Light From Many Lamps Quotes

Life is an island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion. Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams, and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of an ocean of solitude and seclusion. Your life, my friend, is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains,secluded its happiness and far away in its compassion and hidden in its secrets and mysteries. I saw you, my friend, sitting upon a mound of gold, happy in your wealth and great in your riches and believing that a handful of gold is the secret chain that links the thoughts of the people with your own thoughts and links their feeling with your own. I saw you as a great conqueror leading a conquering army toward the fortress, then destroying and capturing it. On second glance I found beyond the wall of your treasures a heart trembling in its solitude and seclusion like the trembling of a thirsty man within a cage of gold and jewels, but without water. I saw you, my friend, sitting on a throne of glory surrounded by people extolling your charity, enumerating your gifts, gazing upon you as if they were in the presence of a prophet lifting their souls up into the planets and stars. I saw you looking at them, contentment and strength upon your face, as if you were to them as the soul is to the body. On the second look I saw your secluded self standing beside your throne, suffering in its seclusion and quaking in its loneliness. I saw that self stretching its hands as if begging from unseen ghosts. I saw it looking above the shoulders of the people to a far horizon, empty of everything except its solitude and seclusion. I saw you, my friend, passionately in love with a beautiful woman, filling her palms with your kisses as she looked at you with sympathy and affection in her eyes and sweetness of motherhood on her lips; I said, secretly, that love has erased his solitude and removed his seclusion and he is now within the eternal soul which draws toward itself, with love, those who were separated by solitude and seclusion. On the second look I saw behind your soul another lonely soul, like a fog, trying in vain to become a drop of tears in the palm of that woman. Your life, my friend, is a residence far away from any other residence and neighbors. Your inner soul is a home far away from other homes named after you. If this residence is dark, you cannot light it with your neighbor's lamp; if it is empty you cannot fill it with the riches of your neighbor; were it in the middle of a desert, you could not move it to a garden planted by someone else. Your inner soul, my friend, is surrounded with solitude and seclusion. Were it not for this solitude and this seclusion you would not be you and I would not be I. If it were not for that solitude and seclusion, I would, if I heard your voice, think myself to be speaking; yet, if I saw your face, i would imagine that I were looking into a mirror.

THE LAMPS ARE DIFFERENT BUT THE LIGHT IS THE SAME So many garish lamps in the dying brain’s lamp-show, Forget about them. Concentrate on the essence, concentrate on the Light. In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire, The Light streams towards you from all things, All people, all possible permutations of good, evil, thought, passion. The lamps are different, but the Light is the same. One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind, Endlessly emanating all things. One turning and burning diamond, One, one, one. Ground yourself, strip yourself down, To blind loving silence. Stay there, until you see You are gazing at the Light With its own ageless eyes

The world was young, the mountains green, No stain yet on the Moon was seen, No words were laid on stream or stone When Durin woke and walked alone. He named the nameless hills and dells; He drank from yet untasted wells; He stooped and looked in Mirrormere, And saw a crown of stars appear, As gems upon a silver thread, Above the shadow of his head. The world was fair, the mountains tall, In Elder Days before the fall Of mighty kings in Nargothrond And Gondolin, who now beyond The Western Seas have passed away: The world was fair in Durin's Day. A king he was on carven throne In many-pillared halls of stone With golden roof and silver floor, And runes of power upon the door. The light of sun and star and moon In shining lamps of crystal hewn Undimmed by cloud or shade of night There shone for ever fair and bright. There hammer on the anvil smote, There chisel clove, and graver wrote; There forged was blade, and bound was hilt; The delver mined, the mason built. There beryl, pearl, and opal pale, And metal wrought like fishes' mail, Buckler and corslet, axe and sword, And shining spears were laid in hoard. Unwearied then were Durin's folk; Beneath the mountains music woke: The harpers harped, the minstrels sang, And at the gates the trumpets rang. The world is grey, the mountains old, The forge's fire is ashen-cold; No harp is wrung, no hammer falls: The darkness dwells in Durin's halls; The shadow lies upon his tomb In Moria, in Khazad-dûm. But still the sunken stars appear In dark and windless Mirrormere; There lies his crown in water deep, Till Durin wakes again from sleep. -The Song of Durin

Magnus stopped dead. The room was illuminated only by a reading lamp; all the other light came from outside the windows. Alec was painted with streetlights and moonlight, shadows curling around his biceps and the slender indentations of his collarbones, his torso all smooth, sleek, bare skin until the dark line of his jeans. There were runes on the flat planes of his stomach and the silvery scars of old Marks snaked around his ribs, with one on the ridge of his hip. His head was bowed, his hair black as ink, his luminously pale skin white as paper. He looked like a piece of art, chiaroscuro, beautifully and wonderfully made. Magnus had heard the story of how the Nephilim were created many times. They must have forgotten to leave out the bit that said: And the Angel descended from on high and gave his chosen ones fantastic abs.

Light from Many Lamps, edited by Lillian Eichler Watson

Musical instruments in celebrating the praises of God would be no more suitable than the burning of incense, the lighting of lamps, and the restoration of the other shadows of the law. The Papists therefore, have foolishly borrowed, this, as well as many other things, from the Jews. Men who are fond of outward pomp may delight in that noise; but the simplicity which God recommends to us by the apostles is far more pleasing to him. Paul allows us to bless God in the public assembly of the saints, only in a known tongue (1 Corinthians 14:16) What shall we then say of chanting, which fills the ears with nothing but an empty sound?

He went often to her little cottage outside Dublin; often they spent their evenings alone. Little by little, as their thoughts entangled, they spoke of subjects less remote. Her companionship was like a warm soil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the dark to fall upon them, refraining from lighting the lamp. The dark discreet room, their isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them. This union exalted him, wore away the rough edges of his character, emotionalised his mental life.

But I guess my absolute favorite place, other than you, of course, is my house. I know, I know. My dad is there, so why would I want to be? But actually… After my dad and sister have gone to sleep at night, when everything is dark, I crawl out my window and up to the roof. There’s a little hidden valley between the ridges where I sit back against the chimney, sometimes for hours, dicking around on my phone, taking in the view, or sometimes I write you. I love it up there. I can see the tops of the trees, blowing in the night wind, the glow of the street lamps and stars, the sound of leaves rustling… I guess it makes me feel like anything is possible. The world isn’t always what’s right in front of you, you know? It’s below, it’s above, it’s out there somewhere. Every burn of every light inside every house I see when I look down from the rooftop has a story. Sometimes we just need to change our perspective. And when I look down at everything, I remember that there’s more out there than just what’s going on in my house—the bullshit with my dad, school, my future. I look at all those full houses, and I remember, I’m just one of many. It’s not to say we’re not special or important, but it’s comforting, I guess. You don’t feel so alone.

What crooked, blind, narrow, impassable, far-straying paths mankind has chosen, striving to attain eternal truth, while a whole straight road lay open before it, like the road leading to a magnificent dwelling meant for a king's mansion! Broader and more splendid than all other roads it is, lit by the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in the blind darkness. So many times already, though guided by a sense come down from heaven, they have managed to waver and go astray, have managed in broad daylight to get again into an impassable wilderness, have managed again to blow a blinding fog into each other's eyes, and, dragging themselves after marsh-lights, have managed finally to reach the abyss, only to ask one another in horror: where is the way out, where is the path?

When I reached the age of seventeen, I had one great companion. That companion was nothing but great books. Throughout my life, books enriched me. I would suggest and recommend all of you to read the following books: • Light from Many Lamps by Lillian Eichler • Empires of the Mind by Denis Waitley • Thirukkural by Thiruvalluvar • Everyday Greatness by Steven R. Covey • The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatma Gandhi

Her companionship was like a warm soil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the dark to fall upon them, refraining from lighting the lamp. The dark discreet room, their isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them.

