Joshua Block Quotes

A big bubble. A block wide. It goes where you go - you're the center of it. And every object gets a little bit better while it's in that bubble with you. It's always very bright where you are.

From the beginnings of Israelite religion the belief that God had chosen this particular people to carry out His mission has been both a cornerstone of Hebrew faith and a refuge in moments of distress. And yet, the prophets felt that to many of their contemporaries this cornerstone was a stumbling block; this refuge, an escape. They had to remind the people that chosenness must not be mistaken as divine favoritism or immunity from chastisement, but, on the contrary, that it meant being more seriously exposed to divine judgment and chastisement.

All of us would like to believe that we could accomplish one brave, selfless act for God and for His kingdom. But it takes greater courage to faithfully accomplish the daily, thankless tasks of everyday life for Him—being a father to our children, a good husband to our wives, building His temple one laborious block at a time.

No matter what the whiny poets say, love isn’t as all encompassing, eternal, and fervent as the Romantics have led us to believe. It can be compartmentalized, momentary, and considered. I can fall in love twelve times walking down the block. Once with a smile, another time with the sway of a ponytail as it bounces left to right with every step, and again with the way a girl places a hand on her boyfriend’s shoulder absentmindedly. But when we express love, when we voice a term that we all define together, we get lost. You say one thing, she hears another. Each of us tells himself a story about what this other person means. But words aren’t fixed. Words are merely containers that we pour meaning into and try to give it shape. If people could just accept that, they’d be a whole lot happier.

At its height, the rebellion can best be described as an insurrection. Large crowds of looters in the early part of July 23 gave way to roving bands of looters and fire bombers, who were much harder to control. Some coordinated their tactics by shortwave radio. Apparently, the rebels saw all government officials as the enemy, and they attacked firemen as well as policemen. By 4:40 P.M. on July 24, rebels had stolen hundreds of guns from gun shops. As police began to shoot at the looters, black snipers started shooting back. Hubert Locke, executive secretary of the establishment Committee for Equal Opportunity, called it a “total state of war.” Police officers and firemen reported being attacked by snipers on both the east and west sides of the city. Snipers made sporadic attacks on the Detroit Street Railways buses and on crews of the Public Lighting Commission and the Detroit Edison Company. Police records indicate that as many as ten people were shot by snipers on July 25 alone. A span of 140 blocks on the west side became a “bloody battlefield,” according to the Detroit News. Government tanks and armored personnel carriers “thundered through the streets and heavy machine guns chattered. . . . It was as though the Viet Cong had infiltrated the riot blackened streets.” The mayor said, “It looks like Berlin in 1945.”55 The black uprisings in Detroit and Newark were the largest of 1967 but by no means the only ones. Urban rebellions rocked cities large and small all across America. According to the Kerner Commission, 164 such rebellions erupted in the first nine months of the year.56

Each teleporter traveled to and from their assigned spot, as accidents involving the fabric of space-time were frowned on. Workplace safety and not shredding the fundamental building blocks of reality go hand in hand. Obvious, really.

What I’m trying to say, Ruben, is that meeting this horrible man and his horrible wife, it made me realize something. It made me realize I don’t believe in anything anymore and not just that, but I don’t care. I have no beliefs and I’m OK with it; I’m more than OK, I’m glad . . . I’m glad I’m getting older without convictions . . .” “What’s Judy always saying, and her friends? ‘It’s copacetic’?” “It’s copacetic.” She retook my arm and we walked on, a pair of sweethearts in the snow. Our block was totally socked in. Hedgerows of snow. The pearly humps of cars. We shuffled up the steps to our door, where the snow was soft and powdery and, even at the topmost step, under the overhang, calf-high. I think of it as a blessing: may you never lock your door . . . may you never have to lock your door . . . I opened the door and—resisting the impulse to sweep her up like a bride—held it open for Edith. She stepped inside. She crunched onto the mat and bent down to untie her laces but stopped and turned and clung to me. I looked over her shoulder, through the lens fog, and saw our new television cabinet tipped over face-first, its screen shattered, and the youngest Netanyahu boy curled fetal atop a mound of gingerbread house scraps and glass.

