Love Highlighted Quotes

You know," he said, "under normal circumstances, you inviting me to the bedroom would be the highlight of my day." I crossed my arms and sat on the bed. I did so out of simple fatigue, but a moment later, I was struck by what I was doing. This is where Adrian sleeps. I'm touching the covers he's wrapped in every night. What does he wear? Does he wear anything? I jumped up.

To be deeply loved, means a willingness to cut yourself wide open, exposing your vulnerabilities... hopes, hurts, fears and flaws. Hiding behind the highlight reel of who you are, is the real you and that person is just as worthy of love. There is nothing more terrifying or fulfilling, than complete love, it's worth the risk... reach for it.

We men are very simple people: if we like what we see, we’re coming over there. If we don’t want anything from you, we’re not coming over there. Period. Please highlight this part right here so you can always remind yourself the next time a man steps to you: a man always wants something. Always. And when it comes to women, that plan is always to find out two things: (1) if you’re willing to sleep with him, and (2) if you are, how much it will cost to get you to sleep with him.

We need to highlight the role women play in perpetuating and sustaining patriarchal culture so that we will recognize patriarchy as a system women and men support equally, even if men receive more rewards from that system. Dismantling and changing patriarchal culture is work that men and women must do together.

The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years. All business and politics is personal in the Philippines. If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump. They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on. I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged. I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy. You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn. Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race. After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself. It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up. He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather. The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up. You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points] Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse. You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow. In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil. There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country. Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us. The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys. The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time. I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality. The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent. Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins. Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it. Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds. Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising. A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't. Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill. It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most. Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold. Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink? She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.

You drive me crazy!" "You were always crazy. I just highlight it.

We have to die to get their pity. We have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. I don't want to be their Imoinda, their Oroonoko. I don't want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live.

It is an emotional and an enchanted place. If the study of the conscious mind highlights the importance of reason and analysis, study of the unconscious mind highlights the importance of passions and perception.

Very sweetly, he always told her he loved her just the way she was. Although, honestly he had no idea. She shuddered to think what she would really look like if she stopped waxing, plucking, highlighting, manicuring, applying make-up and dressing with care and concentration.

That’s when I realized that sex was not necessarily a shared thing. Sex was something you do with someone else, yet you can experience it separately from each other. It didn’t necessarily bring you closer. In fact, it could highlight the parts of you that feel most separate. Sex could reveal to you your own isolation. Sam had told me that this act added up to love, but I did not feel loved by Carlos then, nor, in that moment, could I feel my love for him.

She is fascinated by how much romantic love can soften a hard life, highlight the best of you, not condemn the worst of you.

If you were a book I’d highlight half your lines.

As a culture, we love a celebration. We love a first. We hold them high. We all marvel at headlines and highlight reels. But we rarely discuss the marks and scars and bruises that come with breaking through glass ceilings.

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport". Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (...) and the architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs. They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of the Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not".

I explore the full boxes, mostly brimming with battered, dog-eared, highlighted books. The pages are worn, well-read, and I skim through them. I wonder if it's possible to know someone through the words they loved.

Because, though I'd seen and felt just a fraction of all the love in the world, I knew that when people thought of love they thought of moments. Whether or not a marriage worked out, or if they stayed together after graduation, or if they did go to the big dance together, the story's end mattered less, and the highlights in between mattered more. Those are what lingered, and what people can go back to, even when they had nothing left.

Sometimes I fantasize about getting my hands on my library records. . . my recurring bookworm dream is to peruse my personal library history like it's a historical document. My bookshelves show me the books I've bought or been given. . . But my library books come into my house and go out again, leaving behind only memories and a jotted line in a journal (if I'm lucky). I long for a list that captures these ephemeral reads - all the books I've borrowed in a lifetime of reading, from last week's armful spanning back to when I was a seven-year-old kid with my first library card. I don't need many details - just the titles and dates would be fine - but oh, how I'd love to see them. Those records preserve what my memory has not. I remember the highlights of my grade-school checkouts, but much is lost to time. How I'd love to see the complete list of what I chose to read in second grade, or sixth, or tenth.

We have to die to get their pity said Victoire we have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion. A wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. But I don’t want to die, Robin. I don’t want to die...I don’t want to be their tragic, lovely lack of figure. I want to live…and thrive and survive them.

One of the reasons I wanted to write this column, I think, is because I assumed that the cultural highlight of my month would arrive in book form, and that’s true, for probably eleven months of the year. Books are, let’s face it, better than everything else…. Even if you love movies and music as much as you do books, it’s still, in any given four week period, way, way more likely you’ll find a great book that you haven’t read than a great movie you haven’t seen, or a great album you haven’t heard: the assiduous consumer will eventually exhaust movies and music… the feeling everyone has with literature: that we can’t get through the good novels published in the last six months, let alone those published since publishing began.

The more she talked that way, the worse I felt. She highlighted my awkwardness, my lack of knowledge about the right things to say and do. I was a blundering adolescent in her eyes, and she was trying to let me down easy.

the thing she loved most about being Jewish was that you could step into a synagogue anywhere on earth and feel like you’d come home. India, Brazil, New Zealand, even Mars—if you could rely on Shalom, Spacemen!, the homemade comic book that had been the highlight of Simon’s third-grade Hebrew school experience.

Memory is the mother of the muses, prototype Artist. As a rule picks and highlights what is important, omitting what is accidental or trivial. Occasionally, however, is mistaken as all the other artists. Nevertheless it is what I take as a guide page.

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead.... nor feed on the spectres in books. I tramp a perpetual journey All goes onward and outward.... and nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. The final three stanzas of 'Song of Myself" were also highlighted. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to your nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one places search another, I stop some where waiting for you It became a weekend of reading, of trying to see her in the fragments of the poem she'd left for me. I could never get anywhere with the lines, but I kepr thinking about them anyway, becase I didn't want to disappoint her. She wanted me to play out with the string, to find the place where she had stopped and was waiting for me, to follow the bread crumb trail until it dead-ended into her.

You are such a dork,” I exclaim as my fingers flit over the multitude of images and videos of Will Smith. Pinned quotes and sayings are highlighted, and I chuckle when I recognize a few. “Oh. My. God. Did you actually learn these on purpose?” He reels me into his arms and kisses the top of my head. “Will I be cementing my dork status if I answer affirmatively?” “Absolutely.” I look up into his beautiful eyes. “But I only love you more for it.

Social media is bad enough for the mood and the self-esteem on a good day, when all we see is an endless sequence of people’s highlight reels.

I thought seeing him naked was the highlight of my life. That suit was better than sex.

Here," I said, the morning after the lazy, stupid Derek incident, as I intercepted Camden on his way to his locker shortly before the first-period bell and dragged him into an empty physics lab. I handed him three problem sets with the words PECKER and BALLS written all over them in multicolored highlighters, plus pictures of stick-figure people having sex in different positions. "This is to force your douche-bag friends to copy over the stuff in their own handwriting before they hand it in. There's no way I'm letting us get caught just because our clients get lazy." I crossed my arms and stared at him, daring him to get mad. He didn't. He just looked at the papers, surprised, then looked at me. "That's actually a really good idea," he said, sounding impressed. "I know," I said. "And these pictures you drew are weirdly hot." "I don't disagree," I said. "By the way, I'm charging you for the highlighters I bought." I think he might've said "I love you" as I walked out of the classroom, but the hallway was noisy, so I couldn't be sure.

Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live and a good day to die. Every day is also an apt time to learn and express joy and love for the entire natural world. Each day is an apt time to make contact with other people and express empathy for the entire world. Each day is perfect to accept with indifference all aspects of being.

The relationship between love and appropriate action is demonstrated repeatedly in the scriptures and is highlighted by the Savior's instruction to His Apostles: 'If ye love me, keep my commandments' (John 14:15). Just as our love of and for the Lord is evidenced by walking ever in His ways (see Deuteronomy 19:9), so our love for spouse, parents, and children is reflected most powerfully in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds (see Mosiah 4:30)."Feeling the security and constancy of love from a spouse, a parent, or a child is a rich blessing. Such love nurtures and sustains faith in God. Such love is a source of strength and casts our fear (see 1 John 4:18). Such love is the desire of every human soul."We can become more diligent and concerned at home as we express love—and consistently show it.

Successes are those highlights of life we look back on with a smile. But it's the day to day grind of getting them that defines the laugh lines etched until the end of time. Enjoy each moment along the way

Contrast toxic religion with the pure gospel. Religion is all about what I do. The gospel is all about what Jesus has done. Religion is about me. The gospel is about Jesus. Religion highlights my efforts to do what is right. The gospel highlights what Christ has already done. Religion lures me to believe that if I obey God, he will love me. But the gospel shows me that because God loves me, I get to obey him. Religion puts the burden on us. We have to do what is right. A relationship with Christ puts the burden on him. And because of what he did for us, we get to do what is right. Instead of an obligation, our right living is a response to his gift. Giving Christ our whole lives is the only reasonable response to such love. There nothing more we need to do. Nothing...

He's reading a book called Great Warlocks of the 18th Century, and to get this ball rolling before Dean Devlin shows up and rains on our private parade, I snort and ask, "Good book?" I forget I'm pretending to be sitting behind my two-thousand-ninety-eight-page Highlights of Modern Chemistry book, so he snorts back. "Better than yours.

Looking up, I stare into the most unique and beautiful shade of blue that a pair of eyes has ever possessed. Of that I am certain. Blue just shouldn’t be that multi-faceted and twinkling. There should be a law or something. Or at least a warning label: Caution, these eyes may cause female knees to tremble. Looking up, I stare into the most unique and beautiful shade of blue that a pair of eyes has ever possessed. Of that I am certain. Blue just shouldn’t be that multi-faceted and twinkling. There should be a law or something. Or at least a warning label: Caution, these eyes may cause female knees to tremble. Before I can help it, I scan the rest of him. Sweet Mary. This guy had lucked out in the gene department. Tall, slender, beautiful. Honey colored hair that had natural highlights that could even catch the crappy airport light, broad shoulders, slim hips, long legs. He is tan and golden with a bright, white smile. I am surely staring at Apollo, the god of the sun.

One morning at home, Tik Tok had Tiger Lily try on her wedding dress. He seemed disappointed that it fit so well. Despite their expectations, it became her. Its simplicity and sleekness were subtle enough to highlight her strong, high cheeks, the shine in her hair. It was a dress made by someone who knew her. It was her freedom and her silence sewn into a dress. She hated what it meant. But she loved the dress because it was from Tik Tok's hands and because it made her feel like herself. She took it off.

I loved so many things about him: that his fingers were always stained with paint or charcoal; his casual sense of humor and that he was loyal, to the end—even when I had lied so many times. He pursed his lips, highlighting his high and prominent cheekbones.

[Love] feels . . .” I paused, turning the highlighter in my hand, “like an awakening of senses you never knew you had, and once they’re awakened, you’re never the same. The way you see the world is altered. Instead of riding down a road on your bike and thinking how the wind feels good on your face, you think, ‘This is how it feels when he kisses my cheek.’ You play a piece on the piano, and instead of imagining a crowd applauding, you only see him, sitting in the chair next to the piano, smiling at you. You catch the scent of sage in the air and think, ‘This is how he smells.’ But it’s also kind of like being on a mousetrap ride. Exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time. You smile and laugh and feel a thrill inside of you, all the while wondering in the back of your mind if the car will come off the track at the next turn, or if your harness will come open and you will be tossed to the ground to your death.

I sigh contentedly as I close my eyes, allowing his body heat to warm me. Even though I’ve had an amazing time on our date, this is the highlight of my day. I’ve always been more of a simple pleasures kind of girl. Which isn’t me saying I’m ungrateful for everything he did today. Today was magical, and I will remember it for the rest of my life, but I don’t need grand gestures from Kal. I just need him.

Another highlight was when I got to drive a battery-operated Barbie Jeep. This made a huge impression on me. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I loved it so much that it (unfortunately) influenced my taste in real cars when I finally got my driver's license more than 10 years later.

On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours.

It's the same thing that makes all pop music so heartbreaking. Even when Miley Cyrus sings "So I put my hands up, they're playin' my song / The butterflies fly away / I'm noddin' my head like 'Yeah!' / Movin' my hips like 'Yeah!'" in her song "Party in the U.S.A." It's that chirping mirth against a backdrop of despair, that juxtaposition of blithe optimism against all the crushing brutalities and inadequacies of life. The image of an ineffably beautiful butterfly flitting by the shattered windows of a dilapidated, abandoned factory is not so poignant because it highlights the indomitable life force. To the contrary, the butterfly (and the pop song) is like a PowerPoint cursor; it's there to whet our perception of and strengthen our affinity for what's moribund, for what's always dying before our eyes. Loving the moribund is our way of signaling the dead from this shore: "We are your kinsmen...

But he's right. It was a low point in both of our lives, but being with him was still somehow the highlight of my teenage years. I guess fun is the perfect way to describe what we made of it. And if we somehow had fun together at such a low point in both of our lives, it makes me wonder what we could be like at our highest.

The world THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business. Yet we have no other world to live in. And actually, when we really look closely, the world of stuff and advertising is not really life. Life is the other stuff. Life is what is left when you take all that crap away, or at least ignore it for a while. Life is the people who love you. No one will ever choose to stay alive for an iPhone. It’s the people we reach via the iPhone that matter. And once we begin to recover, and to live again, we do so with new eyes. Things become clearer, and we are aware of things we weren’t aware of before.

I just love checking our mailbox. There is something about getting mail that is exciting. Going out to the box each afternoon is sometimes the highlight of my day.

Highlight your world with all the magnificent new things, no matter how small they are.

Reformers will highlight one or two Joes a year, while thousands of Joes are left behind because they have to be extraordinary to be White ordinary.

If retribution was a date on a calendar, then Karma had today circled and highlighted.

The love that family members share is essential, and it’s so important to highlight it no matter what else might be happening.

After I got back to Texas, Anna sent me another letter. Her voice did not have the hop-skip this time. I read it with a thunderstorm rolling in my belly, the words of rejection leaping out as if a yellow highlighter had been dragged across them: "worried about you" "can no longer watch" "please understand" She did not demand that I quit drinking, but she told me she couldn't be the safe place for my confessions anymore. It was a love letter, the hardest kind to write, but I did not see it that way. It felt like a door slammed in my face.

