Perennial Love Quotes

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love – for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you from misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Love is not selective, desire is selective. In love there are no strangers. When the centre of selfishness is no longer, all desires for pleasure and fear of pain cease; one is no longer interested in being happy; beyond happiness there is pure intensity, inexhaustible energy, the ecstasy of giving from a perennial source.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a "Diver" - Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest, Her heart is fit for home- I- a Sparrow- build there Sweet of twigs and twine My perennial nest.

Some of us wage wars. Others write books. The most delusional ones write books. We have very little choice other than to spend our waking hours trying to sort out and make sense of the perennial pandemonium. To forge patterns and proportions where they don’t actually exist. And it is this same urge, this mania to tame and possess—this necessary folly—that sparks and sustains love.

Wearing an antique bridal gown, the beautiful queen of the vampires sits all alone in her dark, high house under the eyes of the portraits of her demented and atrocious ancestors, each one of whom, through her, projects a baleful posthumous existence; she counts out the Tarot cards, ceaselessly construing a constellation of possibilities as if the random fall of the cards on the red plush tablecloth before her could precipitate her from her chill, shuttered room into a country of perpetual summer and obliterate the perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden.

On one hand the eternal attraction of man towards femininity (cf. Gn. 2:23) frees in him-or perhaps it should free-a gamut of spiritual-corporal desires of an especially personal and "sharing" nature (cf. analysis of the "beginning"), to which a proportionate pyramid of values corresponds. On the other hand, "lust" limits this gamut, obscuring the pyramid of values that marks the perennial attraction of male and female.

Maybe some loves are perennials--they survive the winter and bloom again. Maybe others are annuals--beautiful and lush and full for a season and then back to the earth to die and create rich soil for new life to grow. Maybe there is no way for love to fail, because the eventual result of all love is New Life. Death and resurrection--maybe that's just the way of life and love. I decide that regardless of whether my marriage reveals itself to be an annual or a perennial love, there will be new lushness and beauty and life that comes of it.

Fame is the responsibility, the perennial discipline, the concubine who solicits and imbibes, bit by bit, the love, the relations, the serenity, and the soul, leaving behind the subaqueous plaudits that pinch to the core..

You think God created us to be born only to grow and then die? Not even the tiniest perennial grows only to die. It comes back again and again when the season and the time is right. Even annual flowers grow seeds as they grow so that they can drop the seeds of themselves and live again year after year, life after life.

Among the many subjects which interested me, I dwelt especially upon antiquity, for our own age has always repelled me, so that, had it not been for the love of those dear to me, I should have preferred to place myself in spirit in other ages, and consequently I delighted in history.

Love made us partners in narcissism, and we talked ceaselessly about how close we were, how perfect our connection was, like we were the first people in history to ever get it exactly right. We were that couple for a while, nauseatingly impervious assholes, busy staring into each other’s eyes while everyone else was trying to have a good time. When I think about how stupid we were, how obstinately clueless about the realities that awaited us, I just want to go back to that skinny, cocksure kid with his bloated heart and perennial erection, and kick his teeth in.

-Desiderata- Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

When others call into question our grief, defy our perennial relationship with those we love who have died, treat us as anathema and avoid us, and push us toward healing before we are ready, they simply redouble our burden.

There is no season and no reason for love. Love is not seasonal its perennial.

Only those who love you most can hear you when you're quiet.

Love is a sensual battle,once you get wounded, the scar is perennial. "True love is hard to find, harder to leave and impossible to Forget

We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but his image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship. Pascal

A perennial guest star is like being a foster kid who's passed around some really great foster homes. I would love for one of them to keep me, but it's a hell of a lot better than being abandoned.

The most sensual people are simply those that are forged in the furnace of an unkind world, as they endeavor to rewrite the narrative of suffering and replace it with a symphony of divine love and perennial ecstasy.

This is how worship is connected to our ability to love. When we give our ultimate allegiance to any of the principalities and powers, large or small, we find ourselves perennially at war with anyone who places these things at risk. Idolatry breeds perpetual vigilance and violence.

I was told if I fell in love with a poet I would become immortal, so I decided to become the poet and make all those who touched my soul, eternal. I write friends and lovers into my stories, weaving them into fragments of sonnets and prose, the nectar of my poetry. My muses, perennial… Evergreen.

His eyes were deeply entrancing, in a dangerous, luscious way and he had them on her as if he coveted her more than anything or anyone else in this world. She sensed his gaze falling upon her time and time again. Her heart pounded more than it should and her cheeks picked-up a seemingly perennial red tint. She wondered whether he thought of her as a mere other pray to feed on its heart or there was something special to that look he shackled her with.

Stories change. Just like people change. We change when we suffer, when we take, when we give, when we love. When you lose the object of your love, your normal will be perennially changed; there’s no returning to the old anymore. You have to rebuild stronger walls, change your expectations, and wait for the sunlight.

Vanilla lily Meaning: Ambassador of love Sowerbaea juncea | Eastern Australia Perennial with edible roots found in eucalyptus forests, woodlands, heaths, and sub-alpine meadows. Grass-like leaves have a strong scent of vanilla. Flowers are pink-lilac to white, papery, with sweet vanilla perfume. Resprouts after fire.

But here's what the perennially partnered don't understand: That love is always there, it just expresses itself in a completely different way.

Friendship Is just Like A Perennial River Which Flows Forever It May Change Its Path But it Will Never Dry Up Be proud to be my friend

River Lily Meaning: Love concealed Crinum pedunculatum | Eastern Australia Very large perennial usually found on the edge of forests, but also at the high-tide level close to mangroves. Fragrant, white slender star-shaped flowers. Seeds sometimes germinate while still attached to the parent plant. The sap has been used as a treatment for box jellyfish stings.

