Inspirational New Homes Quotes

You can't always keep your loved ones with you. You can't always settle your life in one place. The world was made to change. But as long as you cherish the memories and make new ones along on the way, no matter where you are, you'll always be at home.

And there are new kinds of nomads, not people who are at home everywhere, but who are at home nowhere. I was one of them

You can wake up every day looking forward to new adventures with hope smiling brightly before you because you have a Savior. You are baptized in His Church.... You just need to stay in, pressing forward with a brightness of hope to your heavenly home.

With maps and globes decorated around your room as a child and with passport and ticket in hand in the present, it is your world to explore. To travel is to ask for a complex mix of the new and the old, hellos and goodbyes, and sadness and happiness. Leave your shoes behind at home and to walk in the footsteps of others for a while.

Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human.

Our opportunities to give of ourselves are indeed limitless, but they are also perishable. There are hearts to gladden. There are kind words to say. There are gifts to be given. There are deeds to be done. There are souls to be saved. As we remember that “when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God,” (Mosiah 2:17) we will not find ourselves in the unenviable position of Jacob Marley’s ghost, who spoke to Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s immortal "Christmas Carol." Marley spoke sadly of opportunities lost. Said he: 'Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!' Marley added: 'Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!' Fortunately, as we know, Ebenezer Scrooge changed his life for the better. I love his line, 'I am not the man I was.' Why is Dickens’ "Christmas Carol" so popular? Why is it ever new? I personally feel it is inspired of God. It brings out the best within human nature. It gives hope. It motivates change. We can turn from the paths which would lead us down and, with a song in our hearts, follow a star and walk toward the light. We can quicken our step, bolster our courage, and bask in the sunlight of truth. We can hear more clearly the laughter of little children. We can dry the tear of the weeping. We can comfort the dying by sharing the promise of eternal life. If we lift one weary hand which hangs down, if we bring peace to one struggling soul, if we give as did the Master, we can—by showing the way—become a guiding star for some lost mariner.

Closing The Cycle One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

You can't always keep your loved ones with you. You can't always settle your life in one place. The world was made to change. But as long as you cherish the memories and make new ones along the way, no matter where you are, you'll always be at home.

It may not feel too classy, begging just to eat But you know who does that? Lassie, and she always gets a treat So you wonder what your part is Because you're homeless and depressed But home is where the heart is So your real home's in your chest Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got villains they must face They're not as cool as mine But folks you know it's fine to know your place Everyone's a hero in their own way In their own not-that-heroic way So I thank my girlfriend Penny Yeah, we totally had sex She showed me there's so many different muscles I can flex There's the deltoids of compassion, There's the abs of being kind It's not enough to bash in heads You've got to bash in minds Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's got something they can do Get up go out and fly Especially that guy, he smells like poo Everyone's a hero in their own way You and you and mostly me and you I'm poverty's new sheriff And I'm bashing in the slums A hero doesn't care if you're a bunch of scary alcoholic bums Everybody! Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone can blaze a hero's trail Don't worry if it's hard If you're not a friggin 'tard you will prevail Everyone's a hero in their own way Everyone's a hero in their...

You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover. Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon.

Diyar-e-Ishq Mein Apna Maqam Paida Kar, Naya Zamana, Naye Subah-o-Sham Paida Kar; Khuda Agar Dil-e-Fitrat Shanas De Tujh Ko, Sakoot-e-Lala-o-Gul Se Kalaam Paida Kar; Mera Tareeq Ameeri Nahin, Faqeeri Hai, Khudi Na Baich, Ghareebi Mein Naam Paida Kar Build in love’s empire your hearth and your home; Build Time anew, a new dawn, a new eve! Your speech, if God give you the friendship of Nature, From the rose and tulip’s long silence weave The way of the hermit, not fortune, is mine; Sell not your soul! In a beggar’s rags shine.

Cutting my roots and leaving my home and family when I was 18 years old forced me to build my home in other things, like my music, stories and my journey. The last years I have more or less constantly been on my way, on the road, always leaving and never arriving, which also means leaving people. I’ve loved and lost and I have regrets and I miss and no matter how many times you leave, start over, achieve success or travel places it’s other people that matter. People, friends, family, lovers, strangers – they will forever stay with you, even if only through memory. I’ve grown to appreciate people to the deepest core and I’m trying to learn how to tell people what I want to tell them when I have the chance, before it’s too late. …

A true home is one of the most sacred of places. It is a sanctuary into which men flee from the world’s perils and alarms. It is a resting-place to which at close of day the weary retire to gather new strength for the battle and toils of tomorrow. It is the place where love learns its lessons, where life is schooled into discipline and strength, where character is molded. Few things we can do in this world are so well worth doing as the making of a beautiful and happy home. He who does this builds a sanctuary for God and opens a fountain of blessing for men. Far more than we know, do the strength and beauty of our lives depend upon the home in which we dwell. He who goes forth in the morning from a happy, loving, prayerful home, into the world’s strife, temptation, struggle, and duty, is strong--inspired for noble and victorious living. The children who are brought up in a true home go out trained and equipped for life’s battles and tasks, carrying in their hearts a secret of strength which will make them brave and loyal to God, and will keep them pure in the world’s severest temptations.

So what do you do when you are stuck? The first thing I do when I am stuck is pray. But I’m not talking about a quick, Help me Lord, Sunday’s a comin’ prayer. When I get stuck I get up from my desk to head for my closet. Literally. If I‘m at the office I go over to a corner that I have deemed my closet away from home. I get on my knees and remind God that this was not my idea, it was His… None of this is new information to God… Then I ask God to show me if there is something He wants to say to prepare me for what He wants me to communicate to our congregation. I surrender my ideas, my outline and my topic. Then I just stay in that quiet place until God quiets my heart… Many times I will have a breakthrough thought or idea that brings clarity to my message. . . Like you, I am simply a mouthpiece. Getting stuck is one way God keeps me ever conscious of that fact.

You yearn to stay in this in-between place, where the beauty of the times you have freshly bade farewell to is still alive and vivid in your mind – almost real – and the reality of your new circumstances has yet to fully sink in. You listen to the familiar melodies that had accompanied you on your journey, and allow the music to evoke landscapes and scenes in your mind. The songs caress your sub-consciousness and fill your being with an airy joy. You are both here and elsewhere. Or perhaps you are everywhere and nowhere.

One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home ... With this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around.

[Jürgen Habermas' obituary to friend and philosopher, Richard Rorty] One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title 'Wild Orchids and Trotsky.' In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky's dream of justice on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the 'holy', the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: 'My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.

I love that there's no cutoff where we get labeled and sent off to a home for hopeless, cranky, depressives. Every day is a new chance to listen longer and be braver and love more. We get to try again and again and again.

I will always come home to you. I won't lie and tell you what I do isn't dangerous sometimes, but I'm always careful, and now, with you, I have a whole new reason to stay safe. - Nico

These days, there seems to be nowhere left to explore. Victims of their very success, the explorers now, pretty much, stay home. Maybe it's a little early- maybe the time is not quite yet- but those other worlds, promising untold opportunities, beckon. Just now, there a great many mattters that are pressing in on us that compete for the money it takes to send people to other worlds. Should we solve those problems first, or are they a reason for going? Our planet and our solar system are surrounded by a New World ocean: the depths of space. It is no more impassable than the last.

If America is to be strong in the future, Americans must see America as home, not divided by race or region. Build American jobs for the future and come together with compassion to solve problems.

Life is so precious in our human family If I lend my brother a helping hand Together the stronger we will both stand Let the love we have in all our hearts Pull us together for a brand new start Let's make this earth from house to home

I even have a welcoming speech prepared for fear, which I deliver right before embarking upon any new project or big adventure. It goes something like this: “Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, and that you take your job seriously. Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do anything interesting—and, may I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means, keep doing your job, if you feel you must. But I will also be doing my job on this road trip, which is to work hard and stay focused. And Creativity will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring. There’s plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home, but understand this: Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way. I recognize and respect that you are part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities, but still—your suggestions will never be followed. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.

Our children belong to God. We're only given them on loan from heaven. Sometimes God calls them home sooner tan we expected.

He who is attached to things will suffer much. He who saves will suffer heavy loss. A contented man is never disappointed. He who knows when to stop does not find himself in trouble. He will stay forever safe.

Either way, it's important that we all remember to play. Watching and being inspired by our uninhabited little ones can lead us in all manner of wonderful, creative, and different directions if we're open to following them.

Goddess Rising This is for the women Who have walked with hidden shame Stirring like all is well Though weighted down in pain. This is for her Inner Child Who longs to forget Her innocence stolen Body, soul and spirit rent into pieces- fragments-broken-bent This is for the Maiden Longing to belong -To another - In hopes to make right the darkened wrongs Not realizing-blinded by oozing wounds Her own innate delicious power Thick within her womb This is for the Mother Breaking eons of fettered chains For the children she has birthed Through blood and breaths of change She calls them Redemption Regardless of their names This is for the Crone Who called her shattered pieces Home To herself- To all her luminous bodies Where she never dared to feel Making strong her bones Crushing~ oppressors With the swaying of her hips Her hands soaring like doves Honey dripping from her lips This is for the Wild Woman Who traversed the Underground Leaving her footprints While taming the Hellhounds. Like a seed breaking fallow ground Emerging fruitful garden No longer bound By the nightmare of the past Awakened from the Dream- Of Separation SHE. IS.- merging realms between. This is for the woman, for the Goddess For me For you Rising from our ashes Making ALL things new~

Later, I walked all the way home so I could take in the city, breaking one of my heels along the way. When I got to my apartment, I went to my terrace and just looked up at the stars for hours. At that moment, I felt one with New York.