When we reach the fence, we see the Dauntless standing in our headlight beams, blocking the gate. Their blue armbands stand out against the rest of their clothing. I try to keep my expression pleasant. I will not be able to fool them into thinking I’m Amity with a scowl on my face. A dark-skinned man with a gun in hand approaches Marcus’s window. He shines a flashlight at Marcus first, then Christina, then me. I squint into the beam, and force a smile at the man like I don’t mind bright lights in the eyes and guns pointed at my head in the slightest. The Amity must be deranged if this is how they really think. Or they’ve been eating too much of that bread. “So tell me,” the man says. “What’s an Abnegation member doing in a truck with two Amity?” “These two girls volunteered to bring provisions to the city,” Marcus says, “and I volunteered to escort them so that they would be safe.” “Also, we don’t know how to drive,” says Christina, grinning. “My dad tried to teach me years ago but I kept confusing the gas pedal for the brake pedal, and you can imagine what a disaster that was! Anyway, it was really nice of Joshua to volunteer to take us, because it would have taken us forever otherwise, and the boxes were so heavy--” The Dauntless man holds up his hand. “Okay, I get it.” “Oh, of course. Sorry.” Christina giggles. “I just thought I would explain, because you seemed so confused, and no wonder, because how many times do you encounter this--””Right,” the man says. “And do you intend to return to the city?” “Not anytime soon,” Marcus says. “All right. Go ahead, then.” He nodes to the other Dauntless by the gate. One of them types a series of numbers on the keypad, and the gate slides open to admit us. Marcus nods to the guard who let us through and drives over the worn path to Amity headquarters. The truck’s headlights catch tire tracks and prairie grass and insects weaving back and forth. In the darkness to my right I see fireflies lighting up to a rhythm that is like a heartbeat. After a few seconds, Marcus glances at Christina. “What on earth was that?” “There’s nothing the Dauntless hate more than cheerful Amity babble,” says Christina, lifting a shoulder. “I figured if he got annoyed it would distract him and he would let us through.” I smile with all my teeth. “You are a genius.” “I know.” She tosses her head like she’s throwing her hair over one shoulder, only she doesn’t have enough to throw. “Except,” says Marcus. “Joshua is not an Abnegation name.” “Whatever. As if anyone knows the difference.

This raises a critical question regarding the inspiration and authority of the Old Testament: If Moses and Joshua misunderstood the will and purposes of God in reference to the Conquest, then what parts of God’s self-disclosure in the Old Testament can we trust? The question is moot if we ask the same of all who feel under no obligation to abide by Old Testament laws governing Sabbath worship, ritual circumcision, animal sacrifices, eating pork, charging interest, and capital punishment for adulterers and those who pick up sticks on the Sabbath. If Biblebelieving Christians are asked how they can justify setting aside great blocks of divine commands in the Old Testament as “truth for today,” even the most avowed scriptural literalists among them respond: because we are no longer living under the old covenant but the new. Exactly!

The wall was indeed falling. Down it came with a thunderous crash, the roar of it almost drowning out the screams of the archers on the wall as they fell and were crushed by the huge blocks. The houses that were on the wall fell too, and Othniel grasped Ardon’s arm. “God is destroying the walls!” he cried. “But not that part. Look!” Othniel saw that part of the wall was still standing and that from one of the houses the scarlet rope on which they had escaped from Jericho was dangling. “Come on. We’ll get them out.” Othniel drew his sword along with the other soldiers. They were all screaming and running straight for the wall. The cries of the dying who had been crushed by the wall were soon joined by the shouts of the remaining soldiers who were met by the flashing swords of Joshua’s army.

In essence, the negative ego is blocking you from God-realization.

So, the spiritual path is a 50/50 proposition. You must do your 50% and GOD and the Masters and Angels will do their 50%. There are many lightworkers who call upon GOD and the Masters, but their lives are not working, or it would seem that help is not forthcoming. This is not true, for every prayer to GOD and the Masters is answered. It is answered in GOD’s time and in GOD’s way. The Lord works in mysterious ways. A lot of the times the problem is really stemming from the lightworker having too much negative thinking and negative emotions on a conscious and subconscious level, which is causing a great many blocks that even GOD and the Masters can’t control if the lightworker is not taking responsibility on that level.

Love is bobbing with the unconcerned weave of the current and particularly I feel this way when I am around you. Sometimes, in the night, the earth will change for a man the earth will open up for him and his belonging. When I am out in the world and the air does its little displacement with my body, I think of you moving with the horizon in and out of view. — Joshua Beckman, from “Block Island,” Something I Expected to be Different (Verse Press, 2001)

Even prohibitions against masturbation—a private act if ever there was one—may serve a social function: A cooperative institution such as a church may increase its power by maintaining a monopoly on the blessing of marriages, while blocking alternative routes to sexual gratification.

