Flame Within Us Quotes

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Life is a pure flame and we live by an invisible sun within us.

I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.

Together let us hold the intention that all aspects of this living planet come together in love, acceptance, and celebration of both our diversities and commonalities. Let us possess the common purpose that we heal from our hearts into compassion and forgiveness for ourselves. Together let us own the belief that we will no longer unite with blame and judgement, but come to accept that we all carry the same wounds. In acknowledging this, the hope is for the whole planet in its jubilant diversity to be healed from any and all woundings so that we come together on equal footing, living in peace and joy and setting the tone for a future of harmony within and on this planet. Peace to all and healing to all.

The Gospel is not an old, old story, freshly told. It is a fire in the Spirit, fed by the flame of Immortal Love; and woe unto us, if, through our negligence to stir up the Gift of God which is within us, that fire burns low.

When the power comes from within us and we claim it as our own, then we no longer have to affirm ourselves by dominating others. The irony is that we are actually afraid of our own power.

There is no need for us all to be alike and think the same way, neither do we need a common enemy to force us to come together and reach out to each other. If we allow ourselves and everyone else the freedom to fully individuate as spiritual beings in human form, there will be no need for us to be forced by worldly circumstances to take hands and stand together. Our souls will automatically want to flock together, like moths to the flame of our shared Divinity, yet each with wings covered in the glimmering colors and unique patterns of our individual human expression.

How I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.

Let's burn our masks at midnight and as flickering flames ascend, under the witness of star-clouds, let us vow to reclaim our true selves. Done with hiding and weary of lying, we'll reconcile without and within. Then, like naked squint-eyed newborns, we'll greet the glorious birth of dawn; blinking at the blazing, wondrous colors we somehow failed to notice before.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each one of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) NOBEL PEACE PRIZE–WINNING MEDICAL MISSIONARY AND PHILOSOPHER

But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.

There are times when the midsummer sun strikes cold, and when the leaping flames of a hearthfire give no heat. Times when the chill within us comes not from fears we know, but from fears unknown-and forever unknowable.

When the power comes from within us and we claim it as our own, then we no longer have to affirm ourselves by dominating others. The irony is that we are actually afraid of our own power.

We reminded them once, then a second time, and then we sent my sister in an Armani suit, armed with her laptop. None of us had any idea what she said, but the payment usually arrived within twenty-four hours.

... in each of us there is a flame that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it burns within us, we cannot be destroyed.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

I do not believe that we can put into anyone ideas which are not in him already. As a rule there is in everyone all sorts of good ideas, ready like tinder. But much of this tinder catches fire, or catches it successfully, only when it meets some flame or spark from the outside, from some other person. Often, too, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by some experience we go through with a fellow man. Thus we have each of us cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. If we had before us those who have thus been a blessing to us, and could tell them how it came about, they would be amazed to learn what passed over from their life to ours.

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.

We struggle, we grow weary, we grow tired. We are exhausted, we are distressed, we despair. We give up, we fall down, we let go. We cry, we are empty, we grown calm. We are ready. We wait quietly. A small shy truth arrives. Arrives from without and within. Arrives and is born. Simple, steady, clear. Like a mirror, like a bell, like a flame. Like rain in summer. A precious truth arrives and is born within us. Within our emptiness. We accept it, we observe it, we absorb it. We surrender to our bare truth. We are nourished, we are changed. We are blessed. We rise up. For this we give thanks. "Short NotesS From The Long History Of Happiness

We women have within us a depth, a capacity for striving, that men for all their swords and wars don't comprehend. We can endure where they are brittle, we can persevere where they snap. It is our unique form of grace. And we will endure. We will persevere.

.. in each of us there is a flame that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it burns within us, we cannot be destroyed." The Power of One.

Sirs, I am but a nameless man, A rhymester without a home, Yet since I come of the Wessex clay And carry the cross of Rome, I will even answer the mighty earl That asked of Wessex men Why they be meek and monkish folk, And bow to the White Lord's broken yoke; What sign have we save blood and smoke? Here is my answer then. That on you is fallen the shadow, And not upon the Name; That though we scatter and though we fly, And you hang over us like the sky, You are more tired of victory, Than we are tired of shame. That though you hunt the Christian man Like a hare on the hill-side, The hare has still more heart to run Than you have heart to ride. That though all lances split on you, All swords be heaved in vain, We have more lust again to lose Than you to win again. Your lord sits high in the saddle, A broken-hearted king, But our king Alfred, lost from fame, Fallen among foes or bonds of shame, In I know not what mean trade or name, Has still some song to sing. Our monks go robed in rain and snow, But the heart of flame therein, But you go clothed in feasts and flames, When all is ice within; Nor shall all iron dooms make dumb Men wandering ceaselessly, If it be not better to fast for joy Than feast for misery. Nor monkish order only Slides down, as field to fen, All things achieved and chosen pass, As the White Horse fades in the grass, No work of Christian men. Ere the sad gods that made your gods Saw their sad sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale, That you have left to darken and fail, Was cut out of the grass. Therefore your end is on you, Is on you and your kings, Not for a fire in Ely fen, Not that your gods are nine or ten, But because it is only Christian men Guard even heathen things. For our God hath blessed creation, Calling it good. I know What spirit with whom you blindly band Hath blessed destruction with his hand; Yet by God's death the stars shall stand And the small apples grow.

Perhaps embracing your darkness, owning all the parts that never see the light of day - the balance between the light and dark that lives within all of us is the path to being whole. - Born of Blood and Flames

Daughter, daughter, shining bright Precious jewel within mine sight Oh, if I could soar with thee As you seek your destiny. To see with you the caves and skies Vistas grand beneath your eyes Taking wing to horizons new Let us wonder who waits for you. A dragon bright? A dragon dark? Victor of duels with battle mark? A dragon strong? A dragon keen? Singer of honors and triumphs seen? Red, Gold, Bronze, and Blue To your lord you shall be true, Copper, Silver, Black, and White, Who will win your mating flight? For in your hearts our future rests To see our line with hatchlings blessed And for those who threaten clutch of flame, To feel the wrath of dragon-dame.

Unlike traditional marriages that are committed to material safety and comfort, the spiritual partnership goes one step further and makes a commitment to mutual spiritual growth. Within spiritual partnerships, the focus is not just on us, our needs, our desires, and our petty grievances – instead, the focus gradually becomes local, national, and global.

There is something living deep within us all that welcomes, even relishes, the role of victimhood for ourselves. There is no cause in the world more righteously embraced than our own when we feel someone has wronged us. Perhaps it is a psychological leftover from early childhood, when we felt the primeval terror of the world around us and yearned for the intervention of a mother/protector to keep us safe. Perhaps it makes it easier to explain away our personal failures when the work of an enemy can be blamed. Perhaps we just get tired of long explanations and like the cleanliness of an easy solution. It is for wiser people than me to say. Whatever its allure, this primitive ideology of Hutu Power swept through Rwanda in 1993 and early 1994 with the speed of flame through dry grass.

Many people in this room have an Etsy store where they create unique, unreplicable artifacts or useful items to be sold on a small scale, in a common marketplace where their friends meet and barter. I and many of my friends own more than one spinning wheel. We grow our food again. We make pickles and jams on private, individual scales, when many of our mothers forgot those skills if they ever knew them. We come to conventions, we create small communities of support and distributed skills--when one of us needs help, our village steps in. It’s only that our village is no longer physical, but connected by DSL instead of roads. But look at how we organize our tribes--bloggers preside over large estates, kings and queens whose spouses’ virtues are oft-lauded but whose faces are rarely seen. They have moderators to protect them, to be their knights, a nobility of active commenters and big name fans, a peasantry of regular readers, and vandals starting the occasional flame war just to watch the fields burn. Other villages are more commune-like, sharing out resources on forums or aggregate sites, providing wise women to be consulted, rabbis or priests to explain the world, makers and smiths to fashion magical objects. Groups of performers, acrobats and actors and singers of songs are traveling the roads once more, entertaining for a brief evening in a living room or a wheatfield, known by word of mouth and secret signal. Separate from official government, we create our own hierarchies, laws, and mores, as well as our own folklore and secret history. Even my own guilt about having failed as an academic is quite the crisis of filial piety--you see, my mother is a professor. I have not carried on the family trade. We dwell within a system so large and widespread, so disorganized and unconcerned for anyone but its most privileged and luxurious members, that our powerlessness, when we can summon up the courage to actually face it, is staggering. So we do not face it. We tell ourselves we are Achilles when we have much more in common with the cathedral-worker, laboring anonymously so that the next generation can see some incremental progress. We lack, of course, a Great Work to point to and say: my grandmother made that window; I worked upon the door. Though, I would submit that perhaps the Internet, as an object, as an aggregate entity, is the cathedral we build word by word and image by image, window by window and portal by portal, to stand taller for our children, if only by a little, than it does for us. For most of us are Lancelots, not Galahads. We may see the Grail of a good Classical life, but never touch it. That is for our sons, or their daughters, or further off. And if our villages are online, the real world becomes that dark wood on the edge of civilization, a place of danger and experience, of magic and blood, a place to make one’s name or find death by bear. And here, there be monsters.

Discovering the true beauty of the world becomes elusive when our perception remains confined solely to the limitations of our own eyes. However, as the veils of illusion are lifted from our minds, a profound sweetness emerges, beckoning our attention towards the depths of our hearts. In this inward journey, we encounter a presence both substantial and weightless, surpassing the superficiality of mere visual observation. It's a richness that resonates from the very core of our being, a melody echoing from the depths of our souls. As we embrace the spectrum of experiences molding us, we ignite a flame within ourselves, one that has the power to engulf our souls in a final, exhilarating blaze of joy. It's the amalgamation of colors, emotions, and transformations that fuels this fire, propelling us towards a state of revelation and profound understanding.

And when you write a poem within the accepted poem-form, making it sound like a poem because a poem is a poem is a poem, you are saying “good morning” in that poem, and well, your morals are straight and you have not said SHIT, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could…instead of sweating out the correct image, the precise phrase, the turn of a thought…simply sit down and write the god damned thing, throwing on the color and sound, shaking us alive with the force, the blackbirds, the wheat fields, the ear in the hand of the whore, sun, sun, sun, SUN!; let’s make poetry the way we make love; let’s make poetry and leave the laws and the rules and the morals to the churches and the politicians; let’s make poetry the way we tilt the head back for the good liquor; let a drunken bum make his flame, and some day, Robert, I’ll think of you, pretty and difficult, measuring vowels and adverbs, making rules instead of poetry.