Establishing yourself as a scientist takes an awfully long time. The riskiest part is learning what a true scientist is and then taking the first shaky steps down that path, which will become a road, which will become a highway, which will maybe someday lead you home. A true scientist doesn’t perform prescribed experiments; she develops her own and thus generates wholly new knowledge. This transition between doing what you’re told and telling yourself what to do generally occurs midway through a dissertation. In many ways, it is the most difficult and terrifying thing that a student can do, and being unable or unwilling to do it is much of what weeds people out of Ph.D. programs.

Fear is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited. There is nothing new or recent about fear—it is doubtless as old as the life of man on the planet. Fears are of many kinds—fear of objects, fear of people, fear of the future, fear of nature, fear of the unknown, fear of old age, fear of disease, and fear of life itself. Then there is fear which has to do with aspects of experience and detailed states of mind. Our homes, institutions, prisons, churches, are crowded with people who are hounded by day and harrowed by night because of some fear that lurks ready to spring into action as soon as one is alone, or as soon as the lights go out, or as soon as one’s social defenses are temporarily removed. The ever-present fear that besets the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere. It is a mood which one carries around with himself, distilled from the acrid conflict with which his days are surrounded. It has its roots deep in the heart of the relations between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of environment and those who are controlled by it. When the basis of such fear is analyzed, it is clear that it arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness in the face of the varied dimensions of violence to which the underprivileged are exposed. Violence, precipitate and stark, is the sire of the fear of such people. It is spawned by the perpetual threat of violence everywhere. Of course, physical violence is the most obvious cause. But here, it is important to point out, a particular kind of physical violence or its counterpart is evidenced; it is violence that is devoid of the element of contest. It is what is feared by the rabbit that cannot ultimately escape the hounds.

Brightbill had been Roz's son from the moment she picked up his egg. She had saved him from certain death, and then he had saved her. He was the reason Roz had lived so well for so long. And if she wanted to continue living, if she wanted to be wild again, she needed to be with her family and her friends on her island. So, as Roz raced through the sky, she began computing a plan. She would get the repairs she needed. She would escape from her new life. She would find her way back home.

New beginnings always had something special—starting at the bottom and making it to the top produced something magical. When you reach your destination, your goal, that’s when it really hits home. Maybe that’s why I felt the way I did. I knew I was just a kid, but eventually I’d become something much more. Eventually I’d be at the top. Someday.

Hospitality is the act of making people feel at home - when you wish they were.

The word is my weapon. FIRE!

As I walked home, the moon shining high in the sky above me, I realised that my biggest fear was watching him walk away before I learnt how it felt to fall in love with him

Luckily we don't inspire the same reactions in every new person we meet. Otherwise the world would be in a sorry mess. [John Lippiatt, 'The Stone Boy']

A book which is left on a shelf is a dead thing but it is also a chrysalis, an inanimate object packed with the potential to burst into new life.

Ever since, New York has existed for me simultaneously as a map to be learned and a place to aspire too--a city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here. As a kid, I grasped that the skyline was a sign that could be, so to speak, relocated to New Jersey--a kind of abstract, receding Vision whose meaning would always be "out of reach," not a concrete thing signifying "here you are." Even when we are established here, New York still seems a place we aspire to. Its life is one thing--streets and hot dogs and brusqueness--and its symbols, the lights across the way, the beckoning skyline, are another. We go on being inspired even when we're most exasperated.

to found a new home in the western continent beyond the ocean, a new fatherland free from tyranny . . . guided by firm convictions and upright motives, not by the whim of the moment.

He stared into Bubbe's kind dark eyes. "They say you can't go home again." "You can't, no, never." She hugged him. "But if you keep your mind open, you can always find a new home inside the old one.

Destination Kampala! Africa’s postcolonial renaissance.” There would have been few other places in the world where there was such an excitement about new literature, new ideas, and new politics. The inspiration arrived at this conference for a new publishing imprint of literary titles called the African Writers Series, which was soon launched by Heinemann in the U.K., with Achebe as the series editor. The excitement reached as far as my high school in Dar, where literary competitions were held, new drama was produced, and a parade of literary luminaries passed through, including Chinua Achebe.

Before I knew it, I was once again being whisked down the hallways at the new hospital into an even bigger room, one that, unbeknownst to me, would be my home for what would feel like a long, long time.

We were the church. As the New Testament instructed. When it was time for Sunday morning meeting, we convened in private homes. To raise a structure and call it a church was the worldly way. A church made of hands was soon cluttered with altars and crucifixes, and was thereupon idolatrous. These false churches, they were not walking in Truth. They were whistling off to Hades. This was a shame, because I knew some real nice Lutherans.

When you work hard, the temptation is to come home and just plotz (which is Jewish for “relax,” or maybe “die,” depending on the context)—to throw your dirty clothes on the floor or hide a mess behind closet doors. This is not a new story.

Many people wonder what it means or feels like to go deep. For me, DEEP means finding new adventures within your soul. It's a spiritual affair. It's about NOT being ashamed of who you are. And it feels like... well, drowning in sensory pleasure or worship.

Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.

Later, Ella looked for the two swallows in the eaves outside the window, watching them even more closely now. The thought of them flying all that way, across mountains and seas and returning here, because this was their home - of them knowing how to find it - changed things. It was a new way of seeing; this was no longer just the place where women and men were kept, but the home of other creatures too, ones that had travelled far and still chosen it because this, above all other places, was the place to bring their families into the world.

The glory of friendship The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration  that comes to one when you discover  that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

We talk to God--that is prayer; God talks to us--that is inspiration." We go apart to get still, that new life, new inspiration, new power of thought, new supply from the fountainhead may flow in; and then we come forth to shed it on those around us, that they, too, may be lifted up. Inharmony cannot remain in any home where even one member of the family daily practices this hour of the presence of God, so surely does the renewed infilling of the heart by peace and harmony result in the continual outgoing of peace and harmony into the entire surroundings.

Today is a new day! Let today be the day you free your mind from the prison of self doubt. Your thoughts can either hinder you or propel you to the next level. Precautions are necessary to maintain your safety and well-being. But fear and precautions are two different things. When you are afraid your doubt is increased. Do what makes you happy in order to satisfy the core of your existence. Fear: to be afraid of something or someone whether the threat is real or imagined Precaution: a measure taken in advance to prevent something from happening, prudent foresight Doubt:a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction

She was a victim, until she decided she wasn’t. Until she realized only she had the final say in her victimhood. That it was a choice. Her choice. Before then, she allowed the actions of others to define her. She allowed painful, unfair circumstances to dictate how she announced herself to the world. She gave up control of who she was, and who she wanted to be, at home—but lost—in a victim’s life. so she made the choice to find herself. She couldn’t take responsibility for everything that happened to her. Bad things happen to us all, even when we don't invite them. But, she could own her response to all of it. everything. The moment she chose to do so, she ignited a strength she’d long forgotten and saw, at last, new possibilitiess for her life. She opened the door to a deeper healing and to endless opportunities for real change. The very moment she chose to take responsibility for her life, she acknowledged her power like never before. And was, never again, a victim.

I had a few glasses of wine at lunch. just the little bottle Sutter Home 4-pack from the party store. Kept it light. It's European, helps you relax, and lets you digest your food properly. Plus. I paired it with a new Artisan Bread sandwich from Quiznos. It's inspired by Europe. So good. Ate it in my car. Europeans love to dine outside.

We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we are frustrated that the kids aren't old enough and we'll be more content when they are. After that we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We will certainly be happy when they are out of that stage. We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. One of my favorite quotes comes from Alfred D Souza. He said, "For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life." This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment that you have. Stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home, until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until you are off welfare, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on, until you've had a drink, until you've sobered up, until you die, until you are born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy.

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired And thus expiring do foretell of him: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small showers last long, but sudden storms are short; He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes; With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder: Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Fear'd by their breed and famous by their birth, Renowned for their deeds as far from home, For Christian service and true chivalry, As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry, Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son, This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land, Dear for her reputation through the world, Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it, Like to a tenement or pelting farm: England, bound in with the triumphant sea Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds: That England, that was wont to conquer others, Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life, How happy then were my ensuing death!