Loving you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done.” Oh. My. God. Is this were a book, that would be the most highlighted line in it. “I love you, Penelope Lane Hart. You’re my That Girl.

They say that when you remember something, you are really remembering the last time you remembered it. Each time you recollect a memory, you change it, ever so slightly, shading it with new information, new feelings. Over the past years without him, my memories of Jesse have become a copy of a copy of a copy. Without meaning to, I have highlighted the parts of him that stood out to me, and the rest have faded away.

Take care of yourself, especially your mental health. That is super important. People love you, including me. If there's anyone in the world who loves you, it's me. I know I say this a lot but I mean it. Love you, bye.

Thank you and endless love to Louisse Ang, Steph Brown, Jennifer Kelly, Alice Fanchiang, Diyana Wan, Laura Ashforth, Alexa Santiago, Rachel Domingo, Jessica Reigle, Jennifer Armentrout, Christina Hobbs, Lauren Billings, and Kelly Grabowski. To Charlie Bowater: Getting to know you has been such a highlight of my career, and your incredible art has inspired me in so many ways. Thank you for all your hard work (and for being a total genius).

As a culture, we love a celebration. We love a first. We hold them high. We all marvel at headlines and highlight reels. But we rarely discuss the marks and scars that bruises that come with breaking through glass ceilings

We have to die to get their pity,' said Victoire. We have to die for them to find us noble. Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. But I don't want to die, Robin.' Her throat hitched. 'I don't want to die. I don't want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live.' 'I want to live,' she repeated, 'and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future.

I blame what happened next on the door. The one right across the hall from me, a mere three feet away. I love doors. All of them, without exception. Doors lead to things and I’ve never met one I haven’t wanted to open. All the same, if that door hadn’t been so old and decorative, so decidedly closed, if a thread of light hadn’t positioned itself with such wretched temptation across its middle, highlighting the keyhole and its intriguing key, perhaps I might have stood a chance; remained twiddling my thumbs until Percy came to collect me. But it was and I didn’t; I maintain that I simply couldn’t. Sometimes, you can tell just by looking at a door there’s something interesting behind it.

Looking at these captured moments I truly understood why Rune loved to take photographs. This exhibition demonstrated how capturing these images impacted society. They showed humanity at its best and at its worst. They highlighted life in all its nakedness and in its purest form.

The most important part that Rose Marie and I had was to learn to stay out of the way and to put our lives at his disposal to be used in ways often contrary to our own instincts. Christ captured Barbara in a way that highlighted her unwillingness to submit to him and our helplessness in changing her. Indeed, more than once he let us see that we needed to be rescued as much as Barbara did—perhaps even more, since there is no more impenetrable barrier to God’s love than the sense of being right. So often self-righteousness controls a parent’s attitudes toward a rebellious offspring. For

For too long we have ignored the dissenting voices that complicate the canon. The men of the Enlightenment were brave thinkers challenging traditional modes of thought, but the women of the Enlightenment were also brave, highlighting the ways in which men’s thinking fell short of their own ideals.

There is a Native American story that highlights the dearth of love in our culture. A Western anthropologist living with and studying the Hopi Indians noticed over time that most of the Hopi songs were about water. One day he asked the shaman: How is it that you sing so much about water? In my culture, love is the theme that is most commonly expressed in our songs? Do your people not value love? The shaman of this desert culture replied: In my culture our songs are frequently prayers, and we sing and pray for the precious things in life of which we do not have enough. Love is not one of them.

I hoped with every ounce of my being that he would have the pleasure of knowing love and heartache in the way that I did. It might sound strange me wanting my five-year-old son to experience heartache, but without it I wouldn't have met his mother - a wonderful woman who taught me just how uncomplicated falling in love can be when it is with the right person, as well as highlighting the notion that timing is everything. If I had met her earlier in life I've no doubt that I'd have made a complete mess of the whole thing. I wouldn't have been ready to receive her love or to give the love I'd spent year accumulating.

Our deaths are thus great acts of rebellion, a wretched lament that highlights their inhumanity. Our deaths become their battle cry. But I don't want to die, Robin.' Her throat hitched. 'I don't want to die. I don't want to be their Imoinda, their Oroonoko. I don't want to be their tragic, lovely lacquer figure. I want to live.

I suspect that self-deception is similar to its cousins, overconfidence and optimism, and as with these other biases, it has both benefits and disadvantages. On the positive side, an unjustifiably elevated belief in ourselves can increase our general well-being by helping us cope with stress; it can increase our persistence while doing difficult or tedious tasks; and it can get us to try new and different experiences. We persist in deceiving ourselves in part to maintain a positive self-image. We gloss over our failures, highlight our successes (even when they’re not entirely our own), and love to blame other people and outside circumstances when our failures are undeniable. Like our friend the crab, we can use self-deception to boost our confidence when we might not otherwise feel bold. Positioning ourselves on the basis of our finer points can help us snag a date, finish a big project, or land a job. (I am not suggesting that you puff up your résumé, of course, but a little extra confidence can often work in our favor.) On the negative side, to the extent that an overly optimistic view of ourselves can form the basis of our actions, we may wrongly assume that things will turn out for the best and as a consequence not actively make the best decisions. Self-deception can also cause us to “enhance” our life stories with, say, a degree from a prestigious university, which can lead us to suffer a great deal when the truth is ultimately revealed. And, of course, there is the general cost of deception. When we and those around us are dishonest, we start suspecting everyone, and without trust our lives become more difficult in almost every way.

On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence.

[Stice's] parents had met and fallen in love in a Country/Western bar in Partridge KS — just outside Liberal KS on the Oklahoma border — met and fallen in star-crossed love in a bar playing this popular Kansas C/W-bar-game where they put their bare forearms together and laid a lit cigarette in the little valley between the two forearms' flesh and kept it there till one of them finally jerked their arm away and reeled away holding their arm. Mr. and Mrs. Stice each discovered somebody else that wouldn't jerk away and reel away, Stice explained. Their forearms were still to this day covered with little white slugs of burn-scar. They'd toppled like pines for each other from the git-go, Stice explained. They'd been divorced and remarried four or five times, depending on how you defined certain jurisprudential precepts. When they were on good domestic terms they stayed in their bedroom for days of squeaking springs with the door locked except for brief sallies out for Beefeater gin and Chinese take-out in little white cardboard pails with wire handles, with the Stice children wandering ghostlike through the clapboard house in sagging diapers or woolen underwear subsisting on potato chips out of econobags bigger than most of them were, the Stice kids. The kids did somewhat physically better during periods of nuptial strife, when a stony-faced Mr. Stice slammed the kitchen door and went off daily to sell crop insurance while Mrs. Stice —whom both Mr. Stice and The Darkness called 'The Bride' —while The Bride spent all day and evening cooking intricate multicourse meals she'd feed bits of to The Brood (Stice refers to both himself and his six siblings as 'The Brood') and then keep warm in quietly rattling-lidded pots and then hurl at the kitchen walls when Mr. Stice came home smelling of gin and of cigarette-brands and toilet-eau not The Bride's own. Ortho Stice loves his folks to distraction, but not blindly, and every holiday home to Partridge KS he memorizes highlights of their connubial battles so he can regale the E.T.A. upperclass-men with them, mostly at meals, after the initial forkwork and gasping have died down and people have returned to sufficient levels of blood-sugar and awareness of their surroundings to be regaled.