For those who have walked through the fires of hell and rather than fall to its flames, have emerged battered, but victorious. In the immortal words of Ovid: Quin ninc quoque frigidus artus, dum loquor, horror habet, parsque est meminisse doloris- Even now while I tell it, cold horror envelops me and my pains return the minute I think of it. We can never escape the pain of our pasts, or the flashbacks that assault us when we dare to let our thoughts drift unattended, but we can choose to not let it ruin the future we, alone, can build for ourselves. And for those who are currently trapped in a bad situation. May you find the resolute strength it takes to free yourself, and to finally see the beauty that lives inside you. You are resplendent, and you deserve respect and love. Don't let the minions of hatred or cruelty define you, or steal away your own humanity. When our compassion and ability to love and appreciate others go, then our bullies and oppressors have truly won, for it is not they who are harmed, but rather we who lose our souls and hearts to the same miserable bitterness that causes them to lash out against us. The cycle can be broken- it must be broken, even though the path is never easy or without cost. Yet victory is made sweeter when you know it came from within you, without violent retribution. The best revenge is to leave them mired in their hateful misery while you learn to bask in the warmth of self-esteem and happiness. Never forget that broken wings can and do heal in time, and that those scarred wings can carry the eagle to the top of the highest mountain.

Wilhelm, what is the world to our hearts without love? What is a magic-lantern without light? You have but to kindle the flame within, and the brightest figures shine on the white wall; and, if love only show us fleeting shadows, we are yet happy, when, like mere children, we behold them, and are transported with the splendid phantoms.

We know we can change ourselves when we realize that we are not dependent on how we feel, nor on how others feel about us, nor on what the situation is around us. The values we hold, the choices we make within ourselves and for ourselves remain our prerogative. In most situations, if we begin to change, to do our own inner work, to accept our own darkness and work toward consciousness, the situation will change. We will begin to emanate a different energy, one that exudes a sense of autonomy and authenticity.

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. Sir Thomas Browne, Hydriotaphia (1658)

The flame of spirit we all had within us, the light that never truly went out, even in our times of deepest despair.

Whatever form each of our own intimate adventures has taken in our fantasies, or in "real life," this Sacred Romance is set within all our hearts and will not go away. It is the core of our spiritual journey. Any religion that ignores it survives only as a guilt induced legalism, a set of propositions to be memorized and rules to be obeyed. Someone or something has romances us from the beginning with creek-side singers and pastel sunsets, with the austere majesty of snow capped mountains and the poignant flames of autumn colors telling us of something - or someone - leaving with a promise to return. These things can, in an unguarded moment, bring us to our knees with longing for this something or someone who is lost; someone or something only our hearts recognizes.

The depths of winter longing are ice within my heart The shards of broken covenants lie sharp against my soul The wraiths of long-lost ecstasy still keep us two apart The amen winds of bitterness sill keen from turn to pole. The scares are twisted tendons, the stumps of struck-off limbs, The aching pit of hunger and throb of unset bone, My sanded burning eyeballs, as might within them dims, Add nothin to the torment of lying here alone... The shimmering flames of fever trace out your blessed face My broken eardrums echo yet your voice inside my head I do not fear the darkness that comes to me apace I only dread the loss of you thy comes when I am dead.

Great love can change small things into great ones, and it is only love which lends value to our actions. And the purer our love becomes, the less there will be within us for the flames of suffering to feed upon, and the suffering will cease to be a suffering for us; it will become a delight! By the grace of God, I have received such a disposition of heart that I am never so happy as when I suffer for Jesus, whom I love with every beat of my heart.

Call to Action Do you hear the angry winds bellowing? The light from a single torch is burning; the sea that roars onto the shoreline, tells us that the tide is turning. Do you feel the blood within you flowing? From rivers to oceans—here we stand; this is the time of our deliverance, the power we now hold in hand. Do you see the flicker of light now growing? A wildfire roars in Liberty’s name; the seraphic flame of our Awakening, it is now our time to rise again.

I suddenly understood why ancient man sat around staring at fire. It was a beautiful dance as old as the dawn of time. You could easily become entranced within its flames; stripping away everything except the raw humanity that burned within us all. 

In The Garret Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, All fashioned and filled, long ago, By children now in their prime. Four little keys hung side by side, With faded ribbons, brave and gay When fastened there, with childish pride, Long ago, on a rainy day. Four little names, one on each lid, Carved out by a boyish hand, And underneath there lieth hid Histories of the happy band Once playing here, and pausing oft To hear the sweet refrain, That came and went on the roof aloft, In the falling summer rain. 'Meg' on the first lid, smooth and fair. I look in with loving eyes, For folded here, with well-known care, A goodly gathering lies, The record of a peaceful life-- Gifts to gentle child and girl, A bridal gown, lines to a wife, A tiny shoe, a baby curl. No toys in this first chest remain, For all are carried away, In their old age, to join again In another small Meg's play. Ah, happy mother! Well I know You hear, like a sweet refrain, Lullabies ever soft and low In the falling summer rain. 'Jo' on the next lid, scratched and worn, And within a motley store Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn, Birds and beasts that speak no more, Spoils brought home from the fairy ground Only trod by youthful feet, Dreams of a future never found, Memories of a past still sweet, Half-writ poems, stories wild, April letters, warm and cold, Diaries of a wilful child, Hints of a woman early old, A woman in a lonely home, Hearing, like a sad refrain-- 'Be worthy, love, and love will come,' In the falling summer rain. My Beth! the dust is always swept From the lid that bears your name, As if by loving eyes that wept, By careful hands that often came. Death canonized for us one saint, Ever less human than divine, And still we lay, with tender plaint, Relics in this household shrine-- The silver bell, so seldom rung, The little cap which last she wore, The fair, dead Catherine that hung By angels borne above her door. The songs she sang, without lament, In her prison-house of pain, Forever are they sweetly blent With the falling summer rain. Upon the last lid's polished field-- Legend now both fair and true A gallant knight bears on his shield, 'Amy' in letters gold and blue. Within lie snoods that bound her hair, Slippers that have danced their last, Faded flowers laid by with care, Fans whose airy toils are past, Gay valentines, all ardent flames, Trifles that have borne their part In girlish hopes and fears and shames, The record of a maiden heart Now learning fairer, truer spells, Hearing, like a blithe refrain, The silver sound of bridal bells In the falling summer rain. Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, Four women, taught by weal and woe To love and labor in their prime. Four sisters, parted for an hour, None lost, one only gone before, Made by love's immortal power, Nearest and dearest evermore. Oh, when these hidden stores of ours Lie open to the Father's sight, May they be rich in golden hours, Deeds that show fairer for the light, Lives whose brave music long shall ring, Like a spirit-stirring strain, Souls that shall gladly soar and sing In the long sunshine after rain

The power which rules within us, when its state is accordant with nature, so acts in every occurrence as easily to adapt itself to all present or possible situations. It requires no set material to work upon, but, under proper reservation, needs but the incitement to pursue, and makes matter for its activities out of every opposition. Even so a fire masters that which is cast upon it, and though a small flame would have been extinguished, your great blaze quickly makes the added fuel its own, consumes it, and grows mightier therefrom.

That which holds the mastery within us, when it is in accordance with Nature, is so disposed towards what befalls, that it can always adapt itself with ease to what is possible and granted us. For it is wedded to no definite material, but, though in the pursuit of its high aims it works under reservations, yet it converts into material for itself any obstacle that it meets with, just as fire when it gets the mastery of what is thrown in upon it. A little flame would have been stifled by it, but the blazing fire instantly assimilates what is cast upon it and, consuming it, leaps the higher in consequence.

Yes, there is a giant within each of us, capable of greatness. The mind keeps him deeply asleep in his dreary world of illusions, so that he could somehow bear the squeezing and pressing of this limited reality. He remains a prisoner of that ignorance until the flame gets lit, and the urge to be free outdoes all fears.

Yes, there is a giant within each of us, capable of greatness. Then mind keeps him deeply asleep in his dreary world of illusions, so that he could somehow bear the squeezing and pressing of this limited reality. He remains a prisoner of that ignorance until the flame gets lit, and the urge to be free outdoes all fears.

They saw how the wall around Eden stretched away on either hand, with only the one opening, as though to guard those within from hungry hordes who might wish to come inside. And next to the cherubim they saw the flaming sword. … The flaming sword turned this way, to prevent any intruder entering from the east, and that way, to prevent any intruder entering from the west. But it did not ever turn in the direction of the garden. The mouse and the beetle stood together watching it for a long time. Beyond it the country stretched away, with winding rivers and low hills and stands of trees and no moving thing in sight. The beetle said, ‘These are formidable defences. No one can enter Eden. But I do not see that there is anything to prevent us leaving.

In the silent whispers of the night, Where shadows dance and dreams take flight, There lies a yearning, deep and true, A hunger born of longing, infused. It sings within the soul's soft embrace, A melody of desire, a tender chase, A craving for a touch, gentle and kind, To soothe the restless heart, the troubled mind. Like petals seeking the sun's warm glow, Or rivers drawn to the ocean's flow, We ache for connection, for hands to meet, In an alchemy of passion, sweet. To feel the brush of fingertips light, To ignite the senses, to set alight The flame that burns within, intense, A symphony of longing, immense. So let us reach across the space, And in each other's arms find grace, For in the touch, we find release, And in each other, we find peace.

