Second Born Child Quotes

Do you always wear underwear like this, or is it for me?” I rolled to my back and pulled the sheet to my waist. “It isn’t for you, I’ve been wearing underwear like this since Gram gave me my first Frederick’s of Hollywood box on my sixteenth birthday. Now, I owe Victoria’s Secret my first-born child.” Before speaking again, Lee waited several seconds that can only be described as ‘loaded silence’. While this silence was going on, he pulled the sheet back down. “You’re tellin’ me that since you were sixteen you’ve been sittin’ next to me every year at Christmas Dinner wearin’ underwear like this?

He seriously thought that there is less harm in killing a man than producing a child: in the first case you are relieving someone of life, not his whole life but a half or a quarter or a hundredth part of that existence that is going to finish, that would finish without you; but as for the second, he would say, are you not responsible to him for all the tears he will shed, from the cradle to the grave? Without you he would never have been born, and why is he born? For your amusement, not for his, that’s for sure; to carry your name, the name of a fool, I’ll be bound – you may as well write that name on some wall; why do you need a man to bear the burden of three or four letters?

Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most in the world, when you see how much stainless steel and money it takes to fight off the fact that god wants both those people dead, no one, no one can look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say there's a god, because I'll tell ya, if we were squatting in the woods, the two people I love most would be dead. There's just no way around that. If I were in charge, no way. We need technology to fight against nature; nature so wants us dead. Nature is trying to kill us.

There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life." -Laura Brown-

Enforced maternity brings into the world wretched infants, whom their parents will be unable to support and who will become the victims of public care or ‘child martyrs’. It must be pointed out that our society, so concerned to defend the rights of the embryo, shows no interest in the children once they are born; it prosecutes the abortionists instead of undertaking to reform that scandalous institution known as ‘public assistance’; those responsible for entrusting the children to their torturers are allowed to go free; society closes its eyes to the frightful tyranny of brutes in children’s asylums and private foster homes.

I remember the first year after my second child was born, what I can remember of it at all, as a year of disarray, of overturned glasses of milk, of toys on the floor, of hours from sunrise to sunset that were horribly busy but filled with what, at the end of the day, seemed like absolutely nothing at all. What saved my sanity were books. What saved my sanity was disappearing, if only for fifteen minutes before I inevitably began to nod off in bed...and as it was for me when I was young and surrounded by siblings, as it is today when I am surrounded by children, reading continues to provide an escape from a crowded house into an imaginary room of one's own.

he was keeping track of time. It was nearly two hours since he had last looked at his watch, but he knew what time it was to within about twenty seconds. It was an old skill, born of many long wakeful nights on active service. When you're waiting for something to happen, you close your body down like a beach house in winter and you let your mind lock onto the steady pace of the passing seconds. It's like suspended animation. It saves energy and it lifts the responsibility for your heartbeat away from your unconscious brain and passes it on to some kind of a hidden clock. Makes a huge black space for thinking in. But it keeps you just awake enough to be reach for whatever you need to be ready for. And it means you always know what time it is.

Regret hung from the hem of everyone's lives, a rip cord reminder that what you want is not always what you get. Look at himself, outliving Aimee. Or Az, trying to find his daughter, only to have her wind up dead. Look at Shelby, with a child who was dying by degrees. Ethan, born into a body nobody deserves. At some point or another, everyone was failed by this world. Disappointment was the one thin humans had in common. Taken this way, Ross didn't feel quite so alone. Trapped in your whirlpool of what might have been, you might no be able to drag yourself out - but you could be saved by someone else who reached in.

Sol in Leo She who is born when the sun is in Leo shall be naturally subtle and witty, and desirous of learning. Whatsoever the heareth or seeth if it seems to comprise any difficulty of matter immediately will she desire to know it. The magic sciences will do her great stead. She shall be familiar to and well beloved by princes. Her first child shall be a female, and the second a male. During her life she shall sustain many troubles and perils.

Forced motherhood results in bringing miserable children into the world, children whose parents cannot feed them, who become victims of public assistance or "martyr children." It must be pointed out that the same society so determined to defend the rights of the fetus shows no interest in children after they are born; instead of trying to reform this scandalous institution called public assistance, society prosecutes abortionists; those responsible for delivering orphans to torturers are left free; society closes its eyes to the horrible tyranny practiced in "reform schools" or in the private homes of child abusers; and while it refuses to accept that the fetus belongs to the mother carrying it, it nevertheless agrees that the child is his parents' thing.

Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.

no child is born whole.so they will grow and as they do they look for a way to be whole,a place to feel at home why are they not whole you ask, they are not whole because they have two eyes, two hands but only one heart so we look for the second.

Children accept the conditions they are born into, and, to a degree, I was getting used to the bombings, fires, and death around me. I remember that I thought those things were normal. It is grown-ups who worry about things, and this ... this was total panic! I could taste the fear, and I could see that my mother was frightened, which I had never seen before, and this made me even more frightened.

Kossola was born circa 1841, in the town of Bantè, the home to the Isha subgroup of the Yoruba people of West Africa. He was the second child of Fondlolu, who was the second of his father’s three wives. His mother named him Kossola, meaning “I do not lose my fruits anymore” or “my children do not die any more.

...The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moment before everything fell apart. The second before the crash, the ice-cream in the gas station just before the accident, the last swim on holiday before we came home and received the diagnosis. Our memories always force us back to those very best moments, night after night, prompting the questions: "Could I have done anything differently? Why did I just go around being happy? If only I'd known what was going to happen, could I have stopped it?"...Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward. When a child is born, its parents dream of it being as unique as possible, until it gets ill, when suddenly all they want is for everything to be normal.

The second simultaneous thing Reacher was doing was playing around with a little mental arithmetic. He was multiplying big numbers in his head. He was thirty-seven years and eight months old, just about to the day. Thirty-seven multiplied by three hundred and sixty-five was thirteen thousand five hundred and five. Plus twelve days for twelve leap years was thirteen thousand five hundred and seventeen. Eight months counting from his birthday in October forward to this date in June was two hundred and forty-three days. Total of thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty days since he was born. Thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty days, thirteen thousand seven hundred and sixty nights. He was trying to place this particular night somewhere on that endless scale. In terms of how bad it was. Truth was, it wasn’t the best night he had ever passed, but it was a long way from being the worst. A very long way.

A child is born with no state of mind Blind to the ways of mankind God is smilin' on you but he's frownin' too Because only God knows what you'll go through You'll grow in the ghetto livin' second-rate And your eyes will sing a song called deep hate The places you play and where you stay Looks like one great big alleyway You'll admire all the number-book takers Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers Drivin' big cars, spendin' twenties and tens And you'll wanna grow up to be just like them, huh Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers Pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers You say I'm cool, huh, I'm no fool But then you wind up droppin' outta high school Now you're unemployed, all non-void Walkin' round like you're Pretty Boy Floyd Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did Got sent up for a eight-year bid Now your manhood is took and you're a Maytag Spend the next two years as a undercover fag Bein' used and abused to serve like hell 'til one day, you was found hung dead in the cell It was plain to see that your life was lost You was cold and your body swung back and forth But now your eyes sing the sad, sad song Of how you lived so fast and died so young

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes—he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying—he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person—he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword—he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love—he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void— he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds—he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni—he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of them died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face—and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips. And, Govinda saw it like this, this smile of the mask, this smile of oneness above the flowing forms, this smile of simultaneousness above the thousand births and deaths, this smile of Siddhartha was precisely the same, was precisely of the same kind as the quiet, delicate, impenetrable, perhaps benevolent, perhaps mocking, wise, thousand-fold smile of Gotama, the Buddha, as he had seen it himself with great respect a hundred times. Like this, Govinda knew, the perfected ones are smiling.

He was, like me, an only child. His father (born in Siberia, a Ukrainian national from Novoagansk) was in mining and exploration. “Big important job—he travels the world.” Boris’s mother—his father’s second wife—was dead.

They asked me to tell you what it was like to be twenty and pregnant in 1950 and when you tell your boyfriend you’re pregnant, he tells you about a friend of his in the army whose girl told him she was pregnant, so he got all his buddies to come and say, “We all fucked her, so who knows who the father is?” And he laughs at the good joke…. What was it like, if you were planning to go to graduate school and get a degree and earn a living so you could support yourself and do the work you loved—what it was like to be a senior at Radcliffe and pregnant and if you bore this child, this child which the law demanded you bear and would then call “unlawful,” “illegitimate,” this child whose father denied it … What was it like? […] It’s like this: if I had dropped out of college, thrown away my education, depended on my parents … if I had done all that, which is what the anti-abortion people want me to have done, I would have borne a child for them, … the authorities, the theorists, the fundamentalists; I would have born a child for them, their child. But I would not have born my own first child, or second child, or third child. My children. The life of that fetus would have prevented, would have aborted, three other fetuses … the three wanted children, the three I had with my husband—whom, if I had not aborted the unwanted one, I would never have met … I would have been an “unwed mother” of a three-year-old in California, without work, with half an education, living off her parents…. But it is the children I have to come back to, my children Elisabeth, Caroline, Theodore, my joy, my pride, my loves. If I had not broken the law and aborted that life nobody wanted, they would have been aborted by a cruel, bigoted, and senseless law. They would never have been born. This thought I cannot bear. What was it like, in the Dark Ages when abortion was a crime, for the girl whose dad couldn’t borrow cash, as my dad could? What was it like for the girl who couldn’t even tell her dad, because he would go crazy with shame and rage? Who couldn’t tell her mother? Who had to go alone to that filthy room and put herself body and soul into the hands of a professional criminal? – because that is what every doctor who did an abortion was, whether he was an extortionist or an idealist. You know what it was like for her. You know and I know; that is why we are here. We are not going back to the Dark Ages. We are not going to let anybody in this country have that kind of power over any girl or woman. There are great powers, outside the government and in it, trying to legislate the return of darkness. We are not great powers. But we are the light. Nobody can put us out. May all of you shine very bright and steady, today and always.

Why doesn't every mother believer her child can change the world? The child can. This is the joke. Here we are still looking for a saviour and hundreds are being born every second. Look at it, this tiny capsule of new life, indifferent to your prejudices, your miseries, unmindful of the world already made. Make it again? They could if we let them, but we make sure they grow up just like us, fearful like us. Don't let them know the potential that they are.

Curiously enough we will find that no two children, even those born in the same family, grow up in the same situation. Even within the same family the atmosphere that surrounds each individual child is quite particular. Thus the first child has notoriously a different set of circumstances from the other children. The first child is at first alone and is thus the center of attention. Once the second child is born, he finds himself dethroned and he does not like the change of situation. In fact it is quite a tragedy in his life that he has been in power and is so no longer. This sense of tragedy goes into the formation of his prototype and will crop out in his adult characteristics.

The world population is nearing seven billion. John Travolta and Farrah Fawcett didn’t procreate and produce all seven thousand million of us. Audrey Hepburn and Burt Lancaster didn’t personally populate the world. Almost every child that was ever born is the byproduct of two everyday people who found each other attractive enough to go jump in the sack together. Almost every child that was ever born came about because two everyday people thought the other was attractive enough to warrant a second glance. If you want proof that attraction belongs to the individual, go sit on a bench at the mall and look at all the different couples walking by. You will believe that there literally is someone for everyone.

When Alexis was born, I thought I'd never have a second child. How could I, when I'd already poured my love into my first? But then I had Brianna, and then Logan, and I realized something they don't teach you in biology.... The heart stretches.

