Jacob's Ladder Quotes

Life isn't a straightforward climb up the ladder. It can take a few slips to really gain perspective.

The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn 'em all away. But they're not punishing you,' he said. 'They're freeing your soul. If your frightened of dying, and your holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. If you've made your peace then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.

Whether our days trip along like the angels mounting on Jacob's ladder to heaven or grind along like the wagons that Joseph sent for Jacob, they are in each case ordered by God's mercy.

I have always unswervingly held, that God, in our civilizing world, manifests Himself not in the miracles of biblical age, but in progress. It is progress that leads humanity up the ladder towards the God-head. No Jacob's ladder this, no, but rather Civilization's Ladder, if you will.

That was Genus Homo, species Whowantstofuckus, subspecies Headup Hisassia. Let us move on to the cages with the interesting animals. Jacob to Ben describing JT

And with the clumsy tools of jealousy and desire, he was trying to create the spell that is ethereal and delicate as the dust on a moth's wing

Individually the disciple and friend of Jesus who has learned to work shoulder to shoulder with his or her Lord stands in this world as a point of contact between heaven and earth, a kind of Jacob’s ladder by which the angels of God may ascend from and descend into human life. Thus the disciple stands as an envoy or a receiver by which the kingdom of God is conveyed into every quarter of human affairs.

Maybe she was a little dark but she sort of sparkled with it. Jacob about Muse

I didn't despise myself for being who I was, and I never would. I wouldn't allow anyone to make me feel bad about that. That was a line I could draw in the sand.

As soon as he had disappeared Deborah made for the trees fringing the lawn, and once in the shrouded wood felt herself safe. She walked softly along the alleyway to the pool. The late sun sent shafts of light between the trees and onto the alleyway, and a myriad insects webbed their way in the beams, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder. But were they insects, wondered Deborah, or particles of dust, or even split fragments of light itself, beaten out and scattered by the sun? It was very quiet. The woods were made for secrecy. They did not recognise her as the garden did. ("The Pool")

But so far he's stayed so deep in the closet, they're going to crown him king of Narnia.

That?" I glanced back to the door where JT had disappeared. "That was Genus Homo, species Whowantstofuckus, subspecies Closeted Headup Hisassia. Let us move on to the cages with the interesting animals." --Jacob "Yasha" Livingston

And these are called a Jacob’s ladder,

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody. —QUENTIN CRISP

The kiss tasted of bitter sleep, the sourness of the wine. Something brought by each of them.

Her neural pattern must remain intact for the time being, as it was still necessary that she stay herself. Changes to her identity would eventually become inevitable, but those would have to wait until she no longer needed the cloak of who she was.

You see, passion alone is a blind power. It’s fire without light. It just ignites whatever it touches, good or evil, truth or lies, unselfishness or selfishness, love or lust.

Jacob’s Ladder represents a bridge between Jacob’s secular mindset to make it in this world and the reality of Heavenly things.

Memory is a spiderweb. It hangs in a corner and collects dust. Until you need it to catch a fly.

If Jacob's ladder reached all the way to heaven, so, too, did ours.

His desire re-created her until she lost all vestiges of the old Jenny, even the girl who had met him at the train that morning. Silently, as the night hours went by, he molded her over into an image of love - an image that would endure as long as love itself, or even longer - not to perish till he could say, 'I never really loved her.

Jacob’s ladder could be touching the soil of this very road. Where you are walking, angels might be ascending and descending. The problem is that like Jacob, most of us spend our days not knowing. The Lord is never far. It is our blindness that makes Him seem so. The veil between heaven

Revenge is a color, a color that never fades. A beautiful color. It is the color of the sky at dawn when lovers are hauled out of their beds and garroted in the middle of the street; the color of the ancient sea when Noah’s Ark has been breached below the water line; the color of Jacob’s Ladder as it collapses while Jacob has climbed only half-way to heaven. But it is more than that, much more. It contains the pigment that colors the eyes of the lovers that betray you.

‎"If we are truly the Lord's, we all walk with a limp" ~R. Alan Woods [2012] *Note: 'Jacobs Ladder'.

