Love Is Just A Transaction Quotes

Elizabeth Bennett needs to chill" . . "Love is just a transaction. We're all hardwired to desire. We present the correct set of desirable traits and boom! We can turn it on or we can turn it off." — Hardin

The water is speaking in a language I knew before the world taught me its language. I lie there and I let the sound of the surf massage my soul fo two hours. I let it speak to me and I do not speak back. I just receive. I understand with great gratitude that i could rest here forever, offer the sea nothing in return, and it would never stop speaking to me. The surf is gentle and selfless and steady. This is not a transaction, it is a gift.

Lovers find secret places inside this violent world where they make transactions with beauty. Reason says, Nonsense. I have walked and measured the walls here. There are no places like that. Love says, There are. Reason sets up a market and begins doing business. Love has more hidden work. Hallaj steps away from the pulpit and climbs the stairs of the gallows. Lovers feel a truth inside themselves that rational people keep denying. It is reasonable to say, Surrender is just an idea that keeps people from leading their lives. Love responds, No. This thinking is what is dangerous. Using language obscures what Shams came to give. Every day the sun rises out of low word-clouds into burning silence.

Let's accept it that we remember people only when we have some work and only our Mother‬ remembers us and calls us for no reason, just to know how we are doing!

Let's accept it that we remember people only when we need something from them and only our Mother remembers us and calls us for no reason, just to know how we are doing! Miss you Aai!

The psychologist Daniel Wegner has this beautiful concept called transactive memory, which is the observation that we don’t just store information in our minds or in specific places. We also store memories and understanding in the minds of the people we love. You don’t need to remember your child’s emotional relationship to her teacher because you know your wife will; you don’t have to remember how to work the remote because you know your daughter will. That’s transactive memory. Little bits of ourselves reside in other people’s minds. Wegner has a heartbreaking riff about what one member of a couple will often say when the other one dies—that some part of him or her died along with the partner. That, Wegner says, is literally true. When your partner dies, everything that you have stored in that person’s brain is gone.

And in the end, it is not our love that overcomes hate at all. It is God’s. And preemptive love is not just something God does as a one-off transaction. Preemptive love is who God is, constantly overcoming our hateful rebellion and our lesser passions that belie the self-interest we suppose ourselves to be pursuing.

We are told that small-scale farming is inefficient— this is true—and that because our factory farms feed the masses, and do so cheaply, we should be satisfied. And that's a deal that makes sense to nearly all of us: just keep the stuff showing up in produce bins and under cellophane in the supermarket cooler, and keep it relatively cheap, and we'll ask no questions. But in striking that devil's bargain, we sign away our responsibility for what's in that food, how it got there, and what was done to human communities to close the deal. To participate in a system and a way of thinking in which the act of eating is merely a commercial transaction is to sell out our spiritual and cultural patrimony. I understand the free-market reasons why Americans do this. But I don't understand why it is called conservative.

Sometimes you change your mind about a person,' I tell her. 'Or your feelings for them change, or they change, or, I don't know, you just want to make a different decision. And that's always okay. You don't owe anyone anything. You know that, don't you?' 'What do you mean?' she says. 'I mean, like with Matt. I wanted to date him, and then I didn't want to anymore, and some people made me feel guilty for that. As if he deserved whatever he wanted, and I was being selfish for not giving it to him.' 'Are you talking about sex?' she asks matter-of-factly. 'No,' I say. 'Yes. Kind of. I'm talking about everything: dating, kissing, sex. All of it. You never owe another person something, no matter how nice they are to you. Relationships aren't transactions.