From my college courses and my reading I knew the various names that came at the end of a line of questions or were placed as periods to bafflement: the First Cause, the First Mover, the Life Force, the Universal Mind, the First Principle, the Unmoved Mover, even Providence. I too had used those names in arguing with others, and with myself, trying to explain the world to myself. And now I saw that those names explained nothing. They were of no more use than Evolution or Natural Selection or Nature or The Big Bang of these later days. All such names do is catch us within the length and breadth of our own thoughts and our own bewilderment. Though I knew the temptation of simple reason, to know nothing that can't be proved, still I supposed that those were not the right names. I imagined that the right name might be Father, and I imagined all that that name would imply: the love, the compassion, the taking offense, the disappointment, the anger, the bearing of wounds, the weeping of tears, the forgiveness, the suffering unto death. If love could force my own thoughts over the edge of the world and out of time, then could I not see how even divine omnipotence might by the force of its own love be swayed down into the world? Could I not see how it might, because it could know its creatures only by compassion, put on mortal flesh, become a man, and walk among us, assume our nature and our fate, suffer our faults and our death? Yes. I could imagine a Father who is yet like a mother hen spreading her wings before the storm or in the dusk before the dark night for the little ones of Port William to come in under, some of whom do, and some do not. I could imagine Port William riding its humble wave through time under the sky, its little flames of wakefulness lighting and going out, its lives passing through birth, pleasure, sufferning, and death. I could imagine God looking down upon it, its lives living by His spirit, breathing by His breath, knowing by His light, but each life living also (inescapably) by its own will--His own body given to be broken.

The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans. They were, it would seem, as old as time, and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled. They wrestled with mysteries and transformed them into myths which coded the world and helped the community to live through one more darkness, with eyes wide open and hearts set alight. "I can see them now, the old masters. I can see them standing on the other side of the flames, speaking in the voices of lions, or thunder, or monsters, or heroes, heroines, or the earth, or fire itself -- for they had to contain all voices within them, had to be all things and nothing. They had to have the ability to become lightning, to become a future homeland, to be the dreaded guide to the fabled land where the community will settle and fructify. They had to be able to fight in advance all the demons they would encounter, and summon up all the courage needed on the way, to prophesy about all the requisite qualities that would ensure their arrival at the dreamt-of land. "The old masters had to be able to tell stories that would make sleep possible on those inhuman nights, stories that would counter terror with enchantment, or with a greater terror. I can see them, beyond the flames, telling of a hero's battle with a fabulous beast -- the beast that is in the hero." "The storyteller's art changed through the ages. From battling dread in word and incantations before their people did in reality, they became the repositories of the people's wisdom and follies. Often, conscripted by kings, they became the memory of a people's origins, and carried with them the long line of ancestries and lineages. Most important of all, they were the living libraries, the keepers of legends and lore. They knew the causes and mutations of things, the herbs, trees, plants, cures for diseases, causes for wars, causes of victory, the ways in which victory often precipitates defeat, or defeat victory, the lineages of gods, the rites humans have to perform to the gods. They knew of follies and restitutions, were advocates of new and old ways of being, were custodians of culture, recorders of change." "These old storytellers were the true magicians. They were humanity's truest friends and most reliable guides. Their role was both simple and demanding. They had to go down deep into the seeds of time, into the dreams of their people, into the unconscious, into the uncharted fears, and bring shapes and moods back up into the light. They had to battle with monsters before they told us about them. They had to see clearly." "They risked their sanity and their consciousness in the service of dreaming better futures. They risked madness, or being unmoored in the wild realms of the interspaces, or being devoured by the unexpected demons of the communal imagination." "And I think that now, in our age, in the mid-ocean of our days, with certainties collapsing around us, and with no beliefs by which to steer our way through the dark descending nights ahead -- I think that now we need those fictional old bards and fearless storytellers, those seers. We need their magic, their courage, their love, and their fire more than ever before. It is precisely in a fractured, broken age that we need mystery and a reawoken sense of wonder. We need them to be whole again.

As long as there have been humans, we have searched for our place in the Cosmos. In the childhood of our species (when our ancestors gazed a little idly at the stars), among the Ionian scientists of ancient Greece, and in our own age, we have been transfixed by this question: Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night. Since Aristarchus, every step in our quest has moved us farther from center stage in the cosmic drama. There has not been much time to assimilate these new findings. The discoveries of Shapley and Hubble were made within the lifetimes of many people still alive today. There are those who secretly deplore these great discoveries, who consider every step a demotion, who in their heart of hearts still pine for a universe whose center, focus and fulcrum is the Earth. But if we are to deal with the Cosmos we must first understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process, contravened. Understanding where we live is an essential precondition for improving the neighborhood. Knowing what other neighborhoods are like also helps. If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. We embarked on our cosmic voyage with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

Healthy competition is not detrimental to our well-being and progress. It is advantageous. It highlights the skills that others have. It’s a teaching and motivating device. It helps us to see the weaker areas within ourselves that need improvement. Other people’s strengths are not disadvantageous to us. They can inspire and push us to develop those same elements within our own being. Turn the flame of jealousy into the fire of self-improvement.

But before I could get hold of my thoughts, another loud explosion tore through the air, crackling like a beast, our screams becoming lost in the echoes of terror. Loud crashes cameoming from every direction, enclosing us within it’s catastrophic claws. Flames so high and wide, we were about to be devoured within the jaws of the fiery creature. I didn’t give myself the time to hesitate for a second longer. I grabbed my two best friends, and hurled them down the stairs

Woke is not merely a state of awareness; it is a force that dismantles the walls of ignorance and complacency. It is the unwavering commitment to truth, justice, and equality, igniting a flame within the hearts of those who seek a better world. To be woke is to rise above the shadows of indifference and confront the uncomfortable realities that permeate our society. It is to acknowledge the deep-rooted biases, systemic injustices, and the pervasive discrimination that persistently plague our communities. Woke is the courage to challenge the status quo, to question the narratives that uphold oppression, and to demand accountability from those who hold power. It is the unwavering belief that every voice matters, regardless of race, gender, or social standing. Woke is the realization that progress requires action, not just words. It is the recognition that the fight for justice extends beyond hashtags and viral trends. It is a constant pursuit of education, empathy, and empathy and the willingness to stand up for what is right, even in the face of adversity. Woke is a movement that refuses to be silenced. It is the collective power of individuals coming together to amplify marginalized voices, to challenge the systems that perpetuate inequality, and to build a future where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. Being woke is not an endpoint; it is a lifelong journey. It is the commitment to unlearn and relearn, to listen and understand, and to continuously evolve in the pursuit of a more inclusive and equitable world. So, let us embrace our woke-ness, not as a trend or a buzzword, but as a guiding principle in our lives. Let us use our awareness to foster meaningful change, to uplift the marginalized, and to build bridges where there were once divides. For in our collective awakening lies the power to reshape the world, to create a future where justice, compassion, and equality prevail. Let us be woke, let us be bold, and let us be the catalysts of a brighter tomorrow.

Unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life are common themes in the American culture today. Folks sometimes mistake my meaning when I say, “You have the freedom of choice and the ability to create your best life”, because they all too often rush to drop everything that is weighing them down. They quit the job, ditch the unhappy marriage, cut out negative friends and family, get out of Dodge, etc. I do not advocate such hastiness; in fact, I believe that rash decision-making leads to more problems further down the road. Another unsatisfying job manifests; another unhappy relationship results. These people want a new environment, yet the same negative energy always seems to occupy it. This is because transformation is all about the internal shift, not the external. Any blame placed on outside sources for our unhappiness will forever perpetuate that unhappiness. Pointing the finger is giving away your power of choice and the ability to create our best life. We choose: “That person is making me unhappy” vs. “I make myself happy.” When you are in unhappy times of lack and feelings of separation – great! Sit there and be with it. Find ways to be content with little. Find ways to be happy with your Self. As we reflect on the lives of mystics past and present, it is not the things they possess or the relationships they share that bring them enlightenment – their light is within. The same light can bring us unwavering happiness (joy). Love, Peace, Joy – these three things all come from within and have an unwavering flame – life source – that is not dependent on the conditions of the outside world. This knowing is the power and wisdom that the mystics teach us that we are all capable of achieving. When I say, “You have the freedom of choice and the ability to create your best life”, I am not referring to external conditions; I am referring to the choice you have to look inward and discover the ability to transform the lead of the soul into gold. Transformation is an inner journey of the soul. Why? Because, as we mentioned above, wherever we go, ourselves go with us. Thus, quitting the job, dumping relationships, etc. will not make us happy because we have forgotten the key factor that makes or breaks our happiness: ourselves. When we find, create, and maintain peace, joy, and love within ourselves, we then gain the ability to embrace the external world with the same emotions, perspective, and vibration. This ability is a form of enlightenment. It is the modern man’s enlightenment that transforms an unsatisfying life into one of fulfillment.

This ether is a source of tremendous energy that is in constant motion, flowing in and out of all objects in the universe—just as a candle flame is constantly absorbing new wax and oxygen and radiating new heat and light, but still continues to exist as a measurable unit.” Wilcox also tells us, “[P]hysicists John Wheeler and Richard Feynman have calculated that the energy in the volume of vacuum space contained within a single light bulb is concentrated enough to bring all the world’s oceans to the boiling point!”2

We have commoditized wellness & creativity, and so gay men are up against these much larger contexts that aren't particularly conducive to the strongest, healthiest, most holistic approaches. Access to basic healthcare, and a healthcare system that is not homophobic and that is responsive to the needs of gay men, would radically change the pressures and therefore the opoprtunities for those of us who work primarily within the HIV/AIDS sector of healthcare, whether in research, programming and cultural production, or advocacy. Similarly with the arts: if we had sufficient and adequate funding for community-based arts programming--of all kinds, not just related to gay men and HIV--then it wouldn't seem so shocking and misappropriated to allocate some of those funds for gay men to tell their stories. So it's in this larger, structural context that we gt forced into very painful conversations about prioritizing of funding, or what's most important, and it's always a reductive conversation because of limited resources. --Patrick "Pato" Hebert

Wherever it is in agreement with nature, the ruling power within us takes a flexible approach to circumstances, always adapting itself easily to both practicality and the given event. It has no favoured material for its work, but sets out on its objects in a conditional way, turning any obstacle into material for its own use. It is like a fire mastering whatever falls into it. A small flame would be extinguished, but a bright fire rapidly claims as its own all that is heaped on it, devours it all, and leaps up yet higher in consequence.

There is a little furnace within every heart that burns pain. It is formed by a masonry of scars as tick by tick the tireless mechanics of life strip the innocence bestowed upon us at birth. There are some in whom life builds the furnace small and controllable, a passionate heat to burn off the losses, the harsh words and petty disappointments, leaving us cleaner for it. There are others. There are those whose innocence is assaulted early and with such brutality, that it goes beyond all the boundaries of deities and angels to stray into the world of unfettered evil. They build their furnaces differently.

