Friendship Established Quotes

What some now call 'emerging Christianity' or 'the emerging church' is not something you join, establish, or invent. You just name it and then you see it everywhere- already in place! Such nongroup groups, the 'two or three' gathered in deep truth, create a whole new level of affiliation, dialogue, and friendship...

Nothing had happened, solely the established fact that we were friends, becoming better by the day. The only thing we'd ever be because we were both so terribly scared to do anything about it.

You need a place just a click over middle range. Don’t want to go all-out first time, but you don’t want to run on the cheap either. You want atmosphere, but not stuffy. A nice established place.” “Bob, you’re going to give me an ulcer.” “This is all ammunition, Cart. All ammo. You want to be able to order a nice bottle of wine. Oh, and after dinner, if she says how she doesn’t want dessert, you suggest she pick one and you’ll split it. Women love that. Sharing dessert’s sexy. Do not go on and on about your job over dinner. Certain death. Get her to talk about hers, and what she likes to do. Then—” “Should I be writing this down?

Studying in countries like China isn't only about your prospects in the global marketplace. It's not just about whether you can compete with your peers in other countries to make America stronger. It's also about whether you can come together and work together with them to make our world stronger. It's about the friendships you make, the bonds of trust you establish and the image of America that you project to the rest of the world.

Nothing- not a conversation, not a handshake or even a hug- establishes friendship so forcefully as eating together.

I do know that, for all the benefits of being the daughter of immigrants, the one drawback is I’ve had to establish my own sense of place. All my extended family live elsewhere, on a different continent, and we don’t visit often enough to form real ties. There’s a lot of freedom in being a pioneer of your family’s history in a new place, of course. But there’s a lot of loneliness too. I’ve had to find my own family, to make the sort of friendships that are family. Yet lack of history means my roots here are shallow, my stories only a few years old.

Trust is the heartbeat of genuine love. And we trust that the attention our partners give friends, or vice versa, does not take anything away from us - we are not diminished. What we learn through experience is that our capacity to establish deep and profound connections in friendship strengthens all our intimate bonds.

Many years before, Abacus had come to the conclusion that the greatest of heroic stories have the shape of a diamond on its side. Beginning at a fine point, the life of the hero expands outward through youth as he begins to establish his strengths and fallibilities, his friendships and enmities. Proceeding into the world, he pursues exploits in grand company, accumulating honors and accolades. But at some untold moment, the two rays that define the outer limits of this widening world of hale companions and worthy adventures simultaneously turn a corner and begin to converge. The terrain our hero travels, the cast of characters he meets, the sense of purpose that has long propelled him forward all begin to narrow—to narrow toward that fixed and inexorable point that defines his fate. Take the tale of Achilles. In hopes of making her son invincible, the Nereid Thetis holds her newborn boy by the ankle and dips him into the river Styx. From that finite moment

And the question was still there of whether their true interior selves—the subtle bodies inside—were still there and functioning despite what age and accident and force of circumstance may have done to hurt them. He meant something like that … that when they had become friends it had been a friendship established between subtle bodies, by which he meant the ingredients of what they were to be …

The "long suit" in most courtships is sex attraction, of course. Then gradually develops such comradeship as the two temperaments allow. Then, after marriage, there is either the establishment of a slow-growing, widely based friendship, the deepest, tenderest, sweetest of relations, all lit and warmed by the recurrent flame of love; or else that process is reversed, love cools and fades, no friendship grows, the whole relation turns from beauty to ashes.

I did not understand why Alfrida looked at him with such a fiercely encouraging smile. All of my experience of a woman with men, of a woman listening to her man, hoping and hoping that he will establish himself as somebody she can reasonably be proud of, was in the future.

The fox is answering the Little Prince's question. What does that mean . . . tame? asks the Little Prince. It means to establish ties. One only understands the things that one tames. Men have no more time to understand anything, they buy things all ready made at the shops, but there is no shop anywhere one can buy friendship.

The challenge to which these two groups responded was the interdependence of human kind, North and South, Rich and Pool, Industrialised and Rural, in the aftermath of the Second World War. To the United World College group it called for the establishment of a new kind of school where young people of all nations and backgrounds could live and learn together at the most formative period of their adolescence and so form those ties of friendship and understanding that would last them through their lives

The pony preserved his character for independence and principle down to the last moment of his life; which was an unusually long one, and caused him to be looked upon, indeed, as the very Old Parr of ponies. He often went to and fro with the little phaeton between Mr. Garland's and his son's, and, as the old people and the young were frequently together, had a stable of his own at the new establishment, into which he would walk of himself with surprising dignity. He condescended to play with the children, as they grew old enough to cultivate his friendship, and would run up and down the little paddock with them like a dog; but though he relaxed so far, and allowed them such freedoms as caresses, or even to look at his shoes or hang on by his tail, he never permitted anyone among them to mount his back or drive him; thus showing that even their familiarity must have its limits, and that there were points between them far too serious for trifling. He was not unsusceptible of warm attachments in his later life, for when the good Bachelor came to live with Mr. Garland upon the clergyman's decease, he conceived a great friendship for him, and amiably submitted to be driven by his hands without the least resistance. He did no work for two or three years before he died, but lived on clover; and his last act (like a choleric old gentleman) was to kick his doctor.

Boom. Status quo re-established. Friendship saved.

There is great pleasure, not only in maintaining old and established friendships, but also in beginning and acquiring new ones.

Now there is great pleasure, not only in maintaining old and established friendships, but also in beginning and acquiring new ones.

For even the heathen poet said, “I was wrong in thinking that that kingdom which is established by force is stronger than that which is joined together by friendship.“6

If we are to violate the Constitution, will the people submit to our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the chains that these measures are forging for them. The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators and all the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of a despotic power ... [T]he hours of the most unsuspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or the recesses of domestic retirement afford no security. The companion whom you most trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the domestic who waits in your chamber, all are tempted to betray your imprudent or unguarded follie; to misrepresent your words; to convey them, distorted by calumny, to the secret tribunal where jealousy presides — where fear officiates as accuser and suspicion is the only evidence that is heard ... Do not let us be told, Sir, that we excite a fervour against foreign aggression only to establish a tyranny at home; that [...] we are absurd enough to call ourselves ‘free and enlightened’ while we advocate principles that would have disgraced the age of Gothic barbarity and establish a code compared to which the ordeal is wise and the trial by battle is merciful and just." [opposing the Alien & Sedition bills of 1798, in Congress]

For most of us, Facebook friends and Instagram followers are supplements to -- not surrogates for -- our social lives. As meaningful as the friendships we establish online can be, most of us are unsatisfied with virtual ties that never develop into face-to-face relationships. Building real connections requires a shared physical environment -- a social infrastructure.

Genuine and lasting friendship is possible, but it is not easy to achieve. If all of us could establish a long lasting friendship, many mature people would still have old friends from their school days.

There is on the earth no institution which Friendship has established; it is not taught by any religion; no scripture contains its maxims. It has no temple nor even a solitary column...However, out fates at least are social. Our courses do not diverge; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly foretell it. We are inclined to lay the chief stress on likeness and not on difference, and in foreign bodies we admit that there are many degrees of warmth below blood heat, but none of cold above it.

But before I invite you into my society and friendship I will be open and sincere with you, and must lay down this as an established truth, that there is nothing truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labour. The

Because we are invited to be part of God's new creation now, we seek to embody the identity we have been given in Christ. . . . We engage in mission to establish friendships that lead to the formation of a new people in the world.

Great pleasure is to be found not only in keeping up an old and established friendship but also in beginning and building up a new one. There is the same difference between having gained a friend and actually gaining a friend as there is between a farmer harvesting and a farmer sowing.

Respect for humanity! Respect for humanity! If such respect is rooted in the human heart, humanity will eventually establish a social, political, or economic system that reflects it. A civilization is before all else rooted in its substance. At first this was a blind urge for warmth. Then by trial and error man found the way to the fire. That is probably why, my friend, I have such need of your friendship. I need a companion who - beyond the struggles of reason - respects in me the pilgrim on his way to that fire. I sometimes need to feel the promised warmth ahead of time and to rest somewhere beyond myself in that meeting place that will be ours. [...] Beyond the clumsiness of my words, beyond my defective reasoning, you are ready to see me as a human being. You are ready to honor in me the representative of beliefs, customs, loves. If I differ from you, far from wronging you, I enrich you. You question me as you would a traveler.