I come from the heart land of New Zealand. A place where men are men and there is no such thing as a latte. Where a day’s work is only done one way. THE HARD WAY. Where the vehicle you drive doesn’t symbolize who you are. A place where a beer is a beer and it comes only one way, ICE COLD. Yes the great land I like to call home the Waikato but yes all this beauty comes at a price obviously where men actually act like men not knob head; makeup wearing, tight jean wearing homos there will always be a shortage of real women. So just as the last generation of real men, almost every weekend we head into every bar, club, party or music festival we can in the hopes of finding a real women. Don’t get me wrong, bars clubs a music fests are the best fun ever. And I drink alcohol like it’s going out of fashion not that we care about fashion round here. See you in the heart land

To illustrate: A man with 314 employees joined one of these courses. For years, he had driven and criticised and condemned his employees without stint or discretion. Kindness, words of appreciation and encouragement were alien to his lips. After studying the principles discussed in this book, this employer sharply altered his philosophy of life. His organisation is now inspired with a new loyalty, a new enthusiasm, a new spirit of teamwork. Three hundred and fourteen enemies have been turned into 314 friends. As he proudly said in a speech before the class: ‘When I used to walk through my establishment, no one greeted me. My employees actually looked the other way when they saw me approaching. But now they are all my friends and even the janitor calls me by my first name.’ This employer gained more profit, more leisure and – what is infinitely more important – he found far more happiness in his business and in his home.

The truth is, new furniture or a better house will never really satisfy - they will just set new, higher standards for what is acceptable to us for our comfort and contentment. When you take care of what you have and find joy right where you are, you set the right tone and expectations for contentment in all circumstances moving forward. Whether things get better or worse, our standard will be to love what we have and be grateful for it (even when we might not like it).

And you, you will come too, young brother; for the days pass, and never return, and the South still waits for you. Take the Adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes! 'Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company.

I know you are tired. I know you are hurting. I know that even among the crowds and or with your closest loved ones, you feel terribly alone in the world. I know that in the quietness, a thousand hell hounds are barking and snarling at your heels. They tell you, "Everything is wrong with you. You are a failure. You will never live to see your dreams and visions come to pass. You know you should just throw in the towel. No one would even miss you if you were gone. Exit from this cruel insane assylum you call home. We will even tell you how to end 'it'." But don't you dare entertain those hounds of hell, no, not even for one moment. See, you not only have the elixir of Life inside of your organs and your veins; you are the Elixir of Life of a Celestial domain. For every hell hound nipping at your ears, there are eight hundred angels rushing to you with every holy breath....you take. Every step you make fuels the fire of Love in your behalf. See, nothing is wrong with you. Every thing is right with you. You are cut from iron. You have long exchanged your velveteen fabric and cotton stuffing for blazen guts and a heart of gold. You are the head and not the tail. You are the water in the desert, the ripple in the steam, the sword AND the stone and you, glorious being, are not alone! We are one and we are many. We've known lack, but we are plenty. We are not on the cusp of a break through. We are the cusp and we are the break --- through. We are the old and we are the new. Who knew? You did. You do. And don't you ever forget that.

So what do we do? Well, if you’re like I used to be, you avoid using anything at all. You aim to keep your options open as long as possible. You avoid commitment. But while investing deeply in one person, one place, one job, one activity might deny us the breadth of experience we’d like, pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to experience the rewards of depth of experience. There are some experiences that you can have only when you’ve lived in the same place for five years, when you’ve been with the same person for over a decade, when you’ve been working on the same scale or craft for half your lifetime. /when you’re pursuing a wide breadth of experience, there are diminishing returns to each new adventure, each new person or thing. When you’ve never left your home country, the first country you visit inspires a massive perspective shift, because you have such a narrow experience space to draw on. But when you’ve been to twenty countries, the twenty-first adds little. And when you’ve been to fifty, the fifty-first adds even less. [the same goes for any other life experience]

I inhale slowly, soaking it all in. I step forward and backward, my neck twisting and turning, memorizing every corner. I feel an instant connection to this place. Something about being here grabs me and infatuates me. I begin taking mental pictures of the narrow alleys decorated with rows of artists and vendors. I start imagining myself dining at the sidewalk cafes, sitting there with Chad during the summer, spring, winter, and fall. I get this strong desire to take off my shoes and walk barefooted on the cobblestones as if I have found my new home.

Many modern readers assume teachings about wives submitting to their husbands appear exclusively in the pages of Scripture and thus reflect uniquely “biblical” views about women’s roles in the home. But to the people who first heard these letters read aloud in their churches, the words of Peter and Paul would have struck them as both familiar and strange, a sort of Christian remix on familiar Greco-Roman philosophy that positioned the male head of house as the rightful ruler over his subordinate wives, children, and slaves. By instructing men to love their wives and respect their slaves, and by telling everyone to “submit to one another” with Jesus as the ultimate head of house, the apostles offer correctives to cultural norms without upending them. They challenge new believers to reconsider their relationships with one another now that, in Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female” (Galatians 3:28). The plot thickens when we pay attention to some of the recurring characters in the Epistles and see a progression toward more freedom and autonomy for slaves like Onesimus and women like Nympha, Priscilla, Junia, and Lydia.

Connor’s pulse tripped. “You text with Tess and Charlie and Natalie about sex?” “Mmm hmm. That new book that came out this week, with Declan on the cover? Inspired a huge conversation about multiple orgasms,” she said. “I’m going to change the subject now.” Harlow’s brows furrowed, and she stopped short. “Are you upset that I talk about sex with our friends?” “Not at all.” He reassured her by closing the distance between them until there wasn’t any left. “But if words like ‘multiple orgasms’ keep coming out of your pretty little mouth, I’m going to be far too tempted to take you home and make life imitate art.

AUTHOR’S NOTE Dear reader: This story was inspired by an event that happened when I was eight years old. At the time, I was living in upstate New York. It was winter, and my dad and his best friend, “Uncle Bob,” decided to take my older brother, me, and Uncle Bob’s two boys for a hike in the Adirondacks. When we left that morning, the weather was crisp and clear, but somewhere near the top of the trail, the temperature dropped abruptly, the sky opened, and we found ourselves caught in a torrential, freezing blizzard. My dad and Uncle Bob were worried we wouldn’t make it down. We weren’t dressed for that kind of cold, and we were hours from the base. Using a rock, Uncle Bob broke the window of an abandoned hunting cabin to get us out of the storm. My dad volunteered to run down for help, leaving my brother Jeff and me to wait with Uncle Bob and his boys. My recollection of the hours we spent waiting for help to arrive is somewhat vague except for my visceral memory of the cold: my body shivering uncontrollably and my mind unable to think straight. The four of us kids sat on a wooden bench that stretched the length of the small cabin, and Uncle Bob knelt on the floor in front of us. I remember his boys being scared and crying and Uncle Bob talking a lot, telling them it was going to be okay and that “Uncle Jerry” would be back soon. As he soothed their fear, he moved back and forth between them, removing their gloves and boots and rubbing each of their hands and feet in turn. Jeff and I sat beside them, silent. I took my cue from my brother. He didn’t complain, so neither did I. Perhaps this is why Uncle Bob never thought to rub our fingers and toes. Perhaps he didn’t realize we, too, were suffering. It’s a generous view, one that as an adult with children of my own I have a hard time accepting. Had the situation been reversed, my dad never would have ignored Uncle Bob’s sons. He might even have tended to them more than he did his own kids, knowing how scared they would have been being there without their parents. Near dusk, a rescue jeep arrived, and we were shuttled down the mountain to waiting paramedics. Uncle Bob’s boys were fine—cold and exhausted, hungry and thirsty, but otherwise unharmed. I was diagnosed with frostnip on my fingers, which it turned out was not so bad. It hurt as my hands were warmed back to life, but as soon as the circulation was restored, I was fine. Jeff, on the other hand, had first-degree frostbite. His gloves needed to be cut from his fingers, and the skin beneath was chafed, white, and blistered. It was horrible to see, and I remember thinking how much it must have hurt, the damage so much worse than my own. No one, including my parents, ever asked Jeff or me what happened in the cabin or questioned why we were injured and Uncle Bob’s boys were not, and Uncle Bob and Aunt Karen continued to be my parents’ best friends. This past winter, I went skiing with my two children, and as we rode the chairlift, my memory of that day returned. I was struck by how callous and uncaring Uncle Bob, a man I’d known my whole life and who I believed loved us, had been and also how unashamed he was after. I remember him laughing with the sheriff, like the whole thing was this great big adventure that had fortunately turned out okay. I think he even viewed himself as sort of a hero, boasting about how he’d broken the window and about his smart thinking to lead us to the cabin in the first place. When he got home, he probably told Karen about rubbing their sons’ hands and feet and about how he’d consoled them and never let them get scared. I looked at my own children beside me, and a shudder ran down my spine as I thought about all the times I had entrusted them to other people in the same way my dad had entrusted us to Uncle Bob, counting on the same naive presumption that a tacit agreement existed for my children to be cared for equally to their own.

What if our national parks and monuments became places of conscience instead of places of consumption? How many more T-shirts can we buy, let alone wear, that advertise where we've been? How many different forms of recreation must we create to assuage our adrenaline to return home with a fresh idea gleaned while walking in new territory? As I have been visiting our national parks, I keep asking myself: Who are we becoming? In the end, it may be solitude that the future will thank us most for conserving- the kind of solitude born out of stillness....It is the kind of stillness that can still be found in each of our national parks where a quieting of the soul inspires creative acts.