Do not make passion an argument for truth! - O you good-natured and even noble enthusiasts, I know you! You want to win your argument against us, but also against yourself, and above all against yourself!and a subtle and tender bad conscience so often incites you against your enthusiasm! How ingenious you then become in the outwitting and deadening of this conscience! How you hate the honest, the simple, the pure, how you avoid their innocent eyes! That knowing better whose representatives they are and whose voice you hear all too loudly within you, how it casts doubt on your belief- how you seek to make it suspect as a bad habit, as a sickness of the age, as neglect and infection of your own spiritual health! You drive yourself to the point of hating criticism, science, reason! You have to falsify history so that it may bear witness for you, you have to deny virtues so that they shall not cast into the shade those of your idols and ideals! Coloured pictures where what is needed is rational grounds! Ardour and power of expression! Silvery mists! Ambrosial nights! You understand how to illuminate and how to obscure, and how to obscure with light! And truly, when your passion rises to the point of frenzy, there comes a moment when you say to yourself: now I have conquered the good conscience, now I am light of heart, courageous, self-denying, magnificent, now I am honest! How you thirst for those moments when your passion bestows on you perfect self-justification and as it were innocence; when in struggle, intoxication, courage, hope, you are beside yourself and beyond all doubting; when you decree: 'he who is not beside himself as we are can in no way know what and where truth is!' How you thirst to discover people of your belief in this condition - it is that of intellectual vice - and ignite your flame at their torch! Oh your deplorable martyrdom! Oh your deplorable victory of the sanctified lie! Must you inflict so much suffering upon yourself? - Must you?

The famous Northern reticence, the tight gag of place And times: yes, yes. Of the "wee six" I sing Where to be saved you only must save face And whatever you say, you say nothing. Smoke-signals are loud-mouthed compared with us: Manoeuvrings to find out name and school, Subtle discrimination by addresses With hardly an exception to the rule That Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape. O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod, Of open minds as open as a trap, Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks, Where half of us, as in a wooden horse Were cabin'd and confined like wily Greeks, Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

First of all, let us not all be too glib in our statements about the will of God. God’s will is a profound and holy mystery, and the fact that we live our everyday lives engulfed in this mystery should not lead us to underestimate its holiness. We dwell in the will of God as in a sanctuary. His will is the cloud of darkness that surrounds His immediate presence. It is the mystery in which His divine life and our created life become “one spirit,” since, as St. Paul says, “Those who are joined to the Lord are one spirit” (I Corinthians 6: 17). There are religious men who have become so familiar with the concept of God’s will that their familiarity has bred an apparent contempt. It has made them forget that God’s will is more than a concept. It is a terrible and transcendent reality, a secret power which is given to us, from moment to moment, to be the life of our life and the soul of our own soul’s life. It is the living flame of God’s own Spirit, in Whom our own soul’s flame can play, if it wills, like a mysterious angel. God’s will is not an abstraction, not a machine, not an esoteric system. It is a living concrete reality in the lives of men, and our souls are created to burn as flames within His flame. The will of the Lord is not a static center drawing our souls blindly toward itself. It is a creative power, working everywhere, giving life and being and direction to all things, and above all forming and creating, in the midst of an old creation, a whole new world which is called the Kingdom of God. What we call the “will of God” is the movement of His love and wisdom, ordering and governing all free and necessary agents, moving movers and causing causes driving drivers and ruling those who rule, so that even those who resist Him carry out His will without realizing that they are doing so In all His acts God orders all things whether good or evil for the good of those who know Him and seek Him and who strive to bring their own freedom under obedience to His divine purpose All that is done by the will of God in secret is done for His glory and for the good of those whom He has chosen to share in His glory!

NAMING THE EARTH (a poem of light for national poetry day) And the world will be born again in circles of steaming breath and beams of light as each one of us directs our inner eye upon its name. Hear the cry of wings, the sigh of leaves and grass, smell the new sweet mist rising as the pathway is cleared at last. Stones stand ready - they have known since ages and ages ago that they were not alone. Water carries the planet's energy into skies and down to earth and bones. The cold parts steadily as we come together, bodies and hearts warm, hands tingling. We are silent but our eyes are singing. We look, we feel, we know, we trust each other's souls, we have no need to speak. Not now, but later, when the time is right, the name will ring within the iron core of each other's listening - and the very earth's being. Every creature, every plant, will hear it calling, tolling like a bell - a sound we've always felt but never dared to hope to hear reverberating - true at last, at every level of existence. The poets come together to open the intimate centre. Believe in life and air - breathe the light itself, for these are the energies and rhythms that we need to see, to touch, to reach, to identify, to say, the NAME. Colours on your skin fuse and dissolve - leave the river clean for pure space and time to enter and flow in. We all become one fluid stream of stillness and motion, of flaring thought pulses discovering weird pools and twists within where darkness hides from the flames in our eyes but will not snare us. We probe deeper still, journeying towards a unity which will be more raw and yet also more formed than anything written or spoken before. Our fragile bodies fall away - and the trees, and the roots of trees, guide us - lead us away from the faces we remember seeing each day in the mirror - into an ocean of dreams seething with warmth, love, where the beginning is real, ripe, evolving. And the world is born again in circles of steaming breath and beams of light. An ache - a signal - a trembling moment - and the time is right to say the name. We sing as one whole voice of the universal - all the words, the names of every tiny thirsting thing, and they ring out together as one sound, one energy, one sense, one vibration, one breath. And the world listens, beats, shines, glows - IS - Exists!

8. Such is the lowliness of our condition in this life; for we think others are like ourselves and we judge others according to what we ourselves are, since our judgment arises from within us and not outside us. Thus the thief thinks others also steal; and the lustful think others are lustful too; and the malicious think others also bear malice, their judgment stemming from their own malice; and the good think well of others, for their judgment flows from the goodness of their own thoughts; and to those who are careless and asleep, it seems that others are too. Hence it is that when we are careless and asleep in God's presence, it seems to us it is God who is asleep and neglectful of us, as is seen in psalm 43 where David calls to him: Arise, Lord, why do you sleep? Arise [Ps. 44:23].

The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creations. Not to make people with better morals, but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friends, is what it really means to be a Christian. Our religion never begins with what we do for God. It always starts with what God has done for us, the great and wondrous things that God dreamed of and achieved for us in Christ Jesus.

There was an epoch in the course of the general sentiment when the comet had attained, at length, a size surpassing that of any previously recorded visitation. The people now, dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest of our race beat violently within their bosoms. A very few days suffered, however, to merge even such feelings in sentiments more unendurable. We could no longer apply to the strange orb any accustomed thoughts. Its historical attributes had disappeared. It oppressed us with a hideous novelty of emotion. We saw it not as an astronomical phenomenon in the heavens, but as an incubus upon our hearts and a shadow upon our brains. It had taken, with unconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic mantle of rare flame, extending from horizon to horizon.

Ione III. TO-DAY my skies are bare and ashen, And bend on me without a beam. Since love is held the master-passion, Its loss must be the pain supreme — And grinning Fate has wrecked my dream. But pardon, dear departed Guest, I will not rant, I will not rail; For good the grain must feel the flail; There are whom love has never blessed. I had and have a younger brother, One whom I loved and love to-day As never fond and doting mother Adored the babe who found its way From heavenly scenes into her day. Oh, he was full of youth's new wine, — A man on life's ascending slope, Flushed with ambition, full of hope; And every wish of his was mine. A kingly youth; the way before him Was thronged with victories to be won; so joyous, too, the heavens o'er him Were bright with an unchanging sun, — His days with rhyme were overrun. Toil had not taught him Nature's prose, Tears had not dimmed his brilliant eyes, And sorrow had not made him wise; His life was in the budding rose. I know not how I came to waken, Some instinct pricked my soul to sight; My heart by some vague thrill was shaken, — A thrill so true and yet so slight, I hardly deemed I read aright. As when a sleeper, ign'rant why, Not knowing what mysterious hand Has called him out of slumberland, Starts up to find some danger nigh. Love is a guest that comes, unbidden, But, having come, asserts his right; He will not be repressed nor hidden. And so my brother's dawning plight Became uncovered to my sight. Some sound-mote in his passing tone Caught in the meshes of my ear; Some little glance, a shade too dear, Betrayed the love he bore Ione. What could I do? He was my brother, And young, and full of hope and trust; I could not, dared not try to smother His flame, and turn his heart to dust. I knew how oft life gives a crust To starving men who cry for bread; But he was young, so few his days, He had not learned the great world's ways, Nor Disappointment's volumes read. However fair and rich the booty, I could not make his loss my gain. For love is dear, but dearer, duty, And here my way was clear and plain. I saw how I could save him pain. And so, with all my day grown dim, That this loved brother's sun might shine, I joined his suit, gave over mine, And sought Ione, to plead for him. I found her in an eastern bower, Where all day long the am'rous sun Lay by to woo a timid flower. This day his course was well-nigh run, But still with lingering art he spun Gold fancies on the shadowed wall. The vines waved soft and green above, And there where one might tell his love, I told my griefs — I told her all! I told her all, and as she hearkened, A tear-drop fell upon her dress. With grief her flushing brow was darkened; One sob that she could not repress Betrayed the depths of her distress. Upon her grief my sorrow fed, And I was bowed with unlived years, My heart swelled with a sea of tears, The tears my manhood could not shed. The world is Rome, and Fate is Nero, Disporting in the hour of doom. God made us men; times make the hero — But in that awful space of gloom I gave no thought but sorrow's room. All — all was dim within that bower, What time the sun divorced the day; And all the shadows, glooming gray, Proclaimed the sadness of the hour. She could not speak — no word was needed; Her look, half strength and half despair, Told me I had not vainly pleaded, That she would not ignore my prayer. And so she turned and left me there, And as she went, so passed my bliss; She loved me, I could not mistake — But for her own and my love's sake, Her womanhood could rise to this! My wounded heart fled swift to cover, And life at times seemed very drear. My brother proved an ardent lover — What had so young a man to fear? He wed Ione within the year. No shadow clouds her tranquil brow, Men speak her husband's name with pride, While she sits honored at his side —

Trust me, Mr. Maxwell.” No more Christian name familiarity for him! “Greyden Kane has never had to ‘overwhelm’ anyone.” He was overwhelming enough on his own. It was too dark to tell for certain, but she thought Kellan might have flushed. “Since we are speaking plainly, I must express my surprise that you would fall so readily into the clutches of such a man.” Rose’s eyes narrowed and she took a step toward him as flames of anger leaped to life within her breast. “By ‘such a man; you refer, of course, to the duke. The very same man who came to my father’s aid when his so-called friends abandoned him. The same man who took my mother and I in after my father’s death and kept us from a life of poverty and no prospects. The very man who was a friend when others-including you-turned their back.” Rage tightened her jaw and clenched her fingers into fists. “I would rather fall into his ‘clutches,’ Kellan, than depend on your friendship, which was proven itself far less palatable than this swill Lady Frederick calls punch. Excuse me.” She shoved the glass into his hand, not caring that some of the sugary liquid splashed over his fingers. And then she whirled on her heel and left him standing alone, and went back inside to face the stares with as much dignity as her anger would give her.

