Mosaic Life Quotes

We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky selves, to the great mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more ourselves.

She felt as if the mosaic she had been assembling out of life's little shards got dumped to the ground, and there was no way to put it back together.

Crippled in the mind, some can no longer bring home their soul in the mosaic of their thinking pattern. By changing the logic model of our mindset, becoming an apprentice of new matters, and turning our emotional approach upside down, we can bring dormant energy to life and restore mental balance. (The freedom of new thinking)

Our lives are unique stones in the mosaic of human existence -- priceless and irreplaceable.

Sometimes you didn't really arrive at a conclusion about your life, you just discovered that you already had.

My whole life I’d always felt a little fractured and scattered. Probably because it was always someone else trying to decide what I needed to be. I was a mosaic of someone else’s design where none of the fragments were put in the right place. And now I had finally put myself together and I recognized myself for the very first time.

The scenes in our life resemble pictures in a rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful. That is why to attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and why, though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite temporary and serving as the only road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have been living the whole time ad interim, and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely that in expectation of which they lived.

Life has a way of shattering our expectations, of leaving our hopes in pieces without explanation. But when there's love in a family, the fragments left behind from our shattered dreams can always be pulled together again, even if the end result is a mosaic.

Too bad the freedom seemed like a prison. As his boots hit the mosaic floor at the bottom of the stairs, John Mellencamp's old-school, bic-lighter anthem echoed in his head-and though he'd always like the song okay, he'd never truly understood what it meant. Kind of wished that were still the case. Life goes on...long after the thrill of living is gone...

Amazing, when you thought about it: how quickly-made decisions became the life you lived.

He wanted to achieve something of surpassing beauty that would last. A creation that would mean that he--the mosaic worker Caius Crispus of Varena--had been born, and lived a life, and had come to understand a portion of the nature of the world, of what ran through and beneath the deeds of women and men in their souls and in the beauty and the pain of their short living beneath the sun.

Perhaps his gloom was due to his profession, that he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruin of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash.

The crash all those years ago shattered the life I had, but the pieces wound up making a pretty good mosaic. That's what art is, I suppose: transforming things from what they were into what they could be. My life now, without question, is transformed. Maybe that makes it a work of art.

Maybe, she thinks, this is simply what living is: an infinite list of transgressions that did not weigh against the joys but that simply overlaid them, the two lists mingling and merging, all the small moments that made up the mosaic of a person, a relationship, a life.

And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely's mysticism, her tale-telling, her great belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She had a lot of her grandfather Rommely's cruel will. She had some of her Aunt Evy's talent for mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan's possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy's love for life and her love for children. She had Johnny's sentimentality without his good looks. She had all of Katie's soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of Katie. She was made up of all these good and these bad things. She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Kitie's secret, desparing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk. She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only- the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life- the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.

Small things change a life. Change lives.

What he understands is that life has suffering in it, can’t not have suffering in it, because in life there is everything. Life is a mosaic of everything,

Your life is like a mosaic, a puzzle. You have to figure out where the pieces go and put them together for yourself.

If you pay attention to those aspects of God that demonstrate love, truth, beauty, intelligence, order, and spiritual evolution, those aspects will begin to expand in your life. Bit by bit, like a mosaic, disparate fragments of grace will merge to form a complete picture. Eventually this picture will replace the ore threatening one you have carried around inside you since infancy.

You may hang your walls with tapestry instead of whitewash or paper; or you may cover them with mosaic; or have them frescoed by a great painter: all this is not luxury, if it be done for beauty's sake, and not for show: it does not break our golden rule: Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful

I’ve always thought of mosaic as this big metaphor for my life,” she says. “All these jagged, incongruous pieces…” She holds up a small shard of milky jade-green glass. “These are like the things that happen to you. But if it’s laid out a certain way and if you take a step back from it, it makes sense.

I thought of relationships as a mosaic, and I put more stock in the overall picture, not the individual tiles. Life was too damned short to make every moment poignant, and too damned long to make every moment perfect. You fought, you made up, you cried, you laughed, and hopefully, when you stepped back, the picture was still beautiful.

It was so strange to realize how it was only at this brink of the chasm, threshold of the dark or the god's holy light, that one could grasp and accept one's own heart's yearning for more of the world. For life.

Who can find a proper grave for such damaged mosaics of the mind, where they may rest in pieces? Life goes on, but in two temporal directions at once, the future unable to escape the grip of a memory laden with grief.”31

Today Means Amen Dear you, whoever you are, however you got here, this is exactly where you are supposed to be. This moment has waited its whole life for you. This moment is your lover and you are a soldier. Come home, baby, it's over. You don't need to suffer anymore. Dear you, this moment is your surprise party. You are both hiding in the dark and walking through the door. This moment is a hallelujah. This moment is your permission slip to finally open that love letter you've been hiding from yourself, the one you wrote when you were little when you still danced like a sparkler at dusk. Do you remember the moment you realized they were watching? When you became ashamed of how much light you were holding? When you first learned how to unlove yourself? Dear you, the word today means amen in every language. Today, we made it. Today, I'm going to love you. Today, I'm going to love myself. Today, the boxcutter will rust in the garbage. The noose will forget how to hold you, today, today-- Dear you, and I have always meant you, nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, whose voice is someone's favorite voice, someone's favorite face to wake up to. Nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, the teacher, the starter's gun, the lantern in the night who offers not a way home, but the courage to travel farther into the dark. You, the lover, who worships the taste of her body, who is the largest tree ring in his heart, who does not let fear ration your love. You, the friend, the sacred chorus of how can I help. You, who have felt more numb than holy, more cracked than mosaic. Who have known the tiles of a bathroom by heart, who have forgotten what makes you worth it. You, the forgiven, the forgiver, who belongs right here in this moment. You, this clump of cells, this happy explosion that happened to start breathing, and by the grace of whatever is up there, you got here. You made it this whole way: through the nights that swallowed you whole, the mornings that arrived in pieces. The scabs, the gravel, the doubt, the hurt, the hurt, the hurt is over. Today, you made it. You made it. You made it here.

I was in Sarasota, Florida, on a spring-break trip with my friends Bruce and Karen Moore. Bruce and I were waiting on the beach for the rest of our crew when and a man and his grown kids came strolling up the sand. They looked at me for a minute, sort of hesitating, and then asked, "Would you mind taking a picture?" "Sure," I said, and quickly arranged all of us in a line, putting myself in the middle and motioning to Bruce to come snap the photo. Right about that time, the father said, "Actually, we were wondering if you could take a picture just of us." An understandable mistake on my part, but really embarrassing. Bruce has had a field day reminding me of that one ever since. Lesson learned: Never assume anything about your own importance. It's a great big world, and all of us are busy living our lives. None of us knows all the time and effort that another person puts into his or her passion.

Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodential panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders’ hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another. It was here that you’d find the resourcefulness of rot, the wholeness of fungi.

But what did one own if life, if love, could be taken away to darkness? Was it all not just ... a loan, a leasehold, transitory as candles?

…but beautiful mosaics are made of broken pieces.

The desire of our inner self to express life’s possibilities is like the art of mosaic, a journey of applying colors and shapes within small scaled patterns.

God gave Moses a calendar that began in spring. (Ex 12:2) God Himself emphasized the importance of Israel’s new calendar at Ex 23:16; Le 23:34 and De 16:13. God’s calendar was for marking, and keeping, God’s holy days. Using a foreign calendar became illegal. Ignoring Israel’s new calendar could cost an Israelite their life. (Nu 15:32-35) Yet, the Jewish calendar is not the only calendar. There are plenty of calendars to choose from: Assyrian; Egyptian; Iranian; Armenian; Ethiopian; Hindu; Coptic; Mayan; Chinese; Julian; Byzantine; Islamic and Gregorian; just to mention a few. Has the Seventh Day Adventists settled on any one of these calendars? Which one?

The scenes of our life are like pictures in rough mosaic, which have no effect at close quarters, but must be looked at from a distance in order to discern their beauty. So that to obtain something we have desired is to find out that it is worthless; we are always living in expectation of better things, while, at the same time, we often repent and long for things that belong to the past. We accept the present as something that is only temporary, and regard it only as a means to accomplish our aim. So that most people will find if they look back when their life is at an end, that they have lived their lifelong ad interim, and they will be surprised to find that something they allowed to pass by unnoticed and unenjoyed was just their life — that is to say, it was the very thing in the expectation of which they lived. And so it may be said of man in general that, befooled by hope, he dances into the arms of death.

Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you’ve learned about the grand themes of life. It’s time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few facts about the drifting clouds…Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life... I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel- and steal- a little of that energy.

In all the lands ruled by that City, with its domes and its bronze and golden doors, its palaces and gardens and statues, forums and theatres and colonnades, bathhouses and shops and guildhalls, taverns and whorehouses and sanctuaries and the great Hippodrome, its triple landward walls that had never yet been breached, and its deep, sheltered harbour and the guarded and guarding seas, there was a timeworn phrase that had the same meaning in every tongue and every dialect. To say of a man that he was sailing to Sarantium was to say that his life was on the cusp of change: poised for emergent greatness, brilliance, fortune – or else at the very precipice of a final and absolute fall as he met something to vast for his capacity. Valerius the Trakesian had become an Emperor.

Though it is not a direct article of the christian system that this world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it is so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the creation, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise, that is, to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous as what we call stars, renders the christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air. The two beliefs can not be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks that be believes both, has thought but little of either. ...And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer? In this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary interval of life.

Owen took Nora’s hand and squeezed it. She leaned her head against his arm, and beneath the layers of grime and torn silk and the frantic beating of her heart, something whispered to her. A cool cup of water soothing her parched throat. A breeze in the middle of India’s scorching summer. A dance beneath monsoon rains. This is right. This is good. This is worth it.

Life has a way of shattering our expectations, of leaving our hopes in pieces without explanation. But when there's love in a family, the fragments left behind from our shattered dreams can always be pulled together again, even if the end result is a mosaic.

Ah, the harbour bells of Cambridge! Whose fountains in moonlight and closed courts and cloisters, whose enduring beauty in its virtuous remote self-assurance, seemed part, less of the loud mosaic of one's stupid life there, though maintained perhaps by the countless deceitful memories of such lives, than the strange dream of some old monk, eight hundred years dead, whose forbidding house, reared upon piles and stakes driven into the marshy ground, had once shone like a beacon out of the mysterious silence, and solitude of the fens. A dream jealously guarded: Keep off the Grass. And yet whose unearthly beauty compelled one to say: God forgive me.

Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world—all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation…the vastness of St. Peter’s the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina.

Being a mosaic does not necessarily mean scattering into pieces, answered Elder Innokenty. It is only up close that each separate little stone seems not to be connected to the others. There is something more important in each of them, O Laurus: striving for the one who looks from afar. For the one who is capable of seizing all the small stones at once. It is he who gathers them with his gaze. That, O Laurus, is how it is in your life, too. You have dissolved yourself in God. You disrupted the unity of your life, renouncing your name and your very identity. But in the mosaic of your life there is also something that joins all these separate parts: it is an aspiration for Him. They will gather together again in Him.

The mosaic is so rich and varied that a hiker who descends from the highest point on the North Rim to the lowest point inside the canyon will pass through a spectrum of life equivalent to moving from the cool boreal forests of subarctic Canada to the sunstruck deserts of Mexico that lie just above the Tropic of Cancer—thereby compressing a distribution of plants and animals that typically stretch over more than two thousand horizontal miles into a single vertical mile.

