Shrine Of Believers Quotes

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Those are shrines. Some people believe spirits live in them.
Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Volume 1)
Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
Aristophanes (The Knights)
Isn't atheism just another religion?' No, it isn't. Atheism has no creeds, rituals, holy book, absolute moral code, origin myth, sacred spaces or shrines. It has no sin, divine judgment, forbidden words, prayer, worship, prophecy, group privileges, or anointed 'holy' leaders. Atheists don't believe in a transcendent world or supernatural afterlife. Most important, there is no orthodoxy in atheism.
Dan Barker (Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists)
But not because I’m psychotic and delusional. I’m not going to make a goddamn shrine of her and convince myself that we were destined to be together by the gods or whatever weird shit people believe in these days.
H.D. Carlton (Haunting Adeline (Cat and Mouse, #1))
I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content - a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognized that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illustrated manuscripts of the faiths.
Alain de Botton (Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion)
The passion for travelling is, I believe, instinctive in some natures. We have seen men persevere in their enterprises against the most formidable obstacles; and, without means or friends, and even ignorant of the languages of the various countries through which they passed, pursue their perilous journeys into remote places, until, like the knight in the Arabian tale, they succeeded in snatching a memorial from every shrine they visited.
James Holman
Say to my friends, when they look upon me, dead, Weeping for me and mourning me in sorrow, ‘Do not believe that this corpse you see is myself, In the name of God, I tell you, it is not I, I am a spirit, and this is naught but flesh, It was my abode and my garment for a time. I am a treasure, by a talisman kept hid, Fashioned of dust, which served me as a shrine, I am a pearl, which has left it’s shell deserted, I am a bird, and this body was my cage, Whence I have now flown forth and it is left as a token, Praise to God, who hath now set me free, And prepared for me my place in the highest of the Heavens, Until today I was dead, though alive in your midst. Now I live in truth, with the grave – clothes discarded. Today I hold converse with the Saints above, With no veil between, I see God face to face. I look upon “Loh-i-Mahfuz” and there in I read, Whatever was and is, and all that is to be. Let my house fall in ruins, lay my cage in the ground, Cast away the talisman, it is a token no more, Lay aside my cloak, it was but my outer garment. Place them all in the grave, let them be forgotten, I have passed on my way and you are left behind, Your place of abode was no dwelling place for me. Think not that death is death, nay, it is life, A life that surpasses all we could dream of here, While in this world, here we are granted sleep, Death is but sleep, sleep that shall be prolonged Be not frightened when death draweth nigh, It is but the departure for this blessed home, Think of the mercy and love of your Lord, Give thanks for His Grace and come without fear. What I am now, even so shall you be, For I know that you are even as I am, The souls of all men come forth from God, The bodies of all are compounded alike, Good and evil, alike it was ours. I give you now a message of good cheer May God’s peace and joy forever more be yours.
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali
Eponymous Clent- Wanted for thirty-nine cases of fraud, counterfeiting, selling, and circulating lewd and unlicensed literature, claiming to be the impecunious son of a duke, impersonating a magistrate, impersonating a horse doctor, breach of promise, forty-seven moonlit flits without payment of debts, robbing shrines, fleeing from justice before trial, stealing pies from windows and small furniture from inns, fabricating the Great Palthrop Horse Plague for purposes of profit, operating a hurdy-gurdy without a license. The public is advised against lending him money, buying anything from him, letting him rooms, or believing a word he says. Contrary to his professions, he will not pay you the day after tomorrow.
Frances Hardinge (Fly Trap)
Contemplations on the belly When pregnant with our first, Dean and I attended a child birth class. There were about 15 other couples, all 6-8 months pregnant, just like us. As an introduction, the teacher asked us to each share what had been our favorite part of pregnancy and least favorite part. I was surprised by how many of the men and women there couldn't name a favorite part. When it was my turn, I said, "My least favorite has been the nausea, and my favorite is the belly." We were sitting in the back of the room, so it was noticeable when several heads turned to get a look at me. Dean then spoke. "Yeah, my least favorite is that she was sick, and my favorite is the belly too." Now nearly every head turned to gander incredulously at the freaky couple who actually liked the belly. Dean and I laughed about it later, but we were sincere. The belly is cool. It is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, an unmistakable sign of what's going on inside, the wigwam for our little squirmer, the mark of my undeniable superpower of baby-making. I loved the belly and its freaky awesomeness, and especially the flutters, kicks, and bumps from within. Twins belly is a whole new species. I marvel at the amazing uterus within and skin without with their unceasing ability to stretch (Reed Richards would be impressed). I still have great admiration for the belly, but I also fear it. Sometimes I wonder if I should build a shrine to it, light some incense, offer up gifts in an attempt both to honor it and avoid its wrath. It does seem more like a mythic monstrosity you'd be wise not to awaken than a bulbous appendage. It had NEEDS. It has DEMANDS. It will not be taken lightly (believe me, there's nothing light about it). I must give it its own throne, lying sideways atop a cushion, or it will CRUSH MY ORGANS. This belly is its own creature, is subject to different laws of growth and gravity. No, it's not a cute belly, not a benevolent belly. It would have tea with Fin Fang Foom; it would shake hands with Cthulhu. It's no wonder I'm so restless at night, having to sleep with one eye open. Nevertheless, I honor you, belly, and the work you do to protect and grow my two precious daughters inside. Truly, they must be even more powerful than you to keep you enslaved to their needs. It's quite clear that out of all of us, I'm certainly not the one in control. I am here to do your bidding, belly and babies. I am your humble servant.