Then [my friend] started dating, quickly got married, then just disappeared. I never saw him. He was like Frodo from Lord of the Rings. The moment he put a ring on, he vanished. I’ve seen this happen a few times. Once a serious relationship is established and a couple gets married, friendship with others becomes a low priority.

Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?’ Amos 3:3 ‘Does This Person Belong in your Life?’ A toxic relationship is like a limb with gangrene: unless you amputate it the infection can spread and kill you. Without the courage to cut off what refuses to heal, you’ll end up losing a lot more. Your personal growth - and in some cases your healing - will only be expedited by establishing relationships with the right people. Maybe you’ve heard the story about the scorpion who asked the frog to carry him across the river because he couldn’t swim. ‘I’m afraid you’ll sting me,’ replied the frog. The scorpion smiled reassuringly and said, ‘Of course I won’t. If I did that we’d both drown!’ So the frog agreed, and the scorpion hopped on his back. Wouldn’t you know it: halfway across the river the scorpion stung him! As they began to sink the frog lamented, ‘You promised you wouldn’t sting me. Why’d you do it?’ The scorpion replied, ‘I can’t help it. It’s my nature!’ Until God changes the other person’s nature, they have the power to affect and infect you. For example, when you feel passionately about something but others don’t, it’s like trying to dance a foxtrot with someone who only knows how to waltz. You picked the wrong dance partner! Don’t get tied up with someone who doesn’t share your values and God-given goals. Some issues can be corrected through counselling, prayer, teaching, and leadership. But you can’t teach someone to care; if they don’t care they’ll pollute your environment, kill your productivity, and break your rhythm with constant complaints. That’s why it’s important to pray and ask God, ‘Does this person belong in my life?

States accustomed to their own laws and freedoms have three ways to maintain control when they are conquered: The first is to eliminate them, the second is to go and settle there, the third is to subject them to taxation and establish a government composed of a small number of individuals who will ensure the friendship of the local people and allow them to live according to their own laws.

I learned that identical emotions do not spring up in the hearts of all men simultaneously, by a pre-established order. Later on I discovered that, whenever I had read for too long and was in a mood for conversation, the friend to whom I would be burning to say something would at that moment have finished indulging himself in the delights of conversation, and wanted nothing now but to be left to read undisturbed.

IF THERE IS A FUNDAMENTAL difference between rivalry in the modern era and rivalry in earlier epochs, as I believe there is, it is that in the modern era artists developed a wholly different conception of greatness. It was a notion based not on the old, established conventions of mastering and extending a pictorial tradition, but on the urge to be radically, disruptively original. Where did this urge come from? It was a response, most basically, to the new conditions of life—to a sense that modern, industrialized, urban society, although in some ways representing a pinnacle of Western civilization, had also foreclosed on certain human possibilities. Modernity, many began to feel, had shut off the possibility of forging a deeper connection with nature and with the riches of spiritual and imaginative life. The world, as Max Weber wrote, had become disenchanted. Hence

To a foreigner, it must have seemed that Russia had become the land of ten thousand lines. For there were lines at the tram stops, lines before the grocer, lines at the agencies of labor, education, and housing. But in point of fact, there were not ten thousand lines, or even ten. There was one all-encompassing line, which wound across the country and back through time. This had been Lenin’s greatest innovation: a line that, like the Proletariat itself, was universal and infinite. He established it by decree in 1917 and personally took the first slot as his comrades jostled to line up behind him. One by one every Russian took his place, and the line grew longer and longer until it shared all of the attributes of life. In it friendships were formed and romances kindled; patience was fostered; civility practiced; even wisdom attained. If one is willing to stand in line for eight hours to purchase a loaf of bread, the lone figure thought, what is an hour or two to see the corpse of a hero free of charge?

And it is on this account that democratic states have established the ostracism; for an equality seems the principal object of their government. For which reason they compel all those who are very eminent for their power, their fortune, their friendships, or any other cause which may give them too great weight in the government, to submit to the ostracism, and leave the city for a stated time; as the fabulous histories relate the Argonauts served Hercules, for they refused to take him with them in the ship Argo on account of his superior valour.

This highly developed mycelial/plant root system connects all the plants in a particular ecorange into one self-organized whole that, itself, possesses capacities not perceivable in any of the parts. In essence, a large, self-organized neural network develops. This leads to the emergence of a unique identity in every identifiable ecorange on Earth. It is possible then, if you reclaim your capacity to feel, to make intelligent contact with the intelligence of any ecorange in which you are embedded to establish rapport and deep friendship and to learn from that relationship, to, in fact, learn to “think like a mountain” from the mountain itself

After months of separation her friends still catalyzed her thoughts and challenged her opinions and wrangled with her emotions, and she was relieved to see that they still slid into the familiar patterns, the comfortable ruts of long-established personalities. It was nice but it also worried her. Could there be room for growth? How could you change around the people that knew you best, who knew you backwards and forwards and knew you so well that they defined themselves by you and you by them? How could you possibly evolve, like really evolve and become a whole person all on your own, when your own makeup was inextricably intertwined with someone else’s perception of themselves?

Anything Bunny wrote was bound to be alarmingly original, since he began with such odd working materials and managed to alter them further by his befuddled scrutiny, but the John Donne paper must have been the worst of all the bad papers he ever wrote (ironic, given that it was the only thing he ever wrote that saw print. After he disappeared, a journalist asked for an excerpt from the missing young scholar's work and Marion gave him a copy of it, a laboriously edited paragraph of which eventually found its way into People magazine). Somewhere, Bunny had heard that John Donne had been acquainted with Izaak Walton, and in some dim corridor of his mind this friendship grew larger and larger, until in his mind the two men were practically interchangeable. We never understood how this fatal connection had established itself: Henry blamed it on Men of Thought and Deed, but no one knew for sure. A week or two before the paper was due, he had started showing up in my room about two or three in the morning, looking as if he had just narrowly escaped some natural disaster, his tie askew and his eyes wild and rolling. 'Hello, hello,' he would say, stepping in, running both hands through his disordered hair. 'Hope I didn't wake you, don't mind if I cut on the lights, do you, ah, here we go, yes, yes…' He would turn on the lights and then pace back and forth for a while without taking off his coat, hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. Finally he would stop dead in his tracks and say, with a desperate look in his eye: 'Metahemeralism. Tell me about it. Everything you know. I gotta know something about metahemeralism.' 'I'm sorry. I don't know what that is.' 'I don't either,' Bunny would say brokenly. 'Got to do with art or pastoralism or something. That's how I gotta tie together John Donne and Izaak Walton, see.' He would resume pacing. 'Donne. Walton. Metahemeralism. That's the problem as I see it.' 'Bunny, I don't think "metahemeralism" is even a word.' 'Sure it is. Comes from the Latin. Has to do with irony and the pastoral. Yeah. That's it. Painting or sculpture or something, maybe.' 'Is it in the dictionary?' 'Dunno. Don't know how to spell it. I mean' – he made a picture frame with his hands – 'the poet and the fisherman. Parfait. Boon companions. Out in the open spaces. Living the good life. Metahemeralism's gotta be the glue here, see?' And so it would go, for sometimes half an hour or more, with Bunny raving about fishing, and sonnets, and heaven knew what, until in the middle of his monologue he would be struck by a brilliant thought and bluster off as suddenly as he had descended. He finished the paper four days before the deadline and ran around showing it to everyone before he turned it in. 'This is a nice paper, Bun -,' Charles said cautiously. 'Thanks, thanks.' 'But don't you think you ought to mention John Donne more often? Wasn't that your assignment?' 'Oh, Donne,' Bunny had said scoffingly. 'I don't want to drag him into this.' Henry refused to read it. 'I'm sure it's over my head, Bunny, really,' he said, glancing over the first page. 'Say, what's wrong with this type?' 'Triple-spaced it,' said Bunny proudly. 'These lines are about an inch apart.' 'Looks kind of like free verse, doesn't it?' Henry made a funny little snorting noise through his nose. 'Looks kind of like a menu,' he said. All I remember about the paper was that it ended with the sentence 'And as we leave Donne and Walton on the shores of Metahemeralism, we wave a fond farewell to those famous chums of yore.' We wondered if he would fail.