To write, to be able to write, what does it mean? It means spending long hours dreaming before a white page, scribbling unconsciously, letting your pen play round a blot of ink and nibble at a half-formed word, scratching it, making it bristle with darts and adorning it with antennae and paws until it loses all resemblance to a legible word and turns into a fantastic insect or a fluttering creature half butterfly, half fairy. To write is to sit and stare, hypnotized, at the reflection of the window in the silver ink-stand, to feel the divine fever mounting to one's cheeks and forehead while the hand that writes grows blissfully numb upon the paper. It also means idle hours curled up in the hollow of the divan, and then the orgy of inspiration from which one emerges stupefied and aching all over, but already recompensed and ladened with treasures that one unloads slowly on to the virgin page in the little round pool of light under the lamp. To write is to pour one's innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one's hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god who guides it — and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower. To write is the joy and torment of the idle. Oh to write! From time to time I feel a need, sharp as thirst in summer, to note and to describe. And then I take up my pen again and attempt the perilous and elusive task of seizing and pinning down, under its flexible double-pointed jib, the many-hued, fugitive, thrilling adjective.… The attack does not last long; it is but the itching of an old scar.

the only light came from a lamp which threw a sharp white circle on melted candles, computer cables, empty beer bottles and butane cans, oil pastels boxed and loose, many catalogues raisonnés, books in German and English including Nabokov’s Despair

Silence is the fruit of the occupation; it hangs in branches, seeps from gutters….So many windows are dark. It’s as if the city has become a library of books in an unknown language, the houses great shelves of illegible volumes, the lamps all extinguished. But there is the machine in the attic at work again. A spark in the night.

To live the life is To be no cause of grief to anyone. To be kind to all people and to love them with a pure spirit. Should opposition or injury happen to us, to bear it, to be as kind as ever can be, and through all, to love the people. Should calamity exist in the greatest degree, to rejoice, for these things are the gifts and favors of God. To be silent concerning the faults of others, to pray for them, and to help them, through kindness, to correct their faults. To look always at the good and not at the bad. If a man has ten good qualities and one bad one, look at the ten and forget the one. And if a man has ten bad qualities and one good one, to look at the one and forget the ten. Never to allow ourselves to speak one unkind word about another, even though that other be our enemy. To do all of our deeds in kindness. To cut our hearts from ourselves and from the world. To be humble. To be servants of each other, and to know that we are less than anyone else. To be as one soul in many bodies, for the more we love each other, the nearer we shall be to God; but to know that our love, our unity, our obedience must not be by confession, but of reality. To act with cautiousness and wisdom. To be truthful. To be hospitable. To be reverent. To be the cause of healing for every sick one, a comforter for every sorrowful one, a pleasant water for every thirsty one. a heavenly table for every hungry one, a star to every horizon, a light for every lamp, a herald to everyone who yearns for the kingdom of God.

If there are fireflies this summer, they do not come down the rue Vauborel. Now it seems there are only shadows and silence. Silence is the fruit of the occupation; it hangs in branches, seeps from gutters. ... So many windows are dark. It's as if the city has become a library of books in an unknown language, the houses great shelves of illegible volumes, the lamps all extinguished.

He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the sensuous. And here the scent was thick and motionless. Costly marqueterie; Palissy candlesticks reflected in half-concealed mirrors framed in embossed silver; antique Nankin vases brimming with pot-pourri; in one comer a suit of Milanese armour, fluted, damasquinee, by Felippo Negroli; in another a tripod table of porphyry, spectrally repeating in its polished surface the opal hues of a vessel of old Venetian glass half filled with some topaz-coloured liqueur - such and many more tokens of a luxurious aestheticism wrought in the observer an immediate sense of pleasurable enervation. He noticed, with a swaying thrill of delight, that his feet were on a padded rug of Astrakhan - one of many, disposed eccentrically about the yellow tassellated-marble floor; and he noticed that the sole light in the chamber came from an iridescent globed lamp, fed with some fragrant oil, that hung near an alcove traversed by a veil of dark violet silk. ("The Accursed Cordonnier")

Marie-Neige was on the shore, near the light, a tin outline. She lifted the lamp above her head and called out his name and he said Yes and she turned. She could see the ribs on his body as he came into more and more light. She placed the lamp on the grass and picked up her cotton dress and began drying her hair, so it was no longer plastered around her face, then came nearer to him and rubbed his hair dry with the dress. So now they looked as they did in a room, or across a table, no longer appearing as strangers to each other. On his knees, behind her, he pulled her thighs back to him in a slow rocking, as if he wanted her now to search for him, the heat of her cave onto his coldness, missing each other, and she said his name again and he moved into her, her softness and the unknown warmth. How many stories were read between them in which they had discovered the codes of eventual love and said nothing in their shyness. She’d barely been touched by him—his cupped hands once on her shoulders, his hard grip when she pulled the splinter out of his eye, his holding her small hands across a table. It was as if they had both known what all this would be like, these doorways and reflections of each other, this cautious modesty and the secrets of herself she had hidden from others. All that witnessed them was a lamp in the grass. She moved back onto his lap so she could control their movement, slow him into more intimacy, so his hands could hold the quiver in her stomach and there could be an equal pleasure. They heard nothing, not the sterile thunder or the mock of the bird or the million insects carelessly yelling. Just their breath, as if they were dying beside each other.

The Undivided Wholeness of All Things Most mind-boggling of all are Bohm's fully developed ideas about wholeness. Because everything in the cosmos is made out of the seamless holographic fabric of the implicate order, he believes it is as meaningless to view the universe as composed of "parts, " as it is to view the different geysers in a fountain as separate from the water out of which they flow. An electron is not an "elementary particle. " It is just a name given to a certain aspect of the holomovement. Dividing reality up into parts and then naming those parts is always arbitrary, a product of convention, because subatomic particles, and everything else in the universe, are no more separate from one another than different patterns in an ornate carpet. This is a profound suggestion. In his general theory of relativity Einstein astounded the world when he said that space and time are not separate entities, but are smoothly linked and part of a larger whole he called the space-time continuum. Bohm takes this idea a giant step further. He says that everything in the universe is part of a continuum. Despite the apparent separateness of things at the explicate level, everything is a seamless extension of everything else, and ultimately even the implicate and explicate orders blend into each other. Take a moment to consider this. Look at your hand. Now look at the light streaming from the lamp beside you. And at the dog resting at your feet. You are not merely made of the same things. You are the same thing. One thing. Unbroken. One enormous something that has extended its uncountable arms and appendages into all the apparent objects, atoms, restless oceans, and twinkling stars in the cosmos. Bohm cautions that this does not mean the universe is a giant undifferentiated mass. Things can be part of an undivided whole and still possess their own unique qualities. To illustrate what he means he points to the little eddies and whirlpools that often form in a river. At a glance such eddies appear to be separate things and possess many individual characteristics such as size, rate, and direction of rotation, et cetera. But careful scrutiny reveals that it is impossible to determine where any given whirlpool ends and the river begins. Thus, Bohm is not suggesting that the differences between "things" is meaningless. He merely wants us to be aware constantly that dividing various aspects of the holomovement into "things" is always an abstraction, a way of making those aspects stand out in our perception by our way of thinking. In attempts to correct this, instead of calling different aspects of the holomovement "things, " he prefers to call them "relatively independent subtotalities. "10 Indeed, Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems, not only in science but in our lives and our society as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth without affecting the whole. We believe it is possible to treat parts of our body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty, and drug addiction, without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on. In his writings Bohm argues passionately that our current way of fragmenting the world into parts not only doesn't work, but may even lead to our extinction.

For what is the world if it lacks this heavenly and spiritual light which we have from theology? The teaching of the jurists and physicians has its place, and it is excellent, necessary, and very profitable. But if all are given to these studies, where will that heavenly light remain when scholars and students of theology are lacking? Of what benefit are gold, silver, good health, and for that matter, this whole life if this lamp of the Word has become extinct? And yet it is now fostered by few, although it really has need of the diligence and interest of very many and although it is retained only with difficulty, for the devil and the world hate it.

Many times she allowed the dark to fall upon them, refraining from lighting the lamp. The dark discreet room, their isolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them. This union exalted him, wore away the rough edges of his character, emotionalised his mental life. Sometimes he caught himself listening to the sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascend to an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his companion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal voice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul's incurable loneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own.

