Home Is A Refuge Quotes

We need a home in the psychological sense as much as we need one in the physical: to compensate for a vulnerability. We need a refuge to shore up our states of mind, because so much of the world is opposed to our allegiances. We need our rooms to align us to desirable versions of ourselves and to keep alive the important, evanescent sides of us.

Suddenly she felt strong and happy. She was not afraid of the darkness or the fog and she knew with a singing in her heart that she would never fear them again. No matter what mists might curl around her in the future, she knew her refuge. She started briskly up the street toward home and the blocks seemed very long. Far, far too long. She caught up her skirts to her knees and began to run lightly. But this time she was not running from fear. She was running because Rhett's arms were at the end of the street.

The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks. The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised.

Each time you meet an old emotional pattern with presence, your awakening to truth can deepen. There’s less identification with the self in the story and more ability to rest in the awareness that is witnessing what’s happening. You become more able to abide in compassion, to remember and trust your true home. Rather than cycling repetitively through old conditioning, you are actually spiraling toward freedom.

If you want the naked beauty of my vulnerability, you have to have the strength to share the burden of, the private pain, that makes me feel so tender and fragile. For i am as strong, as i am, weak. If you want me to come home to you, be the safe harbor, in which, i can seek refuge.

The great gift of a spiritual path is coming to trust that you can find a way to true refuge. You realize that you can start right where you are, in the midst of your life, and find peace in any circumstance. Even at those moments when the ground shakes terribly beneath you—when there’s a loss that will alter your life forever—you can still trust that you will find your way home. This is possible because you’ve touched the timeless love and awareness that are intrinsic to who you are.

Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are all the more clearly delineated. All our lives we come back to them in our daydreams. A psychoanalyst should, therefore, turn his attention to this simple localization of our memories. I should like to give the name of topoanalysis to this auxiliary of pyschoanalysis. Topoanalysis, then would be the systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives.

Thus is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game. It is as if the class from which independent intellectuals have defected takes its revenge, by pressing its demands home in the very domain where the deserter seeks refuge.

I can hear them on the floor below. They will find me in miuntes, or seconds. I scrawl the words on a dirty shred of newsprint. They are nearly illegible, but if he finds them, he will understand: 'Not fast enough. Love you love Jamie. Don't go home' Not only do I break their hearts, I steal their refuge, too. I picture our little canyon abandoned, as it must be forever now. Or if not abandoned, a tomb.

The ad world used to be something of a refuge for literary types. But I feared for myself at J.W.T. It seemed to be entirely peopled by blocked dramatists, likeably shambling poets, and one-off novelists. The whole place felt like a clubworld sunset home for literary talent.

All people need a place where their roots can grow deep and they always feel like they belong and have a loving refuge. And all people need a place that gives wings to their dreams, nurturing possibilities of who they might become.

But perhaps the greatest escapism of all is to take refuge in the domesticity of the past, the home that history and literature become, avoiding the one moment of time in which we are not at home, yet have to live: the present.

Every creature on earth returns to home. It is ironic that we have made wildlife refuges for ibis, pelican, egret, wolf, crane, deer, mouse, moose, and bear, but not for ourselves in the places we live day after day. We understand that the loss of habitat is the most disastrous event that can occur to a free creauture. We fervently point out how other creatures' natural territories have become surrounded by cities, ranches, highways, noise, and other dissonance, as though we are not affected also. We know that for creatures to live on, they must at least from time to time have a home place, a place where they feel both protected and free

I rode my bike home and did the one thing that always helped when things weren't going well. I read. Books were my refuge. Getting lost in a solid adventure story was the best way I knew of to turn off reality.

Homes should be an anchor, a safe harbor, a place of refuge, a place where families dwell together, a place where children are loved. In the home, parents should teach their children the great lessons of life. Home should be the center of one’s earthly experience, where love and mutual respect are appropriately blended.

Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.

It always has to end, doesn't it? We always have to separate.' 'Yes,' I said. He was insistent, 'But it doesn't always have to be that way. We could be together some day for always.' 'Oh, no,' I told him, wondering if he knew it was all over. 'We keep running till we die. We separate, get further apart, till we are dead.' He has no home; he is unhappy. I could be the source of his joy, the refuge of his life. And I can only pass on. Something in me wants more. I can't rest. Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.

This, I think, is a little glimpse of what life could be like without my family. Home could be a place of laughter and love, a refuge. I'm filled with a terrifying weightlessness, like I've jumped off a cliff, but I know that if I don't look down, I'll be just fine.

We have a light upon our house, and it gives hope to all who sail upon the stormy seas. Do ya know what it means to have a light burning atop your home? It is safety, a place of refuge, seen by all that as a signal that ye stand for something greater than this world, greater than us all.

You and I have been happy; we haven't been happy just once, we've been happy a thousand times. . . Forget the past-what you can of it, and turn about and swim back home to me, to your haven forever and ever-even though it may seem a dark cave at times and lit with torches of fury; it is the best refuge for you-turn gently in the water through which you move and sail back.

You and I have been happy; we haven’t been happy just once, we’ve been happy a thousand times. The chances that spring, that’s for everyone, like in the popular songs, may belong to us too – the chances are pretty bright at this time because as usual, I can carry most of contemporary literary opinion, liquidated, in the hollow of my hand – and when I do, I see the swan floating on it and – I find it to be you and you only…. Forget the past – what you can of it, and turn about and swim back home to me, to your haven for ever and ever – even though it may seem a dark cave at times and lit with torches of fury; it is the best refuge for you – turn gently in the waters through which you move and sail back…

Once, he said to her: "You are like me, you are different from most people. You are Kamala, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself, as I can also do. Few people have this, and yet all could have it.

I put a hand up to cup his cheek, warm and lightly stubbled. I didn't fool myself that this was paradise or even a refuge from the war - wars tended not to stay in one place but moved around, much in the manner of cyclones and even more destructive where they touched down. But for however long it lasted, this was home, and now was peace.

Why should a little corner of the garden be so important to a woman like Susanna? A woman with a palatial home, and the finest garments. Because imagine it – if you live as she does, surrounded by endless people and their expectations, ones you cannot possibly live up to, you do not even want to live up to – that refuge might be the only place you are safe.

A home is a refuge from the world, a place of safety.

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

She was one of those exceptional children who do still spend time outside, in solitude. In her case nature represented beauty - and refuge. "It's so peaceful out there and the air smells so good. I mean, it's polluted, but not as much as the city air. For me, it's completely different there," she said. "It's like you're free when you go out there. It's your own time. Sometimes I go there when I'm mad - and then, just with the peacefulness, I'm better. I can come back home happy, and my mom doesn't even know why."      The she described her special part of the woods.      "I had a place. There was a big waterfall and a creek on one side of it. I'd dug a big hole there, and sometimes I'd take a tent back there, or a blanket, and just lie down in the hole, and look up at the trees and sky. Sometimes I'd fall asleep back there. I just felt free; it was like my place, and I could do what I wanted, with nobody to stop me. I used to go down there almost every day."      The young poet's face flushed. Her voice thickened.      "And then they just cut the woods down. It was like they cut down part of me.

The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy. It is derived, no doubt, from love of home and desire for a refuge from danger; we find, accordingly, that it is most passionate in those whose lives are most exposed to catastrophe.

Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican party policy since May 2008. With gas prices soaring to unprecedented heights, that's when the conservative leader Newt Gingrich unveiled the slogan 'Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less'—with an emphasis on the now. The wildly popular campaign was a cry against caution, against study, against measured action. In Gingrich's telling, drilling at home wherever the oil and gas might be—locked in Rocky Mountain shale, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and deep offshore—was a surefire way to lower the price at the pump, create jobs, and kick Arab ass all at once. In the face of this triple win, caring about the environment was for sissies: as senator Mitch McConnell put it, 'in Alabama and Mississippi and Louisiana and Texas, they think oil rigs are pretty'. By the time the infamous 'Drill Baby Drill' Republican national convention rolled around, the party base was in such a frenzy for US-made fossil fuels, they would have bored under the convention floor if someone had brought a big enough drill.

Here are some of the essential take-homes: we all need nearby nature: we benefit cognitively and psychologically from having trees, bodies of water, and green spaces just to look at; we should be smarter about landscaping our schools, hospitals, workplaces and neighborhoods so everyone gains. We need quick incursions to natural areas that engage our senses. Everyone needs access to clean, quiet and safe natural refuges in a city. Short exposures to nature can make us less aggressive, more creative, more civic minded and healthier overall. For warding off depression, lets go with the Finnish recommendation of five hours a month in nature, minimum. But as the poets, neuroscientists and river runners have shown us, we also at times need longer, deeper immersions into wild spaces to recover from severe distress, to imagine our futures and to be our best civilized selves.

You are like me, you are different from most people. You are Kamala, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself, as I can also do. Few people have this, and yet all could have it.

I was genuinely in love with Mme. de Guermantes. The greatest happiness that I could have asked of God would have been that He should overwhelm her under every imaginable calamity, and that ruined, despised, stripped of all the privileges that divided her from me, having no longer any home of her own or people who would condescend to speak to her, she should come to me for refuge. I imagined her doing so.

The doctrine that God can be incarnated in human form is found in most of the principal historic expositions of the Perennial Philosophy—in Hinduism, in Mahayana Buddhism, in Christianity and in the Mohammedanism of the Sufis, by whom the Prophet was equated with the eternal Logos. When goodness grows weak, When evil increases, I make myself a body. In every age I come back To deliver the holy, To destroy the sin of the sinner, To establish righteousness. He who knows the nature Of my task and my holy birth Is not reborn When he leaves this body; He comes to Me. Flying from fear, From lust and anger, He hides in Me, His refuge and safety. Burnt clean in the blaze of my being, In Me many find home. Bhagavad Gita

Then Krishna also decided to return home. As he was departing he spoke affectionately to Yudhisthira. "O King, cherish all your subjects with ceaseless vigilance and patience. As the cloud is to all creatures, or the large tree to the birds, so should you become the refuge to your dependants.

This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway. Step around the poisonous vipers that slither at your feet, attempting to throw you off your course. Be bold. Be humble. Put away the incense and forget the incantations they taught you. Ask no permission from the authorities. Slip away. Close your eyes and follow your breath to the still place that leads to the invisible path that leads you home.

Most people have forgotten nowadays what a house can mean, though some of us have come to realize it as never before. It is a kingdom of its own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life’s storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Late into the night she reads, and the lamplight falls in a soft circle across her tented knees, across the warm blankets, across Luca's casting breath. In their new home, Lydia rereads Amor en los tiempos del colera, first in Spanish, then again in English. No one can take this from her. This book is hers alone.

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In alms-house, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his prospects.

And if you’d been healthy and happy, you wouldn’t have come home?” “When everything is lost a man seeks refuge, as if he were returning to his mother’s womb.” “And after that?” “After that he forgets. He’s driven to it by his restlessness. He wants to be what he was not, or what he was. He runs away from his fortune and looks for another.

Yet Burzee has its inhabitants—for all this. Nature peopled it in the beginning with Fairies, Knooks, Ryls and Nymphs. As long as the Forest stands it will be a home, a refuge and a playground to these sweet immortals, who revel undisturbed in its depths.

Islands are emblematic not only of solitude but of refuge and sanctuary, the way a small boat is an island in rough seas.

Home is supposed to be a place of security, the last resort of refuge.

Home is a refuge not only from the world, but a refuge from my worries, my troubles, my concerns.

Wetlands are actually unsung heroes. They nurture young fish, provide refuge to birds, bats, bugs, and sometimes to big mammals like panthers and bears. Mangroves, for instance, are trees and shrubs that inhabit coastal swamps, and they form peat that is home to clams, snails, crabs, and shrimp, and filter pollution out of the water. Their “interlaced roots protect tiny fish from ravenous jaws of larger fish, and even manatees and dolphins take refuge there.

Home is to be a safe place, a refuge for all who enter, a protection from the harm and storms of the world. Yet often or even daily we open our doors -- usually via television or the internet -- to ideas and images that can damage our faith, abuse our hearts and minds, sear our psyches, and tear apart our peace. Home should be a place where, behind its doors, one should expect to find protection and safety from all the harms of life, including voices that do not speak truth or wisdom. Only the foolish would invite just anyone to enter the door of their home.