Hearth to hearth, the Flame of War went. Over snow-blasted mountains and amongst the trees of tangled forests, hiding from the enemies that prowled the skies. Through long, bitterly cold nights where the wind howled as it tried to wipe out any trace of that flame. But the wind did not succeed, not against the flame of the queen. So hearth to hearth, it went. To remote villages where people screamed and scattered as a young-faced woman descended from the skies on a broom, waving her torch high. Not to signal them, but the few women who did not run. Who walked toward the flame, the rider, as she called out, “Your queen summons you to war. Will you fly?” Trunks hidden in attics were thrown open. Folded swaths of red cloth pulled from within. Brooms left in closets, beside doorways, tucked under beds, were brought out, bound in gold or silver or twine. And swords—ancient and beautiful—were drawn from beneath floorboards, or hauled down from haylofts, their metal shining as bright and fresh as the day they had been forged in a city now lying in ruin. Witches, the townsfolk whispered, husbands wide-eyed and disbelieving as the women took to the skies, red cloaks billowing. Witches amongst us all this time. Village to village, where hearths that had never once gone fully dark blazed in answer. Always one rider going out, to find the next hearth, the next bastion of their people. Witches, here amongst us. Witches, now going to war. A rising tide of witches, who took to the skies in their red cloaks, swords strapped to their backs, brooms shedding years of dust with each mile northward. Witches who bade their families farewell, offering no explanation before they kissed their sleeping babes and vanished into the starry night. Mile after mile, across the darkening world, the call went out, ceaseless and unending as the eternal flame that passed from hearth to hearth. “Fly, fly, fly!” they shouted. “To the queen! To war!” Far and wide, through snow and storm and peril, the Crochans flew.

As long as there have been humans, we have searched for our place in the Cosmos. In the childhood of our species (when our ancestors gazed a little idly at the stars), among the Ionian scientists of ancient Greece, and in our own age, we have been transfixed by this question: Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies, tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night. Since Aristarchus, every step in our quest has moved us farther from center stage in the cosmic drama. There has not been much time to assimilate these new findings. The discoveries of Shapley and Hubble were made within the lifetimes of many people still alive today. There are those who secretly deplore these great discoveries, who consider every step a demotion, who in their heart of hearts still pine for a universe whose center, focus and fulcrum is the Earth. But if we are to deal with the Cosmos we must first understand it, even if our hopes for some unearned preferential status are, in the process, contravened. Understanding where we live is an essential precondition for improving the neighborhood. Knowing what other neighborhoods are like also helps. If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. We embarked on our cosmic voyage with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

We said that if you don't quench those flames at once, they will spread all over the world; you thought we were maniacs. At present we have the mania of trying to tell you about the killing, by hot steam, mass-electrocution and live burial of the total Jewish population of Europe. So far three million have died. It is the greatest mass-killing in recorded history; and it goes on daily, hourly, as regularly as the ticking of your watch. I have photographs before me on the desk while I am writing this, and that accounts for my emotion and bitterness. People died to smuggle them out of Poland; they thought it was worth while. The facts have been published in pamphlets, White Books, newspapers, magazines and what not. But the other day I met one of the best-known American journalists over here. He told me that in the course of some recent public opinion survey nine out of ten average American citizens, when asked whether they believed that the Nazis commit atrocities, answered that it was all propaganda lies, and that they didn't believe a word of it. As to this country, I have been lecturing now for three years to the troops and their attitude is the same. They don't believe in concentration camps, they don't believe in the starved children of Greece, in the shot hostages of France, in the mass-graves of Poland; they have never heard of Lidice, Treblinka or Belzec; you can convince them for an hour, then they shake themselves, their mental self-defence begins to work and in a week the shrug of incredulity has returned like a reflex temporarily weakened by a shock. Clearly all this is becoming a mania with me and my like. Clearly we must suffer from some morbid obsession, whereas the others are healthy and normal. But the characteristic symptom of maniacs is that they lose contact with reality and live in a phantasy world. So, perhaps, it is the other way round: perhaps it is we, the screamers, who react in a sound and healthy way to the reality which surrounds us, whereas you are the neurotics who totter about in a screened phantasy world because you lack the faculty to face the facts. Were it not so, this war would have been avoided, and those murdered within sight of your day-dreaming eyes would still be alive.

The Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel had lived only for God during his childhood in Hungary; his life had been shaped by the disciplines of the Talmud, and he had hoped one day to be initiated into the mysteries of Kabbalah. As a boy, he was taken to Auschwitz and later to Buchenwald. During his first night in the death camp, watching the black smoke coiling to the sky from the crematorium where the bodies of his mother and sister were to be thrown, he knew that the flames had consumed his faith forever. He was in a world which was the objective correlative of the Godless world imagined by Nietzsche. “Never should I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live,” he wrote years later. “Never shall I forget these moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.”33 One day the Gestapo hanged a child. Even the SS were disturbed by the prospect of hanging a young boy in front of thousands of spectators. The child who, Wiesel recalled, had the face of a “sad-eyed angel,” was silent, lividly pale and almost calm as he ascended the gallows. Behind Wiesel, one of the other prisoners asked: “Where is God? Where is He?” It took the child half an hour to die, while the prisoners were forced to look him in the face. The same man asked again: “Where is God now?” And Wiesel heard a voice within him make this answer: “Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.”34 Dostoevsky had said that the death of a single child could make God unacceptable, but even he, no stranger to inhumanity, had not imagined the death of a child in such circumstances. The horror of Auschwitz is a stark challenge to many of the more conventional ideas of God. The remote God of the philosophers, lost in a transcendent apatheia, becomes intolerable. Many Jews can no longer subscribe to the biblical idea of God who manifests himself in history, who, they say with Wiesel, died in Auschwitz. The idea of a personal God, like one of us writ large, is fraught with difficulty. If this God is omnipotent, he could have prevented the Holocaust. If he was unable to stop it, he is impotent and useless; if he could have stopped it and chose not to, he is a monster. Jews are not the only people who believe that the Holocaust put an end to conventional theology.

Pieces of my self. I have come to realise that our soul is not a static element or something that we can ever put in words. It is something that we find and embrace in bits and pieces flowing through an endless journey of life. Sometimes we find a halo of it in the setting sun while sometimes we chase its harmony in a distant sunrise. We have moments in Life, defining our traits, when some incident or some part of our Life changes forever rather takes shape forever but that too is not entirely rigid, they too flow with our soul and may be years or even moments later they change shape into something that twinkles more with our soul. It is a process of learning, unlearning and relearning where everything that we assemble in this Lifetime is like a free flowing river which meanders its way onto an ocean. And the ocean is Love. Not the Love that we often imagine it be, it is something beyond any imagination or definition. It is an air that absorbs every other force of Nature and releases them through the filter of Wisdom. It is about understanding our innermost fear and fighting it out with the indomitable courage that is always lurking in the deepest part of our heart. It is about knowing how contagious kindness can be and becoming the reflector of grace through our very existence. It is about embracing every chapter of our life with gratitude for the path that our spirit has chosen beyond boundaries and limits. It is about growing and healing. Growing through a voyage that is endless in this Cosmic ocean and healing through the balm of connections. I have realised that every connection that we make even if it is for a fraction of a second stays on within our soul and every alley that we explore leads us to a place that is closer to our destination. Sometimes the Destination gets blurred through the noises of all that is tangible in our surroundings and we often grow exhausted on this journey, it is then that we grow, trying to walk over a pyre of our failures, lost bonds, detours and everything that are capable of pulling us down they become stars, like the fireflies that show us the path to bring us closer to our soul, to put back the pieces of our self. They make us all that we stand as a whole. So especially when we run out of our strength somewhere in some hidden alley of our soul, something burns in our soul, a flicker of our passion guiding us home, where the pieces of our soul dance in a mad harmony to awaken the flame that lights our way onto a destination, wandering along the edge of a purpose that breathes through scattered pieces of our self, basking in the halo of eternity.

What about you?” he asked, ready to take the focus off himself and his parents. “What kind of mom did you have?” She hesitated. Her hair was unraveled and lay in a glorious display of long dark curls around her face. The muscles in his hands tensed with the need to thread his fingers through the thick locks. Instead he grabbed his ax and poked the fire, sending more sparks flying. “I don’t remember much about my mother,” she said. He stared at the flames, trying to keep a rein on his thoughts about Lily. “She died giving birth to Daisy.” Her voice dipped. “I’m sorry.” He stilled and glanced at her again. Her forehead crinkled above eyes that radiated pain. “My father couldn’t take care of us, and for a few years we were shuffled between relatives. Until he got into an accident at work and died within a few days.” An ache wound around his heart. “After that, no one wanted us anymore. I suppose without the money my father had provided them, they couldn’t afford to take care of two more children—not when they struggled enough without us. So they dropped us off at the New York Foundling Hospital.” She paused, and he didn’t say anything, although part of him wished he could curse the family that gave up two girls with such ease. “We lived at the hospital in New York City until there was no longer room for us. Then we moved to other orphanages.” She turned to look at the fire, embarrassment reflected in her face. “I made sure they never separated Daisy and me. I kept us together all those years, no matter where we were. And finally we had the option of moving here to Michigan. They said families needed boys and girls. We’d get to live in real homes.” The grip on his heart cinched tighter. “When we got here, I thought I was doing the best thing for Daisy by giving her a real family to live with. The Wretchams seemed nice. They lived on a big farm. Needed some extra help—” “So you and Daisy didn’t stay together?” “There weren’t any families needing two almost-grown girls. But I consoled myself that it was only temporary, that we’d only be apart until I could find a good job and a place for us to live.” “That must have been hard on both of you.” “Letting her go was like ripping out a piece of my heart.” He wanted to reach for her, pull her into his arms, and comfort her. But everything within him warned him against even a move as innocent as that. “When I learned she’d run away from the Wretchams, she ripped out the rest of my heart, and it hasn’t stopped bleeding since.