The only God is in the numbers and the fire; in the equations and the furnace

After twenty-six months on Jacob’s Ladder, her fear has largely faded,

and they believe he or she might have gotten as far as Jacob’s Ladder, her island, her home.

the animals on Jacob’s Ladder are likely to be sensitive

they finished building a year before I purchased Jacob’s Ladder.

large drones gradually grows louder as they return from the far end of Jacob’s Ladder.

Perhaps to conduct a boots-on-the-ground search of Jacob’s Ladder

BEFORE JACOB’S LADDER: THE ATTORNEY

Katie is wary about returning to the southern end of Jacob’s Ladder

MY LIFE BEFORE JACOB’S LADDER, ISLAND LIFE, LITERATURE, and PARANORMAL

Even after all these uneventful years on Jacob’s Ladder, I still lock the door every night.

But so far he’s stayed so deep in the closet, they’re going to crown him king of Narnia.

The first time that Raoul saw Christine at the Opera, he was charmed by the girl's beauty and by the sweet images of the past which it evoked, but was rather surprised at the negative side of her art. He returned to listen to her. He followed her in the wings. He waited for her behind a Jacob's ladder. He tried to attract her attention. More than once, he walked after her to the door of her box, but she did not see him. She seemed, for that matter, to see nobody. She was all indifference. Raoul suffered, for she was very beautiful and he was shy and dared not to confess his love, even to himself. And then came the lightning-flash of the gala performance: the heavens torn asunder and an angel's voice heard upon earth for the delight of mankind and the utter capture of his heart.

I’m glad you enjoyed the photo. There are two groups of piercings: a Prince Albert around my cock head and a Jacob’s Ladder under my shaft. One of the guards tried to remove them during my admission, but I stopped him with a shank.

Know this...GOD IS BIGGER, than anything you're going through, trust him...KEEP YOUR TRUST IN HIM" -Gary Linville "I don't pretend to know what love is for everyone, but I can tell you what love is for me; love is knowing all about someone, and still wanting to be with them more than any other person, love is trusting them enough to tell them everything about yourself, including the things you might be ashamed of, love is feeling comfortable and safe with someone, but still getting weak knees when they walk into a room and smile at you." "Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw, Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw; Gives exercise to faith and love, Brings every blessing from above." Nahum 1:7, "The Lord is good, a strong refuge when trouble comes. He is close to those who trust in him." "be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." ♥ Ephesians 4:2-3 “the truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. you just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” ― Bob Marley "The thing about the shadows is that they're not all darkness. You need to have light to have shadows" - A. Meredith Walters "Light in the Shadows" (Find You in the Dark #2)

This sequence of creation means, in the second place, not only that life should and will manifest itself more abundantly but also that it will do so in the constant upward spiral—from good to very good—that might serve as the definition of heaven itself. That is Jacob’s Ladder, the process that is eternally making everything as it should be but is somehow also improving, finding new pathways to higher orders of the true, the beautiful, and the good.

In the meantime, the Bear had attained the Avenue, where blinding, brilliant traffic travelled like a line of light from north to south, as if between worlds. But it was Jacob who saw the ladder, wrestled with the angel, and obtained a birthright under false pretenses. The Bear had done none of these things. He pulled the hat brim farther down on his face and walked south beneath the vault of darkness, above him like guardians or heralds the electric signs of bars and stores- white, orange, yellow, gold, red, brilliant blue and green, occasional imperial purple - as if they were angels that had descended to earth only to hire themselves out as lures for business, possibly for reasons of pity. The Bear walked beneath them like a resolute and powerful man, the saxophone case at his side swinging like a cache of fate, love, gold or vengeance. When he realised that he could have his pick of them - that all options, attributions and possibilities actually were open to him, that he was, at the moment, exalted, liberated, free - he stopped walking for a moment, put down the saxophone case, looked gradually around him at the Avenue, raised his snout and smiled broadly, and there on the pavement stretched out his great and inevitable arms. Aah. The night entered him like honey, and he began so heartily and with such depth of pleasure that it might have been for the first time in his life, to laugh out loud.