[The wives of powerful noblemen] must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise – in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a baroness must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Of her a philosopher might have said: "No one is wise who does not know some part of everything." Moreover, she must have the courage of a man. This means that she should not be brought up overmuch among women nor should she be indulged in extensive and feminine pampering. Why do I say that? If barons wish to be honoured as they deserve, they spend very little time in their manors and on their own lands. Going to war, attending their prince's court, and traveling are the three primary duties of such a lord. So the lady, his companion, must represent him at home during his absences. Although her husband is served by bailiffs, provosts, rent collectors, and land governors, she must govern them all. To do this according to her right she must conduct herself with such wisdom that she will be both feared and loved. As we have said before, the best possible fear comes from love. When wronged, her men must be able to turn to her for refuge. She must be so skilled and flexible that in each case she can respond suitably. Therefore, she must be knowledgeable in the mores of her locality and instructed in its usages, rights, and customs. She must be a good speaker, proud when pride is needed; circumspect with the scornful, surly, or rebellious; and charitably gentle and humble toward her good, obedient subjects. With the counsellors of her lord and with the advice of elder wise men, she ought to work directly with her people. No one should ever be able to say of her that she acts merely to have her own way. Again, she should have a man's heart. She must know the laws of arms and all things pertaining to warfare, ever prepared to command her men if there is need of it. She has to know both assault and defence tactics to insure that her fortresses are well defended, if she has any expectation of attack or believes she must initiate military action. Testing her men, she will discover their qualities of courage and determination before overly trusting them. She must know the number and strength of her men to gauge accurately her resources, so that she never will have to trust vain or feeble promises. Calculating what force she is capable of providing before her lord arrives with reinforcements, she also must know the financial resources she could call upon to sustain military action. She should avoid oppressing her men, since this is the surest way to incur their hatred. She can best cultivate their loyalty by speaking boldly and consistently to them, according to her council, not giving one reason today and another tomorrow. Speaking words of good courage to her men-at-arms as well as to her other retainers, she will urge them to loyalty and their best efforts.

Where Is Your Sanctuary? Where do you go when you’re hurting? Let’s say it’s been a terrible day at the office. You come home and go — where? To the refrigerator for comfort food like ice cream? To the phone to vent with your most trusted friend? Do you seek escape in novels or movies or video games or pornography? Where do you look for emotional rescue? The Bible tells us that God is our refuge and strength, our help in times of trouble — so much so that we will not fear though the mountains fall into the heart of the sea (Ps. 46:1 – 2). That strikes me as a good place to run. But it’s so easy to forget, so easy for us to run in other directions. Where we go says a lot about who we are. The “high ground” we seek reveals the geography of our values.

Bookstores, invariably, are a refuge. There's one in the town where they live, and the first time Lydia ventures in, it takes her breath away. She has to steady herself against a shelf. The smell of coffee and paper and ink. It's nothing like her little shop back home. It's stocked mostly with religious books, and instead of calendars and toys, they carry rosaries, Buddha figurines, yarmulkes. Still, the upright spines of the books are bedrock. Steady. There's an international poetry section. Hafiz. Heaney. Neruda. Lydia flips past the twenty love poems and reads "The Song of Despair." She reads it desperately, hungrily, bent over the books in the aisle of the quiet shop. Her fingers ready the next page while she devours the words. The book is water in the desert.

Home points to a peace that is beyond color schemes and adornments. It points to the fact that the Lord is our refuge. We find the shalom we seek in him. Your house is not your haven; Christ is.

At this time on a weekday morning, the library was refuge to the retired, the unemployed, and the unemployable. ... 'I'm not always this gabby,' the librarian said. 'It's just so nice to talk to someone who isn't constructing a conspiracy theory or watching videos of home accidents on YouTube.

Whatever happens in the world - whatever is discovered or created or bitterly fought over - eventually ends up, in one way or another, in your house. Wars, famine, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment - they are all there in your sofas and chests of drawers, tucked into the folds of your curtains, in the downy softness of your pillows, in the paint on your walls and the water in your pipes. So the history of household life isn't just a history of beds and sofas and kitchen stoves ... but of scurvy and guano and the Eiffel Tower and bedbugs and body-snatching and just about everything else that has ever happened. Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up.

This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself.

I want you to read ‘God Sees the Truth, but Waits,’ ” said Mother. “Tolstoy writes about a man, wrongly accused of a murder, who spends the rest of his life in a prison camp. Twenty-six years later, as a convict in Siberia, he meets the true murderer and has an opportunity to free himself, but chooses not to. His longing for home leaves him and he dies.” I ask Mother why this story matters to her. “Each of us must face our own Siberia,” she says. “We must come to peace within our own isolation. No one can rescue us. My cancer is my Siberia.” Suddenly, two white birds about the size of finches, dart in front of us and land on the snow.

The perfection of his relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defects, all our evils; for our childhood is born of his fatherhood. That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to him, “Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.

NOW this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back — For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep; And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep. The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown, Remember the Wolf is a Hunter — go forth and get food of thine own. Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear. And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair. When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail, Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail. When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain, The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again. If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay, Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away. Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man! If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride; Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide. The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies; And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies. The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will; But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill. Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same. Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same. Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by himself for his own: He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone. Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw, In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law. Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey!

Beauty! Wasn't that what mattered? Beauty was hardly a popular ideal at that jumpy moment in history. The masses had been desensitized to it, the intelligentsia regarded it with suspicion. To most of her peers, 'beauty' smacked of the rarefied, the indulgent, the superfluous, the effete. How could persons of good conscience pursue the beautiful when there was so much suffering and injustice in the world? Ellen Cherry's answer was that if one didn't cultivate beauty, soon he or she wouldn't be able to recognize ugliness. The prevalence of social ugliness made commitment to physical beauty all the more essential. And the very presence in life of double-wide mobile homes, Magic Marker graffiti, and orange shag carpeting had the effect of making ills such as poverty, crime, repression, pollution, and child abuse seem tolerable. In a sense, beauty was the ultimate protest, and, in that it generally lasted longer than an orgasm, the ultimate refuge. The Venus de Milo screamed 'No!' at evil, whereas the Spandex stretch pant, the macrame plant holder were compliant with it. Ugly bedrooms bred ugly habits. Of course, it wasn't required of beauty that it perform a social function. That was what was valuable about it.

Often all the possessions we have, the work we do, the beliefs we hold, are manic attempts to fill this opening, but they never stay in place. They always slip, and we are left more vulnerable and exposed than before. A time comes when you know that you can no longer wallpaper this void. Until you really listen to the call of this void, you will remain an inner fugitive, driven from refuge to refuge, always on the run with no place to call home.

Silence is my defense. The protector whom I trust. A sturdy shield, A loyal safe-keeper, A sentinel, impassable. Silence is my refuge. The shelter in which I hide. A peaceful home, A safe sanctuary, A fortress, impenetrable.

For years, home has been idealised as a refuge from the world, somewhere predictable and unchanging. But home isn't just where we go to escape the world. Home is how we inhabit the world. Meaning comes from connection and a willingness to pay attention to the particulars of our lives, from the things we choose to use to our daily rituals and shared activities.

I write for you, for me, for the 70% of us who make up the fabric of society: ordinary people with extraordinary lives, who play the roles of parents, siblings, children, neighbors and friends. We are those who work and study with tenacity, those who with effort and dedication bring sustenance to our homes, my novels and stories of horror, suspense and mystery are designed for the emerging generations, for those readers who seek freshness in literature and who feel distant from traditional literature, with its labyrinth of ostentatious and complex words that often alienate the average citizen..., I write for the marginalized, for those who have felt that literature does not offer them a mirror in which to reflect themselves, for those who seek in the pages a refuge or an acknowledgement of their existence, I write for the free and critical spirits, for the innate rebels who question the structures and narratives of our civilization, I write for the dreamers who imagine a world beyond the reach of politics and corporations, for those who resist being molded by the great machines of entertainment that seek to numb our minds and wills; It is my voice, through writing, that seeks to resonate with yours, inviting you on a literary journey where together we explore the confines of our reality and the abysses of our imagination.

From time to time they move you around from one cell to another, and that's always a big deal in your life. Your cell is just about all you've got, your only refuge. Like an animal's cage, it's your home — a home that would make anyone envy the homeless.

The library at home when she was child had been her refuge. She gravitated to it. When she was anxious, just taking a book of a shelf calmed her. Opening the cover, feeling the paper’s smoothness, smelling the sheets, the leather, even sometimes the ink, centered her.

Raphael knew the real reason Illium had flown here rather than to his home in the Tower. Elena's Bluebell adored her, and it was to her that he would speak things he wouldn't speak even to Raphael. And tonight was the one-year anniversary of Aodhan's return to the Refuge.

Though, even if there were no such great advantage to be reaped from it, and if it were only pleasure that is sought from these studies, still I imagine you would consider it a most reasonable and liberal employment of the mind: for other occupations are not suited to every time, nor to every age or place; but these studies are the food of youth, the delight of old age; the ornament of prosperity, the refuge and comfort of adversity; a delight at home, and no hindrance abroad; they are companions by night, and in travel, and in the country.

they say home is a place, but a home without your love is just walls and a bed. when I lay with you, head on your chest, I seek refuge from the storm. there in your arms, I find pieces of myself, and you return them with peace. they say home is a place, but you are home to me.

The prevalence of social ugliness made commitment to physical beauty all the more essential. And the very presence in life of double-wide mobile homes, Magic Marker graffiti, and orange shag carpeting had the effect of making ills such as poverty, crime, repression, pollution and child abuse seem tolerable. In a sense, beauty was the ultimate protest, and, in that it generally lasted longer than an orgasm, the ultimate refuge. The Venus de Milo screamed "No!" at evil, whereas the Spandex stretch pant, the macrame plant holder were compliant with it.

The garden is the place I go for refuge and shelter, not the house. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and admonish, furniture, and meals; but out there blessings crowd round me at every step -- it is there that I am sorry for the unkindness in me, for those selfish thoughts that are so much worse than they feel; it is there that all my sins and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover. When I have been vexed I run to them for comfort, and when I have been angry without just cause, it is there I find absolution. Did ever a woman have so many friends? And always the same, always ready to welcome me and fill me with cheerful thoughts. Happy children of a common Father, why should I, their own sister, be less content and joyous than they?

The season of the world before us will be like no other in the history of mankind. Satan has unleashed every evil, every scheme, every blatant, vile perversion ever known to man in any generation. Just as this is the dispensation of the fullness of times, so it is also the dispensation of the fullness of evil. We and our wives and husbands, our children, and our members must find safety. There is no safety in the world: wealth cannot provide it, enforcement agencies cannot assure it, membership in this Church alone cannot bring it. As the evil night darkens upon this generation, we must come to the temple for light and safety. In our temples we find quiet, sacred havens where the storm cannot penetrate to us. There are hosts of unseen sentinels watching over and guarding our temples. Angels attend every door. As it was in the days of Elisha, so it will be for us: “Those that be with us are more than they that be against us.” Before the Savior comes the world will darken. There will come a period of time where even the elect will lose hope if they do not come to the temples. The world will be so filled with evil that the righteous will only feel secure within these walls. The saints will come here not only to do vicarious work, but to find a haven of peace. They will long to bring their children here for safety’s sake. I believe we may well have living on the earth now or very soon the boy or babe who will be the prophet of the Church when the Savior comes. Those who will sit in the Quorum of Twelve Apostles are here. There are many in our homes and communities who will have apostolic callings. We must keep them clean, sweet and pure in an oh so wicked world. There will be greater hosts of unseen beings in the temple. Prophets of old as well as those in this dispensation will visit the temples. Those who attend will feel their strength and feel their companionship. We will not be alone in our temples. Our garments worn as instructed will clothe us in a manner as protective as temple walls. The covenants and ordinances will fill us with faith as a living fire. In a day of desolating sickness, scorched earth, barren wastes, sickening plagues, disease, destruction, and death, we as a people will rest in the shade of trees, we will drink from the cooling fountains. We will abide in places of refuge from the storm, we will mount up as on eagle’s wings, we will be lifted out of an insane and evil world. We will be as fair as the sun and clear as the moon. The Savior will come and will honor his people. Those who are spared and prepared will be a temple-loving people. They will know Him. They will cry out, “Blessed be the name of He that cometh in the name of the Lord; thou are my God and I will bless thee; thou are my God and I will exalt thee.” Our children will bow down at His feet and worship Him as the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings. They will bathe His feet with their tears and He will weep and bless them for having suffered through the greatest trials ever known to man. His bowels will be filled with compassion and His heart will swell wide as eternity and He will love them. He will bring peace that will last a thousand years and they will receive their reward to dwell with Him. Let us prepare them with faith to surmount every trial and every condition. We will do it in these holy, sacred temples. Come, come, oh come up to the temples of the Lord and abide in His presence.

