Retreat Letter For A Friend Quotes

December 27, 11:00 p.m. My Dear America, I’ve never written a love letter, so forgive me if I fail now. . . . The simple thing would be to say that I love you. But, in truth, it’s so much more than that. I want you, America. I need you. I’ve held back so much from you out of fear. I’m afraid that if I show you everything at once, it will overwhelm you, and you’ll run away. I’m afraid that somewhere in the back of your heart is a love for someone else that will never die. I’m afraid that I will make a mistake again, something so huge that you retreat into that silent world of yours. No scolding from a tutor, no lashing from my father, no isolation in my youth has ever hurt me so much as you separating yourself from me. I keep thinking that it’s there, waiting to come back and strike me. So I’ve held on to all my options, fearing that the moment I wipe them away, you will be standing there with your arms closed, happy to be my friend but unable to be my equal, my queen, my wife. And for you to be my wife is all I want in the world. I love you. I was afraid to admit it for a long time, but I know it now. I would never rejoice in the loss of your father, the sadness you’ve felt since he passed, or the emptiness I’ve experienced since you left. But I’m so grateful that you had to go. I’m not sure how long it would have taken for me to figure this out if I hadn’t had to start trying to imagine a life without you. I know now, with absolute certainty, that is nothing I want. I wish I was as true an artist as you so that I could find a way to tell you what you’ve become to me. America, my love, you are sunlight falling through trees. You are laughter that breaks through sadness. You are the breeze on a too-warm day. You are clarity in the midst of confusion. You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good. Without you, my life would still exist, but that’s all it would manage to do. You said that to get things right one of us would have to take a leap of faith. I think I’ve discovered the canyon that must be leaped, and I hope to find you waiting for me on the other side. I love you, America. Yours forever, Maxon

Sorry,” Kiersten says to Lake and I. “Mom says the FCC is responsible for inventing cusswords just for media shock value. She says if everyone would just use them enough, they wouldn’t be considered cusswords anymore and no one would ever be offended by them” This kid is hard to keep up with! “Your mother encourages you to cuss?” Gavin says. Kiersten nods. “I don’t see it that way. It’s more like she’s encouraging us to undermine a system flawed through overuse of words that are made out to be harmful, when in fact they’re just letters, mixed together like every other word. That’s all they are, mixed up letters. Like, take the word “butterfly” for example. What if someone decided one day that butterfly is a cussword? People would eventually start using butterfly as an insult, and to emphasize things in a negative way. The actual WORD doesn’t mean anything. It’s the negative association people give these words that make them cusswords. So if we all just decided to keep saying butterfly all the time, eventually people would stop caring. The shock value would subside…and it would just become another word again. Same with every other so-called bad word. If we would all just start saying them all the time, They wouldn’t be bad anymore. That’s what my mom says anyway.” “Kiersten?” Eddie says. “Will you be my new best friend?” Lake grabs a french fry off her plate and throws it at Eddie, hitting her in the face with it. “That’s Bullshit,” Lake says. “Oh, go BUTTERFLY yourself,” Eddie says. She returns a fry in Lakes direction.

This land on which so many centuries have left their mark is merely an obligatory retreat for you, whereas it has always been our dearest hope. Your too sudden passion is made up of spite and necessity.

December 22, 1849. To-day, the 22nd of December, we were all taken to Semionovsky Square. There the death-sentence was read to us, we were given the Cross to kiss, the dagger was broken over our heads, and our funeral toilet (white shirts) was made. Then three of us were put standing before the palisades for the execution of the death-sentence. I was sixth in the row; we were called up by groups of three, and so I was in the second group, and had not more than a minute to live. I thought of you, my brother, and of yours; in that last moment you alone were in my mind; then first I learnt how very much I love you, my beloved brother ! I had time to embrace Plechtcheyev and Dourov, who stood near me, and to take my leave of them. Finally, retreat was sounded, those who were bound to the palisades were brought back, and it was read to us that His Imperial Majesty granted us our lives. Then the final sentences were recited. Palm alone is fully pardoned. He has been transferred to the line with the :ame rank. F.