Chiropractic: There are obviously a lot of different niches you could serve in this industry. But, let’s say for a moment that you serve the elderly demographic. You might think that they just want to be able to play a little more golf or keep up with their grandkids. Those things might be true and they’ll certainly admit to them. But if you go deeper, you’ll find that they want to be the envy of all of their friends who are falling apart. That’s the secret ego motivation that inspires them to find you. And further, they do NOT want to be put into a nursing home. That’s the secret fear that has them searching for you. Sell them abilities their friends don’t have and you’ll have them eating out of your hand.

Some might regard such a circumstance as a suffering of a punishment. But the one who dares to live with suffering through to its completion will discover that it is actually a great gift. Some people are difficult to live with, difficult to love. Sometimes the old or the new or the genetically defective can be a trial. But instead of routinely putting them in nursing homes or institutions - or killing them before they can be born - what if we were to live with them? What if, when our love is exhausted, we were to ask God to give us His love for them? Eventually we will discover the blessing they can be. And who knows, perhaps in the process we will become more what He intended us to be - which may have been part of His purpose.

Virtually all letter writers confessed how their encounter with Nietzsche's philosophy either emboldened or chastened them, liberated them from old falsehoods, or saddled them with new moral responsibilities. Helen Bachmuller of Dayton, Ohio, wrote to let Förster-Nietzsche know that her brother had inspired the belief that human greatness was still possible in the modern world. Though unworthy of his greatness, he nevertheless awakened in her a longing for something deeper in herself. Nietzsche, Bachmuller confessed, had saved her from her 'own inner emptiness.' The 'Ohio country' she called home had become 'tame and commonplace,' filled with lives 'trivial and ... essentially ugly, for they are engrossed with matters of money and motors, not with work or faith or art.' She regarded the Methodist church near her house as 'vulgar, pretentious.' Though disgusted by the offensive mediocrity around her, she was also chagrined by her own limitations: 'It would be, probably, impossible for you to imagine anything more superficial than I am.' But reading presumably the recently released translation of Förster-Nietzsche's The_Nietzsche-Wagner_Correspondence had exposed Bachmuller to 'depths beyond depths, of one great soul striking fire against another great soul, and I became thrilled. I could feel the harmonies and dissonances, the swell and surge of those two glorious beings, and I felt much more that I cannot express.' Reading Nietzsche enlivened her to the possibility 'for a companionship that would stimulate, that would deepen, that would give me Tiefen [depth].' Nietzsche strengthened her resolve that 'all my life I will hold on to my hunger, if I never manage to have a soul, at any rate I will remain, by hook or crook, aware of it and I will desire one all my life, I will not accept substitutes.

Another young woman, an employee of the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry, was on her way home from a visit to a sauna when the news of the night inspired her to head for Bornholmer. Her name was Angela Merkel. She had chosen a career in chemistry, not in politics, but that night would change her life. Merkel had been born in Hamburg in 1954, and even though she and her immediate family had moved to East Germany in 1957, she still maintained contact with an aunt in her hometown. On the night of November 9, once she made it to West Berlin, Merkel would call that aunt to say that she had crossed the border. It would be the first of many nights of crossing the East-West divide for Merkel, in both literal and figurative terms.72 She would soon become active in the new East German party Democratic Awakening, which would enter into an election alliance with the CDU, eventually bringing Merkel into the latter party’s ranks. As a member of the CDU, Merkel would start her phenomenal rise to the chancellorship of united Germany.73

For some people, the lure of travelling and exploration is just too strong to resist. I have jokingly called this the ‘Itchy Feet Syndrome’. Years ago, you would have been able to spot this person easily, as their passport would have been filled with exotic stamps and visas. Today, they are likely to have a mass of photos and travel stories uploaded onto their Facebook page or blog. So what makes some people reach for their passport at every opportunity? What inspires them to leave home and travel the world on a sailboat or in a converted van? Is it simply a need to explore and see what is around the next corner? Or is it a deeper desire to be free, to live a simpler life? On talking to many of the authors who have contributed their travel story to this anthology, it became clear that having ‘Itchy Feet’ is a real thing. Many have described how they felt this way from a young age, or even inherited this from their parents or grandparents. What is clear is that their desire to travel is so strong they cannot resist the attraction of the next new place or experience.

One day, I met a new patient who had been previously diagnosed with severe psychosis. The 55-year-old woman was suffering from depression and anxiety. She had never worked in her life and for a long time had been too anxious to leave home. In the discussion, I had a hunch. The woman might well be psychotic, but she seemed to have extraordinary intuitive powers. Could it be that she was anxious because she was overwhelmed by these powers and didn’t know what to do with them? My hunch was confirmed at the end of the session. I was pregnant at the time, and the woman suddenly told me, out of the blue, “What a beautiful boy! What a pity he hasn’t yet turned to be head-first.” She was right on both counts, but how could she know? I recommended to her that she learn to master her psychic powers. She registered in a course with a renowned teacher. We helped her with her depression in the hospital, but the training proved the key to her healing. Today she is transformed. She has a thriving practice where she offers her talents to the world. What used to cripple her with anxiousness now provides her with meaning and income.81

There is however, one reason why the arts so rarely accept a mission that IS within the power of the Church to alter. In the past, the densest or richest location of baptised art has been the Liturgy. The sacred use of the arts in the liturgical setting has provided inspiration for artists engaged in producing artworks for contexts outside the Liturgy, for consumption beyond the limits of the visible Church. In the modern West, the Muses have largely fled the liturgical amphitheatre, which instead is given over to banal language, poor quality popular music, and, in new and re-designed churches, a nugatory or sometimes totally absent visual art. This deprives the wider Christian mission of the arts of essential nourishment. Where would the poetry of Paul Claudel be without the Latin Liturgy? Or John Tavener's music without the Orthodox Liturgy? Where would be the entire tradition of representational art in the West without the liturgical art of which until the seventeenth century at least remained at its heart? We need today to summon back the Muses to the sacred foyer of the Church, to be at home again at that hearth.

But now, inside the gallery, something happens to him. He finds his emotions gripped by the paintings, the huge, colorful canvases by Diego Rivera, the tiny, agonized self-portraits by Frida Kahlo, the woman Rivera loved. Fabien barely notices the crowds that cluster in front of the pictures. He stops before a perfect little painting in which she has pictured her spine as a cracked column. There is something about the grief in her eyes that won't let him look away. That is suffering, he thinks. He thinks about how long he's been moping about Sandrine, and it makes him feel embarrassed, self-indulgent. Theirs, he suspects, was not an epic love story like Diego and Frida's. He finds himself coming back again and again to stand in front of the same pictures, reading about the couple's life, the passion they shared for their art, for workers' rights, for each other. He feels an appetite growing within him for something bigger, better, more meaningful. He wants to live like these people. He has to make his writing better, to keep going. He has to. He is filled with an urge to go home and write something that is fresh and new and has in it the honesty of these pictures. Most of all he just wants to write. But what?

XVIII TO HIS LADY                Beloved beauty who inspires             love from afar, your face concealed             except when your celestial image             stirs my heart in sleep, or in the fields         5  where light and nature’s laughter             shine more lovely;             was it maybe you who blessed             the innocent age called golden,             and do you now, blithe spirit,       10  soar among men? Or does the miser, fate,             who hides you from us save you for the future?                No hope of seeing you alive             remains for me now,             except when, naked and alone,       15  my soul will go down a new street             to an unfamiliar home. Already, at the dawning             of my dark, uncertain day,             I imagined you a fellow traveler             on this parched ground. But no thing on earth       20  compares with you; and if someone             who had a face like yours resembled you             in word and deed, still she would be less lovely.                In spite of all the suffering             that fate assigned to human life,       25  if there was anyone on earth             who truly loved you as my thought portrays you,             this life for him would be a joy.             And I see clearly how your love             would still inspire me to seek praise and virtue,       30  the way I used to in my early years.             Though heaven gave no comfort for our suffering,             still mortal life with you would be             like what in heaven becomes divinity.                In the valleys, where you hear       35  the weary farmer singing             and I sit and mourn             my youth’s illusions leaving me;             and on the hills where I turn back             and lament my lost desires,       40  my life’s lost hope, I think of you             and start to shake. In this sad age             and sickly atmosphere, I try             to keep your noble look in mind;             without the real thing, I enjoy the image.       45     Whether you are the one and only             eternal idea that eternal wisdom             disdains to see arrayed in sensible form,             to know the pains of mournful life             in transitory dress;       50  or if in the supernal spheres another earth             from among unnumbered worlds receives you,             and a near star lovelier than the Sun             warms you and you breathe benigner ether,             from here, where years are both ill-starred and brief,       55  accept this hymn from your unnoticed lover.

