Missionary Best Quotes

You are the best I've ever had. If all we do from now on is straight missionary sex at eight p.m. on Tuesday nights of months that start with J, you'll still be the best I've ever had.

The best remedy for a sick church is to put it on a missionary diet.

O Lord, how happy should we be If we would cast our care on Thee, If we from self would rest; And feel at heart that One above, In perfect wisdom, perfect love, Is working for the best!

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

Soul has been demoted to a new-age spiritual fantasy or a missionary's booty, and nature has been treated , at best, as a postcard or a vacation backdrop or, more commonly, as a hardware store or refuse heap. Too many of us lack intimacy with the natural world and with our souls, and consequently we are doing untold damage to both.

Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: "It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best--to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history--but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian--not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with.

A writer can live by his writing. If not so luxuriously as by other trades, then less luxuriously. The nature of the work he does all day will more affect his happiness than the quality of his dinner at night. Whatever be your calling, and however much it brings you in the year, you could still, you know, get more by cheating. We all suffer ourselves to be too much concerned about a little poverty; but such considerations should not move us in the choice of that which is to be the business and justification of so great a portion of our lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career in which we can do the most and best for mankind.

Many blessings and friendships have come into our lives from our trying to share the gospel. But this blessing has been one of the best: Having the missionaries regularly help us as a family teach the gospel to new and old friends through the power of the Holy Ghost has profoundly affected the faith of our five children and brought the Spirit of God into our home.

When you say you want all peoples to unite, you really mean that you want all peoples to unite to learn the tricks of your people. If the Bedouin Arab does not know how to read, some English missionary or schoolmaster must be sent to teach him to read, but no one ever says, 'This schoolmaster does not know how to ride on a camel; let us pay a Bedouin to teach him.' You say your civilisation will include all talents. Will it? Do you really mean to say that at the moment when the Esquimaux has learnt to vote for a County Council, you will have learnt to spear a walrus? I recur to the example I gave. In Nicaragua we had a way of catching wild horses—by lassooing the fore feet—which was supposed to be the best in South America. If you are going to include all the talents, go and do it. If not, permit me to say what I have always said, that something went from the world when Nicaragua was civilised.

Hers was that common insularity of mind that makes human creatures believe that their color, creed, and politics are best and right and that other human creatures scattered over the world are less fortunately placed than they. It was the same insularity of mind that made the ancient Jew thank God he was not born a woman, and sent the modern missionary god-substituting to the ends of the earth; and it made Ruth desire to shape this man from other crannies of life into the likeness of the men who lived in her particular cranny of life.

The best-known religions of history, such as Islam and Buddhism, are universal and missionary. Consequently

It is the man who is the missionary, it is not his words. His character is his message.

Like, did anyone else notice that you can follow all of the good Christian rules and still be a huge dick about it? Seriously. I can say things right to your face that’ll make you want to slit your wrists, and I can do it with church-approved language, dripping with sweetness and an air of concern. I can lead you to believe God hates your guts and I can make you wish you were never born while I claim to “speak the truth in love,” promising that I only want what’s best for you.

You become a woman the first time you stand up for yourself when they get your order wrong at a diner, or when you first realize your parents are full of shit. You become a woman the first time you get fitted for a bra and realize you’ve been wearing a very wrong size your whole fucking life. You become a woman the first time you fart in front of a boyfriend. The first time your heart breaks. The first time you break someone else’s heart. The first time someone you love dies. The first time you lie and make yourself look bad so a friend you love can look better. And less dramatic things are meaningful too, like the first time a guy tries to put a finger in your ass. The first time you express the reality that you don’t want that finger in your ass. That you really don’t want anything in your ass at all. Or to have any creative, adventurous sex for that matter. That you just want to be fucked missionary sometimes and without any nonsense. You will remember all these moments later as the moments that made you the woman you are. Everyone tells you it happens when you get your first period, but really it happens when you insert your first tampon and teach your best friend to do the same. Speaking

Abiding time is extravagant daily time with Jesus. This extravagant time is the center of abiding. Not legalism, not dry discipline, not manufactured spirituality, but joyous soaking in the presence of Jesus, lavish spending of time with Him who is most precious, Him from whom all life flows. In a world that is over-connected yet lonely, frantically busy yet accomplishing little of eternal value, super-informed but egregiously ignorant on what really matters, abiding gives Jesus the best of our time, in which He leads us to the best of times.

We want missionaries, not mercenaries.” We have all encountered mercenaries in our career. They are in it to make a fast buck for themselves, they don’t have the organization’s best interests at heart, and they don’t have the resolve to stick with your company through challenging times.

The sources, dubious and dubiouser, also recommended missionary position, and she was happy to oblige. Missionary position was, as far as she could tell, like vanilla ice cream: purported to be boring and chosen only by passionless, unimaginative, exhausted people but really the best one. She liked to look at Penn's face so close that it split into pieces like a modernist painting. She liked the length of his front pressed against the length of hers. She felt that people who needed to do it upside down and backward from behind -- or who added candied bacon or smoked sea salt or pieces of raw cookies to their ice cream -- were probably compensating for a product that was inferior to begin with.

Peter's hands had ceased trembling. He had been granted perspective. This was not Gethsemane: he wasn't headed for Golgotha, he was embarking on a great adventure. He'd been chosen out of thousands, to pursue the most important missionary calling since the Apostles had ventured forth to conquer Rome with the power of love, and he was going to do his best.

Young people sometimes say to me, "I'll just die if the Lord calls me to be a missionary," or words to that effect. "Wonderful!" I say. That's the best possible way to start. You won't be of much use on the mission field unless you 'die' first. The conditions for discipleship begin with 'dying', and if you take the first step, very likely you will find that you have indeed been 'called'.

The need is not the call. This piece of wisdom has saved the lives of many a missionary, especially in Africa, where the needs are so great that they can pull you to pieces. A missionary can put out so many fires trying to meet needs around him that he suffers burnout. I have known missionary friends who said, “I hear the cry of lost souls calling me into the mission field.” These workers are headed for the missionary bone yard. They have responded to the call of the need rather than the call of God. We must go where God sends us, speak what He gives us to speak, hear His voice and obey it – this is our best protection from burnout. It will also guide us to the very best strategy for accomplishing His mission. For everything a man does to follow the call of God, there are ten things he does not do. We cannot do everything. We must focus on the call and not simply the needs.