The remaining chain swung down, he wrenched the door out and he was free. The last thing he heard behind him was the oncoming stomp of running feet. Now began flight, that excruciating accompaniment to both the sleep-dream and the drug-dream as well. Down endless flights of stairs that seemed to have increased decimally since he had come up them so many days before. Four, fourteen, forty - there seemed no end to them, no bottom. Round and round he went, hand slapping at the worn guard-rail only at the turns to keep from bulleting head-on into the wall each time. The clamor had come out onto a landing high above him now, endless miles above him; a thin voice came shouting down the stair-well, "There he is! See him down there?" raising the hue and cry to the rest of the pack. Footsteps started cannonading down after him, like avenging thunder from on high. They only added wings to his effortless, almost cascading waterlike flight. Like a drunk, he was incapable of hurting himself. At one turning he went off his feet and rippled down the whole succeeding flight of stair-ribs like a wriggling snake. Then he got up again and plunged ahead, without consciousness of pain or smart. The whole staircase-structure seemed to hitch crazily from side to side with the velocity of his descent, but it was really he that was hitching. But behind him the oncoming thunder kept gaining. Then suddenly, after they'd kept on for hours, the stairs suddenly ended, he'd reached bottom at last. He tore out through a square of blackness at the end of the entrance-hall, and the kindly night received him, took him to itself - along with countless other things that stalk and kill and are dangerous if crossed. He had no knowledge of where he was; if he'd ever had, he'd lost it long ago. The drums of pursuit were still beating a rolling tattoo inside the tenement. He chose a direction at random, fled down the deserted street, the wand of light from a wan street-lamp flicking him in passing, so fast did he scurry by beneath it.

I pulled Slayer from its sheath and pushed the door open with my fingertips. It swung soundlessly on well-greased hinges. Through the hallway, I saw the living room lamp glowing with soothing yellow light. I smelled coffee. Who breaks into a house, turns on the lights, and makes coffee? I padded into the living room on soft feet, Slayer ready. “Loud and clumsy, like a baby rhino,” said a familiar voice. I stepped into the living room. Curran sat on my couch, reading my favorite paperback. His hair was back to its normal short length. His face was clean shaven. He looked nothing like the dark, demonic figure who shook a would-be god’s head on a field a month ago. I thought he had forgotten about me. I had been quite happy to stay forgotten. “The Princess Bride?” he said, flipping the book over. “What are you doing in my house?” Let himself in, had he? Made himself comfortable, as if he owned the place. “Did everything go well with Julie?” “Yes. She didn’t want to stay, but she’ll make friends quickly, and the staff seems sensible.” I watched him, not quite sure where we stood. “I meant to tell you but haven’t gotten a chance. Sorry about Bran. I didn’t like him, but he died well.” “Yes, he did. I’m sorry about your people. Many losses?” A shadow darkened his face. “A third.” He had taken a hundred with him. At least thirty people had never come back. The weight of their deaths pressed on both of us. Curran turned the book over in his hands. “You own words of power.” He knew what a word of power was. Lovely. I shrugged. “Picked up a couple here and there. What happened in the Gap was a one shot deal. I won’t be that powerful again.” At least not until the next flare. “You’re an interesting woman,” he said. “Your interest has been duly noted.” I pointed to the door. He put the book down. “As you wish.” He rose and walked past me. I lowered my sword, expecting him to pass, but suddenly he stepped in dangerously close. “Welcome home. I’m glad you made it. There is coffee in the kitchen for you.” My mouth gaped open. He inhaled my scent, bent close, about to kiss me . . . I just stood there like an idiot. Curran smirked and whispered in my ear instead. “Psych.” And just like that, he was out the door and gone. Oh boy.

The world was young, the mountains green, No stain yet on the Moon was seen, No words were laid on stream or stone When Durin woke and walked alone. He named the nameless hills and dells; He drank from yet untasted wells; He stooped and looked in Mirrormere, And saw a crown of stars appear, As gems upon a silver thread, Above the shadow of his head. The world was fair, the mountains tall, In Elder Days before the fall Of mighty kings in Nargothrond And Gondolin, who now beyond The Western Seas have passed away: The world was fair in Durin’s Day. A king he was on carven throne In many-pillared halls of stone With golden roof and silver floor, And runes of power upon the door. The light of sun and star and moon In shining lamps of crystal hewn Undimmed by cloud or shade of night There shone for ever fair and bright. There hammer on the anvil smote, There chisel clove, and graver wrote; There forged was blade, and bound was hilt; The delver mined, the mason built. There beryl, pearl, and opal pale, And metal wrought like fishes’ mail, Buckler and corslet, axe and sword, And shining spears were laid in hoard. Unwearied then were Durin’s folk; Beneath the mountains music woke: The harpers harped, the minstrels sang, And at the gates the trumpets rang. The world is grey, the mountains old, The forge’s fire is ashen-cold; No harp is wrung, no hammer falls: The darkness dwells in Durin’s halls; The shadow lies upon his tomb In Moria, in Khazad-dûm. But still the sunken stars appear In dark and windless Mirrormere; There lies his crown in water deep, Till Durin wakes again from sleep.

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable godhead of delight? Love is a flame; -- we have beaconed the world's night. A city: -- and we have built it, these and I. An emperor: -- we have taught the world to die. So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming.... These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such -- The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns.... Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass; -- All these have been my loves. And these shall pass, Whatever passes not, in the great hour, Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust. ---- Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers.... But the best I've known, Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies. Nothing remains. O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed, Praise you, "All these were lovely"; say, "He loved.

I was one among many women busy with the obscure daily tasks of the household. Why did you single me out and bring me away from the cool shelter of our common life? Love unexpressed is sacred. It shines like gems in the gloom of the hidden heart. In the light of the curious day it looks pitifully dark. Ah, you broke through the cover of my heart and dragged by trembling love into the open place, destroying for ever the shady corner where it hid its nest. The other women are the same as ever. No one has peeped into their inmost being, and they themselves know not their own secret. Lightly they smile, and weep, chatter, and work. Daily they go to the temple, light their lamps, and fetch water from the river. I hoped my love would be saved from the shivering shame of the shelterless, but you turn your face away. Yes, your path lies open before you, but you have cut off my return, and left me stripped naked before the world with its lidless eyes staring night and day.

No, certainly. We shall not have to explore our way into a hall dimly lighted by the expiring embers of a wood fire—nor be obliged to spread our beds on the floor of a room without windows, doors, or furniture. But you must be aware that when a young lady is (by whatever means) introduced into a dwelling of this kind, she is always lodged apart from the rest of the family. While they snugly repair to their own end of the house, she is formally conducted by Dorothy, the ancient housekeeper, up a different staircase, and along many gloomy passages, into an apartment never used since some cousin or kin died in it about twenty years before. Can you stand such a ceremony as this? Will not your mind misgive you when you find yourself in this gloomy chamber—too lofty and extensive for you, with only the feeble rays of a single lamp to take in its size—its walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as large as life, and the bed, of dark green stuff or purple velvet, presenting even a funereal appearance? Will not your heart sink within you?” “Oh! But this will not happen to me, I am sure.” “How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! And what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fireplace the portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your eyes from it. Dorothy, meanwhile, no less struck by your appearance, gazes on you in great agitation, and drops a few unintelligible hints. To raise your spirits, moreover, she gives you reason to suppose that the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs you that you will not have a single domestic within call. With this parting cordial she curtsies off—you listen to the sound of her receding footsteps as long as the last echo can reach you—and when, with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover, with increased alarm, that it has no lock.

Thus Epicurus also, when he designs to destroy the natural fellowship of mankind, at the same time makes use of that which he destroys. For what does he say? ‘Be not deceived, men, nor be led astray, nor be mistaken: there is no natural fellowship among rational animals; believe me. But those who say otherwise, deceive you and seduce you by false reasons.’—What is this to you? Permit us to be deceived. Will you fare worse, if all the rest of us are persuaded that there is a natural fellowship among us, and that it ought by all means to be preserved? Nay, it will be much better and safer for you. Man, why do you trouble yourself about us? Why do you keep awake for us? Why do you light your lamp? Why do you rise early? Why do you write so many books, that no one of us may be deceived about the gods and believe that they take care of men; or that no one may suppose the nature of good to be other than pleasure? For if this is so, lie down and sleep, and lead the life of a worm, of which you judged yourself worthy: eat and drink, and enjoy women, and ease yourself, and snore. And what is it to you, how the rest shall think about these things, whether right or wrong? For what have we to do with you? You take care of sheep because they supply us with wool and milk, and last of all with their flesh. Would it not be a desirable thing if men could be lulled and enchanted by the Stoics, and sleep and present themselves to you and to those like you to be shorn and milked? For this you ought to say to your brother Epicureans: but ought you not to conceal it from others, and particularly before every thing to persuade them, that we are by nature adapted for fellowship, that temperance is a good thing; in order that all things may be secured for you? Or ought we to maintain this fellowship with some and not with others? With whom then ought we to maintain it? With such as on their part also maintain it, or with such as violate this fellowship? And who violate it more than you who establish such doctrines? What then was it that waked Epicurus from his sleepiness, and compelled him to write what he did write?