Once, when I was grumbling over being obliged to eat meat and do no penance, I heard it said that sometimes there was more of self-love than desire of penance in such sorrow. St. Teresa

Not a dandelion in sight here, the lawns are picked clean. I long for one, just one, rubbishy and insolently random and hard to get rid of and perennially yellow as the sun. Cheerful and plebeian, shining for all alike. Rings, we would make from them, and crowns and necklaces, stains from the bitter milk on our fingers. Or I'd hold one under her chin: Do you like butter? Smelling them, she'd get pollen on her nose. Or was that buttercups? Or gone to seed: I can see her, running across the lawn, that lawn there just in front of me, at two, three years old, waving one like a sparkler, a small wand of white fire, the air filling with tiny parachutes. Blow, and you tell the time. All that time, blowing away in the summer breeze. It was daisies for love though, and we did that too. ***

Because this painting has never been restored there is a heightened poignance to it somehow; it doesn’t have the feeling of unassailable permanence that paintings in museums do. There is a small crack in the lower left, and a little of the priming between the wooden panel and the oil emulsions of paint has been bared. A bit of abrasion shows, at the rim of a bowl of berries, evidence of time’s power even over this—which, paradoxically, only seems to increase its poetry, its deep resonance. If you could see the notes of a cello, when the bow draws slowly and deeply across its strings, and those resonant reverberations which of all instruments’ are nearest to the sound of the human voice emerge—no, the wrong verb, they seem to come into being all at once, to surround us, suddenly, with presence—if that were made visible, that would be the poetry of Osias Beert. But the still life resides in absolute silence. Portraits often seem pregnant with speech, or as if their subjects have just finished saying something, or will soon speak the thoughts that inform their faces, the thoughts we’re invited to read. Landscapes are full of presences, visible or unseen; soon nymphs or a stag or a band of hikers will make themselves heard. But no word will ever be spoken here, among the flowers and snails, the solid and dependable apples, this heap of rumpled books, this pewter plate on which a few opened oysters lie, giving up their silver. These are resolutely still, immutable, poised for a forward movement that will never occur. The brink upon which still life rests is the brink of time, the edge of something about to happen. Everything that we know crosses this lip, over and over, like water over the edge of a fall, as what might happen does, as any of the endless variations of what might come true does so, and things fall into being, tumble through the progression of existing in time. Painting creates silence. You could examine the objects themselves, the actors in a Dutch still life—this knobbed beaker, this pewter salver, this knife—and, lovely as all antique utilitarian objects are, they are not, would not be, poised on the edge these same things inhabit when they are represented. These things exist—if indeed they are still around at all—in time. It is the act of painting them that makes them perennially poised, an emergent truth about to be articulated, a word waiting to be spoken. Single word that has been forming all these years in the light on the knife’s pearl handle, in the drops of moisture on nearly translucent grapes: At the end of time, will that word be said?

Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a “Diver” – Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest. Her heart is fit for home – I – a Sparrow- build there Sweet of twigs and twine My perennial nest

The Risen Lord is indeed risen. Present, intimate, creative, 'closer than your own heartbeat,' accessed through your vulnerability, your capacity for intimacy. The imaginal realm is real, and through it you will never be separated from any one or anything you have ever loved, for love is the ground in which you live and move and have your being. This is the message that Mary Magdalene has perennially to bring. This is the message we most need to hear.

Looking back now on the period when I wrote the books, I feel like it was a good time in my life, because I had work I needed to do, and I did it. I was perennially broke, and lonely, and anxious about money, but I also had this other thing, this part of my life which was secret and protected, and my thoughts returned to it all the time, and my feelings orbited around it, and it belonged to me completely. In a way it was like a love affair, or an infatuation, except that it only involved myself and it was all within my own control. (The opposite of a love affair, then.) For all the frustration and difficulty of writing a novel, I knew from the beginning of the process that I had been given something very important, a special gift, a blessing. It was like God had put his hand on my head and filled me with the most intense desire I had ever felt, not desire for another person, but desire to bring something into being that had never existed before. When I look back at those years, I feel touched and almost pained by the simplicity of the life I was living, because I knew what I had to do, and I did it, that was all.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.

I know what my heart is like       Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool       Left there by the tide,       A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge. — Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Ebb,” Collected Poems. (Harper Perennial Modern Classics; Second Addition edition March 8, 2011)

Blue lady orchid Meaning: Consumed by love Thelymitra crinita | Western Australia Perennial spring-flowering orchid. Flowers are intensely blue and form a delicate star shape. Does not need a bushfire to stimulate flowering, but can be smothered by other vegetation, so periodic burns to restrict taller-growing shrubs are beneficial.

I love you because you have made me laugh every day...I love you because you let me be me, and you have from the start. I love you for saying 'please' and 'thank you' and for kissing me good morning and good night. I love you for treating each day together as if it were a gift, not a curse...I love you for building me up and for never tearing me down. for seeing my flaws and forgiving them all. For finding the good in me, especially when I struggle to see it in myself. And for showing...how a woman should be treated, with dignity and kindness and equal respect...I love you for knowing when to take a stand and when to take a knee. And for always holding the door for me. Always...

Human love is the shadow of the Great love; its child. And of all human loves, it is romantic love which has the most riveting effect upon our soul. Ageless and perennial, it is forever finding an outlet in poetry, music, dance, story-telling, and the media. We never tire of it. It commands attention at so many turns, such is the longing for its presence in our life. It is not by accident that it has such an unfailing pull on our psyche. If we cannot connect with visible human love, we will not be able to find the invisible Love. Human love is leading us, most of us unknowingly, straight to the divinity of our own nature. And that nature leads us, in turn, to the source of life itself.

Love is the only thing that has a perennial root, and that death cannot touch. It is the spirit that constitutes the central influence of human sympathy, of love, of love untarnished, untouched: and when you arise in the other sphere you will find that your personal identity will be that identity which is framed round about the great, glowing, central, summer influence of Love.

The resurrection of the body - what do we really mean by this? ...Did not the mystics and sages of all times teach us that the positive meaning of death is precisely that it liberates us from the prison of the body, as they say, from this perennial dependency on the material, physical, and bodily life - finally rendering our souls light, weightless, free, spiritual? We [must] consider more profoundly the meaning of the body... We must consider the role of the body in our, in my, life. On the one hand, of course it is entirely clear that all of our bodies are transitory and impermanent. Biologists have calculated that all the cells that compose our bodies are replaced every seven years. Thus, physiologically, every seven years we have a new body. Therefore, at the end of my life the body that is laid in the grave or consumed by fire is no longer the same body as all the preceding ones, and in the final analysis each of our bodies is nothing other than our individual [being] in the world, as the form of my dependence on the world, on the one hand, and of my life and of my activity on the other. In essence, my body is my relationship to the world, to others; it is my life as communion and as mutual relationship. Without exception, everything in the body, in the human organism, is created for this relationship, for this communion, for this coming out of oneself. It is not an accident, of course, that love, the highest form of communion, finds its incarnation in the body; the body is that which sees, hears, feels, and thereby leads me out of the isolation of my *I*. But then, perhaps, we can say in response: the body is not the darkness of the soul, but rather the body is its freedom, for the body is the soul as love, the soul as communion, the soul as life, the soul as movement. And this is why, when the soul loses the body, when it is separated from the body, it loses life.