There are lots of “firsts” like this in life, little flashpoints here and there when you’re unknowingly becoming a woman. And it’s not the clichéd shit, like when you have your first kiss or drive your first car. You become a woman the first time you stand up for yourself when they get your order wrong at a diner, or when you first realize your parents are full of shit. You become a woman the first time you get fitted for a bra and realize you’ve been wearing a very wrong size your whole fucking life. You become a woman the first time you fart in front of a boyfriend. The first time your heart breaks. The first time you break someone else’s heart. The first time someone you love dies. The first time you lie and make yourself look bad so a friend you love can look better. And less dramatic things are meaningful too, like the first time a guy tries to put a finger in your ass. The first time you express the reality that you don’t want that finger in your ass. That you really don’t want anything in your ass at all. Or to have any creative, adventurous sex for that matter. That you just want to be fucked missionary sometimes and without any nonsense. You will remember all these moments later as the moments that made you the woman you are. Everyone tells you it happens when you get your first period, but really it happens when you insert your first tampon and teach your best friend to do the same.

In all cases of locating reservations,” he once said, “it would be best to show some deference to the expressed wishes of the tribe.” Euro-Americans, particularly in the boom-and-bust West, were relentlessly mobile. They blew about in the wind—deracinated, it seemed, always in search of better fortune. Miners, traders, trappers, merchants, missionaries, they thought nothing of moving great distances and starting all over when new opportunity struck. The hunger to push on, particularly in a westward direction, was an attribute of the (white) American. But Carson knew enough about Indian culture to recognize that even among nomadic tribes, the familiar landmarks of one’s homeland were profoundly significant—in fact, they were sacred—and one strayed from them with great trepidation. Homeland was crucial in practical terms, but also in terms of ceremony and ritual, central to a tribe’s collective identity and its conception of the universe.

A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had made a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me to death. I burnt for the more active life of the world—for the more exciting toils of a literary career—for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat under my curate’s surplice. I considered; my life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds—my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken. God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary. “A

The overwhelming consensus is that egalitarian social organization is the de-facto system for foraging societies in all environments. In fact, no other system could work for foraging societies. Compulsory sharing is simply the best way to distribute risk to everyone’s benefit: participation mandatory. Pragmatic? Yes. Noble? Hardly. We believe this sharing behavior extended to sex as well. A great deal of research from primatology, anthropology, anatomy, and psychology points to the same fundamental conclusion: human beings and our hominid ancestors have spent almost all of the past few million years or so in small, intimate bands in which most adults had several sexual relationships at any given time. This approach to sexuality probably persisted until the rise of agriculture and private property no more than ten thousand years ago. In addition to voluminous scientific evidence, many explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists support this view, having penned accounts rich with tales of orgiastic rituals, unflinching mate sharing, and an open sexuality unencumbered by guilt or shame.

I’ll tell you what’s true,’ said Weston presently. ‘What?’ ‘A little child that creeps upstairs when nobody’s looking and very slowly turns the handle to take one peep into the room where its grandmother’s dead body is laid out–and then runs away and has bad dreams. An enormous grandmother, you understand.’ ‘What do you mean by saying that’s truer?’ ‘I mean that child knows something about the universe which all science and all religion is trying to hide.’ Ransom said nothing. ‘Lots of things,’ said Weston presently. ‘Children are afraid to go through a churchyard at night, and the grown-ups tell them not to be silly: but the children know better than the grown-ups. People in Central Africa doing beastly things with masks on in the middle of the night–and missionaries and civil servants say it’s all superstition. Well, the blacks know more about the universe than the white people. Dirty priests in back streets in Dublin frightening half-witted children to death with stories about it. You’d say they are unenlightened. They’re not: except that they think there is a way of escape. There isn’t. That is the real universe, always has been, always will be. That’s what it all means.’ ‘I’m not quite clear–’ began Ransom, when Weston interrupted him. ‘That’s why it’s so important to live as long as you can. All the good things are now–a thin little rind of what we call life, put on for show, and then–the real universe for ever and ever. To thicken the rind by one centimetre–to live one week, one day, one half hour longer–that’s the only thing that matters. Of course you don’t know it: but every man who is waiting to be hanged knows it. You say “What difference does a short reprieve make?” What difference!!’ ‘But nobody need go there,’ said Ransom. ‘I know that’s what you believe,’ said Weston. ‘But you’re wrong. It’s only a small parcel of civilised people who think that. Humanity as a whole knows better. It knows–Homer knew–that all the dead have sunk down into the inner darkness: under the rind. All witless, all twittering, gibbering, decaying. Bogeymen. Every savage knows that all ghosts hate the living who are still enjoying the rind: just as old women hate girls who still have their good looks. It’s quite right to be afraid of the ghosts. You’re going to be one all the same.’ ‘You don’t believe in God,’ said Ransom. ‘Well, now, that’s another point,’ said Weston. ‘I’ve been to church as well as you when I was a boy. There’s more sense in parts of the Bible than you religious people know. Doesn’t it say He’s the God of the living, not of the dead? That’s just it. Perhaps your God does exist–but it makes no difference whether He does or not. No, of course you wouldn’t see it; but one day you will. I don’t think you’ve got the idea of the rind–the thin outer skin which we call life–really clear. Picture the universe as an infinite glove with this very thin crust on the outside. But remember its thickness is a thickness of time. It’s about seventy years thick in the best places. We are born on the surface of it and all our lives we are sinking through it. When we’ve got all the way through then we are what’s called Dead: we’ve got into the dark part inside, the real globe. If your God exists, He’s not in the globe–He’s outside, like a moon. As we pass into the interior we pass out of His ken. He doesn’t follow us in. You would express it by saying He’s not in time–which you think comforting! In other words He stays put: out in the light and air, outside. But we are in time. We “move with the times”. That is, from His point of view, we move away, into what He regards as nonentity, where He never follows. That is all there is to us, all there ever was. He may be there in what you call “Life”, or He may not. What difference does it make? We’re not going to be there for long!