— If love wants you; if you’ve been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills, with warm blood and cold. With feathers and scales. Under the hot gloom of the forest canopy you’ll want to breathe with the spiral calls of birds, while your lashing tail still gropes for the waes. You’ll try to haul your weight from simple sea to gravity of land. Caught by the tide, in the snail-slip of your own path, for moments suffocating in both water and air. If love wants you, suddently your past is obsolete science. Old maps, disproved theories, a diorama. The moment our bodies are set to spring open. The immanence that reassembles matter passes through us then disperses into time and place: the spasm of fur stroked upright; shocked electrons. The mother who hears her child crying upstairs and suddenly feels her dress wet with milk. Among black branches, oyster-coloured fog tongues every corner of loneliness we never knew before we were loved there, the places left fallow when we’re born, waiting for experience to find its way into us. The night crossing, on deck in the dark car. On the beach wehre night reshaped your face. In the lava fields, carbon turned to carpet, moss like velvet spread over splintered forms. The instant spray freezes in air above the falls, a gasp of ice. We rise, hearing our names called home through salmon-blue dusk, the royal moon an escutcheon on the shield of sky. The current that passes through us, radio waves, electric lick. The billions of photons that pass through film emulsion every second, the single submicroscopic crystal struck that becomes the phograph. We look and suddenly the world looks back. A jagged tube of ions pins us to the sky. — But if, like starlings, we continue to navigate by the rear-view mirror of the moon; if we continue to reach both for salt and for the sweet white nibs of grass growing closest to earth; if, in the autumn bog red with sedge we’re also driving through the canyon at night, all around us the hidden glow of limestone erased by darkness; if still we sish we’d waited for morning, we will know ourselves nowhere. Not in the mirrors of waves or in the corrading stream, not in the wavering glass of an apartment building, not in the looming light of night lobbies or on the rainy deck. Not in the autumn kitchen or in the motel where we watched meteors from our bed while your slow film, the shutter open, turned stars to rain. We will become indigestible. Afraid of choking on fur and armour, animals will refuse the divided longings in our foreing blue flesh. — In your hands, all you’ve lost, all you’ve touched. In the angle of your head, every vow and broken vow. In your skin, every time you were disregarded, every time you were received. Sundered, drowsed. A seeded field, mossy cleft, tidal pool, milky stem. The branch that’s released when the bird lifts or lands. In a summer kitchen. On a white winter morning, sunlight across the bed.

Every now and then, I'm lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side, and light on skepticism. They're curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I'm asked follow-up questions. They've never heard of the notion of a 'dumb question'. But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize 'facts'. By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts has gone out of them. They've lost much of the wonder and gained very little skepticism. They're worried about asking 'dumb' questions; they are willing to accept inadequate answers, they don't pose follow-up questions, the room is awash with sidelong glances to judge, second-by-second, the approval of their peers. They come to class with their questions written out on pieces of paper, which they surreptitiously examine, waiting their turn and oblivious of whatever discussion their peers are at this moment engaged in. Something has happened between first and twelfth grade. And it's not just puberty. I'd guess that it's partly peer pressure not to excel - except in sports, partly that the society teaches short-term gratification, partly the impression that science or mathematics won't buy you a sports car, partly that so little is expected of students, and partly that there are few rewards or role-models for intelligent discussion of science and technology - or even for learning for it's own sake. Those few who remain interested are vilified as nerds or geeks or grinds. But there's something else. I find many adults are put off when young children pose scientific questions. 'Why is the Moon round?', the children ask. 'Why is grass green?', 'What is a dream?', 'How deep can you dig a hole?', 'When is the world's birthday?', 'Why do we have toes?'. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation, or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. 'What did you expect the Moon to be? Square?' Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys the grown-ups. A few more experiences like it, and another child has been lost to science.

Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the Ogpu and the atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. Nor do most of us find that violence and bloodshed, in a story, produce any haunting dread in the minds of children. As far as that goes, I side impenitently with the human race against the modern reformer. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book. Nothing will persuade me that this causes an ordinary child any kind or degree of fear beyond what it wants, and needs, to feel. For, of course, it wants to be a little frightened.

London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him.  On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him. All England wanted him too.  England had so longed for him, and hoped for him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the people went nearly mad for joy.  Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich

One day, you muster the courage and let go of the fear. In a brief moment of insanity, you give wings to the stories you had wanted to tell; some you didn't even know were in you. In that instant, something about you changes. You are born again. That is not to say the fear and worry and second-guessing go away. They are there. But you learn to cope with them. You learn that they don't control you at all times. In those fleeting moments of freedom, you have the power. You know you are not perfect. You realize no one was born perfect. No one. Rome wasn’t built in a day either. A weird thing happens when you get a glimpse of that side of you. A child-like zeal possesses you. It is addictive. You discover your voice. You matter. Maybe not to the world, yet. You matter to yourself. You are worthy. You are alive. You can be.

By the same wife he had four children more born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all seventeen; of which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his table, who all grew up to be men and women, and married; I was the youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born in Boston, New England.

The first music I ever heard was only one hundred and sixty days after I was conceived. Da dum Da dum Da dum Have you ever heard the sound a blessing makes? This is it. The first thing I ever saw was only one hundred and eighty days after I was conceived. It was a bright light soft like clouds warm like candles. Have you ever seen the colour of a blessing? This is it. The first time I ever suffered was in the three thousand and sixty seconds after I was born. I listened for her heartbeat. I searched for her light. I cried for the first time until she was born. Have you ever known a blessing? A twin is it.

There are cases that I just can't forget.....What it is. I don't know. I think it's the ones where something small changes everything. Where the tiniest act , the smallest space of time, the most inconsequential of decisions, changes a life. A split second separates the long-lost friends who either see or miss each other at an airport. And from that , a relationship does or does not develop, perhaps a lifetime partnership,, perhaps even children. Human beings who might or might not have existed. Whole lives built out of the most fragile of happenstance. And maybe that's why our lives are beautiful; why they're tragic. One perfect child can be born of an accidental encounter, and another lost to a split-second lapse in attention. If a motorist leans over to change a radio station at the same moment that it first occurs to a four year old that he can let go of his mother's hand as easily as hang onto it, and that if he lets go he will be across the road first, before his mother, and that she will certainly laugh and say, "How fast you are, Johnny!" If the child does this and the motorist does that , and if the world then changes forever and unbearably for everyone involved, then is that not life in its simplest form? That so little matters so much, and so much matters so little.

Those who say that children must not be frightened may mean two things. They may mean (1) that we must not do anything likely to give the child those haunting, disabling, pathological fears against which ordinary courage is helpless: in fact, phobias. His mind must, if possible, be kept clear of things he can’t bear to think of. Or they may mean (2) that we must try to keep out of his mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. If they mean the first I agree with them: but not if they mean the second. The second would indeed be to give children a false impression and feed them on escapism in the bad sense. There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the…atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.

It all began to make sense. D as a child. Grandpapa—who died before Angela was born—with, D told us, a kind heart which made everyone love him, and a feeling for family that stretched to nephews, nieces, cousins and second cousins, so that any who needed help were not afraid to come to him, a man of very simple tastes unaffected by fame and fortune.

The truth is that we never know from whom we originally get the ideas and beliefs that shape us, those that make a deep impression on us and which we adopt as a guide, those we retain without intending to and make our own. From a great-grandparent, a grandparent, a parent, not necessarily ours? From a distant teacher we never knew and who taught the one we did know? From a mother, from a nursemaid who looked after her as a child? From the ex-husband of our beloved, from a ġe-bryd-guma we never met? From a few books we never read and from an age through which we never lived? Yes, it's incredible how much people say, how much they discuss and recount and write down, this is a wearisome world of ceaseless transmission, and thus we are born with the work already far advanced but condemned to the knowledge that nothing is ever entirely finished, and thus we carry-like a faint booming in our heads-the exhausting accumulated voices of the countless centuries, believing naively that some of those thoughts and stories are new, never before heard or read, but how could that be, when ever since they acquired the gift of speech people have never stopped endlessly telling stories and, sooner or later, everything is told, the interesting and the trivial, the private and the public, the intimate and the superfluous, what should remain hidden and what will one day inevitably be broadcast, sorrows and joys and resentments, certainties and conjectures, the imagined and the factual, persuasions and suspicions, grievances and flattery and plans for revenge, great feats and humiliations, what fills us with pride and what shames us utterly, what appeared to be a secret and what begged to remain so, the normal and the unconfessable and the horrific and the obvious, the substantial-falling in love-and the insignificant-falling in love. Without even giving it a second thought, we go and we tell.

Missy As Jessica mentioned earlier in the book, I also have to laugh when I hear people talk about Korie, Jessica, and me as gold diggers. I think, Oh please! Jase was skinning raccoons for extra money when Cole (our second child) was born! The only gold I was interested in was Jason’s old gold-colored Chevy, because it had a bench seat and I could snuggle up to him while he drove.

We are told that this child was born in order to rule, for the government will be upon his shoulder. And the second thing we are told about His government is that it will continually increase (v. 7). He will bear the government upon His shoulder, and it will be a continually increasing government. This increase—unlike the growth of secular governments—will be a blessing, and not a pestilence. This is the real big government.

became Secretary to the King's Council, at which time he changed his name to Balzac and added the particle de, both of which denoted nobility. Bernard-François's marriage to Balzac's mother, Anne Laure Sallambier, was a union made for purposes of convenience, rather than love. Although there was a thirty-two year age difference between the two, Balzac's mother came from a wealthy family of drapemakers and thus held great appeal. Her substantial dowry was another factor that distanced her husband from his impoverished childhood. Honoré de Balzac – named after Saint Honoré of Amiens – was the second Balzac child, although his older brother died as an infant. Balzac's parents would go on to have three more children: two girls, Laure and Laurence (born 1800 and 1802), followed by Henry-François (born 1807). Immediately following his birth, Balzac was placed

How I came not to care about other people’s opinions is something of a mystery even to me. I was born with a compass. It was the luck of my draw. This compass has been incalculably beneficial for writing —for everything, really— and for that reason I take very good care of it. How do you take care of your internal compass? You don’t listen to anyone who tells you to do something as consequential as having a child. Think about that one for a second.

Far less tragic—and certainly less attention-grabbing—was a second, very profound event that also happened in 2008. Its exact timing will never be known, but at some instant during the year, the number of people living in urban areas grew to briefly match, for a few seconds, the number of people living in rural areas. Then, somewhere, a city baby was born. From that child forward, for the first time in our history, the human race became urban in its majority.

We had traveled far and long to get here but were still the same still-born, unreconstructed people who had once met on this landscape that began somewhere not too far south of the south and ended all the way up in the northernmost extremes of the north, and every soul begotten upon this land was a bastard child of that interminable human equation: colonizer and colony, slave and master, rapist and victim, and any pledge to loyalty and patriotism was an oath to both parts of this equation—we were the seconds obliviously turned up on the old, unregenerate battlefield, here to fight in history’s redundant, never-ending duel, always carrying someone else’s sword and flag in the name of the myth.