Shannon Hale
Pilgrimage, then, is an image of what the journey of life is about. That, I believe, is the reason it endures—not because of relics and shrines, but because we sense intuitively that this holy journey is a rehearsal for death and resurrection. We go on pilgrimage to see our life in miniature, to walk physically and geographically the journey of the soul to God.
Murray Bodo (The Road to Mount Subasio)
you desecrated the shrines of our fathers you pushed our tongue, stole our culture paraded your wickedness as my savior you refused the right to let me own my narrative you butchered our names you brought war on our land you call my people "savages" you stole our histories and wear them proudly in your museums you wash away our achievements you carry it as yours you "discovered" what was already mine you plant puppets, assassinating our leaders you desecrated the shrines of my mothers when we worshipped nature, you laughed at us now, you want to carry our ways, learn from us we refuse to write softness into our stories for you to feel comfortable we refuse to let anyone but us own our narrative we refuse to believe your lies again you will not spit in the face of our fathers and think his children will now sit quietly.
Ijeoma Umebinyuo (Questions for Ada)
And who talks of error now? I scarcely think the notion that flittered across my brain was an error. I believe it was an inspiration rather than a temptation: it was very genial, very soothing—I know that. Here it comes again! It is no devil, I assure you; or if it be, it has put on the robes of an angel of light. I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.” “Distrust it, sir; it is not a true angel.” “Once more, how do you know? By what instinct do you pretend to distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger from the eternal throne—between a guide and a seducer?” “I judged by your countenance, sir, which was troubled when you said the suggestion had returned upon you. I feel sure it will work you more misery if you listen to it.” “Not at all—it bears the most gracious message in the world: for the rest, you are not my conscience-keeper, so don’t make yourself uneasy. Here, come in, bonny wanderer!” He said this as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but his own; then, folding his arms, which he had half extended, on his chest, he seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being. “Now,” he continued, again addressing me, “I have received the pilgrim—a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
Gwendolen’s mother had been a foolish woman, inclined to believe any passing nonsense. Of such people were patriots made, in Gwendolen’s opinion. More’s the pity.
Kate Atkinson (Shrines of Gaiety)
What has since happened in Tibet is hardly to be believed. More than 1.2 million Tibetans lost their lives and of about six thousand monasteries, temples, and shrines, 99 percent were either looted or totally destroyed. In
Heinrich Harrer (Seven Years in Tibet)
Everything depends on what is being enacted. Enactment itself, since it is almost synonymous with ceremony, is, as we have seen, part of the very fabric of our human life. We do enact things. We will enact things. No on can stop us from enacting things. The most gaunt anti-ceremonialist may refuse to take off his hat in a shrine, whereupon he has given the whole game away. He agrees with the priests at the shrine that hats on or hats off are significant, and to register his dissociation from their cult, he keeps his on. It is a ceremonial enactment of what he believes. A church wishes to stress the table aspect of the Eucharist, so it instructs its people to remain seated as they eat the bread and drink the cup. This is a ceremonial enactment of something important to them. They agree with the Christians who kneel that posture is immensely significant. The external act matters; stay seated.