Mrs Davidson was saying she didn’t know how they’d have got through the journey if it hadn’t been for us,’ said Mrs Macphail as she neatly brushed out her transformation. ‘She said we were really the only people on the ship they cared to know.’ ‘I shouldn’t have thought a missionary was such a big bug that he could afford to put on frills.’ ‘It’s not frills. I quite understand what she means. It wouldn’t have been very nice for the Davidsons to have to mix with all that rough lot in the smoking– room.’ ‘The founder of their religion wasn’t so exclusive,’ said Dr Macphail with a chuckle. ‘I’ve asked you over and over again not to joke about religion,’ answered his wife. ‘I shouldn’t like to have a nature like yours, Alec. You never look for the best in people.’ He gave her a sidelong glance with his pale, blue eyes, but did not reply. After many years of married life he had learned that it was more conducive to peace to leave his wife with the last word. He was undressed before she was, and climbing into the upper bunk he settled down to read himself to sleep. When he came on deck next morning they were close to land. He looked at it with greedy eyes. There was a thin strip of silver beach rising quickly to hills covered to the top with luxuriant vegetation. The coconut trees, thick and green, came nearly to the water’s edge, and among them you saw the grass houses of the Samoans; and here and there, gleaming white, a little church. Mrs Davidson came and stood beside him. She was dressed in black and wore round her neck a gold chain, from which dangled a small cross. She was a little woman, with brown, dull hair very elaborately arranged, and she had prominent blue eyes behind invisible pince–nez. Her face was long, like a sheep’s, but she gave no impression of foolishness, rather of extreme alertness; she had the quick movements of a bird. The most remarkable thing about her was her voice, high, metallic, and without inflexion; it

I used to want to be a missionary, but I don’t believe that’d be the best position for me to be in.

Christians often fail to get in touch with the shocking message that can lie at the heart of evangelism: “I am here to change you, and I’m going to change you so that you become like me.” There are some obvious dangers here once we think about all this. If we approach people in this way, we are not treating them as people. We are not respecting them. We are treating them as part of our own program, like an objective and a statistic, and this is self-centered as well as disrespectful. An obnoxious smell of superiority is apparent. Further, we are judging people as fundamentally inadequate. *We* are okay, of course. Missionary work conducted in this spirit is a well-intentioned but self-centered power-play… We can avoid this instrumentalizing of potential converts - a making of them into something like an instrument or tool that then does something for us - only by approaching them for their own sakes and hence not as potential converts at all. We must value our initial relationships with people for what they are and not in terms of what we want out of them. This means that we must want to become their friends. Moreover, it must be a friendship with no strings attached. We must seek out relationships because we are interested in and value other people for who they are, right where they are. Conversions would be nice, but they are not our main agenda. We hope and pray for the best for our new friends, but that is not our principal motivation for relating to them. In this way and only in this way do we avoid colonizing people as we convert them.

The Cardinal Secretary of State was a Vietnamese priest named Pierre Nguyen Van Nho, a former Vincentian missionary into the People’s Republic of China. He had been considered something of a bomb thrower with the press. After living in China under threat of harsh reprisals if caught evangelizing, his idiocy-tolerance threshold had dropped down to that of most career army personnel. He also had a degree in communications before going into the Church, so the two allowed him to tell reporters to go to Hell with all of the best in psycholinguistics he could throw.

The content of the gospel (that God has offered a path to escape His coming wrath) is the core issue to a missionary but irrelevant to one who is missional. To the missionary, those who repent and believe the gospel are reconciled to God and enter His kingdom. That message is unimportant, or at least not central, to one who is missional. Why? Because to the Emergent there is no impending judgment and if we do something nice on our journey nothing more is needed. To them, a focus on the content of the message is a distraction at best and harmful at worst.

He puts a pot, big enough to boil a small missionary, onto the wide burner and chucks in skeleton segments two-handed.

Our summer missionaries did not stay to see this though we hoped they might yearn for it somehow. Stay for the party. The fleeting volunteer sometimes catches a course- sweet and sour - but no one savours the whole menu like me. 'Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink,' said the master of tbe banquet when he called the bridegroom aside, 'but you have saved the best til now.

How Good Deeds Conquered an Empire Humanly speaking, no one would have thought it possible to bring the nations to the worship of God through simple good deeds. How on earth could “good deeds” change a realm as mighty as the Roman Empire, let alone the whole world? As unlikely as it may have sounded at the time, Jesus’ call to be the light of the world was taken seriously by his disciples. They devoted themselves to quite heroic acts of godliness. They loved their enemies, prayed for their persecutors and cared for the poor wherever they found them. We know that the Jerusalem church set up a large daily food roster for the destitute among them—no fewer than seven Christian leaders were assigned to the management of the program (Acts 6:1—7). The apostle Paul, perhaps the greatest missionary/evangelist ever, was utterly devoted to these kinds of good deeds. In response to a famine that ravaged Palestine between AD 46—48 Paul conducted his own decade-long international aid program earmarked for poverty-stricken Palestinians. Wherever he went, he asked the Gentile churches to contribute whatever they could to the poor in Jerusalem.23 Christian “good deeds” continued long after the New Testament era. We know, for instance, that by AD 250 the Christian community in Rome was supporting 1,500 destitute people every day.24 All around the Mediterranean churches were setting up food programs, hospitals and orphanages. These were available to believers and unbelievers alike. This was an innovation. Historians often point to ancient Israel as the first society to introduce a comprehensive welfare system that cared for the poor and marginalised within the community. Christians

I gave haircuts this morning. The boys think I should do them just like the short-term beautician who was here. Their regular cut with her was a shave up the side coming to a v in the back. Right. Well, I did my best. Josh thinks he may need to wear a hat all weekend. The All West African baseball tournament is in Lomé, and he doesn’t have two days to wait until a bad haircut turns into a good one. Grandpa always said, ‘The only difference between a good haircut and a bad haircut is two days.

One of the problems that the missionaries grappled with that night was that of language. The need to convince the Aucas that here were friendly white men, could best be effected by communicating with them in their own language. This was of the essence. As the men talked over this problem, Jim Elliot came up with the answer. He remembered having seen Dayuma on Señor Carlos Sevilla’s hacienda, which lay only four hours’ walk from Shandia. He offered to go and talk to her to pick up phrases that could be useful in case contact were made. A few days later, Jim trekked over. He found Dayuma cooperative, although he was very careful not to divulge to her the reason for his desire to be taught some simple Auca phrases. Among Quichuas gossip spreads as quickly as anywhere else. Fortunately, Dayuma—accustomed to the strange ways of strange people—assumed he was only casually interested in learning the language.