While women suffer from our relative lack of power in the world and often resent it, certain dimensions of this powerlessness may seem abstract and remote. We know, for example, that we rarely get to make the laws or direct the major financial institutions. But Wall Street and the U.S. Congress seem very far away. The power a woman feels in herself to heal and sustain, on the other hand--"the power of love"--is, once again, concrete and very near: It is like a field of force emanating from within herself, a great river flowing outward from her very person. Thus, a complex and contradictory female subjectivity is constructed within the relations of caregiving. Here, as elsewhere, women are affirmed in some way and diminished in others, this within the unity of a single act. The woman who provides a man with largely unreciprocated emotional sustenance accords him status and pays him homage; she agrees to the unspoken proposition that his doings are important enough to deserve substantially more attention than her own. But even as the man's supremacy in the relationship is tacitly assumed by both parties to the transaction, the man reveals himself to his caregiver as vulnerable and insecure. And while she may well be ethically and epistemically disempowered by the care she gives, this caregiving affords her a feeling that a mighty power resides within her being. The situation of those men in the hierarchy of gender who avail themselves of female tenderness is not thereby altered: Their superordinate position is neither abandoned, nor their male privilege relinquished. The vulnerability these men exhibit is not a prelude in any way to their loss of male privilege or to an elevation in the status of women. Similarly, the feeling that one's love is a mighty force for the good in the life of the beloved doesn't make it so, as Milena Jesenka found, to her sorrow. The feeling of out-flowing personal power so characteristic of the caregiving woman is quite different from the having of any actual power in the world. There is no doubt that this sense of personal efficacy provides some compensation for the extra-domestic power women are typically denied: If one cannot be a king oneself, being a confidante of kings may be the next best thing. But just as we make a bad bargain in accepting an occasional Valentine in lieu of the sustained attention we deserve, we are ill advised to settle for a mere feeling of power, however heady and intoxicating it may be, in place of the effective power we have every right to exercise in the world.

In the unrelenting chase of what is “best,” many of us can unknowingly allow our lives to become defined by materialism. Materialism isn’t simply about loving certain logos or buying nice stuff; rather, it’s a value system that defines our goals and attention and how we spend our days. And it can leave us not just exhausted but unmoored. Pursuing materialistic goals, like high-status careers and money, causes us to invest our time and energy into things that take time away from investing in our social connections, a habit that can make us feel isolated over time. Ironically, the more isolated we feel, the more likely we are to pursue materialistic goals that we hope, even subconsciously, will draw people to us. Acquiring status markers, we believe, will make us worthy of the human connection we crave. It’s a vicious cycle: some people may become materialistic not because they love money more but because they have underdeveloped connections. Instead of attaching to people, they attach to material goods and status markers to fill the void and to try to get the emotional security they’re lacking. But this approach can backfire and undermine the very relationships we’re trying to foster. In fact, people who prioritize materialistic goals tend to have weaker, more transactional relationships: you do for me, I do for you.

To be sure, we can buy art, but we sense that if it is mere commodity, we pay too much; and if it is true art, we pay infinitely too little. Similarly, we can buy sex but not love; we can buy calories but not real nourishment. Today we suffer a poverty of immesurable things, priceless things; a poverty of the things that money cannot buy and a surfeit of the things it can (though this surfeit is so unequally distributed that many suffer a poverty of those things, too). Just as money homogenizes the things it touches, so also does it homogenize and depersonalize its users: "It facilitates the kind of commercial exchange that is disembedded from all other relations." In other words, people become mere parties to a transaction. In contrast to the diverse motivations that characterize the giving and receiving of gifts, in a pure financial transaction we are all identical: we all want to get the best deal. The homegeneity among human beings that is an effect of money is assumed by economics to be a cause. The whole story of money's evolution from barter assumes that it is fundamental human nature to want to maximize self-interest. In this, human beings are assumed to be identical. When there is no standard of value, different humans want different things. When money is exchangeable for any thing, then all people want the same thing: money.

wouldn't know how to take care of it." "No trouble at all. In the first place they're cleanly little beasties—no problem that way. And they'll eat anything; they love garbage. Feed it every week or so and let it have all the water it will take every month or six weeks—it doesn't matter really; if it isn't fed or watered it just slows down until it is. Doesn't hurt it a bit. And you don't even have to see that it keeps warm. Let me show you." He reached out and took the flat cat back, jiggled it in his hand. It promptly curled up into a ball. "See that? Like everything else on Mars, it can wrap itself up when the weather is bad. A real survivor type." The shopkeeper started to mention another of its survival characteristics, then decided it had no bearing on the transaction. "How about it? I'll make you a good price.

