Rugged Cross Quotes

Christ is sufficient. We do not need "support groups" for each and every separate tribulation. The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the same old rugged cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.

A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread. "Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.

Your breathing should flow gracefully, like a river, like a watersnake crossing the water, and not like a chain of rugged mountains or the gallop of a horse. To master our breath is to be in control of our bodies and minds. Each time we find ourselves dispersed and find it difficult to gain control of ourselves by different means, the method of watching the breath should always be used.

I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I'd go looking for the England of English Literature, and he nodded and said: 'It's there.' Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Looking around the rug one thing's for sure: it's here.

[on John Cowper Powys]...there is an indistinct photograph of the great man himself, gazing into the misty cleft of a mountain range, wearing what could be an old rug, or an old cardigan. He looks like a cross between an aged werewolf and a puzzled child.

The cousin was one of those bodies, one of those deaths Gareth tried to keep faceless. The torture of Narvel dying in his arms had been enough. A tired, bitter huff slipped from his lips. "So the lieutenant didn't punish his cousin and now all the colony suffers. When is everyone going to understand that one man's sacrifice is enough?" "They barely accepted one man's sacrifice in Galilee on an old rugged cross. How could they ever weigh the good that can come from realizing no person was more important than the rest?

Regardless of how many books we read, we cling to the old rugged cross. When books overwhelm us, and our intellectual limitations discourage us, we recall the gospel. In the good news of Jesus Christ, overwhelmed readers find peace, and joy, and the courage to keep reading.

Sitting cross-legged on the rug, puffing on a pipe, wearing a fat gold Rolex on his wrist, Khamenei asked the colonel, “If we were to release all of you now, without any conditions, how long would it be before you could begin to supply us again with spare parts for our military forces?

Nick and the Candlestick I am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactites Drip and thicken, tears The earthen womb Exudes from its dead boredom. Black bat airs Wrap me, raggy shawls, Cold homicides. They weld to me like plums. Old cave of calcium Icicles, old echoer. Even the newts are white, Those holy Joes. And the fish, the fish ---- Christ! they are panes of ice, A vice of knives, A piranha Religion, drinking Its first communion out of my live toes. The candle Gulps and recovers its small altitude, Its yellows hearten. O love, how did you get here? O embryo Remembering, even in sleep, Your crossed position. The blood blooms clean In you, ruby. The pain You wake to is not yours. Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses, With soft rugs ---- The last of Victoriana. Let the stars Plummet to their dark address, Let the mercuric Atoms that cripple drip Into the terrible well, You are the one Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.

As the saying goes, I don’t want his blood on the rug.

Istanbul was an illusion. A magician’s trick gone wrong. Istanbul was a dream that existed solely in the minds of hashish eaters. In truth, there was no Istanbul. There were multiple Istanbuls – struggling, competing, clashing, each perceiving that, in the end, only one could survive. There was, for instance, an ancient Istanbul designed to be crossed on foot or by boat – the city of itinerant dervishes, fortune-tellers, matchmakers, seafarers, cotton fluffers, rug beaters and porters with wicker baskets on their backs … There was modern Istanbul – an urban sprawl overrun with cars and motorcycles whizzing back and forth, construction trucks laden with building materials for more shopping centres, skyscrapers, industrial sites … Imperial Istanbul versus plebeian Istanbul; global Istanbul versus parochial Istanbul; cosmopolitan Istanbul versus philistine Istanbul; heretical Istanbul versus pious Istanbul; macho Istanbul versus a feminine Istanbul that adopted Aphrodite – goddess of desire and also of strife – as its symbol and protector … Then there was the Istanbul of those who had left long ago, sailing to faraway ports. For them this city would always be a metropolis made of memories, myths and messianic longings, forever elusive like a lover’s face receding in the mist.

Emptiness was an index. It recorded the incomprehensible chronicle of the metropolis, the demographic realities, how money worked, the cobbled-together lifestyles and roosting habits. The population remained at a miraculous density, it seemed to him, for the empty rooms brimmed with evidence, in the stragglers they did or did not contain, in the busted barricades, in the expired relatives on the futon beds, arms crossed over their chests in ad hoc rites. The rooms stored anthropological clues re: kinship rituals and taboos. How they treated their dead. The rich tended to escape. Entire white-glove buildings were devoid, as Omega discovered after they worried the seams of and then shattered the glass doors to the lobby (no choice, despite the No-No Cards). The rich fled during the convulsions of the great evacuation, dragging their distilled possessions in wheeled luggage of European manufacture, leaving their thousand-dollar floor lamps to attract dust to their silver surfaces and recount luxury to later visitors, bowing like weeping willows over imported pile rugs. A larger percentage of the poor tended to stay, shoving layaway bureaus and media consoles up against the doors. There were those who decided to stay, willfully uncomprehending or stupid or incapacitated by the scope of the disaster, and those who could not leave for a hundred other reasons - because they were waiting for their girlfriend or mother or soul mate to make it home first, because their mobility was compromised or a relative was debilitated, crutched, too young. Because it was too impossible, the enormity of the thought: This is the end. He knew them all from their absences.

He had lived in an apartment with books touching the ceilings, and rugs thick enough to hide dice; then in a room and a half with dirt floors; on forest floors, under unconcerned stars; under the floorboards of a Christian who, half a world and three-quarters of a century away, would have a tree planted to commemorate his righteousness; in a hole for so many days his knees would never wholly unbend; among Gypsies and partisans and half-decent Poles; in transit, refugee, and displaced persons camps; on a boat with a bottle with a boat that an insomniac agnostic had miraculously constructed inside it; on the other side of an ocean he would never wholly cross; above half a dozen grocery stores he killed himself fixing up and selling for small profits; beside a woman who rechecked the locks until she broke them, and died of old age at forty-two without a syllable of praise in her throat but the cells of her murdered mother still dividing in her brain; and finally, for the last quarter century, in a snow-globe-quiet Silver Spring split-level: ten pounds of Roman Vishniac bleaching on the coffee table; Enemies, A Love Story demagnetizing in the world’s last functional VCR; egg salad becoming bird flu in a refrigerator mummified with photographs of gorgeous, genius, tumorless great-grandchildren.

sweetly droning voice of Mother Maybelle Carter, singing “Keep on the Sunny Side.” “Keep on the sunny side, Always on the sunny side, Keep on the sunny side of life, Though your problems may be many It will seem you don’t have any If you keep on the sunny side of life …” The old Buick cruised on and on, making figure eights, loops, sometimes circling the same block three or four times. When it hit a bump (or rolled over a body), the record would skip. At twenty minutes to midnight, the Buick pulled over to the curb and idled. Then it began to roll again. The loudspeaker blared Elvis Presley singing “The Old Rugged Cross,” and a night wind soughed through the trees and stirred a final whiff of smoke from the smoldering ruins of the junior college.

I started dating somebody else. Well, sort of.” “That doesn’t’ sound serious.” She crossed her arms. “It’s personal.” “He turned fully her way then, his eyes darkening. “I took your virginity, baby. We are personal.” … “I believe I took yours, too,” she sputtered. His grin transformed his rugged face from deadly to charming in less than a heartbeat. “That you did. Nicely done, too.

Most of what we got was crockery: from exotic crystal bowls to ceramic anomalies. Then, a cross-section of rugs- from a beautiful Kashmiri original to a memorable one with printed dragons and utterly incomprehensible hieroglyphics. Dibyendu (typically) gave us a scrabble set and Runai Maashi: that rocking chair. Yuppie work friends, trying to be unique and aesthetically offbeat, went for wind-chimes but there were really far too many of them by the end. We also got a fantastic number of white and off-white kurtas, jamdani sarees with complementary blouses, no less than nine suitcases, suit pieces, imported condoms, bed-sheets, bed-covers, coffee makers, coffee tables, coffee-table books, poetry books, used gifts (paintings of sunsets and other disasters), three nights and four days in Darjeeling, along with several variations of Durga, Ganesh and all the usual suspects in ivory, china, terracotta, papier-mâché, and what have you. Someone gave us a calendar that looking back, I think, was laudably sardonic. Others gave us money, in various denominations: from eleven to five hundred and one. And in one envelope, came a letter for her that she read in tears in the bathroom.’ ('Left from Dhakeshwari')

when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip.  She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her.  I do so.  She leads me out into a room adjoining - a rugged room, with a funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright day.  I ask her what it is.  She folds her arms, leers hideously, and stares.  I ask again.  She glances round, to see that all the little company are there; sits down upon a mound of stones; throws up her arms, and yells out, like a fiend, ‘La Salle de la Question!’ The Chamber of Torture!  And the roof was made of that shape to stifle the victim’s cries!  Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us think of this awhile, in silence.  Peace, Goblin!  Sit with your short arms crossed on your short legs, upon that heap of stones, for only five minutes, and then flame out again.