I know people who read interminably, book after book, from page to page, and yet I should not call them 'well-read people'. Of course they 'know' an immense amount; but their brain seems incapable of assorting and classifying the material which they have gathered from books. They have not the faculty of distinguishing between what is useful and useless in a book; so that they may retain the former in their minds and if possible skip over the latter while reading it, if that be not possible, then--when once read--throw it overboard as useless ballast. Reading is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its chief purpose is to help towards filling in the framework which is made up of the talents and capabilities that each individual possesses. Thus each one procures for himself the implements and materials necessary for the fulfilment of his calling in life, no matter whether this be the elementary task of earning one's daily bread or a calling that responds to higher human aspirations. Such is the first purpose of reading. And the second purpose is to give a general knowledge of the world in which we live. In both cases, however, the material which one has acquired through reading must not be stored up in the memory on a plan that corresponds to the successive chapters of the book; but each little piece of knowledge thus gained must be treated as if it were a little stone to be inserted into a mosaic, so that it finds its proper place among all the other pieces and particles that help to form a general world-picture in the brain of the reader. Otherwise only a confused jumble of chaotic notions will result from all this reading. That jumble is not merely useless, but it also tends to make the unfortunate possessor of it conceited. For he seriously considers himself a well-educated person and thinks that he understands something of life. He believes that he has acquired knowledge, whereas the truth is that every increase in such 'knowledge' draws him more and more away from real life, until he finally ends up in some sanatorium or takes to politics and becomes a parliamentary deputy. Such a person never succeeds in turning his knowledge to practical account when the opportune moment arrives; for his mental equipment is not ordered with a view to meeting the demands of everyday life. His knowledge is stored in his brain as a literal transcript of the books he has read and the order of succession in which he has read them. And if Fate should one day call upon him to use some of his book-knowledge for certain practical ends in life that very call will have to name the book and give the number of the page; for the poor noodle himself would never be able to find the spot where he gathered the information now called for. But if the page is not mentioned at the critical moment the widely-read intellectual will find himself in a state of hopeless embarrassment. In a high state of agitation he searches for analogous cases and it is almost a dead certainty that he will finally deliver the wrong prescription.

There’s a certain vulgarity in assigning worth to any individual life when each represents a piece in the mosaic of the whole.

Life is a fragmented mosaic; but the art of existence is within its combination.

The best gift that parents can give their children is their own life fully lived, and that’s the gift my father gave me.

Don’t regret the past, sometimes things happen for a good reason. Life is like a mosaic. From up close it may seem like a mess, but from afar it creates a beautiful picture.

The land we grow up on patterns us, we become a part of the energetic mosaic of the living experience that draws its life from the land and draws its breath from the trees.

Who can find a proper grave for such damaged mosaics of the mind, where they may rest in pieces? Life goes on, but in two temporal directions at once, the future unable to escape the grip of a memory laden in grief.

“I would’ve followed you anywhere,” he mumbles, his voice raw with agony. “All I ever wanted was to spend forever with my best friend. With the girl who gave life to my paintings. But I’m not the one who inspired your mosaics, am I? It was always Wonderland. That’s why you chose him.” “Chose him? It was a kiss, that’s all—” “It’s not the kiss. Sometimes words are louder than actions.” “Words . . . ? What words?” “The promise you gave him that you couldn’t give me.”

He was not someone who celebrated his hometown as a glorious mosaic, and he made fun of people who did. But he admired - how could you not? - the collective amount of labour, real labour, that his trainmates had no doubt accomplished that day.

The art of literature stands apart from among its sisters, because the material in which the literary artist works is the dialect of life; hence, on the one hand, a strange freshness and immediacy of address to the public mind, which is ready prepared to understand it; but hence, on the other, a singular limitation.  The sister arts enjoy the use of a plastic and ductile material, like the modeller’s clay; literature alone is condemned to work in mosaic with finite and quite rigid words.

John Quincy Adams on Islam: “In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE…. Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant…While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.” (Emphasis in the original)

Maybe this is simply what living is: an infinite list of transgressions that did not weigh against the joys but that simply overlaid them, the two lists mingling and merging, all the small moments that made up the mosaic of a person, a relationship, a life.

Life has a way of shattering our expectations, of leaving our hopes in pieces without explanation. But when there’s love in a family, the fragments left behind from our shattered dreams can always be pulled together again, even if the end result is a mosaic.

Members brought books, precious objects, and records of creature history to the city and purchased an island in the lagoon from the Catholic Church: Isola della Stella (Island of Stars). On it were monastic buildings that were converted to suit the Congregation's purposes. ..the vast, ancient monastery library, filled with books, papers, and papyri;...This council chamber, with its stunning frescoes, mosaics, vaulted ceiling, and gallery where the most precious records are kept, embodies the Congregation's power.

A feeling of superiority counteracts imitation. Had the millions of immigrants who came to this country been superior people—the cream of the countries they came from—there would have been not one U.S.A. but a mosaic of lingual and cultural groups. It was due to the fact that the majority of the immigrants were of the lowest and the poorest, the despised and the rejected, that the heterogeneous millions blended so rapidly and thoroughly. They came here with the ardent desire to shed their old world identity and be reborn to a new life; and they were automatically equipped with an unbounded capacity to imitate and adopt the new. The strangeness of the new country attracted rather than repelled them. They craved a new identity and a new life—and the stranger the new world the more it suited their inclination.

The course and affairs of our individual life, in view of their true meaning and connection, are like a piece of crude work in mosaic. So long as one stands close in front of it, one can not correctly see the objects presented, or perceive their importance and beauty; it is only by standing some distance away that both come into view. And in the same way one often understands the true connection of important events in one’s own life, not while they are happening, or even immediately after they have happened, but only a long time afterwards.

People say that America has no religion, but it's the opposite: America has every religion, all the old ones, and produces more new ones than anywhere else on earth. America;'s religious life is like the photo mosaic in which a thousand little images add up to one big picture, except there's no big picture, just a blob of unrelated and unrelatable images, texts, and poses, the freedom to take what you want from a religion and reject hte rest and be lonely, standing outsdie the warm shelters of temples with your own goon god that no one else can understand.

(...) The floor itself was inscribed with a mosaic in the data-pattern mode, representing the entire body of the Curia case law. At the center, small icons representing constitutional principles sent out lines to each case in which they were quoted; bright lines for controlling precedent, dim lines for dissenting opinions or dicta. Each case quoted in a later case sent out additional lines, till the concentric circles of floor-icons were meshed in a complex network. The jest of the architect was clear to Phaethon. The floor mosaic was meant to represent the fixed immutability of the law; but the play of light from the pool above made it seem to ripple and sway and change with each little breeze. Above the floor, not touching it, without sound or motion, hovered three massive cubes of black material. These cubes were the manifestations of the Judges. The cube shape symbolized the solidity and implacable majesty of the law. Their high position showed they were above emotionalism or earthly appeals. The crown of each cube bore a thick-armed double helix of heavy gold. The gold spirals atop the black cubes were symbols of life, motion, and energy. Perhaps they represented the active intellects of the Curia. Or perhaps they represented that life and civilization rested on the solid foundations of the law. If so, this was another jest of the architect. The law, it seemed, rested on nothing.

In studying elementary law, I found the old authors frequently quoting the Scriptures, and referring especially to the Mosaic Institutes, as authority for many of the great principles of common law. This excited my curiosity so much that I went and purchased a Bible, the first I had ever owned; and whenever I found a reference by the law authors to the Bible, I turned to the passage and consulted it in its connection. This soon led to my taking a new interest in the Bible, and I read and meditated on it much more than I had ever done before in my life. However, much of it I did not understand.

She did not like bigots or brilliant bores or academicians who wore their honors, or scholars who wore their doctorates, like dogtags. But she had an infinite capacity to love peasants and children and great but simple causes across the board and a grace in giving that was itself gratitude and she had a body like sculpture in the thinnest of wire and a face made of a million mosaics in a gauze-web of cubes lighter than air and a piñata of a heart in the center of a mobile at fiesta time with bits of her soul swirling in the breeze in honor of life and love and Good Morning to you, Bon Jour, Muy Buenos, Muy Buenos! Muy Buenos! On Nancy Cunard

Now, here's the real beauty of this contorting contradiction. Both working mothers and stay-at-home mothers get to be failures. The ethos of intensive mothering has lower status in our culture ("stay-at-home mothers are boring"), but occupies a higher moral ground ("working mothers are neglectful"). So, welcome to the latest media catfight: the supposed war between working mothers and stay-at-home mothers. Why analyze all the ways in which our country has failed to support families while inflating the work ethic to the size of the Hindenburg when you can, instead, project this paradox onto what the media have come to call, incessantly, "the mommy wars." The "mommy wars" puts mothers into two, mutually exclusive categories--working mother versus stay-at-home mother, and never the twain shall meet. It goes without saying that they allegedly hate each other's guts. In real life, millions of mothers move between these two categories, have been one and then the other at various different times, creating a mosaic of work and child-rearing practices that bears no resemblance to the supposed ironclad roles suggested by the "mommy wars." Not only does the media catfight pit mother against mother, but it suggests that all women be reduced to their one role--mother--or get cut out of the picture entirely.

Every coin has two sides. Every mountain has a valley. For every strength there is a weakness. Every up has a down. For every in there is an out. For every height there is a depth. Life itself is a mosaic of light and dark. And every human is a study in opposites, a kaleidoscope of good and bad, positive and negative, hopes and losses, dreams and disappointments, successes and failures, courage and fear, confidence and insecurity, power and vulnerability. We do not live in a homogeneous world. We live in a world of brilliant contrasts, vivid diversity, striking polarity, and eloquent disparity...a stunning array of sometimes gorgeous, sometimes glaring, always fascinating differences.

Maybe, she thinks, this is simply what living is: an infinite list of transgressions that did not weigh against the joys but that simply overlaid them, the two lists mingling and merging all the small moments that made up the mosaic of a person, a relationship, a life. What Bird will learn, then: That his mother is fallible. That she is only human, too.

Being a mosaic does not necessarily mean scattering into pieces, answered Elder Innokenty. It is only up close that each separate little stone seems not to be connected to the others. There is something more important in each of them, O Laurus: striving for the one who looks from afar. For the one who is capable of seizing all the small stones at once. It is he who gathers them with his gaze. That, O Laurus, is how it is in your life, too. You have dissolved yourself in God. You disrupted the unity of your life, renouncing your name and your very identity. But in the mosaic of your life there is also something that joins all those separate parts: it is an aspiration for Him. They will gather together again in Him.

A forest floor, the Woodland villagers knew, is a living thing. Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodential panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders’ hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another. It was here that you’d find the resourcefulness of rot, the wholeness of fungi.

The more I stare at it, the more the popcorn ceiling above me resembles an exquisite mosaic. Yellow rings from a leaky roof add pizazz to the imperfect white mounds; the reflection of a parked car outside the hotel room highlights the design in a brilliant, abstract pattern. I try to find a name for this provocative image and decide on “Cottage Cheese, Glorified.” And that’s when it becomes obvious that I’m distracting myself from thinking about the U-turn my life just took. I wonder if Galen is back yet. I wonder what he’s thinking. I wonder if Rayna is okay, if she has a killer headache like I do, if chloroform affects a full-blooded Syrena the way it affects humans. I bet that now she really will try to shoot my mom with her harpoon, which reminds me again of the past twenty-four hours of craziness.

All I know is that you can survive. You have to! You can climb higher. You want to! Don't give up. No matter what ... Don't give up on your children ... on your mate ... on your sanity ... on your faith. As far as I know ... we only have one life ... take your sour lemons and make lemonade ... look at whatever positives you can ... but believe ... if you keep on ... step-by-step ... you will not only survive, you will rise.

CLARITIES OF FAITH Not that there are no clarities in the life of faith. There are. Vast, soaring harmonies; deep, satisfying meanings; rich, textured experiences. But these clarities develop from within. They cannot be imposed from without. They cannot be hurried. It is not a matter of hurriedly arranging "dead things into a dead mosaic, but of living forces into a great equilibrium."' The clarities of faith are organic and personal, not mechanical and institutional. Faith invades the muddle; it does not eliminate it. Peace develops in the midst of chaos. Harmony is achieved slowly, quietly, unobtrusively-like the effects of salt and light. Such clarities result from a courageous commitment to God, not from controlling or being controlled by others. Such clarities come from adventuring deep into the mysteries of God's will and love, not by cautiously managing and moralizing in ways that minimize risk and guarantee self-importance. These clarities can only be experienced in acts of faith and only recognized with the eyes of faith. Jeremiah's life was brilliantly supplied with such clarities, but they were always surrounded by hopeless disarray. Sometimes devout and sometimes despairing, Jeremiah doubted himself and God. But these internal agonies never seemed to have interfered with his vocation and his commitment. He argued with God but he did not abandon him. He was clear

What Jesus teaches in regard to violence is so radical that it almost doesn’t even make sense. When we serve an Americanized version of Jesus, we tend to subconsciously imagine that Jesus would have said something to the effect of, “Don’t use violence unless you really and truly fear that your life may be in danger.” However, that isn’t what he taught—Jesus repeatedly taught that those who actually “follow” him must adopt a position of nonviolent love of enemies. This new ethic of nonviolence was not what people were expecting; the Mosaic Law had established principles that justified retributive violence (much like in our own culture), condoning tit-for-tat responses to injustices. Jesus insists, however, that the Kingdom he came to establish was going to operate by different principles from anything they had experienced previously, and that the use of previously justified violence had no place in this new movement God was starting.