Lincoln said at the end of the affair that he’d never marry, because “I can never be satisfied with any one who would be block-head enough to have me.

British sociologist Anthony Giddens observed that part of the strain of modernity results from our becoming “disembedded” from the traditional institutions of church, neighborhood, marriage, community, and gender. In its stead has been left an intensely personal, day-to-day, moment-to-moment appraisal of the self: its moods, desires, thoughts, and aspirations. This self-appraising project requires constant monitoring. How much or how little to engage with others—with friends, with romantic partners? Do they satisfy our ambition of self-actualization? “Personal growth,” writes Giddens in Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, “depends on conquering emotional blocks and tensions that prevent us from understanding ourselves as we really are.” Social psychologist Eli Finkel’s observation of what is required for a successful marriage today also mirrors Giddens’s observation: “Success typically requires not only compatibility but also deep insight into each other’s core essence, the sort of insight that helps us know what type of support is most beneficial under which circumstances.” I say, ditto parenting adult children.

In the summer of 1966, Seale was hired to run a youth work program at the North Oakland Neighborhood Anti-Poverty Center funded by the federal War on Poverty. Through his role as a social service provider, he came to understand even more clearly the economic and social needs of black youth. Beyond delivering services, Bobby brought his revolutionary nationalist theory to the job and used the opportunity to push up against the ideological bias in the government program. Rather than merely guiding young blacks into a government-prescribed path, he used his authority to help them stand up against oppressive authority, particularly against police brutality. One day Seale’s boss instructed him to take a group of young black men and women on a tour of the local police station. When the group arrived, the police officers pulled out notepads and pencils and started to interview the teenagers about the character of gangs in the neighborhood. Seale protested, instructing his group to remain silent and announcing that his program would not be used as a spy network to inform on people in the community. The officers claimed that they simply wanted to foster better relations with the community. In response, Seale turned the conversation around, creating an opportunity for the teenagers to describe their experiences with police brutality in the neighborhood. It was the first time the young people had had the opportunity to look white police officers in the eye and express their anger and frustration. One teenager berated the police for an incident in which several officers had thrown a woman down and beaten her in the head with billy clubs. “Say you!” said a sixteen-year-old girl, pointing at a policeman. “You don’t have to treat him like that,” Seale said to the girl. “I’ll treat him like I want to, because they done treated me so bad,” she replied. Bobby sat back as the girl grilled the officer about whether he had received proper psychiatric treatment. The officer turned red and started to shake. “The way you’re shaking now,” she said, “the way you’re shaking now and carrying on, you must be guilty of a whole lot! And I haven’t got no weapon or nothin.’”69 The poverty program provided a paycheck, some skills, and an opportunity to work with young people. But Newton and Seale were still searching for a way to galvanize the rage of the “brothers on the block.” They wanted to mobilize the ghetto the way that the Civil Rights Movement had mobilized blacks in the South. They dreamt of creating an unstoppable force that would transform the urban landscape forever. The problem was now clear to Huey and Bobby, but they did not yet have a solution. Huey and Bobby were not the only ones looking for answers.

Newton points out that military and political power are inextricably linked: without military power, there can be no political power. “Politics is war without bloodshed,” and “war is politics with bloodshed.” He criticizes black politics as toothless and thus powerless. Only by developing a force with real destructive capacity can black people obtain political power: When black people send a representative, he is somewhat absurd because he represents no political power. He does not represent land power because we do not own any land. He does not represent economic or industrial power because black people do not own the means of production. The only way he can become political is to represent what is commonly called a military power—which the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense calls Self-Defense Power. Black People can develop Self-Defense Power by arming themselves from house to house, block to block, community to community, throughout the nation. Then we will choose a political representative and he will state to the power structure the desires of the black masses. If the desires are not met, the power structure will receive a political consequence. We will make it economically nonprofitable for the power structure to go on with its oppressive ways. We will then negotiate as equals. There will be a balance between the people who are economically powerful and the people who are potentially economically destructive.

Just as his own life had been a struggle, with pain that he recognized and had to tolerate and contain, Lincoln viewed all of American history as a struggle—one that the Founders foresaw and made contingencies for. “The assertion that ‘all men are created equal’ was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain,” Lincoln explained, “and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.” Slavery, Lincoln argued, presented just such a temptation, “now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves.” He argued that the South, in its advocacy of slavery, and the Douglas Democrats, in their apology for it, followed the same logic as that of kings and despots throughout the world who said that one group should work and another should benefit from it.