... man is generous with the word "fool" and is ready to serve it up to his neighbor twenty times a day. It is enough to have one stupid side out of ten to be accounted a fool, aside from the nine good ones ... in the world chronicle of mankind there are many whole centuries which, it would seem, should be crossed out and abolished as unnecessary. There have been many errors in the world which, it would seem, even a child would not make now. What crooked, blind, narrow, impassable, far-straying paths mankind has chosen, striving to attain eternal truth, while a whole straight road lay open before it, like the road leading to a magnificent dwelling meant for a king's mansions! Broader and more splendid than all other roads it is, lit by the sun and illumined all night by lamps, yet people have flowed past it in the blind darkness. So many times already, though guided by a sense come down from heaven, they have managed to waver and go astray, have managed in broad daylight to get again into an impassable wilderness, have managed again to blow a blinding fog into each other's eyes, and, dragging themselves after marsh-lights, have managed finally to reach the abyss, only to ask one another in horror: where is the way out, where is the path? The current generation now sees everything clearly, it marvels at the errors, it laughs at the folly of its ancestors, not seeing that this chronicle is all overscored by divine fire, that every letter of it cries out, that from everywhere the piercing finger is pointed at it, at this current generation; but the current generation laughs and presumptuously, proudly begins a series of new errors, at which their descendants will also laugh afterwards.

Eastern Standard Time Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address only those in my own time zone, this proper slice of longitude that runs from pole to snowy pole down the globe through Montreal to Bogota. Oh, fellow inhabitants of this singular band, sitting up in your many beds this morning— the sun falling through the windows and casting a shadow on the sundial— consider those in other zones who cannot hear these words. They are not slipping into a bathrobe as we are, or following the smell of coffee in a timely fashion. Rather, they are at work already, leaning on copy machines, hammering nails into a house-frame. They are not swallowing a vitamin like us; rather they are smoking a cigarette under a half moon, even jumping around on a dance floor, or just now sliding under the covers, pulling down the little chains on their bed lamps. But we are not like these others, for at this very moment on the face of the earth, we are standing under a hot shower, or we are eating our breakfast, considered by people of all zones to be the most important meal of the day. Later, when the time is right, we might sit down with the boss, wash the car, or linger at a candle-lit table, but now is the hour for pouring the juice and flipping the eggs with one eye on the toaster. So let us slice a banana and uncap the jam, lift our brimming spoons of milk, and leave it to the others to lower a flag or spin absurdly in a barber's chair— those antipodal oddballs, always early or late. Let us praise Sir Stanford Fleming the Canadian genius who first scored with these lines the length of the spinning earth. Let us move together through the rest of this day passing in unison from light to shadow, coasting over the crest of noon into the valley of the evening and then, holding hands, slip into the deeper valley of night.

Many a time when I sat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have watched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few moments groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar upward with joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and sporting around her, so that she seemed a very centre of innocent delight. When I have walked with her amidst the rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would scent or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress of her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the fashion among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their foreheads a circlet, or coronet, with gems resembling opals, arranged in four points or rays like stars. These are lustreless in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand they take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. This serves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in their wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have to traverse the dark. There are times, when I have seen Zee’s thoughtful majesty of face lighted up by this crowning halo, that I could scarcely believe her to be a creature of mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the vision of a being among the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feel for this lofty type of the noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love. Is it that, among the race I belong to, man’s pride so far influences his passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman if he feels her to be in all things eminently superior to himself? But by what strange infatuation could this peerless daughter of a race which, in the supremacy of its powers and the felicity of its conditions, ranked all other races in the category of barbarians, have deigned to honour me with her preference?

Why reinvent the light bulb Did you have a problem with the burning light? Thanks to Thomas Edison’s effort, we don’t need to invent a flashlight, we just go to the store or our closet and pull one out and fuck in. I’m sure you realize that Thomas Edison took many attempts before the lamp was mastered by someone who once asked him if he discouraged his failure and said, “Cut, I haven’t failed yet, I’ve discovered another way not to make a light lamp. You see, there’s nothing like failure, there’s just results. Someone once said that defining madness is doing something over and over and getting the same results. To do our lives right, we have to change the things we do. Just like light can burn, so we can. Life can become dark and depressed and we feel no light, no hope of sight. This picture is certainly not clear. Let me highlight this situation (intentional). When we feel down and deep in the hole, that’s when we need light to see our way through. Some of us are lucky enough to have some light on our hands, others have to come out and get it back. Many people try to invent light for themselves by thinking about positive ideas, but so far it takes them. It just gives a lot of light and there’s more light available, but people at a secondary level are about how to get it. We must not be like Thomas Edison, continue to look at the problem and think of ways to solve it. For every problem, there’s a solution. How do we find a solution? We can try, as we have said, to try to figure it out ourselves, or we can find someone who has already crossed this obstacle and do what they did. There are many books on the market today that can help us understand how to overcome obstacles in our lives. We have to read and learn from the failure of others, they’ve been through it before, and they can help teach us how to go through it. We all need more light in our lives and sometimes we can’t see light at the end of the tunnel, but there’s always hope and assistance. You know how others overcome their challenges and keep this education in you even when you feel weak and life seems bad. Don’t try to reinvent the light lamp. Learn how to carry light in yourself.

After dinner Karamenaios would drop in. We had about fifty words with which to make lingual currency. We didn't even need that many, as I soon discovered. There are a thousand ways of talking and words don't help if the spirit is absent. Karamenaios and I were eager to talk. lt made little difference to me whether we talked about the war or about knives and forks. Sometimes we discovered that a word or phrase which we had been using for days, he in English or I in Greek, meant something entirely different than we had thought it to mean. It made no difference. We understood one another even with the wrong words. I could learn five new words in an evening and forget six or eight during my sleep. The important thing was the warm handclasp, the light in the eyes, the grapes which we devoured in common, the glass we raised to our lips in sign of friendship. Now and then I would get excited and, using a melange of English, Greek, German, French, Choctaw, Eskimo, Swahili or any other tongue I felt would serve the purpose, using the chair, the table, the spoon, the lamp, the bread knife, I would enact for him a fragment of my life in New York, Paris, London, Chula Vista, Canarsie, Hackensack or in some place I had never been or some place I had been in a dream or when lying asleep on the operating table. Sometimes I felt so good, so versatile and acrobatic, that I would stand on the table and sing in some unknown language or hop from the table to the commode and from the commode to the staircase or swing from the rafters, anything to entertain him, keep him amused, make him roll from side to side with laughter. I was considered an old man in the village because of my bald pate and fringe of white hair. Nobody had ever seen an old man cut up the way I did. "The old man is going for a swim," they would say. "The old man is taking the boat out." Always "the old man." If a storm came up and they knew I was out in the middle of the pond they would send someone out to see that "the old man" got in safely. If I decided to take a jaunt through the hills Karamenaios would offer to accompany me so that no harm would come to me. If I got stranded somewhere I had only to announce that I was an American and at once a dozen hands were ready to help me.