A whole stack of them, lined with the stories of others, all with their own memories and regrets, all their failings and love, all things they wished they could tell the children they might never see again. Maybe, she thinks, this is simply what living is: an infinite list of transgressions that did not weigh against the joys but that simply overlaid them, the two lists mingling and merging, all the small moments that made up the mosaic of a person, a relationship, a life.

There's a widespread misconception that biblical literalism is facile and mindless, but the doctrine I was introduced to at Moody was every bit as complicated and arcane as Marxist theory or post-structuralism.... In many ways, Christian literalism is even more complicated than liberal brands of theology because it involves the sticky task of reconciling the overlay myth—the story of redemption—with a wildly inconsistent body of scripture. This requires consummate parsing of Old Testament commands, distinguishing between the universal (e.g., thou shalt not kill) from those particular to the Mosaic law that are no longer relevant after the death of Christ (e.g., a sexually violated woman must marry her rapist). It requires making the elaborate case that the Song of Solomon, a book of Hebrew erotica that managed to wangle its way into the canon, is a metaphor about Christ's love for the church, and that the starkly nihilistic book of Ecclesiastes is a representation of the hopelessness of life without God.

Heresy, in these remote days, always springs from a Jewish or Mosaic root. The false teachers are always teachers of the Law, advocating the Sabbath, circumcision, and other rites. But they do not teach only the Law, and are not to be confounded with the good scribes of Jerusalem, and their Pharisee disciples, absorbed in the canonical Law and its commentaries. They are real theologians, who taking advantage of the comparative indifference of their co-religionists to all but the worship of the Law, devote themselves to doctrinal speculation. And they did not stop there. To the already sufficiently minute observances of the Mosaic Law they added a very definite asceticism, celibacy, vegetarianism, and abstinence from wine. Those amongst them who accepted Christianity, combined with the new doctrines of the Gospel their "Jewish fables," and tried to impose them, together with their austere rule of life, upon new converts. They were, in fact, Judaizing gnostics, who in the primitive churches heralded the inroads of philosophic Gnosticism.

By far, the most important distortions and confabulations of memory are those that serve to justify and explain our own lives. The mind, sense-making organ that it is, does not interpret our experiences as if they were shattered shards of glass; it assembles them into a mosaic. From the distance of years, we see the mosaic’s pattern. It seems tangible, unchangeable; we can’t imagine how we could reconfigure those pieces into another design. But it is a result of years of telling our story, shaping it into a life narrative that is complete with heroes and villians, an account of how we came to be the way we are. Because that narrative is the way we understand the world and our place in it, it is bigger than the sum of its parts. If on part, one memory, is shown to be wrong, people have to reduce the resulting dissonance and even rethink the basic mental category: you mean Dad (Mom) wasn’t such a bad (good) person after all? You mean Dad (Mom) was a complex human being? The life narrative may be fundamentally true; Your father or mother might really have been hateful, or saintly. The problem is that when the narrative becomes a major source of self-justification, one the storyteller relies on to excuse mistakes and failings, memory becomes warped in its service. The storyteller remembers only the confirming examples of the parent’s malevolence and forgets the dissonant instances of the parent’s good qualities. Over time, as the story hardens, it becomes more difficult to see the whole parent — the mixture of good and bad, strengths and flaws, good intentions and unfortunate blunders. Memories create our stories, but our stories also create our memories.

It’s like David in the Bible when his child got sick. He ripped his clothes and shaved his head and wouldn’t eat and prayed all day and begged and cried and everyone was scared to tell him that the boy was dead. But when he found out he washed his face and ate breakfast. When there’s still a chance to salvage something you torture yourself. When it’s gone, you wash your face. You wake up. You start picking up the pieces, no matter how tiny and scattered they are. And then suddenly, the life that you had that was whole is suddenly a mosaic made of the old pieces. And something entirely new. I don’t know how. I just know it happens.

Final Cause is the reason, the interest in why you do what you do, your hope for how things turn out—how you imagine your best future. Final Cause is more than the goal of the goal—it’s the effectual living beyond the goal. Final Cause is the success after the success. Final Cause is the place where your time is spent on your values. Final Cause is where misaligned commitments are reexamined. Final Cause is purpose. Final Cause helps you integrate your purpose into everything you do—even before you’ve finished the puzzle to your big-picture dream. Puzzles are put together one piece at a time, not in one big block—and so are dreams. Final Cause helps you identify the big-picture dream, and Time Tipping helps you put together the oddly shaped interlocking pieces. The mosaic of our dreams draws closer as we draw the mosaic wide awake. Final Cause is your intangible expression of joyful living—that feeling of starting something new harmonizing with the fulfillment of accomplishment. To Time Tippers, Final Cause is not the end—it’s both the end and the beginning. The end informs the beginning so you can begin living the values of the end from the beginning.

The Mosaic legend of the Fall of Man has preserved an ancient picture representing the origin and consequences of this disunion. The incidents of the legend form the basis of an essential article of the creed, the doctrine of original sin in man and his consequent need of succour. It may be well at the commencement of logic to examine the story which treats of the origin and the bearings of the very knowledge which logic has to discuss. For, though philosophy must not allow herself to be overawed by religion, or accept the position of existence on sufferance, she cannot afford to neglect these popular conceptions. The tales and allegories of religion, which have enjoyed for thousands of years the veneration of nations, are not to be set aside as antiquated even now. Upon a closer inspection of the story of the Fall we find, as was already said, that it exemplifies the universal bearings of knowledge upon the spiritual life. In its instinctive and natural stage, spiritual life wears the garb of innocence and confiding simplicity; but the very essence of spirit implies the absorption of this immediate condition in something higher. The spiritual is distinguished from the natural, and more especially from the animal, life, in the circumstance that it does not continue a mere stream of tendency, but sunders itself to self-realisation. But this position of severed life has in its turn to be suppressed, and the spirit has by its own act to win its way to concord again. The final concord then is spiritual; that is, the principle of restoration is found in thought, and thought only. The hand that inflicts the wound is also the hand which heals it. We are told in our story that Adam and Eve, the first human beings, the types of humanity, were placed in a garden, where grew a tree of life and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God, it is said, had forbidden them to eat of the fruit of this latter tree: of the tree of life for the present nothing further is said. These words evidently assume that man is not intended to seek knowledge, and ought to remain in the state of innocence. Other meditative races, it may be remarked, have held the same belief that the primitive state of mankind was one of innocence and harmony. Now all this is to a certain extent correct. The disunion that appears throughout humanity is not a condition to rest in. But it is a mistake to regard the natural and immediate harmony as the right state. The mind is not mere instinct: on the contrary, it essentially involves the tendency to reasoning and meditation. Childlike innocence no doubt has in it something fascinating and attractive: but only because it reminds us of what the spirit must win for itself. The harmoniousness of childhood is a gift from the hand of nature: the second harmony must spring from the labour and culture of the spirit. And so the words of Christ, ‘Except ye become as little children’, etc., are very far from telling us that we must always remain children. Again, we find in the narrative of Moses that the occasion which led man to leave his natural unity is attributed to solicitation from without. The serpent was the tempter. But the truth is, that the step into opposition, the awakening of consciousness, follows from the very nature of man; and the same history repeats itself in every son of Adam. The serpent represents likeness to God as consisting in the knowledge of good and evil: and it is just this knowledge in which man participates when he breaks with the unity of his instinctive being and eats of the forbidden fruit. The first reflection of awakened consciousness in men told them that they were naked. This is a naive and profound trait. For the sense of shame bears evidence to the separation of man from his natural and sensuous life. The beasts never get so far as this separation, and they feel no shame. And it is in the human feeling of shame that we are to seek the spiritual and moral origin origin of dress.

To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot. The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

All life is a mosaic of Light, and you, a brilliance throughout.

Our worst can become our best if mistakes are gathered like twigs of a bird's nest, giving one true foundation. Each mistake is a brick of wisdom to build our lives upon.

I empathize with those of you who have struggled long and hard with few rainbows and even less sunny days. Life for you as been an uphill battle. I implore-I beg you to continue to push, continue to believe in the power of the human spirit when there is nothing left but shame behind you, faith inside you and uncertainty ahead of you.

If we believe that we have control over life, we’re living in an illusion. And if we attempt to protect, strengthen, and expand this illusion, our influence on what’s genuinely happening becomes increasingly smaller; mired in resistance, our life would become a cycle of anxious complaining, postponed decisions, and missed opportunities.

Humans beings strive for happiness and are often unaware that they can choose emotions deliberately even without striving.

Amidst the shattered pieces of a broken life, may you find the strength to gather fragments of hope and forge a mosaic of resilience.

Key Themes All people are sinners and need to be saved from their sin (1:18–3:20; 5:12–19). The Mosaic law is good and holy, but only Christ can remove sin and overcome its power (2:12–29; 3:9–20; 5:20; 7:1–25; 9:30–10:8). Through the righteousness of God, sin is judged and salvation is provided (3:21–26; 5:12–19; 6:1–10; 7:1–6; 8:1–4). With the coming of Jesus Christ, a new age of redemptive history has begun (1:1–7; 3:21–26; 5:1–8:39). The atoning death of Jesus Christ is central to God’s plan of salvation (3:21–26; 4:23–25; 5:6–11, 15–19; 6:1–10; 7:4–6; 8:1–4). Justification is by faith alone (1:16–4:25; 9:30–10:21). Those who are in Christ Jesus have a sure hope of future glory (5:1–8:39). By the power of the Holy Spirit, those who have died with Christ live a new life (2:25–29; 6:1–7:6; 8:1–39). God is sovereign in salvation. He works all things according to his plan (9:1–11:36). God fulfills his promises to both Jews and Gentiles (1:18–4:25; 9:1–11:36; 14:1–15:13). Because of God’s grace, Christians should be morally pure, should show love to their neighbors, should be good citizens, and should welcome their fellow believers into fullest fellowship (12:1–15:7).

The path to greatness is a mosaic of trials and triumphs; trust each piece to reveal the masterpiece of your journey, for every step backward is a lesson, and every leap forward is a victory

Behind every person is a story, a collection of moments that shape the contours of their existence. It's a narrative woven with threads of joy and sorrow, painted with strokes of laughter and tears. Each individual carries within them a unique history, a composition of experiences that define who they are. Beyond the surface, there are layers of emotions, a complex interplay of happiness, pain, and everything in between. It's a journey marked by footprints of relationships, imprints of challenges, and echoes of accomplishments. Behind every person is a living novel, a mosaic of memories, and a reflection of the intricate dance between resilience and vulnerability. So, in the weave of life, let's explore the myriad stories that make each person extraordinary and incomprehensibly beautiful.

A flock without lambs is doomed. A herd without calves has no future. A people whose children are doomed to ignorance has no future. It is our children who are, by this Act, condemned to a world of darkness and ignorance, who will never fit in anywhere in the world after being shut away from the rest of humanity by Bantu Education. If we all realise that, we cannot, no matter what the odds, stand idly by and let that happen. Where are the mothers in this hall who will say: 'Never! Not to my child!'? Where are the women of this nation who will say: 'Never, not to our children!'? Have we less courage than the mother-hen, that will dare the falcon that swoops down on her young? I do not think so. Let us take a lesson from those mothers in Hitler's concentration camps, who, in a desperate situation, tried to save their children. We will do the same too. We will tell Verwoerd that over our dead bodies will he condemn our children to ignorance. We will tell him: Never, not to our children.

...White traders came to the Transkei, hot on the heels of the missionaries, to provide all the new needs that the missionaries demanded and to satisfy the new tastes that had been introduced... They were a hardy breed of men and women, these traders, isolated, lonely, and hard working. In order to survive in this sea of black people, they had to learn how to live with people. Very few of them slept with revolvers under their pillows or locked their doors. They knew they were safe among their neighbours. They had learnt who was who in the areas where they lived, ingratiated themselves with the most influential families, and kept friends with the majority of the people. They learnt the language of the people and made sure their children learnt it too. Some of them born in these parts knew Xhosa before they knew English. When Britain began replacing the civil service personnel in South Africa with locally born whites, most of their recruits came from this class of whites, who knew the Native and spoke his language. Recruits for missionary work too came from this class. Those of them who went on to universities became experts in the areas pertaining to Africans- Anthropology, African languages, Native Administration and Native Law. But though living among Africans, like all white SouthAfricans they never forgot that they were white.