More than anything, I wanted this book to highlight a neurodiverse heroine who happens to be on medication and in therapy falling in love and thriving. I wanted to show the messy, heavy parts of her life alongside the moments that sweep her off her feet. And I wanted a hero who'd love her through her dark days, not despite them, because to me, that is the most romantic thing of all.

It as mathematical, marriage, not, as one might expect, additional; it was exponential. This one man, nervous in a suite a size too small for his long, lean self, this woman, in a green lace dress cut to the upper thigh, with a white rose behind her ear. Christ, so young. The woman before them was a unitarian minister, and on her buzzed scalp, the grey hairs shone in a swab of sun through the lace in the window. Outside, Poughkeepsie was waking. Behind them, a man in a custodian's uniform cried softly beside a man in pajamas with a Dachshund, their witnesses, a shine in everyone's eye. One could taste the love on the air, or maybe that was sex, or maybe that was all the same then. 'I do,' she said. 'I do,' he said. They did. They would. Our children will be so fucking beautiful, he thought, looking at her. Home, she thought, looking at him. 'You may kiss,' said the officiant. They did, would. Now they thanked everyone and laughed, and papers were signed and congratulations offered, and all stood for a moment, unwilling to leave this gentile living room where there was such softness. The newlyweds thanked everyone again, shyly, and went out the door into the cool morning. They laughed, rosy. In they'd come integers, out they came, squared. Her life, in the window, the parakeet, scrap of blue midday in the London dusk, ages away from what had been most deeply lived. Day on a rocky beach, creatures in the tide pool. All those ordinary afternoons, listening to footsteps in the beams of the house, and knowing the feeling behind them. Because it was so true, more than the highlights and the bright events, it was in the daily where she'd found life. The hundreds of time she'd dug in her garden, each time the satisfying chew of spade through soil, so often that this action, the pressure and release and rich dirt smell delineated the warmth she'd felt in the cherry orchard. Or this, each day they woke in the same place, her husband waking her with a cup of coffee, the cream still swirling into the black. Almost unremarked upon this kindness, he would kiss her on the crown of her head before leaving, and she'd feel something in her rising in her body to meet him. These silent intimacies made their marriage, not the ceremonies or parties or opening nights or occasions, or spectacular fucks. Anyway, that part was finished. A pity...

...all the future judgment is highlighted basically as good news, not bad. Why so? It is good news, first, because the one through whom God's justice will finally sweep the world is not a hard-hearted, arrogant, or vengeful tyrant but rather the Man of Sorrows, who was acquainted with grief; the Jesus who loved sinners and died for them; the Messiah who took the world's judgment upon himself on the cross.

DON’T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF. I can bring good even out of your mistakes. Your finite mind tends to look backward, longing to undo decisions you have come to regret. This is a waste of time and energy, leading only to frustration. Instead of floundering in the past, release your mistakes to Me. Look to Me in trust, anticipating that My infinite creativity can weave both good choices and bad into a lovely design. Because you are human, you will continue to make mistakes. Thinking that you should live an error-free life is symptomatic of pride. Your failures can be a source of blessing, humbling you and giving you empathy for other people in their weaknesses. Best of all, failure highlights your dependence on Me. I am able to bring beauty out of the morass of your mistakes. Trust Me, and watch to see what I will do.

We walk into the lobby of the hotel and I try not to grin at the man behind the counter. I refrain from screaming, "I'm going to have sex! With this gorgeous woman. She want to have sex. I didn't even have to ask, she just want to have sex. With me! Can you believe it?" I take deep breaths and try to downplay that this moment is the highlight of my life. Air kicks and high-fives probably wouldn't be a cool more right now.

As anyone who has experienced it will know, war is many contradictory things. There is brutality and heroism, comedy and tragedy, friendship, hate, love and boredom. War is absurd yet fundamental, despicable yet beguiling, unfair yet with its own strange logic. Rarely are people 'back home' exposed to these contradictions — society tends only to highlight those qualities it needs, to construct its own particular narrative.

As we put together our chronicle and highlight antidotes, dramas, and feelings, we need to disclose our story to someone who cares—someone who doesn’t know all the answers but who cares and has experienced his or her own journey through this territory. When we begin this journey, it is very humbling for all of us to admit that “I do not really know what I feel. I do not say what I mean, and, all too often, I do not do what I say.

Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids (Daum, Meghan) - Your Highlight on page 22 | Location 368-369 | Added on Friday, May 1, 2015 11:17:34 PM I was never particularly opposed to the idea of having kids—let no one say that I don’t love kids! It always seemed like an interesting future possibility, the same way that joining the Peace Corps someday seemed like an interesting future possibility.

I want to highlight the spirit of Pope Francis. Elected to the papacy following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis (Jose Maria Bergoglio), in his late seventies, brings a new spirit to the Church that reflects a consciousness of catholicity that we explore here. His is an inner spirit of freedom grounded in the love of God, guided by the gospel message of the new kingdom at hand, and open to a world of change. He desires a Church on the margins, where the poor and the forgotten can be brought into a new unity; a Church that advocates life at all costs and promotes peaceful life in a war-torn and violent world; a Church that models justice in an age of greed, consumerism, and power; a Church centered on the risen Christ, empowering a consciousness of the whole. This is a church leader who desperately wants to breathe a new spirit of catholicity into a world dying for wholeness and unity.

They say that when you remember something, you are really remembering the last time you remembered it. Each time you recollect a memory, you change it, ever so slightly, shading it with new information, new feelings. Over the past years without him, my memories of Jesse have become a copy of a copy of a copy. Without meaning to, I have highlighted the parts of him that stood out to me, and the rest have faded away. In the copy of a copy, what stood out to me about him was how much I loved him. What faded into the background was how much he loved me.

Whatever your motivation for downsizing, you're going to love the benefits that come with this change. Let me highlight a few: 1. More money... in general a smaller home costs less to buy or rent and less to maintain. 2. Less time and energy spent cleaning and maintaining... 3. Better family bonding... A smaller home naturally brings family members into proximity, leading to their having more conversations and doing more things together. 4. Less environmental impact... using less energy and fewer natural resources. 5. Easier perpetuation of your minimalism... 6. Wider market to sell.

Today, the scripture is turned to James 2. She’s highlighted verses 14 through 18. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.” Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds.