I was asked to talk to a roomful of undergraduates in a university in a beautiful coastal valley. I talked about place, about the way we often talk about love of place, but seldom how places love us back, of what they give us. They give us continuity, something to return to, and offer familiarity that allows some portion of our lives to remain collected and coherent. They give us an expansive scale in which our troubles are set into context, in which the largeness of the world is a balm to loss, trouble, and ugliness. And distant places give us refuge in territories where our own histories aren't so deeply entrenched and we can imagine other stories, other selves, or just drink up quiet and respite. The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest. Being able to travel in both ways matters, and sometimes the way back into the heart of the question begins by going outward and beyond. This is the expansiveness that comes literally in a landscape or that tugs you out of yourself in a story..... I told the student that they were at an age when they might begin to choose the places that would sustain them the rest of their lives, that places were much more reliable than human beings, and often much longer-lasting, and I asked each of them where they felt at home. They answered, each of them, down the rows, for an hour, the immigrants who had never stayed anywhere long or left a familiar world behind, the teenagers who'd left the home they'd spent their whole lives in for the first time, the ones who loved or missed familiar landscapes and the ones who had not yet noticed them. I found books and places before I found friends and mentors, and they gave me a lot, if not quite what a human being would. As a child, I spun outward in trouble, for in that inside-out world [of my family], everywhere but home was safe. Happily, the oaks were there, the hills, the creeks, the groves, the birds, the old dairy and horse ranches, the rock outcroppings, the open space inviting me to leap out of the personal into the embrace of the nonhuman world.

Many voices from the world in which we live tell us we should live at a frantic pace. There is always more to do and more to accomplish. Yet deep inside each of us is a need to have a place of refuge where peace and serenity prevail, a place where we can reset, regroup, and reenergize to prepare for future pressures. The ideal place for that peace is within the walls of our own homes, where we have done all we can to make the Lord Jesus Christ the centerpiece.

To many men home is a refuge from the truth: it is their fears and their timidities that make them enjoy a companionship in which these feelings are put to rest. They seek from their wives what they obtained formerly from an unwise mother, and yet they are surprised if their wives regard them as grown-up children.

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: ‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more! Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Whereas my tribe is motley and chaotic. My tribe is dense and tumultuous. We argue and tease and wrangle and goof and fly upside down. We are brilliant and stupid. We are lonely and livid. We lie, we laugh. We are greedy and foolish. Sometimes we all sing together. We tease dogs. We can be cruel, but never for very long. We just can't sustain it. If we could sustain and organize our cruelty we'd rule the world. But what kind of life is that? We all fly home together at the end of the day. We have no kings. We have no outlaws. We have no ranking. We have no priests. We have no status. Age confers nothing in our clan. Size confers nothing. We have no warriors. We have no beauties. That's just how it is. We all look the same. Our stories go all day long. We remember everything. Our life can be maddening. It gets loud. We never agree on anything. We bicker. We play jokes. We take chances. I have often taken refuge with your tribe just to escape the hubbub of my tribe. Your tribe is better able to be alone.

The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which I knew." The man opened his eyes in astonishment.

We must kill this idea, “My home is my refuge.” I often hear people say that. It’s idolatry. Jesus is our refuge. We need to open our homes to people.

Low self-esteem is no better home to take a refuge. It does not keep you comforted from any danger; it keeps you confined away from your real belongings!

I called it the San Clemente Syndrome. Today's Basilica of San Clemente is built on the site of what once was a refuge for persecuted Christians. The home of the Roman consul Titus Flavius Clemens, it was burnt down during Emperor Nero's reign. Next to its charred remains, in what must have been a large, cavernous vault, the Romans built an underground pagan temple dedicated to Mithras, God of the Morning, Light of the World, over whose temple the early Christians built another church, dedicated -coincidentally or not, this is a matter to be further excavated to another Clement, Pope St. Clement, on top of which came yet another church that burnt down and on the site of which stands today's basilica. And the digging could go on and on. Like the subconscious, like love, like memory, like time itself, like every single one of us, the church is built on the ruins of subsequent restorations, there is no rock bottom, there is no first anything, no last anything, just layers and secret passageways and interlocking chambers, like the Christian Catacombs, and right along these, even a Jewish Catacomb.

For other forms of relaxation are not so universally suited to all ages, times, and places; but these studies [of literature] sustain youth and entertain old age, they enhance prosperity, and offer a refuge and solace in adversity, they delight us when we are at home without hindering us in the wider world, and are with us at night, when we travel and when we visit the countryside.

...Hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool’s paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer, “Make me a healthy animal.” But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, “the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on...

The Home Office informs us that there are around 400 ex-offenders from overseas currently seeking refuge in this country. One geezer, who has 78 offences to his name, managed to escape deportation on the grounds that he’s an alcoholic! Drinking alcohol, it seems, is illegal in his homeland, so because he claims he’ll be persecuted and tortured we’ve said, “Oh, bad show, old chap. Tough call that. Enjoy a spot of scotch myself from time to time. Quite understandable. Well why don’t you stay here at our expense? You’ll be able to fondle and grope any woman you like. We’d never deport you for that, I can assure you. You’ll be perfectly safe here.

I stared at him, the boy who’d been my constant, my refuge, my home for so long. But he’d also deserted me when I’d needed him the most. And then he’d treated me like I was an afterthought instead of the love of his life.

But the boy was quiet. He was at home with the silence of the desert, and he was content just to look at the trees. He still had a long way to go to reach the Pyramids, and someday this morning would just be a memory. But this was the present moment - the party the camel driver had mentioned - and he wanted to live it as he did the lessons of his past and hid dreams of the future. Although the vision of the date palms would someday be just a memory, right now it signified shade, water, and a refuge from the war. Yesterday, the camel's groan signaled danger, and now a row of date palms could herald a miracle. The world speaks many languages, the boy thought.

Every creature on earth returns to home. It is ironic that we have made wildlife refuges for ibis, pelican, egret, wolf, crane, deer, mouse, moose, and bear, but not for ourselves in the places where we live day after day.

Yes," she thought, "nature is the refuge and home for women: they have no public career—no aim nor end beyond their domestic circle; but they can extend that, and make all the creations of nature their own, to foster and do good to.

The Bible's picture of a godly leader also describes the godly home: "A shelter from the wind and a refuge from the storm, like streams of water in the desert and the shadow of a great rock" (Isaiah 32:2). May that be true of your home.

Suddenly she felt strong and happy. She was not afraid of the darkness or the fog and she knew with a singing in her heart that she would never fear them again. No matter what mists might curl around her in the future, she knew her refuge. She started briskly up the street toward home and the blocks seemed very long. Far, far too long. She caught up her skirts to her knees and began to run lightly. But this time she was not running from fear. She was running because Rhett’s arms were at the end of the street.

The life they could have had together. The refuge of a shared home, their books, furniture, watercolours. Gatherings at the kitchen table, friends calling round for dinner, arguing, laughing. The love they could have given to their own children. Wanted to give.

You are like me, you are different from most people. You are, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself, as I can also do. Few people have this, and yet all could have it.

AS ONE WOULD gather from the name, the Knit-Wits began as a knitting club. Twenty-five years ago, a handful of Sowell Bay women met to swap yarn. Eventually, it became a refuge for them to escape empty homes, bittersweet voids left by children grown and moved on.

That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to him, "Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.

That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to him, 'Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.

Much is said about escapism in narrative and fiction. But perhaps the greatest escapism of all is to take refuge in the domesticity of the past, the home that history and literature become, avoiding the one moment of time in which we are not at home, yet have to live: the present.

After returning home from the Vietnam War in 1967, animals became his refuge from the stresses and horrors of war. Animals had also helped him stay sober for thirty-eight years. When he first met Michael at AA, he told him, "Anyone who's on the down-and-out heals himself with animals.

My love for math eventually became a passion. I went to math camp when I was fourteen and came home clutching a Rubik’s Cube to my chest. Math provided a neat refuge from the messiness of the real world. It marched forward, its field of knowledge expanding relentlessly, proof by proof. And

The most dangerous place for your life is in your home, as you probably know. Most people are killed by family or those they are relatively close to. Refuges for women are important to deal with this. But in the end there are certain risks you take – when you walk in the streets you might be hit by a car.

Biblical promises, heard first in health, but then unheeded, come whispering to the couch of sickness; it is felt that a pitying God watches what all mankind have forsaken. The tender compassion of Jesus is recalled and relied on; the faded eye, gazing beyond time, sees a home, a friend, a refuge in eternity.

If you have social and financial capital, you can buy your way out of problems – if a facility you use jeopardises your safety or privacy, you will simply switch. It is poorer and older women who are stuck with the consequences of self-ID in women’s prisons, shelters and refuges, hospital wards and care homes.

A modern astronomical view says that everything in the universe is moving uniformly away from everything else in all directions into space, so that there is no center point in the cosmos at all. We live with no fixed reference point. From one perspective, this understanding produces the desolate feeling that there is no home. But from another perspective, this realization shows us directly that every point is home. We are free; we do not need to fix on a single center for refuge, for safety. This is love, this is happiness, where our refuge is unbounded, and we are always at home. As the Buddha said, “They abide in peace who do not abide anywhere.

So the history of household life isn’t just a history of beds and sofas and kitchen stoves, as I had vaguely supposed it would be, but of scurvy and guano and the Eiffel Tower and bedbugs and body-snatching and just about everything else that has ever happened. Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.

I write for you, for me, for the 70% of us who make up the fabric of society: ordinary people with extraordinary lives, who play the roles of parents, siblings, children, neighbours and friends. We are those who work and study with tenacity, those who with effort and dedication bring sustenance to our homes, my novels and stories of horror, suspense and mystery are designed for the emerging generations, for those readers who seek freshness in literature and who feel distanced from traditional literature, with its labyrinth of ostentatious and complex words that often alienate the average citizen..., I write for the marginalised, for those who have felt that literature does not offer them a mirror in which to reflect themselves, for those who seek in the pages a refuge or an acknowledgement of their existence, I write for the free and critical spirits, for the innate rebels who question the structures and narratives of our civilisation, I write for the dreamers who imagine a world beyond the reach of politics and corporations, for those who resist being moulded by the great entertainment machines that seek to numb our minds and wills; It is my voice, through writing, that seeks to resonate with yours, inviting you on a literary journey where together we explore the confines of our reality and the abysses of our imagination".

It’s worth ten times the price to get you out of those things. Besides, I’ve got credits to burn.” He did. They all did. The more they worked, the more credits they got. The more they got, the more they needed to spend them before they expired, which they did after a year. You didn’t need to save them. All the things that Maya’s generation had saved for—a home of one’s own, retirement, the kids’ college education, medical emergencies—all those were now each person’s birthright. When the surplus was totaled each year—for the City inevitably ended up with a net surplus—it was simply a measure that they had produced more than they consumed, given more than they took back.

Softer memories once lived there. Where there is now burning. Where there is now blood. That was where childhood held you. Instead there is a forgetting. Instead there is a fireflood. You have never forgotten how home was more than just a language you grew inside your mouth before you said it in a way your tongue bled. When it lived as a place outside of your body and more than just in your heart and head. Where you once taught your children how to speak and walk and sang them lullabies till they fell asleep in their beds. How it has become a legend, just a holy story you pass from praying hands to praying hands. Where once you built hallowed walls there is now simply scorched earth and bloodied sands. A memory of the scared land that it once was before your whole world was set completely to flames How your heart breaks everyday because home, home no longer remembers how to say your name. Home was your refuge, and I wish they would see. because after cruelly taking it from you, they call you refugee.

The Four Establishments of Mindfulness are the foundation of our dwelling place. Without them, our house is abandoned; no one is sweeping, dusting or tidying up. Our body becomes unkempt, or feelings full of suffering, and our mind a heap of afflictions. When we are truly home, our body, mind, and feelings will be a refuge for ourselves and others.

Books were already a familiar refuge, after all, and they still took me in without the slightest judgment. They don’t close to you the way a person can. You might feel as though you don’t belong anywhere, least of all in your own home, you might feel bound to a person whose actions you abhor yet unable to divorce yourself, struggling to individuate in their shadow—“all these feelings you wouldn’t dare articulate to another person, no matter how highly trained—but you can bring your whole untempered self to books. You can ask them anything, and though you may need to search for the resonant lines, though the answer may come at a slant, they will always speak to you, they will always let you in.

You spent enough time working with computers, and the Internet became a second home. A refuge. A place to share ideas, trade snippets of code, and meet people who shared your interest in the extralegal applications of programming. Could such a person live without the Internet? He supposed it was possible. Yes, a voice countered, but was it probable?

Scared animals return home, regardless of whether home is safe or frightening. I thought about my patients with abusive families who kept going back to be hurt again. Are traumatized people condemned to seek refuge in what is familiar? If so, why, and is it possible to help them become attached to places and activities that are safe and pleasurable?

Nearly a hundred and fifty years prior to my conception, Luella fought to save the land for her family so they could have a place to call home. Now we have been able to do the same. Together, the women of this family have saved this land and legacy, used our smarts to keep us here on this mountain that has given us refuge. I didn’t think we could do it, but we did. We were only able to save four acres, but it is enough. More than enough. Now our entire family will be stewards of this place once again, will understand this rootedness is a gift. When we call ourselves kings and queens, it isn’t just a fantasy of Black pride. It means something. I am the descendant of a queen, a real queen, and I guess that makes me one, too.