I never believed in love before her. I thought it was just an imaginary social construct that humans created in order to give their lives more meaning.
 But then she showed me how real it truly was. How fucking magical, how passionate it could be. A kind of spiritual transaction between two people, something alien, something… Fuck, I don’t know where I’m going with this.
 Love is just something you can’t put into words. It’s just something you feel.
 And with her… with Jane Elizabeth fucking Meyer, I feel it. I fucking feel everything. Something overwhelming and pure and there I go again; trying to make sense of it―trying to define it.
 I give up. 
I don’t need to explain it, as long as I feel it. And that feeling has never died down, not even for a day. Not even after spending so much time apart.
 She will forever be mine. She will forever be the reason I live and breathe.

... nature did not make us to feel too good for too long (which would be no good for the survival of the species) but only to feel good enough to imagine, erroneously, that someday we might feel good all the time. To believe that humanity will ever live in a feel-good world is a common mistake. And if we do not feel good, we should act as if we do. If you act happy, then you will become happy—everybody in the workaday world knows that. If you do not improve, then someone must assume the blame. And that someone will be you. We are on our way to the future, and no introverted melancholic is going to impede our progress. You have two choices: start thinking the way God and your society want you to think or be forsaken by all. The decision is yours, since you are a free agent who can choose to rejoin the world of fabricated reality—civilization, that is—or stubbornly insist on . . . what? That we should rethink how the whole world transacts its business? That we should start over from scratch, questioning all the ways and means that delivered us to a lofty prominence over the amusement park of creation? Try to be realistic. We made our world just the way nature and the Lord wanted us to make it. There is no starting over and no going back. No major readjustments are up for a vote. And no nihilistic head case is going to get a bad word in edgewise. The universe was created by the Creator, goddamn it. We live in a country we love and that loves us back. We have families and friends and jobs that make it all worthwhile. We are somebodies, as we spin upon this good earth, not a bunch of nobodies without names or numbers or retirement plans. None of this is going to become unraveled by a thought criminal who contends that the world is not double plus good and never will be and who believes that anyone is better off dead than alive. Our lives may not be unflawed—that would deny us a future to work toward—but if this charade is good enough for us, then it should be good enough for you. So if you cannot get your mind right, try walking away. You will find no place to go and no one who will have you. You will find only the same old trap the world over. It is the trap of tomorrow. Love it or leave it—choose which and choose fast. You will never get us to give up our hopes, demented as they may seem. You will never get us to wake up from our dreams. Your opinions are not certified by institutions of authority or by the middling run of humanity, and therefore whatever thoughts may enter your chemically imbalanced brain are invalid, inauthentic, or whatever dismissive term we care to assign to you who are only “one of those people.” So get the hell out if you can. But we are betting that when you start hurting badly enough, you will come running back. If you are not as strong as Samson— that no-good suicide and slaughterer of Philistines—then you will return to the trap. Do you think we are morons? We have already thought everything that you have thought. The only difference is that we have the proper and dignified sense of futility not to spread that nasty news. Our shibboleth: “Up the Conspiracy and down with Consciousness.

Their Graces bought me, you know. They’d acquired my brother Devlin the year before, and my mother, inspired by this development, threatened to publish all manner of lurid memoirs regarding His Grace.” Acquired her brother? As if he were a promising yearling colt or an attractive patch of ground? “You are going to burden me with the details of your family past, I take it?” “You are the man who glories in details.” Without the least rude inflection, she made it sound like a failing. “My point is that my mother sold me. She could just as easily have sold me to a brothel. It’s done all the time. Unlike your sisters, Mr. Hazlit, I do not take for granted the propriety with which I was raised. You may ignore it if you please; I will not.” She had such a lovely voice. Light, soft, lilting with a hint of something Gaelic or Celtic… exotic. The sound of her voice was so pretty, it almost disguised the ugliness of her words. “How old were you?” “Five, possibly six. It depends on whether I am truly Moreland’s by-blow or just a result of my mother’s schemes in his direction.” Six years old and sold to a brothel? The food he’d eaten threatened to rebel. “I’m… sorry.” For calling her a dollymop, for making her repeat this miserable tale, for what he was about to suggest. She turned her head to regard him, the slight sheen in her eyes making him sorrier still. Sorrier than he could recall being about anything in a long, long time. Not just guilty and ashamed, but full of regret—for her. The way he’d been full of regret for his sisters and powerless to do anything but support them in their solitary struggles. He shoved that thought aside, along with the odd notion that he should take Magdalene Windham’s hand in some laughable gesture of comfort. He passed her his handkerchief instead. “This makes the stated purpose of my call somewhat awkward.” “It makes just about everything somewhat awkward,” she said quietly. “Try a few years at finishing school when you’re the daughter of not just a courtesan—there are some of those, after all—but a courtesan who sells her offspring. I realized fairly early that my mother’s great failing was not a lack of virtue, but rather that she was greedy in her fall from grace.” “She exploited a child,” Hazlit said. “That is an order of magnitude different from parlaying with an adult male in a transaction of mutual benefit.” “Do you think so?” She laid his handkerchief out in her lap, her fingers running over his monogrammed initials. “Some might say she was protecting me, providing for me and holding the duke accountable for his youthful indiscretions.” Despite her mild tone, Hazlit didn’t think Miss Windham would reach those conclusions. She might long to, but she wouldn’t. By the age of six a child usually had the measure of her caretakers. And to think of Maggie Windham at six… big innocent green eyes, masses of red hair, perfect skin… in a brothel. “I