What happens to a highbrow literary culture when its fault lines-along caste, class and gender-are brutally exposed? What happens to the young iconoclasts who dare to speak and write about these issues openly? Is there such a thing as a happy ending for revolutionaries? Or are they doomed to be forever relegated to the footnotes of history? This is the never-before-told true story of the Hungry Generation (or 'the Hungryalists')-a group of barnstorming, anti-establishment poets, writers and artists in Bengal in the 1960s. Braving social boycott, ridicule and arrests, the Hungryalists changed the literary landscape of Bengal (and many South Asian countries) forever. Along the way, they also influenced iconic poets, such as Allen Ginsberg, who struck up a lifelong friendship with the Hungryalists.

My superpower is that I think everyone is my friend, and that’s the way I treated them. I brought them right down to my level and acted like we already had a bond, and we established one. It works every time, even with people who might not normally accept someone like me. I think being gay is a fun fact about me. It’s like any other bit of biographical trivia: I’m from Pennsylvania, I have five siblings, I get Brazilian blowouts, and I’m gay. They’re all fun facts. (The fun fact of being gay might influence the fun fact of getting the blowouts, but who’s to say?) When I treat being gay like that, it doesn’t keep me from talking to someone at a party, having a good time with them, or even establishing a friendship. And it doesn’t keep them from associating with me. Fun facts have a way of doing that.

This process revealed some surprising findings. The introverts and extroverts participated about equally, giving the lie to the idea that introverts always talk less. But the introvert pairs tended to focus on one or two serious subjects of conversation, while the extrovert pairs chose lighter-hearted and wider-ranging topics. Often the introverts discussed problems or conflicts in their lives: school, work, friendships, and so on. Perhaps because of this fondness for “problem talk,” they tended to adopt the role of adviser, taking turns counseling each other on the problem at hand. The extroverts, by contrast, were more likely to offer casual information about themselves that established commonality with the other person: You have a new dog? That’s great. A friend of mine has an amazing tank of saltwater fish!

Vincent Marc Hoherz. On World Peace. ♡ A construct like religion doesn't exist, it never did and never will be existing. The principles of a peaceful life as a community of quarters, cities, communal districts, conglomerates over city-boundaries, national countries, continents, international communities and economical relations between each of these entities can only sustainably established by following the principles of Human Rights, Common Sense, Empathy and Constructivism like Friendship, Love, Reliability and Circumspection. Each and Everyone has to be registered, guided and assistently encouraged in accordance with their abilities. Women and Children are our most precious and Central Potential as a World-Community and have to be given any existing Security and Right to develop. Following these Principles, Women first, - will lead and only will lead to a Planet's stable Society. ♡ ‪#‎SophieHunger‬ ‪#‎EmilieWelti‬ ‪#‎EmmaWatson‬ ‪#‎HeForShe‬ ‪#‎UnWomen‬ ‪#‎Nato‬ ‪#‎World‬ ‪#‎WorldPeace‬ ‪#‎VincentMarcHoherz‬

We are here this afternoon to mourn the passing of two good friends, Terrence Dace and Felix Beider. They were homeless. Their ways were not those we most desire for ourselves, but that didn’t make them wrong. We seem determined to save the homeless, to fix them, to change them into something other than what they are. We want them to be like us, but they are not. The homeless do not want our pity, nor do they deserve our scorn. Our judgments about them, for good or for ill, negate their right to live as they please. Both the urge to rescue and the need to condemn fail to take into account the concept of their personal liberty, which they may exercise as they see fit as long as their actions fall within the law. The homeless are not lesser mortals. For Terrence and Felix, their battles were within and their victories hard-won. I think of these two men as soldiers of the poor, part of an army of the disaffiliated. The homeless have established a nation within a nation, but we are not at war. Why should we not coexist in peace when we may be in greater need of salvation than they? This is what the homeless long for: respect, freedom from hunger, shelter from the elements, safety, the companionship of the like-minded. They want to live without fear. They want to enjoy the probity of the open air without the risk of bodily harm. They want to be warm. They want the comfort of a clean bed when they are ill, relief from pain, a hand offered in friendship. Ordinary conversation. Simple needs. Why are their choices so hard for us to accept? What you see before you is their home. This is their dwelling place. This grass, this sunlight, these palms, this mighty ocean, the moon, the stars, the clouds overhead though they sometimes harbor rain. Under this canopy they have staked out a life for themselves. For Terrence and for Felix, this is also the wide bridge over which they passed from life into death. Their graves will be unmarked but that does not mean they are forgotten. The Earth remembers them, even as it gathers them tenderly into its

Oh my God, Rayna…I think something almost happened with Ben and me in Rio.” “What? Wait, back up. When? You mean, ‘almost happened’ like…what? What exactly almost happened?” “I’m not sure,” I said. “It all went really fast. I was feeling all these things, and he was looking at me like…like he was in that picture, and then…” “Yeah??” “I saw Sage.” “Ooooh,” Rayna winced. “What did Ben do?” “Nothing. I mean, I ran after Sage and…you know everything that happened then. We haven’t even talked about it.” I looked at her plaintively. “What do I do?” “What do you want to do?” I thought about it. “I don’t know.” “Well…how do you feel? She asked. “I don’t know that either. I never even thought about Ben that way except for that split second in Rio, and even then I wasn’t thinking of it seriously. And Sage…with Sage it’s all I think about, but it’s all jumbled up with the most insane things: dreams, and other lives, and other people’s memories, and…I don’t even know what’s real.” Rayna took it all in. “I love Ben,” she said. “You know that. I think you guys could be great together. I also believe in soulmates. Not just as romantic flings, like the guys in Europe, but true soulmates, destined to be together forever because they’re perfect for each other. Are you and Sage true soulmates? I don’t know, but I do know you’re cheating yourself if you don’t at least try to find out.” “How do I find that out, Rayna?” “I want you to do me a favor. Promise on our friendship.” “Promise what?” “Asking first is cheating. Promise on our friendship.” It was an evil ploy. Rayna knew I wouldn’t say no, and she knew I wouldn’t go back on something if I promised on our friendship. Neither of us ever would-that was a rule we’d established when we were five. “Okay…I promise on our friendship,” I agreed, rolling my eyes. “What did I just promise to do?” “For the rest of the evening, don’t think. Just listen to how you feel and go with it, wherever it leads. And whether or not it makes any sense.” I nodded. “I’ll try.” “Not good enough. You promised on our friendship.” I smiled. “I’ll do it.

The undiscerning observer may think that this mixture of ideal and reality, of the human and spiritual, is most likely to be present where there are a number of levels in the structure of a community, as in marriage, the family, friendship, where the human element as such already assumes a central importance in the community’s coming into being at all, and where the spiritual is only something added to the physical and intellectual. According to this view, it is only in these relationships that there is a danger of confusing and mixing the two spheres, whereas there can be no such danger in a purely spiritual fellowship. This idea, however, is a great delusion. According to all experience the truth is just the opposite. A marriage, a family, a friendship is quite conscious of the limitations of its community-building power; such relationships know very well, if they are sound, where the human element stops and the spiritual begins. They know the difference between physical-intellectual and spiritual community. On the contrary, when a community of a purely spiritual kind is established, it always encounters the danger that everything human will be carried into and intermixed with this fellowship. A purely spiritual relationship is not only dangerous but also an altogether abnormal thing. When physical and family relationships or ordinary associations, that is, those arising from everyday life with all its claims upon people who are working together, are not projected into the spiritual community, then we must be especially careful. That is why, as experience has shown, it is precisely in retreats of short duration that the human element develops most easily. Nothing is easier than to stimulate the glow of fellowship in a few days of life together, but nothing is more fatal to the sound, sober, brotherly fellowship of everyday life. There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life. But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them. It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together. That God has acted and wants to act upon us all, this we see in faith as God’s greatest gift, this makes us glad and happy, but it also makes us ready to forego all such experiences when God at times does not grant them. We are bound together by faith, not by experience. ‘Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity’—this is the Scripture’s praise of life together under the Word. But now we can rightly interpret the words ‘in unity’ and say, ‘for brethren to dwell together through Christ’. For Jesus Christ alone is our unity. ‘He is our peace’. Through him alone do we have access to one another, joy in one another, and fellowship with one another.