The blinking message light on the phone screamed at us when we walked into the bedroom of our suite. Marlboro Man audibly exhaled, clearly wishing the world--and his brother and the grain markets and the uncertainties of agriculture--would leave us alone already. I wish they’d leave us alone, too. In light of the recent developments, though, Marlboro Man picked up the phone and dialed Tim to get an update. I excused myself to the bathroom to freshen up and put on a champagne satin negligee in an effort to thwart the external forces that were trying to rob me of my husband’s attention. I brushed my teeth and spritzed myself with Jil Sander perfume before opening the door to the bedroom, where I would seduce my Marlboro Man away from his worries. I knew I could win if only I applied myself. He was just getting off the phone when I entered the room. “Dammit,” I heard him mumble as he plopped down onto the enormous king-size bed. Oh no. Jil Sander had her work cut out for her. I climbed on the bed and lay beside him, resting my head on his arm. He draped his arm across my waist. I draped my leg around his. He sighed. “The markets are totally in the shitter.” I didn’t know the details, but I did know the shitter wasn’t a good place. I wanted to throw out the usual platitudes. Don’t worry about it, try not to think about it, we’ll figure it out, everything will be okay. But I didn’t know enough about it. I knew he and his brother owned a lot of land. I knew they worked hard to pay for it. I knew they weren’t lawyers or physicians by profession and didn’t have a whole separate income to supplement their ranching operation. As full-time ranchers, their livelihoods were completely reliant on so many things outside of their control--weather, market fluctuations, supply, demand, luck. I knew they weren’t home free in terms of finances--Marlboro Man and I had talked about it. But I didn’t understand enough about the ramifications of this current wrinkle to reassure him that everything would be okay, businesswise. And he probably didn’t want me to. So I did the only thing I could think of to do. I assured my new husband everything would be okay between us by leaning over, turning off the lamp, and letting the love between us--which had zero to do with markets or grains--take over.

There are pieces to the puzzle missing,' Camas said. He was tugging his hair; his eyes glowed eerily in the red light from a stained-glass lamp. 'And pieces that don't yet fit. What, for instance, precipitates the shift from city to shadow city? Is it sorcery? Has it to do with the precarious state of affairs in the House of Greve? The powerless heir, the bastard who cannot act? What secrets are hidden within the secret palace? What is there to gain by anticipating and surviving the shift? Domina Pearl believes that it is possible, if one can remain aware during the transformation, to amass enormous knowledge and power. To rule the shadow city when it emerges, since no one else will remember the previous city, and who ruled then. All will be accepted as it is revealed. All of which is why I am so eager to speak with you. You live in Ombria's past, its ghosts and memories. How far back do you remember? Were you alive before the previous shift? How many transformations have there been? Many? One? None at all? How old are you?' The illusion of Faey inclined her head gracefully; Camas continued without listening for answers. Faey spoke then, her voice sliding within, beneath his words. 'What do you expect to gain form what you call the transformation?' Camas interrupted his own sentence with a word. 'Enlightenment. And the power that comes with an unbroken memory of the history of the city. Domina Pearl's knowledge of sorcery may not survive the transformation if she herself is not aware of the shift. I want to stay alive, be aware of the shift form city to shadow, and I will ally myself and my abilities to anyone powerful enough to maintain the integrity of existence, knowledge, memory and experience through the transformation.' 'Such as Domina Pearl?' the sorceress suggested. She kept her voice light, careless, but her eyes were very dark. 'Domina Pearl,' Camas agreed. 'Or you. Or perhaps even Ducon. He is another puzzle piece, I think. He is drawn to the hidden palace, and to the odd, unnoticed places in Ombria where the boundaries are visible between the city and its shadow. He draws them constantly.' 'So you would pledge your loyalty to him or betray him, depending on the moment?' 'Or her. Or you,' Camas answered, nodding briskly. Mag stared at him with wonder. 'Exactly. Depending on the moment.

I have been so great a lover: filled my days So proudly with the splendour of Love's praise, The pain, the calm, and the astonishment, Desire illimitable, and still content, And all dear names men use, to cheat despair, For the perplexed and viewless streams that bear Our hearts at random down the dark of life. Now, ere the unthinking silence on that strife Steals down, I would cheat drowsy Death so far, My night shall be remembered for a star That outshone all the suns of all men's days. Shall I not crown them with immortal praise Whom I have loved, who have given me, dared with me High secrets, and in darkness knelt to see The inenarrable godhead of delight? Love is a flame:—we have beaconed the world's night. A city:—and we have built it, these and I. An emperor:—we have taught the world to die. So, for their sakes I loved, ere I go hence, And the high cause of Love's magnificence, And to keep loyalties young, I'll write those names Golden for ever, eagles, crying flames, And set them as a banner, that men may know, To dare the generations, burn, and blow Out on the wind of Time, shining and streaming . . . . These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed with blue lines; and feathery, faery dust; Wet roofs, beneath the lamp-light; the strong crust Of friendly bread; and many-tasting food; Rainbows; and the blue bitter smoke of wood; And radiant raindrops couching in cool flowers; And flowers themselves, that sway through sunny hours, Dreaming of moths that drink them under the moon; Then, the cool kindliness of sheets, that soon Smooth away trouble; and the rough male kiss Of blankets; grainy wood; live hair that is Shining and free; blue-massing clouds; the keen Unpassioned beauty of a great machine; The benison of hot water; furs to touch; The good smell of old clothes; and other such— The comfortable smell of friendly fingers, Hair's fragrance, and the musty reek that lingers About dead leaves and last year's ferns. . . . Dear names, And thousand other throng to me! Royal flames; Sweet water's dimpling laugh from tap or spring; Holes in the ground; and voices that do sing; Voices in laughter, too; and body's pain, Soon turned to peace; and the deep-panting train; Firm sands; the little dulling edge of foam That browns and dwindles as the wave goes home; And washen stones, gay for an hour; the cold Graveness of iron; moist black earthen mould; Sleep; and high places; footprints in the dew; And oaks; and brown horse-chestnuts, glossy-new; And new-peeled sticks; and shining pools on grass;— All these have been my loves. And these shall pass, Whatever passes not, in the great hour, Nor all my passion, all my prayers, have power To hold them with me through the gate of Death. They'll play deserter, turn with the traitor breath, Break the high bond we made, and sell Love's trust And sacramented covenant to the dust. ——Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers. . . . But the best I've known Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown About the winds of the world, and fades from brains Of living men, and dies. Nothing remains. O dear my loves, O faithless, once again This one last gift I give: that after men Shall know, and later lovers, far-removed, Praise you, 'All these were lovely'; say, 'He loved.

There are many who profess to be religious and speak of themselves as Christians, and, according to one such, “as accepting the scriptures only as sources of inspiration and moral truth,” and then ask in their smugness: “Do the revelations of God give us a handrail to the kingdom of God, as the Lord’s messenger told Lehi, or merely a compass?” Unfortunately, some are among us who claim to be Church members but are somewhat like the scoffers in Lehi’s vision—standing aloof and seemingly inclined to hold in derision the faithful who choose to accept Church authorities as God’s special witnesses of the gospel and his agents in directing the affairs of the Church. There are those in the Church who speak of themselves as liberals who, as one of our former presidents has said, “read by the lamp of their own conceit.” (Joseph F. Smith, Gospel Doctrine [Deseret Book Co., 1939], p. 373.) One time I asked one of our Church educational leaders how he would define a liberal in the Church. He answered in one sentence: “A liberal in the Church is merely one who does not have a testimony.” Dr. John A. Widtsoe, former member of the Quorum of the Twelve and an eminent educator, made a statement relative to this word liberal as it applied to those in the Church. This is what he said: “The self-called liberal [in the Church] is usually one who has broken with the fundamental principles or guiding philosophy of the group to which he belongs. . . . He claims membership in an organization but does not believe in its basic concepts; and sets out to reform it by changing its foundations. . . . “It is folly to speak of a liberal religion, if that religion claims that it rests upon unchanging truth.” And then Dr. Widtsoe concludes his statement with this: “It is well to beware of people who go about proclaiming that they are or their churches are liberal. The probabilities are that the structure of their faith is built on sand and will not withstand the storms of truth.” (“Evidences and Reconciliations,” Improvement Era, vol. 44 [1941], p. 609.) Here again, to use the figure of speech in Lehi’s vision, they are those who are blinded by the mists of darkness and as yet have not a firm grasp on the “iron rod.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when there are questions which are unanswered because the Lord hasn’t seen fit to reveal the answers as yet, all such could say, as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said, “I accept all I read in the Bible that I can understand, and accept the rest on faith.” . . . Wouldn’t it be a great thing if all who are well schooled in secular learning could hold fast to the “iron rod,” or the word of God, which could lead them, through faith, to an understanding, rather than to have them stray away into strange paths of man-made theories and be plunged into the murky waters of disbelief and apostasy? . . . Cyprian, a defender of the faith in the Apostolic Period, testified, and I quote, “Into my heart, purified of all sin, there entered a light which came from on high, and then suddenly and in a marvelous manner, I saw certainty succeed doubt.” . . . The Lord issued a warning to those who would seek to destroy the faith of an individual or lead him away from the word of God or cause him to lose his grasp on the “iron rod,” wherein was safety by faith in a Divine Redeemer and his purposes concerning this earth and its peoples. The Master warned: “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better … that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6.) The Master was impressing the fact that rather than ruin the soul of a true believer, it were better for a person to suffer an earthly death than to incur the penalty of jeopardizing his own eternal destiny.