Thomas Howard (Evangelical Is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament)
The obstinacy of antiquated institutions in perpetuating themselves resembles the stubbornness of the rancid perfume which should claim our hair, the pretensions of the spoiled fish which should persist in being eaten, the persecution of the child's garment which should insist on clothing the man, the tenderness of corpses which should return to embrace the living. "Ingrates!" says the garment, "I protected you in inclement weather. Why will you have nothing to do with me?" "I have just come from the deep sea," says the fish. "I have been a rose," says the perfume. "I have loved you," says the corpse. "I have civilized you," says the convent. To this there is but one reply: "In former days." To dream of the indefinite prolongation of defunct things, and of the government of men by embalming, to restore dogmas in a bad condition, to regild shrines, to patch up cloisters, to rebless reliquaries, to refurnish superstitions, to revictual fanaticisms, to put new handles on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites, to force the past on the present, – this seems strange. Still, there are theorists who hold such theories. These theorists, who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a glazing which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion; and they go about shouting, "Look! take this, honest people." This logic was known to the ancients. The soothsayers practise it. They rubbed a black heifer over with chalk, and said, "She is white, Bos cretatus." As for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it. Superstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices, those forms all forms as they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war must be made on them, and that without truce; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the earth.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
It was the debut of a strategy employed by the Saudi royal family throughout the twentieth century: Threatened by Islamic radicalism, they embraced it, hoping to retain control. The al-Sauds’ claims to power on the Arabian peninsula were weak and grew largely from conquests made by allied jihadists. They now ruled the holiest shrines in worldwide Islam. There seemed to them no plausible politics but strict official religiosity. Many among the royal family were themselves true believers. Theirs was, after all, the only modern nationstate created by jihad.7
Steve Coll (Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan & Bin Laden from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001)
The Troubadours Etc." Just for this evening, let's not mock them. Not their curtsies or cross-garters or ever-recurring pepper trees in their gardens promising, promising. At least they had ideas about love. All day we've driven past cornfields, past cows poking their heads through metal contraptions to eat. We've followed West 84, and what else? Irrigation sprinklers fly past us, huge wooden spools in the fields, lounging sheep, telephone wires, yellowing flowering shrubs. Before us, above us, the clouds swell, layers of them, the violet underneath of clouds. Every idea I have is nostalgia. Look up: there is the sky that passenger pigeons darkened and filled— darkened for days, eclipsing sun, eclipsing all other sound with the thunder of their wings. After a while, it must have seemed that they followed not instinct or pattern but only one another. When they stopped, Audubon observed, they broke the limbs of stout trees by the weight of the numbers. And when we stop we'll follow—what? Our hearts? The Puritans thought that we are granted the ability to love only through miracle, but the troubadours knew how to burn themselves through, how to make themselves shrines to their own longing. The spectacular was never behind them. Think of days of those scarlet-breasted, blue-winged birds above you. Think of me in the garden, humming quietly to myself in my blue dress, a blue darker than the sky above us, a blue dark enough for storms, though cloudless. At what point is something gone completely? The last of the sunlight is disappearing even as it swells— Just for this evening, won't you put me before you until I'm far enough away you can believe in me? Then try, try to come closer— my wonderful and less than.
Mary Szybist (Incarnadine: Poems)
Cowperwood, who saw things in the large, could scarcely endure this minutae. He was but little interested in the affairs of bygone men and women, being so intensely engaged with the living present. And after a time he slipped outside, preferring the wide sweep of gardens, with their flower-lined walks and views of the cathedral. Its arches and towers and stained-glass windows, this whole carefully executed shrine, still held glamor, but all because of the hands and brains, aspirations and dreams of selfish and self-preserving creatures like himself. And so many of these, as he now mused, walking about, had warred over possession of this church. And now they were within its walls, graced and made respectable, the noble dead! Was any man noble? Had there ever been such a thing as an indubitably noble soul? He was scarcely prepared to believe it. Men killed to live—all of them —and wallowed in lust in order to reproduce themselves. In fact, wars, vanities, pretenses, cruelties, greeds, lusts, murder, spelled their true history, with only the weak running to a mythical saviour or god for aid. And the strong using this belief in a god to further the conquest of the weak. And by such temples or shrines as this. He looked, meditated, and was somehow touched with the futility of so
Theodore Dreiser
Pilgrimage was a centrally important part of Christian life in the early twelfth century, and had been for nearly one thousand years. People traveled incredible distances to visit saints' shrines and the sites of famous Christian deeds. did it for the good of their souls: sometimes to seek divine relief from illness, sometimes as penance to atone for their sins. Some thought that praying at a certain shrine would ensure the protection of that saint in their passage through the afterlife. All believed that God looked kindly on pilgrims and that a man or woman who ventured humbly and faithfully to the center of the world would improve his or her standing in the eyes of God.