Only those who have had to leave home know the unspeakable pain involved. No words can describe it. Much as the situation was ugly in South Africa, and still ugly today, South Africa is my home. I love it. No place in the world is like that country to me. For all its ugliness, it is my home, the place where my roots are, and I love it. This is what is so painful. Even now it is still my hope that I'll go back to live there. It is the only place where my soul can find rest and peace.

Seriality is ubiquitous in life, nature, and cosmos. It is the umbilical cord that connects thought, feeling, science, and art with the womb of the universe that gave birth to them. ... We thurs arrive at the image of a world mosaic or cosmic kaleidoscope, which in spite of constant shufflings and rearrangements, also takes care of bringing like and like together.

those who knew him were surprised when The Anvil unexpectedly retired and subsequently disappeared from public life.  None of his friends would have guessed that he had secretly become a contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency.

I left because the ground in which I could operate was shrinking, getting smaller and smaller. I felt it was better to carry on the struggle outside, rather than risk going to jail to rot there doing nothing. This I have done. But the struggle for liberation cannot be carried on outside the country; it is inside the country. That is where the battle is and where it will be won. When Fikile Bam came out of Robben Island after ten years, in his first letter to me he wrote: 'Mama, we have decided to remain in the country. The struggle is here and not outside.' This was in response to my efforts trying to get him out of the country. Fikile was right,

Our friend Palin said Earth has more water than most other planets, which makes us a prime candidate for relocation.  So, if other forms of alien life can live here, there’s no telling what else might already be here that we don’t know about.

Sometimes, when the nights are cold And darkness is all there is to hold I dream of what comes after death Tears pour while I hold my breath It's hard to want to stay and breathe In a world where everybody leaves Where I was never once enough For anyone who claimed to love My dark mosaic soul.

Begin again.’ For in the rubble lies the raw material of redemption, where shattered fragments pave the path to a mosaic of renewal.

The truth was, only a lucky few got to leave the earth saying everything they would’ve liked to say, exactly how they wanted to say it. I thought of relationships as a mosaic, and I put more stock in the overall picture, not the individual tiles. Life was too damned short to make every moment poignant, and too damned long to make every moment perfect. You fought, you made up, you cried, you laughed, and hopefully, when you stepped back, the picture was still beautiful.

This is why some of the pre-molecular-biological discoveries of the twenties and thirties were so startling and certainly significant for the whole change of attitude that ensued,” Monod said. “I’m thinking now first of all of the crystallization of urease by Sumner in 1926.” Urease is the enzyme that catalyzes the breakdown of urea into ammonia and carbon dioxide. Starting with an extract of jack beans, James Sumner had prepared a solution that demonstrated this catalytic activity very strongly; when he let the solution stand overnight in the cold, he found that crystals formed. The crystals were protein. They proved to be pure urease. This was the first pure enzyme ever prepared. It provided the first demonstration that a protein could act catalytically, and confuted the prevalent view, following Richard Willstätter’s experiments, that enzymes were not proteins. “Sumner’s discovery that one could crystallize an enzyme shocked biologists at the time,” Monod said. “In fact the discovery was denied for a long time. And the second discovery—this was of great psychological rather than actual scientific importance—was the crystallization of tobacco-mosaic virus by Wendell Stanley in 1935. Right away there was a lot of stupid discussion about ‘Can you crystallize life?’ and that sort of thing, which of course is meaningless. But if you could crystallize these biologically active and specific substances, then they had regular structures. With that began the replacement of the colloidal conception of the organization of life by the structural conception.

Tragedy and beauty swirl together, each step blending into the music of existence. When we face midlife's storms, we discover the power to reshape ourselves and find new paths forward. Even in our darkest moments, resilience takes root, blossoming into transformation. Our journey is a collage woven with both suffering and joy, creating a beautiful mosaic of strength and redemption.

Salt water is the greatest component of our world, yet some people never see an ocean. That doesn't change the ocean. It is constant and powerful, and like the love of God, whether we're immersed in it, standing on the shore, or a thousand miles away, it remains.

He know where He wants to take me, and He'll get me there, in spite of myself.

Adrift in the endless night, I’ve wished on the stars far-flung not knowing each spec of light was the dust of my own dreams shattered in another life —embedded in the horizon in the blast wave that shattered me into the mosaic of a melancholic, alcoholic dreamer drunk on this insatiable yearning to connect with another because I can’t find myself.

You are not who you think you are. There are things buried inside you that whisper. They give you words you speak as your own, and they nudge you, lead you, seduce you into thoughts they want you to have. You have formed decisions from their memories and acted from their grievances. They are ghosts that live within you, peeking out from your eyes. They squat in your skin, clouding and morphing what you think, what you see, what you feel. You are, quite simply, not just you. Rather, you are a haphazard, haunted mosaic of a hundred shards of glass. A physical treasure box of experienced lifetimes. A sea of souls trapped in flesh. The fragmented remains of others past live within you. And if you aren’t careful, like a puppeteer to a marionette, they will twitch, and you will move.

Cory Escott's life story is a mosaic of experiences, from his days delivering goods in Hawaii to his passion for collecting baseball cards. With a deep commitment to family, he embraces his role as a parent to three children and grandparent to six. Cory actively promotes health and community well-being, offering assistance to neighbors and family in need.

There is an even more substantial shift from life under the Mosaic covenant to life under the new covenant.

our faces are mosaics of people who fell in love.

We try to grasp too much of life at once; since we think of it as a whole, instead of living one day at a time. Life is a mosaic, and each tiny piece must be cut and set with skill, first one piece, then another.

Life is a mosaic of everything, and there are no clean edges either,

The heathen philosophers were content with mere guesses at the future of the soul. The elder prophets were content with the Divine support in life and in death. The later prophets advance further, as Isaiah: "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in the dust: for thy dew is as the dew of herbs. The earth also shall cast out her dead." This, taken with the sublime spectacle of Hades in the fourteenth chapter, seems a forecast of the future, but Jesus instructed Mary and her sister and Lazarus; and Martha without hesitation spoke of the resurrection at the last day as a familiar doctrine, far in advance of the Mosaic law in which she had been reared.

A mosaic consists of thousands of little stones. Some are blue, some are green, some are yellow, some are gold. When we bring our faces close to the mosaic, we can admire the beauty of each stone. But as we step back from it, we can see that all these little stones reveal to us a beautiful picture, telling a story none of these stones can tell by itself. That is what our life in community is about. Each of us is like a little stone, but together we reveal the face of God to the world. Nobody can say: 'I make God visible.' But others who see us together can say: 'They make God visible.' Community is where humility and glory touch.

As we are in the Church age, which is an age of grace rather than the theocracy of Mosaic times, we are no longer under the Law as such. Dr. Geisler cogently summarizes these distinctions: “While the basic moral principles, reflective of God’s moral nature, embedded in the theocratic construct of Old Testament Israel, are the same immutable principles expressed in the context of grace for the New Testament church, nevertheless, church-age believers are not under Mosaic Law, which has been fulfilled and passed away.”73 I must briefly acknowledge that some theologians seem to disagree with this description of the relationship between the Law and the Gospel or the Law and grace, at least in a technical sense. Kaiser urges that we reject the idea that the Law ceases to be valid just because Jesus fulfilled its requirements for all believers. The Law itself is still valid, he claims, it’s just that we are empowered to obey it through faith. Kaiser is not arguing that we are saved by obeying the Law, as our salvation is purely from our faith in Christ and His finished work on the cross. He seems to be saying, however, that it still remains the perfect standard for holiness—and who can argue with that? He cites Paul, who asks, “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Romans 3:31).74 As I will discuss further in the next chapter in connection with the New Covenant, we can all acknowledge that God’s Law is perfect because its Maker is perfect. It was never intended, however, to impart life (Gal. 3:21).

By the time of the Mosaic covenant, the peace offering (Lev 17:11ff.) was the divinely prescribed means of maintaining a harmonious relationship between God and his covenant people. The sin offering (Lev 4) dealt with sin as a barrier between the worshipers and God. This sin offering was a slaughtered bull, lamb, or goat with which the worshiper had identified himself by laying his hands on its head. When the blood of the victim, signifying its life (Lev 17:11), was daubed on the horns of the altar, symbolizing the presence of God, God and the worshipers were united in a renewed relationship.

To all those smiles that makes a beautiful mosaic ❤️ adding beauty to life

for Christians, not every passage in the Bible is equally prescriptive or determinative for a Christian ethical life. Rather, the Old Testament must be read in light of the New, the Mosaic legislation must be read in light of its fulfillment in Christ (Rom 10:4), and so on. The point is simply that one must look for Scripture’s Christological center and read all of its various parts in light of that center. When

Sometimes life hurts. We suffer. We heal. We move on. But sometimes life hits back. Harder. Lethal in its cruelty. Shattering us into a million glittering shards of pain and loss and anguish. And we suffer, too broken to heal, to become what we once were. So we learn to live with the shards of pain and loss and anguish forever embedded in our souls, and with shaking fingers we piece together the bloody fragments of who we were into a mosaic grotesque in its stark reality, exquisite in its sharp-edged story of the tragic, breathless beauty of a human who survived life. And we move on, often unaware of the light glittering behind us showing others the way through the darkness.

The same thing could be said of the Bible as a whole. The crucifixion-resurrection, after all, isn’t just one event among many in the life of Jesus. It’s the event to which the whole Old Testament looks forward. From God’s making of animal-skin clothing for Adam and Eve, to the sacrificial system under the Mosaic Law, to the representative suffering of Israel’s king, to Isaiah’s prophecy of a Suffering Servant of the Lord, to Zechariah’s prophecy of a Stricken Shepherd, the Old Testament longs for its fulfillment in a King who would suffer, die, and triumph.

I thought that childhood went away softly, or that it was lost with a rip, at the moment when the veil is torn and you see another reality. Instead it is neither one nor the other. Childhood goes away in shreds, like a mosaic that flakes under your eyes. Below, in fragments, appears the adult being in its darkest part, from which we protect ourselves, like children who puts the blanket upon their faces, for fear of the ogre, there are the things you do not want to see, until when you can no longer deny them. And perhaps this denial is a part of wanting to believe in a life after death, the last piece of childhood that some of us guard, for thinking that every goodbye, after all, is not forever.

Whatever you pay attention to will grow. If you pay attention to those aspects of God that demonstrate love, truth, beauty, intelligence, order, and spiritual evolution, those aspects will begin to expand in your life. Bit by bit, like a mosaic, disparate fragments of grace will merge to form a complete picture. Eventually this picture will replace the more threatening one you have carried around inside you since infancy. The external world claims to be

Whatever you pay attention to will grow. If you pay attention to those aspects of God that demonstrate love, truth, beauty, intelligence, order, and spiritual evolution, those aspects will begin to expand in your life. Bit by bit, like a mosaic, disparate fragments of grace will merge to form a complete picture. Eventually this picture will replace the more threatening one you have carried around inside you since infancy.

Life is made up of small decisions which, like brick upon brick, imperceptibly shape the structure of our existence.

To be truly able to greet life with lucidity and tinkling laughter, one must have had bravely experienced that ones heart feels as if it´s thousand years old with all the twinges of grief, nocturnal distress and loneliness and understood that not one expression of human sorrow is really alien. It can serve as a springboard for a more life-sensitive state of mind that paints even seemingly deadly boring details into gratifying wonders (it is not equal to a nauseating expression such as "seeing the good in everything"). I believe and do know that this sort of state can bring one a little closer to bearing the great mosaic that life is and maybe, rather than leaving us feeling opressed, helps us to grow a bit lighter.

And how true it is that the turnings on the path are often so subtle, so unsuspected at the time, that we pass them by with a wave and a smile and a near arrogant ease. Yet when we look back in life the reasons for our choices seem unbearably flimsy and silly, which is confusing and even frightening. A totally different life which could have worked just as well as the one we have? That’s something none of us likes to think about. Instead, we try mightily to forget our other worlds that might have been, and with good reason. But all the same those rare and beautiful moments from the past live on within us, no farther away than the smell of an olive wood fire or the sound of rain beating softly on a garden, time’s unquiet ghosts, haunting our memories with secret whispers of what if? …

The rest, but a small part, is fiction, part of the mosaic of storytelling that a writer must employ to bring life to his tale. But as to which part is truth and which small part is fiction, I will leave that for you to decide.

every good deed tips the balance in favour of humanity, that whoever saves one life, saves the whole world. For the first time, I fully comprehend

His thoughts came and went one at a time, without logical attachments or chains of causation, like hawks circling an empty sky. [...] And from their isolation, their profound disunity, he concluded that a mind was not something grown or evolved, but was a mosaic, a jackdaw’s nest of baubles and bits of glass between which lightning flickered now and again, connecting and establishing the whole for fractions of seconds, creating the illusion of a man, of a man’s rational and emotional convictions. Years before, months before, he might have denied this conception, put forward a romantic conception in its stead. But the constituency of his mind, his jackdaw’s nest, had changed, with war and prostitutes replacing home-cooking and girlfriends, and though a younger Mingolla would have rejected the bleakness of this self-knowledge, the current one found in it a source of strength, a justification for conscienceless action, for contempt of sentiment.