Returning from the grotto, north to south on Jacob’s Ladder, Katie indulges in a slow burn that never escalates from mere vexation. Life has taught her that it’s mentally exhausting and spiritually depressing to waste energy and time fanning the flames of anger when the reason for her outrage is someone who can’t be affected by anything she does or some malignant force in society that, when challenged, will engulf her and dissolve her in a metastatic frenzy. Patience, steadiness, and hope are healthier than anger; therefore, in spite of evidence to the contrary, she still trusts that the world has been shapen to a purpose and that the purpose is not the triumph of evil.

But let’s begin at the beginning. Do you remember Jacob’s “ladder” reaching from earth to heaven, on which angels ministered up and down? Jacob called it the “gate of heaven,” with God visible at the top. (Genesis 28:12, 17.) Around that idea, Isaiah builds a theology—a way we define humanity’s relationship to God. In other words, What is God’s role towards us, and ours towards him? Isaiah’s theology embraces all people born on the earth, no matter how good or evil they turn out to be. In the process, Isaiah describes different ways of living that people choose for themselves, some drawing them nearer to God, others distancing them from him. Each way has a place on the ladder to heaven. Where we find ourselves in this divine scheme depends on us, on what law we live—a higher or lesser law. When we discern the different levels represented on the ladder, we can learn a great deal about ourselves by asking, How does my life fit with this picture? Probably most of us would like to know more about where we stand with God. We have questions such as, How did I get where I am, and where am I going? Or more to the point, Where do I want to go? In addressing such questions, Isaiah eliminates the need for a lot of speculation about ourselves. He shows us the ladder to heaven, and we answer our own questions. Most importantly, Isaiah teaches us how to get through heaven’s “gate.

How quickly the years fall away and the passage of time ceases meaning. We have each a purpose: we are bred to it, engineered for it, or we are drawn to it out of some fathomless innate longing that we cannot explain. Some unlucky few must discover—or create—it on their own, but those are rarer in these days, when by the grace of the forebears we are manufactured to our place in the order of the world. We have our destinies. We race for them, fight for them, fulfill them. Or we fail them. Listen, Perceval. Do you hear your long immortal life stretched out before you, before the stars? I have so much to teach you, my dear. The young do not believe in endings. They do not believe in death. They do not believe in time. Everything takes forever to happen, and twenty years is a long time. Under those circumstances, the apocalypse can seem sexy. Death is a fetish, a taste of the edge. It is not real. And so the days are long, and though time holds us green and dying, we cannot yet feel the drag of our chains hauling us forward to the end. But the old, Perceval. The old have forgiven time. Whatever time you may have is too little. If you live a thousand years—as I nearly have, and you surely will—it does not matter. Unless you have given up, laid down your tools, and folded idle hands to wait, beloved, you will still be in the middle of something when you die. The world is a wheel, and we are all broken on it. And that is fine and just. For there is never any hurry, until there is no time.

April 20 MORNING “That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death.” — Hebrews 2:14 O child of God, death hath lost its sting, because the devil’s power over it is destroyed. Then cease to fear dying. Ask grace from God the Holy Ghost, that by an intimate knowledge and a firm belief of thy Redeemer’s death, thou mayst be strengthened for that dread hour. Living near the cross of Calvary thou mayst think of death with pleasure, and welcome it when it comes with intense delight. It is sweet to die in the Lord: it is a covenant-blessing to sleep in Jesus. Death is no longer banishment, it is a return from exile, a going home to the many mansions where the loved ones already dwell. The distance between glorified spirits in heaven and militant saints on earth seems great; but it is not so. We are not far from home — a moment will bring us there. The sail is spread; the soul is launched upon the deep. How long will be its voyage? How many wearying winds must beat upon the sail ere it shall be reefed in the port of peace? How long shall that soul be tossed upon the waves before it comes to that sea which knows no storm? Listen to the answer, “Absent from the body, present with the Lord.” Yon ship has just departed, but it is already at its haven. It did but spread its sail and it was there. Like that ship of old, upon the Lake of Galilee, a storm had tossed it, but Jesus said, “Peace, be still,” and immediately it came to land. Think not that a long period intervenes between the instant of death and the eternity of glory. When the eyes close on earth they open in heaven. The horses of fire are not an instant on the road. Then, O child of God, what is there for thee to fear in death, seeing that through the death of thy Lord its curse and sting are destroyed? and now it is but a Jacob’s ladder whose foot is in the dark grave, but its top reaches to glory everlasting.