Dan Jones (The Templars: The Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors)
There has come into fashion a strange and easy manner of suppressing the revelations of history, or invalidating the commentaries of philosophy, of eliding all embarrassing facts and all gloomy questions. To dream of the indefinite prolongation of defunct things, and of the government of men by embalming, to restore dogmas in a bad condition, to regild shrines, to patch up cloisters, to rebless reliquaries, to refurnish superstitions, to revictual fanaticisms, to put new handles on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites, to force the past on the present, --this seems strange.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
Depending on which flavor of academic scholarship you prefer, that age had its roots in the Renaissance or Mannerist periods in Germany, England, and Italy. It first bloomed in France in the garden of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 1780s. Others point to François-René de Chateaubriand’s château circa 1800 or Victor Hugo’s Paris apartments in the 1820s and ’30s. The time frame depends on who you ask. All agree Romanticism reached its apogee in Paris in the 1820s to 1840s before fading, according to some circa 1850 to make way for the anti-Romantic Napoléon III and the Second Empire, according to others in the 1880s when the late Romantic Decadents took over. Yet others say the period stretched until 1914—conveniently enduring through the debauched Belle Époque before expiring in time for World War I and the arrival of that other perennial of the pigeonhole specialists, modernism. There are those, however, who look beyond dates and tags and believe the Romantic spirit never died, that it overflowed, spread, fractured, came back together again like the Seine around its islands, morphed into other isms, changed its name and address dozens of times as Nadar and Balzac did and, like a phantom or vampire or other supernatural invention of the Romantic Age, it thrives today in billions of brains and hearts. The mother ship, the source, the living shrine of Romanticism remains the city of Paris.
David Downie (A Passion for Paris: Romanticism and Romance in the City of Light)
Now,’ he continued, again addressing me, ‘I have received the pilgrim – a disguised deity, as I verily believe. Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.’ ‘To speak truth, sir, I don’t understand you at all; I cannot keep up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth. Only one thing I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection; one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane. It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure.’ ‘Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Eyre; and, at this moment, I am paving hell11 with energy.’ ‘Sir?’ ‘I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as flint. Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have been.
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
Nevertheless, in certain respects and in certain places, despite philosophy, despite progress, the spirit of the cloister lingers on, in the middle of the nineteenth century, and a bizarre new outbreak of asceticism now astounds the civilized world. The persistence of antiquated institutions in perpetuating themselves is like the stubbornness of stale scent clinging to your hair, the urgency of spoiled fish clamouring to be eaten, the oppression of childish garb expecting to clothe the adult, and the tenderness of corpses wanting to come back to kiss the living. 'Ungrateful wretch!' says the garment. 'I protected you in bad weather. Why will you have nothing more to do with me?' 'I come from the open sea,' says the fish. 'I was a rose,' says the perfume. 'I loved you,' says the corpse. 'I civilized you,' says the convent. There is only one answer to this: once upon a time. To dream of the indefinite protraction of defunct things and of embalmment as a way of governing mankind, to restore ravaged dogmas, regild shrines, patch up cloisters, re-bless reliquaries, revitalize superstitions, refuel fanaticisms, replace the handles on holy-water sprinklers and on sabres, recreate monasticism and militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of the parasites, to force the past on the present - this seems strange. Still, there are theorists who propound these theories. Such theorists, and they are intelligent people, have a very simple method: they put a gloss on the past, a gloss they call 'social order', 'divine right', 'morality', 'family', 'respect for elders', 'ancient authority', 'sacred tradition', 'legitimacy', 'religion', and they go about shouting, 'Look! Take this, honest people.' This logic was known to the ancients The haruspices practiced it. They rubbed a black heifer with chalk and said, 'It's white.' We ourselves respect the past in certain instances and in all cases grant it clemency, provided it consents to being dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack and try to kill it. Superstitions, bigotries, false pieties, prejudices, these spectres, for all that they are spectres, cling to life. They have teeth and nails in their vaporousness, and they must be tackled head-on, and war must be waged against them, and it must be waged constantly. For it is one of the fates of humanity to be doomed to eternal battle against phantoms. Shades are difficult to throttle and destroy.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