Life isn’t fair. The pleasures that parents give children are brushed away like crumbs,

I would like it more if you would do me a favor, ma’am. There’s something I’d really like.” “Ask me anything you want, Emilio. Tell me what you want most in life, and I’ll get it for you.” Would he want a bicycle? Or maybe a trip to the ocean? “What is it? Tell me.” “I want to meet Monseñor Romero.” That was what he wanted most in his eight-year-old life.

Emilio had the pleasure of going back home completely cured and able to tell all of his stories. But there were only a few pleasures left to him in life. He lived for only two more years. A few days before Monseñor Romero was assassinated, the National Guard attacked and burned down his entire cantón, killing him and the rest of his family. —Margarita Herrera

It is said that life—and by that I mean all of everything that exists—is like a mosaic made of countless tiny stones. Each person’s life comprises a part of the mosaic, and each person can only see their part of the mosaic. Birth, death, love, and hate—all the pain, sweat, and grief that are the lot of every man—those are the stones man is given power to place. Our choices dictate how our own few stones are laid into the larger pattern of the mosaic.

The new covenant is the eschatological fulfillment of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants by bringing the Abrahamic promises to bear on Jews and Gentiles through faith in Jesus Christ. What is new in the new covenant is the death and resurrection of Jesus as the means of salvation, Jesus as the object of faith, God’s people as multiethnic, and the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The obligations of the new covenant are not the moral law of the Decalogue but the example of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus, and life in the Spirit. Those things represent the “law of Christ” (Gal 6:2) and their performance fulfills the Mosaic law. Nonetheless, the law remains as a type of wisdom for Christian living, but it no longer defines the constitution or conduct for God’s people.

The room was small, slightly bigger than his bedroom, but far, far more beautiful. It resembled some of the Asian temples he'd seen in his aunt's coffee-table books. The walls were painted in rich hues of red, green, blue, yellow, and gold. When Alex looked up, he saw a dome-shaped ceiling with a sun, moon and stars made out of pearls and gems. The ground was tiled and shaped into a model of forests, mountains, pastures and rivers-like a mosaic. And across the room was a set of jewel-encrusted thrones where two finely carved statues sat. The life-size carvings were different than those of the army outside the chamber. Theses still wore their original colours, preserved perhaps by the lack of fresh air in the room. Instead of armour, the male figure wore a long, regal robe made of small rectangular-shaped tiles. Alex immediately thought of the chain0mail that knights wore in the Middle Ages, except this was made of jade and not metal. The statue of the beautiful woman also wore clothes or richness and royalty, but hers did not include jade, only gold and precious stones. "They must be the Emperor and Empress," Ryan said.

I got into their military truck all equipped with its mounted machine guns. At the hospitalito, Monseñor Romero came out reluctantly to talk with him, and the colonel gave him a speech. “The situation is serious. It’s more than serious! We fear for your life, and we’d like to begin providing protection for you. Right away!” “I appreciate it, but I don’t think it’s necessary for you to make any special efforts to protect me. Truthfully, I don’t think I need it, especially since there are so many other people who need protection . . .” “All right then. But we should send you some instructions on what measures to take and how to protect yourself, so that you can be familiar with the procedures.” “All right. Send them if you like.” “We’ll send them to you right away!” And the colonel stuck his chest out, gave a military salute, and left. But the famed instructions didn’t arrive, not “right away,” not ever. The offer to protect him was pure theater. —Ricardo Urioste

The average Christian is never meant to find out that, before it was warped and distorted, everything he reads about between the pages of his Bible, as well as every element of his religion, originally came from Egyptian Amenism and Irish Druidism. The more Druidism is studied the more apparent is its relationship to the revealed religion of the Mosaic Law – Rev. C. C. Dobson (Did Our Lord Visit Britain as they say in Cornwall and Somerset, 1954) The Culdee establishment had now acquired a firm footing in the nation. Some of its members not only excelled in astronomy, poetry, and rhetoric, but also in philosophy, mathematics, and several other arts and sciences (which exactly correlates with the learned Druid magi)…It is among the Scottish Culdees, that we are to look for that pure pattern of Christian life, such as was exemplified in the African, Greek and Egyptian Anchorites – Rev. Alexander Low (History of Scotland from the Earliest Period, to the Middle of the Ninth Century, 1826) Nothing is clearer than that Patrick engrafted Christianity on the pagan superstition with so much skill that he won people over to the Christian religion before they understood the exact difference between the two systems of belief – Dr. Donovan (editor of The Annals of the Four Masters)

History of the Jews (Johnson, Paul) - Your Highlight on page 34 | Location 758-759 | Added on Thursday, March 5, 2015 9:59:47 PM in the Mosaic law no property offence is capital. Human life is too sacred where the rights of property alone are violated. It also repudiates vicarious punishment:

For the question of abortion, perhaps the most significant passage of all is found in the specific laws God gave Moses for the people of Israel during the time of the Mosaic covenant. One particular law spoke of the penalties to be imposed in case the life or health of a pregnant woman or her preborn child was endangered or harmed: When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe (Exod. 21:22–25).1 This law concerns a situation when men are fighting and one of them accidentally hits a pregnant woman. Neither one of them intended to do this, but as they fought they were not careful enough to avoid hitting her. If that happens, there are two possibilities: 1. If this causes a premature birth but there is no harm to the pregnant woman or her preborn child, there is still a penalty: “The one who hit her shall surely be fined” (v. 22). The penalty was for carelessly endangering the life or health of the pregnant woman and her child. We have similar laws in modern society, such as when a person is fined for drunken driving, even though he has hit no one with his car. He recklessly endangered human life and health, and he deserved a fine or other penalty. 2. But “if there is harm” to either the pregnant woman or her child, then the penalties are quite severe: “Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth …” (vv. 23–24). This means that both the mother and the preborn child are given equal legal protection. The penalty for harming the preborn child is just as great as for harming the mother. Both are treated as persons, and both deserve the full protection of the law.2

This law is even more significant when we put it in the context of other laws in the Mosaic covenant. In other cases in the Mosaic law where someone accidentally caused the death of another person, there was no requirement to give “life for life,” no capital punishment. Rather, the person who accidentally caused someone else’s death was required to flee to one of the “cities of refuge” until the death of the high priest (see Num. 35:9–15, 22–29). This was a kind of “house arrest,” although the person had to stay within a city rather than within a house for a limited period of time. It was a far lesser punishment than “life for life.” This means that God established for Israel a law code that placed a higher value on protecting the life of a pregnant woman and her preborn child than the life of anyone else in Israelite society. Far from treating the death of a preborn child as less significant than the death of others in society, this law treats the death of a preborn child or its mother as more significant and worthy of more severe punishment. And the law does not place any restriction on the number of months the woman was pregnant. Presumably it would apply from a very early stage in pregnancy, whenever it could be known that a miscarriage had occurred and her child or children had died as a result. Moreover, this law applies to a case of accidental killing of a preborn child. But if accidental killing of a preborn child is so serious in God’s eyes, then surely intentional killing of a preborn child must be an even worse crime. The conclusion from all of these verses is that the Bible teaches that we should think of the preborn child as a person from the moment of conception, and we should give to the preborn child legal protection at least equal to that of others in the society. Additional note: It is likely that many people reading this evidence from the Bible, perhaps for the first time, will already have had an abortion. Others reading this will have encouraged someone else to have an abortion. I cannot minimize or deny the moral wrong involved in this action, but I can point to the repeated offer of the Bible that God will give forgiveness of sins to those who repent of their sin and trust in Jesus Christ for forgiveness: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Although such sin, like all other sin, deserves God’s wrath, Jesus Christ took that wrath on himself as a substitute for all who would believe in him: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24). b. Scientific

This law is even more significant when we put it in the context of other laws in the Mosaic covenant. In other cases in the Mosaic law where someone accidentally caused the death of another person, there was no requirement to give “life for life,” no capital punishment. Rather, the person who accidentally caused someone else’s death was required to flee to one of the “cities of refuge” until the death of the high priest (see Num. 35:9–15, 22–29). This was a kind of “house arrest,” although the person had to stay within a city rather than within a house for a limited period of time. It was a far lesser punishment than “life for life.” This means that God established for Israel a law code that placed a higher value on protecting the life of a pregnant woman and her preborn child than the life of anyone else in Israelite society. Far from treating the death of a preborn child as less significant than the death of others in society, this law treats the death of a preborn child or its mother as more significant and worthy of more severe punishment. And the law does not place any restriction on the number of months the woman was pregnant. Presumably it would apply from a very early stage in pregnancy, whenever it could be known that a miscarriage had occurred and her child or children had died as a result. Moreover, this law applies to a case of accidental killing of a preborn child. But if accidental killing of a preborn child is so serious in God’s eyes, then surely intentional killing of a preborn child must be an even worse crime. The conclusion from all of these verses is that the Bible teaches that we should think of the preborn child as a person from the moment of conception, and we should give to the preborn child legal protection at least equal to that of others in the society. Additional note: It is likely that many people reading this evidence from the Bible, perhaps for the first time, will already have had an abortion. Others reading this will have encouraged someone else to have an abortion. I cannot minimize or deny the moral wrong involved in this action, but I can point to the repeated offer of the Bible that God will give forgiveness of sins to those who repent of their sin and trust in Jesus Christ for forgiveness: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Although such sin, like all other sin, deserves God’s wrath, Jesus Christ took that wrath on himself as a substitute for all who would believe in him: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).

Prince Yosef glanced at the bright anomaly and also wondered if it would ever cease existing or if it were to be a permanent addition to the night sky. “But then, what is permanent? The stars that men gaze on, are they really there? The atmosphere of the earth, has it always been oxygen? Could it not have been another substance? The animals on the earth, were they always as they were or were there different types?” Yosef pondered. “How often have oceans risen and fallen? “The mysterious light that has been present since Miriam’s conception, does it descend from a star that is real or from a star that had perished eons ago? Do our words somehow remain, captured in the atmosphere, waiting to return to someone’s ears. The internal energy of man—his soul—when it perishes, as it must, will the man whom it embraced be forgotten? “Ideologies, how often do they change? Every generation? Every hundred years? Every thousand years? Mohse wrote the books of constant law! Ezra sealed them, making them unchangeable! But then the Greeks came. They invaded the world with different ideas. Different ways of discerning truth! Cyrus came before them with his Zoroastrianism, challenging the established Marduk! Can Yehuway’s truth reside alongside Greeks and Babylonian philosophers? No. For man is a thing inside Yehuway, and without Yehuway, what can be? Can Yehuway perish leaving us behind?” Yosef shook his head. “No! Yehuway’s essence cannot perish! Nothing exists without Yehuway! The Greeks’ intellect, how cunning is its invasion into the concrete reality of Mohse! Hellenistic thoughts have penetrated and conquered the P’rushim’ and Tz’dukim’ intellect. Immortality of the soul! No resurrection! No angels. Heaven’s reward and hell’s damnation according to one’s earthly deeds! All invasive Greek ideologies that are steadfastly adhering and corrupting the Mosaic truths. The Greeks’ intellect is an infectious intellect, founded on nothing but myth and fantasy. “It is man’s spirit that transcends itself to wait in a holding place in Yehuway’s memory. The Greeks declared a heaven and a hell. A tormenting residence and a rewarding residence. Such invasive thoughts are hideous to me. Paganism at its supreme level! The soul perishes. All thoughts become nonexistent! The body is consumed by the earth’s processes. A well versed man in the laws of Yehuway could not accept anything else! I will teach my son to be aware of false tautologies. “It is the personality of the individual that is remembered by Yehuway and it is that exact personality that is brought back to life. It will come back in a different body. In a different tone of voice. But the mannerisms will be the same. The intellect identical. “Yet, what man can return if the Mashi’ach fails in his mission to ransom man’s sins? What man may dwell alongside his past, risen ancestors if the Mashi’ach fails? What man can be if the Mashi’ach fails? What future can there be? Before Adam was created there was void! What is void? It is nothingness. It is total darkness! Total nonexistence. No thoughts. No light. No stars. No motions of the wind or of the seas.