Are you ready, children?” Father Mikhail walked through the church. “Did I keep you waiting?” He took his place in front of them at the altar. The jeweler and Sofia stood nearby. Tatiana thought they might have already finished that bottle of vodka. Father Mikhail smiled. “Your birthday today,” he said to Tatiana. “Nice birthday present for you, no?” She pressed into Alexander. “Sometimes I feel that my powers are limited by the absence of God in the lives of men during these trying times,” Father Mikhail began. “But God is still present in my church, and I can see He is present in you. I am very glad you came to me, children. Your union is meant by God for your mutual joy, for the help and comfort you give one another in prosperity and adversity and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children. I want to send you righteously on your way through life. Are you ready to commit yourselves to each other?” “We are,” they said. “The bond and the covenant of marriage was established by God in creation. Christ himself adorned this manner of life by his first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. A marriage is a symbol of the mystery of the union between Christ and His Church. Do you understand that those whom God has joined together, no man can put asunder?” “We do,” they said. “Do you have the rings?” “We do.” Father Mikhail continued. “Most gracious God,” he said, holding the cross above their heads, “look with favor upon this man and this woman living in a world for which Your Son gave His life. Make their life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world. Defend this man and this woman from every enemy. Lead them into peace. Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts, a mantle upon their shoulders, and a crown upon their foreheads. Bless them in their work and in their friendship, in their sleeping and in their waking, in their joys and their sorrows, in their life and in their death.” Tears trickled down Tatiana’s face. She hoped Alexander wouldn’t notice. Father Mikhail certainly had. Turning to Tatiana and taking her hands, Alexander smiled, beaming at her unrestrained happiness. Outside, on the steps of the church, he lifted her off the ground and swung her around as they kissed ecstatically. The jeweler and Sofia clapped apathetically, already down the steps and on the street. “Don’t hug her so tight. You’ll squeeze that child right out of her,” said Sofia to Alexander as she turned around and lifted her clunky camera. “Oh, wait. Hold on. Let me take a picture of the newlyweds.” She clicked once. Twice. “Come to me next week. Maybe I’ll have some paper by then to develop them.” She waved. “So you still think the registry office judge should have married us?” Alexander grinned. “He with his ‘of sound mind’ philosophy on marriage?” Tatiana shook her head. “You were so right. This was perfect. How did you know this all along?” “Because you and I were brought together by God,” Alexander replied. “This was our way of thanking Him.” Tatiana chuckled. “Do you know it took us less time to get married than to make love the first time?” “Much less,” Alexander said, swinging her around in the air. “Besides, getting married is the easy part. Just like making love. It was the getting you to make love to me that was hard. It was the getting you to marry me…” “I’m sorry. I was so nervous.” “I know,” he said. He still hadn’t put her down. “I thought the chances were twenty-eighty you were actually going to go through with it.” “Twenty against?” “Twenty for.” “Got to have a little more faith, my husband,” said Tatiana, kissing his lips.

Anarchists and antiauthoritarians clearly differentiate between charity and solidarity--especially thanks to working with indigenous solidarity movements and other international solidarity movements--based on the principles of affinity and mutual aid. Affinity is just what it sounds like: that you can work most easily with people who share your goals, and that your work will be strongest when your relationships are based on trust, friendship, and love. Mutual aid is the idea that we all have a stake in one another's liberation, and that when we can act from that interdependence, we can share with one another as equals. Charity, however, is something that is given not only because it feels like there is an excess to share but also because it is based in a framework that implies that others inherently need the help--that they are unable to take care of themselves and that they would suffer without it. Charity is patronizing and selfish. It establishes some people as those who assist and others as those who need assistance, stabilizing oppressive paradigms by solidifying people's positions in them. Autonomy and self-determination are essential to making this distinction as well. Recognizing the autonomy and self-determination of individuals and groups acknowledges their capability. It's an understanding of that group as having something of worth to be gained through interactions with them, whether that thing is a material good or something less tangible, like perspective, joy, or inspiration. The solidarity model dispels the idea of one inside and one outside, foregrounding how individuals belong to multiple groups and how groups overlap with one another, while simultaneously demanding respect for the identity of self-sufficientcy of each of those groups. Original Zine: Ain't no PC Gonna Fix it, Baby. 2013. Featured in: A Critique of Ally Politics. Taking Sides.

What was the battle? What were the aims of the romantics? Why was the subject the focus of such violent interest? Hugo and his generation were all ‘enfants du siècle’, all, give or take a year or two, born with the century. Brought up amidst the dramas of Napoleon’s wars, they had reached manhood to the anticlimax of peace and Bourbon rule. Restless and dissatisfied, their dreams of military glory frustrated, they had turned them- selves instead towards the liberation of the arts, their foes no longer the armies of Europe but the tyrannies of classical tradition. For thirty years, while the nation’s energies had been absorbed in politics and war, the arts had virtually stood still in France, frozen, through lack of challenge, in the classical attitudes of the old régime. The violent emotions and experiences of the Napoleonic era had done much to render them meaningless. ‘Since the cam- paign in Russia,’ said a former officer to Stendhal, ‘Iphigénie en Aulide no longer seems such a good play.’ By the 1820s while the academic establishment, hiding its own sterility behind the great names of the past, continued to denounce all change, the ice of clas- sicism was beginning to crack. New influences were crowding in from abroad: Chateaubriand, the ‘enchanter’, had cast his spell on the rising generation; the po- etry of Lamartine, Hugo and Vigny heralded the spring. An old society lay in ruins; the tremendous forces which had overturned it were sweeping at last through the realms of art and literature, their momentum all the greater for having been so long delayed. Nor, despite the seeming stability of the Restoration, had the political impetus of earlier years been spent. In the aftermath of the Empire exhaustion had brought a temporary longing for repose. Now, to the excitement of creative ferment was added a hidden dimension: a growing undercurrent of political dissent, as yet unexpressed for fear of reprisal. The romantic rebellion, with its claims for freedom in the arts, cloaked the political revolution once more preparing in the shadows.

On Taylor’s account, then, Descartes opts for a new practice of enquiry, fighting vigourously (1) to establish a new radical interiority utterly severed from external involvement; (2) to objectivise the body; (3) to instrumentalise and disenchant materiality more generally; and (4) to redefine rationality, rejecting the goal of encountering the highest principles of order, choosing instead to consider as rational only those (fully internal) representations which have been constructed according to proper canons of procedural rationality. It

Joan's claim that God had France in HIs care because France was sacred to him may not be merely a medieval trope, embarrassingly old-fashioned language that today we must expunge from our vocabularies. To claim that France is sacred does not imply that only France is sacred. Throughout history, men and women have arisen everywhere who testify to the sacredness of nations. Perhaps today more than ever, we are aware that the identity and integrity of nations are supremely significant for the human race - that the facile invasion of a sovereign state and genocide are abbhorent. In this regard, the entire Jewish-Chrisian faith tradition is based on the belief that God once summoned ordinary people and through them worked extraordinary eeds for HIs own purpose, which is to bring all peoples to Himself. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and the prophets were but a few of thsoe called to establish and save the nation of Israel. But Israel was brought into existence and alter triumphed over its enimies not only for its own sake. This is made clear throughout the Hebrew scriptures: God saved the nation so that all nations might be emraced. Israel was to be "a light to the gentiles," as both Old and New Testaments reiterate. God chose the ISraelites not to dominate or control but rather to serve others. The Christian Scriptures make the point more specific: the gentiles are not excluded from God's embrace, for the light of ISrael shines on the gentiles and shows the way into that embrace. All the peoples of the world are to be brought into the capacious light of the knowledge of God's friendship.Nowhere is it implied that Israel, or any other nation, should cease to exist. Because no single person or roup represents what it means to be human, its the variety of people within a nation that gives it an irreplaceable character - its national personality. As with individuals, so with nations: it is the diversity of peoples that furthers the process of the world. Although many nations have tried, none may set itself up as the only or the predominant nation, forcing its culture, ideology, religion or political agenda on any other nation. For Joan of Arc, this was precisely what England was trying to do through its nobels, armies and war machinery. France deserved its identity and, as a symbol of its people, the king.