The modern holiday of Mother's Day was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia.[9] St Andrew's Methodist Church now holds the International Mother's Day Shrine.[10] Her campaign to make Mother's Day a recognized holiday in the United States began in 1905, the year her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, died. Ann Jarvis had been a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War, and created Mother's Day Work Clubs to address public health issues. She and another peace activist and suffragette Julia Ward Howe had been urging for the creation of a Mother’s Day dedicated to peace. 40 years before it became an official holiday, Ward Howe had made her Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870, which called upon mothers of all nationalities to band together to promote the “amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”[11] Anna Jarvis wanted to honor this and to set aside a day to honor all mothers because she believed a mother is "the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world" Ghb구매,물뽕구입,Ghb 구입방법,물뽕가격,수면제판매,물뽕효능,물뽕구매방법,ghb가격,물뽕판매처,수면제팔아요 카톡【AKR331】라인【SPR331】위커【SPR705】텔레【GEM705】 첫거래하시는분들 실레지만 별로 반갑지않습니다 이유는 단하나 판매도 기본이지만 안전은 더중요하거든요 *물뽕이란 알고싶죠? 액체 상태로 주로 물이나 술 등에 타서 마시기 때문에 속칭 '물뽕'으로 불린다. 다량 복용시 필름이 끊기는 등의 증세가 나타나고 강한 흥분작용을 일으켜 미국에서는 젊은 청소년들속에서 주로 이용해 '데이트시 강간할 때 쓰는 약'이라는 뜻의 '데이트 레이프 드러그(date rape drug)'로 불리기도 한다. 미국 등 일부 국가에서는 GHB가 공식적으로 여성작업용으로 시중에서 밀거래 되고있다 미국에서는 2013년부터 미국FDA에서 발표한데의하면 법적으로 물뽕(GHB)약물을 사용금지하였다 이유는 이약물이 사람이 복용후 30분안에 약효가 발생하는데 6~7시간정도 지나면 바로 몸밖으로 오즘이나 혹은 땀으로 전부 빠져나간다는것이다 한번은 미국에서 어떤여성분이 강간을 당했다면서 미국 경찰청에 신고를 했다 2번의재판끝에 경찰당국과 여성분은 아무런 증거도 얻을수없었다 남성분이나 혹은 여성분이 복용할경우 30분이면 바로 기분이 좋아지면서 평소 남성의 터치나 남성의 시선까지 거부하던 여성분이그녀답지않은 스킨쉽으로 30분이 지나서 약발이 오르면 바로 작업을 걸어도 그대로 바로 빠져들게하는 마성의 약물이다 이러한 제품도 진품을살때만이 효과를 보는것이다. 더궁금한것이 있으시면 카톡【AKR331】라인【SPR331】위커【SPR705】텔레【GEM705】로 문의주세요. In 1908, the U.S. Congress rejected a proposal to make Mother's Day an official holiday, joking that they would also have to proclaim a "Mother-in-law's Day". However, owing to the efforts of Anna Jarvis, by 1911 all U.S. states observed the holiday, with some of them officially recognizing Mother's Day as a local holiday (the first being West Virginia, Jarvis' home state, in 1910). In 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating Mother's Day, held on the second Sunday in May, as a national holiday to honor mothers.
마법의약물G,H,B정품판매처,카톡【AKR331】라인【SPR331】물,뽕정품으로 판매하고있어요
Didn’t I advise you to forget the stone? Didn’t I tell you it would be mine? Look at everything you’ve lost.” He threw the sack over the ornate teal stone, pulled a cord tight around the sack’s opening, and lifted it from its resting place without placing a single finger on it. “And look at everything I’ve gained.” His sailors laughed with him. Camille spotted her straggly-beared attacker. A fist-sized bruise from Samuel’s boot discolored his jaw. Camille discreetly scanned the cascade, but didn’t see Ira or Samuel. She returned her stare to McGreenery; only this time, it was she who smiled. “I remember what you said. But I have the real map, don’t I?” She held it up for him to see as the second wave of sparks, invisible to everyone else, rolled back over the map and erased the riddle. “Samuel copied the diagram for you, but there were things the map wouldn’t show him. Things only the one worthy of the stone could see. And he overlooked something else, something he had no reason to believe was important.” McGreenery came around the shrine, the sack’s cord cutting so deeply into his flesh, the skin whitened. Camille twirled the map around to show the glowing mark. “This is the mark of Umandu.” She stepped aside so he could see the amber stone aglow at her heel. Shock drowned McGreenery’s simper. “And you can go to hell.
Angie Frazier (Everlasting (Everlasting, #1))
Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation – none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy. Who will say it? Will America say, We have stolen it, or France step down? Will Russia confess, or Poland say, We have sinned? All bloated on their scraps of destiny, all swaggering in the immunity of superstition. Ishmael, who was saved in the wilderness, and given shade in the desert, and a deadly treasure under you: has Mercy made you wise? Will Ishmael declare, We are in debt forever? Therefore the lands belong to none of you, the borders do not hold, the Law will never serve the lawless. To every people the land is given on condition. Perceived or not, there is a covenant, beyond the constitution, beyond sovereign guarantee, beyond the nation’s sweetest dreams of itself. The Covenant is broken, the condition is dishonoured, have you not noticed that the world has been taken away? You have no place, you will wander through yourselves from generation to generation without a thread. Therefore you rule over chaos, you hoist your flags with no authority, and the heart that is still alive hates you, and the remnant of Mercy is ashamed to look at you. You decompose behind your flimsy armour, your stench alarms you, your panic strikes at love. The land is not yours, the land has been taken back, your shrines fall through empty air, your tablets are quickly revised, and you bow down in hell beside your hired torturers, and still you count your battalions and crank out your marching songs. Your righteous enemy is listening. He hears your anthem full of blood and vanity, and your children singing to themselves. He has overturned the vehicle of nationhood, he has spilled the precious cargo, and every nation he has taken back. Because you are swollen with your little time. Because you do not wrestle with your angel. Because you dare to live without God. Because your cowardice has led you to believe that the victor does not limp.