Augustine, who assumed that Genesis 1 was chapter 1 in a book that contained the literal words of God, and that Genesis 2 was the second chapter in the same book, put the two chapters together and read the latter as a sequel. Genesis 2, he assumed, described the fall from the perfection and original goodness of creation depicted in chapter 1. So almost inevitably the Christian scriptures from the fourth century on were interpreted against the background of this (mis) understanding. The primary trouble with this theory was that by the fourth century of the Common Era there were no Jews to speak of left in the Christian movement, and therefore the only readers and interpreters of the ancient Hebrew myths were Gentiles, who had no idea what these stories originally meant. Consequently, they interpreted them as perfection established by God in chapter 1, followed by perfection ruined by human beings in chapter 2. Why was that a problem? Well I, for one, have never known a Jewish scripture scholar to treat the Garden of Eden story in the same way that Gentiles treat it. Jews tend to see this story not as a narrative about sin entering the world, but as a parable about the birth of self-consciousness. It is, for the Jews, not a fall into sin, but a step into humanity. It is the birth of a new relationship with God, changing from master-servant to interdependent cooperation. The forbidden fruit was not from an apple tree, as so many who don’t bother to read the text seem to think. It was rather from “the tree of knowledge,” and the primary thing that one gained from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge was the ability to discern good from evil. Gaining that ability did not, in the minds of the Jewish readers of the book of Genesis, corrupt human nature. It simply made people take responsibility for their freely made decisions. A slave has no such freedom. The job of the slave is simply to obey, not to think. The job of the slave-master is to command. Thus the relationship of the master to the slave is a relationship of the strong to the weak, the parent to the child, the king to the serf, the boss to the worker. If human beings were meant to live in that kind of relationship with God, then humanity would have been kept in a perpetual state of irresponsible, childlike immaturity. Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden, not because they had disobeyed God’s rules, but because, when self-consciousness was born, they could no longer live in childlike dependency. Adam and Eve discovered, as every child ultimately must discover, that maturity requires that the child leave his or her parents’ home, just as every bird sooner or later must leave its nest and learn to fly on its own. To be forced out of the Garden of Eden was, therefore, not a punishment for sin, so much as it was a step into maturity.

For my father, the myth of Cassandra had been just another way he sought to guide me toward what he thought I needed to know. In some versions, Cassandra's fate is that she is merely misunderstood--not unlike what my father imagined to be the obvious fate of a mixed-race child born in a place like Mississippi. "She was a prophet," he told me, "but no one would believe her." Over the years, though, this second naming would come to weigh heavily on me. It was as if, in giving me that name, he had given me not only the burden of foresight but also the notion of causation--that whatever it was, if I could imagine it, see it in my mind's eye, it would happen because I had envisioned it. As if I had willed it into being.

Therefore, first, God created man in such a way that man had His image outwardly and had a spirit inwardly to contact and receive God. Second, God became a man and accomplished redemption to solve all the problems between God and man and release the divine life. Third, He became the life-giving Spirit. This is the Triune God in whom we believe today. When He enters into those who believe in Him, He dispenses Himself into them. How does He give Himself to us? When He as the life-giving Spirit comes into us, He is begotten in us. When He is born in us, we are regenerated to become another person, no longer the original person. Such a person is born of God and has the authority to be a child of God (John 1:12-13). Now we not only are created by God and have His image; we also are born of God. He Himself is born into us to be our life, our person, and our everything. He and we become one entity—God yet man, man yet God.

The history of the two halves of post-war Europe cannot be told in isolation from one another. The legacy of the Second World War—and the pre-war decades and the war before that—forced upon the governments and peoples of east and west Europe alike some hard choices about how best to order their affairs so as to avoid any return to the past. One option—to pursue the radical agenda of the popular front movements of the 1930s—was initially very popular in both parts of Europe (a reminder that 1945 was never quite the fresh start that it sometimes appears). In eastern Europe some sort of radical transformation was unavoidable. There could be no possibility of returning to the discredited past. What, then, would replace it? Communism may have been the wrong solution, but the dilemma to which it was responding was real enough. In the West the prospect of radical change was smoothed away, not least thanks to American aid (and pressure). The appeal of the popular-front agenda—and of Communism—faded: both were prescriptions for hard times and in the West, at least after 1952, the times were no longer so hard. And so, in the decades that followed, the uncertainties of the immediate post-war years were forgotten. But the possibility that things might take a different turn—indeed, the likelihood that they would take a different turn—had seemed very real in 1945; it was to head off a return of the old demons (unemployment, Fascism, German militarism, war, revolution) that western Europe took the new path with which we are now familiar. Post-national, welfare-state, cooperative, pacific Europe was not born of the optimistic, ambitious, forward-looking project imagined in fond retrospect by today’s Euro-idealists. It was the insecure child of anxiety. Shadowed by history, its leaders implemented social reforms and built new institutions as a prophylactic, to keep the past at bay.

In the first place, this is a history of Europe’s reduction. The constituent states of Europe could no longer aspire, after 1945, to international or imperial status. The two exceptions to this rule—the Soviet Union and, in part, Great Britain—were both only half-European in their own eyes and in any case, by the end of the period recounted here, they too were much reduced. Most of the rest of continental Europe had been humiliated by defeat and occupation. It had not been able to liberate itself from Fascism by its own efforts; nor was it able, unassisted, to keep Communism at bay. Post-war Europe was liberated—or immured—by outsiders. Only with considerable effort and across long decades did Europeans recover control of their own destiny. Shorn of their overseas territories Europe’s erstwhile sea-borne empires (Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal) were all shrunk back in the course of these years to their European nuclei, their attention re-directed to Europe itself. Secondly, the later decades of the twentieth century saw the withering away of the ‘master narratives’ of European history: the great nineteenth-century theories of history, with their models of progress and change, of revolution and transformation, that had fuelled the political projects and social movements that tore Europe apart in the first half of the century. This too is a story that only makes sense on a pan-European canvas: the decline of political fervor in the West (except among a marginalized intellectual minority) was accompanied—for quite different reasons—by the loss of political faith and the discrediting of official Marxism in the East. For a brief moment in the 1980s, to be sure, it seemed as though the intellectual Right might stage a revival around the equally nineteenth-century project of dismantling ‘society’ and abandoning public affairs to the untrammelled market and the minimalist state; but the spasm passed. After 1989 there was no overarching ideological project of Left or Right on offer in Europe—except the prospect of liberty, which for most Europeans was a promise now fulfilled. Thirdly, and as a modest substitute for the defunct ambitions of Europe’s ideological past, there emerged belatedly—and largely by accident—the ‘European model’. Born of an eclectic mix of Social Democratic and Christian Democratic legislation and the crab-like institutional extension of the European Community and its successor Union, this was a distinctively ‘European’ way of regulating social intercourse and inter-state relations. Embracing everything from child-care to inter-state legal norms, this European approach stood for more than just the bureaucratic practices of the European Union and its member states; by the beginning of the twenty-first century it had become a beacon and example for aspirant EU members and a global challenge to the United States and the competing appeal of the ‘American way of life’.

It is not death that human beings are most afraid of, it is love. The heart is bigger than a mountain. One human life is deeper than the ocean. Strange fishes and sea-monsters and mighty plants live in the rock-bed of our spirits. The whole of human history is an undiscovered continent deep in our souls. There are dolphins, plants that dream, magic birds inside us. The sky is inside us. The earth is in us. The trees of the forest, the animals of the bushes, tortoises, birds, and flowers know our future. The world that we see and the world that is there are two different things. Wars are not fought on battlegrounds but in a space smaller than the head of a needle. We need a new language to talk to one another. Inside a cat there are many histories, many books. When you look into the eyes of dogs strange fishes swim in your mind. All roads lead to death, but some roads lead to things which can never be finished. Wonderful things. There are human beings who are small but if you can SEE you will notice that their spirits are ten thousand feet wide. In my dream I met a child sitting on a cloud and his spirit covered half the earth. Angels and demons are amongst us; they take many forms. They can enter us and dwell there for one second or half a lifetime. Sometimes both of them dwell in us together. Before everything was born there was first the spirit. It is the spirit which invites things in, good things, or bad. Invite only good things, my son. Listen to the spirit of things. To your own spirit. Follow it. Master it. So long as we are alive, so long as we feel, so long as we love, everything in us is an energy we can use. There is a stillness which makes you travel faster. There is a silence which makes you fly. If your heart is a friend of Time nothing can destroy you. Death has taught me the religion of living – I am converted – I am blinded – I am beginning to see – I am drunk on sleep – My words are the words of a stranger – Wear a smile on your faces – Pour me some wine and buy me some cigarettes, my son, for your father has returned to his true home.

History is storytelling,’” Yaw repeated. He walked down the aisles between the rows of seats, making sure to look each boy in the eye. Once he finished walking and stood in the back of the room, where the boys would have to crane their necks in order to see him, he asked, “Who would like to tell the story of how I got my scar?” The students began to squirm, their limbs growing limp and wobbly. They looked at each other, coughed, looked away. “Don’t be shy,” Yaw said, smiling now, nodding encouragingly. “Peter?” he asked. The boy who only seconds before had been so happy to speak began to plead with his eyes. The first day with a new class was always Yaw’s favorite. “Mr. Agyekum, sah?” Peter said. “What story have you heard? About my scar?” Yaw asked, smiling still, hoping, now to ease some of the child’s growing fear. Peter cleared his throat and looked at the ground. “They say you were born of fire,” he started. “That this is why you are so smart. Because you were lit by fire.” “Anyone else?” Timidly, a boy named Edem raised his hand. “They say your mother was fighting evil spirits from Asamando.” Then William: “I heard your father was so sad by the Asante loss that he cursed the gods, and the gods took vengeance.” Another, named Thomas: “I heard you did it to yourself, so that you would have something to talk about on the first day of class.” All the boys laughed, and Yaw had to stifle his own amusement. Word of his lesson had gotten around, he knew. The older boys told some of the younger ones what to expect from him. Still, he continued, making his way back to the front of the room to look at his students, the bright boys from the uncertain Gold Coast, learning the white book from a scarred man. “Whose story is correct?” Yaw asked them. They looked around at the boys who had spoken, as though trying to establish their allegiance by holding a gaze, casting a vote by sending a glance. Finally, once the murmuring subsided, Peter raised his hand. “Mr. Agyekum, we cannot know which story is correct.” He looked at the rest of the class, slowly understanding. “We cannot know which story is correct because we were not there.” Yaw nodded. He sat in his chair at the front of the room and looked at all the young men. “This is the problem of history. We cannot know that which we were not there to see and hear and experience for ourselves. We must rely upon the words of others. Those who were there in the olden days, they told stories to the children so that the children would know, so that the children could tell stories to their children. And so on, and so on. But now we come upon the problem of conflicting stories. Kojo Nyarko says that when the warriors came to his village their coats were red, but Kwame Adu says that they were blue. Whose story do we believe, then?” The boys were silent. They stared at him, waiting. “We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there, you begin to get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.

You'd make a lot of people feel better if you'd just wake," Kevis hung the new bag on the pole beside Breanne's bed. "You're safe where you are, I promise. I talked with Graegar—he came to see me. He says that he loves you. Barrigar does, too. You've never really talked with Barrigar. He's one of the best Larentii I know. Doesn't say much, but he sees everything around him." Kevis took a chair beside the bed with a sigh. "I think Barry's talent for noticing everything around him makes him a really good Protector. I know Conner loves him a lot—just like she loves Graegar. Connegar is Barrigar's son, you know. Barrigar is a wonderful parent. Connegar was Conner's first Larentii child, so he was named after her. Garegar is Graegar's child with Conner, and since he was second-born, he took a variation of his father's name for himself. Are you cold?" Kevis leaned forward and pulled the blanket up a little, covering Breanne's body up to her chin. "Now," he said, "Pheligar is Renegar's father. Kiarra is Renegar's mother. Renegar is Graegar's father; Grace is Graegar's mother. Graegar is Garegar's father, Conner is Garegar's mother." "If you don't shut up with Larentii lineage, I may punch you," Breanne's cobalt-blue eyes opened and she blinked in the light filtering through a nearby window. Even Bill heard Kevis' whoop of joy and popped out of his deck chair at a run.