For more than two centuries, black people had resisted Christianity, often with the tacit acquiescence of their owners. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Christian missionaries who attempted to bring slaves into the fold confronted a hostile planter class, whose only interest in the slaves' spirituality was to denigrate it as idolatry. Westward-moving planters showed little sympathy with slaves who prayed when they might be working and even less patience with separate gatherings of converts, which they suspected to be revolutionary cabals. An 1822 Mississippi law barring black people from meeting without white supervision spoke directly to the planters' fears. But the trauma of the Second Middle Passage and the cotton revolution sensitized transplanted slaves to the evangelicals' message. Young men and women forcibly displaced from their old homes were eager to find alternative sources of authority and comfort. Responding to the evangelical message, they found new meaning in the emotional deliverance of conversion and the baptismal rituals of the church. In turning their lives over to Christ, the deportees took control of their own destiny. White missionaries, some of them still committed to the evangelical egalitarianism of the eighteenth-century revivals, welcomed black believers into their churches. Slaves - sometimes carrying letters of separation from their home congregations - were present in the first evangelical services in Mississippi and Alabama. The earliest religious associations listed black churches, and black preachers - free and slave - won fame for the exercise of 'their gift.' Established denominational lines informed much of slaves' Christianity. The large Protestant denominations - Baptist and Methodist, Anglican and Presbyterian - made the most substantial claims, although Catholicism had a powerful impact all along the Gulf Coast, especially in Louisiana and Florida. From this melange, slaves selectively appropriated those ideas that best fit their own sacred universe and secular world. With little standing in the church of the master, these men and women fostered a new faith. For that reason, it was not the church of the master or even the church of the missionary that attracted black converts; they much preferred their own religious conclaves. These fugitive meetings were often held deep in the woods in brush tents called 'arbors.' Kept private by overturning a pot to muffle the sound of their prayers, these meetings promised African-American spirituality and mixed black and white religious forms into a theological amalgam that white clerics found unrecognizable - what one planter-preacher called 'a jumble of Protestantism, Romanism, and Fetishism.' Under the brush arbor, notions of secular and sacred life took on new meanings. The experience of spiritual rebirth and the conviction that Christ spoke directly to them armed slaves against their owners, assuring them that they too were God's children, perhaps even his chosen people. It infused daily life with the promise of the Great Jubilee and eternal life that offered a final escape from earthly captivity. In the end, it would be they - not their owners - who would stand at God's side and enjoy the blessing of eternal salvation.

Imperialism and not patriarchy is the core foundation of modern militarism (even though it serves the interest of imperialism to link notions of masculinity with the struggle to conquer nations and peoples). Many societies in the world that are ruled by males are not imperialistic; many women in the United States have made political decisions to support imperialism and militarism. Historically, white women in the United States, working for women's rights, have felt no contradiction between this effort and their support of the Western imperialist attempt to conquer the planet. Often they argued that equal rights would better enable white women to help in the building of this "great nation," i.e. in the cause of imperialism. Many white women in the early part of the twentieth century, who were strong advocates of women's liberation, were pro-imperialist. Books like Helen Montgomery's Western Women in Eastern Lands, published in 1910, outlining fifty years of white women's work in foreign missions, document the link between the struggle for the emancipation of white women in the United States and the imperialist, hegemonic spread of Western values and Western domination of the globe. As missionaries, white women traveled to Eastern lands armed with psychological weapons that undermined the belief systems of Eastern women and replaced them with Western values. In the closing statement of her work, Helen Montgomery writes: "So many voices are calling us, so many goods demand our allegiance, that we are in danger of forgetting the best. To seek first to bring Christ's kingdom on the earth, to respond to the need that is sorest, to go out into the desert for that loved and bewildered sheep that the shepherd has missed from the fold, to share all of the privilege with the unprivileged and happiness with the unhappy, to see the possibility of one redeemed earth, undivided, unvexed, unperplexed resting in the light of the glorious Gospel of the blessed God, this is the mission of the women's missionary movement.

When he finished he had a magnificent house, perched on the edge of a precipice at whose feet the ocean thundered, but it was a house that knew no happiness, for shortly after Whip had moved in with his third wife, the Hawaiian-Chinese beauty Ching-ching, who was pregnant at the time, she had caught him fooling around with the brothel girls that flourished in the town of Kapaa. Without even a scene of recrimination, Ching-ching had simply ordered a carriage and driven back to the capital town of Lihune, where she boarded an H & H steamer for Honolulu. She divorced Whip but kept both his daughter Iliki and his yet-unborn son John. Now there were two Mrs. Whipple Hoxworths in Honolulu and they caused some embarrassment to the more staid community. There was his first wife, Iliki Janders Hoxworth, who moved in only the best missionary circles, and there was Ching-ching Hoxworth who lived within the Chinese community. The two never met, but Howxworth & Hale saw to it that each received a monthly allowance. The sums were generous, but not so much so as those sent periodically Wild Whip's second wife, the fiery Spanish girl named Aloma Duarte Hoxworth, whose name frequently appeared in New York and London newspapers... p623 When the polo players had departed, when the field kitchens were taken down, and when the patient little Japanese gardeners were tending each cut in the polo turf as if it were a personal wound, Wild Whip would retire to his sprawling mansion overlooking the sea and get drunk. He was never offensive and never beat anyone while intoxicated. At such times he stayed away from the brothels in Kapaa and away from the broad lanai from which he could see the ocean. In a small, darkened room he drank, and as he did so he often recalled his grandfather's words: "Girls are like stars, and you could reach up and pinch each one on the points. And then in the east the moon rises, enormous and perfect. And that's something else, entirely different." It was now apparent to Whip, in his forty-fifth year, that for him the moon did not intend to rise. Somehow he had missed encountering the woman whom he could love as his grandfather had loved the Hawaiian princess Noelani. He had known hundreds of women, but he had found none that a man could permanently want or respect. Those who were desirable were mean in spirit and those who were loyal were sure to be tedious. It was probably best, he thought at such times, to do as he did: know a couple of the better girls at Kapaa, wait for some friend's wife who was bored with her husband, or trust that a casual trip through the more settled camps might turn up some workman's wife who wanted a little excitement. It wasn't a bad life and was certainly less expensive in the long run than trying to marry and divorce a succession of giddy women; but often when he had reached this conclusion, through the bamboo shades of the darkened room in which he huddled a light would penetrate, and it would be the great moon risen from the waters to the east and now passing majestically high above the Pacific. It was an all-seeing beacon, brillant enough to make the grassy lawns on Hanakai a sheet of silver, probing enough to find any mansion tucked away beneath the casuarina trees. When this moon sought out Wild Whip he would first draw in his feet, trying like a child to evade it, but when it persisted he often rose, threw open the lanai screens, and went forth to meet it. p625

As godliness increases the sense of ungodliness becomes more acute, and so feelings never accurately gauge real assimilation to God. We shall seem worst in our own eyes when in His we are best, and conversely.