April 10 MORNING “The place which is called Calvary.” — Luke 23:33 THE hill of comfort is the hill of Calvary; the house of consolation is built with the wood of the cross; the temple of heavenly blessing is founded upon the riven rock — riven by the spear which pierced His side. No scene in sacred history ever gladdens the soul like Calvary’s tragedy. “Is it not strange, the darkest hour That ever dawned on sinful earth, Should touch the heart with softer power, For comfort, than an angel’s mirth? That to the Cross the mourner’s eye should turn, Sooner than where the stars of Bethlehem burn?” Light springs from the midday-midnight of Golgotha, and every herb of the field blooms sweetly beneath the shadow of the once accursed tree. In that place of thirst, grace hath dug a fountain which ever gusheth with waters pure as crystal, each drop capable of alleviating the woes of mankind. You who have had your seasons of conflict, will confess that it was not at Olivet that you ever found comfort, not on the hill of Sinai, nor on Tabor; but Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha have been a means of comfort to you. The bitter herbs of Gethsemane have often taken away the bitters of your life; the scourge of Gabbatha has often scourged away your cares, and the groans of Calvary yields us comfort rare and rich. We never should have known Christ’s love in all its heights and depths if He had not died; nor could we guess the Father’s deep affection if He had not given His Son to die. The common mercies we enjoy all sing of love, just as the sea-shell, when we put it to our ears, whispers of the deep sea whence it came; but if we desire to hear the ocean itself, we must not look at every-day blessings, but at the transactions of the crucifixion. He who would know love, let him retire to Calvary and see the Man of sorrows die.

The political establishment was caught off guard because words like “despair,” “anger,” and “anxiety” refer to emotions, and the establishment mind-set sees emotions as “soft” rather than “hard” political factors. Its worldview is transactional rather than relational, treating the exchange of money far more seriously than the exchange of love. But a healthy political order does not leave our deep humanity out of the equation; it values the workings of the heart as well as the workings of the economy. Government is here to serve its people, and people are not just job numbers or cogs in a corporate machine. We are living, breathing, divinely created beings on this earth for a high and mighty purpose. No politics, and no political establishment, that fails to see us that way or treat us that way is worthy. We don’t just need a progressive politics or a conservative politics; we need a more deeply human politics. We need a politics of love. Love is the angel of our better nature, just as fear is the demon of the lower self. And it is love, not fear, that has made us great. When politics is used for loveless purposes, love and love alone can override it. It was love that abolished slavery, it was love that gave women suffrage, it was love that established civil rights, and it is love that we need now.