The Birth of the Prince and the Pauper In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him. On the same day another English child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him. All England wanted him too. England had so longed for him, and hoped for him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the people went nearly mad for joy. Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich and poor, feasted and danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they kept this up for days and nights together. By day, London was a sight to see, with gay banners waving from every balcony and house-top, and splendid pageants marching along. By night, it was again a sight to see, with its great bonfires at every corner, and its troops of revelers making merry around them. There was no talk in all England but of the new baby, Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, who lay lapped in silks and satins, unconscious of all this fuss, and not knowing that great lords and ladies were tending him and watching over him—and not caring, either. But there was no talk about the other baby, Tom Canty, lapped in his poor rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had just come to trouble with his presence.

Obama’s narrative culminates in his month-long journey to Africa, where he talks to various relatives about who his dad really was, and then weeps at the man’s grave. It’s powerful stuff. But at first glance it’s a little hard for the reader to understand Obama’s depth of allegiance. His dad was, after all, a complete jerk. He married Kezia in Kenya and had two children with her. Before the second child was born, he abandoned his family to come to America. There he met Obama’s mother Ann, got her pregnant, and then married her, but without telling her he was already married. When Obama was two, his father abandoned him and his mother to go to Harvard; there he moved in with a teacher, Ruth Nidesand. Eventually he took Nidesand back to Africa, married her, and had two children with her. But he also rejoined his African wife, Kezia, and had two more children with her. Later in life he took up with still another woman, Jael Otieno, and impregnated her. The two of them planned to get married after the child was born, but the marriage never took place. By the time he was done, Barack Sr. managed a grand total of three wives, one wife-to-be, and eight children. He was a terrible husband and a worse father; he neglected virtually all his offspring, and one of his sons has accused him of domestic violence. In the words of Mark Ndesandjo, who is the son of Obama Sr. and Nidesand, “I remember situations when I was growing up, and there would be a light coming from our living room, and I could hear thuds and screams, and my father’s voice and my mother shouting. I remember one night when she ran out into the street and she didn’t know where to go.”11

In the seven weeks that it took for Longwood to be refurbished and extended, Napoleon stayed at a pretty bungalow called The Briars, closer to Jamestown, with the family of the East India Company superintendent William Balcombe, where he had one room and a pavilion in their garden.66 This period was his happiest on St Helena, not least because he struck up an unlikely, charming and innocent friendship with the second of the Balcombes’ four surviving children, Betsy, a spirited fourteen-year-old girl who spoke intelligible if ungrammatical French and to whom Napoleon behaved with avuncular indulgence. She had originally been brought up to view Napoleon, in her words, as ‘a huge ogre or giant, with one large flaming eye in the centre of his forehead, and long teeth protruding from his mouth, with which he tore to pieces and devoured little girls’, but she very soon came to adore him.67 ‘His smile, and the expression of his eye, could not be transmitted to canvas, and these constituted Napoleon’s chief charm,’ she later wrote. ‘His hair was dark brown, and as fine and silky as a child’s, rather too much so indeed for a man as its very softness caused it to look thin.’68 The friendship began when Napoleon tested Betsy on the capitals of Europe. When he asked her the capital of Russia she replied, ‘Petersburg now; Moscow formerly’, upon which ‘He turned abruptly round, and, fixing his piercing eyes full in my face, he demanded sternly, “Who burnt it?” ’ She was dumbstruck, until he laughed and said: ‘Oui, oui. You know very well that it was I who burnt it!’ Upon which the teenager corrected him: ‘I believe, sir, the Russians burnt it to get rid of the French.’69 Whereupon Napoleon laughed and friendship with ‘Mademoiselle Betsee’, ‘lettle monkee’, ‘bambina’ and ‘little scatterbrain’ was born.

I dreamed once that I had committed a terrible crime. Carried beyond myself by passion, I knew not at the moment HOW evil was the thing I did. But I knew it was evil. And suddenly I became aware, when it was too late, of the nature of that which I had done. The horror that came with the knowledge was of the things that belong only to the secret soul. I was the same man as before I did it, yet was I now a man of whom my former self could not have conceived the possibility as dwelling within it. The former self seemed now by contrast lovely in purity, yet out of that seeming purity this fearful, foul I of the present had just been born! The face of my fellow-man was an avenging law, the face of a just enemy. Where, how, should the frightful face be hidden? The conscious earth must take it into its wounded bosom, and that before the all-seeing daylight should come. But it would come, and I should stand therein pointed at by every ray that shot through the sunny atmosphere! "The agony was of its own kind, and I have no word to tell what it was like. An evil odour and a sickening pain combined, might be a symbol of the torture. As is in the nature of dreams, possibly I lay but a little second on the rack, yet an age seemed shot through and through with the burning meshes of that crime, while, cowering and terror-stricken, I tossed about the loathsome fact in my mind. I had DONE it, and from the done there was no escape: it was for evermore a thing done.—Came a sudden change: I awoke. The sun stained with glory the curtains of my room, and the light of light darted keen as an arrow into my very soul. Glory to God! I was innocent! The stone was rolled from my sepulchre. With the darkness whence it had sprung, the cloud of my crime went heaving lurid away. I was a creature of the light and not of the dark. For me the sun shone and the wind blew; for me the sea roared and the flowers sent up their odours. For me the earth had nothing to hide. My guilt was wiped away; there was no red worm gnawing at my heart; I could look my neighbour in the face, and the child of my friend might lay his hand in mine and not be defiled! All day long the joy of that deliverance kept surging on in my soul.

Epilogue "It's a girl!" "A what?" Michael stared in shock at the midwife, who had just left his wife's chambers. "A girl, Your Grace," the woman replied nervously, perhaps worried that he would order Isabella's head cut off for not producing a male heir. A girl, Michael thought in wonder. Not for a moment had he thought his child would be a girl. For the past one hundred years, only males had been born into the Blackmore line, and he hadn't expected his offspring to be any different. "I must see them at once." Michael stood abruptly, causing the small, rotund midwife to jump with nerves. "Yes, Your Grace." She bowed fearfully—and unnecessarily, for he was only a Duke—and gestured for him to follow her into his wife's rooms. In a few long strides, he was inside Isabella's inner sanctum and rushing to the bed, where his wife lay as serene and calm as though she had merely taken a walk . "Isabella?" he croaked, tears in his eyes. "Oh, don't be so dramatic, darling!" Isabella replied with a gentle smile. "I'm perfectly all right, and so is the baby. One of the nurses shall bring her back in a minute; they're just bathing her." As though her words had been a command, the door to the antechamber opened and a second—more cheerful—midwife emerged with an armful of blankets. "Here she is, Your Grace," she said, shoving the bundle of blankets into his arms. "What, where?" the Duke asked in confusion, before looking down at the white blankets, light as a feather, that he held. There, in the midst of all the material and swaddled tight, was the face of the tiniest baby he had ever seen. "She's very small," he said in confusion to Isabella, who merely smiled. "Should she be this small?" "Actually, she's quite big," the midwife interjected, her face a picture of amusement at Michael's helpless expression. "What do you think?" Isabella asked softly, leaning over his shoulder to stare down at the baby. "I-I-I" Michael stuttered, completely overwhelmed. "You love her that much already?" Isabella teased . Unable to respond, Michael merely nodded, knowing that he probably appeared cold to the watching midwife. But his wife knew the truth, and she understood that sometimes a man didn't need words to express how much love was in his heart. And one day, his daughter would understand too.

Your womb can’t never bear fruit.” Miss Ethel Fordham told her that. Without sorrow or alarm, she had passed along the news as though she’d examined a Burpee seedling overcome by marauding rabbits. Cee didn’t know then what to feel about that news, no more than what she felt about Dr. Beau. Anger wasn’t available to her—she had been so stupid, so eager to please. As usual she blamed being dumb on her lack of schooling, but that excuse fell apart the second she thought about the skilled women who had cared for her, healed her. Some of them had to have Bible verses read to them because they could not decipher print themselves, so they had sharpened the skills of the illiterate: perfect memory, photographic minds, keen senses of smell and hearing. And they knew how to repair what an educated bandit doctor had plundered. If not schooling, then what? Branded early as an unlovable, barely tolerated “gutter child” by Lenore, the only one whose opinion mattered to her parents, exactly like what Miss Ethel said, she had agreed with the label and believed herself worthless. Ida never said, “You my child. I dote on you. You wasn’t born in no gutter. You born into my arms. Come on over here and let me give you a hug.” If not her mother, somebody somewhere should have said those words and meant them. Frank alone valued her. While his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her. Should it have? Why was that his job and not her own? Cee didn’t know any soft, silly women. Not Thelma, or Sarah, or Ida, and certainly not the women who had healed her. Even Mrs. K., who let the boys play nasty with her, did hair and slapped anybody who messed with her, in or outside her hairdressing kitchen. So it was just herself. In this world with these people she wanted to be the person who would never again need rescue. Not from Lenore through the lies of the Rat, not from Dr. Beau through the courage of Sarah and her brother. Sun-smacked or not, she wanted to be the one who rescued her own self. Did she have a mind, or not? Wishing would not make it so, nor would blame, but thinking might. If she did not respect herself, why should anybody else? Okay. She would never have children to care about and give her the status of motherhood. Okay. She didn’t have and probably would never have a mate. Why should that matter? Love? Please. Protection? Yeah, sure. Golden eggs? Don’t make me laugh. Okay. She was penniless. But not for long. She would have to invent a way to earn a living. What else?

From the Author Matthew 16:25 says, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  This is a perfect picture of the life of Nate Saint; he gave up his life so God could reveal a greater glory in him and through him. I first heard the story of Operation Auca when I was eight years old, and ever since then I have been inspired by Nate’s commitment to the cause of Christ. He was determined to carry out God’s will for his life in spite of fears, failures, and physical challenges. For several years of my life, I lived and ministered with my parents who were missionaries on the island of Jamaica. My experiences during those years gave me a passion for sharing the stories of those who make great sacrifices to carry the gospel around the world. As I wrote this book, learning more about Nate Saint’s life—seeing his spirit and his struggles—was both enlightening and encouraging to me. It is my prayer that this book will provide a window into Nate Saint’s vision—his desires, dreams, and dedication. I pray his example will convince young people to step out of their comfort zones and wholeheartedly seek God’s will for their lives. That is Nate Saint’s legacy: changing the world for Christ, one person and one day at a time.   Nate Saint Timeline 1923 Nate Saint born. 1924 Stalin rises to power in Russia. 1930 Nate’s first flight, aged 7 with his brother, Sam. 1933 Nate’s second flight with his brother, Sam. 1936 Nate made his public profession of faith. 1937 Nate develops bone infection. 1939 World War II begins. 1940 Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister. 1941 Nate graduates from Wheaton College. Nate takes first flying lesson. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 1942 Nate’s induction into the Army Air Corps. 1943 Nate learns he is to be transferred to Indiana. 1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan by U.S. 1946 Nate discharged from the Army. 1947 Nate accepted for Wheaton College. 1948 Nate and Marj are married and begin work in Eduador. Nate crashes his plane in Quito. 1949 Nate’s first child, Kathy, is born. Germany divided into East and West. 1950 Korean War begins. 1951 Nate’s second child, Stephen, is born. 1952 The Saint family return home to the U.S. 1953 Nate comes down with pneumonia. Nate and Henry fly to Ecuador. 1954 The first nuclear-powered submarine is launched. Nate’s third child, Phillip, is born. 1955 Nate is joined by Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming and Roger Youderian. Nate spots an Auca village for the first time. Operation Auca commences. 1956 The group sets up camp four miles from the Auca territory. Nate and the group are killed on “Palm Beach”.