It is an interesting concept, is it not- the idea of never aging? Would it appeal to you, to be rich, beautiful, and eternally young?" "I think everyone has a desire for perennial youth," I admitted, "but in the end, this is a Faustian, cautionary tale, about vanity and frivolity, and the dangers of trying to interfere with the basic laws of life and death. When I really think about it, I would not wish to be young for ever." "No? And why not?" "Because I would be obliged to watch everyone I loved grow old and die." "What if that were not the case? What if there was one person whom you loved deeply, with whom you could live on for ever, under the same terms?" I hesitated, then said: "Perhaps then it would prove agreeable, as long it did not involve selling my soul to the Devil.

The topic of disinterested, non-calculating, and purposeless love for the sake of love is central to mysticism as such. To love God, not because of powerful institutions, or even because God commands it, but to do so in an act of unencumbered freedom, is the very source of mystical relation. To love God is all the reason there needs to be . . . The orthodoxies that have been handed down to us in the monotheistic religions called for obedience to the commanding God. They threatened with punishment and enticed with rewards - images of hell and heaven resting on that authority. In technologically advanced centers of the world, authoritarian religious systems are in sharp decline. Mystical perceptions and approaches to God, however, are entirely different: "God, if I worship Thee in fear of hell, burn me in hell. And if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise; but if I worship Thee for Thine own sake, withhold not Thine everlasting Beauty" (Aldous Huxley, in The Perennial Philosophy). Mysticism may he regarded as the anti-authoritarian religion per se. In it, the commanding lord becomes the beloved; what is to come later becomes the now; and naked or even enlightened self-interest that is oriented by reward and punishment becomes mystical freedom.

The Sravaka (literally ‘hearer,’ the name given by Mahayana Buddhists to contemplatives of the Hinayana school) fails to perceive that Mind, as it is in itself, has no stages, no causation. Disciplining himself in the cause, he has attained the result and abides in the samadhi (contemplation) of Emptiness for ever so many aeons. However enlightened in this way, the Sravaka is not at all on the right track. From the point of view of the Bodhisattva, this is like suffering the torture of hell. The Sravaka has buried himself in Emptiness and does not know how to get out of his quiet contemplation, for he has no insight into the Buddha-nature itself. Mo Tsu When Enlightenment is perfected, a Bodhisattva is free from the bondage of things, but does not seek to be delivered from things. Samsara (the world of becoming) is not hated by him, nor is Nirvana loved. When perfect Enlightenment shines, it is neither bondage nor deliverance. Prunabuddha-sutra

Blythe's favorite shelf near the coffee area. She'd labeled it W.O.W. (WORDS OF WISDOM) and it was stocked with her perennial favorites with bookmarked passages. Natalie used to love browsing that shelf. A book would never betray you or change its mind or make you feel stupid. She took down The Once and Future King and found a marked passage: "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails."

I shall be gone to what I understand, And happier than I ever was before. The love that stood a moment in your eyes, The words that lay a moment on your tongue, Are one with all that in a moment dies, A little under-said and over-sung. But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies Unchanged from what they were when I was young. — Edna St. Vincent Millay, from “Sonnet XIX," Collected Sonnets. (Harper Perennial; Revised, Expanded ed. edition April 13, 1988) Originally published 1917.

That is what makes us love beautiful things: they have a perennial appeal, and hearing about them a second and third time can be even better than the first. The first time you hear it but not all of it. When you hear it again you savor every detail. Thus, when Avraham David spoke about our Master, the distinguished Av Beit Din, he would go on and on about things we already knew, but both the speaker and the listener felt as if they were only now hearing the real gist of it for the first time.

we should all be amazed that we are Christians, that the great God is working in us. In “O Little Town of Bethlehem” we sing, “O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.” It’s a bold image, but quite right. Every Christian is like Mary. Everyone who puts faith in Christ receives, by the Holy Spirit, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27, emphasis mine). We should be just as shocked that God would give us—with all our smallness and flaws—such a mighty gift. And so no Christian should ever be far from this astonishment that “I, I of all people, should be loved and embraced by his grace!” I would go so far as to say that this perennial note of surprise is a mark of anyone who understands the essence of the Gospel. What is Christianity? If you think Christianity is mainly going to church, believing a certain creed, and living a certain kind of life, then there will be no note of wonder and surprise about the fact that you are a believer. If someone asks you, “Are you a Christian?” you will say, “Of course I am! It’s hard work but I’m doing it. Why do you ask?” Christianity is, in this view, something done by you—and so there’s no astonishment about being a Christian. However, if Christianity is something done for you, and to you, and in you, then there is a constant note of surprise and wonder. John Newton wrote the hymn: Let us love and sing and wonder, Let us praise the Savior’s name. He has hushed the law’s loud thunder, He has quenched Mount Sinai’s flame. He has washed us with his blood He has brought us nigh to God.1 See where the love and wonder comes from—because he has done all this and brought us to himself. He has done it. So if someone asks you if you are a Christian, you should not say, “Of course!” There should be no “of course-ness” about it. It would be more appropriate to say, “Yes, I am, and that’s a miracle. Me! A Christian! Who would have ever thought it? Yet he did it, and I’m his.” SHE

But that's not true because the world is full of us. One in five. We are as perennial as love. We go about our business, raising kids, running countries, starting wars and solving crimes. We don't tell our stories because, if we've survived, that can only mean that what happened wasn't so very bad after all. It never means that we are fucking amazing. I am fucking amazing. When I was nineteen I ran so fast I left a branding behind. And I have stories to tell that are more than titillating details or pleas for your pity. This is just one of them.

If a fountain could jet bouquets of chrome yellow in dazzling arches of chrysanthemum fireworks, that would be Canada Goldenrod. Each three-foot stem is a geyser of tiny gold daisies, ladylike in miniature, exuberant en masse. Where the soil is damp enough, they stand side by side with their perfect counterpart, New England Asters. Not the pale domesticates of the perennial border, the weak sauce of lavender or sky blue, but full-on royal purple that would make a violet shrink. The daisylike fringe of purple petals surrounds a disc as bright as the sun at high noon, a golden-orange pool, just a tantalizing shade darker than the surrounding goldenrod. Alone, each is a botanical superlative. Together, the visual effect is stunning. Purple and gold, the heraldic colors of the king and queen of the meadow, a regal procession in complementary colors. I just wanted to know why. In composing a palette, putting them together makes each more vivid; just a touch of one will bring out the other. In an 1890 treatise on color perception, Goethe, who was both a scientist and a poet, wrote that “the colors diametrically opposed to each other . . . are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye.” Purple and yellow are a reciprocal pair. Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone. It’s a testable hypothesis; it’s a question of science, a question of art, and a question of beauty. Why are they beautiful together? It is a phenomenon simultaneously material and spiritual, for which we need all wavelengths, for which we need depth perception. When I stare too long at the world with science eyes, I see an afterimage of traditional knowledge. Might science and traditional knowledge be purple and yellow to one another, might they be goldenrod and asters? We see the world more fully when we use both. The question of goldenrod and asters was of course just emblematic of what I really wanted to know. It was an architecture of relationships, of connections that I yearned to understand. I wanted to see the shimmering threads that hold it all together. And I wanted to know why we love the world, why the most ordinary scrap of meadow can rock us back on our heels in awe.