Many people you think you love, and who think they love you, do not really love you, and you do not love them. This can be shocking to feel and see; yet in this seeing, and by being honest, a basis for true love can start to be established. Generally, it is not friendships we seek – it is wound-ships, ways to collude with others who have similar or totally opposite wounds so you can both stay in the wound, thinking this charge is ‘love.’ And we can become addicted to this. We use each other, like tools, to stop feeling and seeing ourselves.

Under the appeals court ruling, the government must also show more than just friendship between people sharing in inside information in order to establish a benefit — one of the elements of proving insider trading. The court said the person passing on a tip must receive something “of some consequence.

Marriage is a commitment to do the right thing beyond the emotion of feeling loved

February 19 Coping with Loneliness A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.—Proverbs 18:24 “I am so lonely. I’m around people all of the time, but I feel that I don’t belong.” These were the words of a lady with whom I was having coffee. She added, “I feel cut off from others. I feel isolated in a crowd of people.” My heart ached for this lady. In a large world it is easy to feel that we are nothing more than a speck in the midst of a multitude. Loneliness is painful. It means that we lack meaningful and close relationships with others. Our busy and impersonal world contributes to loneliness. Loneliness can also be self-inflicted. Some find it difficult to communicate with others. They may suffer from a poor self-image. Others demand privacy. This inhibits the development of meaningful relationships. I believe that the worst kind of loneliness comes from being alienated from God. A life steeped in sin is a lonely life. “How can I cope with this loneliness?” this lady asked as we began to talk. If you are not walking with God you must restore your fellowship with Him. You can find forgiveness through Christ. Being separated from God will cause you to feel that life has little meaning. Your first step out of the lonely pit is to realize how much Jesus loves you. He knows you better than anyone else does. He knows your past. He knows your future. As our Scripture tells us, He is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. If you want a friend, you must be a friend. It is God’s plan that we reach outside ourselves. God wants us to be the kind of friend who can strengthen others. Being a friend can help you cope with your loneliness. Why don’t you seek out someone to help and establish a friendship? Telephone someone. Visit your new co-worker or new neighbor. They may be lonely also.

The Covenant of Grace is that eternal and intimate bond of friendship that God has established with His people in the Lord Jesus Christ; in which He is their sovereign friend and they are His servant friends; and in which God gives to them a communion of life with Him and a sovereignly dictated order of life.

Non-teenagers might find his appeal difficult to understand, as he isn’t especially handsome, or big, or even funny; his features are striking only in their regularity, the overall effect being one of solidity, steadiness, the quiet self-assurance one might associate with, for instance, a long-established and successful bank. But that, in fact, is the whole point. One look at Titch, in his regulation Dubarrys, Ireland jersey and freshly topped-up salon tan, and you can see his whole future stretched out before him: you can tell that he will, when he leaves this place, go on to get a good job (banking/insurance/consultancy), marry a nice girl (probably from the Dublin 18 area), settle down in a decent neighbourhood (see above) and about fifteen years from now produce a Titch Version 2.0 who will think his old man is a bit of a knob sometimes but basically all right. The danger of him ever drastically changing – like some day joining a cult, or having a nervous breakdown, or developing out of nowhere a sudden burning need to express himself and taking up some ruinously expensive and embarrassing-to-all-that-know-him discipline, like modern dance, or interpreting the songs of Joni Mitchell in a voice that, after all these years, is revealed to be disquietingly feminine – is negligible. Titch, in short, is so remarkably unremarkable that he has become a kind of embodiment of his socioeconomic class; a friendship/sexual liaison with Titch has therefore come to be seen as a kind of self-endorsement, a badge of Normality, which at this point in life is a highly prized commodity.

The new ideal of virginity and widowhood opened up a new era of sympathetic collaboration between men and women, and for male-female friendship. By establishing a category of women who were understood to be off-limits with respect to romantic entanglements, writers like Gregory were able to support and even celebrate a feminine version of Christianity without being afraid to seem as if they had fallen under the influence of feminine charms.

We spent the morning discussing Michael’s role at Tribune, guiding the journal’s policy toward endorsing the creation of NATO and establishing an anti-Communist stance earlier than most other leftwing publications. George Orwell had become a welcome figure to the staff at Tribune, even though readers protested: “Why do you take after the Russians all the time? We’re still allies with them.” Part of Michael’s friendship with Ernest Bevin was founded on their staunchly anti-Communist views, strengthened by their dismay at what happened to Poland, Czechoslovakia and other Central European countries that became Soviet satellites shortly after the Yalta agreement.

The princess within yourself. The feminine aspect within the man. But there is also a woman waiting somewhere out there. If men and women only knew the possibilities they possess when they are together. The initiated ones in antiquity always worked in pairs. Just as Simon the Magus had his Helen and Yeshua his Mariam, Paul had his Thekla. Not many Christians are aware of this. When they established the Church in the year 325 it was first and foremost a political act, with the purpose of stopping the autonomous gnostic and mystical society which was flowering at the time of Yeshua and in the years after his ceremonial death. When they established the Church they also adopted the dogmas and some of the rites of the Mithras cult and the Ishtar/Isis tradition, which fitted the political agenda under new headings and names. The rest was silenced. In this way they literally threw out the wisdom aspect, Sophia, with the bath water. The symbolic Second Coming happens through Sophia, that is the higher Sophia aspect, which is secret. Find her and you have found the princess. It’s happening now. The Second Coming of the higher Sophia aspect is not just a collective matter but also a process, which each and every one of us must go through. That is why so many people, and especially those who work spiritually, experience that these are turbulent times. This implies a confrontation with the old. All that limits us. And that is hard for most people. Look around. Have you noticed how many men and women leave each other in this day and age? Not because something is wrong with any of them. They simply started their relationship on the wrong foundation. People now must enter into true relationships. This is how it is at all levels. Not just between man and woman but also ties within the family, friendships, and the old teacher/student relationships are also broken because of the new which is on the way.

One should understand that there are principles, which make the friendship, love, and life honourable, civilized, and stable relationships between you and others, not only the feelings, bad or good. When you remain secret in the heart of love, sincerity, fairness, and devotion, it means you have established the wall to break all that relations yourself. You are only responsible for that, not anyone else.

Among the ideas this group put on their exit forms: fostering more empathy between departments through a job-swapping program, establishing a lunch lottery that would match people at random to encourage new connections and friendships, and holding cross-departmental mixers designed to let far-flung colleagues get to know each other over a few beers.

But too many kids get to college and try to collapse it, to make it as comfortable and recognizable as possible. They replicate the friends and friendships they've previously enjoyed. They join groups that perpetuate their high school cliques. Concerned with establishing a "network" they seek out peers with aspirations identical to their own. In doing so, they frequently default to a clannishness that too easily becomes a lifelong habit. ....Open your laptops . Delete at least one of every four bookmarks. Replace it with something entirely different, even anti ethical. Go to twitter, Facebook etc start falling or connecting with views that diverge from your own. Conduct your social lives along the same lines, mixing it up. Do not go only to the campus basketball games....wander beyond the periphery of campus, and not to find equally enchanted realms-if you study abroad, don't choose the destination for its picturesqueness-but to see something else.

had been Lenin’s greatest innovation: a line that, like the Proletariat itself, was universal and infinite. He established it by decree in 1917 and personally took the first slot as his comrades jostled to line up behind him. One by one every Russian took his place, and the line grew longer and longer until it shared all of the attributes of life. In it friendships were formed and romances kindled; patience was fostered; civility practiced; even wisdom attained. If

Thirteen Recurrent Domains of Human Concerns: Possible Breakdowns 1. BODY: health, sickness, injury, availability and unavailability for meetings and appointments. 2. PLAY or AESTHETICS: entertainment, recreation, art, and appreciation of art. 3. SOCIABILITY: opening new conversations, making new friends, maintaining friendships, breaking friendships, trusting what others say, establishing trust for yourself. 4. FAMILY: having children, education of children, marriage. 5. WORK: completing actions you have committed to take, doing your job. 6. EDUCATION: gaining competence, skill in some area. 7. CAREER: choosing a direction to take in life, choosing a career or profession to prepare for and follow. 8. MONEY or PRUDENCE: having sufficient money to support yourself, your salary, reputation among others you deal with. 9. MEMBERSHIP: participation in club, professional, organizational, or government institutions; gaining membership in societies, clubs, or other organizations; becoming a citizen. 10. WORLD: politics, the environment, other countries or cultures. 11. DIGNITY: self-respect, self-esteem, lack of self-esteem, conflicts between your standards of action and your actions. 12. SITUATION: disposition, temperament, outlook, emotions, judgments about “how things are going.” 13. SPIRITUALITY: philosophy, poetry, religion, humor (laughing about our nonacceptance of the facticity of life, not being burdened by it).