Look,let me give you the CliffNotes: You're a bitch in this life and Daniel doesn't care.Shocker! He courts you for a few weeks,there's some exchanging of flowers.A big kiss and then kaboom. Okay? Not much more to see." "You don't understand." "What? I don't understand that Victorians are as stuffy as an attic and as boring as watching wallpaper peel? Come on,if you're going to zigzag through your past,make it count. Let's hit some highlights. Luce didn't budge. "Is there a way to make you disappear?" "Do I have to stuff you in this Announcer like a cat in a suitcase? Let's move!" "I need to see that he loves me, not just some idea of me because of some curse that he's bound to.I need to feel like there's something stronger keeping us together. Something real." Bill took a seat next to Luce on the grass. Then he seemed to think better of it and actually crawled onto her lap. At first,she wanted to swat him, and the flies buzzing around his head,but when he looked up at her,his eyes appeared sincere. "Honey,Daniel loving the real you is the last thing you should be worried about. You're freaking soul mates. You two coined the phrase. You don't have to stick around here to see that.It's in every life.

The French psychologist Jacques Salomé talks about the need to develop a personal intimacy with one’s own self as a counterbalance to the couple. There is beauty in an image that highlights a connection to oneself, rather than a distance from one’s partner. In our mutual intimacy we make love, we have children, and we share physical space and interests. Indeed, we blend the essential parts of our lives. But “essential” does not mean “all.” Personal intimacy demarcates a private zone, one that requires tolerance and respect. It is a space—physical, emotional, and intellectual—that belongs only to me. Not everything needs to be revealed. Everyone should cultivate a secret garden.

Father Brian D’Arcy spoke of the love the locals had for Shay Hutchinson and described him as ‘an originator’ of country music in Ireland, who highlighted the musical links between the United States and Ireland: He wanted to sing and make people happy with this other American music which in turn had been got from the Irish anyway … so country music and Irish people … it’s natural that we would want to be part of country music because it was our music originally. It came out from the Celtic nations, from Scotland and Ireland, went out to America to the bluegrass hills and they still play bluegrass as Irish music to this very day … people like Ricky Skaggs and Bill Monroe are indistinguishable from Sean McGuire [a famous fiddle player from Tyrone] playing the fiddle.

These theological disputes turned so violent that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholics and Protestants killed each other by the hundreds of thousands. On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence.

There are three ways to respond to your critic that you might find particularly helpful: defense, questioning, and acceptance. The first way is to directly challenge your critic, saying something like: “I disagree. That seems extreme. I’m not sure that is true.” The second way to respond is to ask your critic questions that highlight his logic. You can also ask for specifics when he is making a vague or extreme claim. For example: Critic: No one likes you. Me: No one? Do you mean nobody at all, or just this person? A final way to respond to your critic is by flowing with the attacks and finding a grain of truth in them. This is a powerful form of acceptance that allows you to acknowledge a shortcoming or mistake, without taking on the meaning that you are a bad person because of it. The general attitude behind the acceptance is: Yes, I make mistakes and have flaws, but I am still a good person who is worthy of love and belonging.

Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs. They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve-jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller for ever from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not.

But without Emily, Greg would feel—paradoxically for such a social creature—alone. Before they met, most of Greg’s girlfriends were extroverts. He says he enjoyed those relationships, but never got to know his girlfriends well, because they were always “plotting how to be with groups of people.” He speaks of Emily with a kind of awe, as if she has access to a deeper state of being. He also describes her as “the anchor” around which his world revolves. Emily, for her part, treasures Greg’s ebullient nature; he makes her feel happy and alive. She has always been attracted to extroverts, who she says “do all the work of making conversation. For them, it’s not work at all.” The trouble is that for most of the five years they’ve been together, Greg and Emily have been having one version or another of the same fight. Greg, a music promoter with a large circle of friends, wants to host dinner parties every Friday—casual, animated get-togethers with heaping bowls of pasta and flowing bottles of wine. He’s been giving Friday-night dinners since he was a senior in college, and they’ve become a highlight of his week and a treasured piece of his identity. Emily has come to dread these weekly events. A hardworking staff attorney for an art museum and a very private person, the last thing she wants to do when she gets home from work is entertain. Her idea of a perfect start to the weekend is a quiet evening at the movies, just her and Greg. It seems an irreconcilable difference: Greg wants fifty-two dinner parties a year, Emily wants zero. Greg says that Emily should make more of an effort. He accuses her of being antisocial. “I am social,” she says. “I love you, I love my family, I love my close friends. I just don’t love dinner parties. People don’t really relate at those parties—they just socialize. You’re lucky because I devote all my energy to you. You spread yours around to everyone.” But Emily soon backs off, partly because she hates fighting, but also because she doubts herself. Maybe I am antisocial, she

Of Love and Other Demons (Vintage International) - Gabriel GarcÍA MÁRquez (Highlight: 5; Note: 0) ------------- "Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning." (Chapter:Chapter Two) "What is essential, therefore, is not that you no longer believe, but that God continues to believe in you. And regarding that there can be no doubt, for it is He in His infinite diligence who has enlightened us so that we may offer you this consolation.”" (Chapter:Chapter Two) "Disbelief is more resistant than faith because it is sustained by the senses" (Chapter:Chapter Two) "Take care,” said Delaura. “Sometimes we attribute certain things we do not understand to the demon, not thinking they may be things of God that we do not understand.”" (Chapter:Chapter Three) ". He confessed that every moment was filled with thoughts of her, that everything he ate and drank tasted of her, that she was his life, always and everywhere, as only God had the right and power to be, and that the supreme joy of his heart would be to die with her. " (Chapter:Chapter Five)

He had only three days off, which meant our honeymoon was only two days. We went to Lake Tahoe, and one of the highlights was a snowmobile tour in the mountains. In theory, we had to ride our separate vehicles very placidly, with no horsing around. But Chris-or maybe it was me-discovered that by maneuvering carefully, it was possible to splash up a lot of snow, and as we went up to the top we managed to cover each other with snow. It was the sort of simple joy you vow to repeat as often as you can, even as you realize the moment will be impossible to duplicate. They were a great two days, though I wished there were more. I happened to be reading a book around that time that theorized that humans live through many lives. I asked Chris what he thought about the concept. Did he think he had many past lives? “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “That’s not in the Bible.” “No, it’s not.” “I guess anything’s possible,” he told me after a little thought. “I don’t think we have all the answers. But I do know this: if we get more than one life, I can’t wait to spend the rest of them with you.

Scripture says there’s great strength in human weakness. Our frailty and inabilities highlight God’s perfect strength. Jesus himself is the ultimate example of finding strength in weakness. He was fully God and fully human, yet he came down to serve others and sacrifice himself for us. What appeared to be a moment of weakness for him was actually the strongest moment in history. He gave his life for us—not because he had to, but because he chose to, because he loves us. When we are at our most vulnerable, that’s when we tend to pray and ask God for help. Why don’t we pray like that when things are going well? It’s because we think we can do it on our own and through our own strength. In reality, however, we are strongest when we are weak, because that’s when we turn to God and put our trust in him. It seems counterintuitive, but I knew that my greatest strength would come not when I thought I had it all together but when I knew how much I needed God—whether things were going well or not. Grasping these foundational biblical concepts and applying them revolutionized my life—and my career.