Being a student of divinity he was at liberty to preach, but conscious ignorance had hitherto restrained him. He thought, however, that by committing some other man's sermon to memory he might profit the hearers, and so he undertook it. It was slavish work to prepare, for it took most of a week to memorize the sermon, and it was joyless work to deliver it, for there was none of the living power that attends a man's God-given message and witness. His conscience was not yet enlightened enough to see that he was acting a false part in preaching another's sermon as his own; nor had he the spiritual insight to perceive that it is not God's way to set up a man to preach who knows not enough of either His word or the life of the Spirit within him, to prepare his own discourse. How few even among preachers feel preaching to be a divine vocation and not a mere human profession; that a ministry of the truth implies the witness of experience, and that to preach another man's sermon is, at the best, unnatural walking on stilts!

the best leaders tend to be missionaries rather than mercenaries.

Missionaries can take nothing greater to the heathen world than the impress and reflection of the Love of God upon their own character.

At the very worst we see a prophet with a shocking disregard for human life and a bitter hatred toward those who had experienced mercy. At the very best he was a prophet who misunderstood God's mercy and had a limited view of God's plan for the redemption of his own people. While there may have been some reasons for Jonah's displeasure, it is sad to see him place limits on the same grace that saved him. While missionaries and evangelists would be delighted at such results, Jonah failed to recognize his privilege of being an instrument of God in a miraculous situation. Failing to recognize God's sovereign plan, he missed the joy of the situation.

Life is meant to be shared and fully lived.

The powerhouse of a great move of God starts with prayer. The fuel of our mission is prayer. One of the best activities you can do as an everyday missionary is to walk or ride through your neighborhood and ask God to show you what He sees.

You ARE the best I've ever had. If all we do from now on is straight missionary sex at 8pm on Tuesday nights of months that start with J, you'll still be the best I've ever had.

Life turns on small choices. A last-minute decision to take a shortcut over a snowy pass. A shrugging dismissal of the odd-looking man in the long coat standing off to one side. A decision to postpone a physical exam till a less busy time. A word spoken with the best intentions. Looking back, after the lives are destroyed, the blood spilt, the families shattered, and even the courses of nations changed forever, the mistakes that started the doomsday clock ticking down often seem minor, even innocent-even virtuous. So easy to make. David Eller would give anything-no, everything-to go back and undo those mistakes. But life does not give us that chance. Like everyone else, he has no choice but to dangle from the hand of that clock, trying in vain to pull them backward as they tick inexorably toward zero.

Rakesh Roshan Rakesh Roshan is a producer, director, and actor in Bollywood films. A member of the successful Roshan film family, Mr. Roshan opened his own production company in 1982 and has been producing Hindi movies ever since. His film Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai won nine Filmfare awards, including those for best movie and best director. I didn’t have the privilege of meeting Diana personally, but as a keen observer I learned a lot about her through the media and television coverage of her various activities and her visits to various countries, including India. I vividly remember when she came to my country and visited places that interested her, such as Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, various homes of the destitute, orphanages, hospitals, and so on. On all of these occasions, her kind looks, kind words, and kind actions, such as holding the poor orphan children in her lap, caring for them with love, and wiping their tears, were sufficient indications to convey the passion that Diana had in her heart for the service of the poor and underprivileged. Wherever she went, she went with such noble mission. She derived a sort of divine pleasure through her visits to charitable institutions, orphanages, and homes of the destitute. By minutely looking at her, one could see a deity in Diana--dedicated to love and kindness--devoted to charity and goodness and the darling of all she met. For such human virtues, love for the poor and concern for the suffering of humanity, Diana commands the immense respect, admiration, and affection of the whole world. Wherever she went, she was received with genuine affection and warmth, unlike politically staged receptions.

There are three important observations about the emergence of Korean Christianity that are crucial to our understanding of the emergence of global Christianity. First, Korea is one of the few countries in the world where the church was born outside the country through expatriates who were being held as prisoners. Second, the first missionaries to Korea were not foreign missionaries but Koreans themselves who had come to Christ outside of Korea and returned as indigenous propagators of the gospel. Third, one of the earliest documentations of the Christian message was from Chinese Christian documents, rather than literature that explained the gospel in Western terminology. Since Korea has become one of the most Christianized countries in Asia and today is the home of the largest Christian churches in the world, it is important to recall the unusual origins of Korean Christianity, which was birthed through indigenous expressions of faith. If the missio dei is best understood as the arrival of the gospel prior to the missionaries, then the Korean church represents one of the foremost examples.

God’s strength shows up best in weak people. Avis leaves no room for doubting God has a plan and the power to bring it to fruition. As she said on our program, “God can use anybody to do anything. We just need to be willing to follow where He leads. God will use the things of our past – hurts, homelessness, abuse, as well as a good family life, education, and money. They all can be tools that God will use if we give them to Him. God was calling me: ‘Go. I will show you what to do when you get there.

The very best products and services are always built by missionaries.