I’m the kind of patriot whom people on the Acela corridor laugh at. I choke up when I hear Lee Greenwood’s cheesy anthem “Proud to Be an American.” When I was sixteen, I vowed that every time I met a veteran, I would go out of my way to shake his or her hand, even if I had to awkwardly interject to do so. To this day, I refuse to watch Saving Private Ryan around anyone but my closest friends, because I can’t stop from crying during the final scene. Mamaw and Papaw taught me that we live in the best and greatest country on earth. This fact gave meaning to my childhood. Whenever times were tough—when I felt overwhelmed by the drama and the tumult of my youth—I knew that better days were ahead because I lived in a country that allowed me to make the good choices that others hadn’t. When I think today about my life and how genuinely incredible it is—a gorgeous, kind, brilliant life partner; the financial security that I dreamed about as a child; great friends and exciting new experiences—I feel overwhelming appreciation for these United States. I know it’s corny, but it’s the way I feel. If Mamaw’s second God was the United States of America, then many people in my community were losing something akin to a religion. The tie that bound them to their neighbors, that inspired them in the way my patriotism had always inspired me, had seemingly vanished. The symptoms are all around us. Significant percentages of white conservative voters—about one-third—believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. In one poll, 32 percent of conservatives said that they believed Obama was foreign-born and another 19 percent said they were unsure—which means that a majority of white conservatives aren’t certain that Obama is even an American. I regularly hear from acquaintances or distant family members that Obama has ties to Islamic extremists, or is a traitor, or was born in some far-flung corner of the world. Many of my new friends blame racism for this perception of the president. But the president feels like an alien to many Middletonians for reasons that have nothing to do with skin color. Recall that not a single one of my high school classmates attended an Ivy League school. Barack Obama attended two of them and excelled at both. He is brilliant, wealthy, and speaks like a constitutional law professor—which, of course, he is. Nothing about him bears any resemblance to the people I admired growing up: His accent—clean, perfect, neutral—is foreign; his credentials are so impressive that they’re frightening; he made his life in Chicago, a dense metropolis; and he conducts himself with a confidence that comes from knowing that the modern American meritocracy was built for him. Of course, Obama overcame adversity in his own right—adversity familiar to many of us—but that was long before any of us knew him. President Obama came on the scene right as so many people in my community began to believe that the modern American meritocracy was not built for them. We know we’re not doing well. We see it every day: in the obituaries for teenage kids that conspicuously omit the cause of death (reading between the lines: overdose), in the deadbeats we watch our daughters waste their time with. Barack Obama strikes at the heart of our deepest insecurities. He is a good father while many of us aren’t. He wears suits to his job while we wear overalls, if we’re lucky enough to have a job at all. His wife tells us that we shouldn’t be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it—not because we think she’s wrong but because we know she’s right.

At their invitation we crowded into the spacious control cabin of the great airship, where scientific gear occupied every available cubic—perhaps hypercubic—inch. Among the fantastical glass envelopes and knottings of gold wire as unreadable to us as the ebonite control panels scrupulously polished and reflecting the Arctic sky, we were able here and there to recognize more mundane items—here Manganin resistance-boxes and Tesla coils, there Leclanché cells and solenoidal magnets, with electrical cables sheathed in commercial-grade Gutta Percha running everywhere. Inside, the overhead was much higher than expected, and the bulkheads could scarcely be made out in the muted light through three hanging Fresnel lenses, the mantle behind each glowing a different primary color, from sensitive-flames which hissed at different frequencies. Strange sounds, complex harmonies and dissonances, resonant, sibilant, and percussive at once, being monitored from someplace far Exterior to this, issued from a large brass speaking-trumpet, with brass tubing and valvework elaborate as any to be found in an American marching band running back from it and into an extensive control panel on which various metering gauges were ranked, their pointers, with exquisite Breguet-style arrowheads, trembling in their rise and fall along the arcs of italic numerals. The glow of electrical coils seeped beyond the glass cylinders which enclosed them, and anyone’s hands that came near seemed dipped in blue chalk-dust. A Poulsen’s Telegraphone, recording the data being received, moved constantly to and fro along a length of shining steel wire which periodically was removed and replaced. “Ætheric impulses,” Dr. Counterfly was explaining. “For vortex stabilization we need a membrane sensitive enough to respond to the slightest eddies. We use a human caul—a ‘veil,’ as some say.” “Isn’t a child born with a veil believed to have powers of second sight?” Dr. Vormance inquired. “Correct. And a ship with a veil aboard it will never sink—or, in our case, crash.” “Things have been done to obtain a veil,” darkly added a junior officer, Mr. Suckling, “that may not even be talked about.

In new and sanitized suburban towns, a young generation thus dreamed of cures—of a death-free, disease-free existence. Lulled by the idea of the durability of life, they threw themselves into consuming durables: boat-size Studebakers, rayon leisure suits, televisions, radios, vacation homes, golf clubs, barbecue grills, washing machines. In Levittown, a sprawling suburban settlement built in a potato field on Long Island—a symbolic utopia—“illness” now ranked third in a list of “worries,” falling behind “finances” and “child-rearing.” In fact, rearing children was becoming a national preoccupation at an unprecedented level. Fertility rose steadily—by 1957, a baby was being born every seven seconds in America. The “affluent society,” as the economist John Galbraith described it, also imagined itself as eternally young, with an accompanying guarantee of eternal health—the invincible society.

In the first place, this is a history of Europe’s reduction. The constituent states of Europe could no longer aspire, after 1945, to international or imperial status. The two exceptions to this rule—the Soviet Union and, in part, Great Britain—were both only half-European in their own eyes and in any case, by the end of the period recounted here, they too were much reduced. Most of the rest of continental Europe had been humiliated by defeat and occupation. It had not been able to liberate itself from Fascism by its own efforts; nor was it able, unassisted, to keep Communism at bay. Post-war Europe was liberated—or immured—by outsiders. Only with considerable effort and across long decades did Europeans recover control of their own destiny. Shorn of their overseas territories Europe’s erstwhile sea-borne empires (Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal) were all shrunk back in the course of these years to their European nuclei, their attention re-directed to Europe itself. Secondly, the later decades of the twentieth century saw the withering away of the ‘master narratives’ of European history: the great nineteenth-century theories of history, with their models of progress and change, of revolution and transformation, that had fuelled the political projects and social movements that tore Europe apart in the first half of the century. This too is a story that only makes sense on a pan-European canvas: the decline of political fervor in the West (except among a marginalized intellectual minority) was accompanied—for quite different reasons—by the loss of political faith and the discrediting of official Marxism in the East. For a brief moment in the 1980s, to be sure, it seemed as though the intellectual Right might stage a revival around the equally nineteenth-century project of dismantling ‘society’ and abandoning public affairs to the untrammelled market and the minimalist state; but the spasm passed. After 1989 there was no overarching ideological project of Left or Right on offer in Europe—except the prospect of liberty, which for most Europeans was a promise now fulfilled. Thirdly, and as a modest substitute for the defunct ambitions of Europe’s ideological past, there emerged belatedly—and largely by accident—the ‘European model’. Born of an eclectic mix of Social Democratic and Christian Democratic legislation and the crab-like institutional extension of the European Community and its successor Union, this was a distinctively ‘European’ way of regulating social intercourse and inter-state relations. Embracing everything from child-care to inter-state legal norms, this European approach stood for more than just the bureaucratic practices of the European Union and its member states; by the beginning of the twenty-first century it had become a beacon and example for aspirant EU members and a global challenge to the United States and the competing appeal of the ‘American way of life’.

The urge to turn his back until his stepmother went away was strong, but the urge to talk about Jane was stronger. “You were her chaperone?” Jack said, the words half lost on the wind. “Chaperone, second in command.” Miss Gwen rested her parasol point on the ground, frowning out to sea, her eyes searching the waters that separated them from the mainland. “I’ve known her since she was born.” “Was she always . . .” Jack stuck. “Maddeningly omniscient?” Miss Gwen gave a sharp bark of a laugh. “Yes. Even as a child. Oh, she hid it well. The girl had good manners. She knew when to keep her mouth shut in adult company. But if you made the mistake of asking! The vicar,” she said with satisfaction, “never questioned her about her catechism again.

Suppressed I Rise” is the true story of a courageous mother from South Africa and her two daughters. It started when Adeline, the granddaughter of missionaries from Germany, met and fell in love with a handsome young teacher, Richard Beck. They were married in the Cape Province of South Africa and would have been able to enjoy a normal life if it hadn’t been for the dark clouds of World War II. Their first child Brigitte was born in Cape Town in 1936, just as Germany was ordering its citizens to return to the Vaterland. Richard Beck obeyed his country’s call and returned to Mannheim, Germany, bringing his family with him. His young wife gave birth to Ursula, her second daughter, in the Mannheim Municipal Hospital on March 31, 1940, just days before Germany invaded Norway. It wasn’t long before Richard was inducted into the German Army and eventually sent to German-occupied Paris, leaving Adeline with her two young daughters, alone in a foreign land that was now at war with her own country, the Union of South Africa. This was certainly not what she had expected, but life offers no guarantees….

It was time to begin making notes on how the search was going, the people he had met, the conversations he had had, his thoughts, his plans and tactics for an investigation that promised to be complex, The steps taken by someone in search of someone else, he thought, and the truth is, that although the process was only in its early stages, he already had a lot to say, If this were a novel, he murmured as he opened the notebook, the conversation with the lady in the ground-floor apartment would be a chapter in itself. He picked up a pen to begin but stopped halfway, his eyes caught the paper on which he had written down the addresses, there was something he hadn’t considered before the perfectly plausible hypothesis that the unknown woman, after she got divorced, had gone to live with her parents, the equally possible hypothesis that her husband had left the apartment, leaving the telephone in his name. If that was so, and bearing in mind that the street in question was near the Central Registry, the woman on the bus might well have been the same one. The inner dialogue seemed to want to start up again, It was, It wasn’t, It was, It wasn’t, but this time, Senhor José paid no heed to it and, bending over the notebook, he began to write the first words, Thus, I went into the building, went up the stairs to the second floor and listened at the door of the apartment where the unknown woman was born, then I heard a little baby crying, it could be her child I thought, and, at the same time, I heard a woman crooning to it softly, It must be her, later, I found out that it wasn’t.

We need to be able to differentiate for a moment fear, anxiety and angst. Angst is existential anxiety, it comes with the condition: we are born, we are consious, we are aware of our fragility and mortality and that contributes to the sense of the peril in which daily life occurs. That’s existantial anxiety, it’s not pathological...it’s part of the suffering, of the human condition. Fear is something specific, something related to a specific threat, real or perceived, to our wellbeing. Anxiety is a free floating anticipatory emotion, anxiety is always in some way bound to the future, like something could happen here, something might happen. Paradoxicallly guilt binds us to the past and we always stuck in the past with guilt. And anxiety binds us to a possible future, a so improbable one, but a possible one. So in differentiating for a moment between fear and anxiety we realize that there can be therapeutic move from anxiety to fear, and you could say: oh, yea, i feel so much better already! I am not anxious anymore, i am just fearfiul. In many cases our fears are non existents or manageable, in many cases our fears are based on powerless past...most of our fears.. if you look at them as an adult, they are not going to happen, but if they were to happen, we can bear them, because we’ve also become adults, we have most of all we have psychological tensil strength, we have resiliance that child did not have, we have modes of behavious and other choices available to us, we have a capacity for toleration, we have a capacity for freedom of motion, that we didn’t have as a child... And so many times the effort to define a fear is to say it’s not going to happen, but if it were to happen, i can handle it, i can manage that. Fear in a sense is specific always, anxiety is like a fog that blows across the highway.,i t can keep us from driving as we can’t see clearly what is happening, but underneath all that we know that anxiety has power to cripple life.