Then, improbably, a door opened. In 1948, the state of Israel was declared…Nelly loved her new home from the moment she saw the ancient stones of Jerusalem in the desert sun. She was not a Zionist, or a partisan. She was an orphan of a hostile world. Now she had a refuge. A place where people who had lived through hell were embracing life, joy, idealism, and love.

...in providing refuge and in challenging us - [stories] are instruments of healing. For all these reasons, the power of story is one we must not abdicate. The church needs to be a place where stories are told, where we are invited back into the stories we live by, and where we come to find ourselves at home again in a dwelling made of words that is reconstructed in every telling. We need good storytellers to keep us alive and imagining. The exercise of the imagination is the training ground of compassion. Stories educate the heart. Stories, like poetry, are related to prayer. They have an incantatory, invocational function. They call forth and focus our dread and desire. They are vehicles of confession, thanksgiving, petition.

To quote Ms. Lauryn: i wrote these words for everyone who struggles in their youth... * * - Esther - * * "Don't worry that you'll be a copy The Maker had you on His mind the entire time Before a speckle of sand hit the darkness Before sound came from the void Before two drops of hydrogen And oxygen combined Before mama knew papa The vibrations in your voice are like thumbprints The fequency and wavelength your sound generates Reverberates in the universe Breaking and entering into souls A light house in a perfect storm Your siren song does not take but lends To safety To refuge To home Don't be afraid that its already been said - Speak Don't be afraid that its already been thought - Think In this generation This moment For this time

Mimi talked about Mother, how at fifty, women wonder what they have done with their lives. What do they believe? What is of value? What should they do with the new freedom that is theirs now that their children are, for the most part, grown? “It’s a wonderful time in a woman’s life to really explore the possibilities. Your mother has changed a great deal over the years.” Mimi said. “And I think her cancer had a lot to do with it. During the early 1970s when many women were rethinking their roles within the home and confronting their own independence, I saw Diane focusing on her health, living, surviving, so she could raise you children. Along the way, she became much more philosophical. I admire how she protects her energy and understands her limitations.

Our path to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge took us directly over the Gates of the Arctic National Park, which is home to the largest intact forest remaining in the United States. The pristine landscape below us was filled with jagged mountains, serpentine rivers, and boreal forests stretching for as far as the eye could see. I heard it was staggeringly beautiful. But I slept through it.

It was the prospect of seeing Mr. Rodman again that agitated her, especially after their miserable discussion of her beliefs and their silent but heated interaction over the Kama Sutra last Sunday. She didn’t like Mr. Rodman. Not really. There was no denying he was attractive and that he had the potential to affect her like no other man ever had. Still, he was an arse. Not only did he disparage her beliefs and practices but also he had condemned her for keeping wives from their husbands by offering them refuge in her home. True, he might have said he approved of the shelters after hearing the story of Phoebe, but when it came down to it, he was a man. And she had no doubt that, as a man, he would side with other men, the law, and the Church over a woman’s fate, if ever asked to do so.

Mohini was a regal white tiger who lived for many years at the Washington, D.C. National Zoo. For most of those years her home was in the old lion house—a typical twelve-by-twelve-foot cage with iron bars and a cement floor. Mohini spent her days pacing restlessly back and forth in her cramped quarters. Eventually, biologists and staff worked together to create a natural habitat for her. Covering several acres, it had hills, trees, a pond and a variety of vegetation. With excitement and anticipation they released Mohini into her new and expansive environment. But it was too late. The tiger immediately sought refuge in a corner of the compound, where she lived for the remainder of her life. Mohini paced and paced in that corner until an area twelve by twelve feet was worn bare of grass.

Deceived wives could purchase a gun, take lessons, and receive a cheating-husband hunting license complete with a big red A label to tie to the man’s zipper after the kill. Open season could be scheduled months in advance to give the husbands a fighting chance. They could hide in refuges or stay home and take their chances at being shot through the living room window as they watched Monday Night Football.

The most deeply one sinks into one's own religious truth,' Knitter says, 'the more broadly one can appreciate and learn from other truths.' That has been true for me, both as a teacher and as a spiritual seeker. Unlike the young man bent on keeping his Christian faith uncontested and pure, I have gained insight every time I have put mine to the test. Sometimes the results are distressing, as when I find the silence of the meditation bench more healing than the words of my favorite psalms, or when I take greater refuge in the Buddhist concept of impermanence than in the Christian assurance of eternal life. Yet this is how i have discovered that I am Christian to the core. However many other religious languages I learn, I dream in Christian. However much I learn from other spiritual teachers, it is Jesus I come home to at night.

ref·u·gee noun: a person who flees for refuge or safety We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from burning buildings into the arms of loving families. When we flee from floods and earthquakes to sleep on blue mats in community centres. We are, each of us, refugees when we flee from abusive relationships, and shooters in cinemas and shopping centres. Sometimes it takes only a day for our countries to persecute us because of our creed, race, or sexual orientation. Sometimes it takes only a minute for the missiles to rain down and leave our towns in ruin and destitution. We are, each of us, refugees longing for that amniotic tranquillity dreaming of freedom and safety when fences and barbed wires spring into walled gardens. Lebanese, Sudanese, Libyan and Syrian, Yemeni, Somali, Palestinian, and Ethiopian, like our brothers and sisters, we are, each of us, refugees. The bombs fell in their cafés and squares where once poetry, dancing, and laughter prevailed. Only their olive trees remember music and merriment now as their cities wail for departed children without a funeral. We are, each of us, refugees. Don’t let stamped paper tell you differently. We’ve been fleeing for centuries because to stay means getting bullets in our heads because to stay means being hanged by our necks because to stay means being jailed, raped and left for dead. But we can, each of us, serve as one another’s refuge so we don't board dinghies when we can’t swim so we don’t climb walls with snipers aimed at our chest so we don’t choose to remain and die instead. When home turns into hell, you, too, will run with tears in your eyes screaming rescue me! and then you’ll know for certain: you've always been a refugee.

At the curb, Velia turned, remembering the first day she stood here debating with herself about turning back, running home. But, her inner victim convinced her, this was the right thing to do. Now, she’d be leaving this home that gave her refuge for a time. Where she began to heal. She stood here as the person she used to be before falling victim to abuse—lost for a while. She smiled when she turned back to her car, loaded it, and left to be with the man she loved.

The garden is the place I go to for refuge and shelter, not the house. In the house are duties and annoyances, servants to exhort and admonish, furniture, and meals; but out there blessings crowd round me at every step—it is there that I am sorry for the unkindness in me, for those selfish thoughts that are so much worse than they feel; it is there that all my sins and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover.

our home is not our refuge; God is our refuge. We nurture life in the face of death and leverage our homes for gospel work. For those whose hope is in the coming kingdom, our homes are less like retreats and more like a network of foxholes for planning and hosting kingdom advances into this present darkness. Our homes are centers of hospitality to show strangers and neighbors the light of Christ. And they are equipping centers for traveling ambassadors to help them on their way to doing the King’s business.

Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!  “Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —   For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!   We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.   (After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”  …

Yet this city (San Francisco) was also a final refuge for many who had roamed the world, and finally found the home of their hearts...And while I heard every sort of prosaic answer when I asked those people what brought and kept them here, each somehow also hinted at a deeper reason, having something to do with freedom from expectations, freedom from the past, often freedom from their families; we do not admit much that families can be a kind of prison from which we yearn to escape, yet this is incontrovertibly so, as I know too well myself.

We keep running till we die. We separate, get further apart, till we are dead.' He has no home; he is unhappy. I could be the source of his joy, the refuge of his life. And I can only pass on. Something in me wants more. I can't rest. Without emotion I let him kiss me. The evening had been lovely, complete. I had been alone more that I could have been had I gone by myself. The poor guy; there is no one nicer. Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.

My home should calm me and energize me. It should be a comforting, quiet refuge and a place of excitement and possibility. It should call to my mind the past, the present, and the future. It should be a snuggery of privacy and reflection, but also a gathering place that strengthened my engagement with other people. By making me feel safe, it should embolden me to take risks. I wanted a feeling of home so strong that no matter where I went, I would take that feeling with me; at the same time, I wanted to find adventure without leaving my apartment.

ANA. Thank you: I am going to heaven for happiness. I have had quite enough of reality on earth. DON JUAN. Then you must stay here; for hell is the home of the unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are dragged down from their fool’s paradise by their bodies: hunger and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all, make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten and digested: thrice a century anew generation must be engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all driven at last to have but one prayer “Make me a healthy animal.” But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance, an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word, bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue, just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance, a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem, “the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal Feminine draws us ever upward and on”—without getting us a step farther. And yet you want to leave this paradise!

The Law of the Jungle NOW this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back — For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack. Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep; And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep. The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown, Remember the Wolf is a Hunter — go forth and get food of thine own. Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear. And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair. When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail, Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail. When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar, Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home, Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come. The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain, The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again. If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay, Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away. Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can; But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man! If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride; Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide. The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies; And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies. The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will; But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill. Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same. Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same. Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by himself for his own: He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone. Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw, In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law. Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey!

The Balkans I know is the Balkans from below: a space of bogoumils- these medieval heretics who fought against the Crusades and churches- and a place of anti-Ottoman resistance; a home to hajduks and klephts, pirates and rebels; a refuge of feminists and socialists, of antifascist and partisans; a place of dreamers of all sorts struggling both against provincial "peninsularity" as well as against occupations, foreign interventions and that process which is now, in a strange inversion of history, often described with that fashionable phrase, "balkanization." (p.11)

The biblical narrative begins and ends at home. From the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem we are hardwired for place and for permanence, for rest and refuge, for presence and protection. We long for home because welcome was our first gift of grace and it will be our last. The settings of our first home and our last home will testify to the nature of the embodied story God is writing in human history. Because God's story begins in a garden and ends in a city, place isn't incidental to Christian hope, just as our bodies aren't incidental to salvation. God will resurrect our bodies, and he will -- finally -- bring us home.

I believe many of us now live as if we value things more than people. In America, we spend more time than ever at work, and we earn more money than any generation in history, but we spend less and less time with our loved ones as a result. Likewise, many of us barely think twice about severing close ties with friends and family to move halfway across the country in pursuit of career advancement. We buy exorbitant houses—the square footage of the average American home has more than doubled in the past generation—but increasingly we use them only to retreat from the world. And even within the home-as-refuge, sealed off from the broader community “out there,” each member of the household can often be found sitting alone in front of his or her own private screen—exchanging time with loved ones for time with a bright, shiny object instead. Now, I’m not saying that any of us—if asked—would claim to value things more than people. Nor would we say that our loved ones aren’t important to us. Of course they are. But many people now live as if achievement, career advancement, money, material possessions, entertainment, and status matter more. Unfortunately, such things don’t confer lasting happiness, nor do they protect us from depression. Loved ones do.

On that spot I wove delightful romances, and abandoned myself to little debauches of melancholy which enchanted me. If I had known the reason — perhaps quite commonplace — of this neglect, I should have lost the unwritten poetry which intoxicated me. To me this refuge represented the most various phases of human life, shadowed by misfortune; sometimes the peace of the graveyard without the dead, who speak in the language of epitaphs; one day I saw in it the home of lepers; another, the house of the Atridae; but, above all, I found there provincial life, with its contemplative ideas, its hour-glass existence. I often wept there, I never laughed.

My mind went back to Bambi. If there were too many deer, then hunters were given the opportunity to shoot them. Cheating husbands were also a problem in the balance of nature, and there were far too many of them. Why couldn't there be open season on cheating husbands? Deceived wives could purchase a gun, take lessons, and receive a cheating-husband hunting license complete with a big red A label to tie to the man's zipper after the kill. Open season could be scheduled months in advance to give the husbands a fighting chance. They could hide in refuges or stay home and take their chances at being shot through the living room window as they watched Monday Night Football.

Yes,” said Papa, “and to me it doesn’t seem so very long ago. Of course we didn’t know then that we’d be spending your tenth birthday steaming about Lake Zurich as refugees from Hitler.” “Is a refugee someone who’s had to leave their home?” asked Anna. “Someone who seeks refuge in another country,” said Papa. “I don’t think I’m quite used to being one yet,” said Anna. “It’s an odd feeling,” said Papa. “You live in a country all your life. Then suddenly it is taken over by thugs and there you are, on your own in a strange place, with nothing.” He looked so cheerful as he said this that Anna asked, “Don’t you mind?” “In a way,” said Papa. “But I find it very interesting.

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams.