For those of us who believe in our Messiah, that cord now has new meaning. Our Father, our Savior, and the Holy Spirit who dwells within us and gives wisdom and guidance. Again, we need and accept the presence of all three in our lives. And at this time we come apart at the beginning of a new day, a new week, which was God’s purpose in the festival gathering, and we present ourselves once more to God, not just as individuals, but as a community of believers. We draw strength and encouragement from one another. We share prayer for God’s leading and direction. We ask for strength and courage, that we might continue to be strong in proclaiming the message of Jesus to all people.

When dusk fell, my family, along with what appeared to be all the citizens of Hytanica, gathered at the military training field, where the Captain of the Guard’s body had been placed on a litter above a stack of firewood, ready to be burned, his soul already committed to God by our priests. Soldiers had stood guard around the site all day, and people had been coming in a steady stream to pay their respects. Many of them had left tokens of esteem at the base of the pyre--weapons of various types, coins, embroidered handkerchiefs, trophies won in battle or at tournaments, military medals and insignia. Even small children came forward, laying flowers, notes, toys and other items that had some special meaning to them among the other gifts. It made me both sad and proud when Celdrid walked forward and added his sword to the growing mound of mementos, the one that had originally been given to Steldor by our father, to be passed on by Steldor to my brother. It was perhaps Celdrid’s most coveted possession. He looked to Steldor as he came back to stand by us, and our cousin gave him a salute. When all the individuals who wanted to do so had paid homage to the captain, everyone stood in silence, the stillness of the large crowd itself a potent tribute. Grief could be a powerful, uniting force. Off to the side, separated from the masses, stood Steldor and Galen, their faces stoic, both wearing their military uniforms and holding lighted torches in preparation for setting the wood ablaze. King Adrik finally broke the silence, stepping forward as the appropriate representative of the royal family to say a few words. Queen Alera had not yet returned from Cokyri, another source of worry for the subdued throng. The former King cleared his throat and then began to speak, his deep voice easily carrying across the field. “We come together to honor a man of duty and devotion, strength and compassion, courage and wisdom. A man who put kingdom and family before all else, but who included within his family every citizen in need. A man of unwavering allegiance who steadfastly served his King and Queen for over thirty years. A man whose legacy will live on in his son and in every life he touched. A man I was proud to name my Captain of the Guard and to call my friend. And who, while serving the kingdom he loved, made the ultimate sacrifice. Let us celebrate his life this night, and may his funeral pyre burn as a bright beacon of hope in the darkness, letting the entire Recorah River Valley know that Hytanica is free once more.” Cheers went up from the crowd, then Steldor and Galen stepped forward and touched their torches to the pitch-soaked firewood. With a roar, flames shot into the air, befitting the man who had lived with an equally fiery passion.

The Gospel is not an old, old story, freshly told. It is a fire in the Spirit, fed by the flame of Immortal Love; and woe unto us, if through our negligence to stir up the Gift of God which is within us, that fire burns low.

Christianity is not brain surgery or rocket science, it is not quantum mechanics or nuclear physics; it is both infinitely easier and more difficult than all of these. The fragile flame of faith is fanned into life so simply: all we need do is sit still for a few moments, embrace the silence that engulfs us, and invite that flame to burn bright within us.

May a fire burn steadily within to destroy our sin, a holy sacrificial flame to make us whole burnt offerings unto God, a never-dying flame of zeal for God, and devotion to the cross.

Anger is like a flame blazing up and consuming our self-control, making us think, say and do things that we will probably regret later. When anger is born in us, we should follow our breathing closely while we identify and mindfully observe our anger. When we are angry, our anger is our very self. To suppress or chase away our anger is to suppress or chase away ourselves. When anger is born, we can be aware that anger is an energy in us and we can change that energy into another kind of energy. If we want to transform it, first we have to know how to accept it. Looking into our anger, we can see its roots, such as the misunderstanding of ourselves and others, our pain, the violence and unkindness in our society and hidden resentment over many generations. These roots can be present both within us and in the person who played the principal role in triggering our anger. When your mother keeps reminding you that you are fat, that you should not eat this or that, you gradually build up resentment and guilt, forming complex knots of suffering. Because it is easier to avoid suffering in the short term, we have defense mechanisms that push our psychological pains, sorrow and internal conflicts into our subconscious mind and bury them there. But occasionally they emerge and surface in our thoughts, speech and actions, reflecting symptoms of physical and psychological disturbance.

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus, but the wisedom of funerall Law found the folly of prodigall blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an Urne.

Be careful of your peers. They are sometimes harmless, sometimes even helpful. They can also be deadly. If you intend to do well in your chosen career, be careful about spending too much time with struggling peers. No matter how sweetly it dresses, the ego cannot help but feel that one person's success is an opportunity taken away from itself in an intensely competitive market. Don’t fall prey to it, and make sure you are not one of those egos yourself. Healthy competition is not detrimental to our well-being and progress. It is advantageous. It highlights the skills that others have. It is a teaching and motivating device. It helps us to see the weaker areas within ourselves that need improvement. Other people’s strengths are not disadvantageous to us. They can inspire and push us to develop those elements within our being. Turn the flame of jealousy into the fire of self-improvement.

A Poem for Pentecost For light to burn brighter it must be passed on, one small flame kindling another, to ignite a great fire. For a blessing to be bestowed it must have first sprung from the well within, in which blessings received are held. For like the light that burns without going out, so the blessings we are given are to be borne on as gifts to others. And when we fail to receive all God has for us, we risk failing to become the gift he would have us be to those in need of it. For the light is not in ourselves alone, and the blessing is something that grows with the passing. We, the baton bearers of an endless flame. ‘“The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”’ Matthew 4:16 (NIV)

The gentle answer that comes from Jesus defuses wrath instead of fanning its flame (Prov. 15:1). Within it resides the power to subdue fruitless arguments, break vicious cycles, turn enemies into friends, end wars, and change history. Within it resides the power of a future where wolves dwell in harmony with lambs, leopards with young goats, and lions with fattened cows (Isa. 11:6).

Worship of Chains (The Sonnet) Enough with the worship of chains! Enough with celebration of selfishness! Time it is to shatter the altars of separation. Time it is to be the ravager of primitiveness. Let us hang all our sectarian gods and idols. Let us start a new worship of love and liberty. Let us be prophets and messengers of harmony. Let us be disintegrated in realization of inclusivity. Let us go insane and kick all prison-gates down. Let us burn locks to ashes with flames of heart. Let us call upon the vigor eternal from within. Let us hunt down the last trace of inhuman dirt. Let us draw a noble anatomy for civilization. Let us lay ourselves as cornerstones of ascension.

Were he to paint the murals in the Enchanted Hunters, the motel where he first raped her, he tells us, he would have painted a lake, an arbor in flames and finally there would have been “a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool, a last throb, a last dab of color, stinging red, smarting pink, a sigh, a wincing child.” (Child, please remember, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, although this child, had she lived in the Islamic Republic, would have been long ripe for marriage to men older than Humbert.)

Great love can change small things into great ones, and it is only love which lends value to our actions. And the purer our love becomes, the less there will be within us for the flames of suffering to feed upon, and the suffering will cease to be a suffering for us; it will become a delight!

The first Superfortress reached Tokyo just after midnight, dropping flares to mark the target area. Then came the onslaught. Hundreds of planes—massive winged mechanical beasts roaring over Tokyo, flying so low that the entire city pulsed with the booming of their engines. The US military’s worries about the city’s air defenses proved groundless: the Japanese were completely unprepared for an attacking force coming in at five thousand feet. The full attack lasted almost three hours; 1,665 tons of napalm were dropped. LeMay’s planners had worked out in advance that this many firebombs, dropped in such tight proximity, would create a firestorm—a conflagration of such intensity that it would create and sustain its own wind system. They were correct. Everything burned for sixteen square miles. Buildings burst into flame before the fire ever reached them. Mothers ran from the fire with their babies strapped to their backs only to discover—when they stopped to rest—that their babies were on fire. People jumped into the canals off the Sumida River, only to drown when the tide came in or when hundreds of others jumped on top of them. People tried to hang on to steel bridges until the metal grew too hot to the touch, and then they fell to their deaths. After the war, the US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded: “Probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a six-hour period than at any time in the history of man.” As many as 100,000 people died that night. The aircrews who flew that mission came back shaken. [According to historian] Conrad Crane: “They’re about five thousand feet, they are pretty low... They are low enough that the smell of burning flesh permeates the aircraft...They actually have to fumigate the aircraft when they land back in the Marianas, because the smell of burning flesh remains within the aircraft. (...) The historian Conrad Crane told me: I actually gave a presentation in Tokyo about the incendiary bombing of Tokyo to a Japanese audience, and at the end of the presentation, one of the senior Japanese historians there stood up and said, “In the end, we must thank you, Americans, for the firebombing and the atomic bombs.” That kind of took me aback. And then he explained: “We would have surrendered eventually anyway, but the impact of the massive firebombing campaign and the atomic bombs was that we surrendered in August.” In other words, this Japanese historian believed: no firebombs and no atomic bombs, and the Japanese don’t surrender. And if they don’t surrender, the Soviets invade, and then the Americans invade, and Japan gets carved up, just as Germany and the Korean peninsula eventually were. Crane added, The other thing that would have happened is that there would have been millions of Japanese who would have starved to death in the winter. Because what happens is that by surrendering in August, that givesMacArthur time to come in with his occupation forces and actually feedJapan...I mean, that’s one of MacArthur’s great successes: bringing in a massive amount of food to avoid starvation in the winter of 1945.He is referring to General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander for the Allied powers in the Pacific. He was the one who accepted theJapanese emperor’s surrender.Curtis LeMay’s approach brought everyone—Americans and Japanese—back to peace and prosperity as quickly as possible. In 1964, the Japanese government awarded LeMay the highest award their country could give a foreigner, the First-Class Order of Merit of the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun, in appreciation for his help in rebuilding the Japanese Air Force. “Bygones are bygones,” the premier of Japan said at the time.