Do you really think my feet smell?” I don’t. I love the way he smells after a lacrosse game--like sweat and grass and him. But I love to tease, to see that unsure look cross his face for just half a beat. “Well, I mean, on game days…” I say. Then Peter attacks me again, and we’re wrestling around, laughing, when Kitty walks in, balancing a tray with a cheese sandwich and a glass of orange juice. “Take it upstairs,” she says, sitting down on the floor. “This is a public area.” Disentangling myself, I give her a glare. “We aren’t doing anything private, Katherine.” “Your sister says my feet stink,” Peter says, pointing his foot in her direction. “She’s lying, isn’t she?” She deflects it with a pop of her elbow. “I’m not smelling your foot.” She shudders. “You guys are kinky.” I yelp and throw a pillow at her. She gasps. “You’re lucky you didn’t knock over my juice! Daddy will kill you if you mess up the rug again.” Pointedly she says, “Remember the nail-polish-remover incident?” Peter ruffles my hair. “Clumsy Lara Jean.” I shove him away from me. “I’m not clumsy. You’re the one who tripped over his own feet trying to get to the pizza the other night at Gabe’s.” Kitty bursts into giggles and Peter throws a pillow at her. “You guys need to stop ganging up on me!” he yells.

I’m spending until dawn with you,” I said firmly. “Don’t bother to argue.” “God forbid,” said Jesse, solemn. I pushed past him into the cottage. He’d been waiting up for me, I could tell. There was a book spread facedown upon the table, a pair of lamps lit beside it. “I thought you said you were resting tonight. “Aye. I was. But then it occurred to me that the bed wasn’t nearly so comfortable without you. So I got up and hoped.” I crossed my arms over my chest and dug my toes into the soft nap of the rug. The cottage had been built within a protective circle of birches; even during the heat of the day, it was never very warm. “You hoped for me?” I asked, uncertain. Jesse came close, put his arms around me, and buried his face in my hair. “As always. As ever.” “And I came,” I whispered, closing my eyes, breathing him. The ache behind my forehead began to unbind. “And you came,” he agreed. And he summoned the magic that was all his own, beyond stars and starfire. A magic of mortal lips and hands, of bristly new whiskers scraping my chin, of melting kisses that made the whiskers unimportant. Our bodies entwined, or hearts. Our lives. I think that was the night a very quiet, very powerful part of me began to comprehend how it was going to be. I think the part of me that was magic, that had broken away from the practical earth to slip along Jesse’s celestial family of stars, to allow them to bind me in their spell… That part of me knew.

And all this time I was keeping my eyes open, or trying to, only they kept closing, because I wanted to go on watching the stars, where the most extraordinary things were happening. A bright satellite, a man-made star, very slowly and somehow carefully crossed the sky in a great arc, from one side to the other, a close arc, one knew it was not far away, a friendly satellite slowly going about its business round and round the globe. And then, much much farther away, stars were quietly shooting and tumbling and disappearing, silently falling and being extinguished, lost utterly silent falling stars, falling from nowhere to nowhere into an unimaginable extinction. How many of them there were, as if the heavens were crumbling at last and being dismantled. And I wanted to show all these things to my father. Later I knew that I had been asleep and I opened my eyes with wonder and the sky had utterly changed again and was no longer dark but bright, golden, gold-dust golden, as if curtain after curtain had been removed behind the stars I had seen before, and now I was looking into the vast interior of the universe, as if the universe were quietly turning itself inside out. Stars behind stars and stars behind stars behind stars until there was nothing between them, nothing beyond them, but dusty dim gold of stars and no space and no light but stars. The moon was gone. The water lapped higher, nearer, touching the rock so lightly it was audible only as a kind of vibration. The sea had fallen dark, in submission to the stars. And the stars seemed to move as if one could see the rotation of the heavens as a kind of vast crepitation, only now there were no more events, no shooting stars, no falling stars, which human senses could grasp or even conceive of. All was movement, all was change, and somehow this was visible and yet unimaginable. And I was no longer I but something pinned down as an atom, an atom of an atom, a necessary captive spectator, a tiny mirror into which it was all indifferently beamed, as it motionlessly seethed and boiled, gold behind gold behind gold. Later still I awoke and it had all gone; and for a few moments I thought that I had seen all those stars only in a dream. There was a weird shocking sudden quiet, as at the cessation of a great symphony or of some immense prolonged indescribable din. Had the stars then been audible as well as visible and had I indeed heard the music of the spheres? The early dawn light hung over the rocks and over the sea, with an awful intent gripping silence, as if it had seized these faintly visible shapes and were very slowly drawing tgem out of a darkness in which they wanted to remain. Even the water was now totally silent, not a tap, not a vibration. The sky was a faintly lucid grey and the sea was a lightless grey, and the rocks were a dark fuzzy greyish brown. The sense of loneliness was far more intense than it had been under the stars. Then I had felt no fear. Now I felt fear. I discovered that I was feeling very stiff and rather cold. The rock beneath me was very hard and I felt bruised and aching. I was surprised to find my rugs and cushions were wet with dew. I got up stiffly and shook them. I looked around me. Mountainous piled-up rocks hid the house. And I saw myself as a dark figure in the midst of this empty awfully silent dawn, where light was scarcely yet light, and I was afraid of myself and quickly lay down again and settled my rug and closed my eyes, lying there stiffly and not imagining that I would sleep again.

This is the hospital's idea of nondenominational." She points around the chapel. There is a crucifix mounted on the wall, a flag of a cross draped over the lectern, and a few paintings of the Madonna and Child hanging in the back."We have a token Star of David," she says, gesturing to the six-pointed star on the wall. "But what about the Muslims? No prayer rugs or symbol to show which way is east towards Mecca? And what about the Buddhists? Couldn't they spring for a gong? I mean there are probably more Buddhists than Jews in Portland anyway.

Like most people, when I look back, the family house is held in time, or rather it is now outside of time, because it exists so clearly and it does not change, and it can only be entered through a door in the mind. I like it that pre-industrial societies, and religious cultures still, now, distinguish between two kinds of time – linear time, that is also cyclical because history repeats itself, even as it seems to progress, and real time, which is not subject to the clock or the calendar, and is where the soul used to live. This real time is reversible and redeemable. It is why, in religious rites of all kinds, something that happened once is re-enacted – Passover, Christmas, Easter, or, in the pagan record, Midsummer and the dying of the god. As we participate in the ritual, we step outside of linear time and enter real time. Time is only truly locked when we live in a mechanised world. Then we turn into clock-watchers and time-servers. Like the rest of life, time becomes uniform and standardised. When I left home at sixteen I bought a small rug. It was my roll-up world. Whatever room, whatever temporary place I had, I unrolled the rug. It was a map of myself. Invisible to others, but held in the rug, were all the places I had stayed – for a few weeks, for a few months. On the first night anywhere new I liked to lie in bed and look at the rug to remind myself that I had what I needed even though what I had was so little. Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you. Why did I leave home when I was sixteen? It was one of those important choices that will change the rest of your life. When I look back it feels like I was at the borders of common sense, and the sensible thing to do would have been to keep quiet, keep going, learn to lie better and leave later. I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it. And here is the shock – when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, then you do not experience great joy and huge energy. You are unhappy. Things get worse. It is a time of mourning. Loss. Fear. We bullet ourselves through with questions. And then we feel shot and wounded. And then all the cowards come out and say, ‘See, I told you so.’ In fact, they told you nothing.

Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the World. Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots who gave up home and fortune and left their Country forever at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon Earth. Take this formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances under which no weakling could survive, place them so that they acquire exceptional skills with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a Country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman and the rider. Then, finally, put a fine temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine all of these qualities and all these impulses in one individual, and you have the modern Boer. The most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain.

Carter stretched his arm out and relaxed into the softness of his own bed a moment before a scream three inches from his ear frightened him out of a few years of his life. He was up, fumbling for matches as the scream came again, echoing off the walls. It didn’t occur to him that he was totally nude until after the match flickered to light. Bailee stared at him with huge frightened eyes, and he stared back until the match burned his finger. They were in blackness once more. Silence. He listened. She didn’t even breathe. “I’m sorry,” he finally managed to stammer as he reached for his clothes only to find them gone from the peg where they were kept. He stumbled over what might be a rug where no rug had ever been before and opened the top drawer of his dresser. Lace and silk greeted his touch, not cotton as he’d expected. He pulled open the second drawer. The same. At the third drawer he decided he must have somehow crossed through the wrong passage. This wasn’t his home. Nothing was in the right place. Trousers flew from nowhere and slapped him across the face. ”Thank you,” he mumbled as he untangled them from around his neck. “You’re welcome,” came a whisper from the blackness.

He just wanted a walk- and a few books. It had been an age since he'd even had free time to read, let alone do so for pleasure. But there she was. His mate. She was nothing like Jesminda. Jesminda had been all laughter and mischief, too wild and free to be contained by the country life that she'd been born into. She had teased him, taunted him- seduced him so thoroughly that he hadn't wanted anything but her. She'd seen him not as a High Lord's seventh son, but as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him. Elain had been... thrown at him. He glanced toward the tea service spread on a low-lying table nearby. 'I'm going to assume that one of those cups belongs to your sister.' Indeed, there was a discarded book in the viper's usual chair. Cauldron help the male who wound up shackled to her. 'Do you mind if I held myself to the other?' He tried to sound casual- comfortable. Even as his heart raced and raced, so swift he thought he might vomit on the very expensive, very old carpet. From Sangravah, if the patterns and rich dyes were any indication. Rhysand was many things, but he certainly had good taste. The entire place had been decorated with thought and elegance, with a penchant for comfort over stuffiness. He didn't want to admit he liked it. Didn't want to admit he found the city beautiful. That the circle of people who now claimed to be Feyre's new family... It was what, long ago, he'd once thought life at Tamlin's court would be. An ache like a blow to the chest went through him, but he crossed the rug. Forced his hands to be steady while he poured himself a cup of tea and sat in the chair opposite Nesta's vacated one. 'There's a plate of biscuits. Would you like one?' He didn't expect her to answer, and he gave himself all of one more minute before he'd rise from this chair and leave, hopefully avoiding Nesta's return. But sunlight on gold caught his eye- and Elain slowly turned from her vigil at the window. He had not seen her entire face since that day in Hybern. Then, it had been drawn and terrified, then utterly blank and numb, her hair plastered to her head, her lips blue with cold and shock. Looking at her now... She was pale, yes. The vacancy still glazing her features. But he couldn't breathe as she faced him fully. She was the most beautiful female he'd ever seen. Betrayal, queasy and oily, slid through his veins. He'd said the same to Jesminda once. But even as shame washed through him, the words, the sense chanted, Mine. You are mine, and I am yours. Mate.

Chaworth," the dark-haired man beside him intervened quietly, "if I may speak." The speaker was ruggedly attractive, with boldly hewn features and the sun-browned complexion of an avid outdoorsman. Although he was not young- his black locks were liberally shot with steel, and time had deepened the laugh-lines around his eyes and the brackets between his nose and mouth- he certainly couldn't have been called old. Not with that air of robust health, and the presence of a man with considerable authority. "I've known the lad since the day he was born," he continued, voice deep and a bit gravelly. "As you know, his father is a close friend. I'll vouch for his character, and his word. For the girl's sake, I suggest that we hold our silence and handle the matter with discretion." "I am also acquainted with his father," Lord Chaworth snapped, "who plucked many a fair flower in his day. Obviously the son is following in his footsteps. No, Westcliff, I will not remain silent- he must be held accountable for his actions." Westcliff? Pandora glanced at him with alert interest. She had heard of the Earl of Westcliff, who, after the Duke of Norfolk, held the oldest and most respectable peerage title in England. His vast Hampshire estate, Stony Cross Park, was famed for its fishing, hunting, and shooting.

I stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with sitting at a distance from the drawing-room fire. I felt now as composed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy’s appearance to trouble one’s calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf-locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with a bold and direct gaze. “Well, and you want your fortune told?” she said, in a voice as decided as her glance, as harsh as her features. “I don’t care about it, mother; you may please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I have no faith.” “It’s like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it in your step as you crossed the threshold.” “Did you? You’ve a quick ear.” “I have; and a quick eye and a quick brain.” “You need them all in your trade.” “I do; especially when I’ve customers like you to deal with. Why don’t you tremble?” “I’m not cold.” “Why don’t you turn pale?” “I am not sick.” “Why don’t you consult my art?” “I’m not silly.” The old crone “nichered” a laugh under her bonnet and bandage; she then drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke.

What the hell is that?' Cassian was grinning that next evening as he waved a hand toward the pile of pine boughs dumped on the ornate red rug in the centre of the foyer. 'Solstice decorations. Straight from the market.' Snow clung to his broad shoulders and dark hair, and his tan cheeks were flushed with cold. 'You call that a decoration? He smirked. 'A heap of pine in the middle of the floor is Night Court tradition.' I crossed my arms. 'Funny.' 'I'm serious.' I glared, and he laughed. 'It's for the mantels, the banister, and whatever else, smartass. Want to help?' He shrugged off his heavy coat, revealing a black jacket and shirt beneath, and hung it in the hall closet. I remained where I was and tapped my foot. 'What?' he said, brows rising. It was rare to see Cassian in anything but his Illyrian leathers, but the clothes, while not as fine as anything Rhys or Mor usually favoured, suited him. 'Dumping a bunch of trees at my feet is really how you say hello these days? A little time in that Illyrian camp and you forget all your manners.' Cassian was on me in a second, hoisting me off the ground to twirl me until I was going to be sick. I beat at his chest, cursing at him. Cassian set me down at last. 'What did you get me for Solstice?' I smacked his arm. 'A heaping pile of shut the hell up.' He laughed again, and I winked at him. 'Hot cocoa or wine?' Cassian curved a wing around me, turning us toward the cellar door. 'How many good bottles does little Rhysie have left?