Leonard Cohen (Book of Mercy)
The persistence of superannuated institutions in striving to perpetuate themselves is like the obstinacy of a rancid odour clinging to the hair; the pretension of spoiled fish that insists on being eaten, the tenacious folly of a child's garment trying to clothe a man, or the tenderness of a corpse returning to embrace the living. "Ingrates!" exclaims the garment. "I shielded you in weakness. Why do you reject me now?" "I come from the depths of the sea," says the fish; "I was once a rose," cries the odour; "I loved you," murmurs the corpse; "I civilized you," says the convent. To this there is but one reply; "In the past." To dream of the indefinite prolongation of things dead and the government of mankind by embalming; to restore dilapidated dogmas, regild the shrines, replaster the cloisters, reconsecrate the reliquaries, revamp old superstitions, replenish fading fanaticism, put new handles in worn-out sprinkling brushes, reconstitute monasticism; to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites; to foist the past upon the present, all this seems strange. There are, however, advocates for such theories as these. These theorists, men of mind too, in other things, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a coating of what they term divine right, respect for our forefathers, time-honored authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy; and they go about, shouting, "Here! take this, good people!" This logic was familiar to the ancients; their soothsayers practised it. Rubbing over a black heifer with chalk, they would exclaim, "She is white" Bos cretatus. As for ourselves, we distribute our respect, here and there, and spare the past entirely, provided it will but consent to be dead. But, if it insists upon being alive, we attack it and endeavor to kill it. Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them, body to body, and make war upon them and that, too, without cessation; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms. A shadow is hard to seize by the throat and dash upon the ground.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
The world he had known was full of dark powers. Or, to be more precise, the created order was good, as Genesis had said, but humans had worshipped nongods, pseudogods, “forces” within the natural order, and had thereby handed over to those shadowy beings a power not rightfully theirs. The “forces” had usurped the proper human authority over the world. Evidence was all around. Tarsus, like every ancient non-Jewish city, was full of shrines, full of strange worship, full of human lives misshapen by dehumanizing practices. And Paul believed that on the cross Jesus of Nazareth had defeated the ultimate force of evil. The resurrection proved it. If he had overcome death, it could only be because he had overcome the forces that lead to death, the corrosive power of idolatry and human wickedness.
N.T. Wright (Paul: A Biography)
You prayed at the holy shrine Still the guru wouldn’t receive you You’ve seen so many signs Still they call you a non-believer Alabama 3, ‘Come On Home’ Album: Power in the Blood, 2002
Martina Cole (The Life)
HEALING POINTS IN REVIEW • Remind yourself frequently that the healing power is in your subconscious mind. • Know that faith is like a seed planted in the ground; it grows after its kind. Plant the idea (seed) in your mind, water and fertilize it with expectancy, and it will become manifest. • The idea you have for a book, new invention, or play is real in your mind. This is why you can believe you have it now. Believe in the reality of your idea, plan, or invention, and as you do, it will become manifest. • In praying for another, know that your silent inner knowing of wholeness, beauty, and perfection can change the negative patterns of the other’s subconscious mind and bring about wonderful results. • The miraculous healings you hear about at various shrines are due to imagination and blind faith that act on the subconscious mind, releasing the healing power. • All disease originates in the mind. Nothing appears on the body unless there is a mental pattern corresponding to it. • The symptoms of almost any disease can be induced in you by hypnotic suggestion. This shows you the power of your thought. • There is only one process of healing and that is faith. There is only one healing power; namely, your subconscious mind. • Whether the object of your faith is real or false, you will get results. Your subconscious mind responds to the thought in your mind. Look upon faith as a thought in your mind, and that will suffice.
Joseph Murphy (The Power of Your Subconscious Mind (GP Self-Help Collection Book 4))
The Public Library is a shrine of dreams, and people fall in love here all the time. Maybe you don't believe this, but it's true. Books are works of love after all.