An oft-repeated tale recounts that a Christian mob destroyed the Great Library of Alexandria in 391 and burnt its books in the street. According to some versions, the repository in question was the original library in the Brucheium, while others state that it was a ‘daughter’ library located in the Serapeum. This tale has entered so deeply into the popular imagination that it even sometimes appears in otherwise respectable books of history. It is, however, a myth, originated in the late 18th century, when the great historian Edward Gibbon read an unwarranted meaning into a single sentence from the Christian chronicler Paul Orosius (fl. 414–17). The subtext of the legend is that the Christians of the fourth century were intensely hostile to the science, literature, and scholarship of classical culture, and that such matters were the special preserve of the pagans of Alexandria. This too is an 18th-century myth. The city’s scholarly and scientific class comprised Christians as well as pagans, and Christian scholars, rhetoricians, philosophers and scientists were active in Alexandria right up until the city fell to Arab Muslim invaders in 642. Regarding the library in the Brucheium – whose size, again, is impossible to determine – many ancient historians believed that it (or a large part of its collection) had already gone up in flames following Julius Caesar’s assault on the city in 48 or 47 BC, during his wars with Pompey. Some historians now also claim that, if any part of the original library remained, it vanished in 272, during the emperor Aurelian’s campaigns to reunite the empire. Whether either story is true, the Great Library of the Ptolemies no longer existed by the late fourth century. As for the ‘daughter’ library, it may have been situated within the enclosure of the Serapeum; there were, at any rate, library stacks in the temple. However, the Pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus (c.330–95) indicates that whatever library had once been there was long gone before the Serapeum’s demolition in 391. More importantly, none of the original accounts of the temple’s destruction mentions a library, not even the account written by the devout pagan Eunapius of Sardis (c.345–c.420), who despised Christians and who, as an erudite man, would have been enraged by the burning of precious texts. Later Medieval legend claimed that the actual final destruction of the ‘Library’ or libraries of Alexandria was the work of the Arab conquerors of the seventh century ad. Of this, however, no account exists that was written before the 12th century. Whatever the case, the scurrilous story of the Great Library’s destruction by Christians is untrue. It may tell us something about modern misconceptions regarding the past, but tells us nothing about Christian or pagan antiquity.

I strongly believe that our unfaithfulness will cause great torment to us when we are in the pure, unmediated presence of the One who is faithful and true, but this torment isn't something that Christ actively causes. It is simply something that happens when we are in his presence; and it is what we most deeply need, regardless of how painful it might be. John describes the risen Christ as having eyes "like flames of fire" (Rev 1:14). The grace in his gaze will burn away all that is false and deceptive within us and will destroy the masks that we hide behind. We will be fully known while being fully loved. Therein lies the pain of judgment, which will come from having the light of love shine brightly on the darkness of our sin. The torment that comes from being in the presence of the Lamb, I believe, is the torment of coming to see the futility and absurdity of our sinful ways, and the harm that we have done to others. The flames will burn as hot and as bright as they need to in order to purify us and restore us to God and one another, but they are flames of love, and although they may hurt like hell, they will fit us for heaven.

All spiritual traditions regard our ordinary human condition as somehow flawed or corrupt, as falling short of the unsurpassable perfection or wholeness of Reality. As a process of transformation, Yoga endeavors to re-form or, in the words of the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, even “super-form” the spiritual practitioner. The old Adam has to die before the new super-formed being can emerge—the being who is reintegrated with the Whole. Not surprisingly, this transmutation of the human personality is also often couched in terms of self-sacrifice. In gnostic language, the “lower” reality must be surrendered, so that the “higher” or divine Reality can become manifest in our lives. For this to be possible, the spiritual practitioner must somehow locate and emulate that higher Reality. He or she must find the “Heaven” within, whether by experiential communion or mystical union with the Divine or by an act of faith in which a connection with the Divine is simply assumed until this becomes an actual experience. Spiritual discipline (sādhana), then, is a matter of constantly “remembering” the Divine, the transcendental Self, or Buddha nature. There can be no such transformation without catharsis, without shedding all those aspects of one’s being that block our immediate apperception of Reality. Traditions like Yoga and Vedānta can be understood as programs of progressive “detoxification” of the body-mind, which clears the inner eye so that we can see what is always in front of us—the omnipresent Reality, the Divine. So long as our emotional and cognitive system is toxic or impure, that inner eye remains veiled, and all we see is the world of multiplicity devoid of unity. The modern gnostic teacher Mikhaёl Aїvanhov remarked about this: Not so many years ago, when people’s homes were still lit by oil lamps, the glass chimneys had to be cleaned every evening. All combustion produces wastes, and the oil in these lamps deposited a film of soot on the inside of the glass, so that, even if the flame was lit, the lamp gave no light unless the glass was cleaned. The same phenomenon occurs in each one of us, for life is combustion. All our thoughts, feelings and acts, all our manifestations, are the result of combustion. Now it is obvious that in order to produce the flame, the energy which animates us, something has to burn and that burning necessarily entails waste products which then have to be eliminated. Just as the lamp fails to light up the house if its glass is coated with soot . . . similarly, if a man fails to purify himself he will sink deeper and deeper into the cold and dark and end by losing life itself.

There are objects I seem to live through more than view. I think I pick up noises from them more than I see them, touch them, or conceive them. I hear without clear frontiers, without divining an isolated source, hearing is better at integrating than analyzing, the ear knows how to lose track. By the ear, of course, I hear: temple, drum, pavilion, but also my entire body and the whole of my skin. We are immersed in sound just as we are immersed in air and light... We breathe background noise, the taut and tenuous agitation at the bottom of the world, through all our pores and papillae, we collect within us the noise of organization, a hot flame and dance of integers. My acouphenes, a mad murmur, tense and constant in hearing, speak to me of my ashes, perhaps, the ones whence I came, the ones to which I will return. Background noise is the ground of our perception, absolutely uninterrupted, it is our perennial sustenance, the element of the software of all our logic. It is the residue and the cesspool of our messages.

Back then, I would never have thought- this was an option with me. I did what I believed was right, and I am happy. With all of the choices, but will I be able to finish school? Is being seventeen too young to be a mom? What is it like to be a mother? Why doesn’t the hellhole cover this in their health class? They just give you ways to prevent, yet not how to be a mother, who is supposed to teach this? I remember bringing her home for the first time, we made a nursery for her in my room, and we had a white bassinet for her. She keeps me tending to her nonstop, on the weekends he and I stayed together, maybe someday soon we can get our place. Her first bath was in the farm sink, and his mom got her all kinds of cute things to where it was hard to choose what to put on her. She always looked so adorable. A real-life baby doll. (People talking) Nevaeh- Talk is cheap… in all honesty, most people just need to mind their own business, I think. Either somebody wants to kick the shit out of you, or steal your joy. Stop making judgments about us! It all comes down to the fact that they need to feel needed. Just stop bothering me, go get what you need, and fight for it as I did, stop trying to take it away from me. Besides, keep this in mind as you are doing it- ‘Do to others, as you would want them to do to you.’ Why do you ask? Just because you might end up worse, off in what you are doing, than what you are seeing, and saying about others. ‘Just remember when you point a finger at someone three fingers are pointing back at you.’ Just like you can always tell when someone is on the dark side. They have to dance around the fires of destruction and torment, the flame within their eyes sparkles as you look at them, as they are children of the night and immorality. Let's just say the sisters finally got their turn, for trying to kill my baby Jaylynn with her small pillow in my own home, in my room they stood over her one night. When hope was the only one home, and we were out for the first time all night without her. Hope caught and fought with all of them before they got the job done. Baby Jaylynn is still alive, yet it is a wonder that she is.

The result of meditation and ethical living is that our soul becomes like a pure spotless glass, reflecting the light of the God. Then, the light burning within us shines its sacred flame of bliss and love to light our pathway to the Divine

There was a rumble deep within the earth, followed by a deafening roar. As we watched, helpless, the sand hill collapsed in on itself. Dirt burst from all sides as the mound imploded in a whoosh of heat and flame. “Back!” Chance shouted, coughing into a fist as dust blanketed our tiny vessel. Ben quickly reversed course, scooting us farther out to sea. But it was already over—the collapsing hill doused the fire, thousands of pounds of gravel and earth smothering the flames like a snuffed candle. The damage was done. Where our bunker had been, nothing remained but a smoking pile. I tried to think. To reboot my mind. “Where are Karsten’s parvovirus files?” “My study.” Chance tapped his chest. “All of them. Locked in a private safe.” One less worry, at least. “Any chance the solar array survived?” “None.” Hi gestured uselessly at the scorched wreckage. “It was outside the bunker, but look at that. The whole damn hill just fell into the mine shaft. It’s a total loss.” I glanced at Shelton. “What about the hard drives?” Shelton’s face brightened an iota. “I back everything up wirelessly. Our files are safe.” “The mini-fridge is toast.” Hi sighed deeply. “I had a sandwich in there.