I decide that candor is probably best, that I will never see this woman again after this month. “I’m honestly not sure why I’m here, other than I feel like I could use some spiritual direction in my life.” This is the truth. “Why do you feel that way?” Nora asks. I sit for a few seconds, because this is a good question. I’m not terribly sure, other than my soul is weary, my usual recipe of prayer and reflecting on passages from the Bible isn’t inspiring me, and I sense a gaping, run-ragged hole in my soul where mature wisdom should be. Also, I don’t know where my home is, where I might really belong. Years have passed since I last felt poured-into, I tell her, and I have not bothered to seek it out. I have embarked on this year of travel, at age thirty-seven, feeling less confident than I did a decade ago about what I believe to be true, and how that truth intersects with who I am. I am weary from game playing and formulaic answers, and the evangelical-Christian hat that I have worn daily with every outfit since I was fourteen feels too small, headache inducing. I fidget daily in its discomfort, but I don’t know how to exchange it, how it should be resized. Perhaps I can stitch a new hat from scraps I find scattered around the globe, I suggest. Perhaps she could be my milliner, maybe help me find the first scrap, floating somewhere along the sidewalks of old Chiang

O that today you would hearken to his voice! —Psalm 95:7 (RSV) MARIA, INSPIRATION BEHIND HOLY ANGELS HOME Maria was nine in 1965 when I first wrote about her, a bright, little girl with an impish smile. Born hydrocephalic, without legs, a “vegetable” who could not survive, she’d dumbfounded experts and become the inspiration behind a home for infants with multiple handicaps. Now I was back at Holy Angels in North Carolina to celebrate Maria’s fiftieth birthday. I had to trot to keep up with Maria’s motorized wheelchair through a maze of new buildings, home now for adults as well as infants. At each stop, Maria introduced me to staff and volunteers who simply exuded joy. And yet the people they were caring for had such cruel limitations! How could everyone seem so happy, I asked, working day after day with people who’ll never speak, never hold a spoon, never sit up alone? “None of us would be happy,” Maria said, “if we looked way off into the future like that.” Here, she explained, they looked for what God was doing in each life, just that one day. “That’s where God is for all of us, you know. Just in what’s happening right now.” How intently one would learn to look, I thought, to spot the little victories. In my life too…. What if I memorized just the first stanza of Millay’s “Renascence”? What if I understood just one more function on my iPhone? What if just one morning I didn’t comment about my husband’s snoring? “Thank you, Maria,” I said as we hugged good-bye, “for showing me the God of the little victories.” Through what small victory, Father, will You show me Yourself today? —Elizabeth Sherrill Digging Deeper: Ps 118:24; Mt 6:34

Everything has its price," Reverend Willows said. "The sunset costs us the moment in which we pause to look at it. We pay for a great love or a great dream in self-discipline, in self-sacrifice, in the giving of our love and our time and sometimes the sacrificing of our happiness." He grew silent. After a moment she realized that he was praying, his head bowed, his eyes closed. She was embarrassed, thinking that she was an intrusion upon his privacy, but when a moment later he opened his eyes, he smiled with surprising shyness and said, "A very impressive cathedral, isn't it?" He left her there. She looked and saw that the sky had turned pink and coral and gray, and as the light of dawn was born in the sky, a new light was born within her, too. There was a new day before them and with it new hope, new possibilities. A thousand men before her, a thousand million people, had looked up at the reddening sky or had seen the fragile green budding of the trees in spring, had heard the sudden song of a bird winging skywar, and had felt hope rekindled in their breasts. The dark night was over, the long winter ended, God was still in his heaven. How plain, how often repeated those homilies, yet what succor they gave. A bird cried somewhere in the rocks above her, and now in the distant valley she could see the glow of campfires and the smoke rising from the brown bosom of the land. At last she turned and went down the path to the wagons. And she, child of the earth, felt a thrill of response within her. She was thousands of miles from France. Between here and there lay an entire continent and a vast ocean, and yet in her heart she suddenly felt that she had come home.

Georgia pines flew past the windows of the Greyhound bus carrying Isaac Woodard home to Winnsboro, South Carolina. After serving four years in the army in World War II, where he had earned a battle star, he had received an honorable discharge earlier that day at Camp Gordon and was headed home to meet his wife. When the bus stopped at a small drugstore an hour outside Atlanta, Woodard asked the white driver if he could go to the restroom and a brief argument ensued. About half an hour later, the driver stopped again and told Woodard to get off the bus. Crisp in his uniform, Woodard stepped from the stairs and saw white police waiting for him. Before he could speak, one of the officers struck him in the head with a billy club, then continued to beat him so badly that he fell unconscious. The blows to Woodard’s head were so severe that when he woke in a jail cell the next day, he could not see. The beating occurred just four and a half hours after the soldier’s military discharge. At twenty-six, Woodard would never see again.83 There was nothing unusual about Woodard’s horrific maiming. It was part of a wave of systemic violence that had been deployed continuously against Black Americans for decades since the end of Reconstruction, in both the North and the South. As the racially egalitarian spirit of post–Civil War America evaporated under the desire for national reunification, Black Americans, simply by existing, served as a problematic reminder of this nation’s failings. White America dealt with this inconvenience by constructing a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid that excluded Black people almost entirely from mainstream American life—a system so grotesque that Nazi Germany would later take inspiration from it for its own racist policies.84

This is the part of the book where the author usually sums it all up in a conclusion chapter and announces, “I did it!” I suppose I could have titled it “The Finale,” but that’s just not me. I don’t think you ever reach a point in life (or in writing!) where you get to say that. It ain’t over till it’s over. I want to be an eternal student, always pushing myself to learn more, fear less, fight harder. What lies in the future? Truthfully, I don’t know. For some people, that’s a scary thought. They like their life mapped out and scheduled down to the second. Not me. Not anymore. I take comfort in knowing not everything is definite. There’s where you find the excitement, in the unknown, uncharted, spaces. If I take the lead in my life, I expect that things will keep changing, progressing, moving. That’s the joy for me. Where will I go next? What doors will open? What doors will close? All I can tell you is that I will be performing and connecting with people--be it through dance, movies, music, or speaking. I want to inspire and create. I love the phrase “I’m created to create.” That’s what I feel like, and that’s what makes me the happiest. I’m building a house right now--my own extreme home makeover. I love the process of tearing something down and rebuilding it, creating something from nothing and bringing my artistic vision to it. I will always be someone who likes getting his hands dirty. But the blueprint of my life has completely changed from the time I was a little boy dreaming about fame. It’s broadened and widened. I want variety in my life; I like my days filled with new and different things. I love exploring the world, meeting new people, learning new crafts and art. It’s why you might often read what I’m up to and scratch your head: “I didn’t know Derek did that.” I probably didn’t before, but I do now.

In fact, the same basic ingredients can easily be found in numerous start-up clusters in the United States and around the world: Austin, Boston, New York, Seattle, Shanghai, Bangalore, Istanbul, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, and Dubai. To discover the secret to Silicon Valley’s success, you need to look beyond the standard origin story. When people think of Silicon Valley, the first things that spring to mind—after the HBO television show, of course—are the names of famous start-ups and their equally glamorized founders: Apple, Google, Facebook; Jobs/ Wozniak, Page/ Brin, Zuckerberg. The success narrative of these hallowed names has become so universally familiar that people from countries around the world can tell it just as well as Sand Hill Road venture capitalists. It goes something like this: A brilliant entrepreneur discovers an incredible opportunity. After dropping out of college, he or she gathers a small team who are happy to work for equity, sets up shop in a humble garage, plays foosball, raises money from sage venture capitalists, and proceeds to change the world—after which, of course, the founders and early employees live happily ever after, using the wealth they’ve amassed to fund both a new generation of entrepreneurs and a set of eponymous buildings for Stanford University’s Computer Science Department. It’s an exciting and inspiring story. We get the appeal. There’s only one problem. It’s incomplete and deceptive in several important ways. First, while “Silicon Valley” and “start-ups” are used almost synonymously these days, only a tiny fraction of the world’s start-ups actually originate in Silicon Valley, and this fraction has been getting smaller as start-up knowledge spreads around the globe. Thanks to the Internet, entrepreneurs everywhere have access to the same information. Moreover, as other markets have matured, smart founders from around the globe are electing to build companies in start-up hubs in their home countries rather than immigrating to Silicon Valley.

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.

Easing Your Worries I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? —MATTHEW 6:25     I don’t know how things are in your world, but I can tell you that in Southern California we live in an age of anxiety. My neighbors and I have it much easier than our parents, but we certainly are much uneasier than our parents were. We seem to be anxious about temporal things, more so than past generations. They never worried about whether they were eating at the new vogue eatery, vacationing at the best island hotel with the largest pool, wearing the most prestigious label, or keeping their abs in shape. I watched the previous generation closely; they wanted a home for their families, a car that ran efficiently, and a job that provided for their basic needs. It seems our main concerns and drives today are physical and earth possessed. A large number of people actually believe that if they have the best food, clothing, education, house, and trainer, they have arrived. What else could one want for a perfect life? Our culture actually places more importance on the body and what we do with it than ever before in modern history. Thus we have created a mind set that causes us as women to be more concerned with life’s accommodations along life’s journey than with our final destination. Many women are going through their lives with a vast vacuum on the inside. In fact, the woman that you might sometimes envy because of her finely dressed family and newly remodeled kitchen is probably spending most of her day anxious and unsatisfied. Maybe that woman is you? This thing called life is more important than food, and the body is more important than what we wear. All the tangible distractions don’t satisfy the soul; they have become cheap substitutes for our spiritual wholeness and well-being. Let Christ help you overcome the anxieties of life. • Stop chasing the temporal things of life. Seek the kingdom of God as it is revealed in Jesus. Cast all your cares on Him. • Take your eyes off yourself and focus them on God first. Much of our anxieties are rooted in our self-centeredness. • Spend most of your prayer time praying for others.