Have you got them?” “Got them! No. The old man’s not there.” He has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his terror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly, “What’s the matter?” “I couldn’t make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked in. And the burning smell is there—and the soot is there, and the oil is there—and he is not there!” Tony ends this with a groan. Mr. Guppy takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and holding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has retreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something on the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in the grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room and a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and table, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as usual. On one chair-back hang the old man’s hairy cap and coat. “Look!” whispers the lodger, pointing his friend’s attention to these objects with a trembling finger. “I told you so. When I saw him last, he took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung his cap on the back of the chair—his coat was there already, for he had pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up—and I left him turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that crumbled black thing is upon the floor.” Is he hanging somewhere? They look up. No. “See!” whispers Tony. “At the foot of the same chair there lies a dirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went round the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me, before he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it fall.” “What’s the matter with the cat?” says Mr. Guppy. “Look at her!” “Mad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place.” They advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains where they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground before the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the light.

To give just one example of what the inside of this world (largely upper-class and Oxbridge world of wealth, power, and privilege) looked like: Huxley sent the UNESCO documents to his close friend the English poet Stephen Spender. In his reply, from his regular retreat at the Chalet Waldegg in Gstaad, Switzerland, Spender says that he won't burden Huxley with his own views on human rights, since he doesn't have anything 'worth saying' on the topic, but then goes on to suggest that Huxley send the documents to some of his acquaintances. This curious list of the great and the good includes the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers, the first and second president of Czechoslovakia, the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, Isaiah Berlin, A.J. Ayer, and W.H. Auden. Spender even gives Huxley some advice about whom to avoid: 'I honestly don't think there are any outstanding Belgians.

the ends. Jesus saw through it at once; why are pastors so intoxicated with visions and goals and so muddled when it comes to ways and means? The difficulty is that concern for ways and means, which is the heart of the contemplative life, is very low on the agenda of the American pastor, especially for the pastor who wants to make an “impact” on the culture. Even the word contemplative itself is consigned to the far margins of interest, something to be indulged occasionally, perhaps on a weekend retreat or on a walk through the woods. When I am in Tyler, Texas, and its many suburbs that fill the pews in evangelical congregations all over the country, I am simply overwhelmed with the seeming impossibility of arousing any interest in caring about ways and means—how we live this life the way Jesus led us to do it. The ways and means adopted by all my erstwhile and admiring friends revolve around instant communication, efficiency, hurry, planning, and counting. Anything small or slow, which includes any person small or slow, is treated with condescension.

the ends. Jesus saw through it at once; why are pastors so intoxicated with visions and goals and so muddled when it comes to ways and means? The difficulty is that concern for ways and means, which is the heart of the contemplative life, is very low on the agenda of the American pastor, especially for the pastor who wants to make an “impact” on the culture. Even the word contemplative itself is consigned to the far margins of interest, something to be indulged occasionally, perhaps on a weekend retreat or on a walk through the woods. When I am in Tyler, Texas, and its many suburbs that fill the pews in evangelical congregations all over the country, I am simply overwhelmed with the seeming impossibility of arousing any interest in caring about ways and means—how we live this life the way Jesus led us to do it. The ways and means adopted by all my erstwhile and admiring friends revolve around instant communication, efficiency, hurry, planning, and counting. Anything small or slow, which includes any person small or slow, is treated with condescension. Your mother and I have been thinking about this trust—we have named it the Selah Trust—and so have been trying to get a focus on just what it is that we have been about all our lives and how we want our money to be used in a way consistent with that. The word that keeps coming up is contemplation. What we are looking for is not primarily the causes and ends that people/organizations are committed to, but how they go about it—the test for gospel authenticity is the way, not the what. Standard fundraising is all about the what. Any how will do, so long as it brings in the money. So we find ourselves staying very local, very close to the ground, as we make our decisions and plans. I am not sure, Eric, that this is a letter; it qualifies more as a rant. At one time in the course of those earlier deletions, I started out by reflecting on what it feels like to be seventy. But that will come later. Actually, it feels pretty good. I can’t remember being as reflective regarding any other decade marker. There is a contemplative feel to this one. But maybe I had to get the “rant” out of my system to get down to what is really going on in me. With much love,

The difficulty is that concern for ways and means, which is the heart of the contemplative life, is very low on the agenda of the American pastor, especially for the pastor who wants to make an “impact” on the culture. Even the word contemplative itself is consigned to the far margins of interest, something to be indulged occasionally, perhaps on a weekend retreat or on a walk through the woods. When I am in Tyler, Texas, and its many suburbs that fill the pews in evangelical congregations all over the country, I am simply overwhelmed with the seeming impossibility of arousing any interest in caring about ways and means—how we live this life the way Jesus led us to do it. The ways and means adopted by all my erstwhile and admiring friends revolve around instant communication, efficiency, hurry, planning, and counting. Anything small or slow, which includes any person small or slow, is treated with condescension.