Where the African church failed was in not carrying Christianity beyond the Romanized inhabitants of the cities and the great estates, and not sinking roots into the world of the native peoples. Like most regions of the Western empire, such as Gaul and Spain, Africa was divided between Latin-speaking provincials and old-stock natives, who spoke their ancient languages—in this case, varieties of Berber. Unlike these other provinces, though, the African church had made next to no progress in taking the faith to the villages and the neighboring tribes, nor, critically, had they tried to evangelize in local languages. This would not have been an unrealistic expectation, in that already by the fourth century missionaries elsewhere were translating the scriptures into Gothic, and Hunnic languages followed by the sixth century. Evidence of the neglect of the countryside can be found in the letters of Saint Augustine, by far the best known of African bishops, whose vision was sharply focused on the cities of Rome and Carthage; he expressed no interest in the rural areas or peoples of his diocese.3

Barron is convinced that the moral teachings of Catholicism are true, and that people who strive to practice them will live healthier, happier, more fulfilled lives. At the same time, he knows that in a postmodern, secular world, “rule-talk” often comes off as an attempt to limit people’s freedom, not to free them to become the persons God intends them to be. Therefore, the right way to deploy “the good” as a missionary tool is to start by showing people what a genuinely Christian life at its best looks like—and then, gradually, to lead people to appreciate the principles and norms which make that kind of heroic life possible.

We must be the best people we can, the nicest people we can be. What others think we are doesn’t matter. If we are the best that we can be, Jesus knows it, and it’s what he thinks that really matters, isn’t it?

Few men I know of have had the opportunity I have had and have been influenced by the people who have influenced me—to know personally men like John R. Rice; to have called my best friend for more than fifteen years men like Curtis Hutson; to be called the spiritual son of Dr. Lee Roberson; to have been the closest of friends with some of the great missionary leaders of our day like Dr. Don Sisk and Dr. James Ray; to have sat in meetings and been given the opportunity to speak in those meetings. Few men have been given the opportunity I have been given.

Flower killers ( Part 2 ) And if you visit the fence and look at the metallic vampire, You will notice something strange in this tragedy’s ultimate empire, Bullets where the address is still the same: kill, Who? Just anyone do it at your free will, The flower had no name, the bee that loved it and the butterfly that romanced it, Have all died with it, forever dead with it, The garden of tragedies invokes a morbid feeling, It is as if asking the angel of death to rescue life’s last hope its last feeling, But the bullets still travel through the garden of tragedies, Only that now there are no casualties, Do you know why? Because now there is no one left to kill, and no one left to die, The young flower has fallen, others with it fell too, But a bullet with no address, still has a job to do, Because its address reads: Kill anyone at your free will, And that is what it did yesterday, it will do so today too, because it has mad man’s wish to fulfil, Who directs its anonymity and its every act, But the bullet in the fence has a different fact, The bullet is not the killer of the flower, It is someone else, whom the garden of tragedies knows as “The Bullet Lover!” Men have died, women have been killed, flowers murdered, But the mad man’s will has not surrendered, It may not ever, it may never, Because he is on a quest to find a bullet that can travel forever, Through desires, hopes, wishes and feelings of love, And kill them all one by one, for the sake of his mad love, Where exaltation is sought via phoney acts, Always feeding on a desire that never detracts, From being the seminal factor in everything related with misery, So it kills with a delusional passion bearing vigour missionary, And if you happen to visit the garden of tragedies to see the bullet in the fence, Towards the bullet, please hold not feelings of lament or any offence, Because it obeys the shooter, Who has never been a lover! That is why the bullet lies pierced in the wall, Because it no more wants to obey the mad man’s call, And be known as the killer of the young flowers, Murderer of many passionate lovers!

Daughter,” said the grim old Presbyterian, “you can serve God and mankind as worthily with a gift like yours as you could by going as a missionary to the heathen. God gave you the rare power to write. You would be ungrateful to Him if you neglected it. Go on with your work.

Jeff often said in those days, “We want missionaries, not mercenaries.” We have all encountered mercenaries in our career. They are in it to make a fast buck for themselves, they don’t have the organization’s best interests at heart, and they don’t have the resolve to stick with your company through challenging times. Missionaries, as Jeff defined the term, would not only believe in Amazon’s mission but also embody its Leadership Principles. They would also stick around: we wanted people who would thrive and work at Amazon for five-plus years, not the 18–24 months typical of Silicon Valley.

This amounts to nothing more than misleading propaganda. The purpose is to create a climate of acceptance for the passage of legislation which will turn the majority of parents into criminals of the most heinous kind-those whose victims are defenseless children. The resulting body of law will play directly into the hands of ultraliberal social engineers as well as social activists within the professional community. The outward motive-the protection of children-conceals several more insidious ones: • The desire to expand and consolidate the power of the helping professions. At the present time, there is no law that says an individual must, under certain circumstances, submit to psychological evaluation and counseling. If they are written as is being suggested, however, antispanking laws will require exactly that. They will give helping professionals the power to define when the law has been broken, who is in need of "help" and how much, and when a certain parent's "rehabilitation" is complete. It is significant to note that in all of history the only other state to confer this much power on psychologists and their ilk was the former Soviet Union. • The desire to manipulate the inner workings of the American family; specifically, the desire to exercise significant control over the child-rearing process. Take it from someone who was, at one time, similarly guilty, a significant number of helping professionals possess a "save the world" mentality. They believe they know what's best for individuals, families, and children. The only problem, as they see it, is that most people are "in denial"-unwilling to recognize their need for help. This self-righteousness fuels a zealous, missionary attitude. And like the first missionaries to the New World, many helping professionals seem to believe that their vision of a perfect world justifies whatever means they deem necessary, including licensing parents, taking children away from parents they define as unfit, and the like. (For a close look at the social engineering being proposed by some professionals, see Debating Children's Lives, Mason and Gambrill, eds., Sage Publications, 1994).