Sulloway (1996, 2011) proposed that the adaptive problems imposed by parents on children will create different “niches” for children, depending on their birth order. Specifically, because parents often favor the oldest child, the firstborn tends to be relatively more conservative and more likely to support the status quo. Second-borns, however, have little to gain by supporting the existing structure and everything to gain by rebelling against it. Later-borns, especially middle-borns, according to Sulloway, develop a more rebellious personality because they have the least to gain by maintaining the existing order; studies of birth order and personality confirm this prediction (Healey & Ellis, 2007). The youngest, on the other hand, might receive more parental investment than middle children, as parents often let out all the stops to invest in their final direct reproductive vehicle. Salmon and Daly (1998) find support for these predictions. They discovered that middle-borns differ from first- and last-borns in scoring lower on measures of family solidarity and identity. Middle-borns, for example, are less likely to name a genetic relative as the person to whom they feel closest. They are also less likely to assume the role of family genealogist. Middle-borns, compared to firstborns and last-borns, are less positive in attitudes toward their families and less likely to help a family member who needs help (Salmon, 2003). These and other results (Salmon, 1999) lend some support to Sulloway’s theory that birth order affects the niches a person selects. Firstborns are more likely to feel solidarity with parents and perceive them as dependable, whereas middle-borns appear more likely to invest in bonds outside of the family. Interestingly, middle-born children might receive less total investment from parents even if parents treat all their children equally (Hertwig, Davis, & Sulloway, 2002). This result occurs because firstborns receive all of their parents’ investments early in life before other children are born and last-borns receive all of their parents’ investments after all other children leave the house. Middle-borns, in contrast, must share their parents’ investments, because there is rarely a time when other siblings are not around. Even when parents strive to invest equally in their children, middle-borns end up on the short end of the stick—perhaps accounting for why middle-borns are less identified with their families (Hertwig et al., 2002).

When a young employee gasped at his blue language, Simons flashed a grin. “I know—that is an impressive rate!” A few times a week, Marilyn came by to visit, usually with their baby, Nicholas. Other times, Barbara checked in on her ex-husband. Other employees’ spouses and children also wandered around the office. Each afternoon, the team met for tea in the library, where Simons, Baum, and others discussed the latest news and debated the direction of the economy. Simons also hosted staffers on his yacht, The Lord Jim, docked in nearby Port Jefferson. Most days, Simons sat in his office, wearing jeans and a golf shirt, staring at his computer screen, developing new trades—reading the news and predicting where markets were going, like most everyone else. When he was especially engrossed in thought, Simons would hold a cigarette in one hand and chew on his cheek. Baum, in a smaller, nearby office, trading his own account, favored raggedy sweaters, wrinkled trousers, and worn Hush Puppies shoes. To compensate for his worsening eyesight, he hunched close to his computer, trying to ignore the smoke wafting through the office from Simons’s cigarettes. Their traditional trading approach was going so well that, when the boutique next door closed, Simons rented the space and punched through the adjoining wall. The new space was filled with offices for new hires, including an economist and others who provided expert intelligence and made their own trades, helping to boost returns. At the same time, Simons was developing a new passion: backing promising technology companies, including an electronic dictionary company called Franklin Electronic Publishers, which developed the first hand-held computer. In 1982, Simons changed Monemetrics’ name to Renaissance Technologies Corporation, reflecting his developing interest in these upstart companies. Simons came to see himself as a venture capitalist as much as a trader. He spent much of the week working in an office in New York City, where he interacted with his hedge fund’s investors while also dealing with his tech companies. Simons also took time to care for his children, one of whom needed extra attention. Paul, Simons’s second child with Barbara, had been born with a rare hereditary condition called ectodermal dysplasia. Paul’s skin, hair, and sweat glands didn’t develop properly, he was short for his age, and his teeth were few and misshapen. To cope with the resulting insecurities, Paul asked his parents to buy him stylish and popular clothing in the hopes of fitting in with his grade-school peers. Paul’s challenges weighed on Simons, who sometimes drove Paul to Trenton, New Jersey, where a pediatric dentist made cosmetic improvements to Paul’s teeth. Later, a New York dentist fitted Paul with a complete set of implants, improving his self-esteem. Baum was fine with Simons working from the New York office, dealing with his outside investments, and tending to family matters. Baum didn’t need much help. He was making so much money trading various currencies using intuition and instinct that pursuing a systematic, “quantitative” style of trading seemed a waste of

Creation Myth I'm the great-grandson of a sheep farmer, child of sumacs, trash trees shedding their ancient scales. I'm drawn from fair grass on the north end, my molecules spat from coal and cattle, the Indiana dusk. I'm notes scrawled on freezer paper, the one looped oven mitt Aunt Bev crocheted while the baby lay feverish in its crib. I rise from a day gone thin as Cousin Ceily, who wore her cancer wigs to church. I come from boys unfastening in the 4-H bathroom, the stink of urinal cakes, dirty hands that scratched an itch. I breathe in arc welders and air compressors. I breathe out milk leaking from nurse cows, Uncle Jake's spoiled old bitches. I'm run through with moths and meth labs, a child of the KKK, men who lynched Tom Shipp from a split oak in Marion, August 1930. My cells carry his shadow swaying over uncut grass. They carry my second third cousin cheering in the back. I rise from aphids in honeysuckle, egg yolks flecked with blood. Born one humid summer night, my body hums like a black cricket, transmitting August across the fields. I sing till my throat bleeds. I smoke like a pan of scorched sugar. I'll never forget the miracle of firecrackers, freezer meat, murky gray lemonade. I'm born to thunder in the veins, a child of form, a rusted gasket ring, some disenchanted thing, the promise of a worm.

But every parent will know that it makes perfect sense. After his birth, the logic is different. Instantly it became clear that the life of the child has infinite dignity. Of course it is worth the grief, even if the candle is only lit for such a short time. Once a kid is born you’ve been seized by a commitment, the strength of which you couldn’t even have imagined beforehand. It brings you to the doorstep of disciplined service. When a parent falls in love with a child, the love arouses amazing energy levels; we lose sleep caring for the infant. The love impels us to make vows to the thing we love; parents vow to always be there for their kid. Fulfilling those vows requires us to perform specific self-sacrificial practices; we push the baby in a stroller when maybe we’d rather go out alone for a run. Over time those practices become habits, and those habits engrave a certain disposition; by the time the kid is three, the habit of putting the child’s needs first has become second nature to most parents. Slowly, slowly, by steady dedication, you’ve transformed a central part of yourself into something a little more giving, more in harmony with others and more in harmony with what is good than it was before. Gradually the big loves overshadow the little ones: Why would I spend my weekends playing golf when I could spend my weekends playing ball with my children? In my experience, people repress bad desires only when they are able to turn their attention to a better desire. When you’re deep in a commitment, the distinction between altruism and selfishness begins to fade away. When you serve your child it feels like you are serving a piece of yourself. That disposition to do good is what having good character is all about. In this way, moral formation is not individual; it is relational. Character is not something you build sitting in a room thinking about the difference between right and wrong and about your own willpower. Character emerges from our commitments. If you want to inculcate character in someone else, teach them how to form commitments—temporary ones in childhood, provisional ones in youth, permanent ones in adulthood. Commitments are the school for moral formation.

I was born in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and passed my first eight years at Gorakhpur. This was my birthplace in the United Provinces of northeastern India. We were eight children: four boys and four girls. I, Mukunda Lal Ghosh,3 was the second son and the fourth child.

Maternity is a totally ungracious thing, beneath the sentimentality heaped upon it. Only once have I seen it made beautiful for an instant, by a chance grouping of a woman's thick white thigh, statuesque in its rigidity, and the new-born child lying in the arch made by her raised knee, with its arm thrown back above its head, and the strangest expression of peace that I have ever seen on the face of a living child. The cord was not yet cut, stretching in an arc between them. For a second I was staggered by such unexpected loveliness as they showed together, and then I bent over them to help her, and the scene changed back instantly to a normal birth, which is generally uglier than death, only so much pleasanter to witness than one rarely realizes it.

In the whole history of theological exegesis and interpretation I know of nothing so utterly faulty, illogical and wholly unscriptural as that exegesis which teaches the angel song at Bethlehem to be the announcement of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace and that as such He should establish it among the nations after His ascension to heaven and during His absence from the world. The angels sang glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to “men of good will.” The angel who spoke to the shepherds keeping the temple sheep for the morning and the evening sacrifice was testifying to them that there was no longer need to keep the sheep for such a purpose. The day of animal sacrifices had passed, the living God had provided the true sacrifice, He who was born beneath the chaplet of heaven’s music, the Lamb of God ordained before the foundation of the world. He had been born into the world that He might make peace by the blood of His cross, not between man and man, not between nation and nation, but between man and God. He had been born to die and by His death reconcile a rebel world to God; on the basis of this sacrifice yet to be and when He should have risen from the dead as witness of the efficacy of His death He would bring peace to every soul that should be of good will—every soul that should surrender to the will of God by believing on Him, offering Him by faith as a sacrifice and claiming Him as a substitute. Every such soul should be at peace with, and have the peace of, God. This was the meaning of that natal hour at Bethlehem. The angels were not singing over Him as the Prince of Peace who had come to abolish war among the nations, but as the ordained sacrifice who should bring peace between the individual man and his God. And yet—He is to be the Prince of Peace and reign and rule as such over the earth, putting an end to war and establishing perfect peace among the nations. The promise of His reign and rule as the Prince of Peace is clearly set forth in Scripture; as it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his peace and government there shall be no end.” But when? Where? Listen: “Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it.” And hear what Gabriel says to Mary when he comes to announce to her that she has been chosen of Almighty God to give birth to the Messiah of Israel. The angel says: “Thou shalt call his name Jesus . . . He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” He is to be the Prince of Peace when He sits upon the throne of united Israel in their own land and not before.

Thousands of years have passed and the Immortal race still thrives, despite the damage caused by one man’s misguided pursuit of Enlightenment. The Power is corrupted, and will remain so until a new generation is born with the strength of their ancestors, led by one with an unsullied, natural connection with the Power. His heart will guide him, giving him the restraint to wield his Power wisely. He will gather his equals and together they will stand against those who persist in the corruption of the natural order. He will be strong and fierce in his beliefs, and steadfast in his love. Born the second child of the seventh daughter of his line, he alone will possess the skills and the knowledge to heal what has been broken. He alone will have the courage to judge unbiased and mete out the ultimate punishment. Until the time of his birth, may we prepare the way and hope for the future of all the races of men. —Book of the Indriell Queens – ca. 6000 B.C.E.