We are not climbing Jacob’s ladder to some heavenly perfection, but stumbling downhill towards Ragnarok.

Le Bon claimed that when individuals assemble in the street or at a political meeting, they spark in each other a mass reversion to a primitive state: “By the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd,” Le Bon wrote, “a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilization.” By himself, “he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian”—and becomes capable of the sort of irrational and brutal actions that characterize a street riot or lynch mob. “He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity,” but also the “enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.”41 Since modern urban life and democratic politics create a wealth of opportunities for this kind of mass reversionary behavior (what another theorist, William Trotter, would call “the herd instinct”), enormous dangers loomed ahead for European industrial society. As Le Bon explained, echoing Jacob Burckhardt, “the advent of power of the masses marks one of the last stages of Western civilization … Its civilization is now without stability. The populace is sovereign, and the tide of barbarism mounts.”42 Therefore, the “true” character of mass democracy required a new approach to politics. Traditional parliamentary or legal institutions can no longer control the masses, Le Bon warned. What the crowd looks for, in its atavistic way, is instead a leader, a single powerful figure who can direct its irrational energies to constructive ends.*

As is said in the film Jacob’s Ladder, “The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away, but they’re not punishing you, they’re freeing your soul. If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.

The countless allusions to the Old Testament (e.g., references to the tabernacle, Jacob’s ladder, Jacob’s well, manna, the serpent in the wilderness, Sabbath, and various feasts) presuppose both a writer and readers who are steeped in the Scriptures.76

That’s Jacob’s ladder, princess. Five barbells on my cock. I’ll show you later, okay?

I take my cock in my hand, feeling the piercings. I’ve got six barbells along my shaft—Jacob’s ladder.

God himself had stretched his ladder from the heavens to the earth, so that his angels could ascend and descend amongst the lonely and brokenhearted. In that forsaken place, God had promised Jacob, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go. I tapped the ground next to my head. “Set the foot of your ladder right here, my Lord. Be with me and keep me.

He reached between us and pulled his cock free from his tight pants, and I was deceased. Because Ari Lancaster's cock was completely pierced from root to tip. A Jacob's ladder extending from the bottom of his gigantic dick, all the way to the top.

St. Jerome Letter In the lives of Christians we look not to the beginnings but to the endings. Paul began badly but ended well. The start of Judas wins praise; his end is condemned because of his treachery. Read Ezekiel, “The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression; as for the wickedness of the wicked he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turns from his wickedness” (Ezek. 33:12). The Christian life is the true Jacob’s ladder on which the angels ascend and descend (Gen. 28:12), while the Lord stands above it holding out his hand to those who slip and sustaining by the vision of himself the weary steps of those who ascend.

Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. So, if you're frightened of dying and... and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth.

The Christians tell us we move inexorably towards better times, towards their god’s kingdom on earth, but my gods only promise the chaos of the world’s ending, and a man only has to look around him to see that everything is crumbling, decaying, proof that the chaos is coming. We are not climbing Jacob’s ladder to some heavenly perfection, but stumbling downhill towards Ragnarok.

It is the proper function of the theologian to go back and forth, like the angels on Jacob's ladder, between heaven and earth and to weave continually new connections between them.

What is that?” Jude smirks, pumping his cock again, and not taking his eyes off me. “A Jacob’s ladder.” Six barbells run through the underside of his dick, and the piercings fit the name. “Didn’t it hurt?” “Hurt like hell, Red.” He smirks, his eyes skimming me over with a look that strips me to the absolute bone. “But you’re going to thank me for it.

The metal barb of my Jacob’s Ladder piercing

The metal barb of my Jacob’s Ladder piercing rubs against the confinement of my tight black skinny jeans as my cock hardens at the subtle, but incredibly sexy gesture.