There used to be a time when neighbors took care of one another, he remembered. [Put “he remembered”first to establish reflective tone.] It no longer seemed to happen that way, however. [The contrast supplied by “however”must come first. Start with “But.”Also establish America locale.] He wondered if it was because everyone in the modern world was so busy. [All these sentences are the same length and have the same soporific rhythm; turn this one into a question?] It occurred to him that people today have so many things to do that they don’t have time for old-fashioned friendship. [Sentence essentially repeats previous sentence; kill it or warm it up with specific detail.] Things didn’t work that way in America in previous eras. [Reader is still in the present; reverse the sentence to tell him he’s now in the past. “America”no longer needed if inserted earlier.] And he knew that the situation was very different in other countries, as he recalled from the years when he lived in villages in Spain and Italy. [Reader is still in America. Use a negative transition word to get him to Europe. Sentence is also too flabby. Break it into two sentences?] It almost seemed to him that as people got richer and built their houses farther apart they isolated themselves from the essentials of life. [Irony deferred too long. Plant irony early. Sharpen the paradox about richness.] And there was another thought that troubled him. [This is the real point of the paragraph; signal the reader that it’s important. Avoid weak “there was”construction.] His friends had deserted him when he needed them most during his recent illness. [Reshape to end with “most”; the last word is the one that stays in the reader’s ear and gives the sentence its punch. Hold sickness for next sentence; it’s a separate thought.] It was almost as if they found him guilty of doing something shameful. [Introduce sickness here as the reason for the shame. Omit “guilty”; it’s implicit.] He recalled reading somewhere about societies in primitive parts of the world in which sick people were shunned, though he had never heard of any such ritual in America. [Sentence starts slowly and stays sluggish and dull. Break it into shorter units. Snap off the ironic point.]

Christ did not establish and institute the ministry of proclamation to provide us with money, property, popularity, honor, or friendship.

Martoglio also discovered those actors who were to become stars not only in the Sicilian but in the Italian context. The legendary Angelo Musco, Giovanni Grasso and Rosina Anselmi, to name but three of the most widely known, owe much of their fame to Martoglio. They in turn found in Martoglio’s characters the vehicles to best express themselves. It was Nino Martoglio who convinced Luigi Pirandello to begin writing for the theatre. Martoglio and Pirandello developed a very close friendship which eventually led to actual collaboration in the writing of some Sicilian language plays such as A vilanza (Cowardice) (performed on Sept. 8, 1917) and Cappiddazzu paga tuttu, (Capiddazzu Pays for Everything). But at the beginning of their relationship, while Pirandello experienced much critical resistance to his innovative and revolutionary work, Martoglio was a well-established and famous playwright and literary entrepreneur.

Never labor to establish who is always there for you unconditionally: you will know at your lowest points.

Sharing a meal as a family without electronic devices, doing a group activity such as a walk or a weekly excursion is paramount to establish connection.

When you try to establish justice, it can create change, and for a time, it seems there is disorder.

A handsome, cosmopolitan forty-three-year-old, Gebhardt had been a decorated World War I flying ace, serving in the squadron of Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary “Red Baron.” Following the war, he had earned his doctorate degree in political economy from Frankfurt University with a dissertation on “The International Trade in Machinery.” After a brief teaching stint, he had gone into business, earning a fortune in the automobile and locomotive industries before establishing a highly successful import-export firm that specialized in “exchanging German raw material for American commodities.” Charming, cultured, fluent in several languages, he also harbored political ambitions and had hopes of being named German ambassador to the United States—a fair expectation, given his close friendship with high Nazi officials, particularly Hermann Göring, a fellow Richthofen pilot during the Great War.9

Not all that long ago, I was in a room with Jewish and Gentile leaders in the larger body of Jesus-followers. The horror of the Holocaust was being discussed, and one of the Gentile pastors looked over at one of my Jewish friends and remarked almost casually, "Next time we'll stand with you." Almost reflexively, as if responding from lifelong pain and betrayal, my Jewish friend blurted out, "I don't believe you!" I think he was shocked at his own words, but added, "That has never been the case in history." I was heavily impacted by the encounter. Somewhere it was stored in the inner recesses of my soul, so that on another occasion, following a showing of films from the Holocaust, I turned to this same Jewish friend and said, under a Holy Spirit anointing and with tears streaming down my cheeks, "I vow to you in the name of Yeshua, that I will stand with you even to death." His response? "I believe you, Don." My prayer for all of us is that we establish such deep friendships across these turbulent ancient "racial" lines, so that even among Jewish people who are not believers in Yeshua, we Gentiles will become the Corrie ten Booms and the Oskar Schindlers of our time.

If you don’t see the virtue of friendship and harmony, you may learn it by observing the effects of quarrels and feuds. Was any family ever so well established, any State so firmly settled, as to be beyond the reach of utter destruction from animosities and factions?

[Women] tend to see the workplace as a network of connections where friendships are established as people cooperate to produce work. Nothing is wrong with that viewpoint until you realize that, by and large, the work world was created by men—males who tend to see the workplace as a field for competition

If you are thinking, My co-workers and I don’t compete, we are one big happy family, brace yourself for a cold splash of reality. You can establish friendships in the workplace, but work at times will be a game with winners and losers. If you don’t realize that, you are being naïve, and you are going to get hurt and taken advantage of.

I myself am open with others—as I so often must be. As noted earlier, I need a lot of extra help in living my life. In the process, I necessarily offer my trust to people, which may trigger a correspondingly generous response, especially from good people who happen to be imbued with the spirit of helping others. In other words, I suspect that a reciprocity is established. Whether that is so or not, the fact is that my reliance on so many people has greatly enriched my life. Yet another compensatory balance, perhaps.

Desire for material enjoyment arises as soon as there is an absence of the propensity to render loving service to the Supreme Lord. This is the root cause of all material miseries. While utilizing this natural propensity for serving the Supreme Lord, one is able to see everything within the material world as meant for the Lord’s enjoyment, rather than his own enjoyment. Thus one sees the material world as an opportunity for engaging in the devotional service of the Lord. In Kṛṣṇa consciousness, one’s conditional life is dissolved, and one become qualified to establish true friendship with other devotees in the course of rendering loving service to the Supreme Lord.

While Hizb made inroads in Nangarhar, it also exploited the rising discontent sweeping through rural areas close to Kabul. Since late 1978 ethnic Hazaras in the rugged central region around Bamiyan had been rising up against the government. The regime responded by forming a Pashtun militia in neighbouring Wardak province to deploy against the rebels. On 4 June 1979—as the communist sergeant was being executed in Nangahrar—a delegation of Pashtuns drove to the district centre of Chak to collect the government-issue weapons they were meant to use against the Hazaras. With thousands of brand new rifles in their possession, the Pashtuns then turned on the government. The double cross had been hatched by a local council of scholars, elders, farmers and labourers who did not claim fealty to any mujahideen party. Later that summer, Hizb made the most of the rebellion, sending one of its commanders to establish a unit of fighters inside Chak. The commander had been living in Peshawar but was from Chak and had known Hekmatyar for nearly a decade. Using the friendships he already enjoyed within the community and the help of former Muslim Youth members, he ensured that Hizb quickly picked up support in and around the district

The same is true for social fitness. It’s not easy to take care of our relationships today, and in fact, we tend to think that once we establish friendships and intimate relationships, they will take care of themselves. But like muscles, neglected relationships atrophy. Our social life is a living system. And it needs exercise.