Missy and her crew left, I was alone. Like really alone, like pre-Shay alone. It felt glorious. Well, maybe not. I didn’t feel right about Shay, but I’d see him in a day. We could sort out whatever happened on his street. Till then, I studied to my heart’s content. I made trips to my dorm’s computer lab, and I even got naughty. I stole some of the computer’s printing papers, stuffing them down the front of my shirt. My inner dork was coming out full-force. It was like I’d been around “cool” people too much for my system. It was rebelling. It needed an outlet, and I indulged. All of the colored highlighters came out. Not just the primary colors, all of them. I used pink for one textbook, and added purple on the next. All caution was thrown to the wind. It was only eight, but I went to the library. I really let my freak out. An energy drink. Coffee from the cart. My own Twizzlers this time. Even a bag of chocolate candies. I was going nuts on the caffeine and sugar, and then I found an empty study room on the top and most isolated floor in the library. I stayed until midnight. It was some of the best studying I’ve had. Ever. Mind-blowing.

Saint John Paul II wrote, “when its concepts and conclusions can be integrated into the wider human culture and its concerns for ultimate meaning and value.”7 Religion, too, develops best when its doctrines are not abstract and fixed in an ancient past but integrated into the wider stream of life. Albert Einstein once said that “science without religion is lame and religion without science is blind.”8 So too, John Paul II wrote: “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”9 Teilhard de Chardin saw that dialogue alone between the disciplines is insufficient; what we need is a new synthesis of science and religion, drawing insights from each discipline into a new unity. In a remarkable letter to the director of the Vatican Observatory, John Paul II wrote: The church does not propose that science should become religion or religion science. On the contrary, unity always presupposes the diversity and integrity of its elements. Each of these members should become not less itself but more itself in a dynamic interchange, for a unity in which one of the elements is reduced to the other is destructive, false in its promises of harmony, and ruinous of the integrity of its components. We are asked to become one. We are not asked to become each other. . . . Unity involves the drive of the human mind towards understanding and the desire of the human spirit for love. When human beings seek to understand the multiplicities that surround them, when they seek to make sense of experience, they do so by bringing many factors into a common vision. Understanding is achieved when many data are unified by a common structure. The one illuminates the many: it makes sense of the whole. . . . We move towards unity as we move towards meaning in our lives. Unity is also the consequence of love. If love is genuine, it moves not towards the assimilation of the other but towards union with the other. Human community begins in desire when that union has not been achieved, and it is completed in joy when those who have been apart are now united.10 The words of the late pope highlight the core of catholicity: consciousness of belonging to a whole and unity as a consequence of love.

One of the things I loved about Chris was his sense of humor, which seemed perfectly matched with mine, even at its most offbeat. April Fools’ Day was always a major highlight. A month before our daughter was due, I woke him up in the middle of the night. “Don’t panic,” I told him, “but I think I’m going into labor.” “Do we have a bag?” he asked, jumping up immediately. “No, no, don’t worry.” I slipped out of bed and went to take a shower. Chris immediately got dressed and, calmly but very quickly, gathered my clothes and packed a suitcase. “I’m ready!” he announced, barging into the bathroom. “Babe, do you know what day it is?” I asked sweetly. It was two A.M., April 1. “Are you kidding me?” he said, disbelieving. I laughed and plunged back into the shower. He quickly got revenge by flushing the toilet, sending a burst of cold water across my body. In retrospect, maybe I’d been a little cruel, but we did love teasing each other. At our wedding, we’d smooshed cake into each other’s faces. That began a tradition that continued at each birthday--whether it was ours or not. The routine never seemed to get old. We’d giggle and laugh, chasing each other as if we were crazy people. Our friends and neighbors got used to it--and learned to stay out of the line of fire.

When I burst into the terminal, my eyes swept around, bouncing from person to person in the crowded, bustling space. My stomach fell a little when I didn’t see him, but I knew he probably couldn’t come this far. He was probably at baggage claim. I looked around for a sign to point me in the right direction and finally saw one labeled Baggage Claim with an arrow pointing off to the left. But I didn’t follow the arrow. My eyes fixed on someone standing beneath the sign. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his well-worn slouchy jeans. The relaxed action pulled the waistband low, highlighting his flat, narrow waist his Henley tee molded to. As usual, he was wearing his varsity jacket and his blond hair was a mess. My gaze locked on his sapphire-blue eyes and didn’t let go. His eyes, ohmigod, his eyes. The blue was so intense it served as an emergency brake on everything in my life. The second I looked at him, everything else came to a screeching halt. I no longer noticed the huge crowd rushing around. The anxiety-causing flight was just a distant memory, and the two weeks I spent longing for his touch became something I would live through ten times over just to be in this moment with him again. His lips pulled into a smile and the charm that oozed from every pore in his body made me almost lightheaded. Romeo pulled his hands out of his pockets and straightened, motioning for me. I rushed across the space separating us, my bag slapping against my side as I, for once, gracefully maneuvered around the people in my path. His chuckle brushed over me when I was just steps away, and I threw myself at him with a little sigh of relief. My legs wrapped around his waist and his arms locked around my back. I burrowed my head into his shoulder and inhaled deep, taking in his distinctive scent. “Rim,” he murmured, his voice low. I pulled back and his lips were on mine instantly. The moment our lips touched, he stilled, his body and mouth pausing against mine. Before I could wonder why, he muttered a garbled curse against my mouth and then his lips began to move. He kissed me softly but fiercely. There was so much possession in the way he kissed me, in the way his arms locked around me that my heart stuttered. I parted my lips so his tongue could sweep inside, and when my tongue met his, desire, hot and heavy, unfurled within me. Someone chuckled as they walked by, and Romeo retreated slightly, still letting his mouth linger on mine before completely pulling away. He rested his forehead against mine and he smiled. “I really fucking missed you.” “Me too,” I whispered. -Romeo & Rimmel

I think you’d be a really good Thomasina.” I smile. “Thanks but no thanks.” “Why not? It could be something good to put on your college apps.” “It’s not like I’m going to be a theater major or anything.” “It wouldn’t kill you to get out of your comfort zone a little bit,” he says, stretching his arms out behind his head. “Take a risk. Look at Margot. She’s all the way over in Scotland.” “I’m not Margot.” “I’m not saying you should move to the other side of the world. I know you’d never do that. Hey, what about Honor Council? You love judging people!” I make a face at him. “Or Model UN. I bet you’d like that. I’m just saying…your world could be bigger than just playing checkers with Kitty and riding around in Kavinsky’s car.” I stop highlighting midsentence. Is he right? Is my world really that small? It’s not like his world is so big! “Josh,” I begin. Then I pause, because I don’t know how I’m going to finish the sentence. So instead I throw my highlighter at him. It ricochets off his forehead. “Hey! You could have hit me in the eye!” “And you would have deserved it.” “Okay, okay. You know I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean that you should give people a chance to know you.” Josh points the remote control at me and says, “If people knew you, they would love you.” He sounds so matter-of-fact.