Tell me," he said. "Tell me what you think the University is." Finch grinned. "Why, Dave, it's a place to learn, a place to find out about things." Masters looked at Stoner. "And you, Galahad? What do you think it is?" Stoner flushed. "I suppose it's a place... where you can... where you can find out who you are." Masters snorted. "You're both wrong. You're fools. The University is an asylum, a refuge for the defective, the crippled, the bleeding, the sensitive. It's a place for persons who are unfit for the world, a place for persons who are brave enough to be cowards, who are strong enough to be weak. It's a home for the maimed, the broken, the cast-out. It's a home for the scholars.

At that time, a number of myths were created by the young people of the smoking carriages and forests of hallucinogenic mushrooms, the hungry for the thirst of lysergic acid, who were too tired of the suffering they grew up in and needed to take refuge in dreams. In these children's universe there were unbelievable stories about places in the mountains that women sought to retreat to, places where people were united by music and love for a mutual spiritual growth. For Aunt Jeanine, who had grown up with the image of her father, an amputee due to the war, feeding on such stories was like a haven, one she would later try to turn into her home. And one of those stories, one particular one, stood in her memory until the last stage of her life, when she passed away at eighty-one, burned with fire. (...) At that time, kid, they said that if we searched enough, we would find a place where the world wouldn't end. Men would never know what hell of a place that was, totally unconquerable! A place where the dirty hands of men would never arrive. A place men would never know about . Don't you think I could find it? To have my body disappearing in the woods, as I saw happening to kids in Japan, in that forest that swallows them to its core. Flesh turned to powder, my essence disappearing in the middle of life. They said that, when you die at a place, you'll stay at that place forever. That was why everyone was afraid to go to war. They weren't afraid of dying, kid, they were afraid of dying there.

This internal exploration is well worth while. For there is something within the mind of man and beast, something that is neither intellect nor feeling, but deeper than both, to which the name of intuition, may fitly be given. When science can truly explain why a horse will take its drunken rider or driver for miles through the dark and find its own way home; why field-mice seal up their holes before the cold weather comes; why sheep move away to the lee side of a mountain before severe storms; when it can tell us what warns the tortoise to retire to rest and refuge before every shower of rain; and when it can really explain who guides a vulture many miles distant to the dead body of an animal, we may then learn that intuition is sometimes a better guide than intellect.

Rather than seeking true refuge, we turn toward what I call false refuges. They are false because while they may provide a temporary sense of comfort or security, they create more suffering in the long run. We might, like Pam, have a fear of failure and take refuge in staying busy, in striving to perform well, or in taking care of others. Or we might feel unlovable and take refuge in pursuing wealth or success. Maybe we fear being criticized, and take refuge in avoiding risks and always pleasing others. Or we feel anxious or empty and take refuge in alcohol, overeating, or surfing the Web. Instead of consenting and opening to what we are actually feeling, our turn toward false refuges is a way of avoiding emotional pain. But this only takes us further from real comfort, further from home.

As the nineteenth century progressed, Austria-Hungary took refuge in reaction at home and adventurism abroad in an effort to contain the centrifugal forces which eventually blew it, and much of Europe, apart. Austria, and Vienna in particular, was the real home of Central-European anti-semitism. Jews wew bottom of the pile. No matter how low you sank, the Jews were still below you, along with the gypsies. At the tail-end of the nineteenth century, the Viennese politician Karl Lueger founded his power base on an anti-semitic platform. Stories of ritual murder by Jewish cabals featured regularly in the Viennese gutter press. It is no accident that Schickelgruber, the faied artist who became Hitler, should have neen the son of a petty official and have spent his ambitions at the butt end of Viennese snobbery.

Monsieur le Curé," said the man, "you are good; you do not despise me. You receive me into your house. You light your candles for me. Yet I have not concealed from you whence I come and that I am an unfortunate man." The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which I knew.

The values and assumptions of that household I took in without knowing when or how it happened, and I have them to this day: The pleasure in sharing pleasure. The belief that is is only proper to help lame dogs to get over stiles and young men to put one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. An impatient disregard for small sums of money. The belief that it is a sin against Nature to put sugar in one's tea. The preference for being home over being anywhere else. The belief that generous impulses should be acted on, whether you can afford to do this or not. The trust in premonitions and the knowledge of what is in wrapped packages. The willingness to go to any amount of trouble to make yourself comfortable. The tendency to take refuge in absolutes. The belief that you don't have to apologize for tears; that consoling words should never be withheld; that what somebody wants very much they should, if possible, have.

Only, this was the thing: you'd provided me with the possibility of getting away from myself and making myself at home in another world. You were like a messenger from that world. With you, I could give my real self a rest. You were part and parcel of that dissolving of reality - myself included - that I'd been working on for seven or eight years through writing. For me, you were the herald out in front who showed me how to put the menacing world on hold. In that world I was a refugee whose existence was not legitimate, whose future never went beyond the three months of a temporary visa. I had no desire to come back to earth. I'd found a refuge in a magical experience and I wasn't about to let it get dragged down into reality. As far back as I can remember, I'd always sought not to exist. You've had to work for years on end to get me to accept the fact that I do exist. And I really don't think your work is over yet.

Home. After a lifetime of wandering, of seeking and failing, I finally understood the meaning of the word. Home isn’t a place, a structure you create from wood or bricks or mortar, building the walls high and strong, to keep out the storms of life. Home is in the things you carry with you, the treasures of the heart, like Gil’s Bible, or the memories of a family baseball game on a sunny summer day, or the feeling of singing “I’ll Fly Away” in an abandoned church as the storm passes over. It is a dwelling place you share with the people who matter most, a refuge in which you’re never alone. The Builder is always nearby, tearing down old walls and adding new rooms, repairing the damage of wind and weather, filling empty spaces with new gifts. Gifts beautiful and mysterious and unexpected. Like all beautiful gifts, a surprise to everyone but the Giver, who seeks us in our hidden places and beckons us home from our wanderings. Who knows that nothing adrift is meant to stay adrift forever.

So, with so much insight, would he not have noticed the meaning behind my abrupt shrinking away from his hand? Not notice that I'd leaned into his grip? Not know that I didn't want him to let go of me? Not sense that when he started massaging me, my inability to relax was my last refuge, my last defense, my last pretense, that I had by no means resisted, that mine was fake resistance, that I was incapable of resisting and would never want to resist no matter what he did or asked me to do? Not know, as I sat on my bed that Sunday afternoon when no one was home except for the two of us and watched him enter my room and ask me why I wasn't with the others at the beach, that if I refused to answer and simply shrugged my shoulders under his gaze, it was simply so as not to show that I couldn't gather sufficient breath to speak, that if I so much as let out a sound it might be to utter a desperate confession or a sob— one or the other? Never, since childhood, had anyone brought me to such a pass.

The night is filled with intermittent panicked shouts and pained wails, followed by the occasional laughter of an Evrallonic soldier. Fury warms me and I don’t feel the bite of the wintry air anymore, but I control my rage, filter and focus it, so that when two soldiers run past me, chasing after a young boy, I am able to act swiftly. I step out of the shadows and grab the first soldier by the hair, which has been left exposed after he either discarded or dropped his helmet. He opens his mouth to shout but it dies on his lips when I slit his throat, dropping him to the ground as he chokes. The soldier chasing the boy stops and turns around, drawing his sword upon seeing me. It’s the last thing he does. Before he moves an inch, I’ve thrown my dagger into his forehead. A wave of shock rolls through the soldiers body and I walk past him, snatching the blade from his skull just before he falls to the ground. The boy has disappeared but he’s none of my concern now. I move through the community like the wraith I’ve been labeled. Anyone wearing soldier’s attire is brought to their knees and left to die in the streets. Fishing families scurry out of my way like they know who I am and take refuge in their homes as I make my way to the other side of the community. An Evrallonic soldier stands on the doorstep of a home, hovering over a young woman whose blouse has been torn. The young woman is sobbing, her body trembling under the pressing soldier. The Evrallonic man is leaning towards her when I approach. He barely has time to look up before I’ve brought my knee up and connected it with his nose. The satisfying crack sounds through the air and the soldier shouts in disbelief, holding his nose. He drops his hand a moment later and unsheathes his sword, swinging a deadly strong blow at me. I sidestep and place my foot between his, easily knocking him to the ground when he trips over me. His sword spills from his hands and I snatch it up, jabbing it through the man’s chest before he can even utter a plea for mercy.

During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got upon his feet at last and moved feebly downtown, a melancholy change had come over everything and every creature. There had been a “revival,” and everybody had “got religion,” not only the adults, but even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning. Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town was lost, forever and forever.

This letter is for all mothers who choose exile, who walk away from everything they know in search of a safe haven. Who carry their tired children upon their backs through deserts, with home left behind them, and the hope of America at the end of that long, perilous journey. For the mothers who help their frightened children into crowded boats that sail into the tempest-tossed seas. For the mothers who ignore their own hunger so that they can feed their children until they reach the plenty they dream of giving. This letter is for the mothers who shield their bodies of their sleeping babes through the dark nights while planes fly overhead, mothers who pray of giving their children a home where they might sleep safely. America is yours. She always has been. America is the Mother of Exiles. That is her given name, and it is from this dream of mothers that she was conceived. She is the end to that perilous road, the safe shore of that stormy ocean, the refuge from the darkness, the terror, the suffering. She is the plenty, the giver, the one who holds the torch, the flame of which is the imprisoned lightning that will guide us home.

It has been a thousand years since I started trekking the earth A huge travel in night’s darkness from the Ceylonese waters to the Malayan sea I have been there too: the fading world of Vimbisara and Asoka Even further—the forgotten city of Vidarva, Today I am a weary soul although the ocean of life around continues to foam, Except for a few soothing moments with Natore’s Banalata Sen. Her hair as if the dark night of long lost Vidisha, Her face reminiscent of the fine works of Sravasti, When I saw her in the shadow it seemed as if a ship-wrecked mariner in a far away sea has spotted a cinnamon island lined with greenish grass. “Where had you been lost all these days? ” yes, she demanded of me, Natore’s Banalata Sen raising her eyes of profound refuge. At the day’s end evening crawls in like the sound of dews, The kite flaps off the smell of sun from its wings. When all colours take leave from the world except for the flicker of the hovering fireflies The manuscript is ready with tales to be told All birds come home, rivers too, All transactions of the day being over Nothing remains but darkness to sit face to face with Banalata Sen.

Dear Bride to Be Come to me, Dear Bride to be, And kneel before My Throne And I will share My heart with you And make your house a home. Listen well, lean closely There are secrets at My feet— The marriage you will soon begin This Bridegroom will complete. The man with whom you'll journey Is your wedding gift from me To teach you things beyond this world… A precious mystery. Bearing all these things in mind You'll never lack for wealth For through your union I will choose To teach you of Myself. Let him hold you tightly And keep you safe from harm Until I'll one day hold you In My everlasting arms. Let him wipe your tears away And trust him with your pain Until I wipe them all away And Heaven is your gain. Pray to love his tender touch And want his gentle kiss I grant you both my blessing And ask you not to miss The reason why I've chosen For two halves to become one— That you might see the Bride of Christ, Sweet Daughter and Dear Son. So make his home a refuge He's to love you as I do Until your mansion is complete... A place prepared for you. And if I should choose to leave you here When I have called him home Trust I'll be your husband near... You'll never be alone.

Oh, my son loves Japan!" she says, her voice soaring. "He's been studying Japanese, all by himself, and he went there recently actually for the first time, and he said he just felt immediately at home there, you know really comfortable. I mean with him it's mostly the, the, the-" My brain silently fills in the next word: anime. "The animation and so on, you know he's really into technology. I mean he's only seventeen, you know so who knows what is going to happen. But it does seem like, you know, a real thing for him." "Right," I say, and I nod. "That's great." Sometimes at times like these, what fills my head is the things I do not and could not ever say. For example: "You have no idea how many stories I've heard exactly like that one!" Or: "You know, even though I'm generally reluctant to admit the existence of 'types' among people, I'm often shocked by the parallels that exist between the kind of young men who like anime and all things Japanese, to the extent that I sometimes struggle to believe that a group of people with such intensely similar interests are in fact individuals." Certainly I do not say: "And what would you like to bet that he ends up marrying a Japanese woman and becomes an academic teaching the world about Japanese culture while she gives up her job to bring up his children?" But even if these things flicker through my mind, I'm not anywhere near as rageful as any of that makes me sound. In fact, if anything, what I feel in this particular moment is something like envy, for this son of hers that I've never met, I understand that taking refuge in Japan and being shielded from the demands of full adulthood is a privilege offered to predominantly white, educated, Anglophone men, because they are deemed the most desirable that the world has to offer; that it feeds off power relations that date back to the American occupation and beyond, and which hew closely to the colonial paradigm even if there are important differences (and even if Japan also has a history of colonialism of its own to reckon with); and that even leaving all of this aside, this Peter Pan status is not something I am interested in. And yet I can't help but look at the sort of person who feels "immediately" comfortable in Japan and wish that I had felt like that, only because it might validate the way I've dedicated a lot of my life to the country, but because the security of that sensation in itself feels like something I would love to experience.