I highly recommend a crystal salt lamp in the room to help to balance the ions and improve the electro-magnetic balance of the air. The benefits of these naturally beautiful lamps are well known. While most ionizers on the market are just so many more man-made machines, the salt crystal lamp is a beautiful alternative of Mother Nature, without any noise and no harmful ozone added to our homes. Salt crystal lamps are highly beneficial for daily use in the whole house. Bed rooms, living rooms, dining rooms, and especially near televisions, computers and around smokers, to neutralize the damage being put out from those sources. Use these lovely lamps to reduce your own fatigue, a crystal salt lamp near your child’s computer will minimize the ill effect of all that radiation and bring a soothing effect to the surroundings of your child’s work area; they improve concentration and refresh the child naturally by neutralizing the effects of an artificial environment. Please place a small crystal salt light in your child’s

ave you thought of your family photos as a collection? One of my tables held photos of many generations of women in our family. I displayed them in a variety of frames, and the mother-daughter-granddaughter theme pulled the collection together. No one could resist stopping and taking a peek. Group as black-and-white photos or formal or informal in groups. Another idea is to keep the same frames but change the photos for the seasons. If you have a ton of photos, rotate them so you can enjoy your entire collection. And for a designer touch, add a surprise to your grouping-something that doesn't "match," such as that silly picture of your Aunt Lily. The idea is to share yourself with others in a way that is interesting. ant to change your room? Put two lamps of different sizes on a side table with books, a small clock, a pot of flowers, or a ceramic creation. These change the look and provide better lighting. Your coffee table is an ideal spot for a plant or a terracotta pot with candles. For a softer look, add a throw rug made of mohair or wool-something warm and inviting. And I don't know about you, but I like bookshelves in the living room-complete with books, family pictures, and a mixture of the things I collect. I also love to frame favorite scriptures to welcome me as I go from room to room.

Until this night, this awful night, he’d had a little joke about himself. He didn’t know who he was, or where he’d come from, but he knew what he liked. And what he liked was all around him-the flower stands on the corners, the big steel and glass buildings filled with milky evening light, the trees, of course, the grass beneath his feet. And the telephones-it didn’t matter. He liked to figure them out, master them, then crush them into tiny hard multicolored balls which he could then juggle or toss through plate glass windows when nobody was about. He liked piano music, the motion pictures, and the poems he found in books. He also liked the automobiles that burnt oil from the earth like lamps. And the great jet planes that flew on the same scientific principles, above the clouds. He always stopped and listened to the people laughing and talking up there when one of the people laughing and talking up there when one of the planes flew overhead. Driving was an extraordinary pleasure. In a silver Mercedes-Benz, he had sped on smooth empty roads from Rome to Florence to Venice in one night. He also liked television-the entire electric process of it, with tiny bits of lights. How soothing it was to have the company of the television, the intimacy with so many artfully painted faces speaking to you in friendship from the glowing screen. The rock and roll, he liked that too. He liked the music. He liked the Vampire Lestat singing “Requiem for the Marquise”. He didn’t pay attention to the words much. It was the melancholy and the dark undertone of drums and cymbals. Made him want to dance. He liked the giant yellow machines that dug into the earth late at night in the big cities with men in uniforms, crawling all over them; he liked the double-decker buses of London, and the people-the clever mortals everywhere-he liked, too, of course. He liked walking in Damascus during the evening, and seeing in sudden flashes of disconnected memory the city of the ancients. Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians in these streets. He liked the libraries where he could find photographs of ancient monuments in big smooth good-smelling books. He took his own photographs of the new cities around him and sometimes he could put images on those pictures which came from his thoughts. For example, in his photograph of Rome there were Roman people in tunics and sandals superimposed upon the modern versions in their thick ungraceful clothes. Oh, yes, much to like around him always-the violin music of Bartók, little girls in snow white dresses coming out of the church at midnight having sung at the Christmas mass. He liked the blood of his victims too, of course. That went without saying. It was no part of his little joke. Death was not funny to him. He stalked his prey in silence; he didn’t want to know his victims. All a mortal had to do was speak to him and he was turned away. Not proper, as he saw it, to talk to these sweet, soft-eyed things and then gobble their blood, break their bones and lick the marrow, squeeze their limbs to dripping pulp. And that was the way he feasted now, so violently. He felt no great need for blood anymore; but he wanted it. And the desire overpowered him in all its ravening purity, quite apart from the thirst. He could have feasted upon three or four mortals a night.

The boys married nymphs and the girls married would gods and river gods. The lamp post which the witch had planted (without knowing it) shone day and night in the Narnian forest, so that the place where it grew came to be called Lantern Waste; and in, many years later, another child from our world got into Narnia, on a snowy night, she found the light still burning.

Anne sprang to her feet, knowing at once what that paper contained. The pass list was out! Her head whirled and her heart beat until it hurt her. She could not move a step. It seemed an hour to her before Diana came rushing along the hall and burst into the room without even knocking, so great was her excitement. “Anne, you’ve passed,” she cried, “passed the very first—you and Gilbert both—you’re ties—but your name is first. Oh, I’m so proud!” Diana flung the paper on the table and herself on Anne’s bed, utterly breathless and incapable of further speech. Anne lighted the lamp, oversetting the match safe and using up half a dozen matches before her shaking hands could accomplish the task. Then she snatched up the paper. Yes, she had passed—there was her name at the very top of a list of two hundred! That moment was worth living for. “You did just splendidly, Anne,” puffed Diana, recovering sufficiently to sit up and speak, for Anne, starry eyed and rapt, had not uttered a word. “Father brought the paper home from Bright River not ten minutes ago—it came out on the afternoon train, you know, and won’t be here till tomorrow by mail—and when I saw the pass list I just rushed over like a wild thing. You’ve all passed, every one of you, Moody Spurgeon and all, although he’s conditioned in history. Jane and Ruby did pretty well—they’re halfway up—and so did Charlie. Josie just scraped through with three marks to spare, but you’ll see she’ll put on as many airs as if she’d led. Won’t Miss Stacy be delighted? Oh, Anne, what does it feel like to see your name at the head of a pass list like that? If it were me I know I’d go crazy with joy. I am pretty near crazy as it is, but you’re as calm and cool as a spring evening.” “I’m just dazzled inside,” said Anne. “I want to say a hundred things, and I can’t find words to say them in. I never dreamed of this—yes, I did too, just once! I let myself think once, ‘What if I should come out first?’ quakingly, you know, for it seemed so vain and presumptuous to think I could lead the Island. Excuse me a minute, Diana. I must run right out to the field to tell Matthew. Then we’ll go up the road and tell the good news to the others.