The effects of suffering may be morally and spiritually bad, neutral or good, according to the way in which the suffering is endured and reacted to. In other words, it may stimulate in the sufferer a conscious or unconscious craving for the intensification of his separateness; or it may leave the craving such as it was before the suffering; or, finally, it may mitigate it and so become a means for advance towards self-abandonment and the love and knowledge of God. Which of these three alternatives shall be realized depends, in the last analysis, upon the choice,

Every project needs to go through this process. Whether it’s with an editor or a producer or a partner or a group of beta users or just through your own relentless perfectionism—whatever form it takes is up to you. But getting outside voices is crucial. The fact is, most people are so terrified of what an outside voice might say that they forgo opportunities to improve what they are making. Remember: Getting feedback requires humility. It demands that you subordinate your thoughts about your project and your love for it and entertain the idea that someone else might have a valuable thing or two to add.

This feeling of irritability and alienation meant I was malleable. Have you ever tried to argue with someone who doesn’t want anything from you? It’s hard. Have you ever noticed in a row with someone that no longer loves you that you have no recourse? No tools with which to bargain. If you stroll up to a stranger and tell them that unless they comply with your demands they’ll never see you again, it’s unlikely that they’ll fling themselves at your feet and beg you not to go. They’ll just wander off. When people are content, they are difficult to maneuver. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies. My intention in writing this book is to make you feel better, to offer you a solution to the way you feel.

Anyone who investigates the revealed religions with an open mind and a discerning heart is bound to discover the truth in all of them. Of course, there are notable differences between them. Each faith is distinguished by the personality of its messenger and the circumstances of its revelation. With the passing of time, faith traditions are also subject to the proliferation of distorted interpretations. Nonetheless, to seeing eyes it is plain to see that all of the world‘s great faiths harbor at their core the same message of love […] Through whichever channel Providence pours it out to the thirsty, the divine love that flows through revelation is from first to last a single substance. All fields are watered with one water. (p. 255)

This sound, which like all music--indeed, like all pleasure--I had been numbly unresponsive to for months, pierced my heart like a dagger, and in a flood of swift recollection I thought of all the joys the house had known: the children who had rushed through its rooms, the festivals, the love and work, the honestly earned slumber, the voices and the nimble commotion, the perennial tribe of cats and dogs and birds, "laughter and ability and Sighing, And Frocks and Curls." All this I realized was more than I could ever abandon, even as what I had set out so deliberately to do was more than I could inflict on those memories, and upon those, so close to me, with whom the memories were bound. And just as powerfully I realized I could not commit this desecration on myself.

What if I had made different choices from the start? What if I had stuck around to watch another year of seasons spin here in Oxford, staying to see the daffodils bloom or to wander beneath the privet tunnel hand in hand with Fisher? What if we had kept right on kissing until the naked ladies emerged near the Osage orange? What if I had lingered long enough to see cape jasmine arrive, her voluptuous white bundles an aromatic call for summer love? Or even longer, when the spider lilies burst open in the fall and the yellow autumn light fell low among missy roots? What if I had stayed through winter, forming snow angels with my lover beneath the icy cedar boughs? What if I had not let fear defeat me after Fisher knelt before me in my mother's backyard garden, ring in his hand and happy-ever-after in his heart?

A hell-fire faith that uses the theatrical techniques of revivalism in order to stimulate remorse and induce the crisis of sudden conversion; a saviour cult that is for ever stirring up what St. Bernard calls the amor carnalis or fleshly love of the Avatar and personal God; a ritualistic mystery-religion that generates high feelings of awe and reverence and aesthetic ecstasy by means of its sacraments and ceremonials, its music and its incense, its numinous darknesses and sacred lights in its own special way, each one of these runs the risk of becoming a form of psychological idolatry, in which God is identified with the ego's affective attitude towards God and finally the emotion becomes an end in itself, to be eagerly sought after and worshipped, as the addicts of a drug spend life in the pursuit of their artificial paradise.

[Huxley's Perennial Philosophy is concerned with] the need to love the earth and respect nature instead of following the example of those who 'chopped down vast forests to provide the newsprint demanded by that universal literacy which was to make the world safe for intelligence and democracy, and got wholesale erosion, pulp magazines, and organs of Fascist, Communist, capitalist, and nationalist propaganda.' He attacked 'technological imperialism' and the mechanisation which was 'increasing the power of a minority to exercise a co-ersive control over the lives of their fellows' and 'the popular philosophy of life... now moulded by advertising copy whose one idea is to persuade everybody to be as extroverted and uninhibitedly greedy as possible, since of course it is only the possessive, the restless, the distracted, who spend money on the things that advertisers want to sell.

Eventually, the men’s talk of politics turned to poetry. The recitations could begin with a quatrain from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat: I need a jug of wine and a book of poetry, Half a loaf for a bite to eat, Then you and I, seated in a deserted spot, Will have more wealth than a Sultan’s realm. To which a voice might answer with a poem by Rumi: My arrow of love has arrived at the target I am in the house of mercy and my heart is a place of prayer. These gatherings went on for hours, with one guest after another reciting poems of the Persian masters—Rumi, Khayyam, Sa’adi, snd Hafez. That my father, the Colonel, who could make us cower with a single sidelong glance, produced the most skillful recitations both bewildered and fascinated me. His voice had a deep timbre perfectly suited to reciting verse, and the frequent cries of “Lovely!” and “Exquisite!” roused him to ever more passionate declamation. I listened from behind the window, enraptured by the music of a language that can sometimes sound like susurrations of a lover and sometimes like the reed’s plaintive song. The words hooked into me and wouldn’t let me go. Rivers, oceans, and deserts, the nightingale and the rose—the perennial symbols of Persian poetry first grew familiar to me through these late-night scenes in the garden, and even though I was still a young girl, only just a child, the verses called me away to different lands.