Change is still resented on the Plains, so much so much so that many small-town people cling to the dangerous notion that while the world outside may change drastically, their town does not... ... when myth dictates that the town has not really changed, ways of adapting to new social and economic conditions are rejected: not vigorously, but with a strangely resolute inertia... Combatting inertia in a town such as Lemmon can seem like raising the dead. It is painful to watch intelligent business people who are dedicated to the welfare of the town spend most of their energy combatting those more set in their ways. Community spirit can still work wonders here - people raised over $500,000 in the hard times of the late 1980s to keep the Lemmon nursing home open... By the time a town is 75 or 100 years old, it may be filled with those who have come to idealize their isolation. Often these are people who never left at all, or fled back to the safety of the town after a try at college a few hundred miles from home, or returned after college regarding the values of the broader, more pluralistic world they had encountered as something to protect themselves and their families from... More than ever, I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity to cope with change.

To the Sumerians the Divine was Queen Nana, to the Romans “Anna Perenna.” She is Al-Uzza of Mecca, Artemis of Ephesus, Anatis of Egypt, Eurynome of Africa, Coatlique of the Aztecs, Kunapipi of Australia. She is Rhea, Tellus, Ceres, Hera. The Female Metaphor has been known in innumerable ways and by innumerable names as humans tried to express their perception of the Great Mystery. She encompassed All. She has been present throughout the millennia in the myths, rituals, religions and poetry of humanity. She has been loved and revered. Before She appeared in human form, there were stones, trees, pools, fruits and animals that She either lived in or were identified with Her or parts of Her. For many peoples the stones and rocks were Her bones, the vegetation Her hair. Poppies and pomegranates and other such many-seeded flora identified Her fertility and abundance. Grain/food could represent Her. The earth itself was understood as Her belly, the mountains as places of refuge, caves providing shelter for the unborn and the dead. Primal peoples everywhere at some time understood Earth Herself as Divine One, Deity – Mother. They languaged this in different ways. The pre-Celtic indigenous Europeans named Her – the Land – as Lady Sovereignty. In South-East Asia, where She has been known as Mago, Earth is Her Stronghold, the primordial home. In Greece and in the West, She has been known as Gaia.

What is the purpose of grace? Primarily, to restore our relationship with God. When God lays the foundation of this restored relationship, by forgiving our sins as we trust his Son, he does so in order that henceforth we and he may live in fellowship. And what he does in renewing our nature is intended to make us capable of, and actually to lead us into, the exercise of love, trust, delight, hope and obedience Godward—those acts which, from our side, make up the reality of fellowship with God, who is constantly making himself known to us. This is what all the work of grace aims at—an ever deeper knowledge of God, and an ever closer fellowship with him. Grace is God drawing us sinners closer and closer to himself. How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from assault by the world, the flesh and the devil, nor by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstances, nor yet by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology; but rather by exposing us to all these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely. This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another: it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast. The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defense, and a sure refuge and help for the weak, is that God spends so much of his time bringing home to us that we are weak, both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find, or to follow, the right road.

Sweetheart Like You" Well the pressure's down, the boss ain't here He gone North, for a while They say that vanity got the best of him But he sure left here in style By the way, that's a cute hat And that smile's so hard to resist But what's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? You know, I once knew a woman who looked like you She wanted a whole man, not just a half She used to call me sweet daddy when I was only a child You kind of remind me of her when you laugh In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear It's done with a flick of the wrist What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? You know, a woman like you should be at home That's where you belong Taking care for somebody nice Who don't know how to do you wrong Just how much abuse will you be able to take ? Well, there's no way to tell by that first kiss What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? You know you can make a name for yourself You can hear them tires squeal You can be known as the most beautiful woman Who ever crawled across cut glass to make a deal. You know, news of you has come down the line Even before ya came in the door They say in your father's house, there's many mansions Each one of them got a fireproof floor Snap out of it baby, people are jealous of you They smile to your face, but behind your back they hiss What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? Got to be an important person to be in here, honey Got to have done some evil deed Got to have your own harem when you come in the door Got to play your harp until your lips bleed. They say that patriotism is the last refuge To which a scoundrel clings Steal a little and they throw you in jail Steal a lot and they make you king There's only one step down from here, baby It's called the land of permanent bliss What's a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this ? Bob Dylan, Infidels (1983)

How are Good Europeans such as ourselves distinguished from the patriots? In the first place, we are atheists and immoralists, but we take care to support the religions and the morality which we associate with the gregarious instinct: for by means of them, an order of men is, so to speak, being prepared, which must at some time or other fall into our hands, which must actually crave for our hands. Beyond Good and Evil, — certainly; but we insist upon the unconditional and strict preservation of herd-morality. We reserve ourselves the right to several kinds of philosophy which it is necessary to learn: under certain circumstances, the pessimistic kind as a hammer; a European Buddhism might perhaps be indispensable. We should probably support the development and the maturation of democratic tendencies; for it conduces to weakness of will: in "Socialism" we recognise a thorn which prevents smug ease. Attitude towards the people. Our prejudices; we pay attention to the results of cross-breeding. Detached, well-to-do, strong: irony concerning the "press" and its culture. Our care: that scientific men should not become journalists. We mistrust any form of culture that tolerates news-paper reading or writing. We make our accidental positions (as Goethe and Stendhal did), our experiences, a foreground, and we lay stress upon them, so that we may deceive concerning our backgrounds. We ourselves wait and avoid putting our heart into them. They serve us as refuges, such as a wanderer might require and use — but we avoid feeling at home in them. We are ahead of our fellows in that we have had a disciplina voluntatis. All strength is directed to the development of the will, an art which allows us to wear masks, an art of understanding beyond the passions (also "super-European" thought at times). This is our preparation before becoming the law-givers of the future and the lords of the earth; if not we, at least our children. Caution where marriage is concerned.

Activists who expressed genuine and reasonable concern for the struggles of trans-identified people would simultaneously dismiss women’s desire for safety, privacy, dignity and fair competition. Unlike those activists, I feel compassion both for people who feel at odds with their sexed bodies, and for the people, mainly women and children, who are harmed when sexual dimorphism is denied. At first I was puzzled that well-educated young women were the most ardent supporters of this new policy of gender self-identification, even though it is very much against their interests. A man may be embarrassed if a female person uses a male changing room; a male in a communal female facility can inspire fear. I came to see it as the rising generation’s ‘luxury belief’ – a creed espoused by members of an elite to enhance their status in each other’s eyes, with the harms experienced by the less fortunate. If you have social and financial capital, you can buy your way out of problems – if a facility you use jeopardises your safety or privacy, you will simply switch. It is poorer and older women who are stuck with the consequences of self-ID in women’s prisons, shelters and refuges, hospital wards and care homes. And some women’s apparent support for self-ID is deceptive, expressed for fear of what open opposition would bring. The few male academics and journalists who write critically on this topic tell me that they get only a fraction of the hate directed at their female peers (and are spared the sexualised insults and rape threats). This dynamic is reinforced by ageism, which is inextricably intertwined with misogyny – including internalised misogyny. I was astonished by the young female reviewer who described my book’s tone as ‘harsh’ and ‘unfortunate’. I wondered if she knew that sexists often say they would have listened to women if only they had stated their demands more nicely and politely, and whether she realised that once she is no longer young and beautiful, the same sorts of things will be said about her, too.

You make springs gush forth in the valleys;         they flow between the hills;     11 they give drink to every beast of the field;         the wild donkeys quench their thirst.     12 Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell;         they sing among the branches.     13 From your lofty abode you water the mountains;         the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.     14 You cause the grass to grow for the livestock         and plants for man to cultivate,     that he may bring forth food from the earth         15 and wine to gladden the heart of man,     oil to make his face shine         and bread to strengthen man's heart.     16 The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly,         the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.     17 In them the birds build their nests;         the stork has her home in the fir trees.     18 The high mountains are for the wild goats;         the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.     19 He made the moon to mark the seasons; [1]         the sun knows its time for setting.     20 You make darkness, and it is night,         when all the beasts of the forest creep about.     21 The young lions roar for their prey,         seeking their food from God.     22 When the sun rises, they steal away         and lie down in their dens.     23 Man goes out to his work         and to his labor until the evening.     24 O LORD, how manifold are your works!         In wisdom have you made them all;         the earth is full of your creatures.     25 Here is the sea, great and wide,         which teems with creatures innumerable,         living things both small and great.     26 There go the ships,         and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it. [2]     27 These all look to you,         to give them their food in due season.     28 When you give it to them, they gather it up;         when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.     29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;         when you take away their breath, they die         and return to their dust.     30 When you send forth your Spirit, [3] they are created,         and you renew the face of the ground.     31 May the glory of the LORD endure forever;

refuge imagine how it feels to be chased out of home. to have your grip ripped. loosened from your fingertips, something you so dearly held on to. like a lover’s hand that slips when pulled away you are always reaching. my father would speak of home. reaching. speaking of familiar faces. girl next door who would eventually grow up to be my mother. the fruit seller at the market. the lonely man at the top of the road who nobody spoke to. and our house at the bottom of the street lit up by a single flickering lamp where beyond was only darkness. there they would sit and tell stories of monsters that lurked and came only at night to catch the children who sat and listened to stories of monsters that lurked. this is how they lived. each memory buried. an artefact left to be discovered by archaeologists. the last words on a dying family member’s lips. this was sacred. not even monsters could taint it. but there were monsters that came during the day. monsters that tore families apart with their giant hands. and fingers that slept on triggers. the sound of gunshots ripping through the sky became familiar like the tapping of rain fall on a window sill. monsters that would kill and hide behind speeches, suits and ties. monsters that would chase families away forcing them to leave everything behind. i remember when we first stepped off the plane. everything was foreign. unfamiliar. uninviting. even the air in my lungs left me short of breath. we came here to find refuge. they called us refugees so, we hid ourselves in their language until we sounded just like them. changed the way we dressed to look just like them. made this our home until we lived just like them and began to speak of familiar faces. girl next door who would grow up to be a mother. the fruit seller at the market. the lonely man at the top of the road who nobody spoke to. and our house at the bottom of the street lit up by a flickering lamp to keep away the darkness. there we would sit and watch police that lurked and came only at night to arrest the youths who sat and watched police that lurked and came only at night. this is how we lived. i remember one day i heard them say to me they come here to take our jobs they need to go back to where they came from not knowing that i was one of the ones who came. i told them that a refugee is simply someone who is trying to make a home. so next time when you go home tuck your children in and kiss your families goodnight, be glad that the monsters never came for you. in their suits and ties. never came for you. in the newspapers with the media lies. never came for you. that you are not despised. and know that deep inside the hearts of each and every one of us we are all always reaching for a place that we can call home.

The society’s ‘look’ is a self-publicizing one. The American flag itself bears witness to this by its omnipresence, in fields and built-up areas, at service stations, and on graves in the cemeteries, not as a heroic sign, but as the trademark of a good brand. It is simply the label of the finest successful international enterprise, the US. This explains why the hyperrealists were able to paint it naively, without either irony or protest (Jim Dine in the sixties), in much the same way as Pop Art gleefully transposed the amazing banality of consumer goods on to its canvases. There is nothing here of the fierce parodying of the American anthem by Jimi Hendrix, merely the light irony and neutral humour of things that have become banal, the humour of the mobile home and the giant hamburger on the sixteen-foot long billboard, the pop and hyper humour so characteristic of the atmosphere of America, where things almost seem endowed with a certain indulgence towards their own banality. But they are indulgent towards their own craziness too. Looked at more generally, they do not lay claim to being extraordinary; they simply are extraordinary. They have that extravagance which makes up odd, everyday America. This oddness is not surrealistic (surrealism is an extravagance that is still aesthetic in nature and as such very European in inspiration); here, the extravagance has passed into things. Madness, which with us is subjective, has here become objective, and irony which is subjective with us has also turned into something objective. The fantasmagoria and excess which we locate in the mind and the mental faculties have passed into things themselves. Whatever the boredom, the hellish tedium of the everyday in the US or anywhere else, American banality will always be a thousand times more interesting than the European - and especially the French - variety. Perhaps because banality here is born of extreme distances, of the monotony of wide-open spaces and the radical absence of culture. It is a native flower here, asis the opposite extreme, that of speed and verticality, of an excess that verges on abandon, and indifference to values bordering on immorality, whereas French banality is a hangover from bourgeois everyday life, born out of a dying aristocratic culture and transmuted into petty-bourgeois mannerism as the bourgeoisie shrank away throughout the nineteenth century. This is the crux: it is the corpse of the bourgeoisie that separates us. With us, it is that class that is the carrier of the chromosome of banality, whereas the Americans have succeeded in preserving some humour in the material signs of manifest reality and wealth. This also explains why Europeans experience anything relating to statistics as tragic. They immediately read in them their individual failure and take refuge in a pained denunciation of the merely quantitative. The Americans, by contrast, see statistics as an optimistic stimulus, as representing the dimensions of their good fortune, their joyous membership of the majority. Theirs is the only country where quantity can be extolled without compunction.