The howl, Doc, not the silence of the lambs, the howl stays with me, I hear it, I scream, I raise my arms to the sky, I try, Doc, I try to defend myself, to protect my soul. Auntie Badeea used to say that jackals have howled at the innocent moon for aeons because they mourn the fact that they are not eternal, that when Death with his pale eyes comes for them they will be no more, unlike us who climb up Jacob's ladder to Heaven in God's embrace or fall to Satan's fiery Hell. I don't think so, Doc, I disagree. Jackals howl because we don't. The howl has been traveling for thousands of years, from the beginning of time, when Adam and Eve tasted the fruit and Satan triumphed and his son, Death, was born, when loss became our intimate, across deserts and seas the howl moves, loaded with dust and grime and brine, searching for souls to remind them to grieve, but we pay little attention, always avoiding, always moving forward, our souls filled with termite holes that the howl passes through, only whistling. Lost we are, so the jackals and coyotes, the wolves red and gray, howl for us, howl at the baby-faced moon.

The original ceiling illustrated a simple theme shared by many synagogues: a night sky, filled with golden stars. This scene is reminiscent of Jacob’s dream while sleeping under the stars (Genesis 28:11–19) shortly after fleeing his father’s house. It was then that Jacob had a vision of “a ladder with angels ascending and descending,” and it was that spot that he named Beit-El, the House of God.

is it i, who have dragged the latter of linger from the shadows the smell of death from the pits; the footprints where no one steps the pitiful thoughts of nostalgia, hate? the love for another, hate for myself, of human feeling? is it i? falling from the skies was the son of God, or his enemy? constantly torn between sun and shade, the good and not weighing scales of justice, the path to good grace living a lie for a heaven only dreamed; the preacher man's belly sweet wine and sour, deceit before the holy bible, of the preacher man's tongue testaments of old and new, what to follow for truth, what is new to old laws laws of the land, of the people, laws broken, held against ourselves is it i? to think of Christ Jesus, or His Father in Heaven, or the holy spirit solemn: my thoughts running wild, the second coming of who we love who we do not; who we believe in; who we want to follow; or not is it i? who is afraid, or the voices in my head? of Jacob's ladder? buried in myself; afraid of the light, afraid of change. is it i? in low, bottomless pits,holds the crucifix in high esteem; soar lips preaching testaments in disbelief? of what we have become, what we are, what we live to not see is it i? who have dragged myself to this? or this bottomless thoughts?

Going to the office wasn't as pleasant lately, Sam thought, as he made his way through the back entry to the detectives' division. There weren't so many people there that day, and it seemed like a lot of them were avoiding the place, just staying away as much as they could. He could understand that. After almost ten years as a Denver cop, Sam was sick of seeing what humanity was really capable of. He had grown up reading cop stories, always seeing how the cops would save the day, watching them rescue the innocent and punish the guilty every week on TV, until he finally knew that he had to be one himself. After a short stint in the Army that never even got him out of the country, he'd come home and applied for the academy. He'd been accepted, and that was the start of an illustrious career. Now, it was all he could do to drag himself out of bed in the mornings, make himself come in and see what new horrors he'd have to deal with. The past four months he'd been on loan to the DEA, and they'd made some big drug busts, shut down some of the most evil purveyors of sin and death that ever lived, but they were like the mythical hydra—as soon as you cut off one of its heads, three more grew back to take its place. Sam wanted to stop cutting off heads and find the creature's heart, but there was almost no evidence as to where that heart might be. They knew there was something big behind the drug operations in the city, but it was so well organized and so carefully designed that no one seemed to have any idea where or how to find it. His cell rang as he sat down at his desk, and he saw his partner's number. Dan Jacobs was already out on his station, watching one of the dealers they'd identified the day before. “Yo,” Sam answered. “Sam, it's Dan. I been thinkin', and it seems to me that we might be lookin' in the wrong direction, y'know?” Sam blinked a couple of times. “Danny, I've been awake for about fifteen minutes, and haven't even opened my Starbuck's yet. What the heck are you talkin' about?” “I'm sayin', maybe we're goin' about this all the wrong way, tryin' to find dealers and trail 'em, follow the tracks up the ladder. There's something about this whole setup that smacks of serious organization, something big enough to hide in plain sight, know what I mean? If it's that well laid out, we can follow minions all day long, we're never gonna find the top guy, because they don’t ever see the top guys.” Sam nodded. “Yeah, you're probably right,” he said, “but unless you got a crystal ball lead on where else to go, I don’t know what good it's doin' us. Where else we gonna find any leads at all? Got a clue, there?” “Maybe,” Dan said. “We've been tailing a lot of these clowns the past few weeks, right? Have you noticed one thing they all do the same?” Sam thought about it, but nothing jumped out at him. He looked at it from a couple of different angles, then shook his head. Into the phone, he said, “Nope. So, what is it?” “Facebook. No matter what else they're doin', these bastards never miss checking in on Facebook every day, several times a day. They go on, look at what people are sayin' on their pages, sometimes they answer and sometimes they don't, and then they go back to their drug dealin' ways.” Sam rubbed his temple. “Dan, everyone does that. Everyone on freakin' earth is on Facebook, and always checkin' it out. That's just part