The projection of Disbelief among humanity is biological, it is marked by the emergence of Socialists (nationalists and/or Patriots - the latter fancy themselves with the name: Capitalists) who -so in life as in burial- shrine themselves onto and into the Earth; with the Rich among them favoring the gemstones layers thereof. However, and contrary to this entombed mosaic of cadavers, is Belief dislodging to its carriers from Earth's beds - therefore, it is spiritual (i.e., cordial - meaning: 'of the heart') and not biological. The tombs of the Pantheists on the other hand are hallucinatory dreams of spatial transcending, yet bolted in their own domain of consciousness while being numb outside that constrained sphere of infection; it is after all their biological senses that charm them, not their active hearts (contrary to passive mode when it is not linked with the mind and, hence, acts as a mere radiator of a biological system).

oan Hilliard could feel the smile on her face as she stepped from her car. Not the best wheels, but they were hers, a token of four years spent working in a brokerage firm. Joan had always wanted to be a teacher, but she had finished college at the wrong time. To her great disappointment, she couldn’t land a teaching position. She had still wanted her own classroom but decided that any job was better than nothing. The brokerage firm paid well, and she felt better for the experience. She had learned about herself, how to work with other adults, and what life at work was all about. Above all, she felt more confident. She had learned to cope in a demanding and stressful adult environment. That experience ought to help in a classroom of kids. She was delighted to get a teaching assignment at Pico School. It looked like a friendly place from the outside. The surrounding neighborhood was in decline, but Pico boasted green lawns, welltrimmed shrubbery, and large, lattice-paned windows. Built in the 1950s, it had the architectural charm that Joan remembered from the schools of her childhood. As she walked through the arched entryway, she noticed the vaguely familiar smells of new wax and summer mustiness. As she turned down the corridor leading to the principal’s office, she ran into a tall, broad-shouldered man with hands on hips, scrutinizing the newly polished sheen on the floor. This had to be the custodian, admiring his work before hundreds of students’feet turned it into a mosaic of scuff marks. As she moved closer, he looked up and smiled as if he had

The mental Images were liquifying So I could no longer separate what I was recalling from the past from what I'd seen in detailed photos that afternoon. Like life. I've long suspected that many of my memories from childhood Are actually drawn from old pictures, That they are composed of snapshots, A mosaic of celluloids Images reworked into a remembered reality. Kodak cast backwards. Maybe it's better to recall The pass that way. We rarely take pictures of sad occasions.

The mental images were liquifying so I could no longer separate what I was recalling from the past from what I'd seen in detailed photos that afternoon. Like life. I've long suspected that many of my memories from childhood are actually drawn from old pictures, That they are composed of snapshots, A mosaic of celluloids Images reworked into a remembered reality. Kodak cast backwards. Maybe it's better to recall the past that way. We rarely take pictures of sad occasions.

A forest floor, the Woodland villagers knew, is a living thing. Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodential panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders’ hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another. It was here that you’d find the resourcefulness of rot, the wholeness of fungi. Disturbing these lives through digging was a violence—though sometimes a needed one,

I’ve always thought of mosaic as this big metaphor for my life,” she says. “All these jagged, incongruous pieces…” She holds up a small shard of milky jade-green glass. “These are like the things that happen to you. But if it’s laid out a certain way and if you take a step back from it, it makes sense.” Edie

The spatter of raindrops made me look down at the floor. It was mosaic, a huge mosaic, made up of trillions of tiled fragments. I had heard that only if you climbed up the dome to the very top, and peered in through the skylights at the summit, could you perceive the mosaic image in full and understand what it depicted. This felt, to me, like an adequate metaphor for my life.

Maybe, she thinks, this is simply what living is: an infinite list of transgressions that did not weigh against the joys but that simply overlaid them, the two lists mingling and merging, all the small moments that made up the mosaic of a person, a relationship, a life. What Bird will learn, then: That his mother is fallible. That she is only human, too.

Today’s journalism is more like a mosaic; an artistic technique using variously colored half-truths to form a decorative whole story.

I love the church. I like the waxed candles that remind me people think of people. I love the bouquet of flowers on the altar that a group of grandmas grow in their gardens and pridefully donate every week. I admire the wooden statues of craftsmanship, of a mother staring at you with the kind of pure, loving look I forgot to ask from mine. I like the skinny man nailed to the cross reminding me that people are capable of sacrificial love. I like to stare at the art on the stained-glass windows, of angels, of lambs, and of fruit. I love running my hands over mosaics and tracing the lips of saints. I love the hymns and joy of the choir, who sing regardless if you’re too scared. I love watching the collective sway of bodies subconsciously comforted by their environment after finally saying “Peace be with you.” And most of all, I love being surrounded by people trying. They wear Christ around their neck and squeeze a rosary for dear life, admitting their weaknesses and sins. Tell me, where do you find that? There is an honesty in the church, spilling from kneeling persons, that gives me the hope humans can take care of each other and our planet can be a good one. Where else can I be exposed to the practice of morality on such an emotional level? I love everything about the church—the shiny pews, the smoky incense, the Bible and its purpose – because when all is considered, it makes sense. It is a template of discipline and thoughtfulness. Why call religious people idiots when they’re the few paying attention to their own lives? And there are other ways to be moral of course, but not many ways to practice. I’ve learned that to believe in God doesn’t subtract any life from you. It is additional. It is the world and God. If someone wears a jacket over their shirt, they aren’t naked. They’re double-layered.

Horatius Bonar wrote the following concerning the little things of life: The avoidance of little evils, little sins, little inconsistencies, little weaknesses, little follies, little indiscretions and imprudences, little foibles, little indulgences of self and of the flesh, little acts of indolence or indecision or slovenliness or cowardice, little equivocations or aberrations from high integrity, little touches of shabbiness and meanness, . . . little indifferences to the feelings or wishes of others, little outbreaks of temper, or crossness, or selfishness, or vanity—the avoidance of such little things as these goes far to make up at least the negative beauty of a holy life.[4] That is a long list, but I encourage you to prayerfully read over it again to see which little things Bonar mentions may be a problem for you. Life is largely a mosaic of little events and little deeds.

A forest floor, the Woodland villagers knew, is a living thing. Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodential panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders’ hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another. It was here that you’d find the resourcefulness of rot, the wholeness of fungi. Disturbing these lives through digging was a violence—though sometimes a needed one, as demonstrated by the birds and white skunks who brashly kicked the humus away in necessary pursuit of a full belly. Still, the human residents of this place were judicious about what constituted actual necessity, and as such, disturbed the ground as little as possible.

Another survivor, Charlotte Delbo, describes her dual existence after Auschwitz: “[T]he ‘self’ who was in the camp isn’t me, isn’t the person who is here, opposite you. No, it’s too unbelievable. And everything that happened to this other ‘self,’ the one from Auschwitz, doesn’t touch me now, me, doesn’t concern me, so distinct are deep memory and common memory. . . . Without this split, I wouldn’t have been able to come back to life.”29 She comments that even words have a dual meaning: “Otherwise, someone [in the camps] who has been tormented by thirst for weeks would never again be able to say: ‘I’m thirsty. Let’s make a cup of tea.’ Thirst [after the war] has once more become a currently used term. On the other hand, if I dream of the thirst I felt in Birkenau [the extermination facilities in Auschwitz], I see myself as I was then, haggard, bereft of reason, tottering.”30 Langer hauntingly concludes, “Who can find a proper grave for such damaged mosaics of the mind, where they may rest in pieces? Life goes on, but in two temporal directions at once, the future unable to escape the grip of a memory laden with grief.”31

All the pieces in my life will get rearranged into something new like the tiles of a mosaic. I never thought that from those pieces I might be able to choose something different. Something that's mine. But I can - I will." -Emma

This person greeted the Cohen by raising his left hand, then spreading the fingers two and two away from the thumb so as to form the Hebrew letter shin, signifying the initial letter of one of the pre-Mosaic (that is, plural) names of God, which may never be spoken. “Basically wishing long life and prosperity,” explained the Cohen, answering with the same gesture.

I thought of fleeting satisfaction, of happiness, of romance, of perfect silver screen moments shared with a companion, and of perfect blue movie moments too. Yet I had never stopped to wonder whether that one companion might satisfy me completely, having assumed always that there would be another to follow who would touch a different chord in me, who would bring me a different pleasure, and that with all of them taken together I would create for myself a mosaic of experiences that gave me everything that I wanted to experience in the course of my life; everything that I wanted to feel, to enjoy.

In place of polytheistic idolatry, a new pattern of worship was ordained by God in the Mosaic Law. One of its key components was a purified form of sacrifice. Although recognizable as the same ritual practiced by other cultures, it was stripped of all their sinful distortions and regulated so that it might fulfill its natural purpose: drawing humanity into relationship with God. It was a perfected form of sacrifice.

That’s what I’ve taken from all this. The crash all those years ago shattered the life I had, but the pieces wound up making a pretty good mosaic. That’s what art is, I suppose: transforming things from what they were into what they could be. My life now, without question, is transformed. Maybe that makes it a work of art.

For the new covenant apostles, Jew-Gentile unity is pivotal to the early church. It is about more than human relational harmony. Instead, it acknowledges that God’s kingdom purposes are in Christ. He is the last man and the true Israel, the bearer of the Spirit. A Jewish person who clings to the tribal markings of the old covenant acts as though the eschaton has not arrived, as though one were still waiting for the promised seed. Both Jews and Gentiles must instead see their identities not in themselves or in the flesh but in Jesus Christ and in him alone. Jesus is the descendant of Abraham, the one who deserves the throne of David. He is the obedient Israel who inherits the blessings of the Mosaic covenant. He is the propitiation of God’s wrath. He is the firstborn from the dead, the resurrection and the life. Those who are in Christ – whether Jew or Gentile – receive with him all the eschatological blessings that are due to him. In him, they are all, whether Jew or Gentile, sons of God – not only in terms of relationship with the Father but also in terms of promised inheritance (Rom 8:12-17). In Christ, they all – whether Jew or Gentile – are sons of Abraham, the true circumcision, the holy nation, and the household and commonwealth of God (Gal 3:23-4:7; Eph 2-3; Col 2:6-15; 3:3-11; 1 Pet 2:9-10).…

Life Is a Mosaic I am picking up the pieces of my life and doing what is necessary to build a beautiful mosaic.

know what it is like to walk around this earth raw. Raw and exposed, feeling as if I didn’t have any skin – each and every nerve ending grieving – to my very core. I’m here to tell you, with time, the rawness fades. You will grow a new skin, a different skin. It will be a reflection of your experiences in life and grief, just like a mosaic, there is beauty in our brokenness.

Writing unearths the fragmentary remains of the years lived, to recover those out of a sense of pressing need for to build the loosely knit is not to fall apart in pieces but to form a mosaic that holds them all..

Life is a mosaic of moments—each piece, whether bright or dark, forms the intricate and beautiful tapestry that is uniquely yours. Cherish the dark hues as much as the vibrant ones, for they give depth and meaning to your journey.

In a hidden paradise where bountiful leaves danced with the emerald waves, a young woman epitomized the very spirit of femininity, radiating a serenity that mirrored the enchanting landscape surrounding her. This secluded island, a precious jewel far removed from the turmoil of the outside world, a realm where nature thrived in its most exquisite form. Each day, she wandered through the vibrant, verdant jungle, her heart alive with the symphony of chirping birds and the gentle rustle of leaves stirred by the soft caress of the breeze. The air was rich with the heady fragrance of blooming blossoms, and golden sunlight streamed through the lush canopy, casting a delicate mosaic of light and shadow upon the jungle floor. In this ethereal haven, she felt an intimate connection to the Earth, as if the very essence of nature cradled her in a loving embrace. The ocean, a breathtaking canvas of swirling blues and greens, held its own kind of magic. Majestic whales glided gracefully beneath the surface, their haunting songs weaving tales of the ocean's deepest secrets. Wise turtles ambled across the sunkissed sands, while playful dolphins frolicked in the waves, their joyous leaps celebrating the boundless freedom of life in harmony with nature. As the sun descended beyond the horizon, splashing the sky with vibrant shades of blazing red, gleaming gold, delicate pink and lavender, she often found herself standing at the water's edge, captivated by the breathtaking beauty that surrounded her. The gentle lullaby of the ocean, entwined with the whispers of the jungle, created a symphony of serenity that enveloped her, allowing her thoughts to drift like clouds in the vast sky above. In this tranquil paradise, time seemed to stand still, each moment stretching into eternity like a cherished memory. The island's mysteries slowly unfolded, revealing hidden waterfalls that sparkled like diamonds, secret groves filled with the sweet scent of jasmine and plumeria, and breathtaking vistas that stole her breath away. It was a realm of endless wonder, where every corner held a new discovery, each more enchanting than the last. Here, in the heart of the Pacific she uncovered her true self ~ a reflectiocn of the beauty that surrounded her. In this harmonious environment, she felt eternally at peace, wrapped in the loving arms of nature and the island's enchanting magic. Each day became a celebration of romance and life, a poignant reminder that the greatest treasures lie not in material possessions but in the simple joys of existence, the deep connections forged with the world around her, and the profound serenity of being truly alive, where love blooms in every heartbeat and every breath...