Ever since the birth of our nation, white America has had a schizophrenic personality on the question of race. She has been torn between selves—a self in which she proudly professed the great principles of democracy and a self in which she sadly practiced the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence toward the Negro, causing America to take a step backward simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice, to be at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love and to hate him. There has never been a solid, unified and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans. The step backward has a new name today. It is called the “white backlash.” But the white backlash is nothing new. It is the surfacing of old prejudices, hostilities and ambivalences that have always been there. It was caused neither by the cry of Black Power nor by the unfortunate recent wave of riots in our cities. The white backlash of today is rooted in the same problem that has characterized America ever since the black man landed in chains on the shores of this nation. The white backlash is an expression of the same vacillations, the same search for rationalizations, the same lack of commitment that have always characterized white America on the question of race. What is the source of this perennial indecision and vacillation? It lies in the “congenital deformity” of racism that has crippled the nation from its inception. The roots of racism are very deep in America. Historically it was so acceptable in the national life that today it still only lightly burdens the conscience.

Still, the appeal of regressive ideas is perennial, and the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress always has to be made. When we fail to acknowledge our hard-won progress, we may come to believe that perfect order and universal prosperity are the natural state of affairs, and that every problem is an outrage that calls for blaming evildoers, wrecking institutions, and empowering a leader who will restore the country to its rightful greatness. I have made my own best case for progress and the ideals that made it possible, and have dropped hints on how journalists, intellectuals, and other thoughtful people (including the readers of this book) might avoid contributing to the widespread heedlessness of the gifts of the Enlightenment. Remember your math: an anecdote is not a trend. Remember your history: the fact that something is bad today doesn’t mean it was better in the past. Remember your philosophy: one cannot reason that there’s no such thing as reason, or that something is true or good because God said it is. And remember your psychology: much of what we know isn’t so, especially when our comrades know it too. Keep some perspective. Not every problem is a Crisis, Plague, Epidemic, or Existential Threat, and not every change is the End of This, the Death of That, or the Dawn of a Post-Something Era. Don’t confuse pessimism with profundity: problems are inevitable, but problems are solvable, and diagnosing every setback as a symptom of a sick society is a cheap grab for gravitas. Finally, drop the Nietzsche. His ideas may seem edgy, authentic, baaad, while humanism seems sappy, unhip, uncool. But what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

I taught an introductory creative writing class at Princeton last year and, in addition to the classic ‘show don’t tell’, I often told my students that their fiction needed to have ’emotional truth’ […]: a quality different from honesty and more resilient than fact, a quality that existed not in the kind of fiction that explains but in the kind of fiction that shows. All the novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have this empathetic human quality. And because I write the kind of fiction I like to read, when I started Half of a Yellow Sun […], I hoped that emotional truth would be its major recognizable trait. […] Successful fiction does not need to be validated by ‘real life’; I cringe whenever a writer is asked how much of a novel is ‘real’. Yet, […] to write realistic fiction about war, especially one central to the history of one’s own country, is to be constantly aware of a responsibility to something larger than art. While writing Half of a Yellow Sun, I enjoyed playing with minor things [such as inventing a train station in a town that has none]. Yet I did not play with the central events of that time. I could not let a character be changed by anything that had not actually happened. If fiction is indeed the soul of history, then I was equally committed to the fiction and the history, equally keen to be true to the spirit of the time as well as to artistic vision of it. The writing itself was a bruising experience. […] But there were also moments of extravagant joy when I recognized, in a character or moment or scene, that quality of emotional truth.” In the Shadow of Biafra (essay included in the 2007 Harper Perennial edition of Half of a Yellow Sun).

Pigs eat acorns, but neither consider the sun that gave them life, nor the influence of the heavens by which they were nourished, nor the very root of the tree from whence they came. Thomas Traherne Your enjoyment of the world is never right till every morning you awake in Heaven; see yourself in your Father’s palace; and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys; having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the Angels. The bride of a monarch, in her husband’s chamber, hath no such causes of delight as you. You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and kings in sceptres, you can never enjoy the world. Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all ages as with your walk and table; till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made; till you love men so as to desire their happiness with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own; till you delight in God for being good to all; you never enjoy the world. Till you more feel it than your private estate, and are more present in the hemisphere, considering the glories and the beauties there, than in your own house; till you remember how lately you were made, and how wonderful it was when you came into it; and more rejoice in the palace of your glory than if it had been made today morning. Yet further, you never enjoyed the world aright, till you so love the beauty of enjoying it, that you are covetous and earnest to persuade others to enjoy it. And so perfectly hate the abominable corruption of men in despising it that you had rather suffer the flames of hell than willingly be guilty of their error. The world is a mirror of Infinite Beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not men disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God. It is more to man since he is fallen than it was before. It is the place of Angels and the Gate of Heaven. When Jacob waked out of his dream, he said, God is here, and I wist it not. How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the House of God and the Gate of Heaven. Thomas Traherne

If only I could have realized the truth years ago. But now I know. And now I see. Love is what strengthens and remains of me.

The false or at best imperfect salvations described in the Chandogya Upanishad are of three kinds. There is first the pseudo-salvation associated with the belief that matter is the ultimate Reality. Virochana, the demonic being who is the apotheosis of power-loving, extraverted somatotonia, finds it perfectly natural to identify himself with his body, and he goes back to the other Titans to seek a purely material salvation. Incarnated in the present century, Virochana would have been an ardent Communist, Fascist or nationalist. Indra sees through material salvationism and is then offered dreamsalvation, deliverance out of bodily existence into the intermediate world between matter and spirit—that fascinatingly odd and exciting psychic universe, out of which miracles and foreknowledge, “spirit communications” and extra-sensory perceptions make their startling irruptions into ordinary life. But this freer kind of individualized existence is still all too personal and ego-centric to satisfy a soul conscious of its own incompleteness and eager to be made whole. Indra accordingly goes further and is tempted to accept the undifferentiated consciousness of deep sleep, of false samadhi and quietistic trance, as the final deliverance. But he refuses, in Brahmananda’s words, to mistake tamas for sattvas, sloth and sub-consciousness for poise and super-consciousness. And so, by discrimination, he comes to the realization of the Self, which is the enlightenment of the darkness that is ignorance and the deliverance from the mortal consequences of that ignorance.

The ever-shifting but almost perennially uneven balance of affection and obligation between parent and child is one of life's deepest and most bittersweet experiences. And it illustrates how imprecise the genes can be in turning on and off our emotional spigots. Though there seems to be no good Darwinian reason to spend time and energy on an old, dying father, few of us would, or could, turn our backs. The stubborn core of familial love persists beyond its evolutionary usefulness. Most of us, presumably, are glad for this crudeness of genetic control- although, of course, there's no way of knowing what our opinion would be if the controls were more precise.