Jane waited until she had her sons’ full attention once again and gestured for Avery to speak. “Now, let’s get down to specifics, Mother. What do you expect us to do that will make him jealous?” Avery looked up at his mother with false wide-eyed innocence, the rogue wanted her to say it! He didn’t think she would be capable of laying out her scheme in explicit detail. He was quite mistaken. “Don’t give me that sweet-as-a-lamb look, child,” Jane warned. “The three of you have sinned enough to fill the second circle of hell all on your own, and leave no room for others. You will do what you do with any gentle born lady. Compliment her. Seduce her. Fuel the fire deep within her. Lure her into passion. But do nothing to worry me in a month’s time. Understood?” Had she been in a better mood she would have laughed at the flush of embarrassment on their faces. “What? You expect me to play ignorant of such things? I gave birth to five children, and I assure you that I did not do that all on my own. Your father played a significant role in bringing your miserable existences about. There’s that little book from India I believe you all own? The one with all the illustrations. Don’t pretend you don’t know it, because I’ve read it as well.” “Mother! For God’s sake!” Lawrence begged, cutting his mother off. Jane allowed a smile to curve her lips. “It isn’t as much fun when you are on the other end of unpleasant thoughts now, is it?” She clapped her hands together. “Now then, off to the ballroom. And remember, do what I charged you or you will beg for mercy, and I shall have none to give. I brought you into this world, and should you displease me, I shall happily remove you from it.” She made the threat in such a sweet tone that all three of her sons shuddered. -Lady Rochester, Avery, Lawrence, & Linus

What she wouldn’t have given for her father to see her—to see his baby girl who used to count the stars now sending men to travel among them. Joshua Coleman knew as if from second sight that Katherine, his brilliant, charismatic, inquisitive youngest child—a black girl from rural West Virginia, born at a time when the odds were more likely that she would die before age thirty-five than even finish high school—would somehow, someday, unite her story with the great epic of America. And

First, while the church shouldn’t affirm homosexual activity (or adultery, idolatry, or greed, for that matter), it should welcome anyone—gays included—to discover who God is and to find his forgiveness.5 Lots of people wear WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) bracelets and T-shirts, but they don’t treat homosexuals as Jesus would. He wouldn’t react in fear or avoid them; he would welcome them, sit with them, and tell them of God’s deep interest in them. Many churches treat homosexuals as modern-day lepers—as outcasts; but Jesus came to heal, help, and set all people free to live for God. Surely churches can welcome gays without condoning their lifestyle—just as they can receive adulterers and alcoholics. As my pastor, Bill Stepp, regularly says, “God accepts you the way you are, but he loves you too much to leave you as you are.” It’s strange that professing Christians single out homosexual activity as the most wicked of sins. Often those who claim to be saved by God’s grace are amazingly judgmental, hateful, and demeaning (calling homosexual persons “fairies” or “faggots”) rather than being compassionate and embracing. Professing Christians are often harder on homosexuals outside the church than they are with the immorality within the church (cf. 1 Cor. 5:9–13). New Testament scholar Bruce Winter writes with a prophetic voice, “The ease with which the present day church often passes judgment on the ethical or structural misconduct of the outside community is at times matched only by its reluctance to take action to remedy the ethical conduct of its own members.”6 Second, the Bible doesn’t condemn homosexual inclinations, but rather sexual activity outside of a marriage relationship between husband and wife. In fact, no writers of antiquity, including biblical ones, had any idea of “sexual orientation”; they talked about sexual behavior. When the Scriptures speak against immoral sexual relationships, the focus is not on inclinations or feelings (whether homosexual or heterosexual).7 Rather, the focus is on acting out those impulses (which ranges from inappropriately dwelling on sexual thoughts—lusting—to carrying them out sexually). Even though we are born with a sinful, self-centered inclination, God judges us based on what we do.8 Similarly, a person may, for whatever reasons, have same-sex inclinations, but God won’t judge him on the basis of those inclinations, but on what he does with them. A common argument made by advocates of a gay lifestyle is that the Bible doesn’t condemn loving, committed same-sex relationships (“covenant homosexuality”)—just homosexual rape or going against one’s natural sexual inclination, whether hetero- or homosexual. Now, “the Bible doesn’t say anything about ——” or “Jesus never said anything about ——” arguments can be tricky and even misleading. The Bible doesn’t speak about abortion, euthanasia, political involvement, Christians fighting in the military, and the like. Jesus, as far as we know, never said anything about rape or child abuse. Nevertheless, we can get guidance from Scripture’s more basic affirmations about our roles as God’s image-bearers, about God’s creation design, and about our identity and redemption in Christ, as we’ll see below.

Consider the emotional patterns of infants. Have you ever noticed how changeable they are? A baby may be crying lustily, but if you say, "Goo, goo, goo" and call his attention to something else, suddenly he's giggling. But ten seconds later, he can be crying again. A child's emotions are like that until he gets to a point where the highs and lows are less extreme. Likewise, in spiritual growth, we tend to follow a generally upward trend in which our ups and downs, over time, become less severe. As we grow in maturity, we settle into a more consistent pattern of spiritual behavior. But

Ironically, during that time, Charles and Diana enjoyed the happiest period of their married life. The balmy summer months before Harry’s birth was a time of contentment and mutual devotion. But a storm cloud hovered on the horizon. Diana knew that Charles was desperate for their second child to be a girl. A scan had already shown that her baby was a boy. It was a secret she nursed until the moment he was born at 4.20pm on Saturday, September 15 in the Lindo wing at St. Mary’s Hospital. Charles’s reaction finally closed the door on any love Diana may have felt for him. “Oh it’s a boy,” he said, “and he’s even got rusty hair.” [A common Spencer trait.] With these dismissive remarks he left to play polo. From that moment, as Diana has told friends: “Something inside me died.” It was a reaction which marked the beginning of the end of their marriage.

Quiz # 6 1.   Who is the father of all mankind? 2.   In Genesis, what was the name of Isaac’s brother-in-law? 3.   What was Obed’s famous grandson’s first occupation? 4.   Who was the favorite child of Isaac’s wife, Rebekah? 5.   In the Old Testament which royal prince got his head caught in the branches of a tree? 6.   What was the name of Jacob’s only daughter? 7.   What prize did Caleb the spy offer to the person who captured Kiriath Sepher? 8.   How many son’s did Zilpah, the wife of Jacob have? 9.   What was the name of Abraham’s first-born son? 10. What was the name of the first child ever born? 11. How old was Jesus when his parents left him behind in Jerusalem? 12. Which Old Testament prophet was the son of Amittai? 13. What was the name of Queen Esther’s cousin who raised her from childhood? 14. What family arrangements of King Solomon angered God? 15. Who was Jacob the patriarch’s second son?

Ibn Sina was born in a tiny settlement called Afshanah, outside the village of Kharmaythan, and soon after his birth his family moved to the nearby city of Bukhara. While he was still a small boy his father, a tax collector, arranged for him to study with a teacher of Qu’ran and a teacher of literature, and by the time he was ten he had memorized the entire Qu’ran and absorbed much of Muslim culture. His father met a learned vegetable peddler named Mahmud the Mathematician, who taught the child Indian calculation and algebra. Before the gifted youth grew his first facial hairs he had qualified in law and delved into Euclid and geometry, and his teachers begged his father to allow him to devote his life to scholarship. He began the study of medicine at eleven and by the time he was sixteen he was lecturing to older physicians and spending much of his time in the practice of law. All his life he would be both jurist and philosopher, but he noted that although these learned pursuits were given deference and respect by the Persian world in which he lived, nothing mattered more to an individual than his well-being and whether he would live or die. At an early age, fate made Ibn Sina the servant of a series of rulers who used his genius to guard their health, and though he wrote dozens of volumes on law and philosophy—enough to win him the affectionate sobriquet of Second Teacher (First Teacher being Mohammed)—it was as the Prince of Physicians that he gained the fame and adulation that followed him wherever he traveled. In Ispahan, where he had gone at

The town is described in this story as the “House of Bread” (in Arabic, the name means “House of Meat”).[7] The two women arrived in time for the harvest, and Ruth started working in the barley fields surrounding Bethlehem. There she met a man named Boaz, who first helped her acquire land in the town and later had a child with her.[8] This child, Obed, was the father of Jesse, the father of David who was born in Bethlehem and who would later become the second King of Israel.[9] David was anointed king by the prophet Samuel in Bethlehem.

sn A quotation from Isa 7:14. It is unclear whether the author is citing the MT or the LXX. The use of the word παρθένος (parthenos, “virgin”) may be due to its occurrence in the LXX, but it is also possible that it is the author’s translation of the Hebrew term עַלְמָה (’almah, “young woman”). The second phrase of the quotation is modified slightly from its original context; both the MT and LXX have a second person singular verb, but here the quotation has a third person plural verb form. The spelling of the name here (Emmanuel) differs from the spelling of the name in the OT (Immanuel) because of a different leading vowel in the respective Greek and Hebrew words. In the original context, this passage pointed to a child who would be born during the time of Ahaz as proof that the military alliance of Syria and Israel against Judah would fail. Within Isaiah’s subsequent prophecies this promise was ultimately applied to the future Davidic king who would one day rule over the nation.

No one is born a great cook, one learns by doing," she assured readers. "This is my invariable advice to people: Learn to cook - try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!

Consider the question posed at the beginning of this book’s penultimate chapter: how much do parents really matter? The data have by now made it clear that parents matter a great deal in some regards (most of which have been long determined by the time a child is born) and not at all in others (the ones we obsess about). You can’t blame parents for trying to do something — anything — to help their child succeed, even if it’s something as irrelevant as giving him a high-end first name. But there is also a huge random effect that rains down on even the best parenting efforts. If you are in any way typical, you have known some intelligent and devoted parents whose child went badly off the rails. You may have also known of the opposite instance, where a child succeeds despite his parents’ worst intentions and habits. Recall for a moment the two boys, one white and one black, who were described in chapter 5. The white boy who grew up outside Chicago had smart, solid, encouraging, loving parents who stressed education and family. The black boy from Daytona Beach was abandoned by his mother, was beaten by his father, and had become a full-fledged gangster by his teens. So what became of the two boys? The second child, now twenty-eight years old, is Roland G. Fryer Jr., the Harvard economist studying black underachievement. The white child also made it to Harvard. But soon after, things went badly for him. His name is Ted Kaczynski.