In the workday world, complainers will not go far. When someone asks how you are doing, you had better be wise enough to reply "I can't complain." If you do complain, even justifiably, people will stop asking how you are doing. Complaining will not help you succeed and influence people. You can complain to your physician or psychiatrist because they are paid to hear you complain. But you cannot complain to your boss or your friends, if you have any. You will soon be dismissed from your job and dropped from the social register. Then you will be left alone with your complaints and no one to listen to them gratis. Perhaps then the message will sink into your head: If you do not feel good enough for long enough, you should act as if you do and even think as if you do. That is the way to get yourself to feel good for long enough and stop you from complaining for good, as any self-improvement book can affirm. But should you not improve, someone must assume the blame. And that someone will be you. This is monumentally so if you are a pessimist or a depressive. Should you conclude that life is objectionable or that nothing matters, do not waste our time with your nonsense. We are on our way to the future, and the philosophically disheartening or the emotionally impaired are not going to hinder our progress. If you cannot say something positive, or at least equivocal, keep it to yourself. Pessimists and depressives need not apply for a position in the enterprise of life. You have two choices: Start thinking the way God and your society want you to think or be forsake by all. The decision is yours, since you are a free agent who can choose to rejoin our fabricated reality or stubbornly insist on... what? That we should mollycoddle non-positive thinkers like you or rethink how the whole world transacts it's business? That we should start over from scratch? Or that we should go extinct? Try to be realistic. We did the best we could with the tools we had. After all, we are only human, as we like to say. Our world may not be in accord with nature's way, but it did develop organically according to our consciousness , which delivered us to a lofty prominence over the Creation. The whole thing just took on a life of its own, and nothing is going to stop it anytime soon. There can be no starting over and no going back. No major readjustments are up for a vote. And no melancholic head-case is going to bad-mouth our catastrophe. The universe was created by the Creator, by damn. We live in a country we love and that loves us back, We have families and friends and jobs that make it all worthwhile. We are somebodies, not a bunch of nobodies without names or numbers or retirement plans. None of this is going to be overhauled by a thought criminal who contends that the world is not double-plus-good and never will be. Our lives may not be unflawed, that would deny us a better future to work towards but if this charade is good enough for us, then it should be good enough for you. So if you cannot get your mind right, try walking away. You will find no place to go and no one who will have you. You will find only the same old trap the world over. Lighten up or leave us alone. You will never get us to give up our hopes. You will never get us to wake up from our dreams. We are not contradictory beings whose continuance only worsens our plight as mutants who embody the contorted logic of a paradox. Such opinions will not be accredited by institutions of authority or by the middling run of humanity. To lay it on the line, whatever thoughts may emerge from your deviant brain are invalid, inauthentic, or whatever dismissive term we care to hang on you, who are only "one of those people." So start pretending that you feel good enough for long enough, stop your complaining, and get back in line.

The place which is called Calvary." Luke 23:33 The hill of comfort is the hill of Calvary; the house of consolation is built with the wood of the cross; the temple of heavenly blessing is founded upon the riven rock--riven by the spear which pierced his side. No scene in sacred history ever gladdens the soul like Calvary's tragedy. "Is it not strange, the darkest hour That ever dawned on sinful earth, Should touch the heart with softer power, For comfort, than an angel's mirth? That to the Cross the mourner's eye should turn, Sooner than where the stars of Bethlehem burn?" Light springs from the midday-midnight of Golgotha, and every herb of the field blooms sweetly beneath the shadow of the once accursed tree. In that place of thirst, grace hath dug a fountain which ever gusheth with waters pure as crystal, each drop capable of alleviating the woes of mankind. You who have had your seasons of conflict, will confess that it was not at Olivet that you ever found comfort, not on the hill of Sinai, nor on Tabor; but Gethsemane, Gabbatha, and Golgotha have been a means of comfort to you. The bitter herbs of Gethsemane have often taken away the bitters of your life; the scourge of Gabbatha has often scourged away your cares, and the groans of Calvary yields us comfort rare and rich. We never should have known Christ's love in all its heights and depths if he had not died; nor could we guess the Father's deep affection if he had not given his Son to die. The common mercies we enjoy all sing of love, just as the sea-shell, when we put it to our ears, whispers of the deep sea whence it came; but if we desire to hear the ocean itself, we must not look at every-day blessings, but at the transactions of the crucifixion. He who would know love, let him retire to Calvary and see the Man of sorrows die.