It is of course possible to give more elaborate answers to the perennial question: why climb? In his writing and lectures, George described the spirit of adventure, confronting and managing risk, winning admiration; even, he confessed, the desire to be proclaimed a hero. His love for the wild places was manifest, as was his delight in the inner journey that accompanies an ascent.

I always hoped you'd outgrow the whole sibling-rivalry thing. Whatever it is that keeps you at each other's throats, I wish you'd both just let it go." "In all honesty, Mother, an apology would do wonders, but Bitsy has never apologized for anything in her entire life." She pauses, weighing her words. "People don't always say they're sorry, Lovey. You have to find a way to move on without it." Mother begins to make my bed, and I hurry to help. "Kind of hard to let something go when it's still happening." She draws her lips into a tight frown, as if I'm the greatest disappointment of her life. "You think you're the only one who has ever been hurt?" She snaps the pillow to fluff it in its case, clearly convinced her own pain far exceeds my own. "That's not what I'm saying." I place three pillow shams. She resets them. "Of course I'm not the only one who has ever been hurt. But it's a little different when you're betrayed by someone you love, and even worse when she does it on purpose. You don't know how that feels.

The Greeks believed this to be a part of human nature. Whether it becomes a destructive or healing energy in the world depends largely on whether that spirit of fight or struggle is directed in self-centered ways at the disappointments we experience in not getting what we want, or in deeper, self-transforming ways that seek out the resources of spirit, love, and truth. It seems to be perennially true that if that spirit of fight or struggle is not directed at what distances us from God (our isolations and illusions), then it will be directed at others. Needleman suggests that the misdirection of Thumos, our spirit of fight or struggle, has been a timeless source of war, evil, and unnecessary woundedness in the world.

In her perennial search for the best foods regardless of cuisine, exploring the vast cornucopia at her disposal, she'd realized that the little mom-and-pop restaurants in the mini-malls were where she found the mother lode of deliciousness. Why? Because immigrants operated them. They had brought their homeland's flavors in their suitcases and were adding them to the never-ending gastronomic experiment that took place every day in Los Angeles. She loved to observe, but more important, to participate in the frequent overlap between different cuisines, resulting in an endless continuum of delight and surprise. Multiply that by more than one hundred and fifty countries and you had yourself Angeleno cuisine.

I have big dreams and big goals. But also big limitations, which means III never reach the big goals unless I have the wisdom to recognize the chains that bind me. Only then will I be able to figure out a way to work within them instead of ignoring them or naively wishing they'll cease to exist. I'm on a perennial quest to find balance. Writing helps me do that. To quote Neruda: Tengo que acordarme de todos, recoger las briznas, los hilos del acontecer harapiento (I have to remember everything, collect the wisps, the threads of untidy happenings). That line is ME. But my memory is slipping and that's one of the scariest aspects about all this. How can I tell my story, how can I create a narrative around my life, if I cant even remember the details? But I do want to tell my story, and so I write. I write because I want my parents to understand me. I write to leave something behind for them, for my brother Micah, for my boyfriend Jack, and for my extended family and friends, so I won't just end up as ashes scattered in the ocean and nothing else. Curiously, the things I write in my journal are almost all bad: the letdowns. the uncertainties. the anxieties. the loneliness. The good stuff I keep in my head and heart, but that proves an unreliable way of holding on because time eventually steals all memories-and if it doesn't completely steal them, it distorts them, sometimes beyond recognition, or the emotional quality accompanying the moment just dissipates. Many of the feelings I write about are too difficult to share while I'm alive, so I am keeping everything in my journal password-protected until the end. When I die I want my mom to edit these pages to ensure they are acceptable for publication-culling through years of writing, pulling together what will resonate, cutting references that might be hurtful. My hope is that my writing will offer insight for people living with, or loving someone with, chronic illness.

I have big dreams and big goals. But also big limitations, which means I'II never reach the big goals unless I have the wisdom to recognize the chains that bind me. Only then will I be able to figure out a way to work within them instead of ignoring them or naively wishing they'll cease to exist. I'm on a perennial quest to find balance. Writing helps me do that. To quote Neruda: Tengo que acordarme de todos, recoger las briznas, los hilos del acontecer harapiento (I have to remember everything, collect the wisps, the threads of untidy happenings). That line is ME. But my memory is slipping and that's one of the scariest aspects about all this. How can I tell my story, how can I create a narrative around my life, if I cant even remember the details? But I do want to tell my story, and so I write. I write because I want my parents to understand me. I write to leave something behind for them, for my brother Micah, for my boyfriend Jack, and for my extended family and friends, so I won't just end up as ashes scattered in the ocean and nothing else. Curiously, the things I write in my journal are almost all bad: the letdowns. the uncertainties. the anxieties. the loneliness. The good stuff I keep in my head and heart, but that proves an unreliable way of holding on because time eventually steals all memories-and if it doesn't completely steal them, it distorts them, sometimes beyond recognition, or the emotional quality accompanying the moment just dissipates. Many of the feelings I write about are too difficult to share while I'm alive, so I am keeping everything in my journal password-protected until the end. When I die I want my mom to edit these pages to ensure they are acceptable for publication-culling through years of writing, pulling together what will resonate, cutting references that might be hurtful. My hope is that my writing will offer insight for people living with, or loving someone with, chronic illness.

We can only love what we know, and we can never know completely what we do not love

Traditionally Christian good manners outlawed all expression of pleasure in the satisfaction of physical appetites. “You may love the screeching owl, but you must not love the roasted fowl.” Such was the rhyme on which children were brought up in nurseries on of only fifty years ago. Today the young unceasingly proclaim how much they “love” and “adore” different kinds of food and drink; adolescents and adults talk about the “thrills” they derive from the stimulation of their sexuality. The popular philosophy of life has ceased to be based on the classics of devotion and rules of aristocratic good breeding, and is molded by writers and advertising copy, whose one idea is to persuade everybody to be as extraverted and uninhibitedly greedy as possible, since of course it is only the possessive, the restless, the distracted, who spend money on things advertisers want to sell.

One may ask what makes Pai Hsien-yung's fiction still so compelling in the new millennium. I suggest that it is because instead of being a conservative, Pai impresses as a radical, one who relentlessly campaigns for the power of qing - feeling, sentience, love, affect - via a vis human adversities from national vicissitudes or erotic frustrations, and from fanaticism to the doom of life and death. "Qing is of source unknown, yet it grows ever deeper. The living may die of it, by its power the dead live again," wrote Tang Xianzu (1550-1616), the perennial spokesperson of the "cult of qing.