Mr. Townsend quirks a brow at the other man, and when our boss walks away he sticks his tongue out to his back. I push my hair over my shoulder and look this man over a bit closer. His dark hair reaches his shoulders and falls in soft waves around his face. He has a strong jaw lined with stubble and high cheekbones under his impossibly dark eyes. His perfect teeth are framed beautifully with full lips and a dark goatee, which only highlight the voluptuous color of his mouth. He’s wearing a dark blue button up shirt that fits loosely around his arms and chest, but the fitted dark jeans show off the chiseled lines of his thighs. He pushes his chair back slightly and stands, extending his large hand toward me. “I’m Reid. Reid Townsend.” He’s tall, about 6’0”, with a smile right out of a toothpaste commercial, and when I take his hand (surely with a stupid look on my face) it’s rough from heavy use. “Nice to meet you. I’m Danielle Delaney,” I reply. “You can call me Dani… Or anything you’d like except DD, um, in high school some people called me Double D’s because of that name and because I have big boobs—” I cut off abruptly with a slightly choked sound, feeling the blood rush over my chest, face and ears. I’ve never blurted something like that before in my life, and I especially have never blurted anything because I’m standing in front of a beautiful guy—I’m the player, not the played.

Closing the door, she turned back to him, taking in the long, muscled length of him on the bed, staring at her. Waiting for her. Perfection. He was perfect, and she was bare before him, bathed in candlelight. She was instantly embarrassed- somehow more embarrassed than she had been that night in his office, when she'd touched herself under his careful guidance. At least then she'd been wearing a corset. Stockings. Tonight, she wore nothing. She was all flaws, each one highlighted by his perfection. He watched her for a long moment before extending one muscled arm, palm up, an irresistible invitation. She went to him without hesitation, and he rolled to his back, pulling her over his lovely, lean chest, staring up at her intently. She covered her breasts in a wave of nerves and trepidation. "When you look at me like that... it's too much." He did not look away. "How do I look at you?" "I don't know what it is... but I feel as though you can see into me. As though, if you could, you would consume me." "It's want, love. Desire like nothing I've never experienced. I'm fairly shaking with it. Come here." The demand was impossible to resist, carrying with it the promise of pleasure beyond her dreams. She went. When she was close enough to touch, he lifted one hand, stroking his fingers along hers where they hid her breasts from view. "I tremble with need for you, Pippa. Please, love, let me see you." The request was raw and wretched, and she couldn't deny him, slowly moving her hands to settle them on his chest, fingers splayed wide across the crisp auburn hair that dusted his skin. She was distracted by that hair, the play of it over muscle- the way it narrowed to a lovely dark line across his flat stomach. He lay still as she touched him, his muscles firm and perfect. "You're so beautiful," she whispered, fingers stroking down his arms to his wrists. His gaze narrowed on her. "I am happy you approve, my lady." She smiled. "Oh I do, my lord. You are a remarkable specimen." White teeth flashed again as she gained her courage, retracing her touch, over his forearms, marveling in the feel of him, reciting from memory, "flexor digitorium superficialis, flexor capri radialis..." along his upper arms, "biceps brachii, tricipitis brachii..." over his shoulders, loving the way his muscles tensed and flexed beneath her touch, "deltoideus..." and down his chest, "subscapularis... pectoralis major..." She stilled, brushing her fingers over the curve of that muscle, the landscape of him... the valleys of his body. He sucked in a breath as her fingers ran over the flat discs of his nipples, arching up to her touch, and she stilled, reveling in her power. He enjoyed her touch. He wanted it. She repeated the stroke, this time with her thumbs. He hissed his pleasure, one wide hand falling to the inside of her knee, sending a river of heat through her. "Don't stop now, love. This is the most effective seduction I've ever experienced.

For me, the biggest conflict with the surgery date was that it fell on the same day as Cole’s junior/senior formal at school. The formal had been a big night for Reed two years earlier, with the highlight being a special ring ceremony. Juniors receive their senior rings and ask two special people in their lives to turn the ring on their finger. Reed has asked me to be one of those two people for him, which was a special honor for me. If Cole wants me there, I will reschedule Mia’s surgery. “Cole, who are you planning on having turn your ring?” I asked. “I didn’t get a ring, Mom. I really don’t want one,” Cole replied. Seriously? I thought. Boy, are you your father’s son or what? “All I really care about is getting some really good pictures.” I knew Cole was telling me the truth. He is not about fanfare or rituals. But he did want to remember the night. “Absolutely! I’ll make sure we have plenty of pictures of you,” I exclaimed. As it turned out, I think he was the most photographed student that night. Since I could not be there in person, people texted, e-mailed, and tagged me on Facebook with pictures of him. Again, my friends and Cole’s friends’ parents did what they could to help us through this difficult time. Something as simple as taking pictures was priceless to me. Yes, Cole was completely fine with my not being at the formal, but he was also sad that he could not be at the hospital for Mia. I assured him that there’s never a good time for surgery, and he shouldn’t feel guilty about attending his event--all of us wanted him to go and have a great time.

The panel delivery truck drew up before the front of the “Amsterdam Apartments” on 126th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues. Words on its sides, barely discernible in the dim street light, read: LUNATIC LYNDON … I DELIVER AND INSTALL TELEVISION SETS ANY TIME OF DAY OR NIGHT ANY PLACE. Two uniformed delivery men alighted and stood on the sidewalk to examine an address book in the light of a torch. Dark faces were highlighted for a moment like masks on display and went out with the light. They looked up and down the street. No one was in sight. Houses were vague geometrical patterns of black against the lighter blackness of the sky. Crosstown streets were always dark. Above them, in the black squares of windows, crescent-shaped whites of eyes and quarter moons of yellow teeth bloomed like Halloween pumpkins. Suddenly voices bubbled in the night. “Lookin’ for somebody?” The driver looked up. “Amsterdam Apartments.” “These is they.” Without replying, the driver and his helper began unloading a wooden box. Stenciled on its side were the words: Acme Television “Satellite” A.406. “What that number?” someone asked. “Fo-o-six,” Sharp-eyes replied. “I’m gonna play it in the night house if I ain’t too late.” “What ya’ll got there, baby?” “Television set,” the driver replied shortly. “Who dat getting a television this time of night?” The delivery man didn’t reply. A man’s voice ventured, “Maybe it’s that bird liver on the third storey got all them mens.” A woman said scornfully, “Bird liver! If she bird liver I’se fish and eggs and I got a daughter old enough to has mens.” “… or not!” a male voice boomed. “What she got ’ill get television sets when you jealous old hags is fighting over mops and pails.” “Listen to the loverboy! When yo’ love come down last?” “Bet loverboy ain’t got none, bird liver or what.” “Ain’t gonna get none either. She don’t burn no coal.” “Not in dis life, next life maybe.” “You people make me sick,” a woman said from a group on the sidewalk that had just arrived. “We looking for the dead man and you talking ’bout tricks.” The two delivery men were silently struggling with the big television box but the new arrivals got in their way. “Will you ladies kindly move your asses and look for dead men sommers else,” the driver said. His voice sounded mean. “ ’Scuse me,” the lady said. “You ain’t got him, is you?” “Does I look like I’m carrying a dead man ’round in my pocket?” “Dead man! What dead man? What you folks playing?” a man called down interestedly. “Skin?” “Georgia skin? Where?” “Ain’t nobody playing no skin,” the lady said with disgust. “He’s one of us.” “Who?” “The dead man, that’s who.” “One of usses? Where he at?” “Where he at? He dead, that’s where he at.” “Let me get some green down on dead man’s row.” “Ain’t you the mother’s gonna play fo-o-six?” “Thass all you niggers thinks about,” the disgusted lady said. “Womens and hits!” “What else is they?” “Where yo’ pride? The white cops done killed one of usses and thass all you can think about.” “Killed ’im where?” “We don’t know where. Why you think we’s looking?” “You sho’ is a one-tracked woman. I help you look, just don’t call me nigger is all.