… The most important contribution you can make now is taking pride in your treasured home state. Because nobody else is. Study and cherish her history, even if you have to do it on your own time. I did. Don’t know what they’re teaching today, but when I was a kid, American history was the exact same every year: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock, Pilgrims, Thomas Paine, John Hancock, Sons of Liberty, tea party. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we have to start somewhere— we’ll get to Florida soon enough.’…Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks, Paul Revere, the North Church, ‘Redcoats are coming,’ one if by land, two if by sea, three makes a crowd, and I’m sitting in a tiny desk, rolling my eyes at the ceiling. Hello! Did we order the wrong books? Were these supposed to go to Massachusetts?…Then things showed hope, moving south now: Washington crosses the Delaware, down through original colonies, Carolinas, Georgia. Finally! Here we go! Florida’s next! Wait. What’s this? No more pages in the book. School’s out? Then I had to wait all summer, and the first day back the next grade: Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock…Know who the first modern Floridians were? Seminoles! Only unconquered group in the country! These are your peeps, the rugged stock you come from. Not genetically descended, but bound by geographical experience like a subtropical Ellis Island. Because who’s really from Florida? Not the flamingos, or even the Seminoles for that matter. They arrived when the government began rounding up tribes, but the Seminoles said, ‘Naw, we prefer waterfront,’ and the white man chased them but got freaked out in the Everglades and let ’em have slot machines…I see you glancing over at the cupcakes and ice cream, so I’ll limit my remaining remarks to distilled wisdom: “Respect your parents. And respect them even more after you find out they were wrong about a bunch of stuff. Their love and hard work got you to the point where you could realize this. “Don’t make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must. “If someone isn’t kind to animals, ignore anything they have to say. “Your best teachers are sacrificing their comfort to ensure yours; show gratitude. Your worst are jealous of your future; rub it in. “Don’t talk to strangers, don’t play with matches, don’t eat the yellow snow, don’t pull your uncle’s finger. “Skip down the street when you’re happy. It’s one of those carefree little things we lose as we get older. If you skip as an adult, people talk, but I don’t mind. “Don’t follow the leader. “Don’t try to be different—that will make you different. “Don’t try to be popular. If you’re already popular, you’ve peaked too soon. “Always walk away from a fight. Then ambush. “Read everything. Doubt everything. Appreciate everything. “When you’re feeling down, make a silly noise. “Go fly a kite—seriously. “Always say ‘thank you,’ don’t forget to floss, put the lime in the coconut. “Each new year of school, look for the kid nobody’s talking to— and talk to him. “Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work. “Cherish freedom of religion: Protect it from religion. “Remember that a smile is your umbrella. It’s also your sixteen-in-one reversible ratchet set. “ ‘I am rubber, you are glue’ carries no weight in a knife fight. “Hang on to your dreams with everything you’ve got. Because the best life is when your dreams come true. The second-best is when they don’t but you never stop chasing them. So never let the authority jade your youthful enthusiasm. Stay excited about dinosaurs, keep looking up at the stars, become an archaeologist, classical pianist, police officer or veterinarian. And, above all else, question everything I’ve just said. Now get out there, class of 2020, and take back our state!

Kiril glanced around the darkened room. He walked to a leather chair and sat, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. “Did you know that during the Fae Wars the Dark took two Dragon Kings? At different times, of course.” “I suppose they escaped as well? Are you telling me we don’t know how to hold a Dragon King?” “The Dark did . . . things to my brethren. One completely lost his mind and attacked us, which is what the Dark wanted. He had to be killed. The other King knew what was happening to him, but he couldna stop it. He came to us and begged to be killed before he could harm one of us.” Shara sipped her whisky before she said, “You lost two Kings and I lost seven siblings.” “And the Light the Dark took?” “The Dark take the Light and the Light take the Dark.” Kiril let his gaze drift down her body. How he itched to have her long legs wrapped around him. Things would be so much easier if he didn’t desire her as he did, but there wasn’t a switch he could flip and turn off his body’s reaction. The more he tried to ignore the growing desire, the more it raged uncontrollably within him. He gave himself a mental shake and returned to their conversation. “What’s the plan, then? Will the Dark storm in here and try to capture me?” Shara walked around the room, her hand skimming along the backs of the chairs. “No.” “No?” Kiril set aside his glass on the table next to him and silently rose to his feet. He followed her as if a string tied them together. “What then?” “You don’t really want to know.” Kiril spun her around so hard that her glass flew from her hand and landed upon a rug, spilling the whisky but not breaking the crystal. “Tell me,” he demanded in a soft, deadly voice. “My job is to seduce you.” She held her stance for a heartbeat before she retreated, taking two steps back. He tracked her until she was once more in the entryway. The shadows darkened everything, and yet the smallest sliver of moonlight found her, illuminating her in a pale blue glow. No longer could he deny what he wanted. Perhaps it was her confession. Maybe it was because he hadn’t taken to the skies in weeks. Whatever it was, all he knew was that he had to have her or go up in flames. “Then seduce me.

…Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. —Philippians 3:13 (NKJV) Chuck Lawrence is the minister at Christ Temple Church in Huntington, West Virginia. He’s also an accomplished musician and songwriter. In the 1980s, he wrote “He Grew the Tree,” which won a variety of accolades, including several Dove Awards. Barbara Mandrell recorded the sacred song about Calvary, which spoke of God nurturing the very tree that would become the old rugged cross. But today in his sermon Chuck had a different take on his accomplishment. He referred to Philippians 3:13, which says we are to forget those things that are behind us. “I believe that means even the good things. In 1982 I wrote ‘He Grew the Tree,’ but it’s not supposed to be my pinnacle. God wants us to look forward with anticipation to each new day.” Chuck’s words gave me pause. The 1980s were banner years for me too. I wrote for ten home-decorating magazines, where my byline was featured. Now, given the many changes in the publishing industry, I’m hard-pressed to find even one of my own articles. Chuck was urging me to look forward—not to yesterday, but to now, glorious today. Today’s a brand-new era, Lord. Help me to really look forward to it. Amen. —Roberta Messner Digging Deeper: Jer 29:11; Phil 3

Please tell me we don’t have to go all the way upstairs for a condom,” she said. “Back pocket.” She leaned with him as he fished it out, then tried to help him get his jeans down over his hips. Her foot hit the coffee table, which snagged on the throw rug and sent the Scrabble tiles sliding all over the board. She laughed as he tore open the condom packet. “Now nobody wins.” “I was ahead.” He put one hand on her hip, using the other to guide himself into her. “So I win.” Emma moaned as he filled her, bracing herself against the couch with a hand on either side of his head. “The game wasn’t over. It’s a draw.” He pulled down on her hips as he drove up into her, making her gasp. “Ties are for pussies. Admit I won.” She looked down into his blue eyes, crinkled with amusement as he grinned at her. God, she loved…having sex with this man. “One good word isn’t a victory.” “That’s not what the score sheet said.” He stopped moving, and when she tried to rock against him, he held down on her hips so she couldn’t move, either. Then he had the nerve to chuckle at her growl of sexual frustration. “Admit it. I can sit here all night.” “Oh, really?” She went straight for a known weak spot—nipping at his earlobe before sucking it into her mouth. He let go of her hips with one hand, intending to push her mouth away, but she rocked her hips. He groaned and put his hand back. She breathed softly against his ear and then ran her tongue along the outside. “Admit I was going to win,” she whispered, “because I can do this all night.” With one leg, he kicked at the table, sending it over and the letter tiles flying. Before Emma could react, she was on her back on the throw rug with Sean between her legs and her hands held over her head. “I don’t lose.” He crossed her wrists so he could hold them with one hand, then used the other to pull her leg up over his hip so he was totally buried in her. “Give up?” She shook her head, but couldn’t hold back the sigh as he oh, so slowly withdrew almost completely and then just as slowly filled her again. “You’re cheating.” He did it again and again, the slow friction delicious and frustrating, until they were both trembling and on the edge. Then, as he was pulling out of her once again with a self-control that made her want to scream, it became a matter of life or death, because she was going to die if she didn’t get what her body was looking for. “Okay, fine. You win.” He drove into her hard, his fingers biting into her wrists before he released them so he could lift her legs to her shoulder. She cried his name as his fingers dug into her hips and he gave them what they both wanted. When he collapsed on top of her, breathing hard against her neck, she wrapped her legs and arms around him, holding him close. “Another one for the win column,” he said once they’d caught their breath. “It has an asterisk, though, because you totally cheated.” “All’s fair in sex and Scrabble, baby.” He propped his head on his hand and smiled down at her. “What should we play next?” “I’ve still got clothes on. You’ve still got clothes on. Maybe we should break out a deck of cards.” “You’re my kinda girl, Emma Shaw,” he said, and thankfully, he was in the process of getting up off the floor, because she didn’t think she did a good job of hiding how happy those words made her.

pale-gray rug. Several pieces of chrome-and-black-leather

The main obstacle between the Indian and Pacific Oceans is the continent of Australia, and the earliest Dutch discoveries in the seventeenth century were off Australia’s west coast. But Tasman’s route took him so far south that he missed the Australian mainland altogether, and the first body of land he met with after leaving Mauritius was the island, later named in his honor, of Tasmania. Continuing on to the east, he crossed what is now the Tasman Sea, and about a week later he sighted a “groot hooch verheven landt”—“a large land, uplifted high.” It can be difficult to tell how large a body of land is from the sea—European explorers were constantly mistaking islands for continents—but this time it was unmistakable. The land before them was dark and rugged, with ranks of serried mountains receding deep into an interior overhung with clouds. A heavy sea beat upon the rocky coast, “rolling towards it in huge billows and swells,” offering no obvious place to go ashore. So Tasman turned and followed the land as it stretched away to the northeast. For

There is a lot of suffering that takes place in the world, a lot of evil. If we are going to have a religion that is worth anything to us, if we are going to believe in a God who makes any difference in our lives, we have to know the very worst that happens. This is the worst. And this worst is not a kind of embarrassed exception to everything else. It is the climax. This is that toward which everything has moved. The cross of Jesus is not an unfortunate episode that we should try to sweep under the rug, the skeleton in the closet of the gospel. This is the place of arrival, the goal. And none of us fails to be moved by it. If Jesus could enter this world and be unflinchingly courageous in this extreme adversity, be such a magnificent “failure,” then I can also live with meaning and love in whatever comes my way.