Although a youth culture was in evidence by the 1950s, the first obvious and dramatic manifestation of a culture generated by peer-orientation was the hippie counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan called it “the new tribalism of the Electric Age.” Hair and dress and music played a significant part in shaping this culture, but what defined it more than anything was its glorification of the peer attachment that gave rise to it. Friends took precedence over family. Physical contact and connection with peers were pursued; the brotherhood of the pop tribe was declared, as in the generation-based “Woodstock nation.” The peer group was the true home. “Don't trust anyone over thirty” became the byword of youth who went far beyond a healthy critique of their elders to a militant rejection of tradition. The degeneration of that culture into alienation and drug use, on the one hand, and its co-optation for commercial purposes by the very mainstream institutions it was rebelling against were almost predictable. The wisdom of well-seasoned cultures has accumulated over hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. Healthy cultures also contain rituals and customs and ways of doing things that protect us from ourselves and safeguard values important to human life, even when we are not conscious of what such values are. An evolved culture needs to have some art and music that one can grow into, symbols that convey deeper meanings to existence and models that inspire greatness. Most important of all, a culture must protect its essence and its ability to reproduce itself — the attachment of children to their parents. The culture generated by peer orientation contains no wisdom, does not protect its members from themselves, creates only fleeting fads, and worships idols hollow of value or meaning. It symbolizes only the undeveloped ego of callow youth and destroys child-parent attachments. We may observe the cheapening of cultural values with each new peer-oriented generation. For all its self-delusion and smug isolation from the adult world, the Woodstock “tribe” still embraced universal values of peace, freedom, and brotherhood. Today's mass musical gatherings are about little more than style, ego, tribal exuberance, and dollars.

With the news that he would soon be a daddy again, Steve seemed inspired to work even harder. Our zoo continued to get busier, and we had trouble coping with the large numbers. The biggest draw was the crocodiles. Crowds poured in for the croc shows, filling up all the grandstands. The place was packed. Steve came up with a monumental plan. He was a big fan of the Colosseum-type arenas of the Roman gladiator days. He sketched out his idea for me on a piece of paper. “Have a go at this, it’s a coliseum,” he declared, his eyes wide with excitement. He drew an oval, then a series of smaller ovals in back of it. “Then we have crocodile ponds where the crocs could live. Every day a different croc could come out for the show and swim through a canal system”--he sketched rapidly--“then come out in the main area.” “Canals,” I said. “Could you get them to come in on cue?” “Piece of cake!” he said. “And get this! We call it…the Crocoseum!” His enthusiasm was contagious. Never mind that nothing like this had ever been done before. Steve was determined to take the excitement and hype of the ancient Roman gladiators and combine it with the need to show people just how awesome crocs really were. But it was a huge project. There was nothing to compare it to, because nothing even remotely similar had ever been attempted anywhere in the world. I priced it out: The budget to build the arena would have to be somewhere north of eight million dollars, a huge expense. Wes, John, Frank, and I all knew we’d have to rely on Steve’s knowledge of crocodiles to make this work. Steve’s enthusiasm never waned. He was determined. This would become the biggest structure at the zoo. The arena would seat five thousand and have space beneath it for museums, shops, and a food court. The center of the arena would have land areas large enough for people to work around crocodiles safely and water areas large enough for crocs to be able to access them easily. “How is this going to work, Steve?” I asked, after soberly assessing the cost. What if we laid out more than eight million dollars and the crocodiles decided not to cooperate? “How are you going to convince a crocodile to come out exactly at showtime, try to kill and eat the keeper, and then go back home again?” I bit my tongue when I realized what was coming out of my mouth: advice on crocodiles directed at the world’s expert on croc behavior. Steve was right with his philosophy: Build it, and they will come. These were heady times. As the Crocoseum rose into the sky, my tummy got bigger and bigger with our new baby. It felt like I was expanding as rapidly as the new project. The Crocoseum debuted during an Animal Planet live feed, its premiere beamed all over the world. The design was a smashing success. Once again, Steve had confounded the doubters.

Skiddy Cottontail—that was his name—and he defended LGBT equality. He was a flamboyant, colorful striped rabbit, with a headdress of a rainbow crown on his forehead. The radiance of his energy was violet, scarlet, and turquoise; as it represented his love for everyone. In the infancy years of his existence, he was abandoned—alone—unwanted—unloved; rejected by a world that disdains him. His father wished him deceased, his family exiled him from the warren, he was physically mistreated and preyed on by homophobic mobs in the surrounding community by Elephants—Hyenas—rats. They splashed spit at his face, advising him that God condemns homosexuality—as Christ did not. They would slam him on the pavement with their Bibles, strike him in the stomach with their feet, throw boulders of stone at his body: imploring—abusing—condemning him to a tyrannical sentence. Skiddy Cottontail thought that his existence would end with this case of cruelty—violence—assault that was perpetrated against him. He wanted to cease to exist— he wanted to commit the ultimate murder on himself—he no more desired to go on living— he realized hope is already deceased. He yearned to have the courage to emerge, to discover his bravery that would sever this spiral of sensations of oppression. Being a victim made him a slave to his opponent—as his adversaries have full leverage against him. Life has become a thread of light, which he longed to be liberated from its shackles. His demon—a voice that keeps blaming him for his crimes in the back of his mind—a glass that continually cracks in his heart—will keep breaking him if he does not devise a way out of this crisis. He was conscious by his innermost conviction that there was candlelight with a key that had the potential to illuminate a new chapter that will erase this trail of obscurity behind him. He sees a new horizon with greater comprehension, a journey that can give him the roses of affection than a handful of dead birds that his adversaries handed him along the way. The stunning blossoming trees did have a forest—beautiful greenery that was colorful like the rainbow in the Heavens. This home will embrace him with a warm embrace of open arms, where cruelty is forbidden; where adoration can forever abound. Dawn will know him when he arrives. No more hurricanes or strife will be here—no crying of a sad humanity are here—only a gift of harmony and devotion, beyond all explanation, will abide in the heart of Skiddy Cottontail—when he finds his way out from this opponent world for a beautiful existence that is called liberation. Skiddy Cottontail has found a happiness that can only bring him contentment like nothing in this hurtful world can. Find your own sense of balance like him, Skiddy Cottontail, and you will experience serenity as much as him.

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Oh, what a pleasure that was! Mollie Katzen's handwritten and illustrated recipes that recalled some glorious time in upstate New York when a girl with an appetite could work at a funky vegetarian restaurant and jot down some tasty favorites between shifts. That one had the Pumpkin Tureen soup that Margo had made so many times when she first got the book. She loved the cheesy onion soup served from a pumpkin with a hot dash of horseradish and rye croutons. And the Cardamom Coffee Cake, full of butter, real vanilla, and rich brown sugar, said to be a favorite at the restaurant, where Margo loved to imagine the patrons picking up extras to take back to their green, grassy, shady farmhouses dotted along winding country roads. Linda's Kitchen by Linda McCartney, Paul's first wife, the vegetarian cookbook that had initially spurred her yearlong attempt at vegetarianism (with cheese and eggs, thank you very much) right after college. Margo used to have to drag Calvin into such phases and had finally lured him in by saying that surely anything Paul would eat was good enough for them. Because of Linda's Kitchen, Margo had dived into the world of textured vegetable protein instead of meat, and tons of soups, including a very good watercress, which she never would have tried without Linda's inspiration. It had also inspired her to get a gorgeous, long marble-topped island for prep work. Sometimes she only cooked for the aesthetic pleasure of the gleaming marble topped with rustic pottery containing bright fresh veggies, chopped to perfection. Then Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells caught her eye, and she took it down. Some pages were stuck together from previous cooking nights, but the one she turned to, the most splattered of all, was the one for Onion Soup au Gratin, the recipe that had taught her the importance of cheese quality. No mozzarella or broken string cheeses with- maybe- a little lacy Swiss thrown on. And definitely none of the "fat-free" cheese that she'd tried in order to give Calvin a rich dish without the cholesterol. No, for this to be great, you needed a good, aged, nutty Gruyère from what you couldn't help but imagine as the green grassy Alps of Switzerland, where the cows grazed lazily under a cheerful children's-book blue sky with puffy white clouds. Good Gruyère was blocked into rind-covered rounds and aged in caves before being shipped fresh to the USA with a whisper of fairy-tale clouds still lingering over it. There was a cheese shop downtown that sold the best she'd ever had. She'd tried it one afternoon when she was avoiding returning home. A spunky girl in a visor and an apron had perked up as she walked by the counter, saying, "Cheese can change your life!" The charm of her youthful innocence would have been enough to be cheered by, but the sample she handed out really did it. The taste was beyond delicious. It was good alone, but it cried out for ham or turkey or a rich beefy broth with deep caramelized onions for soup.