Ruth Ozeki (The Book of Form and Emptiness)
These outcasts, or osu, seeing that the new religion welcomed twins and such abominations, thought that it was possible that they would also be received. And so one Sunday two of them went into the church. There was an immediate stir, but so great was the work the new religion had done among the converts that they did not immediately leave the church when the outcasts came in. Those who found themselves nearest to them merely moved to another seat. It was a miracle. But it only lasted till the end of the service. The whole church raised a protest and was about to drive these people out, when Mr. Kiaga stopped them and began to explain. "Before God," he said, "there is no slave or free. We are all children of God and we must receive these our brothers." "You do not understand," said one of the converts. "What will the heathen say of us when they hear that we receive osu into our midst? They will laugh." "Let them laugh," said Mr. Kiaga. "God will laugh at them on the judgment day. Why do the nations rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing? He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision." "You do not understand," the convert maintained. "You are our teacher, and you can teach us the things of the new faith. But this is a matter which we know." And he told him what an osu was. He was a person dedicated to a god, a thing set apart--a taboo for ever, and his children after him. He could neither marry nor be married by the free-born. He was in fact an outcast, living in a special area of the village, close to the Great Shrine. Wherever he went he carried with him the mark of his forbidden caste -long, tangled and dirty hair. A razor was taboo to him. An osu could not attend an assembly of the free-born, and they, in turn, could not shelter under his roof. He could not take any of the four titles of the clan, and when he died he was buried by his kind in the Evil Forest. How could such a man be a follower of Christ? "He needs Christ more than you and I," said Mr. Kiaga. "Then I shall go back to the clan," said the convert. And he went. Mr. Kiaga stood firm, and it was his firmness that saved the young church. The wavering converts drew inspiration and confidence from his unshakable faith. He ordered the outcasts to shave off their long, tangled hair. At first they were afraid they might die. "Unless you shave off the mark of your heathen belief I will not admit you into the church," said Mr. Kiaga. "You fear that you will die. Why should that be? How are you different from other men who shave their hair? The same God created you and them. But they have cast you out like lepers. It is against the will of God, who has promised everlasting life to all who believe in His holy name. The heathen say you will die if you do this or that, and you are afraid. They also said I would die if I built my church on this ground. Am I dead? They said I would die if I took care of twins. I am still alive. The heathen speak nothing but falsehood. Only the word of our God is true." The two outcasts shaved off their hair, and soon they were the strongest adherents of the new faith. And what was more, nearly all the osu in Mbanta followed their example.
Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart)
The remnants of no other ancient structure support as many fears and hopes about the present or future of humanity as those of the Western, or Wailing, Wall of the Temple. Many people today believe that the fate of humanity itself will be decided at the site of the destroyed Temple. Visitors to the Western Wall today are immediately aware that they are visiting not just another tourist site; they are at an active religious shrine and are witnesses to expressions of piety that are sometimes intended to have consequences for all of humanity.
Guy Maclean Rogers (For the Freedom of Zion: The Great Revolt of Jews against Romans, 66-74 CE)
The modern holiday of Mother's Day was first celebrated in 1908, when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother at St Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia.[9] St Andrew's Methodist Church now holds the International Mother's Day Shrine.[10] Her campaign to make Mother's Day a recognized holiday in the United States began in 1905, the year her mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis, died. Ann Jarvis had been a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War, and created Mother's Day Work Clubs to address public health issues. She and another peace activist and suffragette Julia Ward Howe had been urging for the creation of a Mother’s Day dedicated to peace. 40 years before it became an official holiday, Ward Howe had made her Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870, which called upon mothers of all nationalities to band together to promote the “amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”[11] Anna Jarvis wanted to honor this and to set aside a day to honor all mothers because she believed a mother is "the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world" Ghb구매,물뽕구입,Ghb 구입방법,물뽕가격,수면제판매,물뽕효능,물뽕구매방법,ghb가격,물뽕판매처,수면제팔아요 까톡【pak6】텔레:【JRJR331】텔레:【TTZZZ6】라인【TTZZ6】 첫거래하시는분들 실레지만 별로 반갑지않습니다 이유는 단하나 판매도 기본이지만 안전은 더중요하거든요 *물뽕이란 알고싶죠? 액체 상태로 주로 물이나 술 등에 타서 마시기 때문에 속칭 '물뽕'으로 불린다. 다량 복용시 필름이 끊기는 등의 증세가 나타나고 강한 흥분작용을 일으켜 미국에서는 젊은 청소년들속에서 주로 이용해 '데이트시 강간할 때 쓰는 약'이라는 뜻의 '데이트 레이프 드러그(date rape drug)'로 불리기도 한다. 미국 등 일부 국가에서는 GHB가 공식적으로 여성작업용으로 시중에서 밀거래 되고있다 미국에서는 2013년부터 미국FDA에서 발표한데의하면 법적으로 물뽕(GHB)약물을 사용금지하였다 이유는 이약물이 사람이 복용후 30분안에 약효가 발생하는데 6~7시간정도 지나면 바로 몸밖으로 오즘이나 혹은 땀으로 전부 빠져나간다는것이다 한번은 미국에서 어떤여성분이 강간을 당했다면서 미국 경찰청에 신고를 했다 2번의재판끝에 경찰당국과 여성분은 아무런 증거도 얻을수없었다 남성분이나 혹은 여성분이 복용할경우 30분이면 바로 기분이 좋아지면서 평소 남성의 터치나 남성의 시선까지 거부하던 여성분이그녀답지않은 스킨쉽으로 30분이 지나서 약발이 오르면 바로 작업을 걸어도 그대로 바로 빠져들게하는 마성의 약물이다 이러한 제품도 진품을살때만이 효과를 보는것이다. 더궁금한것이 있으시면 까톡【pak6】텔레:【JRJR331】텔레:【TTZZZ6】라인【TTZZ6】로 문의주세요. In 1908, the U.S. Congress rejected a proposal to make Mother's Day an official holiday, joking that they would also have to proclaim a "Mother-in-law's Day". However, owing to the efforts of Anna Jarvis, by 1911 all U.S. states observed the holiday, with some of them officially recognizing Mother's Day as a local holiday (the first being West Virginia, Jarvis' home state, in 1910). In 1914, Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation designating Mother's Day, held on the second Sunday in May, as a national holiday to honor mothers.