On December 24, 2011—Christmas Eve—Muslims in Christian-majority Uganda threw acid on a church pastor outside his church, severely disfiguring him, blinding one eye and damaging the other. Pastor of the ten-thousand-strong Gospel Life International Pentecostal church, Umar Mulinde, formerly a Muslim, explained his ordeal: “I was attacked by a man who claimed to be a Christian. He called out to me shouting ‘pastor, pastor,’ and as I turned to see who he was, he poured acid which burnt part of my face. As I turned away from the attacker, another man poured the liquid on my back and ran away shouting ‘Allah Akbar.’” Mulinde originally “came from a strict Muslim family and his father was an imam.” Umar was the fifty-second child to be born to the polygamist Muslim leader. The son went on to become a sheikh himself before converting to Christianity in 1993,

dissociation, “the escape when there is no escape.”An infant typically seeks his parents when alarmed, so when a parent actually causes alarm the infant is in an unsolvable situation in which it can neither approach or avoid. Neurobiologically this represents a simultaneous and uncoupled hyperactivation of the sympathic and the parasympathic circuits. This is subjectively experienced as a sudden transition into emotional chaos. Sieff asked what might cause a mother to behave in such a harmful way with her baby. Schore answered that this is not a conscious voluntary but an unconscious involuntary response, and that typically women who cannot mother their child in an attuned way are suffering from the consequences of their own unresolved early emotional trauma. The experience of a female infant with her mother influences how she will mother her own infants. Thus if early childhood trauma remains unconscious and unresolved it will inevitably be passed down the generations. Additionally, Sieff asked what role the father plays in a child’s emotional development. Schore explained that children form a second attachment relationship to the father especially during the second year. The quality of the attachment to the father is independent of that to his mother. At eighteen months there are two separate attachment dynamics in operation. It also appears that the father is critically involved in the development of a toddler’s regulation of aggression. This is true of both sexes, but particularly of boys who are born with a greater aggressive endowment than girls. Afterwards, a long discussion followed where Schore highlighted the damaging effects of long bouts of unregulated shame for the toddler, the differences between shame and guilt, and the enduring consequences of early chronic shame. Schore emphasized that when the caregiver is unable to help the child to regulate either a specific emotion or intense emotions in general, or – worse – that she exacerbates the dysregulation, the child will start to go into a state of hypoaroused dissociation as soon as a threat of

Sol in Leo She who is born when the sun is in Leo shall be naturally subtle and witty, and desirous of learning. Whatsoever she heareth or seeth if it seems to comprise any difficulty of matter immediately will she desire to know it. The magic sciences will do her great stead. She shall be familiar to and well beloved by princes. Her first child shall be a female, and the second a male. During her life she shall sustain many troubles and perils. —Anonymous English Commonplace Book, c. 1590, Gonçalves MS 4890, f. 8v

When Constance was born she was welcomed with enthusiasm by both her parents — it was delightful to have a little girl — but when her second daughter arrived Mrs. Ayrton was disappointed. Her third daughter was a disaster (there was no other word for it in Mrs. Ayrton’s opinion) for not only was the child of the wrong sex but she was positively ugly; a thin puling baby with a curiously broad forehead and no hair at all. Mrs. Ayrton took one look at the new arrival and then turned her head and wept. “She’s a nice little baby,” said the nurse. “No,” said Mrs. Ayrton between her sobs. “Perhaps it will be a boy next time.” “No,” said Mrs. Ayrton. She had made up her mind there was to be no “next time.” Three babies in three years was enough. If she could have been certain that the next one would be a son … but it might be a girl … she was not going to risk it.

heroine born with lover and her father after accident of her father test of three daughters proved she have no blood relationship with them and father dead and he ensured her to hero she have no confidence and depend to others hero try to insult to change her but she didn't after her second sister is villainous heroine killed father because will and heroine try to find her real father and say pic edit by villainous thinking hero father was her real father and aborts her child and not giving explanation hero divorced her and engaged to villainess and final became independent and figure that father already died and go back to get hero and revenge for died child

heroine born with lover and her father after accident of her father test of three daughters proved she have no blood relationship with them and father dead and he ensured her to hero she have no confidence and depend to others hero try to insult to change her but she didn't after her second sister is villainous heroine killed father because will and heroine try to find her real father and say pic edit by villainous thinking hero father was her real father and aborts her child and not giving explanation hero divorced her and engaged to villainess and final became independent and figure that father already died and go back to get hero and revenge for died child Book name

And when a Child is born into this World, it has no concept of the tone the skin it’s living in, it’s not a second, seven seconds away

And so it began. The seed had been planted there all along. He was born with it. But it was dormant, fast asleep, deep inside the frontal lobe of his brain's left hemisphere. It woke up when it was ready, not one moment before, and it started to grow. And the wild child would eventually learn his ABC's and how to count to ten. And he would acquire thousands of words and learn how to puzzle them together into meaningful speech. And he would one day come to master, like it was second nature, all the elegant behaviors and customs and protocols and etiquettes separating him from the lower forms of life. Like standing in line and waiting your turn because patience is a virtue. And chewing with your mouth closed because it is rude to let others see the awful mess inside. And watching the clock because they told him he should never be late.

I place the nail in my right palm, the tip pointed toward Landulf, and stare at it. Neither Yaksha’s nor the child’s nor my daughter’s blood is in this present form of mine. I am strong but still only a shadow of what I will be in the future. Since returning to Sicily I have felt no power of psychokinesis, the ability to move objects with my mind. It was Kalika’s blood alone that gave me that ability, and my daughter hasn’t even been born yet. Still, my daughter gave her life to save the child, paid for his life with her own. And the child’s blood, in an earlier reincarnation, was once on this nail. There is a connection that can reasonably be made here, or else mystically contrived. No doubt a particle of Christ’s blood still remains on the metal, deep in the folds of the atoms that bind it together. It is on this invisible blood I focus. I still believe in the miracle of this blood. My belief is born of experience. I have seen it bring a friend back to life. My belief is stronger than evil incantations spoken to cruel spirits, and bloody pentagrams drawn on forsaken cliffs. I made a serious mistake by stealing the girl’s heart, but now I will give my own heart in exchange for hers. And in exchange for my life, for just a second of time, I ask for the power that my daughter already gave to me. I ask it out of favor to Kalika, whom I am sure would not want her mother to go down without a final chance of victory. Yes, I have the nerve to remind God that he owes me for my daughter’s sacrifice. But I also have the faith to believe he hears me. And my faith is stronger than stone.

When my first child was born, I thought it quite hilarious that within seconds of her arrival, she was placed before me on a tray and a doctor put a sharp pair of scissors in my hand. It was to cut the umbilical cord. I had an advantage over potential Harm OCD with my children, which is that I always knew full well that I would have intrusive violent thoughts about them. Because I always assumed I'd have thoughts of cutting, smothering, strangling, microwaving them, and so on, I never responded to any individual thought of that nature like it was particularly interesting. If anything, I welcomed such thoughts as useful reminders of why I became a therapist.

They hate love, human love, because they were born of angels. And while God charged his angels to take care of humans, the angels were made first, and they have always hated God’s second creation. That is why Lucifer fell. He was an angel who would not bow to mankind, God’s favored child. Love is the weakness of human beings, and the angels despise them for it.

At birth, your baby can distinguish between the sounds of every language that has ever been invented. Professor Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, discovered this phenomenon. She calls kids at this age “citizens of the world”. Chomsky puts it this way: We are not born with the capacity to speak a specific language. We are born with the capacity to speak any language. Unfortunately, things don’t stay that way. By their first birthday, Kuhl found, babies can no longer distinguish between the sounds of every language on the planet. They can distinguish only between those to which they have been exposed in the past six months. A Japanese baby not exposed to “rake” and “lake” during her second six months of life cannot distinguish between those two sounds by the time she is 1 year old.

Please note that the Gallup-documented changes in trust did not flow from the verifiable truth or falsity of the content. In the bubble, facts are no match for belief. There is no Democrat Party child-sex ring being operated out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria, and never was. There is no fleet of UN black helicopters poised to invade the capitals of the world and steal their sovereignty, and never was. There was no U.S. military operation under the Obama administration to overthrow Texas and jail patriots in a vacant Walmart (I’m pretty sure we already have Texas, don’t we?). There was no George W. Bush administration plot to blow up the Twin Towers on 9/11 as a false-flag operation. There was no fake moon landing. Baby Barack Obama was born in a Honolulu, Hawaii, hospital, just as the birth certificate and contemporaneous newspaper announcements said. And at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, having already shot his own mother to death, Adam Lanza murdered twenty children and six adults. It was not a hoax. No matter what that asshole Alex Jones or his addled followers believe, the victims’ grieving parents were not “crisis actors” in a plot to undermine the Second Amendment. It was a fucking massacre conducted with a fucking assault rifle such as the fucking NRA has fought for decades to be readily available.

When I was a child and I would listen to my sister's LPs She was a huge fan and she was so in love with him that she wrote him a letter. I enjoyed seeing my sis so happy about Manilow Mania. I wrote some lyrics based on one of his songs, also thinking of those ships that pass in the night in the city where I was born. Can you guess which one? Anyway, my sister was already unconscious at the hospital when I inserted an earplug so that she could hear some of his songs. It was very low, very mild Manilow, when all of a sudden, in the second cord when he sang "I made it through the rain" in a beat a bit higher her heartbeat which was being monitored played faster. I could see that as a sign that she was listening. I stopped the song and I started Singing one of her songs that she had especially made for my birthday when I turned nine yrs old and I never forgot about that. I could see a little smile coming from the left side of her lips. It was the affirmation I needed. That she was and will always be there for me as I so admired her soul to the bones!

An incapacitous patient who becomes pregnant may be forced, against her will, to have an abortion. The judgment will typically be expressed in the language of the best interests both of the mother and of the welfare (were it to be born) of the child. What’s happening here? The maternal best interests part of the analysis is fairly straightforward. This isn’t really an abortion against the mother’s will. She’s got no (rightly directed) will. But what about the interests of the putative child? A couple of points. First: it is given a voice in the debate (although for other purposes it has no legal existence) because it is convenient for it to have it. It will obligingly deliver a speech saying that it doesn’t want to exist, and will then shut up. It’s allowed no other speech. Second: in the law of the UK and in many other jurisdictions a child cannot bring a claim based on the assertion ‘It were better that my mother had not borne me.’ It’s regarded as offensive to public policy: see, for instance, McKay v Essex AHA (1982).

Peter and Paul, there to be baptized and forever snatched from the gaping maw of everlasting fire and death. Because November 11 was St. Martin’s Day—the feast day of Saint Martin of Tours—the child was given the saint’s name, a common enough practice at that time. But unbeknownst to Luther’s parents, there was a detail of this saint’s life that would one day form an eerie and seemingly prophetic parallel with the career of the newborn that day named for him. Saint Martin lived in the fourth century. He was born in what is today Hungary; grew up in what is today Pavia, Italy; and spent most of his adult life in what is today France, all three of which at that time were within the borders of the Roman Empire. He became a Christian at an early age, despite his father’s disapproval, and was enlisted in the Roman army. One day while in the Gallic provinces—it was in the town of Borbetomagus, in what is today central Germany—the future saint was ordered to participate in a battle. But in the belief that shedding blood was not consonant with his deep Christian convictions, Martin bravely declared, “I am a soldier of Christ. I cannot fight.”1 For this shocking refusal to submit to this duty assigned him, he was imprisoned and charged with cowardice, but he turned this charge on its head by then volunteering to go to the front lines unarmed, because he did not fear for his life, only that he might take the life of another. In the end, the battle did not take place, and he was released from duty, shortly thereafter becoming a monk. The Roman city called Borbetomagus where this Martin took the death-defying stand for his faith that set him on his path of sainthood would in the future become known as the German city of Worms. Thus, eleven centuries from when this first Martin took his Christian stand against the Roman Empire, the second Martin would take his Christian stand against the Holy Roman Empire—in precisely the same place.

Presidential Similarities All former presidents of the United States are bound together for life, but the similarities between two former presidents goes beyond what is normal. Have you ever heard about the Lincoln/Kennedy paradox? For starters, both Lincoln and Kennedy had previously been boat captains and were also the second children in their family. Both presidents were elected in the year ’60—Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and John F. Kennedy in 1960. They each had three children living with them in the White House and had one child pass away during their presidency. But that’s just the beginning. President Lincoln had a secretary with the last name Kennedy, while President Kennedy had a secretary with the last name Lincoln. Upon each of their deaths, they were succeeded by vice presidents with the last name Johnson (Andrew Johnson and Lyndon B. Johnson). Both John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, the presidents’ assassins, have fifteen letters in their name. Booth shot President Lincoln in a theater and then fled to a warehouse, while Oswald shot President Kennedy from a warehouse, then fled to a theater. These similarities are a bit eerie, right?! It seems as though Lincoln and Kennedy were twins born a century apart.