On March 1, 2002, at 1:00 p.m., three men broke into our high-rise apartment in Russia and brutally attacked me and my children. By the grace of God, our lives were spared and we were not terribly injured—physically. But the masked attackers had left deep spiritual and emotional wounds. We were sent to a trauma center for counseling for a month, then returned to Russia, our field of service, to complete our missionary term. Four months later, burned-out and spiritually empty, we packed our bags and returned to America for our scheduled one-year home service. I had no plans to return. Secretly, I harbored deep in my heart a resolve to never again set foot in Russia, with its many dangers. I had done eight hard years of service there and felt that I had given the best part of myself to a country that didn’t care. And no one—not even God—was going to change my mind. Yes, He’d spared my life, but I had serious doubts I could ever trust Him again. But God knew better. Not only is He gentle, but He understands and can handle my pain and my questions. I dove into the Psalms, finding hope in David’s cries to the Lord and healing in his praise to the Almighty in the darkest hours. I observed God’s goodness to me, providing for my needs in the past—and present—and I allowed myself to be embraced by the body of Christ, who loved us well. Finally, as time and distance began to heal me, I was able to look behind and see God’s grace embracing me every moment of the difficult journey. He reminded me that He would meet me in my future with the same abundance of grace. I wrote Anne and Noah’s story while struggling through the dark night of the soul. Amazingly, many times I felt as though the words that appeared on the page were more for me than for Anne. I journeyed with Anne until I, too, could see God embracing me in the darkest hour. Her victory is mine. On New Year’s Eve 2003, I surrendered to the Lord my future, agreeing to continue missionary work in Russia if God so chose. The peace that flooded my heart told me that His grace would carry me wherever He took our family. His grace is sufficient. For every heartache, every fear, every wound. Thank you for reading Tying the Knot. I pray that somehow Anne and Noah’s journey of faith and love will encourage and bless you. And that you will know, above all, that it is well with your soul. In His grace, Susan May Warren

1. These legends have similar counterparts not only in Polynesia but from every part of the world. The Hawaiian legends could be traced back for generations, and were known to various persons residing on different islands who had no communication with each other. Also, both the narrations and songs were best known by the very oldest of the people; those who never learned to read and whose education and training were under the ancient system. These legends were told to the missionaries by the Hawaiians before the Bible was translated into the Hawaiian tongue and before the Hawaiians knew much of the Bible. The Hawaiian who helped in translating the history of Joseph was amazed by its similarity to their ancient tradition.

There’s a reason that all the major religions in the world have a history of sending missionaries to the poorest and most destitute corners of the globe: starving people will believe anything if it will keep them fed. For your new religion, it’s best to start preaching your message to people whose lives suck the most:

As a boy, Jimmy sent a nickel every week to Baptist missionaries building hospitals and schools in China.

Being a writer, then, is as much about observation as it is imagination. I try to let new experiences inspire me. I’ve been lucky enough in this field that I am able to travel frequently. When I visit a new country, I try to let the culture, people, and experiences there shape themselves into a story. Once when I visited Taiwan, I was fortunate enough to visit the National Palace Museum, with my editor Sherry Wang and translator Lucie Tuan along to play tour guides. A person can’t take in thousands of years of Chinese history in a matter of a few hours, but we did our best. Fortunately, I had some grounding in Asian history and lore already. (I lived for two years in Korea as an LDS missionary, and I then minored in Korean during my university days.)

Credibility and trust are the key ingredients when it comes to missionary selling of revolutionary products. To gain credibility and trust, you will also need to find the best sales driver, and find it before you go broke.

the Irish thought of education as essential for a man of God. Irish monasteries became the main educational centers in Europe during the sixth and seventh centuries. These centers included the continent’s major scriptoria (places where manuscripts were copied) at Luxeuil and Bobbio in France, and particularly a major school at York in England, another church founded by Irish missionaries. In fact, in the late 700s, over a century after the reintroduction of education to the continent, when Charlemagne decided he wanted to overhaul education in his empire, the best scholar he could find was Alcuin, a deacon at York. So Charlemagne sent for him, and Alcuin developed a system of schools, textual study, and copying that laid the foundation for the later widespread revival of education in Europe.

There's a reason that all the major religions in the world have a history of sending missionaries to the poorest and most destitute corners of the globe: starving people will believe anything if it will keep them fed. For your new religion, it's best to start preaching your message to people whose lives suck the most: the poor, the outcasts, the abused and forgotten.

To bring light and hope, you and I must show up for life in our homes, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, and in our schools not as “missionaries” and self-proclaimed blessings but as imperfect parents, genuine friends, competent professionals, and messy people. We must show up as safe havens, not as mini saviors. We must bravely show up in our everyday lives to do our best with what we have, listening carefully, serving sensibly, and loving fully as active participants in the story of who God is and what God does.

The Pima are among the best-studied indigenous populations in the world. Their history, told by missionaries, soldiers, physicians, and travelers through the Pima territory prior to the twentieth century, is of an affluent and apparently healthy population whose prosperity came to an end in the 1860s. Anglos and Mexican Americans moved into the region, overhunted the local game, and diverted for their own use the Gila River

The Pima are among the best-studied indigenous populations in the world. Their history, told by missionaries, soldiers, physicians, and travelers through the Pima territory prior to the twentieth century, is of an affluent and apparently healthy population whose prosperity came to an end in the 1860s. Anglos and Mexican Americans moved into the region, overhunted the local game, and diverted for their own use the Gila River water, on which the Pima depended for fishing and irrigating their crops.

He stands near the planting, its black ring of soil like a promise at his feet. He won’t wipe his muddy hands even on his dungarees. His wife Charlotte, scion of a fallen southern planting family that once sent missionaries to China, tells him, “There’s a Chinese saying. ‘When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago.’ ” The Chinese engineer smiles. “Good one.” “ ‘When is the next best time? Now.’ ” “Ah! Okay!” The smile turns real. Until today, he has never planted anything.

words, that man got hold of our best missionary

No amount of cost-counting, however, and no amount of training in cross-cultural ministry can fully prepare us for what we will face, whether leaving home for a third-world country or a more modern country. I think Mike Tyson articulated this best (yes, the boxer, of all people). He said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

There can be no doubt that the Spanish missionaries in the U.S. were much assisted in their efforts by many miracles, such as the one at Guadalupe. Most spectacular and best known of these is the experience of Venerable Maria de Agreda (1602-1665). At that time, the first Franciscan missionaries reached the tribes of West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. Much to their surprise, the padres found that a few of the tribes were already aware of Catholicism, knew its doctrines, and asked for Baptism. When asked how they knew, they replied that they had been taught by a lady in blue. Several of the Friars returned to Spain, and found Maria de Agreda, head of a convent of nuns who wore blue habits; she claimed to have bilocated to the New World to instruct Indians there. Questioned in detail about the appearances and customs of those she allegedly had taught, she described to them perfectly the tribes they had just left. The account is commemorated in a picture at the Cathedral of Fort Worth, Texas.

I know I am God’s. I know I only want His Glory and the salvation of others and I know he knows it. I never was better or stronger for years, but best of all; I know God is with us. He talks to me and His blessed word more than ever before and makes me burn to dare and do for him.