He rose and standing in the dark he began to chant in a deep voice, while the echoes ran away into the roof. The world was young, the mountains green, No stain yet on the Moon was seen, No words were laid on stream or stone When Durin woke and walked alone. He named the nameless hills and dells; He drank from yet untasted wells; He stooped and looked in Mirrormere, And saw a crown of stars appear, As gems upon a silver thread, Above the shadow of his head. The world was fair, the mountains tall, In Elder Days before the fall Of mighty kings in Nargothrond And Gondolin, who now beyond The Western Seas have passed away: The world was fair in Durin’s Day. A king he was on carven throne In many-pillared halls of stone With golden roof and silver floor, And runes of power upon the door. The light of sun and star and moon In shining lamps of crystal hewn Undimmed by cloud or shade of night There shone for ever fair and bright. There hammer on the anvil smote, There chisel clove, and graver wrote; There forged was blade, and bound was hilt; The delver mined, the mason built. There beryl, pearl, and opal pale, And metal wrought like fishes’ mail, Buckler and corslet, axe and sword, And shining spears were laid in hoard. Unwearied then were Durin’s folk; Beneath the mountains music woke: The harpers harped, the minstrels sang, And at the gates the trumpets rang. The world is grey, the mountains old, The forge’s fire is ashen-cold; No harp is wrung, no hammer falls: The darkness dwells in Durin’s halls; The shadow lies upon his tomb In Moria, in Khazad-dûm. But still the sunken stars appear In dark and windless Mirrormere; There lies his crown in water deep, Till Durin wakes again from sleep. ‘I

He raised the leather curtain and showed us into the next room. “Little study” is not how I would have described it; it was spacious, with walls of exquisite antique shelving crammed with handsomely bound books all of venerable age. What impressed me more than the books were some small glass cases filled with objects hard to identify—they looked like stones. And there were little animals, whether stuffed, mummified, or delicately reproduced I couldn’t say. Everything was bathed in a diffuse crepuscular light that came from a large double-mullioned window at the end, with leaded diamond panes of transparent amber. The light from the window blended with that of a great lamp on a dark mahogany table covered with papers. It was one of those lamps sometimes found on reading tables in old libraries, with a dome of green glass that could cast a white oval on the page while leaving the surroundings in an opalescent penumbra. This play of two sources of light, both unnatural, somehow enlivened the polychrome of the ceiling. The ceiling was vaulted, supported on all four sides by a decorative fiction: little brick-red columns with tiny gilded capitals. The many trompe l’oeil images, divided into seven areas, enhanced the effect of depth, and the whole room had the feeling of a mortuary chapel, impalpably sinful, melancholy, sensual.

Before we conclude that human cognitive mechanisms are riddled with biases and errors of judgment, we need to ask which adaptive problems human cognitive mechanisms evolved to solve and what would be “sound judgment” or “successful reasoning” from an evolutionary perspective. If humans have trouble locating their cars by color at night in parking lots illuminated with sodium vapor lamps, we would not conclude that our visual system is riddled with errors. Our eyes were designed to perceive the color of objects under natural, not artificial, light (Shepard, 1992). Many of the research programs that have documented “biases” in judgment, it turns out, have used artificial, evolutionarily unprecedented experimental stimuli that are analogous to sodium vapor lamps. Many, for example, require subjects to make probability judgments based on a single event (Gigerenzer, 1991, 1998). “Reliable numerical statements about the probability of a single event were rare or nonexistent in the Pleistocene—a conclusion reinforced by the relative poverty of number terms in modern band level societies” (Tooby & Cosmides, 1998 p. 40). A specific woman cannot have a 35 percent chance of being pregnant; she either is pregnant or is not, so probabilities hardly make sense when applied to a single case.

the Universe at large is the energy source, the client is a lamp (seeking some form of light, be it to shine a light on a problem perhaps, or to lighten a burden they are carrying, or to lighten their spirits), the facilitator is nothing more than the plug that connects the two. She has no part to play beyond connection and possibly translation. Whether the lamp/client chooses to emit light, absorb light, allow light in is entirely up to them. Sometimes people can be so far removed from the reality of who they are, resulting from many wrong turns or mis steps along their life path, that it is difficult for them to light up. It’s taken me many years. Surviving my life had somehow smashed all the lights in my existence and I had stumbled in the dark for most of it. Through this work though, I was beginning to see light again. Perhaps one day I would have the courage to let it shine brightly.

Many Christians also take a “passive trust” approach to seeking guidance and direction from the Lord. They think that knowing God’s will comes as God reveals his secret plan to them; then they will know what to do. But guidance is really a matter of obedient, active trust. I examine the options before me using the principles, themes, and perspectives of Scripture. Then, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I apply biblical wisdom and make a decision. My decision is not based on reading God’s mind, but on things he has clearly revealed in his Word. As I step forward, I entrust myself to the Lord, knowing that he rules over everything and will place me where he wants me. This is the biblical model of guidance. Too many people have their “Christian divining rods” out in hopes of discovering the secret will of God. Meanwhile, the Bible in their hands is unopened—the thing God has said will be a “lamp to their feet and a light to their path”!

There were five of these commandments. The First Commandment (Matthew v, 21-6) was that man must not only refrain from killing, he must not become angry with his brother, must not consider anyone to be raca, of no consequence, and if he should quarrel he must first be reconciled before bringing a gift to God, that is before praying. The Second Commandment (Matthew v, 27-32) was that man must not only refrain from adultery, he must avoid lusting after womanly beauty, and one joined to a woman he never be unfaithful to her. The Third Commandment (Matthew v, 33-7) was that man must swear no oaths. The Fourth Commandment (Matthew v, 38-42) was that man must not only refrain from taking an eye for an eye, but must turn the other cheek when smitten on one, must forgive injuries and humbly bear them and never refuse people that which they desire of him. The Fifth Commandment (Matthew v, 43-8) was that man must not only refrain from hating his enemies, and waging war against them, but must love, help and serve them. Nekhlyudov fixed his gaze on the light coming from the burning lamp, and his heart stopped. Recalling all the ugliness of our lives, he started to imagine what this life could be like if only people were educated in the principles, and his soul was filled with the kind of rapture he had not known for a very long time. It was as if he had suddenly found peace and freedom after a long period of anguish and pain. He did not sleep that night, and, as so often happens with many, many people reading the Gospels for the first time, as he read he came to a full understanding of words he had heard read many times before without taking in what they said. All that was revealed to him in that book as vital, important and joyful he drank in like a sponge soaking up water. And all that he read seemed familiar, seemed to confirm and full acknowledge things he had known for a very long time without accepting or believing them. But now he accepted and believed. But more that that: as well as accepting and believing that by obeying these commandments people will attain the highest of all possible blessings, he now accepted and believed that obeying these commandments is all that a person has to do, the only thing makes sense in human life, and that any departure from this is a mistake leading to instant retribution. This emerged from the teaching as a whole but with particular strength and clarity from the parable of the vineyard. The workers in the vineyard had come to imagine that the garden where they had been sent to work for the master was their own property, and that everything in it had been put there for their benefit, and all they had to do was to enjoy life in the garden, forget all about the master and put to death anybody who reminded them of the master and their duty towards him. ‘This is just what we are doing,’ thought Nekhlyudov, ‘living in the absurd conviction that we are masters of our own lives, and that life is given to us purely for our enjoyment. Yet this is patently absurd. Surely, if we have been sent here it must be at someone’s behest and for a purpose. But we have decided that we live only for our gratification, and naturally life turns sour on us, as it turns sour on a worker who fails to follow his master’s will. And the will of the master is expressed in these commandments. People only have to obey these commandments and the kingdom of God will be established on earth, and the people will receive the highest of all possible blessings. ‘See ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and the all the rest shall be added on to you.’ And although we are seeking ‘all the rest’, we obviously cannot find it. ‘So this is what my life is all about. As one part comes to an end, another begins.

God’s Word holds out the promise of rich benefits for those who spend time reading it and taking its truths to heart. Here are just seven of the many ways your life can be better as you make the Bible your daily reading companion. All seven come from Psalm 119—a magnificent song of praise for God’s Word.    1. The Bible will help keep you from sin. “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (verse 11).    2. The Bible will lift your burdens. “I weep with sorrow; encourage me by your word” (verse 28).    3. The Bible will guide your steps. “Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path” (verse 105).    4. The Bible will bring you joy. “Your laws are my treasure; they are my heart’s delight” (verse 111).    5. The Bible will lead you to wisdom. “The teaching of your word gives light, so even the simple can understand” (verse 130).    6. The Bible will give you peace. “Those who love your instructions have great peace and do not stumble” (verse 165).    7. The Bible will bring you back to God. “I have wandered away like a lost sheep; come and find me, for I have not forgotten your commands” (verse 176).