Is that where you’re going to sleep?” Muddy indicated Chancho’s saddle. “Sure. Good a spot as any to be blessed with my presence. Maybe I’ll even use a rock as a pillow and have visions of angels climbing back and forth on a ladder from heaven.” “Catholics are crazy.” Nena lowered the tailgate to the chuck wagon. “Besides, don’t angels have wings? Why would they need a ladder?” Chancho scratched his chin. “You know, that’s a good question. I’ll have to ask Jacob when I see him.

Jesus, in the story of creation, already planning the new creation; Jesus supreme above the ruins of the fall; Jesus in the ark, the rainbow and the dove; Jesus in the sacrifice on Mount Moriah, the ladder of Jacob, and the story of Joseph; Jesus in the Paschal lamb, the desert manna…. The face of Jesus can be traced like water lines in fine paper back of every page, for He is the Alpha and the Omega: the first and the last of this Holy Book.

had gone to heaven. Enoch was “translated” and Elijah was “taken up.” One could “ascend” a ladder (Jesus had told Nathanael that he would see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, and Jacob beheld a ladder in his midnight dream at Bethel) or one could “ascend” to Jerusalem, moving to a higher elevation from sea level. The term could be used figuratively to refer to the elevation of a king to his royal office. But no one ever had “ascended to heaven” in the sense in which Jesus was speaking. The ascension of Jesus was the supreme political event of world history. He ascended

February 19 MORNING “Thus saith the Lord God; I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them.” — Ezekiel 36:37 PRAYER is the forerunner of mercy. Turn to sacred history, and you will find that scarcely ever did a great mercy come to this world unheralded by supplication. You have found this true in your own personal experience. God has given you many an unsolicited favour, but still great prayer has always been the prelude of great mercy with you. When you first found peace through the blood of the cross, you had been praying much, and earnestly interceding with God that He would remove your doubts, and deliver you from your distresses. Your assurance was the result of prayer. When at any time you have had high and rapturous joys, you have been obliged to look upon them as answers to your prayers. When you have had great deliverances out of sore troubles, and mighty helps in great dangers, you have been able to say, “I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.” Prayer is always the preface to blessing. It goes before the blessing as the blessing’s shadow. When the sunlight of God’s mercies rises upon our necessities, it casts the shadow of prayer far down upon the plain. Or, to use another illustration, when God piles up a hill of mercies, He Himself shines behind them, and He casts on our spirits the shadow of prayer, so that we may rest certain, if we are much in prayer, our pleadings are the shadows of mercy. Prayer is thus connected with the blessing to show us the value of it. If we had the blessings without asking for them, we should think them common things; but prayer makes our mercies more precious than diamonds. The things we ask for are precious, but we do not realize their preciousness until we have sought for them earnestly. “Prayer makes the darken’d cloud withdraw; Prayer climbs the ladder Jacob saw; Gives exercise to faith and love; Brings every blessing from above.

Perfect. Another B-movie dream sequence to start the day. Why can’t I ever win in these things? Instead, it’s always some Jacob’s Ladder outtake, and I want to talk to the director because the script needs a rewrite.

Mountains, even when they are hidden in darkness, are as real as in the daylight. God’s love is as true now as it has been in our brightest times. We will yet climb Jacob’s ladder with angels, and behold the one who sits enthroned above it - our covenant God – our advocate with the Father – our dearest friend! “Believe me when I say that the indescribable splendors of eternity will make us forget the trials of time, or only remember them enough to bless God for leading us through them and for using them for our lasting good. “It’s because of this that we can sing amid our deepest trouble and rejoice even while passing through the furnace. We see the day coming when He will again make our wilderness blossom like the rose! He will cause the desert to ring with our exulting joys because this earthly pain will soon be over, and then ‘together forever with the Lord,’ our joy will never end!2

Footsteps approached, soft and sure. They were not Perceval’s, and Rien was surprised to find she knew her sister’s tread already.