You see Matt and Anthony every week. You see everyone every week.” “Not everyone, Nick,” his mother said pointedly. Then her voice changed and turned warmer. “Well, except for this upcoming weekend.” Nick paused at this. It could’ve been a trap. Perhaps his mother suspected something was up with her birthday and was fishing for information. Although it was surprising that she’d come to him—she usually went after Anthony, who had the secret-keeping skills of a four-year-old. “Why? What’s happening this weekend?” he asked nonchalantly. “Oh, nothing much. I just heard something about a sixtieth birthday party your father and you boys are planning for me.” Fucking Anthony. “And don’t go blaming Anthony,” his mother said, quick to protect her youngest. “I’d already heard about it from your aunt Donna before he slipped.” Nick knew what her next question would be before the words left her mouth. “So? Are you bringing a date?” she asked. “Sorry, Ma. It’ll just be me.” “There’s a surprise.” He pulled into the driveway that led to the parking garage of his condo building. “Just a warning, I’m about to pull into the garage—I might lose you.” “How convenient,” his mother said. “Because I had a really nice lecture planned for you.” “Let me guess the highlights: it involved me needing to focus on something other than work, and you dying heartbroken and miserable without grandchildren. Am I close?” “Not bad. But I’ll save the rest of the lecture for Sunday. There’s going to be a lot of gesturing on my part, and the phone doesn’t quite capture the spirit.” Nick smiled. “Shockingly, I’m looking forward to it. I’ll see you Sunday, Ma.” Her voice softened. “I know how busy you are, Nick. It means a lot to me that you’re coming home.” He knew it did. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Then it was time for dessert: another plate, full of big, white larvas from the palm nut tree. And I do mean big—each one was longer and thicker than my thumb, and had been lightly fried in its own fat. But I wondered, had they been too lightly fried? Because they seemed to be moving. The villagers were proud to offer us such a delicious treat. Remember, I am a sword swallower. I should be able to push anything down my throat. And I am not usually a fussy eater: I had even once eaten porridge made from mosquitos. But no. This, I couldn’t do. The heads of the larvas looked like little brown nuts and their thick bodies like transparent wrinkled marshmallows, through which I could see their intestines. The villagers gestured that I should bite them in two and suck out the insides. If I tried I would puke the rat back up. I did not want to offend. Suddenly, an idea. I smiled softly and said regretfully, “You know what, I am sorry, but I can’t eat larvas.” Thorkild turned to me, surprised. He already had a couple of larvas hanging out of the corners of his mouth. He really loved those larvas. He had previously worked as a missionary in Congo, where they had been the highlight of every week for one whole year. “You see, we don’t eat larvas,” I said, trying to look convincing. The villagers looked at Thorkild. “But he eats them?” they asked. Thorkild stared at me. “Ah,” I said. “You see, he comes from a different tribe. I come from Sweden, he comes from Denmark. In Denmark, they love eating larvas. But in Sweden it’s against our culture.” The village teacher went and got out the world map and I pointed out the water separating our two countries. “On this side of the water they eat larvas,” I said, “and on this side we don’t.” It’s actually one of the most blatant lies I have ever told, but it worked. The villagers were happy to share my dessert between them. Everyone, everywhere knows that people from different tribes have different customs.

Still, if we combine all the victims of all these persecutions, it turns out that in these three centuries, the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians.1 In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion. The religious wars between Catholics and Protestants that swept Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are particularly notorious. All those involved accepted Christ’s divinity and His gospel of compassion and love. However, they disagreed about the nature of this love. Protestants believed that the divine love is so great that God was incarnated in flesh and allowed Himself to be tortured and crucified, thereby redeeming the original sin and opening the gates of heaven to all those who professed faith in Him. Catholics maintained that faith, while essential, was not enough. To enter heaven, believers had to participate in church rituals and do good deeds. Protestants refused to accept this, arguing that this quid pro quo belittles God’s greatness and love. Whoever thinks that entry to heaven depends upon his or her own good deeds magnifies his own importance, and implies that Christ’s suffering on the cross and God’s love for humankind are not enough. These theological disputes turned so violent that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Catholics and Protestants killed each other by the hundreds of thousands. On 23 August 1572, French Catholics who stressed the importance of good deeds attacked communities of French Protestants who highlighted God’s love for humankind. In this attack, the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, between 5,000 and 10,000 Protestants were slaughtered in less than twenty-four hours. When the pope in Rome heard the news from France, he was so overcome by joy that he organised festive prayers to celebrate the occasion and commissioned Giorgio Vasari to decorate one of the Vatican’s rooms with a fresco of the massacre (the room is currently off-limits to visitors).2 More Christians were killed by fellow Christians in those twenty-four hours than by the polytheistic Roman Empire throughout its entire existence. God

Of course, not everyone agreed with Professor Glaude’s assessment. Joel C. Gregory, a white professor of preaching at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary and coauthor of What We Love about the Black Church,8 took issue with Glaude’s pronouncement of the Black Church’s death. Gregory, a self-described veteran of preaching in “more than two hundred African-American congregations, conferences, and conventions in more than twenty states each year,” found himself at a loss for an explanation of Glaude’s statements. Gregory offered six signs of vitality in the African-American church, including: thriving preaching, vitality in worship, continuing concern for social justice, active community service, high regard for education, and efforts at empowerment. Gregory contends that these signs of life can be found in African-American congregations in every historically black denomination and in varying regions across the country. He writes: Where is the obituary? I do not know any organization in America today that has the vitality of the black church. Lodges are dying, civic clubs are filled with octogenarians, volunteer organizations are languishing, and even the academy has to prove the worth of a degree. The government is divided, the schoolroom has become a war zone, mainline denominations are staggering, and evangelical megachurch juggernauts show signs of lagging. Above all this entropy stands one institution that is more vital than ever: the praising, preaching, and empowering black church.9 The back-and-forth between those pronouncing death and those highlighting life reveals the difficulty of defining “the Black Church.” In fact, we must admit that speaking of “the Black Church” remains a quixotic quest. “The Black Church” really exists as multiple black churches across denominational, theological, and regional lines. To some extent, we can define the Black Church by referring to the historically black denominations—National Baptist, Progressive Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal (AME), African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ), Church of God in Christ (COGIC), and so on. But increasingly we must recognize that one part of “the Black Church” exists as predominantly black congregations belonging to majority white denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention or even African-American members of predominantly white churches. Still, other quarters of “the Black Church” belong to nondenominational affinity groups like the many congregations involved in Word of Faith and “prosperity gospel” networks sponsored by leaders like Creflo A. Dollar Jr. and T. D. Jakes. Clearly “the Black Church” is not one thing. Black churches come in as many flavors as any other ethnic communion. Indeed, many African-Americans have experiences with many parts of the varied Black Church world.

it’s usually better to highlight a core benefit of your business instead of a descriptive feature.