Weston, having been born in Chicago, was raised with typical, well-grounded, mid-western values. On his 16th birthday, his father gave him a Kodak camera with which he started what would become his lifetime vocation. During the summer of 1908, Weston met Flora May Chandler, a schoolteacher who was seven years older than he was. The following year the couple married and in time they had four sons. Weston and his family moved to Southern California and opened a portrait studio on Brand Boulevard, in the artsy section of Glendale, California, called Tropico. His artistic skills soon became apparent and he became well known for his portraits of famous people, such as Carl Sandburg and Max Eastman. In the autumn of 1913, hearing of his work, Margrethe Mather, a photographer from Los Angeles, came to his studio, where Weston asked her to be his studio assistant. It didn’t take long before the two developed a passionate, intimate relationship. Both Weston and Mather became active in the growing bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles. She was extremely outgoing and artistic in a most flamboyant way. Her bohemian sexual values were new to Weston’s conventional thinking, but Mather excited him and presented him with a new outlook that he found enticing. Mather was beautiful, and being bisexual and having been a high-class prostitute, was delightfully worldly. Mather's uninhibited lifestyle became irresistible to Weston and her photography took him into a new and exciting art form. As Mather worked and overtly played with him, she presented a lifestyle that was in stark contrast to Weston’s conventional home life, and he soon came to see his wife Flora as a person with whom he had little in common. Weston expanded his horizons but tried to keep his affairs with other women a secret. As he immersed himself further into nude photography, it became more difficult to hide his new lifestyle from his wife. Flora became suspicious about this secret life, but apparently suffered in silence. One of the first of many women who agreed to model nude for Weston was Tina Modotti. Although Mather remained with Weston, Tina soon became his primary model and remained so for the next several years. There was an instant attraction between Tina Modotti, Mather and Edward Weston, and although he remained married, Tina became his student, model and lover. Richey soon became aware of the affair, but it didn’t seem to bother him, as they all continued to remain good friends. The relationship Tina had with Weston could definitely be considered “cheating,” since knowledge of the affair was withheld as much as possible from his wife Flora May. Perhaps his wife knew and condoned this new promiscuous relationship, since she had also endured the intense liaison with Margrethe Mather. Tina, Mather and Weston continued working together until Tina and Weston suddenly left for Mexico in 1923. As a group, they were all a part of the cozy, artsy, bohemian society of Los Angeles, which was where they were introduced to the then-fashionable, communistic philosophy.

Charles Bean, the official historian of Australia’s part in World War I, was unusual in dealing closely with the deeds of the soldiers on the front line, and not just the plans and orders of their leaders. At the end of his account of the Gallipoli landing in the Official History, he asked what made the soldiers fight on. What motive sustained them? At the end of the second or third day of the Landing, when they had fought without sleep until the whole world seemed a dream, and they scarcely knew whether it was a world of reality or of delirium – and often, no doubt, it held something of both; when half of each battalion had been annihilated, and there seemed no prospect before any man except that of wounds or death in the most vile surroundings; when the dead lay three deep in the rifle-pits under the blue sky and the place was filled with stench and sickness, and reason had almost vanished – what was it then that carried each man on? It was not love of a fight. The Australian loved fighting better than most, but it is an occupation from which the glamour quickly wears. It was not hatred of the Turk. It is true that the men at this time hated their enemy for his supposed ill-treatment of the wounded – and the fact that, of the hundreds who lay out, only one wounded man survived in Turkish hands has justified their suspicions. But hatred was not the motive which inspired them. Nor was it purely patriotism, as it would have been had they fought on Australian soil. The love of country in Australians and New Zealanders was intense – how strong, they did not realise until they were far away from their home. Nor, in most cases was the motive their loyalty to the tie between Australia and Great Britain. Although, singly or combined, all these were powerful influences, they were not the chief. Nor was it the desire for fame that made them steer their course so straight in the hour of crucial trial. They knew too well the chance that their families, possibly even the men beside them, would never know how they died. Doubtless the weaker were swept on by the stronger. In every army which enters into battle there is a part which is dependent for its resolution upon the nearest strong man. If he endures, those around him will endure; if he turns, they turn; if he falls, they may become confused. But the Australian force contained more than its share of men who were masters of their own minds and decisions. What was the dominant motive that impelled them? It lay in the mettle of the men themselves. To be the sort of man who would give way when his mates were trusting to his firmness; to be the sort of man who would fail when the line, the whole force, and the allied cause required his endurance; to have made it necessary for another unit to do his own unit’s work; to live the rest of his life haunted by the knowledge that he had set his hand to a soldier’s task and had lacked the grit to carry it through – that was the prospect which these men could not face. Life was very dear, but life was not worth living unless they could be true to their idea of Australian manhood.

Well before the end of the 20th century however print had lost its former dominance. This resulted in, among other things, a different kind of person getting elected as leader. One who can present himself and his programs in a polished way, as Lee Quan Yu you observed in 2000, adding, “Satellite television has allowed me to follow the American presidential campaign. I am amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him, at least superficially, into a different personality. Winning an election becomes, in large measure, a contest in packaging and advertising. Just as the benefits of the printed era were inextricable from its costs, so it is with the visual age. With screens in every home entertainment is omnipresent and boredom a rarity. More substantively, injustice visualized is more visceral than injustice described. Television played a crucial role in the American Civil rights movement, yet the costs of television are substantial, privileging emotional display over self-command, changing the kinds of people and arguments that are taken seriously in public life. The shift from print to visual culture continues with the contemporary entrenchment of the Internet and social media, which bring with them four biases that make it more difficult for leaders to develop their capabilities than in the age of print. These are immediacy, intensity, polarity, and conformity. Although the Internet makes news and data more immediately accessible than ever, this surfeit of information has hardly made us individually more knowledgeable, let alone wiser, as the cost of accessing information becomes negligible, as with the Internet, the incentives to remember it seem to weaken. While forgetting anyone fact may not matter, the systematic failure to internalize information brings about a change in perception, and a weakening of analytical ability. Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance and interpretation depend on context and relevance. For information to be transmuted into something approaching wisdom it must be placed within a broader context of history and experience. As a general rule, images speak at a more emotional register of intensity than do words. Television and social media rely on images that inflamed the passions, threatening to overwhelm leadership with the combination of personal and mass emotion. Social media, in particular, have encouraged users to become image conscious spin doctors. All this engenders a more populist politics that celebrates utterances perceived to be authentic over the polished sound bites of the television era, not to mention the more analytical output of print. The architects of the Internet thought of their invention as an ingenious means of connecting the world. In reality, it has also yielded a new way to divide humanity into warring tribes. Polarity and conformity rely upon, and reinforce, each other. One is shunted into a group, and then the group polices once thinking. Small wonder that on many contemporary social media platforms, users are divided into followers and influencers. There are no leaders. What are the consequences for leadership? In our present circumstances, Lee's gloomy assessment of visual media's effects is relevant. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill or Roosevelt or a de Gaulle can emerge. It is not that changes in communications technology have made inspired leadership and deep thinking about world order impossible, but that in an age dominated by television and the Internet, thoughtful leaders must struggle against the tide.

Reasons to keep books: To read them one day! If you hope to read the book one day, definitely keep it. It’s fine to be aspirational; no one else will keep score on what you have actually read. It’s great to dream and hope that one day you do have the time to read all your books. To tell your story. Some people give away every book they’ve read explaining, “What’s the point in keeping a book after I’ve read it if I’m not going to read it again? It’s someone else’s turn to read my copy now.” If that works for you, then only keep books on your shelves that you haven’t read yet. However you can probably understand that the books that you haven’t yet read only tell the story of your future, they don’t say much about where you’ve been and what made you who you are today. To make people think you’ve read the book! This one may be hard or easy for you to admit, but we don’t think there is any shame in it. Sometimes we hold on to books because they represent our aspirational selves, supporting the perception of how well read or intelligent we are. They are certainly the books our ideal selves would read, but in reality—if we had to admit it—we probably never will. We would argue that you should still have these books around. They are part of your story and who you want to be. To inspire someone else in your household to read those books one day. Perhaps it’s your kids or maybe your guests. Keeping books for the benefit of others is thoughtful and generous. At the very least, anyone who comes into your home will know that these are important books and will be exposed to the subjects and authors that you feel are important. Whether they actually read Charles Dickens or just know that he existed and was a prolific writer after seeing your books: mission accomplished! To retain sentimental value. People keep a lot of things that have sentimental value: photographs, concert ticket stubs, travel knickknacks. Books, we would argue, have deeper meaning as sentimental objects. That childhood book of your grandmother's— she may have spent hours and hours with it and perhaps it was instrumental in her education. That is much more impactful than a photograph or a ceramic figurine. You are holding in your hands what she held in her hands. This brings her into the present and into your home, taking up space on your shelves and acknowledging the thread of family and history that unites you. Books can do that in ways that other objects cannot. To prove to someone that you still have it! This may be a book that you are otherwise ready to give away, but because a friend gifted it, you want to make sure you have it on display when they visit. This I’ve found happens a lot with coffee table books. It can be a little frustrating when the biggest books are the ones you want to get rid of the most, yet, you are beholden to keeping them. This dilemma is probably better suited to “Dear Abby” than to our guidance here. You will know if it’s time to part ways with a book if you notice it frequently and agonize over the need to keep it to stay friends with your friend. You should probably donate it to a good organization and then tell your friend you spilled coffee all over it and had to give it away! To make your shelves look good! There is no shame in keeping books just because they look good. It’s great if your books all belong on your shelves for multiple reasons, but if it’s only one reason and that it is that it looks good, that is good enough for us. When you need room for new acquisitions, maybe cull some books that only look good and aren’t serving other purposes.