Mallory’s face went briefly vague, as those of Exalts could do when they consulted their internal worlds.

He had never been able to name things himself-he was, after all, in chief a sort of archivist-but as with many archivists, a good irony and a pun delighted him.

The ladder these angels must climb was the double helix. And then they would be God. They, who were splinters of God.

A shape was only a mask, to be discarded upon an instant.

Mallory,” Dust hissed. “And the familiar basilisk. You sent my maidens for them.” “My maidens? The world’s maidens, surely. Do you begrudge them a little assistance, a little education?” “That is no Ben Kenobi. More une belle quelquesomething sans merci.” “The question stands, my dearest Dust.

When Samael uncrossed his arms, it was to stand hipshot, balanced one the toes of one bare foot and the heel of the other. He had simulated silver toenail polish.

Dust might have said that Samael lied, but in truth he had not, really. He had omitted, but by the most strict definition that was not providing false information. And that was what the ancient lingering protocols forebade them.

The builders must never have imagined that the world might find itself not only fragmented, but wishing to lie between modules.

I begrudge your assistance. And I begrudge Mallory.” “Tough,” Samael said. He stepped forward, bounced up on his toes, and planted a kiss on Dust’s scaly cheek. “I know you want to be the last angel standing. But brother, so do I.

Even if Rien awoke sore and sticky, it was a better awakening than the last.

She could already imagine the dexterity with which Mallory’s arched dark eyebrows would rise, and the answer which didn’t need saying.

Rien sat transfixed by the music, old and alien and like nothing she'd heard before. She felt her symbiont accepting the new information, integrating it. Making it part of her flesh and bone. It immersed and surrounded her, but even as she heard it performed, she sensed it as gestalt, knew the notes and chords. She could have played it, if her hands were sufficiently trained to the task. She could have seeing it, if her voice was adequate. She could have rearranged it, resurrected it, reinvented it, if she had been a composer.

Wait,” the necromancer said, and kissed her around that silencing finger. “Gently, Rien. It’s not about getting it over with as fast as possible, my sweet.

I don’t love you. You shouldn’t change yourself for me.

A song, and she’d swallowed it.

Her eyes stung with the beauty.

A warm hand rested on Rien’s nape. It was comforting, and it sent a shiver between her shoulders. She swallowed and licked salt from her lip and tried to think of what to say.

She was not prepared for Mallory to pull away before Rien thought the kiss was half finished, quickly nipping at Rien’s lower lip and then pressing a finger against it. And then it was dark eyes, brown and transparent as coffee, with green and amber flecks swimming under the surface of Mallory’s breath across her mouth.

She knew where he was going, but she wasn’t going to give him an inch that he didn’t earn.

He seemed far too small to be the source of the air of wicked malice that surrounded him, but Dust knew better.

If beaks could smirk, she would have sworn him to be smirking.

Sometimes, laziness was the next best thing to genius.

We have reason to believe,” he said, “that the object indicated by that icon is a sublight colony ship from Earth which has been lost and presumed destroyed since the time of the Kleptocracy.

The Jacob’s Ladder showed up regularly as a plot point in fashionable entertainments, cast in the role of an enclave of fanatics, an insane asylum, and a lair of monsters all in one.

Conversation was more interesting than one man droning on and on. It held the audience better. And Danilaw would have used puppets if he thought it would get his cabinet to pay attention.

Perceval had been slow in forgiving herself for her lost loved ones and enemies, and slower in forgiving the new Angel so forged in the exigencies of her birth.

He limped into its cramped spaces like a wind into a cavern, so constrained by its limits that even his shredden self would not entirely fit and still more rags and tendrils had to be shred, cut away by the Procustean limits of this metaphysical form.

Perceval smiled inside, but she would not let her lips curve. No one must see her mirth at an execution-no one except the executed, who would know it without being shown.

Just like a Conn, she thought. Eating everything in sight.