The reorganisation of the world has at first to be mainly the work of a "movement" or a Party or a religion or cult, whatever we choose to call it. We may call it New Liberalism or the New Radicalism or what not. It will not be a close-knit organisation, toeing the Party line and so forth. It may be a very loose-knit and many faceted, but if a sufficient number of minds throughout the world, irrespective of race, origin or economic and social habituations, can be brought to the free and candid recognition of the essentials of the human problem, then their effective collaboration in a conscious, explicit and open effort to reconstruct human society will ensue. And to begin with they will do all they can to spread and perfect this conception of a new world order, which they will regard as the only working frame for their activities, while at the same time they will set themselves to discover and associate with themselves, everyone, everywhere, who is intellectually able to grasp the same broad ideas and morally disposed to realise them. The distribution of this essential conception one may call propaganda, but in reality it is education. The opening phase of this new type of Revolution must involve therefore a campaign for re-invigorated and modernised education throughout the world, an education that will have the same ratio to the education of a couple of hundred years ago, as the electric lighting of a contemporary city has to the chandeliers and oil lamps of the same period. On its present mental levels humanity can do no better than what it is doing now. Vitalising education is only possible when it is under the influence of people who are themselves learning. It is inseparable from the modern idea of education that it should be knit up to incessant research. We say research rather than science. It is the better word because it is free from any suggestion of that finality which means dogmatism and death. All education tends to become stylistic and sterile unless it is kept in close touch with experimental verification and practical work, and consequently this new movement of revolutionary initiative, must at the same time be sustaining realistic political and social activities and working steadily for the collectivisation of governments and economic life. The intellectual movement will be only the initiatory and correlating part of the new revolutionary drive. These practical activities must be various. Everyone engaged in them must be thinking for himself and not waiting for orders. The only dictatorship he will recognise is the dictatorship of the plain understanding and the invincible fact. And if this culminating Revolution is to be accomplished, then the participation of every conceivable sort of human+being who has the mental grasp to see these broad realities of the world situation and the moral quality to do something about it, must be welcomed. Previous revolutionary thrusts have been vitiated by bad psychology. They have given great play to the gratification of the inferiority complexes that arise out of class disadvantages. It is no doubt very unjust that anyone should be better educated, healthier and less fearful of the world than anyone else, but that is no reason why the new Revolution should not make the fullest use of the health, education, vigour and courage of the fortunate. The Revolution we are contemplating will aim at abolishing the bitterness of frustration. But certainly it will do nothing to avenge it. Nothing whatever. Let the dead past punish its dead.

Once upon a time, when I first ventured out to cover war in the Middle East, I carted around palm-sized books of poems by early twentieth century poets like Wilfried Owen, and at night I would fall asleep beneath a dim lamp light submerged in beautifully written conflict memoirs by John Hersey and Michael Herr, comforted by the anecdotes of sadness and self-preservation. These days, I carry with me a hand-scrawled notebook of the above words of wisdom and reflection, treasuring the many inspiring humans who have welcomed me into their lives in their darkest and most triumphant moments. These beautifully ordinary people remind me that we all have the innate potential not only to surmount, but to thrive. Go forth and conquer. The choice is yours.

The First Commandment (Matthew V, 21-6) was that man must not only refrain from killing, he must not become angry with his brother, must not consider anyone to be raca, of no consequence, and if he should quarrel he must first be reconciled before bringing a gift to God, that is before praying. The Second Commandment (Matthew V, 27-32) was that man must not only refrain from adultery, he must avoid lusting after womanly beauty, and once joined to a woman he must never be unfaithful to her. The Third Commandment (Matthew V, 33-7) was that man must swear no oaths. The Fourth Commandment (Matthew V, 38-42) was that man must not only refrain taking an eye for an eye, but must turn the other cheek when smitten on one, must forgive injuries and humbly bear them and never refuse people that which they desire of him. The Fifth Commandment (Matthew V, 43-8) was that man must not only refrain from hating his enemies, and waging war against them, but must love, help and serve them. Nekhlyudov fixed his gaze on the light coming from the burning lamp, and his heart stopped. Recalling all the ugliness of our lives, he started to imagine what this life could be like if only people were educated in these principles, and his soul was filled with the kind of rapture he had not known for a very long time. It was as if he had suddenly found peace and freedom after a long period of anguish and pain. He did not sleep that night, and, as so often happens with many, many people reading the Gospels for the first time, as he read he came to a full understanding of words he had heard read many times before without taking in what they said. All that was revealed to him in that book as vital, important and joyful he drank in like a sponge soaking up water. And all that he read seemed familiar, seemed to confirm and fully acknowledge things he had known for a very long time without accepting or believing them. But now he accepted and believed.

Ode 25 I was rescued from my chains, and I fled unto You, O my God. Because You are the right hand of salvation, and my Helper. You have restrained those who rise up against me, and no more were they seen. Because Your face was with me, which saved me by Your grace. But I was despised and rejected in the eyes of many, and I was in their eyes like lead. And I acquired strength from You, and help. A lamp You set for me both on my right and on my left, so that there might not be in me anything that is not light. And I was covered with the covering of Your Spirit, and I removed from me my garments of skin. Because Your right hand exalted me, and caused sickness to pass from me. And I became mighty in Your truth, and holy in Your righteousness. And all my adversaries were afraid of me, and I became the Lord's by the name of the Lord. And I was justified by His kindness, and His rest is for ever and ever. Hallelujah.

Even asleep, the little greyhound trailed after her madame, through a weave of green stars and gas lamps, along the boulevards of Paris. It was a conjured city that no native would recognize—Emma Bovary’s head on the pillow, its architect. Her Paris was assembled from a guidebook with an out-of-date map, and from the novels of Balzac and Sand, and from her vividly disordered recollections of the viscount’s ball at La Vaubyessard, with its odor of dying flowers, burning flambeaux, and truffles. (Many neighborhoods within the city’s quivering boundaries, curiously enough, smelled identical to the viscount’s dining room.) A rose and gold glow obscured the storefront windows, and cathedral bells tolled continuously as they strolled past the same four landmarks: a tremulous bridge over the roaring Seine, a vanilla-white dress shop, the vague façade of the opera house—overlaid in more gold light—and the crude stencil of a theater. All night they walked like that, companions in Emma’s phantasmal labyrinth, suspended by her hopeful mists, and each dawn the dog would wake to the second Madame Bovary, the lightly snoring woman on the mattress, her eyes still hidden beneath a peacock sleep mask. Lumped in the coverlet, Charles’s blocky legs tangled around her in an apprehensive pretzel, a doomed attempt to hold her in their marriage bed.

Unlike many a royal couple, Nicholas and Alexandra shared the same bed. The bedroom was a large chamber with tall windows opening onto the park. A large double bed made of light-colored wood stood between two windows. Chairs and couches covered in flowered tapestry were scattered about on a thick carpet of mauve pile. To the right of the bed, a door led to a small chapel used by the Empress for her private prayers. Dimly lit by hanging lamps, the room contained only an icon on one wall and a table holding a Bible. Another door led from the bedroom to Alexandra’s private bathroom, where a collection of old-fashioned fixtures were set in a dark recess.

Black Beacon Books... Why the name? There are many tropes and symbols used in fiction of a dark and mysterious nature. Amongst them, we have keys, mirrors, telescopes, treasure chests, secret passages, graveyards, skulls, churches, castles, caves, telescopes, clocks, the moon, oil lamps and candles, and, of course, beacons and lighthouses. The beacon or lighthouse conjures a setting of darkness, for in daylight they are rendered almost useless. In this darkness, they have a role to play, a crucial role, and that is to either warn away or beckon nearer. That is also the role of Black Beacon Books, to thrust the reader into mystery and darkness whilst providing a distant and guiding light, one that can be seen atop cliffs rising up from a troubled sea or on the peaks of wild mountains. We want stories that both warn you of impending danger and draw you into the worlds they create.

The stars are still there, but in the city—the lights of our offices that stay on late, bright advertisements vying for our attention, the yellow glow of so many lamps in so many apartment windows—it all works together to drown out the lights that remind us of how small we are. It all works together to convince me that the world from behind my tiny perspective is all there is.