MY CODE OF ETHICS I. I believe in the Golden Rule as the basis of all human conduct; therefore, I will never do to another person that which I would not be willing for that person to do to me if our positions were reversed. II. I will be honest, even to the slightest detail, in all my transactions with others, not alone because of my desire to be fair with them, but because of my desire to impress the idea of honesty on my own subconscious mind, thereby weaving this essential quality into my own character. III. I will forgive those who are unjust toward me, with no thought as to whether they deserve it or not, because I understand the law through which forgiveness of others strengthens my own character and wipes out the effects of my own transgressions, in my subconscious mind. IV. I will be just, generous and fair with others always, even though I know that these acts will go unnoticed and unrecorded, in the ordinary terms of reward, because I understand and intend to apply the law through the aid of which one's own character is but the sum total of one's own acts and deeds. V. Whatever time I may have to devote to the discovery and exposure of the weaknesses and faults of others I will devote, more profitably, to the discovery and correction of my own. VI. I will slander no person, no matter how much I may believe another person may deserve it, because I wish to plant no destructive suggestions in my own sub-conscious mind. VII. I recognize the power of Thought as being an inlet leading into my brain from the universal ocean of life; therefore, I will set no destructive thoughts afloat upon that ocean lest they pollute the minds of others. VIII. I will conquer the common human tendency toward hatred, and envy, and selfishness, and jealousy, and malice, and pessimism, and doubt, and fear; for I believe these to be the seed from which the world harvests most of its troubles. IX. When my mind is not occupied with thoughts that tend toward the attainment of my definite chief aim in life, I will voluntarily keep it filled with thoughts of courage, and self-confidence, and good- will toward others, and faith, and kindness, and loyalty, and love for truth, and justice, for I believe these to be the seed from which the world reaps its harvest of progressive growth. X. I understand that a mere passive belief in the soundness of the Golden Rule philosophy is of no value whatsoever, either to myself or to others; there- 32- fore, I will actively put into operation this universal rule for good in all my transactions with others. XI. I understand the law through the operation of which my own character is developed from my own acts and thoughts; therefore, I will guard with care all that goes into its development. XII. Realizing that enduring happiness comes only through helping others find it; that no act of kindness is without its reward, even though it may never be directly repaid, I will do my best to assist others when and where the opportunity appears.

I love signing my name to Sebastian’s checks and credit card transactions. But not in a creepy I’m-pretending-to-be-his-wife kind of way. I just like to sign for things that I don’t actually have to pay for—who wouldn’t?

terms. The net effect is that I have created $30,000 in my asset column for which I am paid interest, just like a bank gets paid interest for the loans it makes. I was beginning to be a bank, and I loved it. Remember that rich dad said, “Be careful when you take on debt. If you take on debt personally, make sure it’s small. If you take on large debt, make sure someone else is paying for it.” In the language of the B and I side, I “laid off” my risk, or “hedged” my risk to another buyer. That is the game in the world of finance. This type of transaction is done all over the world. Yet wherever I go, people come up to me and say those magic words: “You can’t do that here.” What most small investors fail to realize is that many large commercial buildings are bought and sold exactly in the manner described above. Sometimes they go through a bank, but many times

done. Why did he stick around? Why would he force that encounter with you on the road, and that night at the diner . . .” He looked at Chris as though willing him to fill in the blanks, but Chris’s implacable eyes gave away nothing. “Wait,” Beck said, “I just remembered something. When Watkins came into the diner, I remember him looking surprised to see us there. But it was only me he was surprised to see, wasn’t it? He said he was there for a business . . . Ah,” he said with sudden enlightenment. “The payoff. He was meeting you there to get his money. “That was the night of Billy’s accident. I’d just come from the hospital. Our unscheduled meeting in the diner prevented you from conducting your transaction with Watkins. No wonder he was so angry that night on the road. He still hadn’t been paid. He was getting antsy. The heat was shifting from you onto him. In desperation, he went to Sayre and got Scott focused on the fratricide angle. That brought things to a head, so you arranged for a meeting with Watkins at the camp this morning.” Chris grinned. “I bet you aced law school, didn’t you? You’re actually very sharp. But, Beck, the only thing I would swear to under oath is that Slap Watkins came crashing through the door of the cabin, waving a knife and telling me he was going to kill his second Hoyle and how giddy he was at the prospect.” “I have no doubt that’s what happened, Chris. He just arrived earlier than you expected. He wanted to get the jump on you because he didn’t trust you. Justifiably. Even Watkins was smart enough to realize that you weren’t about to hand over money and let him walk away from that last meeting. He signed his own death warrant the minute he agreed to kill Danny.” “Please, Beck. Let’s not get sentimental over Slap. A double cross was his plan from the very beginning. Why do you think he left that matchbook in the cabin?” Beck mentally stepped back from himself and considered his options. He could leave now. Simply turn around and walk out. Go to Sayre. Live out the rest of his days loving her, and to hell with Chris and Huff, their treachery and corruption, to hell with their stinking, maiming, life-taking foundry. He was so damn weary of the struggle and the pretense. He longed to throw off this mantle of responsibility, to forget he ever knew the Hoyles and let the devil take them—if he would have them. That was what he wanted to do. Or he could stay and do what he had committed to do. As appealing as the former option was, the latter was preordained. “Slap Watkins didn’t plant the matchbook in the cabin, Chris.” He held Chris’s stare for several seconds, before adding, “I did.” • • • George