Hymn for the 81% By Daniel Deitrich I grew up in your churches Sunday morning and evening service Knelt in tears at the foot of the rugged cross  You taught me every life is sacred Feed the hungry, clothe the naked I learned from you the highest law is Love  I believed you when you said That I should trust the words in red To guide my steps through a wicked world I assumed you’d do the same So imagine my dismay When I watched you lead the sheep to the wolves  You said to love the lost  So I’m loving you now You said to speak the truth  So I’m calling you out  Why don’t you live the words That you put in my mouth May love overcome and justice roll down They started putting kids in cages Ripping mothers from their babies And I looked to you to speak on their behalf  But all I heard was silence Or worse you justified it Singing glory hallelujah raise the flag  Your fear had turned to hatred But you baptized it with language torn from the pages of the good book You weaponized religion And you wonder why I’m leaving To find Jesus on the wrong side of your walls  You said to love the lost  So I’m loving you now You said to speak the truth  So I’m calling you out  Why don’t you live the words That you put in my mouth May love overcome and justice roll down Come home, come home  You’re better than this You taught me better than this  Come home, come home  You’re better than this You taught me better than this You said to love the lost  I’m trying to love you now You said to speak the truth  So I’m calling you out  Why don’t you live the words That you put in my mouth May love overcome and justice roll down May love overcome and justice roll down May love overcome and justice roll down

The most spectacular display of God’s glory is in a bloody instrument of torture because that is where God’s goodness was most displayed. It is good to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus,” but we must also sing, “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame”—because there God displayed his glory in Christ Jesus, who thus became our tabernacle, our temple, the meeting place between God and human beings.

Without taking use of ox or man, Or of creature as Mary desired, Without spinning thread of silk or of satin, Without sowing, without harrowing, without reaping, Without rowing, without games, without fishing, Without going to the hunting hill, Without trimming arrows on the Lord's Day, Without cleaning byre, without threshing corn, Without kiln, without mill on the Lord's Day. Whosoever would keep the Lord's Day, Even would it be to him and lasting, From setting of sun on Saturday Till rising of sun on Monday.17 Beltaine remained the central festival in the cycle of the agricultural pastoral year, the season of light, the time of growth. It was then that the sheep and cattle would be driven up to the summer pastures, the “shielings” in Scotland, the “hafods” in Wales. This was a virtual migration since these might be six or eight or even twelve or fourteen miles away, and it often meant crossing land that was rough and rugged or full of swamps, even sometimes having to swim across channels or rivers. The procession included the men carrying spades, ropes, and other things that might be needed to repair their summer huts, while the women carried the bedding, meal, and dairy utensils. As they went, there were songs to be sung on the journey, a dedicatory hymn to the Trinity and to the most familiar of the saints, Michael, Bride, and Columba, respectively the protector, the woman who knew about dairies, the guardian of their cattle—and, of course, to Mary herself, who on this occasion they address as mother of the White Lamb: Valiant Michael of the white steeds, Who subdued the Dragon of blood, For love of God, for pains of Mary's Son, Spread

From Alan Thein Duening: Picture North America from space. Look at the upper left and start an imaginary line on the rugged coast of southern Alaska. Climb the ridges that encircle Prince William Sound. Cross the snowy teeth of the Chugach Mountains and descend through kettle-pond country to the feet of the towering Alaska Range. Rise again to the bitter heights and turning southeast along the crest, clip the corner of the Yukon Territory. Enter British Columbia and veer east through its folding north. Turn your line south when you reach the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains. Follow the divide down the thousand-mile spine of British Columbia, across Montana, along the buttressed ridges of the Idaho border and into Wyoming as far as Jackson Hole. There, leave the divide and turn westward toward the coast. Following the swells and benches that limit the Columbia Basin, dip southward into Utah and Nevada, then northward again around the high desert of central Oregon. When you approach the Cascade Mountains, veer southwest through the tangled topography of northern California to the crest of the Coast Range. Just north of San Francisco Bay, descend to the shores of the Pacific. The line you have drawn is an unfamiliar one. You won’t find it on maps. But it shows a geographical unit more real, in ecological sense, than any of the lines governments draw. You have drawn a biological region, a bioregion. Specifically, you have outlines the watersheds of rivers flowing into the Pacific Ocean through North America’s temperate rain forest zone with a fifteen-hundred-mile belt of rain forests along the coast. The unity of this diverse bioregion is the movement of its water; every ounce of moisture that the ocean throws into the sky and the sky hurls down on the land inside this region’s borders tumbles toward the rain forest coast. If it does not evaporate or get trapped in underground aquifers along the way, water will reach that dripping shoreline through one of several hundred swift, cold rivers. Most likely, it will travel through the Columbia or the Fraser rivers, home to the Earth’s greatest population of migrating salmon. This place, defined by water running to woodlands, has no perfect name. You can call it Rain Forest Province, the North Pacific Slope, or Cascadia… Natural units of place such as this have always mattered more to people than has humanity in general or the planet in its entirety. Indeed, history is unequivocal; people will sacrifice for villages, homelands, or nations, even giving their lives. But humans seem unwilling to sacrifice for their planet, despite the fact that it is now suffering proportionately greater losses from social decay and environmental destruction than most countries at war.

Oh my God, Carter!” I sprang to my feet, already in a run. I crashed into Carter, hugging him tightly, “What are you doing here?!” “Damn Blaze. Where’s my Harper and what have you done with her?” I blushed and crossed my arms over my chest, “Uh, yeah. I guess I look a little different.” He ran a finger near the piercing on my lip, “A little.” He smiled and hugged me to him again. “I missed you Blaze.” “I missed you too.” I said into his chest, “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were coming. I would have been at the airport to get you.” “Well that wouldn’t have been half as fun as your reaction just now.” I leaned back to smile at him. He was tall too, not like Chase or Brandon, but close to six feet. His black hair was in the traditional fade the Marine’s had and his brown eyes were bright. “How long do you get to be here for?” He smiled wide and opened his mouth to talk, but was cut off. “Harper?” Turning, I saw Brandon staring at Carter, he didn’t look happy. And I could only imagine how after what happened last night with Amanda, me taking off and almost tackling a random guy while in a bikini would be a little alarming. Especially since Carter still had his arms wrapped around my waist. Stepping back toward Brandon, I grabbed his hand and squeezed, “Brandon this is my best friend from Camp Lejeune, Jason Carter, Carter, this is my boyfriend Brandon Taylor.” They firmly shook hands but didn’t say anything. Awkward. “Um, why don’t we head back over there? I can introduce you to everyone else.” I pulled Brandon back towards our friends while I was introduced to the three guys Carter had been with. He was right, I didn’t know them, but Carter had never been to California so I didn’t know how he knew them either. I introduced Carter and the three guys to everyone, and while all the housemates and Konrad were polite, Chase wouldn’t speak to, or shake Carter’s hand. Just crossed his arms over his bare chest and openly glared at him. What threw me off even more, was Brandon standing right next to him, in the exact same stance. It didn’t surprise me that Carter took a step back, those guys could look scary if they wanted to. Rugged looks, tall tattooed and muscled bodies. Yep. Definitely scary to someone who didn’t know them.

The Cross is a rugged place, not a place for the squeamish or self-righteous.