ESTABLISH STABLE ANCHORS OF ATTENTION Mindfulness meditation typically involves something known as an anchor of attention—a neutral reference point that helps support mental stability. An anchor might be the sensation of our breath coming in and out of the nostrils, or the rising and falling of our abdomen. When we become lost in thought during practice, we can return to our anchor, fixing our attention on the stimuli we’ve chosen. But anchors can also intensify trauma. The breath, for instance, is far from neutral for many survivors. It’s an area of the body that can hold tension related to a trauma and connect to overwhelming, life-threatening events. When Dylan paid attention to the rising and falling of his abdomen, he would be swamped with memories of mocking faces while walking down the hallway. Other times, feeling a constriction of his breath in the chest echoed a feeling of immobility, which was a traumatic reminder. For Dylan, the breath simply wasn’t a neutral anchor. As a remedy, we can encourage survivors to establish stabilizing anchors of attention. This means finding a focus of attention that supports one’s window of tolerance—creating stability in the nervous system as opposed to dysregulation. Each person’s anchor will vary: for some, it could be the sensations of their hands resting on their thighs, or their buttocks on the cushion. Other stabilizing anchors might include another sense altogether, such as hearing or sight. When Dylan and I worked together, it took a while until he could find a part of his body that didn’t make him more agitated. He eventually found that the sense of hearing was a neutral anchor of attention. At my office, he’d listen for the sound of the birds or the traffic outside, which he found to be stabilizing. “It’s subtle,” he said to me, opening his eyes and rubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “But it is a lot less charged. I’m not getting riled up the same way, which is a huge relief.” In sessions together, Dylan’s anchor was a spot he’d rest his attention on at the beginning of a session or a place to return to if he felt overwhelmed. If he practiced meditation at home—I’d recommended short periods if he could stay in his window of tolerance—he used hearing as an anchor, or “home base” as he called it. “I finally feel like I can access a kind of refuge,” he said quietly, placing his hand on his belly. “My body hasn’t felt safe in so long. It’s a relief to finally feel like I’m learning how to be in here.” Anchors of attention you can offer students and clients practicing mindfulness—besides the sensation of the breath in the abdomen or nostrils—include different physical sensations (feet, buttocks, back, hands) and other senses (seeing, smelling, hearing). One client of mine had a soft blanket that she would touch slowly as an anchor. Another used a candle. For some, walking meditation is a great way to develop more stable anchors of attention, such as the feeling of one’s feet on the ground—whatever supports stability and one’s window of tolerance. Experimentation is key. Using subtler anchors does come with benefits and drawbacks. One advantage to working with the breath is that it is dynamic and tends to hold our attention more easily. When we work with a sense that’s less tactile—hearing, for instance—we may be more prone to drifting off into distraction. The more tangible the anchor, the easier it is to return to it when attention wanders.

My mother was a force. She had little tolerance for fools. She kept her hair short and wore practical, unfussy clothes. Everything about her radiated competence and calm. As it had been when Craig and I were kids, she didn’t get involved with our private lives. Her love came in the form of reliability. She showed up when your flight came in. She drove you home and offered food if you were hungry. Her even temper was like shelter to me, a place to seek refuge.

There’s no geography in this story. Generally speaking, it takes place in three settings of national importance: the city, whether that one or another one; the mountains, where you take refuge when you’re attacked or you want to make war; and the village, which is for each and every one of us the ancestral home.

Man has such strange ideas of the meaning of My invitation "Come unto Me." Too often has it been interpreted as an urge to pay a duty owed to a Creator, or a debt owed to a Saviour. That "Come unto Me" holds in it a wealth of meaning far surpassing even that. "Come unto Me" for the solution of every problem, for the calming of every fear, for all you need—physical, mental, spiritual. Sick, come to Me for health. Homeless, ask Me for a home. Friendless, claim a friend. Hopeless, a refuge.

When you're alone at home, go to the mirror and stare at your reflection. You will get scared of yourself. Story of your life is actually a story of how you're running away from yourself and taking refuge in others.

Shelly wanted her husband home to face the music for which she was the conductor. He had no place of refuge.

For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].

The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can “be ourselves.” Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks. The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try.

When I take refuge in buddha, I don’t take refuge in my good points or my skillful behavior, and of course I don’t take refuge in my shortcomings. I take refuge in me being me. That is my indestructible virtue, which never is lost except by me forgetting it or not facing up to it. To take refuge means to give up running away from home. It means to recognize my responsibility to live in accord with my buddhahood.

When we take refuge in the Triple Treasure, we are flying back to our true home.

For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep. Hence the Jews. Divine providence has given them to us, and so, by God, let us use them, and pray there’s always some Jew to fear and to hate. We need an enemy to give people hope. Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and the bastards always talk about the purity of the race.

After the removal era initiated officially in 1830 and the Seminole Wars of the 1840s, most Americans had the misperception that not Indians remained in the Southeast. Small communities of Indians persisted, however. Largely hidden in isolated pockets of their former homelands, southeastern Indians struggled ot survive, both physically and cultural, in the harsh social an political climate of the nineteenth century South. The groups that remained found refuge in generally undesired places: mountain hollows, swamps, costal marshes and pine-barrens were their homes…Most communities had intermarried with non-Indians and faced challenges to their racial status as Indians—local and state politicians repeated questioned their tribal acknowledgment and tried to break up their reservations.

In the fast paced, digitally saturated, screen-overloaded era we live in, we believe that printed books are a refuge of space and time. It’s OK to slow down and read; it’s OK to fill your home and your shelves with printed books and to celebrate the comfort and meaning they provide in our lives. We think it’s something that we all crave whether we know it or not.

When the Indian wars began to go cold, the theft of land and tribal sovereignty bureaucratic, they came for Indian children, forcing them into boarding schools, where if they did not die of what they called consumption even while they regularly were starved; if they were not buried in duty, training for agricultural or industrial labor, or indentured servitude; were they not buried in children’s cemeteries, or in unmarked graves, not lost somewhere between the school and home having run away, unburied, unfound, lost to time, or lost between exile and refuge, between school, tribal homelands, reservation, and city; if they made it through routine beatings and rape, if they survived, made lives and families and homes, it was because of this and only this: Such Indian children were made to carry more than they were made to carry.

While you can still call home the place where your mother’s blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, whilst you are there he cannot hurt you. Your aunt knows this. I explained what I had done in the letter I left, with you, on her doorstep. She knows that allowing you houseroom may well have kept you alive for the past fifteen years.

But if you don’t own, you will move. Maybe not today or next year, but at some point.It makes notions of home and refuge seem useless and foolhardy. It makes you never want to get attached. And being unattached to one’s home can exhaust a person.

The museum is more than just a home for artifacts. In many ways, it’s a refuge. And you were right to come here if you were in need.

It is at home, where man . . . seeks a refuge from the vexations and embarrassments of business, an enchanting repose from exertion, a relaxation from care by the interchange of affection; where some of his finest sympathies, tastes, and moral and religious feelings are formed and nourished;—where is the treasury of pure disinterested love, such as is seldom found in the busy walks of a selfish and calculating world.

If we ask why such a man lapsed into heresy, the psychological answer, for what it is worth, lies on the surface. He was incurably a logician, his whole temper was impatient of compromises, of halfway houses. And in the debate which probably went on in his age, as it does in most ages of the Church, between the people who want to screw up the standard of Church discipline and the people who would adjust it to the weakness of human nature, he inevitably found his true home among the extremists. Not because he was a saintly idealist, with Wesley's distrust of the 'almost Christian', but because his intellectual bias impelled him towards the party of consistency; he preferred rigorism, not because it was a harder rule to live by, but because it was an easier principle to defend. Where was the sense in belauding martyrdom, yet allowing Christians to take refuge in flight when persecution threatened? Why should absolution be refused to the man who had denied his faith under torture, and then granted to the adulterer, who could make no plea of duress? We do not know what personal or accidental motives may have contributed to his false decision; but it is not difficult, I think, to see that decision as congenial to the bent of his mind.

Still, on a daily basis, I have to remember to release, to choose patience, to ask for forgiveness when I blow it. But now we have a rhythm to our family that is built on a foundation of unconditional love. Not matter what happens, at the end of the day, this is the place where we all return: "I am committed to loving you and accepting you as God has made you." "I will always be here for you." "I will always have your back and be a friend, whatever life holds." "I will help you search for answers and support your growth." "I will be a refuge you can come home to." "We are a family, and we will love each other always and always.

Home need not always correspond to a single dwelling or place. We can choose its form and location but not its meaning. Home is where we know and where we are known, where we love and are beloved. Home is mastery, voice, relationship, and sanctuary: part freedom, part flourishing… part refuge, part prospect.

Meeting people whose life trajectories were so different from my own enlarged my way of thinking. Outside the school, arguments over refugees were raging, but the time I had spent inside this building showed me that those conversations were based on phantasms. People were debating their own fears. What I had witnessed taking place inside this school every day revealed the rhetoric for what it was: more propaganda than fact. Donald Trump appeared to believe his own assertions, but I hoped that in the years to come, more people would be able to recognize refugees for who they really were: simply the most vulnerable people on earth. Inside this school, where the reality of refugee resettlement was enacted every day, it was plain to see that seeking a new home took tremendous courage. And receiving those who had been displaced involved tremendous generosity. That’s what refugee resettlement was, I decided. Acts of courage met by acts of generosity. Despite how fear-based the national conversation had turned, there was nothing scary about what was happening at South. Getting to know the newcomer students had deepened my own life, and watching Mr. Williams work with all twenty-two of them at once with so much grace, dexterity, sensitivity, and affection had provided me with daily inspiration. I would even say that spending a year in room 142 had allowed me to witness something as close to holy as I’ve seen take place between human beings. I could only wish that in time, more people would be able to look past their fear of the stranger and experience the wonder of getting to know people from other parts of the globe. For as far as I could tell, the world was not going to stop producing refugees. The plain, irreducible fact of good people being made nomad by the millions through all the kinds of horror this world could produce seemed likely to prove the central moral challenge of our times. How did we want to meet that challenge? We could fill our hearts with fear or with hope. And the choice would affect more than just our own dispositions, for in choosing which seeds to sow, we would dictate the type of harvest. Surely the only harvest worth cultivating was the one Mr. Williams had been seeking: greater fluency, better understanding.

God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble. So we will not fear when earthquakes come and the mountains crumble into the sea. Let the oceans roar and foam. Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge! A river brings joy to the city of our God, the sacred home of the Most High. God dwells in that city; it cannot be destroyed.

You know what amazes me the most about some people? They value their idiotic ideals over actual human lives. Esty—” her hand, holding a cloth on which she had just generously poured antiseptic, gestured toward her patient, “would have died, and that self-important Hungarian broad, who calls herself a physician, wouldn’t give a brass tack. All she cares about is the idea of the unborn child. The mother, who is a living and breathing human being and whose life is at stake, is irrelevant to her. She would refuse to abort a child that didn’t have the slightest chance in the first place and kill the mother with her inaction as long as her religious principles aren’t compromised. Isn’t that something amazing?” “I’m Jewish.” Mala shrugged. “In my religion, we value a mother’s life over an unborn child’s. Even when it’s a difficult birth and there’s a choice between a mother’s life and the child’s, we always save the mother. She’s already here on earth. She has her life, family, friends, her work and her interests. She’ll go on and have more children. The child hasn’t begun its life yet, so the choice is obvious. That’s the logic behind all this, at least.” “Precisely,” Stasia agreed. “I worked as a gynecologist, back home, in Poland. I was performing abortions—illegally, of course—for all those poor souls who had been turned away from state hospitals. I had thirteen-year-old girls who were raped by their uncles and who sat there with empty eyes and explained to me very calmly that it was the choice between me helping them or them drowning themselves in the river. I had wives who wore veils over their faces to cover up their bruises, begging me to help them so that another poor soul wouldn’t be born into a household where the husband did two things: got drunk, and beat up her and the children on a daily basis. My private clinic was a safe refuge for them. But in the eyes of the self-righteous public, I was this vicious child-murderer with no morals or ethics. And you know what? If helping a woman in crisis is immoral and unethical, I think I’ll remain immoral and unethical rather than condemning her to a life of abuse, poverty, or literal death as in Esty’s case.