There is really no such thing as conditional love and unconditional love. There are conditions and there is love. When you talk about love, it has to be unconditional. The moment there is a condition, it just amounts to a transaction.

So that’s it, huh? You show up here, ask me for a loan, get your check, and then leave?” Hattie didn’t flinch. “What did you expect? A teary-eyed family reunion? You want to hold me up with emotional blackmail? That’s not gonna work on me anymore, Dad. I finally figured it out. Everything is a transaction to you. Okay, fine. I don’t need your love, or your approval, or even your respect anymore. But I’ll take a loan. And I’ll pay you back. Because, just like you taught me, I

[eroticism is] quality of aliveness, of vibrancy, of vitality, a life force" that's just as relevant to your work life as it is to your love life. Bringing eroticism into all areas of human existence is at the heart of her work. And because virtually everyone lives in a matrix of personal, professional, and transactional relationships, the erotic charge of those relationships is integrally tied to the pursuit of a meaningful life.

I’d always thought real prayer, real religious expression, had to be unique. Individualistic. New and tailored for the person expressing it because otherwise what’s the point? But for the first time, I feel the power of praying words alongside someone else, the power of praying words so familiar and ancient they come from some hitherto unknown part of my mind. The part of my mind that isn’t consumed with accounting and finance, the part that isn’t even rational or entirely civilized. It’s a part of me so deep, so elemental, I can’t even name it. But it responds to the old words like trees to wind, rustling awake, stretching roots deep, deep down. The words don’t care about my feelings, about my petty sulks and mortal frustrations. The words are there anyway, just as the humanness inside me is there anyway, and for one clear, shimmering moment, I understand. I understand how you can convict God of terrible crimes and then go to evening prayer. I understand that hate was never, ever the opposite of belief. I understand that belief isn’t a coat to be put on and worn in all kinds of weather, even the blistering sun. Belief is this. Praying when you don’t feel like it, when you don’t know who or what is listening; it’s doing the actions with the trust that something about it matters. That something about it makes you more human, a better human, a human able to love and trust and hope in a world where those things are hard. That is belief. That is the point of prayer. Not logging a wish list inside a cosmic ledger, not bartering for transactional services. You do it for the change it works on you and on those around you; the point of it is…itself. Nothing more and nothing less.

It is common for one party to a transaction to have better information than another party. In the parlance of economists, such a case is known as an information asymmetry. We accept as a verity of capitalism that someone (usually an expert) knows more than someone else (usually a consumer). But information asymmetries everywhere have in fact been gravely wounded by the Internet. Information is the currency of the Internet. As a medium, the Internet is brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not. Often, as in the case of term life insurance prices, the information existed but in a woefully scattered way. (In such instances, the Internet acts like a gigantic horseshoe magnet waved over an endless sea of haystacks, plucking the needle out of each one.) The Internet has accomplished what even the most fervent consumer advocates usually cannot: it has vastly shrunk the gap between the experts and the public. The Internet has proven particularly fruitful for situations in which a face-to-face encounter with an expert might actually exacerbate the problem of asymmetrical information—situations in which an expert uses his informational advantage to make us feel stupid or rushed or cheap or ignoble. Consider a scenario in which your loved one has just died and now the funeral director (who knows that you know next to nothing about his business and are under emotional duress to boot) steers you to the $8,000 mahogany casket. Or consider the automobile dealership: a salesman does his best to obscure the car’s base price under a mountain of add-ons and incentives. Later, however, in the cool-headed calm of your home, you can use the Internet to find out exactly how much the dealer paid the manufacturer for that car. Or you might just log on to TributeDirect.com and buy that mahogany casket yourself for only $3,595, delivered overnight.