Perhaps her abruptness was merely part of her personality, for she had the appearance of the worst kind of bureaucrat, the aspiring one, from blunt, square haircut to blunt, clean fingernails to blunt, efficient pumps. But perhaps it was me, still morally disoriented from the crapulent major’s death, as well as the apparition of his severed head at the wedding banquet. The emotional residue of that night was like a drop of arsenic falling into the still waters of my soul, nothing having changed from the taste of it but everything now tainted. So perhaps that was why when I crossed over the threshold into the marble foyer, I instantly suspected that the cause of her behavior was my race. What she saw when she looked at me must have been my yellowness, my slightly smaller eyes, and the shadow cast by the ill fame of the Oriental’s genitals, those supposedly minuscule privates disparaged on many a public restroom wall by semiliterates. I might have been just half an Asian, but in America it was all or nothing when it came to race. You were either white or you weren’t. Funnily enough, I had never felt inferior because of my race during my foreign student days. I was foreign by definition and therefore was treated as a guest. But now, even though I was a card-carrying American with a driver’s license, Social Security card, and resident alien permit, Violet still considered me as foreign, and this misrecognition punctured the smooth skin of my self-confidence. Was I just being paranoid, that all-American characteristic? Maybe Violet was stricken with colorblindness, the willful inability to distinguish between white and any other color, the only infirmity Americans wished for themselves. But as she advanced along the polished bamboo floors, steering clear of the dusky maid vacuuming a Turkish rug, I just knew it could not be so. The flawlessness of my English did not matter. Even if she could hear me, she still saw right through me, or perhaps saw someone else instead of me, her retinas burned with the images of all the castrati dreamed up by Hollywood to steal the place of real Asian men. Here I speak of those cartoons named Fu Manchu, Charlie Chan, Number One Son, Hop Sing—Hop Sing!—and the bucktoothed, bespectacled Jap not so much played as mocked by Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The performance was so insulting it even deflated my fetish for Audrey Hepburn, understanding as I did her implicit endorsement of such loathsomeness.

When we reached his door, he went inside, leaving it open for me to follow. I stepped across the threshold and closed out the hall, then surveyed what lay before me: a lavish main room much like mine in Hytanica, with a fireplace; a rich, comfortable sofa upon which Narian settled; several armchairs; a carved wooden table scattered with papers; and two bookshelves stocked with volumes. Heavy drapes covered one wall, and when I crossed the thick rug that blanketed the floor to push the fabric aside, I learned the reason--they hid a set of large windows. I turned around and saw that an expansive mural covered the wall above and to the sides of the door. It combined horses, a sunrise and sunset, stars in a deep blue sky, noblewomen and men, creatures of myth and a Cokyrian flag into a single stunning piece of artwork. Intricate tapestries were common in Hytanica, but I had never seen anything approaching the beauty of this painting before. Narian was content to let me explore, so I approached the table, skimming the papers atop it, which ranged from correspondence and scrawled notes to maps and battle strategies. Spying his bedroom beyond, which was open to the main room but secluded by a wall, I glanced at him for approval, and went inside upon his nod. His bed was built into a corner, on a raised platform, permitting access from only one side by what appeared to be a climbing net. Practical for a military man--and fun for a child. He followed me, stopping in the archway to watch me explore his private space. “May I?” I asked, crossing to his wardrobe, for I was curious about the style of his attire here in Cokyri, and he again motioned me ahead. I glanced between Narian and the clothing inside the wardrobe several times, trying to understand the disparity. The Narian I knew dressed practically, ever a soldier, thinking of comfort and of blending into his surroundings. Yet he possessed a collection of rich clothing, the fabrics similar to what I would have expected to find in Steldor’s or my father’s wardrobe, not in his. Mounted on the inside of one of the doors were dress swords, and on the other, shelves that held jewels far more valuable than anything we had in Hytanica. “Narian, this is…” I started, then shook my head in wonder. “Ridiculous, I know.” He crossed to his bed and leaned against the netting. “No!” I exclaimed. “It’s unbelievably beautiful.” I pointed to an exquisite ruby ring and flashed him a smile. “This could have been my betrothal ring.

Forneus?” Great. That was just the maggot-licking bastard he needed to suffer in this mood. What? Were the gods really that bored? Reining in his temper as best he could, he turned to find the last creature he wanted to face. Second only to his father. Folding his wings down, Thorn crossed his arms over his chest. “Michael … been a while.” Seven feet in height, he was a massive bastard. Whereas most of the Seraphim were pretty enough to pass as women, Michael was ruggedly handsome. No one would ever mistake him for a Seraphia. And in his Seraph form, he was snow white—armor, weapons, every part of him. Even his eyes were a stark silvery blue. So it was always shocking to Thorn how dark the tool was whenever he donned a more human appearance. Dark hair, tanned skin. The only thing that remained the same were those celestial blue eyes that glittered like spiked icicles in front of a setting sun. And they had the same effect today that they always did on him. He wanted to punch the sanctimonious bastard in the face. “What are you doing here, Mikey? Last I heard, none of you would sully yourself by crossing the boundary into this dimension.” “You have something that belongs to me.” “No. I have something that belongs to your bloodline and I promised her that I’d return it. So sod off.

Andy smiled. “How many guns does an Alaskan need?” Vic made an I-don’t-know face. “Just one more,” I told him. Andy laughed.

Second, there is the attempt by some to justify the rise of the prisons by claiming, “well, we have to do something about those people who fail to act ‘responsibly,’ who, for whatever reason, are ‘disruptive and violent’.” As I consider this kind of response, let us recall that the most “disruptive and violent” in our society are actually the architects of U.S. war and of carceral state terror. Their acts are usually accepted, assumed by public ideologies to be innocent. Moreover, the violations by the rich, as distinct from those by the poor, are often swept under the rug, routinely treated with less harshness, if punished at all. One major example of this is the fact that the most widespread use and distribution of drugs is by whites, even though black and Latinos are punished more for drug use at strikingly higher rates.

There’s nowhere I’d rather be than here with you.” She drops onto the rug across from me and crosses her legs.

... crept up on his brother, quiet as a Shaolin monk crossing a shag rug... Not sure if he meant to; you learn to do things real quiet in prison.

While Hizb made inroads in Nangarhar, it also exploited the rising discontent sweeping through rural areas close to Kabul. Since late 1978 ethnic Hazaras in the rugged central region around Bamiyan had been rising up against the government. The regime responded by forming a Pashtun militia in neighbouring Wardak province to deploy against the rebels. On 4 June 1979—as the communist sergeant was being executed in Nangahrar—a delegation of Pashtuns drove to the district centre of Chak to collect the government-issue weapons they were meant to use against the Hazaras. With thousands of brand new rifles in their possession, the Pashtuns then turned on the government. The double cross had been hatched by a local council of scholars, elders, farmers and labourers who did not claim fealty to any mujahideen party. Later that summer, Hizb made the most of the rebellion, sending one of its commanders to establish a unit of fighters inside Chak. The commander had been living in Peshawar but was from Chak and had known Hekmatyar for nearly a decade. Using the friendships he already enjoyed within the community and the help of former Muslim Youth members, he ensured that Hizb quickly picked up support in and around the district

After her fourth glass of anisette she lay down on the rug, her head almost at the foot of the hearth. She stretched out her arms and closed her eyes. I couldn’t help but compare her to a heavenly image. The only thing missing was a cross.

