. If allowed.” “So it’s the same in Arabia?” “In many ways, yes.” She nodded. “Yeshua offers no judgment and speaks of the Father in the same way. The very code that men lord over women, Yeshua upends. If Yeshua speaks out against any, it’s only against the brood of vipers who judge others.

They spoke of death and of resurrection. Lazarus declared that Saba, who had no religion, could accept the mysteries more easily than those steeped in religious tradition. What he’d experienced while being dead and then coming back to life defied all common reason. In this, he knew what Yeshua meant by his repeated use of children as an example for all who want to enter his kingdom. “He speaks of being born yet again,” Lazarus said in a gentle voice. “Of the Father revealing himself to infants and hiding himself from minds of reason. ‘The kingdom of God belongs to such as these,’ he says of the babes when they are brought to him.” He glanced at me, a mother. “And ‘anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’” “You experienced this rebirth, upon waking?” Saba asked. “As an infant?” “I can only say that nothing looks the same to me now,” Lazarus said. “There are no words for it. All that I saw before has grown strangely dim.” His eyes twinkled. “I feel as though I am just now alive. As though reborn into the light.” “You see, Saba?” Stephen said, smiling. “Reborn, like infants. Are you then an infant?

Had I made the right decision to give up law school—the “safe” choice—to pursue my passion—a career in broadcast journalism? Would I be stuck making $ 15,000 a year for the rest of my career? Would my father, who had landed on these shores as an Italian immigrant with $ 20 in his pocket after World War II, have been proud of my decision, or would the former prisoner of war have felt that his son was squandering an opportunity to make it in America?

Ted was embarrassed by his family's descent into working-class status and especially by the Nash Rambler his mother and step-father drove. Ted fantasized about being adopted by western actor Roy Rogers (he wouldn’t drive a Nash Rambler).

A love for books and mischief is often born in childhood, and it seems possible that no child in English letters has ever had as much fun pillaging her father's library as the young Jane Austen.

Three Best Ways to Start a Speech The third best way to start a speech is by using an ‘imagine’ scenario. ‘Imagine a big explosion as you climb up 3000 ft. Imagine a plane full of smoke. Imagine an engine going clack, clack, clack. It sounds scary. Well, I had a unique seat that day. I was sitting on 1D.’ This is how Ric Elias started his TED talk—‘3 Things I Learned While My Plane Crashed’1—on the Hudson river landing. This true story was captured in an award-winning film, Sully, starring Tom Hanks. The second is to start with a statistic or factoid that shocks. Jamie Oliver, a British celebrity chef, restauranteur and activist who promotes healthy eating among children, started his TED Talk—‘Teach Every Child about Food’2—with ‘Sadly, in the next eighteen minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead through the food that they eat.’ Given that the audience here was mainly American, there is no way that it didn’t get their attention. The absolutely best way to start a speech—no points for guessing—is with a story, one that is inextricably linked with the topic you are speaking on. ‘I was only four years old when I saw my mother load a washing machine for the very first time in her life. That was a great day for her. My mother and father had been saving money for years to be able to buy that machine

Getting its target audience to conclude that facts and truth are “unknowable” is the true objective of any disinformation campaign. Climate change deniers aren’t trying to convince people that surveys they commissioned are better than those agreed upon by the vast majority of scientists. Antigovernment conspiracy theorists aren’t really trying to convince people that some towns in the Midwest are governed under Sharia law, or that Jade Helm was an attempt by Obama to come for their guns. If someone actually believes the falsehood, that’s a bonus, but the primary objective is to get readers or viewers to throw their hands up and give up on “facts.” Do vaccines cause autism? Maybe. Was Senator Ted Cruz’s father involved with President Kennedy’s assassination? Anything’s possible. Is Hillary Clinton running a child-sex ring out of the basement of a DC pizza parlor? Who knows?

Trust the Father. Then you will master this world with pleasure rather than be mastered by it. Then you will find the power to command any storm.

I had obviously been a much worse father fourteen years ago than I’d thought; it would be tempting to conclude I had come further to reach where I currently was, but I couldn’t trust my perceptions anymore. Did Nicole even have positive feelings about me now? I wasn’t going to try using Remem to answer this question; I needed to go to the source.

I would have testified, hand on a stack of Bibles or using any oath required of me, that it was Nicole who’d accused me of being the reason her mother left us. My recollection of that argument was as clear as any memory I had, but that wasn’t the only reason I found the video hard to believe; it was also my knowledge that—whatever my faults or imperfections—I was never the kind of father who could say such a thing to his child. Yet here was digital video proving that I had been exactly that kind of father. And while I wasn’t that man anymore, I couldn’t deny that I was continuous with him. Even more telling was the fact that for many years I had successfully hidden the truth from myself. Earlier I said that the details we choose to remember are a reflection of our personalities. What did it say about me that I put those words in Nicole’s mouth instead of mine?

In the fall, he briefly flew to Northern California to attend his father’s funeral and also spent six weeks training at Roosevelt Roads Naval Station in Puerto Rico, one of ten thousand Marines training for an amphibious “mock assault” on Onslow Beach, North Carolina.

They could barely see each other. It was safe to love each other in the dark, Ted thought. They couldn't see how badly they loved each other, how they always botched it, didn't have to own that chasm of need. Ted felt his father's soul open up to the kiss like one of those plants that only grow at night, he thought, without any irony. A nightshade. My father the nightshade.

Ted remained seated at the kitchen table, marveling at how big the emptiness inside him felt, and how the smallest thing, a sideways word from his father, could tear it open, and how the smallest thing, a kiss from his father, stitched it up in light.

David and then turned from the podium. Leaving? She wasn’t finished! There must be a way to put Billy back on his heels. Was further argument that pointless? Taking the cue, Billy turned, walked to the curtains, and disappeared behind them. That was it then. Samuel watched as first his father and then the line of overseers rose and walked from the room. The Hall of Truth now awaited the students’ verdict.

It’s a boy! We’ve named him Ted, after Dora’s father!

It’s a boy! We’ve named him Ted, after Dora’s father!” Hermione shrieked. “Wha — ? Tonks — Tonks has had the baby?” “Yes, yes, she’s had the baby!” shouted Lupin.