The ocean has always felt like home to me. When you’re young and poor and alone, the beach can be a refuge. Doesn’t cost anything. Doesn’t demand anything. And when you sit on sun-warmed sand and stare at the horizon, the world suddenly seems bigger, brighter. Like maybe there’s a future out there for you, after all.

How do you know all of this?” Siobhan asked. “Some, from our whisperers that still circulate among the human kingdoms. Some, from the traders that pass through. And some…” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was tighter. “We had visitors, around four months ago. A group of humans seeking refuge after their home was destroyed. We had never accepted so many humans into our walls at once before, but none of us could bear to turn them away. They were here for two weeks before I realized…their intentions were not what they claimed.

Better a refugee than prisoner (Sonnet 1555) Eon upon eon I seek for a refuge, Land upon land I receive but coldness. Last I stand at your door exhausted, Spare some warmth, for my heart freezes! Stateless, cultless, I walk the planet. Restless, sleepless, I live a dream. Friendless, loveless, I brave the mission. The being is dissolved for the beacon to beam. Wield, I do, my conscience as compass. Wear, I do, my backbone as battery. Bouts of tragedy only amplifies my thunder, Nature's bare mockery makes miracle of me. Borders are for hoarders, my home is the world. Better a refugee to the sea than prisoner of the pond.

Beyond Borders and Dogma (Sonnet 1590) Monkeys obsess over chunks of land, takes a human to home the world. Leeches obsess over guns and badges, takes a human to deck the halls. Beyond borders and dogma, beyond division and doctrine, beyond malignant maleficence, everyone is my kith and kin. Any ape can boast about their culture, I'll die roaring for every culture on earth, except my own. Monkeys obsess over chunks of land, I stand guard till all are one. Nationalists mark borders by raising guns, like dogs mark their territory by raising legs. Monkeys seek refuge in archaic sovereignty, Human am I, my refuge is the human race.

In the middle of Lake Baikal sits Olkhon Island, and on the island is a small backpacking commune known as Nikita’s: a homely refuge set up by a former Russian ping-pong champion. That’s where we stayed, and to this day it remains the most unique getaway I’ve ever experienced.

A key step that can help us begin to settle ourselves when we are profoundly unsettled is to come home, to ourselves, in this moment, whatever is happening. This is one way of speaking about mindfulness, or being present: coming home to ourselves. When we bring our mind back to our body we come home. We could consider this state as our true home. This home inside of us is a home no one can take away from us, and it cannot be damaged or destroyed. No matter what happens around us, if we can find this home inside of us, we are always safe. When we touch this experience of coming home, it is like we have finally arrived home after a long journey. We experience a sense of peace and even freedom, no matter how confining the outer circumstances. Coming home to ourselves feels like belonging; it is a state that holds us and enables us to hold others. This is so important because we can live our whole lives estranged from this home within ourselves. My teacher Thay sums up his whole lifetime of teachings with one sentence: “I have arrived, I am home.” For him, the principal aim of mindfulness practice is to experience that we have already arrived, here and now. There is nowhere we need to run to or be, other than right here in the present moment. And we experience ourselves at home, no longer looking for some refuge outside of us, in some other place or time, when we touch the truth that all that we long for and search after is here inside of us. We can experience encountering this spacious and free place of our true home in unexpected moments as we spend more time tuning in to what is happening inside us and around us.

Lord, You are my refuge and strong tower. You are my fortress and place of security and safety. Help me to live in that place of confidence and peace. Because I have made You, Lord, my refuge and my dwelling place, no evil shall befall me; no plague or calamity shall come near my home or my family. You give Your angels charge over me to accompany, defend, and preserve me in all my ways. Wherever I go and whatever I do, Your angels go with me to protect me from harm, injury, and evil.

When the world my heart is rending With its heaviest storm of care, My glad thoughts to heaven ascending, Find a refuge from despair. Faith's bright vision shall sustain me Till life's pilgrimage is past; Fears may vex and troubles pain me, I shall reach my home at last.

January 29 MORNING “The things which are not seen.” — 2 Corinthians 4:18 IN our Christian pilgrimage it is well, for the most part, to be looking forward. Forward lies the crown, and onward is the goal. Whether it be for hope, for joy, for consolation, or for the inspiring of our love, the future must, after all, be the grand object of the eye of faith. Looking into the future we see sin cast out, the body of sin and death destroyed, the soul made perfect, and fit to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Looking further yet, the believer’s enlightened eye can see death’s river passed, the gloomy stream forded, and the hills of light attained on which standeth the celestial city; he seeth himself enter within the pearly gates, hailed as more than conqueror, crowned by the hand of Christ, embraced in the arms of Jesus, glorified with Him, and made to sit together with Him on His throne, even as He has overcome and has sat down with the Father on His throne. The thought of this future may well relieve the darkness of the past and the gloom of the present. The joys of heaven will surely compensate for the sorrows of earth. Hush, my fears! this world is but a narrow span, and thou shalt soon have passed it. Hush, hush, my doubts! death is but a narrow stream, and thou shalt soon have forded it. Time, how short — eternity, how long! Death, how brief — immortality, how endless! Methinks I even now eat of Eshcol’s clusters, and sip of the well which is within the gate. The road is so, so short! I shall soon be there. When the world my heart is rending     With its heaviest storm of care, My glad thoughts to heaven ascending,     Find a refuge from despair. Faith’s bright vision shall sustain me     Till life’s pilgrimage is past; Fears may vex and troubles pain me,     I shall reach my home at last.

Our God is so gracious. None other gratefully and joyfully welcomes home the wayward soul who would, only after having exhausted all possible alternatives, seek Him as the refuge of last resort. The natural father, under such circumstances, would seethe with the resentment born of pride. God, however, evinces a love so compassionate and encompassing that He would humble Himself to accept those who would be inclined, if left to their own devices, to choose anything and anyone but Him.

Happy New Year, Cuban Style In Havana, Christmas of 1958 had not been celebrated with the usual festivity. The week between Christmas and New Year’s was filled with uncertainty and the usual joyous season was suspended by many. Visitations among family and friends were few; as people held their breath waiting to see what would happen. It was obvious that the rebel forces were moving ever closer to Havana and on December 31, 1958, when Santa Clara came under the control of “Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, the people knew that Havana would be next. What they didn’t know was that their President was preparing to leave, taking with him a large part of the national treasury. Aside from the tourists celebrating at the casinos and some private parties held by the naïve elite, very few celebrated New Year’s Eve. A select few left Cuba with Batista, but the majority didn’t find out that they were without a President until the morning of the following day…. January 1, 1959, became a day of hasty departure for many of Batista’s supporters that had been left behind. Those with boats or airplanes left the island nation for Florida or the Dominican Republic, and the rest sought refuge in foreign embassies. The high=flying era of Batista and his chosen few came to a sudden end. Gone were the police that had made such an overwhelming presence while Batista was in power, and in their place were young people wearing black and red “26th of July” armbands. Not wanting a repeat of when Machado fled Cuba, they went around securing government buildings and the homes of the wealthy. Many of these same buildings had been looted and burned after the revolt of 1933. It was expected that Fidel Castro’s rise to power would be organized and orderly. Although the casinos were raided and gambling tables overturned and sometimes burned in the streets, there was no widespread looting with the exception of the hated parking meters that became symbolic of the corruption in Batista’s government. Castro called for a general “walk-out” and when the country ground to a halt, it gave them a movement time to establish a new government. The entire transition took about a week, while his tanks and army trucks rolled into Havana. The revolutionaries sought out Batista’s henchmen and government ministers and arrested them until their status could be established. A few of Batista’s loyalists attempted to shoot it out and were killed for their efforts. Others were tried and executed, but many were simply jailed, awaiting trial at a later time.

There’s no better way to mark success than to buy a home. It’s the one reward that truly feeds the soul. It’s in our homes that we are safe, both from the world and from ourselves. A home is the one place where we can be our true selves. Walls and roof are so much more when they belong to a person. They are a refuge away from judgement. They are sanctuary where our inner child is safe, and the person we are to become can blossom.

I For Marcel Proust. - The son of well-to-do parents who, whether from talent or weakness, engages in a so-called intellectual profession, as an artist or a scholar, will have a particularly difficult time with those bearing the distasteful title of colleagues. It is not merely that his independence is envied, the seriousness of his intentions mistrusted, and that he is suspected of being a secret envoy of the establishE:d powers. Such suspicions, though betraying a deepseated resentment, would usually prove well-founded. But the real resistances lie elsewhere. The occupation with things of the mind has by now itself become 'practical', a business with strict division of labour, departments and restricted entry. The man of independent means who chooses it out of repugnance for the ignominy of earning money will not be disposed to acknowledge the fact. For this he is punished. He is not a 'professional', is ranked in the competitive hierarchy as a dilettante no matter how well he knows his subject, and must, if he wants to make a career, show himself even more resolutely blinkered than the most inveterate specialist. The urge to suspend the division of labour which, within certain limits, his economic situation enables him to satisfy, is thought particularly disreputable: it betrays a disinclination to sanction the operations imposed by society, and domineering competence permits no such idiosyncrasies. The departmentalization of mind is a means of abolishing mind where it is not exercised ex officio, under contract. It performs this task all the more reliably since anyone who repudiates the division of labour - if only by taking pleasure in his work - makes himself vulnerable by its standards in ways inseparable from elements of his superiority. Thus is order ensured: some have to play the game because they cannot otherwise live, and those who could live otherwise are kept out because they do not want to play the game. It is as if the class from which independent intellectuals have defected takes its revenge, by pressing its demands home in the very domain where the deserter seeks refuge.

Certainly no permission was asked of the owners. The dogs were simply shot. In some instances, the carcasses were thrown in piles and burnt. All this happened in view of their shocked owners. For the Nunavut perspectives of the dog slaughters, see the Qikiqtani Truth Commission Reports, which were commissioned by the Qikiqtani Inuit Association. The testimony of Inuit who watched the slaughter unfold is harrowing. Some men had come in from outpost camps and watched as their only means of transport, their only way to get back to their families, was destroyed before their eyes. Others said that they were preparing to go hunting, and their dogs were shot and killed as they stood harnessed to the sleds. Still others testified that the RCMP chased and shot loose dogs, even firing at those that had taken refuge under family homes. Some dogs were wounded and not killed, and their owners would beg the officials to track the animals down to put them out of their suffering. My own uncle Johnny eventually told me that he received a knock on his door, only to have someone of authority throw his new harnesses in his face and tell him, without remorse or apology, that he had just shot his dogs.

True solitude is the home of the person, false solitude the refuge of the individualist.

We asked an old monk sitting beside us to explain. “Here, we contemplate the impermanence of the body and its attachments. This helps us to overcome the temptations of the flesh and seek refuge in the Kingdom of God.” We listened carefully. Deeper in the catacombs, a group of skeletons wearing monk robes pointed to a sign that read: “As you are now, we used to be. As we are now, you will be.

I decided that I had been foolish to be ashamed of Baba, to let my need for security conquer every other instinct. I had spent years nursing the wrong fears. Baba's Iranianness, his village ways, weren't the problem. Just the opposite: if Baba were to uproot, every special thing about him - the Ardestoon he carried in his easy gait and his yellow fingers and his lion cane - all of that would be lost. Home would be lost. Living in American or Europe would end him, his lofty, infectious personality, his wonderful sense of himself. Deep down, Baba must have known this.

As a child, she believed he was the kindest man she knew. But slowly over the years, Baba became a stranger and she feels nothing but a dull ache for the energetic, gleeful father she once knew. People change. Everyone. And all love ends. She knows this now. Only hardened exiles refuse to change; they dig their feet in and try to root everywhere they land, even if the soil poisons them. They hang on and on, afraid to move forward. They don't let go of dead things. They don't toss the lime juice. They hoard trinkets in ragged suitcases. They pile up photographs of long-ago days, begging their children for doubles. They build a fortress in the corner of a closet. Maybe Gui was right. You're still waiting, he said - it's true. She's so terrified of losing her every small advantage that now her own Baba poses a threat. If she had accepted Gui as her home, would she shield herself so zealously? Would she be a secure kind of woman with a dozen purses strewn everywhere, each containing an old ID or a document she once thought important - none of it vital enough to save, because her entitlement to her life isn't granted by these things, but intrinsic? No one can snatch it away. Maybe that's the difference between refugees and expats. The difference isn't Yale or naturalization papers, a fat bank account or invitations to native homes. In that way, she is the same as Mam'mad and Karim. When you learn to release that first great windfall after the long migration, when you trust that you'll still be you in a year or a decade, even without the treasures you've picked up along the way, always capable of more - when you stop carrying it all on your back - maybe that's when the refugee years end.