It's... One Batch, Two Batch, Penny and Dime, you know? It was her favorite book. You gotta cross the ocean, and go fight. You see, whole time you're thinking you're gonna be scared, right? But then you're not. See, that part of it was always easy for me. Killing. Even watching my buddies die, it just didn't mean nothing. The first time I got scared was on a plane on the way home. I kept thinking God was gonna pull the rug out from under us, you know? Shit, that's his kind of funny, you know. But the plane landed safe and we were home. Driving through traffic. Yeah, you pass fast food and donut shops and all that greasy shit, the shit you fought to protect, and then the car stops. We were outside her school. I get to her classroom, right? She's in there, but she's got no idea. She's got no idea Daddy's home. I walk in, these kids, they're not even studying, they're-they're doing some kind of yoga. Yeah. You know? She's there. She's doing her poses, you know, she's bending and, you know, she's moving. She looks like a flower. Yeah. And you know, you can't even understand it, you know, how does something like that have... How does something that beautiful have... How does that... how does that come from me, you know? And she looks up and she sees me. I see her. By God, that's real. That's real, Red. Boom. In an instant, she's across that classroom floor, she's in my arms. She's squeezing me so tight, I swear I was gonna bust a rib, you know? We just stayed there like that, we're holding each other. Teacher's filming the whole thing on her phone, you know, she's gonna put it on YouTube or some shit. She can't hold the thing steady, because, you know, she's... she's bawling so hard, and the kids are all wailing, you know, they're screaming. And me? Shit, I'm the worst of all. I'm a... I'm a rubber-faced clown, you know? I cried so hard. But not my baby. Not my girl. You know, she's my girl. She's... she's not crying, she's holding me up. My girl, she's keeping me on my feet. She says, "I knew it, Daddy. I knew it." And then we go home. To the wife, the boy. Place is the exact same, it's like it was just holding its breath waiting for me to get back, you know? Then it hit me. All of it, you know? The first time I felt how tired I was, you know, I was just tired, you know? You ever been tired, Red?

The instruments that I liked the most were the flautos and recorders, especially the lovely flauto in the box with blue velvet. It was so beautiful I had been shy about even touching it, but one day I worked up my courage and took it out of the cabinet. I placed the mouthpiece to my lips and blew. A loud ringing note came out, startling me so that I almost dropped the instrument. But I held on and tried again. As that second note died away, the white bear entered the room. I fought down the instinct to hide the flauto behind my back as though I were a naughty child caught playing with grown-up things. As he came closer I could read a sort of yearning in his eyes. He lay down on the rug near the cabinet and looked up expectantly, as he did in the weaving room when he was ready to hear a story. I shook my head. “I don’t know how to play,” I explained, my cheeks a little red. “Play,” he said. “I can’t.” But he just stared at me with those yearning eyes. So I tried. And though the tone of the instrument was lovely, my playing sounded like two birds of different pitch scolding each other. The white bear closed his eyes and flattened his ears against the sound. “Well, I warned you,” I said. Then he got up and crossed to a polished wooden chest, and, using a large paw, pushed the top up. I could see bundles of paper inside, some bound, some tied with ribbon. I knew what the papers were. “I cannot read music,” I said. The white bear sighed. Then he turned and left the room. After he’d gone I went to the chest and sat down beside it, taking out a bundle of the papers with music written on them. It became my new project, learning to read music. I was lucky to find a book in the chest that showed which note corresponded to which hole on the flauto. Occasionally the white bear would come into the music room and sit and listen while I practiced, which made me self-conscious. But he never stayed long. It was as if he could only take it so long, hearing the music he knew mangled beyond all recognizable shape.

- Can you keep secrets? - Yesss. - We are going to make one of the biggest coffeeshops in Barcelona with my boss, Adam. - Realllllly? - This Adam guy is kind of my friend and kind of my boss, but I don't trust him; he is a bad guy. “Bad to the bone.” His father is an even darker figure. I am pretty sure that both have killed before, hired to kill people. - I am from Buenos Airessss. - I understand honey but you don’t know this kind of people, these f…g desert roses. - There are Jewish people in Argentina too. - I am sure, baby, but these are not regular Jewish people, not regular Israeli people. These people are dark. Hocus-pocus. Criminal minds. Do you understand? - I guessss. - There are a lot of criminals in this town. They will try to take our club away, just like the Camorra is taking away other people's clubs. Just like that. Do you understand? - Yessss. - I know them; they are one of my clients. If there is anyone in the world who could make a deal with them, it would be me and Adam. He cannot cross me and I cannot cross him either. I would never do that. I am not sure about him though what is on his mind, I can tell there is something he is orchestrating I just don’t know what exactly, but he is as fishy as Sabrina. The problem is that only my ex-girlfriend knows about my signature on the non-profit organization, which is the base of the coffeeshop, the marijuana grow and the smoker club. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - We are talking about millions of Euros monthly cashflow. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - By telling you everything now, you are becoming my trusted; your life is in danger too if they manage to find a gap between us. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - I'm not sure what they're up to. They owe me already more money than anyone in this town would murder for. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - Now you know about it, too. Sabrina didn't care; she didn't think I would make it happen. She doesn’t know about the place. Only you know about it and us. But she will figure it out somehow; she will try to take your position, slipping between the criminals. Do you know how to play chess? - Not really. - OK then. Imagine this as a throne, these chairs you are sitting on top of. OK. No one can remove you from this throne being my girlfriend, no one can stand between us. No one can take the club away from us. They have no chance. Understand? - Yesss. - As long as you stick with me, she cannot do anything; no one can mess with us. Do you understand? - Yes. Everyone in the world would try to take your place, being my girlfriend, and they will try to push you out from this position, which only me I can give you, with Love. They will tell you lies about me and about themselves who’s club is it. Do you understand? - Yes. But why? - Because Rachel and Tom, the other two founding members of the club, Golan, I signed up with, are Adam's puppets. I don't trust any one of them. If they kill me, they never have to pay me what they owe me already, plus they can keep the 33% of the club which belongs to me. 100% Adam would keep. Do you understand now? - Yessss. - We will pull all the trash out and remodel the place without any permit, under the rug, in secret. - I sssseeee. (Eye. See.)

This motion, her fingers striking words onto a blank page, cross-legged on a rug. It grounded her.

- Can you keep secrets? - Yesss. - We are going to make one of the biggest coffeeshops in Barcelona with my boss, Adam. - Realllllly? - This Adam guy is kind of my friend and kind of my boss, but I don't trust him; he is a bad guy. “Bad to the bone.” His father is an even darker figure. I am pretty sure that both have killed before, hired to kill people. - I am from Buenos Airessss. - I understand honey but you don’t know this kind of people, these f…g desert roses. - There are Jewish people in Argentina too. - I am sure, baby, but these are not regular Jewish people, not regular Israeli people. These people are dark. Hocus-pocus. Criminal minds. Do you understand? - I guessss. - There are a lot of criminals in this town. They will try to take our club away, just like the Camorra is taking away other people's clubs. Just like that. Do you understand? - Yessss. - I know them; they are one of my clients. If there is anyone in the world who could make a deal with them, it would be me and Adam. He cannot cross me and I cannot cross him either. I would never do that. I am not sure about him though what is on his mind, I can tell there is something he is orchestrating I just don’t know what exactly, but he is as fishy as Sabrina. The problem is that only my ex-girlfriend knows about my signature on the non-profit organization, which is the base of the coffeeshop, the marijuana grow and the smoker club. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - We are talking about millions of Euros monthly cashflow. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - By telling you everything now, you are becoming my trusted; your life is in danger too if they manage to find a gap between us. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - I'm not sure what they're up to. They owe me already more money than anyone in this town would murder for. Do you understand? - Yesssss. - Now you know about it, too. Sabrina didn't care; she didn't think I would make it happen. She doesn’t know about the place. Only you know about it and us. But she will figure it out somehow; she will try to take your position, slipping between the criminals. Do you know how to play chess? - Not really. - OK then. Imagine this as a throne, these chairs you are sitting on top of. OK. No one can remove you from this throne being my girlfriend, no one can stand between us. No one can take the club away from us. They have no chance. Understand? - Yesss. - As long as you stick with me, she cannot do anything; no one can mess with us. Do you understand? - Yesss. - Everyone in the world would try to take your place, being my girlfriend, and they will try to push you out from this position, which only me I can give you, with Love. They will tell you lies about me and about themselves who’s club is it. Do you understand? - Yes. But why? - Because Rachel and Tom, the other two founding members of the club, Golan, I signed up with, are Adam's puppets. I don't trust any one of them. If they kill me, they never have to pay me what they owe me already, plus they can keep the 33% of the club which belongs to me. 100% Adam would keep. Do you understand now? - Yessss. - We will pull all the trash out and remodel the place without any permit, under the rug, in secret. - I sssseeee. (Eye. See.)