Cassian angled his head. 'What happened before the disaster that was last night?' ... When Rhys didn't answer, Cassian said, 'Rhys.' Rhys didn't look at him as he whispered, 'The baby has wings.' Joy sparked through Cassian- even as the broken whisper and what those words meant made his blood go cold. 'You're sure?' 'We had an appointment with Madja this morning.' 'But he's only a quarter Illyrian.' It was possible, of course, for the baby to have inherited wings, but unlikely, given that Rhys himself had been born without them, and only conjured them through whatever strange unearthly magic he possessed. 'He is. But Feyre was in an Illyrian form when he was conceived.' 'That can make a difference? I thought she only made the wings- nothing else.' 'She shape-shifts. She transforms her entire self into the form she takes. When she grants herself wings, she essentially alters her body as its most intrinsic level. So she was fully Illyrian that night.' 'She doesn't have the wings now.' 'No, she shifted back before we knew.' 'So let her change back into an Illyrian to bear the babe.' Rhys's face was stark. 'Madja has put a ban on any more shape-shifting. She says that to alter Feyre's body in any way right now could put the baby at risk. On the chance that it could be bad for the baby. Feyre is forbidden to so much as change the colour of her hair until after the birth.' Cassian raked a hand through his hair. 'I see. But, Rhys- it'll be all right. It's not that bad.' Rhys snarled. 'It is bad. For so many gods-damned reasons, it is fucking bad.' Rhys was as close to being beside himself as Cassian had seen him since he'd returned from Amarantha's court. 'Breathe,' Cassian said calmly. Rhys's eyes simmered, the stars within them winked out. 'Fuck you.' 'Take a breath, Rhysand.' Cassian gestured to the window behind him, the lawn sloping down to the river. 'You want to go fight it out, I've got energy to burn.' The study doors opened, and Azriel walked in. From the grim expression etched on his face, he already knew. Azriel claimed the seat beside Cassian. 'Tell us what you need, Rhys.' 'Nothing. I need to not fall apart so my mate doesn't pick up a whiff of this when she comes home for lunch.' Rhys narrowed his eyes, and power rumbled in the room. 'No one says a word about this to Feyre. No one.' 'Didn't Madja warn her?' Azriel asked. 'Not strongly. She only mentioned an elevated risk during labour.' Rhys let out a harsh laugh. 'An elevated risk.

Before he could say anything else, another bolt of lightning slammed into our shield and shattered it. The force of its power sent us flying and I crashed down on my back in the mud five meters from Darius as he scrambled to his knees. I pushed myself upright and we looked across the distance separating us as the rain pelted us again and a huge crash of thunder sounded in warning. If we didn’t stop this, we were going to get ourselves killed. And as much as I wanted to defy the heavens and refuse to bow to their commands, I couldn’t just abandon Darcy like that. Agony of a far too familiar nature splintered through my heart as I called on my Order form and flaming wings burst from my skin. Darius watched me as the rain pelted down on him, his whole posture written with defeat as he waited for me to leave him behind again. “I’m sorry,” I breathed and he nodded just a little to let me know he understood. I turned and ran from him before he could see me shatter, diving over the edge of the cliff as my wings snapped out and I beat them hard as I flew toward the storm clouds which had come to curse us. I kept flying hard and fast, diving into the clouds and relishing the satisfying hiss that sounded as my wings turned the rain to steam all around me. I let the Phoenix fire have me, coating my skin in it and relishing the full power of my Order as I flew into the darkness within the clouds, burning a path right through the centre of them. I finally burst free, emerging above the storm and looking up at the sky as the last stars lingered in a sea of navy blue on the horizon. I raised my hands and bared my teeth at them as I unleashed the might of my Order on the heavens themselves, hoping I could curse them just as they had cursed me. Red and blue flames poured from me in a torrent so hot that the air shimmered all around me. “You don’t get to choose for me!” I screamed. Thunder rumbled as the storm dissipated beneath me and for a moment I could have sworn the sky was mocking me. Tears sprung from my eyes and I turned away from the sky and the stars and all the fucking secrets they held as I raced back down to the ground. They may have forced us apart, but my lips still tingled with the memory of Darius’s mouth on mine. And if we’d managed to steal that much then I was going to figure out how to claim a whole lot more. I’d been a thief for a long time and if I had to take my destiny from the clutches of the stars while they slept, then I’d figure out a way to do it. I’d never set my mind on something and failed before. And this wouldn’t be the first time. (Tory)

You don’t remember putting on a strip show for your friends in The Orb?” he asked, looking into my eyes. I frowned a little. I could remember playing some Fae drinking game and forgetting the rules so that I lost a hell of a lot and consumed more than my share of the drinks. I had to admit that I wouldn’t have shied away from a dare like that but it didn’t really explain our current situation. “No,” I said eventually. “Well you ripped all the buttons off of your shirt right before you passed out. I brought you back here to keep an eye on you - much to the disgust of your little Pegasus friend I might add.” “Sofia?” Yeah, I could imagine she wouldn’t have wanted Darius Acrux taking me off to his room after all the shit he’d put me through. He obviously hadn’t listened to her complaints though. “She’s pretty loyal to you,” he said. “But as she couldn’t exactly challenge me, she had to accept that I was just going to look after you. You took care of stripping off the rest of your clothes after that. Right before you straddled me and stole my shirt.” I opened my mouth to protest against the idea of that but it actually sounded vaguely familiar. Darius was just watching me like I was somehow fascinating to him and I couldn’t help but stare back into his deep brown eyes. His thumb shifted, painting a line of fire across my thigh and my heart thumped a little harder in response. “And then we just... slept?” I confirmed. “I wouldn’t have touched you while you were wasted like that,” he said, his gaze travelling over my face and landing on my mouth. But I’m not wasted now... I reached out slowly and pressed my palm down on his chest so that I could feel his heart pounding to the same fierce tune as my own. I dropped my gaze to the back of my hand so that I didn’t have to see the way he was looking at me anymore. His skin was flaming hot beneath my palm, the depth of his fire magic burning within him like an inferno. I wanted to look up again and catch his gaze with mine but if I did then I was fairly sure that I knew what would happen. And this dark temptation before me was so much more monster than man. I’d never had an opportunity to really study the tattoos which marked his flesh before and I let myself look at the patterns which wove their way over his shoulders and chest in the dim light. A wing swept across his ribs from some design on his back, the feathers burning like they were made of fire themselves. The red Libra symbol on his forearm began a network of constellations and star signs which formed a sleeve over his bicep, though it stood out starkly as the only image with any colour in it. Flames climbed over his left shoulder from the tattoo covering his back which I knew spurted from the mouth of a dragon. I was sure I could have lost myself in the art on his back if I could see it and I itched to ask him about them but it seemed too personal somehow and I held my tongue. I shifted my gaze back to my hand above his pounding heart where his skin was bare of any marks. I cast about for something else to ask him as the silence spread and a kind of expectant energy seemed to build between us. I could still feel him watching me, waiting for me to look up and give him the answer to the question which was hanging between us. (Darius POV)

I screamed a battle cry like a damn Viking warrior as I flung my palms out, aiming for the nightmare creature and sending blue and red fire to consume it on blazing wings. The Nymph shrieked as it burned before bursting apart, leaving a trail of black smoke hanging in the air where it had been. Diego’s eyes were wild with panic as he stared between the black smoke and me. “Shift!” I commanded, my voice unintentionally thick with Coercion as my worry for my friends compelled me to make sure they got to safety. Sofia’s eyes widened a moment before a pale pink Pegasus burst from the confines of her skin once more. I skidded to a halt in the mud beside her, reaching down to heave Diego back to his feet. He swayed unsteadily and I shoved him towards Sofia without wasting time on being gentle. “Climb on,” I said. “And fly as far from here as you can get!” I tried to turn away as Diego clambered onto her back but he caught my wrist. “Come with us, chica, it's not safe for you here either-” “I’m not leaving Darcy,” I replied dismissively, pulling my arm back. “But the two of you need to go.” Sofia flapped her sparkling wings as my Coercion gripped her and my heart twisted at the concern in their eyes. “Don’t worry about me,” I added as they took flight. I watched for a moment as they sped towards the sky then turned back to my hunt for Darcy. Darius roared behind me as his flames took out another Nymph but a second leapt around the blaze and onto his back. I sucked in a sharp breath, drawing on the well of power within me as I started running back towards him. Darius spun around, the razor sharp spines on his tail swiping within inches of my face as he tried to dislodge the creature but it clambered all the way up until it was lodged between his wings. He swung his head around, snapping at it as he tried to rip it off of him but he couldn’t twist his head into that position. The Nymph released its rattling breath and my knees buckled as it weakened me. I staggered forward, my hand landing on Darius’s front leg as I tried to steady myself. The Nymph shrieked excitedly and drove its probes into the flesh between Darius’s shoulder blades. A roar filled with pure agony escaped him and he fell forward onto his chest as pain wracked through his body. Where my hand still rested against him it was like I could feel that pain within myself. I felt like I was tearing in two, my soul ripping free of my body and the deepest sense of dread filled me. Darius swung his head around to look at me, one huge, golden eye reflecting back the image of a girl who was breaking in half. He snarled at me, striking his nose against my chest to knock me back a step. As I stumbled away from him, he struck me again, a deep growl echoing from his throat as he urged me to run. I stared at him in shock for a moment and he trembled as more pain tore through him. “So fucking bossy,” I snapped, shoving his big Dragon face aside as I moved closer to him instead. “You probably are stubborn enough to die here rather than let me help you.” Darius growled at me but I ignored him as I leapt up onto his leg and started climbing up the side of his big ass Dragon body. (tory)

As the clock strikes midnight, let us not just mark a new year, but ignite the flames of hope within our hearts, kindling the path to transformative change.

There, in the center of the chamber, sat a small, golden harp. Cold leached through Nesta, clarifying her thoughts enough to realize where she stood. That the music of the priestesses had lulled her into a trance, that her own bones and the stone of the mountain surrounding her had been her scrying tools, and she had drifted to this place … The Harp gleamed in the darkness, as if it possessed its own sun within the metal and strings. Play me, it seemed to whisper. Let me sing again. Join your voice with mine. Her hand reached toward the strings. Yes. The Harp sighed, a low purr rolling off it as Nesta’s hand neared. We shall open doors and pathways; we shall move through space and eons together. Our music will free us of earthly rules and borders. Yes. She’d play the Harp, and there would be nothing but music until the stars died out. Play. I have so long wished to play, it said, and she could have sworn she heard a smile within the sound. What might my song unlock in here? A cold, humorless laugh skittered along Nesta’s bones. It sang again, Play, play— The song halted, and the vision shattered. Nesta’s knees gave out as the room swept in, and she collapsed onto the pew, earning an alarmed look from Gwyn through the crowd. Her heart thundered, her mouth was dry as sand, and she forced herself to rise to her feet again. To listen to the end of the service as she pieced it all together, realized what she had discovered in her unwitting scrying.

There are other dragons here, and they saved us, hid us in the network of caves within the valley, then later with the civilians who survived the city being scorched.