Man becomes uprooted, starts feeling meaningless. All the values of life disappear. A great darkness surrounds. Sense of direction is lost. One simply feels accidental. There seems to be no , no significance. Life seems to be just a byproduct of chance. It seems existence does not care for you. [...] All seems to be pointless. These times of chaos, disorder, can either be a great curse, [...] or they can prove a quantum leap in human growth. It depends on how we use them. It is only in such great times of chaos that great stars are born. [...] The ordinary masses live in such unconsciousness that they can’t see even a few steps ahead. They are blind. And they are the majority! The coming twenty-five years, the last part of this century, is going to be of IMMENSE value. If we can create a great momentum in the world for meditation, for the inward journey, for tranquillity, for stillness, for love, for God... if we can create a space in these coming twenty-five years for God to happen to many many people, humanity will have a new birth, a resurrection. A new man will be born.

Washingtonians love the "So-and-so is spinning in his grave" cliché. Someone is always speculating about how some great dead American would be scandalized over some crime against How It Used to Be. The Founding Fathers are always spinning in their graves over something, as is Ronald Reagan, or FDR. Edward R. Murrow is a perennial grave spinner in the news business (though in fact, Murrow was cremated).

The age old question, what is Love? Isn't it the greatest gift from the holy one Above? Is it pure and white like a new born Dove? Does it cuddle you up,Like a hand in a Glove? Answer this hard question that what is LOVE?? the force that propels you ,through pain and despair, the benevolence,the blessings,from the heavens above, the ray of sunshine that pierces the clouds, a perennial hope, that's what is love; Its the glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, Its the mirth that ends melancholy's reign, A fountain of glee,the elixir of life, Its the drug that heals,and cures all the pain; Its an eternal promise, never meant to be broken, Its the bond that adheres two hearts together, People may die and their stories may end, But their love is immortal,it lives on forever; Its the river that cuts through boulders and rocks, and the stream that flows through our barren lives, And on its long course, it leaves behind a trail Of vivid fragrant flowers,and clear blue skies; Love is felt by the heart,relished by the soul, Blissful like the divine touch of the Gods, I yearn for more ballads and more metaphors, But i fall short of verses, can't bind love in words.

The season for love is coming around The reason to love is nowhere around. Looking around I see no dearth The longing of love is blossoming around. The roses are there to express the love Love to express so instant love. Proclaim your love with roses so red Passions aflame extinguish them now. Propose to the one before it's late With chocolates, teddies and promises of love. A hug a kiss will make your day Is Valentine day all you have? Love is perennial so let it blossom Let it bloom and spread around. No season for love no reasons to love The greatest is love so love all around.

You’ll always be with me, Mom. Kind of like Jordan’s perennials. Every year, something’ll bloom in my life to remind me of you. It’ll always be different, never the same, but it’ll be good. Love lasts.

Had the love been perennial, there won’t have been murders of wives by husbands and murders of husbands by wives, who were lovers at a point of time.

Luther’s understanding of the individual Christian life is in some ways refreshingly simple and straightforward. We live at a time when the church always seems to be looking for new and elaborate ways of winning converts, of discipling, of bringing people to maturity in the faith. Luther’s approach is rather different. Building upon the objectivity of God’s action in Christ as set forth in his Word, he sees the Christian life as one fueled by the reading and hearing of this Word, primarily in a corporate context. This is a great antidote to a number of perennial problems for Christians. First, there is the “need” for something more than the Bible. The success of books that offer something spectacular—whether accounts of dying and coming back to the land of the living or low-key claims to special, extra words from God—shows that the Christian world loves something out of the ordinary. Luther would respond that such things are absolutely unnecessary, for what we need is the Word of God in the humble, mundane form that he has given it to us. Why read a book on a child who claims to have died and come back when one can read the Gospels and find there God, clothed in frail human flesh, dying and rising again? Why desire further, special words from God when the great Word of God, Christ himself, is offered to every individual as the Bible is read, preached, and sometimes applied individually through the confessional? Luther would see the market for such books as a function of our striving to be theologians of glory, unsatisfied with how God has chosen to reveal himself to be toward us, and always craving to make God conform to our expectations of what we need.

...in just one night, that perennial feeling of being a rotting painting decorating the intimacy of a perpetually dark house was replaced by that of desire, curiosity and the audacity of what we were or were supposed to be...

Across spiritual traditions, sages and mystics have recognized a divine essence underlying all existence, often described as the "light behind the clouds." From Rumi's poetic verses to the Diamond Sutra's teachings, Meister Eckhart's sermons to Ramana Maharshi's insights, this fundamental awareness emerges repeatedly. Contemporary teachers like Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and Rupert Spira continue sharing this perennial wisdom, which the IFS model translates into a modern psychotherapeutic framework. The technique complements rather than replaces contemplative paths, offering a modality for directly experiencing the shared spiritual recognition permeating sages' teachings across cultures and eras. Through IFS, individuals can connect with the higher insights found within the world's great wisdom traditions.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Peace is at the heart of all because Avalokiteśvara–Kwan Yin, the mighty Bodhisattva, Boundless Love, includes, regards, and dwells within (without exception) every sentient being. The perfection of the delicate wings of an insect, broken in the passage of time, he regards — and he himself is both their perfection and their disintegration. The perennial agony of man, self-torturing, deluded, tangled in the net of his own tenuous delirium, frustrated, yet having within himself, undiscovered, absolutely unutilized, the secret of release: this too he regards — and is. Serene above man, the angels; below man, the demons and unhappy dead: these all are drawn to the Bodhisattva by the rays of his jewel hands, and they are he, as he is they. The bounded, shackled centers of consciousness, myriad-fold, on every plane of existence (not only in this present universe, limited by the Milky Way, but beyond, into the reaches of space), galaxy beyond galaxy, world beyond world of universes, coming into being out of the timeless pool of the void, bursting into life, and like a bubble therewith vanishing: time and time again: lives by the multitude: all suffering: each bounded in the tenuous, tight circle of itself — lashing, killing, hating, and desiring peace beyond victory: these all are the children, the mad figures of the transitory yet inexhaustible, long world dream of the All-Regarding, whose essence is the essence of Emptiness: “The Lord Looking Down in Pity.” But the name means also: “The Lord Who Is Seen Within.”* We are all reflexes of the image of the Bodhisattva. The sufferer within us is that divine being. We and that protecting father are one. This is the redeeming insight. That protecting father is every man we meet. And so it must be known that, though this ignorant, limited, self-defending, suffering body may regard itself as threatened by some other — the enemy — that one too is the God. The ogre breaks us, but the hero, the fit candidate, undergoes the initiation “like a man”; and behold, it was the father: we in Him and He in us.[

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Goatherd, when you turn the corner by the oaks you'll see a freshly carved statue in fig wood. The bark is not peeled off. It is legless, earless, but strongly equipped with a dynamic phallus to perform the labor of Aphrodite. A holy hedge runs around the precinct where a perennial brook spills down from upper rocks and feeds a luxuriance of bay, myrtle and fragrant cypress trees. A grape vine pours its tendrils along a branch, and spring blackbirds echo in pure transparency of sound to high nightingales who echo back with pungent honey. Come, sit down, and beg Priapos to end my love for Daphnis. Butcher a young goat in sacrifice. If he will not, I make three vows: I will slay a young cow, a shaggy goat and a darling lamb I am raising. May God hear you and assent.