The mountains are cast away with the other turmoils that melted your snowmen during your relapses into retrospect where the cat of your crossings jumped through its curious hoops while the flummoxed chicken ran around a pumpkin patch until it found the dirt that no rug could conceal for the shootout on the street that subsequently became a war in a chaotic dust storm on the porch of reflection.

I stood under the arch and absorbed the image. Rose and blue and ancient oriental rugs held pale pink loveseats with curved arms and perfectly faded silk upholstery. Sheer white-winged angels floated on a ceiling of baby-blue sky with clouds of spun gold. And eastern-facing windows of blue stained glass held paler blue stained-glass crosses in the middle. Daylight and streetlamps were obliterated by thick velvet curtains with gold tasseled ropes, and a small, dusty beam of faded light managed to seep past the heavy drapes, making it look like the tail end of the day instead of the early part of the afternoon. His home was lavish and seductive, and I thought it rare that a man living alone could create a thing of such intensity. For the second time in two days I found myself having to adjust my opinion of Michael Bon Chance. It was a marble fountain that ended my reverie and brought me back down to earth. It was the true centerpiece of the room, with water slowly seeping from a cracked jug and dripping over a statue of a nude couple, bathing. I cringed at the sound. Michael looked at me. "Something wrong?" "It's the dripping." He went over to the bar and poured me a glass of wine. "You're tense. Maybe this will help." I took a sip from the glass and put it down on the fireplace mantel. I caught a glimpse of Michael and myself in the mirror above the fire and felt trapped by how beautiful we looked in the rose glow of the dragon's-head lamps with pale pink bulbs.

The world’s key strategy is peer pressure. Think of this as a siege tactic. They surround you and use your fear of rejection and reproach to keep you in line with them. One of the greatest things you’ll ever do is divorce yourself from public opinion. Only one opinion matters—what does the Lord Jesus Christ think of you? Along these lines, Paul wrote: Romans 12:2 — And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Are you going to do the will of the world or the will of God? Don’t be afraid to be different. If you want to overcome the world consistently, you’ll need to renew your mind daily. Remember every day that you are not your own; you are bought with a price. Jesus hung on an old rugged cross, despised by the world—rejected of men—so that you could be reconciled to God. Jesus wasn’t ashamed to suffer for us. Don’t be ashamed to stand for Him. Our Savior said: John 15:18 — If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20 Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. The Bible is filled with information about the world and how a Christian should approach it. The following is a series of verses about the word that I hope you will read and study at a later time: John 1:10; 7:7; 8:23; 15:18-25; 17:14; 1 Corinthians 1:20-21; 2:6, 3:18-19; Ephesians 2:2-3; 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:10; James 1:27; 4:4; 2 Peter 1:4; 1 John 2:15-17; 3:1, 13; 4:4; and 5:4.

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, The emblem of suffering and shame; And I love that old cross where the dearest and best For a world of lost sinners was slain. So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, Till my trophies at last I lay down; I will cling to the old rugged cross, And exchange it someday for a crown. O that old rugged cross, so despised by the world, Has a wondrous attraction for me; For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above To bear it to dark Calvary. In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine, A wondrous beauty I see, For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died, To pardon and sanctify me. To the old rugged cross I will ever be true; Its shame and reproach gladly bear; Then He’ll call me some day to my home far away, Where His glory forever I’ll share.

looks flawless, even… Inhuman. I look around her. Next to the rocking chair in which she’s seated is a— “Oh, Jesus—” My hand jerks, and the beam of light shoots to the ceiling. Hands shaking, I sweep the light through the darkness again, past the woman— A man. Wearing some kind of coat, tweed. Hair greased back. A thin face, eyes open and vacant. Sitting on a love seat, legs crossed. Same deal with the glossy skin, the immobile eyes, unresponsive to light. Not dead people. Not people at all. Wax figures. I exhale with the realization. I was two seconds away from kicking in this window to rescue a couple of wax mannequins. I keep the light moving. An area rug on the floor. A battered coffee table with a vase and flowers—fresh flowers, not fake. Against the wall, a faux fireplace—something painted on the wall, complete with logs and a spirited flame. A television set. I can only

Merchant Bashir got up and plodded to a pile of rugs. He grabbed a kilim and unrolled it across the floor. A mosaic of black, yellow, and maroon geometries glimmered. “He taught me rug weaving. It’s a nomadic art, he said. Pattern making carries the past into the future.” Bashir pointed to a recurrent cross motif that ran down the kilim’s center. “The four corners of the cross are the four corners of the universe. The scorpion here”—he toed a many-legged symmetric creature woven in yellow—“represents freedom. Sharif taught me this and more. He was a natural at symbols. I asked him why he went to Turkey. He looked at me and said, ‘To learn to weave the best kilim in the world.

Entering the room, Lily was struck by the changes that had been wrought since she had last been there on the night of her abduction. Though his massive four-poster bed remained, the coverings were now a mixture of midnight blue and a mysterious smoky gray. In fact, various shades of gray had been added throughout the room. The two heavy leather chairs had been beautifully reupholstered in a dove-gray damask, a plush rug in a light and misty color was laid before the fireplace, and on a delicate table between them stood a large vase of lilies, infusing the room with their delicate scent. "Do you see?" the earl asked from behind her. Once they entered the bedroom, he had released her hand to close the door, ensconcing them together in the private space. Lily turned to watch him walk toward one of the new chairs. He ran his fingers over the fabric. "The color of your eyes when you are quiet and content," he stated in a low voice, then he crossed to the bed where he smoothed his palm over a velvet coverlet. "This is the darker shade your eyes become when you are aroused- with emotion or desire." He looked at her, and Lily's world expanded on a sudden breath at what she saw in the depth of his gaze. They both seemed rooted in place, standing in the center of his bedroom, staring at each other with their breaths coming fast and their focus locked upon each other, as though they were equally afraid the other might disappear. "You exist in everything. You have become a part of me," he murmured thickly. "I cannot breathe without you.

If you want to know your worth, look at the old rugged Cross.

I was waiting for things to make sense. Nothing did. I had lived in John Grey’s house, with its gracious stair and crystal chandelier, its Turkey rugs and fine china, for nearly a month, and yet I woke each day with no idea where I was, reaching across an empty bed for Jamie. I could not believe he was dead. Could not.

I have been asked the question, “If people are simply trying to physically survive by purchasing food through this system, why would God not give them grace and allow them to feed themselves and their families by using this mark?” The answer is that this entire system is based upon a false religion and the idolatrous act of worshipping the Antichrist and his man-made image. Consider this example. When the Israelites departed from Egypt, there were six hundred thousand men, not counting the women and children. They departed with unleavened bread but entered a rugged wilderness where they lacked the foods they were accustomed to in Egypt. There was also a shortage of fresh water. Moses left for forty days on Mount Sinai, and the people demanded that Aaron collect their gold earrings and create a golden calf they could worship. They had lived for hundreds of years among the idolatrous Egyptians, a culture that worshipped a different deity for just about every situation. They also deified and worshipped some mortals; namely, certain rulers. After all that time, the culture had influenced some of these former Hebrew slaves. Several of the Egyptians gods were represented by a cow or a bull, and they all were given names. Each named cow was associated with a particular role, and each had its main center of cult worship. Apis was worshipped in Memphis, Hathor was worshipped in Dendera, and so on. With Hathor being a cow god that was worshipped in Dendera, a location near the Red Sea where the Hebrews might have crossed, it might be reasonable to assume that the Hebrews could have been creating a golden image to represent this Egyptian god. This god was also associated with music and dance, among other things. By molding a golden calf and dancing around it, the Israelites were turning from trust in their God, Yahweh, who delivered them from slavery with astonishing and supernatural signs and wonders. Instead of turning to God for sustenance and provision, their hearts turned to idol worship, which was an abomination to God. The divine punishment for this act was the death of three thousand Israelites and the destruction of the golden calf.

I sat cross-legged on a worn Persian rug between a demon, a dragon vampire hybrid, and a werewolf . . . playing old video games.