Grieving for their future, men and women often took their own lives. Others died when they could not maintain the feverish pace of the march. While the mortality rate of slaves during the Second Middle Passage never approached that of the transatlantic transfer, it surpassed the death rate of those who remained in the seaboard states. Over time some of the hazards of the long march abated, as slave traders - intent on the safe delivery of a valuable commodity - standardized their routes and relied more on flatboats, steamboats, and eventually railroads for transportation. The largest traders established 'jails,' where slaves could be warehoused, inspected, rehabilitated if necessary, and auctioned, sometimes to minor traders who served as middlemen in the expanding transcontinental enterprise. But while the rationalization of the slave trade may have reduced the slaves' mortality rate, it did nothing to mitigate the essential brutality or the profound alienation that accompanied separation from the physical and social moorings of home and family. ... [T]he Second Middle Passage was extraordinarily lonely, debilitating, and dispiriting. Capturing the mournful character of one southward marching coffle, an observer characterized it as 'a procession of men, women, and children resembling that of a funeral.' Indeed, with men and women dying on the march or being sold and resold, slaves became not merely commodified but cut off from nearly every human attachment. Surrendering to despair, many deportees had difficulties establishing friendships or even maintaining old ones. After a while, some simply resigned themselves to their fate, turned inward, and became reclusive, trying to protect a shred of humanity in a circumstance that denied it. Others exhibited a sort of manic glee, singing loudly and laughing conspicuously to compensate for the sad fate that had befallen them. Yet others fell into a deep depression and determined to march no further. Charles Ball, like others caught in the tide, 'longed to die, and escape from the bonds of my tormentors.' But many who survived the transcontinental trek formed strong bonds of friendships akin to those forged by shipmates on the voyage across the Atlantic. Indeed, the Second Middle Passage itself became a site for remaking African-American society. Mutual trust became a basis of resistance, which began almost simultaneously with the long march. Waiting for their first opportunity and calculating their chances carefully, a few slaves broke free and turned on their enslavers. Murder and mayhem made the Second Middle Passage almost as dangerous for traders as it was for slaves, which was why the men were chained tightly and guarded closely.

Abacus had come to the conclusion that the greatest of heroic stories have the shape of a diamond on its side. Beginning at a fine point, the life of the hero expands outward through youth as he begins to establish his strengths and fallibilities, his friendships and enmities. Proceeding into the world, he pursues exploits in grand company, accumulating honors and accolades. But at some untold moment, the two rays that define the outer limits of this widening world of hale companions and worthy adventures simultaneously turn a corner and begin to converge.

Abacus had come to the conclusion that the greatest of heroic stories have the shape of a diamond on its side. Beginning at a fine point, the life of the hero expands outward through youth as he begins to establish his strengths and fallibilities, his friendships and enmities. Proceeding into the world, he pursues exploits in grand company, accumulating honors and accolades. But at some untold moment, the two rays that define the outer limits of this widening world of hale companions and worthy adventures simultaneously turn a corner and begin to converge. The terrain our hero travels, the cast of characters he meets, the sense of purpose that has long propelled him forward all begin to narrow—to narrow toward that fixed and inexorable point that defines his fate.

Society is against the heart, because the heart lives through love. And love cannot be controlled and conditioned. The heart is basically rebellious. The heart always lives in the moment. It never repeats the old. The heart always responds to the present moment. This is why society is against the heart. Society disciplines the head, because the head functionslike a machine. Machines are never rebellious. They simply follow orders. They are obedient. Hence the state, the church and the establishment, the status quo, are interested in the head. Our heart is the door to allow existence to guide us – instead of being directed by our own ideas, attitudes and preconceived expectations of how life should be. The heart creates inconvenience for society and for the established order. The heart is spontaneous and never repeats the old. The head lives in the past, which is why the head is traditional and conventional.  The heart relates to unconditional love and acceptance both for ourselves and for other people.  The heart relates to qualities such as empathy, joy, acceptance, trust, intuition, understanding, compassion, playfulness, healing, friendship, sincerity and a sense of oneness in love. Love is not an exclusive relationship with another person; love is the quality that arises when we are in contact with our inner being, with our authentic self, withthe meditative quality within, with the inner silence and emptiness. This inner emptiness is experienced by others and is expressed on the outside as love. This love is not addressed to a specific person; it is a presence that surrounds a person like a fragrance. Love is perfect as it is. Love is enough unto itself. Love has to be understood. Love is the flight of your consciousness to higher realms beyond the body. Love is the fragrance of a rising consciousness. Love is like the fragrance of a flower. The moment you are overflowing with joy, a longing arises to share it. This sharing is love. Love is not something that you can get from somebody else, who has not attained to a state of joy. Everybody is asking to be loved, and pretending to love. You cannot love, because you don't know what consciousness is. You don't know the truth; you don't know the experience of the divine.  You don't know what love is, because you have not yet gone deeper in your consciousness. In this ignorance and blindness love does not grow. If you really want to know love, forget about love and remember meditation. Love is the defeat of all imposed rules and conditions. hence there is  a struggle between the individual who follows his heart and the collective who follows the imposed order. The individual who follows his heart has to be aware of this struggle, because he is moving towards the freedom of being himself. Being himself means that he is not going to be ruled by the collective, by the crowd. It means that now he will live according to his own heart, according to his own light. When he becomes independent, he will start feeling that he is  becoming one with the whole, one with the universal.  It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that we are not separated from life. We begin to understand that we are not small separate islands in a great ocean, but that life is one and that we all are small parts of the Whole. We begin to understand what is really important and meaningful in life. It is on the consciousness level of the heart that we begin to understand that life is about sharing, rather than hoarding. We begin to understand that life is about giving, rather than taking.

Redelmeier soon returned with the widely held belief that arthritis pain was related to the weather. For thousands of years, people had imagined this connection; it could be traced back to Hippocrates, who wrote, in 400 BC, about the effect of wind and rain on disease. In the late 1980s, doctors were still suggesting to arthritis patients that they move to warmer climates. Working with Amos, Redelmeier found a large group of arthritis patients and asked them to report their pain levels. He then matched these to weather reports. Pretty quickly, he and Amos established that, despite the patients’ claims that their pain changed with the weather, there was no meaningful correlation between the two.

As a child during the war, he’d cultivated an active fantasy life. He would play out elaborate scenes with himself at the center of them. He imagined himself single-handedly winning the war and ending it, for example. But because he was Danny, he made a rule about his fantasy life: He never fantasized about something that might happen. He established this private rule for his imagination once he realized that, after he had fantasized about something that might actually happen, he lost his drive to make it happen.

But real openness to each other also means a real closedness, because only he who can hold a secret can safely share his knowledge. When we do not protect with great care our own inner mystery, we will never be able to form community. It is this inner mystery that attracts us to each other and allows us to establish friendship and develop lasting relationships of love.

...military operations, even when employing the Colt .45 (developed to stop juramentados dead in their tracks) and the Krag rifle, achieved no permanent results in pacifying the Muslims. The Americans were faced with the choice of annihilating the Muslims altogether or changing their tactics. Fortunately, they choose the latter course. They began to pursue a policy of friendship, aid and toleration. American civil officers earned the confidence of the Muslim sultans and datus, established free public schools, built roads and enhanced the Muslims'opportunities for progress.

One should understand that there are principles that make friendship, love, and life honorable, civilized, and stable relationships between you and others, not only feelings, bad or good. When you remain secret in the heart of love, sincerity, fairness, and devotion, it means you have established the wall to break all those relations yourself. You are only responsible for that, not anyone else.

Commonalities connect people. Finding common ground quickly establishes rapport and a fertile environment for developing friendships. Aristotle wrote, “We like those who resemble us, and are engaged in the same pursuits. . . . We like those who desire the same things as we [do].

Setting new boundaries and staying inside the established scriptural lifelines requires an investment of time, energy, and discipline.