Clouds pass and disperse. / Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? / Is it for such I agitate my heart? — Sylvia Plath, from “Elm,” The Collected Poems (HarperPerennial, 1992)

What if I had made different choices from the start? What if I had stuck around to watch another year of seasons spin here in Oxford, staying to see the daffodils bloom or to wander beneath the privet tunnel hand in hand with Fisher? What if we had kept right on kissing until the naked ladies emerged near the Osage orange? What if I had lingered long enough to see cape jasmine arrive, her voluptuous white bundles an aromatic call for summer love? Or even longer, when the spider lilies burst open in the fall and the yellow autumn light fell low among mossy roots? What if I had stayed through winter, forming snow angels with my lover beneath the icy cedar boughs? What if I had not let fear defeat me after Fisher knelt before me in my mother's backyard garden, ring in his hand and happy-ever-after in his heart?

The preacher talked about the story of Adam and Eve, how we are told that God pulled the rib from Adam's side because it shows that woman and man are made to be equal partners." "He said Eve wasn't formed from Adam's feet to be below him or from his head to be above him, but from his rib, to walk beside him." Mother says this while smiling. "I liked that." "Yep." Chief nods. "And that the rib came from near his heart, so she would be loved by him, and from beneath his arms, so she would be protected by him.

I used to think the garden of Eden story was all about Eve breaking the rules and eating the forbidden fruit. Church lessons taught us that her selfishness and deception resulted in great suffering for every generation to follow. That's the guilt we have been taught to carry as women. The serpent tricks us, and it's all our fault. Others are harmed by our naive choice, and it's all our fault. Our children stray from the right path, and it's all our fault. Truth is, the dangers were here from the start. But so was the beauty. Now I realize the story is not about punishing all of humankind for Eve's mistake. It's about relationship. It's about gratitude and honesty and choosing the right person to be by your side in life. It's about trust and partnership and loyalty. It's about love. Now, as the garden comes to life around me, I no longer think of serpents and betrayals and lies and shame. Instead, I see what God sees. I see that it is good. All of it. Good.

I've stayed here in Oxford as the seasons have changed, watching summer turn to autumn turn to winter turn to spring. And in the coming cycle, I will be here once more. Season after season, year after year, as crocuses make way for summer honeysuckle, as sun-loving lantana ease out for the quieter mums, as pansies blanket the wintry town and as spring beauties burst forth again behind the snow. I'll still be here with Fisher by my side. Because this spring the stars aligned, as Marian promised they would. I picked a mid-March spray of spirea, made myself a bridal bouquet, and gave my whole heart to the man whose heart was given whole to me.

Every one of us is a messy combination of all that has happened in our lives, all the hurts and heartaches, mishaps and mistakes. But there's one big difference. Some of us choose to love in spite of it all. And some of us don't.

French or Foe, is a perennial bestseller, flying off shop

Rather than seeking to be safe and in control, we become capable of living life on life’s terms. Instead of striving for perfection, we find rest in the reality that we will be, for the rest of our days, a constant work in progress, perennially unfinished, perpetually imperfect—always becoming in the experience of daily living. When we begin to accept that clumsy is the best we get—like giraffes on ice—we can begin to offer what our children really need from us: heartfelt relationship. This encompasses empathy, sensitivity, grief and celebration, perseverance, authenticity, understanding, boundaries, and reduced demands while still having high expectations, gratitude for others, gratitude for gifts they have, acceptance of others and self, understandable anger and frustration about life, and hope as what holds it all together. This sounds like a lot—and it is. These noble things cannot be achieved through knowing more but only through gaining and surrendering to the heart experience of living. The good-enough, clumsy parent is a wise-hearted person—someone who lives from a place rooted deeply in their authentic emotional and spiritual core and who has struggled truthfully to accept this clear edict: it takes a lifetime to learn how to live. Living the way we are made to live means acknowledging our feelings and asking for help and confessing that we are human. Living fully requires the ability to struggle daily with this truth: if we are going to experience the joy of life, we cannot escape the pain of love. If we don’t stay sensitive to life, then we revert to perfectionism—insisting that life and our children and other people behave according to our preset agendas.

Desiderata GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

I prefer novels,” she adds, “that bring me immediately into a world where everything is precise, concrete, specific. I feel a special satisfaction in knowing what things are made in that certain fashion and not otherwise, even the most common place things that in real life seem indifferent to me.” “The book I would like to read now is a novel in which you sense the story arriving like still-vague thunder, the historical story along with the individual story, a novel that gives the sense of living through an upheaval that still has no name, has not yet taken shape…” “The novels I prefer,” she says, “are those that make you feel uneasy from the very first page.” “I like books,” she says, “where all the mysteries and anguish pass through a precise and a cold mind, without shadows, like the mind of a chess player.” “The novels that attract me most,” Ludmilla said, “are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible.” “The quality of perennial dissatisfaction seems to me characteristic of Ludmilla: it seems to me that her preferences change overnight and today reflect only her restless.” “Do you mean to deny you have a sister?” “I have a sister, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.” “A sister who loves novels with characters whose psychology is upsetting and complicated?” “My sister always says she loves novels where you feel an elemental strength, primordial, telluric. That’s exactly what she says: telluric.” “The book I’m looking for,” says the blurred figure who holds out a volume similar to yours, “is the one that gives the sense of the world after the end of the world, the sense that the world is the end of everything that there is the world, that the only thing there is in the world is the end of the world.

But when love is mutual, for a moment or a lifetime, annual or perennial, it blooms with a shape, a smell, and a color that makes it at once particular and general, impossible to convey fully yet amenable to precise characterization.