My little mosaic of a life. Broken here, shattered there, but put back together by the most wonderful glue, making the prettiest art around me.

NARAHDARN   The first man and woman lived happily over the pursuing months and with child their spirits rose, and they felt happy; but not always content.     Baiame, who was the Great Father Spirit, sensed that something was the matter one day when looking down upon his creations. He saw the woman looking up into the mosaic of a yarran tree which was a sacred tree.     The man come up and stood beside his wife with child. Baiame saw this as a moment to press upon them a matter of great urgency, for he was the creator and therefore provided the rules for life and death.     Baiame said to the man: “This tree is a sacred tree and upon it is something that has caught your eye.”     “What is it?” asked the man.     “It is called honey and is made from bees: all things have names. You will now be known as Ber-rook-boorn, the one who carries the essence of man.”     “Can we eat it?” he asked.     “No, it is forbidden,” said Baiame.     “Then why did you make it?”     “I did not,” answered Baiame. “The bees make it from the pollen of flowers. The honey is for them. And I should also warn you,” continued Baiame, having noticed the stare of the woman upon the honey as it dripped from within the hive, “that I have

It became apparent to enthusiasts of locomotive travel that there was at least one unscheduled train on the tracks of Palimpsest. It did not stop at any of the stations, for one thing. Astrologers and geologists were consulted; they are much the same folk in this part of the world. The astrologer gazes upward and scries out shapes in the sky, and to do this he builds great towers so as to be closest to the element of his choice. The geologist is an astrologer who once, just once, happened to look down. From such great heights she glimpses the enormous shapes stamped on the earth, the long polygons made by the borders of farms and rivers and mill towns, littoral masses and city walls, a reflection of the celestial mosaic. In these loamy constellations Palimpsest is but a decorative flourish; they are so vast and complex that in her lifetime the geologist may chart but the tiniest part of the conterration which contains her tower. It is a long and lonely life to which few are called.

Kaleidoscope Yoga: The universal heart and the individual self. We, as humanity, make up together a mosaic of beautiful colors and shapes that can harmoniously play together in endless combinations. We are an ever-changing play of shape and form. A kaleidoscope consists of a tube (or container), mirrors, pieces of glass (or beads or precious stones), sunlight, and someone to turn it and observe and enjoy the forms. Metaphorically, perhaps the sun represents the divine light, or spark of life, within all of us. The mirrors represent our ability to serve as mirrors for one another and each other’s alignment, reflecting sides of ourselves that we may not have been aware of. The tube (or container) is the practice of community yoga. We, as human beings, are the glass, the beads, the precious stones. The facilitator is the person turning the Kaleidoscope, initiating the changing patterns. And the resulting beauty of the shapes? Well, that’s for everyone to enjoy... Coming into a practice and an energy field of community yoga over and over, is a practice of returning, again and again, to the present moment, to the person in front of you, to the people around you, to your body, to others’ bodies, to your energy, to others’ energy, to your breath, to others’ breath. [...] community yoga practice can help us, in a very real, practical, grounded, felt, somatic way, to identify and be in harmony with all that is around us, which includes all of our fellow human beings.
 We are all multiple selves. We are all infinite. We are all universal selves. We are all unique expressions of the universal heart and universal energy. We are all the universal self. We are all one another. And we are all also unique specific individuals. And to the extent that we practice this, somatically, we become more and more comfortable and fluid with this larger, more cosmic, more inter-related reality. We see and feel and breathe ourselves, more and more, as the open movement of energy, as open somatic possibility. As energy and breath. This is one of the many benefits of a community yoga practice. Kaleidoscope shows us, in a very practical way, how to allow universal patterns of wisdom and interconnectedness to filter through us. [...] One of the most interesting paradoxes I have encountered during my involvement with the community yoga project (and it is one that I have felt again and again, too many times to count) is the paradox that many of the most infinite, universal forms have come to me in a place of absolute solitude, silence, deep aloneness or meditation. And, similarly, conversely and complimentarily, (best not to get stuck on the words) I have often found myself in the midst of a huge crowd or group of people of seamlessly flowing forms, and felt simultaneously, in addition to the group energy, the group shape, and the group awareness, myself as a very cleanly and clearly defined, very particular, individual self. These moments and discoveries and journeys of group awareness, in addition to the sense of cosmic expansion, have also clarified more strongly my sense of a very specific, rooted, personal self. The more deeply I dive into the universal heart, the more clearly I see my own place in it. And the more deeply I tune in and connect with my own true personal self, the more open and available I am to a larger, more universal self. We are both, universal heart and universal self. Individual heart and individual self. We are, or have the capacity for, or however you choose to put it, simultaneous layers of awareness. Learning to feel and navigate and mediate between these different kinds and layers of awareness is one of the great joys of Kaleidoscope Community Yoga, and of life in general. Come join us, and see what that feels like, in your body, again and again. From the Preface of Kaleidoscope Community Yoga: The Art of Connecting: The First 108 Poses

I ache sometimes. I ache with the need for human connection. Contact. Physical contact, mental contact. The desire to touch and be touched, but also to touch someone in a less adjacent way. To touch someone’s life. To be a part of it. To be pulled in and accepted and a part of something. A tile in a mosaic that everyone agrees is stunning to behold. But then I find myself becoming part of such an ecosystem — an integral thread in a tightly-woven tapestry — and cringe with the responsibility. Their woes are my woes. Their tension is my tension. As soon as I have the thing I want so much from afar, I shrink away from the whole ordeal; happy to have been a part of something, but even happier to go and be my own entity again. A table for one. A queen-sized bed pulling half duty.

Self-identity depends upon our manner of apprehending the world. Life for me is primarily about distilling patterns, attempting to sift between the ordinary and extraordinary events of daily of life in order to weave a mosaic that defines and clarifies the reasons behind why and how I live.

Rainer Maria Rilke said, ‘The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.’ I will witness many crimes and commit my share of sins. I shall nonetheless rally from heart rendering defeat and continue struggling to make my mind a cool reflection table that is capable of mirroring without distress all the conflict and greed that living entails. I will rebound from glorious defeat of cherished ideas by continuing to exhibit profound reverence for every facet of living in a world filled with both kind and beastly people. I can never cease learning and working to control my devious monkey mind. While I prefer that other people respect me, I will encounter many people whom dislike or ignore me. I cannot live an enlightened existence attempting to win other people’s affection. I desire success, but I must embrace failure and heartache as the preeminent means to encounter suffering that is essential to foster intellectual and spiritual growth. I aspire to make a mosaic of the mind out of personal failures and script a future byline that is admirable because it reflects living in a principled and disciplined manner.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), the novelist Milan Kundera wrote: ‘Without realising it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.’ And maybe that is what internet memes accomplish. They take the confusing pieces of the world and order them into a mosaic (or news feed) that makes sense to us. And instead of curing us of our myth-making, the internet has made this practice even easier, no matter what pain it might cause to others.

If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. This is a direct reference to Deuteronomy 13:9; 17:7 (cf. Lv. 24:14)–the witnesses of the crime must be the first to throw the stones, and they must not be participants in the crime itself. Jesus’ saying does not mean that the authorities must be paragons of sinless perfection before the death sentence can properly be meted out, nor does it mean that one must be free even from lust before one can legitimately condemn adultery (even though lust and adultery belong to the same genus, Mt. 5:28). It means, rather, that they must not be guilty of this particular sin. As in many societies around the world, so here: when it comes to sexual sins, the woman was much more likely to be in legal and social jeopardy than her paramour. The man could lead a ‘respectable’ life while masking the same sexual sins with a knowing wink. Jesus’ simple condition, without calling into question the Mosaic code, cuts through the double standard and drives hard to reach the conscience.

The man inhabited his solitude fully, and everything else was extraneous:he and his ship and his sea. In that second, if Ayaana had craved anything in her life, it was this:to be of this replete mosaic as an element component.

The old Day of Atonement, once held every year in accordance with the Mosaic covenant, has been superseded, because we have the ultimate sacrifice for sin: Jesus himself, who shed his blood on our behalf, a perfect moral sacrifice. He offers up his life, takes our death, and bears our sin away in a fashion that no animal ever could. The law pointed forward to that sole means of God reconciling rebels to himself and brings together in Jesus the poles of Exodus 34: God abounds “in love and faithfulness” (34:6), and he forgives “wickedness, rebellion and sin” (34:7), not because he leaves the guilty unpunished but because another bears their punishment. Here is the God who legislates, and even in his legislation he points us to Jesus.

Now and then we know a moment of supreme bliss, when we ask nothing, give nothing, know nothing but bliss. Then it passes, and we again see the panorama of the universe moving before us; and we know that it is but a mosaic work set upon God, who is the background of all things. Vedanta teaches that nirvana can be attained here and now, that we do not have to wait for death to reach it. Nirvana is the realization of the Self, and after having once known that, if only for an instant, never again can one be deluded by the mirage of personality. Having eyes, we must see the apparent, but all the time we know what it is; we have found out its true nature. It is the screen that hides the Self, which is unchanging. The screen opens and we find the Self behind it. All change is the screen. In the saint the screen is thin, and the reality can almost shine through. In the sinner the screen is thick, and we are able to lose sight of the truth that the atman [Self] is there, as well as behind the saint’s screen. When the screen is wholly removed, we find it never existed—that we were the atman and nothing else, even the screen is forgotten. The two phases of this distinction in life are: First, that the man, who knows the real Self, will not be affected by anything; secondly, that that man alone can do good to the world. That man alone will have seen the real motive of doing good to others, because there is only one. It cannot be called egoistic, because that would be differentiation. It is only selflessness. It is the perception of the universal, not of the individual. Every case of love and sympathy is an assertion of this universal. “Not I, but thou.” Help another, because you are in him and he is in you, is the philosophical way of putting it. The real Vedantist alone will give up his life for a fellow being without any compunction, because he knows he will not die. As long as there is one insect left in the world, he is living; as long as one mouth eats, he eats. So he goes on doing good to others, and is never hindered by the modern ideas of caring for the body. When a man reaches this point of abnegation, he goes beyond the moral struggle, beyond everything. He sees in the most learned priest, in the cow, in the dog, in the most miserable places, neither the learned man, nor the cow, nor the dog, nor the miserable place, but the same divinity manifesting itself in them all. He alone is the happy man; and the man who has acquired that sameness has, even in this life, conquered all existence. God is pure; therefore such a man is said to be living in God.