Generally speaking, those who, at age thirteen, expected to be treated well by friends and were able to respectfully stand up for themselves when necessary. And those who, at ages fifteen and sixteen, were able to establish close friendships and get along with peers. And those who, at seventeen and eighteen, were able to maintain close friendships over a two-year period. Keeping an eye on these benchmarks will help you know that your teen is coming along in developing the skills needed for healthy romances down the line.

The simple truth is that making a friend involves taking a risk, which of course means swallowing a little fear. Friendship can be, at least at first, an emotional gamble—much like dating. You need to show something of yourself in order for it to work. And in showing yourself, you open yourself to being judged or even rejected. You have to be willing to accept the possibility that maybe, for any number of good reasons, you won’t end up friends with this person after all. Every friendship has an ignition point. By necessity, it involves a deliberate extension of curiosity from one person to another, and I believe this is an offer you should never be ashamed to make. To say I am curious about you is a form of gladness, and gladness, as we’ve established, is nourishing. Yes, it can be awkward to express for the very first time that you might actually be glad to see someone if they were to meet you for coffee or maybe show up at your birthday party, but when they do show up and you do feel glad, you both get the gift. You’re finding the light in another person, creating something new together. You are building a sense of home.

Nasser’s new order appeared to be on the way when military officers, pledging “loyalty” to him, seized power in a coup in Syria. This led, in 1958, to a “merger” of Egypt and Syria into what was supposed to be a single country, the United Arab Republic. But then in 1961 other officers seized power in Damascus and promptly withdrew Syria from the new “state.” The following year, Nasser sent troops to intervene in the civil war in Yemen, expecting a quick victory that would expand his reach. Instead it turned into a long battle against royalist guerrillas and a proxy war between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iran joined with Saudi Arabia to support the guerrillas in resisting the Egyptian forces, one result of which was the establishment of an Iran-Arab Friendship Society, with offices both in Tehran and Riyadh. Nasser would end up calling Yemen his “Vietnam,” a political quagmire that added to the economic woes of the grossly mismanaged Egyptian economy.

Here I do not refer to the simple love of charity we must have for all men but of that spiritual friendship by which two, three, or more souls share with one another their devotion and spiritual affections and establish a single spirit among themselves.

The tendency exists to look for a solution to [loneliness] by establishing very demanding and often exhausting friendships. […] the stresses on many students are so intense that they often have inexhaustible needs for intimacy, and clinging friendships. But this is often encouraging the unrealistic fantasy that the true, real, faithful friend is somewhere waiting, able to take away all the feelings of frustration.

All women bring with them to work their affinity for relationships. Females tend to see the workplace as a network of connections where friendships are established as people cooperate to produce work.

There’s nothing like a friendly handshake to establish social cooperation, but the bonobo handshake takes erotic politics to a whole new level.

The higher the style we demand of friendship, of course the less easy to establish it with flesh and blood. We walk alone in the world. Friends such as we desire are dreams and fables. But a sublime hope cheers ever the faithful heart, that elsewhere, in other regions of the universal power, souls are now acting, enduring, daring, which can love us and which we can love.

Even in the most impersonal shopping mall or supermarket, clerks are expected to at least simulate personal warmth, patience, and other reassuring qualities; in a Middle Eastern bazaar, one might have to go through an elaborate process of establishing a simulated friendship, sharing tea, food, or tobacco, before engaging in similarly elaborate haggling—an interesting ritual that begins by establishing sociality through baseline communism—and continues with an often prolonged mock battle over prices. It’s all done on the basis of the assumption that buyer and seller are, at least at that moment, friends (and thus each entitled to feel outraged and indignant at the other’s unreasonable demands), but it’s all a little piece of theater. Once the object changes hands, there is no expectation that the two will ever have anything to do with each other again.26

There are mountains written about closing and overcoming objections. Read every book. Listen to every CD. They all contain ways to overcome objections. And most have usable ideas. Your job is to apply those ideas to your style and personality. And the ultimate goal is to make sales in a way that you never have to use them -- by establishing relationships and friendships. Sometimes you're precluded from the relationship or friendship, and the ideas are all that's left. That's why you need to know them all.

But Glass, in her research, discovered that if you dig a little deeper into people's infidelities, you can almost always see how the affair started long before the first stolen kiss. Most affairs begin, Glass wrote, when a husband or wife makes a new friend, and an apparently harmless intimacy is born. You don't sense the danger as it's happening, because what's wrong with friendship? Why can't we have friends of the opposite sex--or of the same sex, for that matter--even if we are married? The answer, as Dr. Glass explained, is that nothing is wrong with a married person launching a friendship outside of matrimony--so long as the "walls and windows" of the relationship remain in the correct places. It was Glass's theory that every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world--that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimate secrets of your marriage. What often happens, though, during so-called harmless friendships, is that you begin sharing intimacies with your new friend that belong hidden within your marriage. You reveal secrets about yourself--your deepest yearnings and frustrations--and it feels good to be so exposed. You throw open a window where there really ought to be a solid, weight-bearing wall, and soon you find yourself spilling your secret heart with this new person. Not wanting your spouse to feel jealous, you keep the details of your new friendship hidden. In so doing, you have now created a problem: You have just built a wall between you and your spouse where there really ought to be free circulation of air and light. The entire architecture of your matrimonial intimacy has therefore been rearranged. Every old wall is now a giant picture window; every old window is now boarded up like a crack house. You have just established the perfect blueprint for infidelity without even noticing.

If there was any politician in America who reflected the Cold War and what it did to the country, it was Richard Nixon—the man and the era were made for each other. The anger and resentment that were a critical part of his temperament were not unlike the tensions running through the nation as its new anxieties grew. He himself seized on the anti-Communist issue earlier and more tenaciously than any other centrist politician in the country. In fact that was why he had been put on the ticket in the first place. His first congressional race in 1946, against a pleasant liberal incumbent named Jerry Voorhis, was marked by red-baiting so savage that it took Voorhis completely by surprise. Upon getting elected, Nixon wasted no time in asking for membership in the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was the committee member who first spotted the contradictions in Hiss’s seemingly impeccable case; in later years he was inclined to think of the case as one of his greatest victories, in which he had challenged and defeated a man who was not what he seemed, and represented the hated Eastern establishment. His career, though, was riddled with contradictions. Like many of his conservative colleagues, he had few reservations about implying that some fellow Americans, including perhaps the highest officials in the opposition party, were loyal to a hostile foreign power and willing to betray their fellow citizens. Yet by the end of his career, he became the man who opened the door to normalized relations with China (perhaps, thought some critics, he was the only politician in America who could do that without being attacked by Richard Nixon), and he was a pal of both the Soviet and Chinese Communist leadership. If he later surprised many long-standing critics with his trips to Moscow and Peking, he had shown his genuine diplomatic skills much earlier in the way he balanced the demands of the warring factions within his own party. He never asked to be well liked or popular; he asked only to be accepted. There were many Republicans who hated him, particularly in California. Earl Warren feuded with him for years. Even Bill Knowland, the state’s senior senator and an old-fashioned reactionary, despised him. At the 1952 convention, Knowland had remained loyal to Warren despite Nixon’s attempts to help Eisenhower in the California delegation. When Knowland was asked to give a nominating speech for Nixon, he was not pleased: “I have to nominate the dirty son of a bitch,” he told friends. Nixon bridged the gap because his politics were never about ideology: They were the politics of self. Never popular with either wing, he managed to negotiate a delicate position acceptable to both. He did not bring warmth or friendship to the task; when he made attempts at these, he was, more often than not, stilted and artificial. Instead, he offered a stark choice: If you don’t like me, find someone who is closer to your position and who is also likely to win. If he tilted to either side, it was because that side seemed a little stronger at the moment or seemed to present a more formidable candidate with whom he had to deal. A classic example of this came early in 1960, when he told Barry Goldwater, the conservative Republican leader, that he would advocate a right-to-work plank at the convention; a few weeks later in a secret meeting with Nelson Rockefeller, the liberal Republican leader—then a more formidable national figure than Goldwater—Nixon not only reversed himself but agreed to call for its repeal under the Taft-Hartley act. “The man,” Goldwater noted of Nixon in his personal journal at the time, “is a two-fisted four-square liar.