AS IF THE abstracting qualities of numbers and scale aren’t enough to deal with when trying to run an organization, these days we have the added complication of the virtual world. The Internet is nothing short of awe inspiring. It gives the power to operate at scale or spread ideas to anyone, be it a small business or a social movement. It gives us the ability to find and connect with people more easily. And it is incredible at speeding the pace of commercial transactions. All of these things are good. But, just as money was developed to help expedite and simplify transactions by allowing payment to be rendered without barter, we often use the Internet as a means to expedite and simplify communication and the relationships we build. And just as money can’t buy love, the Internet can’t buy deep, trusting relationships. What makes a statement like that somewhat tricky or controversial is that the relationships we form online feel real. We can, indeed, get bursts of serotonin when people “like” our pictures, pages or posts or when we watch ourselves go up in a ranking (you know how much serotonin loves a ranking). The feelings of admiration we get from virtual “likes” or the number of followers we have is not like the feelings of admiration we get from our children, or that a coach gets from their players. It is simply a public display of “like” with no sacrifice required—a new kind of status symbol, if you will. Put simply, though the love may feel real, the relationship is still virtual. Relationships can certainly start online, but they only become real when we meet face-to-face.

I’m going to kiss you again.” He took her hand in his. “Now, in fact.” He settled his lips over hers gently, just as he’d done a year ago. And now, as then, he took his time deepening the kiss, tasting her, breathing in her fragrance, letting his hands wander over her arms and shoulders and neck, until she was leaning into him and kissing him back. “All day today,” Val said as he wrapped his arms around her, “I watched you being so brisk, efficient, and businesslike. You have the knack of the friendly transaction, and you part with your produce willingly enough. But your flowers.” He paused to kiss the side of her neck, a spot she seemed to particularly enjoy. “When you sold your posies,” Val went on, kissing his way out to her shoulder, “each time, you didn’t want to let them go. Your heart broke a little, sending them off that way, for coin.” “Hush. Flowers aren’t kisses to be given away…” She buried her face against his shoulder. “What?” He slid a hand to her nape and began massaging gently. “Your moods are hard to read today, love.” “I’m just tired,” Ellen said, offering him a smile.

The common mercies we enjoy all sing of love, just as the sea-shell, when we put it to our ears, whispers of the deep sea whence it came; but if we desire to hear the ocean itself, we must not look at every-day blessings, but at the transactions of the crucifixion. He who would know love, let him retire to Calvary and see the Man of sorrows die.

Paul Ricœur has two terms that neatly sum up this difference between modern contracts and God’s covenants.12 Contracts obey a logic of equivalence, a regime of strict justice in which unerring calculation determines the just measure of commitment in each case. It is the logic of the transaction and of the market, a reciprocal paradigm in which debts must be paid in full, but no more. The logic of equivalence belongs to a view of the world in which every gift is a trojan horse that requires reciprocation sooner or later: “They invited us round for dinner and baked their own dessert; we will have to do the same!” It is the ethics of a Derrida who ruefully acknowledges that “for there to be gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, counter-gift, or debt.”13 This is an impossible standard that leads him to conclude that the pure gift is impossible and could not even be recognized as such: gifts always fall back into economies of debt sooner or later, a grim reality that leads Terry Eagleton to remark “one would not have wished to spend Christmas in the Derrida household.”14 The contractual logic of equivalence is the logic of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It is a human logic. God’s covenants, by contrast, operate according to a logic of superabundance, a lavish, gracious, loving paradigm of excess. God walks between the animal parts alone; the exodus rescue precedes the Sinai law; Christ lays down his life in the new covenant in his blood. This is the logic of the “how much more” of the Pauline epistles (Rom 5:9, 10, 15, 17; 11:24; 1 Cor 6:3; 2 Cor 3:9) and the letter to the Hebrews (Heb 9:14; 10:29; 12:9), of going beyond the call of duty, beyond what is right and proper, beyond what could reasonably be demanded on a ledger of credit and debt. The logic of superabundance replaces the fear and submission of Hobbes’s Leviathan or the tyranny of Rousseau’s general will with the love and sacrifice of Christ. It is the logic of grace and the gift. It is a divine logic. The