(And at this point it must be said that there's truth to the saying *make your name, then sleep and reap fame*, because Espinoza's and Pelletier's participation in the conference "Reflecting the Twentieth Century: The Work of Benno Von Archimboldi," not to mention their contribution to it, was as best null, at worst catatonic, as if they were suddenly spent or absent, prematurely aged or in a state of shock, a fact that didn't pass unnoticed by the attendees used to Espinoza's and Pelletier's displays of energy [sometimes brazen] at this sort of event, nor did it go unnoticed by the latest litter of Archimboldians, recent graduates, boys and girls, their doctorates tucked still warm under their arms, who planned, by any means necessary, to impose their particular readings of Archimboldi, like missionaries ready to instill faith in God, even if to do so meant signing a pact with the devil, for most were what you might call rationalists, not in the philosophical sense but in the pejorative literal sense, denoting people less interested in literature than in literary criticism, the one field, according to them - some of them, anyway - where revolution was still possible, and in some way they behaved not like youths but like *nouveau* youths, in the sense that there are the rich and the *nouveau riches*, all of them generally rational thinkers, let us repeat, although often incapable of telling their ases from their elbows, and although they noticed a there and a not-there, an absence-presence in the fleeting passage of Pelletier and Espinoza through Bologna, they were incapable of seeing what was really important: Pelletier's and Espinoza's absolute boredom regarding everything said there about Archimboldi or their negligent disregard for the gaze of others, as if the two were so much cannibal fodder, a disregard lost on the young conferencegoers, those eager and insatiable cannibals, their thirtysomething faces bloated with success, their expressions shifting from boredom to madness, their coded stutterings speaking only two words: *love me*, or maybe two words and a phrase: *love me, let me love you*, though obviously no one understood.)

(And at this point it must be said that there's truth to the saying *make your name, then sleep and reap fame*, because Espinoza's and Pelletier's participation in the conference "Reflecting the Twentieth Century: The Work of Benno Von Archimboldi," not to mention their contribution to it, was as best null, at worst catatonic, as if they were suddenly spent or absent, prematurely aged or in a state of shock, a fact that didn't pass unnoticed by the attendees used to Espinoza's and Pelletier's displays of energy [sometimes brazen] at this sort of event, nor did it go unnoticed by the latest litter of Archimboldians, recent graduates, boys and girls, their doctorates tucked still warm under their arms, who planned, by any means necessary, to impose their particular readings of Archimboldi, like missionaries ready to instill faith in God, even if to do so meant signing a pact with the devil, for most were what you might call rationalists, not in the philosophical sense but in the pejorative literal sense, denoting people less interested in literature than in literary criticism, the one field, according to them - some of them, anyway - where revolution was still possible, and in some way they behaved not like youths but like *nouveau* youths, in the sense that there are the rich and the *nouveau riches*, all of them generally rational thinkers, let us repeat, although often incapable of telling their ases from their elbows, and although they noticed a there and a not-there, an absence-presence in the fleeting passage of Pelletier and Espinoza through Bologna, they were incapable of seeing what was really important: Pelletier's and Espinoza's absolute boredom regarding everything said there about Archimboldi or their negligent disregard for the gaze of others, as if the two were so much cannibal fodder, a disregard lost on the young conferencegoers, those eager and insatiable cannibals, their thirtysomething faces bloated with success, their expressions shifting from boredom to madness, their coded stuttering a speaking only two words: *love me*, or maybe two words and a phrase: *love me, let me love you*, though obviously no one understood.)

Daring greatly’ requires nothing less than a cleansing of the heart—or what the Desert Elders called ‘purity of heart.’ My best stab at what they meant by this is what I call wholeheartedness. This means we are ‘all in.’ We no longer hold anything back. We can contrast ‘all in’ with ‘half-hearted.’ Purity of heart is unwavering commitment and resolve, void of duplicity.

Diplomats, anonymity of: "In general, diplomats, unlike soldiers, are not fussed over by historians, who barely mention their names; the secrecy of negotiations, so often disputed by their contemporaries, is largely forgiven in the silence of posterity." — Jules Cambon, 1926 Diplomats, best: "The man who becomes intensely interested in what he finds at his diplomatic post, people or landscape, or even historical documents, is the best diplomat. He is a successful diplomat because the people ... appreciate his interest in them and trust him accordingly. After he has shown an enthusiasm for the local scene ... he is in a far better position to represent his own country effectively." — E. Wilder Spaulding, 1961 Diplomats, best: "The best diplomat is he who, insipred solely by cold reason, ask himself only what he can obtain and how he will arrive at it." — Gyula Szillassy, 1928 Diplomats, best and worst: "The worst kind of diplomatists are missionaries, fanatics and lawyers; the best kind are reasonable and humane skeptics. Thus it is not religion which has been the main formative influence in diplomatic theory; it is common sense." — Harold Nicolson, 1939 Diplomats, chameleons: Diplomats are a species of chameleon; they blend in most of the time but puff themselves up in a brilliant display when required. Diplomats, estrangement from compatriots: "Diplomacy calls for gifts that are as seemingly incogruous as cynicism and courtesy, sophistication and sincerity, and decisiveness and patience. The diplomat is the bearer of a view of the outside world which his fellow citizens cannot entirely follow or accept." — Kenneth W. Thompson, 1962

Travel in China was difficult at best. Officials and the common peasantry had long fought the introduction of railroads into the country. The opposition was the result of old customs and a well-founded distrust of foreigners. Poorly educated people—cart drivers, wheelbarrow pushers, and boatmen—believed that the railroads would irritate evil spirits who would then seek revenge upon the populace. (A railroad would also deprive these common workers of their livelihoods.) The educated class, on the other hand, had discovered that when a foreign entrepreneur—from England, Germany, France, Russia, or the United States—built a road, that road was then used by that particular nation’s government to extend its power in China, to gain some new piece of territory or trade advantage. Chinese officials realized that railroads—just like paved roads—would make travel easier for missionaries and other foreigners who wanted to exploit the country. The opposition had been so great that, back in 1875, the first railroad line from Shanghai to Wusung was bought by the Chinese authorities and destroyed. By 1919, however, there had been some progress, as fifty-four railroad lines tentatively webbed across China’s great expanse.