We talk to God—that is prayer; God talks to us—that is inspiration. We go apart to get still, that new life, new inspiration, new power of thought, new supply from the Fountainhead may flow in; and then we come forth to shed it on those around us, that they, too, may be lifted up. Inharmony cannot remain in any home where even one member of the family daily practices this hour of the presence of God, so surely does the renewed infilling of the heart by peace and harmony result in the continual outgoing of peace and harmony into the entire surroundings.

As I was doing this, I was also reading the book that Charlotte Clingstone had selected from Horace's library and left for me, Candide-- her cafe's namesake. It was, unexpectedly, a screwball action comedy. The hapless main character, whose name was Candide, travelled with a band of companions from Europe to the New World and back. Along the way, characters were flogged, ship-wrecked, enslaved and nearly executed several times. There were earthquakes and tsunamis and missing body parts. One of Candide's companions, Pangloss, whose name I recognized from the hundred-dollar adjective he inspired-- I'd never known the etymology-- insisted throughout that all their misfortunes were for the best, for they delivered the companions into situations that seemed, at first, pretty good. Until those situations, too, went to shit. The story concluded on a small farm outside Istanbul, where Candide plunked a hoe into the dirt and declared his intention to retreat from adventure (and suffering) and simply tend his garden. The way the author told it-- the book was written in 1959-- it was clear I was supposed to think Candide had finally discovered something important.

Pericles’ speech is not only a programme. It is also a defence, and perhaps even an attack. It reads, as I have already hinted, like a direct attack on Plato. I do not doubt that it was directed, not only against the arrested tribalism of Sparta, but also against the totalitarian ring or ‘link’ at home; against the movement for the paternal state, the Athenian ‘Society of the Friends of Laconia’ (as Th. Gomperz called them in 190232). The speech is the earliest33 and at the same time perhaps the strongest statement ever made in opposition to this kind of movement. Its importance was felt by Plato, who caricatured Pericles’ oration half a century later in the passages of the Republic34 in which he attacks democracy, as well as in that undisguised parody, the dialogue called Menexenus or the Funeral Oration35. But the Friends of Laconia whom Pericles attacked retaliated long before Plato. Only five or six years after Pericles’ oration, a pamphlet on the Constitution of Athens36 was published by an unknown author (possibly Critias), now usually called the ‘Old Oligarch’. This ingenious pamphlet, the oldest extant treatise on political theory, is, at the same time, perhaps the oldest monument of the desertion of mankind by its intellectual leaders. It is a ruthless attack upon Athens, written no doubt by one of her best brains. Its central idea, an idea which became an article of faith with Thucydides and Plato, is the close connection between naval imperialism and democracy. And it tries to show that there can be no compromise in a conflict between two worlds37, the worlds of democracy and of oligarchy; that only the use of ruthless violence, of total measures, including the intervention of allies from outside (the Spartans), can put an end to the unholy rule of freedom. This remarkable pamphlet was to become the first of a practically infinite sequence of works on political philosophy which were to repeat more or less, openly or covertly, the same theme down to our own day. Unwilling and unable to help mankind along their difficult path into an unknown future which they have to create for themselves, some of the ‘educated’ tried to make them turn back into the past. Incapable of leading a new way, they could only make themselves leaders of the perennial revolt against freedom. It became the more necessary for them to assert their superiority by fighting against equality as they were (using Socratic language) misanthropists and misologists—incapable of that simple and ordinary generosity which inspires faith in men, and faith in human reason and freedom. Harsh as this judgement may sound, it is just, I fear, if it is applied to those intellectual leaders of the revolt against freedom who came after the Great Generation, and especially after Socrates. We can now try to see them against the background of our historical interpretation.

Post-Rehab Advice: 5 Things to Do After Getting Out of Rehab Getting yourself into rehab is not the easiest thing to do, but it is certainly one of the most important things you can ever do for your well-being. However, your journey to self-healing does not simply end on your last day at rehab. Now that you have committed your self to sobriety and wellness, the next step is maintaining the new life you have built. To make sure that you are on the right track, here are some tips on what you should do as soon as you get back home from treatment. 1. Have a Game Plan Most people are encouraged to leave rehab with a proper recovery plan. What’s next for you? Envision how you want yourself to be after the inpatient treatment. This is a crucial part of the entire recovery process since it will be easier to determine the next phase of treatment you need. 2. Build Your New Social Life Finishing rehab opens endless opportunities for you. Use it to put yourself out in the world and maybe even pursue a new passion in life. Keep in mind that there are a lot of alcohol- and drug-free activities that offer a social and mental outlet. Meet new friends by playing sports, taking a class or volunteering. It is also a good opportunity for you to have sober friends who can help you through your recovery. 3. Keep Yourself Busy One of the struggles after rehab is finding purpose. Your life in recovery will obviously center on trying to stay sober. To remain sober in the long term, you must have a life that’s worth living. What drives you? Begin finding your purpose by trying out things that make you productive and satisfied at the same time. Get a new job, do volunteer work or go back to school. Try whatever is interesting for you. 4. Pay It Forward As a person who has gone through rehab, you are in the perfect place to help those who are in the early stages of recovery. Join a support group and do not be afraid to tell your story. Reaching out to other recovering individuals will also help keep your mind off your own struggles, while being an inspiration to others. 5. Get Help If You’re Still Struggling Research proves that about half of those in recovery will relapse, usually within the treatment’s first few months. However, these numbers do not necessarily mean that rehab is a waste of time. Similar to those with physical disabilities who need continuous therapy, individuals recovering from addiction also require ongoing support to stay clean and sober. Are you slipping back to your old ways? Do not let pride or shame take control of your mind. Life throws you a curveball sometimes, and slipping back to old patterns does not mean you are hopeless. Be sure to have a sober friend, family, therapist or sponsor you could trust and call in case you are struggling. Remember that building a drug- and alcohol-free life is no walk in the park, but you will likely get through it with the help of those who are dear to you.

Love is an unbroken circle. Real love returns home, sometimes with familiar eyes, sometimes though a new soul.

And so (We) made our way home. That’s what you do when you run out of options: you go home. Ask a failed college student or a new mother whose partner disappears. Ask the parolee and the schizophrenic. No matter what home is. Even if home is a false hope. You just pick yourself up and go there. Then you sit down and wait to see what happens next.

When you’re pursuing a wide breadth of experience, there are diminishing returns to each new adventure, each new person or thing. When you’ve never left your home country, the first country you visit inspires a massive perspective shift, because you have such a narrow experience base to draw on. But when you’ve been to twenty countries, the twenty-first adds little. And when you’ve been to fifty, the fifty-first adds even less. The same goes for material possessions, money, hobbies, jobs, friends, and romantic/sexual partners—all the lame superficial values people choose for themselves. The older you get, the more experienced you get, the less significantly each new experience affects you. The first time I drank at a party was exciting. The hundredth time was fun. The five hundredth time felt like a normal weekend. And the thousandth time felt boring and unimportant.

May, A bright Month to welcome and celebrate, The delicate fragrance and beauty of roses and mayflower, The innocence of a young children, the warm touch of home and family, That someone who teach and inspires to never give up and always to give the best finding a new path in life, Finally a celebration of the eternal and unconditional love from the most precious person in your heart.

eastern Massachusetts alone, I came across almost more than I could visit. I spent a couple mornings with the founders and members of Beacon Hill Villages, a kind of community cooperative in several neighborhoods of Boston dedicated to organizing affordable services—everything from plumbing repair to laundry—in order to help the elderly stay in their homes. I talked to people running assisted living homes who, against every obstacle, had stuck with the fundamental ideas Keren Wilson had planted. I’ve never encountered people more determined, more imaginative, and more inspiring. It depresses me to imagine how differently Alice Hobson’s last years would have been if she’d been able to meet one of them—if she’d had a NewBridge, an Eden Alternative, a Peter Sanborn Place, or somewhere like them to turn to. With any of them, Alice would have had the chance to continue to be who she was despite her creeping infirmities—“to really live,” as she would have put it.

Your consciousness will lead you home.