John Vernall lifted up his head, the milk locks that had given him his nickname stirring in the third floor winds, and stared with pale grey eyes out over Lambeth, over London. Snowy's dad had once explained to him and his young sister Thursa how by altering one's altitude, one's level on the upright axis of this seemingly three-planed existence, it was possible to catch a glimpse of the elusive fourth plane, the fourth axis, which was time. Or was at any rate, at least in Snowy's understanding of their father's Bedlam lectures, what most people saw as time from the perspective of a world impermanent and fragile, vanished into nothingness and made anew from nothing with each passing instant, all its substance disappeared into a past that was invisible from their new angle and which thus appeared no longer to be there. For the majority of people, Snowy realised, the previous hour was gone forever and the next did not exist yet. They-were trapped in their thin, moving pane of Now: a filmy membrane that might fatally disintegrate at any moment, stretched between two dreadful absences. This view of life and being as frail, flimsy things that were soon ended did not match in any way with Snowy Vernall's own, especially not from a glorious vantage like his current one, mucky nativity below and only reefs of hurtling cloud above. His increased elevation had proportionately shrunken and reduced the landscape, squashing down the buildings so that if he were by some means to rise higher still, he knew that all the houses, churches and hotels would be eventually compressed in only two dimensions, flattened to a street map or a plan, a smouldering mosaic where the roads and lanes were cobbled silver lines binding factory-black ceramic chips in a Miltonic tableau. From the roof-ridge where he perched, soles angled inwards gripping the damp tiles, the rolling Thames was motionless, a seam of iron amongst the city's dusty strata. He could see from here a river, not just shifting liquid in a stupefying volume. He could see the watercourse's history bound in its form, its snaking path of least resistance through a valley made by the collapse of a great chalk fault somewhere to the south behind him, white scarps crashing in white billows a few hundred feet uphill and a few million years ago. The bulge of Waterloo, off to his north, was simply where the slide of rock and mud had stopped and hardened, mammoth-trodden to a pasture where a thousand chimneys had eventually blossomed, tarry-throated tubeworms gathering around the warm miasma of the railway station. Snowy saw the thumbprint of a giant mathematic power, untold generations caught up in the magnet-pattern of its loops and whorls. On the loose-shoelace stream's far side was banked the scorched metropolis, its edifices rising floor by floor into a different kind of time, the more enduring continuity of architecture, markedly distinct from the clock-governed scurry of humanity occurring on the ground. In London's variously styled and weathered spires or bridges there were interrupted conversations with the dead, with Trinovantes, Romans, Saxons, Normans, their forgotten and obscure agendas told in stone. In celebrated landmarks Snowy heard the lonely, self-infatuated monologues of kings and queens, fraught with anxieties concerning their significance, lives squandered in pursuit of legacy, an optical illusion of the temporary world which they inhabited. The avenues and monuments he overlooked were barricades' against oblivion, ornate breastwork flung up to defer a future in which both the glorious structures and the memories of those who'd founded them did not exist.

Fesko also misreads the contrast that Calvin subsequently draws in the Institutes between the “law” and “gospel.” Fesko interprets Calvin’s contrast to teach a real contrast between the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace (at least at some level) and the gospel of Jesus Christ. According to Fesko, the contrast is that between the Mosaic covenant, which communicates a “works principle” for obtaining life, and the gospel, which communicates a promise of life by grace through faith in Christ alone. However, the passage that Fesko adduces for his understanding of this contrast shows that Calvin identifies the contrast as that between a “legalistic” misappropriation of the law of Moses, abstracted from its setting within the broader administration of the Mosaic covenant and used as a means of justification before God, and the gospel. In the passage to which Fesko appeals, Calvin is explaining the contrast in Hebrews between the law and the gospel, and the reason the author appeals to the promise of Jeremiah 31:31–34. In his explanation, Calvin maintains that the contrast is between the law in the narrowest sense, namely, in terms of what it demands, promises, and threatens, and the gospel. However, this contrast is not between the Mosaic administration of the covenant of grace and the gospel, since the Mosaic administration also reveals God’s promises of mercy and gracious correction of human depravity. For the apostle [author of Hebrews] speaks more opprobriously of the law than the prophet does—not simply in respect to the law itself, but, because of certain wretches who aped the law and, by their perverse zeal for ceremonies, obscured the clarity of the gospel. Their error and stupid predilection prompt Paul to discuss the nature of the law. It behooves us therefore to note that particular point in Paul. But both Jeremiah and Paul, because they are contrasting the Old and New Testaments, consider nothing in the law except what properly belongs to it. For example: the law contains here and there promises of mercy, but because they have been borrowed from elsewhere, they are not counted part of the law, when only the nature of the law is under discussion. They ascribe to it only this function: to enjoin what is right, to forbid what is wicked; to promise a reward to the keepers of righteousness, and threaten transgressors with punishment; but at the same time not to change or correct the depravity of heart that by nature inheres in all men.15 For Calvin, the law as such was never intended to play an independent role within the broader administration of the Mosaic covenant, which was an evangelical covenant that communicated the gospel of God’s gracious promise of salvation through Christ. The contrast between the “law” and the “gospel,” therefore, is not between the Mosaic administration and the gospel. In Calvin’s view, when the apostle Paul and other NT writers oppose the “law” and the “gospel,” they are speaking of the law in the narrowest sense, wrested from its evangelical setting and misappropriated by those who falsely boast of their justification before God through obedience to the law’s demands. Though the law is holy and good, it can only demand perfect obedience and remind its recipients of the consequences of any failure to do what it requires. When the law is viewed in isolation from its evangelical setting, it can only condemn fallen sinners who are incapable of doing what it requires. Contrary to Fesko’s reading of Calvin, there is no basis for interpreting Calvin to teach that the Mosaic administration included at some level a kind of “legal” covenant that republished the prelapsarian covenant of works.

As you pass from outer to inner narthex [in Istanbul’s Church of St. Savior], the doorway is crowned with a magnificent mosaic of Christ Pantokrator…. As in all such Eastern icons, frescoes, or mosaics of Christ, his right hand is raised in an authoritative teaching gesture, with his fingers separated into a twosome and a threesome to command Christian faith in the two natures of Christ and the three persons of the Trinity. As usual, he holds a book in his left hand. But he is not reading the book—it is not even open, but securely closed and tightly clasped. Christ does not read the Bible, the New Testament, or the Gospel. He is the norm of the Bible, the criterion of the New Testament, the incarnation of the Gospel. That is how we Christians decide between a violent and nonviolent God in the Bible, New Testament, or Gospel. The person, not the book, and the life, not the text, are decisive and constitutive for us.*

So where does the secure attachment come from? As more studies become available, there is increasing evidence that a secure attachment style doesn't originate from a single source. The equation of a caring and sensitive parent producing a secure-for-life child is too one-dimensional; instead it seems that an entire mosaic of factors comes together to create this attachment pattern: our early connection with our parents, our genes, and also something else- our romantic experiences as adults. On average, about 70 to 75 percent of adults remain consistently in the same attachment category at different points in their lives, while the remaining 25 to 30 percent of the population report a change in their attachment style. Researchers attribute this change to romantic relationships in adulthood that are so powerful that they actually revise our most basic beliefs and attitudes toward connectedness. And yes, that change can happen in both directions- secure people can become less secure and people who were originally insecure can become increasingly secure. If you are insecure, this piece of information is vital and could be your ticket to happiness in relationships. If you are secure, you should be aware of this finding because you have a lot to lose by becoming less secure. p140

In the life story of Fong See, the events surrounding his first wedding, his transition from boy to man, his voyage to the Gold Mountain, the search for his father, his birth, even his name, will always dwell in a nebulous world of fact mixed with mystery, fantasy, and apocrypha. This is purely American, for in what other country can a man—any man (or woman, for that matter)—reinvent himself over and over again? Fong See and his descendants created his history from a mosaic composed of perceptions, feelings, sometimes wishful thinking, and undeniable fact.

Third, whereas the Mosaic covenant was temporary (vv. 10–11; see Gal 3:23–25), the new covenant endures forever (v. 11). A key verb in this passage and the following verses is katargeō (vv. 7, 11, 13, 14—all in the passive voice). Although many translations, including the NAB, render katargeō as “fade” in verses 7, 11, and 13, this meaning does not correspond to Paul’s usage elsewhere. Rather, he uses this verb to explain that the old covenant ministry “has been set aside” or “rendered inoperative.”[14] Because God has now acted once for all through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and through the sending of the Spirit, the new covenant ministry is marked by permanence.

It is important to note that Paul here does not speak of doing or keeping the law, but rather fulfilling it. Paul’s point here is that by serving others through love, believers are able to live out the kind of life devoted to God that the Mosaic law commanded but could never produce in a person’s life … What the Mosaic law aimed for but could never produce, believers are able to experience because Jesus Christ fulfilled the law on our behalf and now lives in us by his Spirit to empower us to love others with the love he has first shown to us. We must use our freedom to love and serve others because Jesus Christ used His freedom to love and serve us. We fulfill for others what He has already accomplished for us.

It is important to note that Paul here does not speak of doing or keeping the law, but rather fulfilling it. Paul’s point here is that by serving others through love, believers are able to live out the kind of life devoted to God that the Mosaic law commanded but could never produce in a person’s life … What the Mosaic law aimed for but could never produce, believers are able to experience because Jesus Christ fulfilled the law on our behalf and now lives in us by his Spirit to empower us to love others with the love he has first shown to us. We must use our freedom to love and serve others because Jesus Christ used His freedom to love and serve us. We fulfill for others what He has already accomplished for us.

Then red, orange, white, pink. If the cool, moody tones of morning represent promise and potential, then these are that of hope, of a dream being realized. The colors, it occurs to me, of the tiny mosaic on the side table in my rented bedroom.

A forest floor, the Woodland villagers knew, is a living thing. Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodential panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders' hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another. It was here that you'd find the resourcefulness of rot, the wholeness of fungi.

With the arrival of TV and its iconic mosaic image, the everyday life situations began to seem very square, indeed. Al Capp suddenly found that his kind of distortion no longer worked. He felt that Americans had lost their power to laugh at themselves. He was wrong. TV simply involved everybody in everybody more deeply than before. This cool medium, with its mandate of participation in depth, required Capp to refocus the Li’l Abner image. His confusion and dismay were a perfect match for the feelings of those in every major American enterprise. From Life to General Motors, and from the classroom to the Executive Suite, a refocusing of aims and images to permit ever more audience involvement and participation has been inevitable. Capp said: “But now America has changed. The humorist feels the change more, perhaps, than anyone. Now there are things about America we can’t kid.

Between a father and son lies a mosaic of triumphs and misunderstandings, each fragment a piece of stained glass shaped by love, loss, and longing. It is through the cracks that light pours in, revealing the quiet truth of our bond—that even when words falter and restlessness stirs within the soul, the architecture of our struggles builds a cathedral of strength. Forgiveness and redemption are not the erasure of pain but the transformation of it into wisdom, and in the silence of unspoken words, we find the unbreakable trust of a shared, imperfect humanity.

In the depths of contemplation, we encounter the curiosities of reality: the way a breeze can carry whispers of ancient stories, the rustling leaves speaking a language only the soul can comprehend. Each droplet of rain becomes a prism through which we glimpse reflections of ourselves, fragmented yet whole. We reclaim forgotten pieces of our identity in the most unexpected places-a fleeting smile from a stranger, the scent of pine on a winter’s night, the laughter of children echoing in the distance. These ephemeral moments remind us that the present is a mosaic, intricately crafted from the past yet ever vibrant with potential.

During college, my friends and I used to hit up Dreams Nightclub because ladies got in free before 11 p.m. and they had “free” transportation from campus—which just turned out to be off-duty school buses. Sexy! Then the club got stale… so we cooled on it. One day, a friend of mine showed up with a new flyer advertising Club 21. It had good drink specials, fresh vibes, so we were like, “Okay, let’s give Club 21 a try.” We walked in, looked around, and realized it’s just fucking Dreams again! They painted the outside, moved the bar to the other side of the room, and changed the sign out front. By junior year, we were getting hip to the scam. A few times, my friends came with new flyers and I pointed out that the address was always the same. “It’s just Dreams, you guys.” Then, one day, everyone was talking about the Mosaic Lounge: it was cool; it was new; it was the place to be on a Friday night. I told my friends, “No, it’s Dreams. I’m not gonna get got again.” But then they showed me the address on the flyer, and sure enough, it was different. So I was like, “Fuck it, let’s go.” We showed up to the building, which was suspiciously close to Dreams, and once we walked in, I immediately realized it was just the back entrance into Dreams. They fucking got us.

It’s not until I throw my vehicle in park that I look out over the picturesque valley where Griffin told me the words I’ve spent my entire life desperate to hear. And I sob, slapping a hand over my mouth in shock. Because the entire thing is full of wildflowers. A mosaic of bright spring colors. White. Pink. Red. Orange. Blue. Yellow. Every single kind of flower he sent me in his notes.

While we haunt ourselves, we become part of others. With all our broken pieces, we are gathered in mosaics— reflecting every careless smile, echoing every careless word. We become them eventually, in the way we live and survive each night. Ghosts, bohemian wallpapers, and shiny crystal whiskey glasses, used by them—hauntingly beautiful, collected, and far behind. And after all this, nothing of ourselves remains.

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This whole time I thought I was broken. I'd wasted so much life trying to pick up the shrapnel, slicing my fingers in the process, trying to mosaic myself into the shape of a human, & now suddenly, with a word, I was whole.

Figures that it would take someone like him to breathe me back to life. He’s so… different. Unique, like a mosaic. Complex little pieces glued together to make a purely stunning creation.

May you pause long enough to feel the sun on your skin, the breeze in your hair, and the quiet joy tucked into ordinary moments. Life is a mosaic in each breath, each smile, each chance to begin again.

She sat in the cab finishing her own plate, knowing one thing for certain about her future. She was born for this life.