물뽕구입
Inari shrines, where fox images are found, and at Kasuga shrines, where there are deer, the animals are believed to be the attendants or messengers of the kami, rather than guardians.
Sokyo Ono (Shinto: The Kami Way)
With so many people lulled into believing everything they found on the Web, he expected computer shrines to pop up in homes soon. Worship the new Oracle of Dell-phi.
B.V. Lawson (Dies Irae (Scott Drayco Mystery, #3))
As we mentioned earlier,” Yusuf began, “Mount Moriah is the hill in Jerusalem that is graced by the Muslim shrine known as the Dome of the Rock. This real estate is no doubt the most religiously revered in the world. It is valued by Muslims as one of their holiest sites, remembered by Jews and Christians alike as the site of the Holy Temple in ancient times, and looked to by some as the site at which another temple will one day be built. The eyes and hearts of the world are focused on Mount Moriah. “Because of this, that revered piece of land is an outward symbol both of our conflicts and our possibilities. One side may say it is their holy place, set apart for millennia. Others may believe it was bequeathed them by God. There seems to be little opportunity for peace in such views. Looked at in another way, however, this passionate belief provides the portal to peace. “Think about it. From within the box, passions, beliefs, and personal needs seem to divide us. When we get out of the box, however, we learn that this has been a lie. Our passions, beliefs, and needs do not divide but unite: it is by virtue of our own passions, beliefs, and needs that we can see and understand others’. If we have beliefs we cherish, then we know how important others’ beliefs must be to them. And if we have needs, then our own experience equips us to notice the needs of others. To scale Mount Moriah is to ascend a mountain of hope. At least it is if one climbs in a way that lifts his soul to an out-of-the-box summit—a place from where he sees not only buildings and homes but people as well.
Arbinger Institute (The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict)
Even the most powerful of Dark Side Adepts believed that shrines of that sort existed only on Sith worlds remote from Coruscant, and even the most powerful of the Jedi believed that the power inherent in the shrine had been neutralized and successfully capped. In truth, that power had seeped upward and outward since its entombment, infiltrating the hallways and rooms above, and weakening the Jedi Order much as the Sith Masters themselves had secretly infiltrated the corridors of political power and toppled the Republic.
John Jackson Miller (The Rise of the Empire)
In this moment of clarity, Saul regretted that he had opened the gates of Tartarus to satisfy his hunger. There was an emptiness in his soul, a deep and abiding emptiness, like a pit in Sheol, that drove him. He had believed that greatness and glory might satiate the hunger. But now he realized he had bitten off more than he could eat. He felt nauseous. Nevertheless, he determined to institute a pogrom to root out all mediums, necromancers and sorcerers from Israel’s territories. The Torah already prescribed death as the penalty for such spiritual traitors, but in reality was rarely enforced. Common Israelites in more rural areas, in the absence of contact with king or priest, degenerated into doing exactly what Saul himself had previously done. They sought for validation wherever they could find it. And there was plenty of validation from the gods of Canaan, who only asked for a small amount of recognition in return—a small amount of worship. Thus, many Israelites owned teraphim, little statues of gods or ancestors to whom they could maintain household shrines. Even some of Saul’s family had them.
Brian Godawa (David Ascendant (Chronicles of the Nephilim, #7))
Cynics are believed to have derived their name from that of the Cynosarges, a famous public gymnasium (an outdoor place of learning) on the outskirts of Athens, where Antisthenes is known to have once taught. According to legend, the Cynosarges itself is named after the Greek for ‘white dog’, kynos argos, as it was supposedly founded on the site of an ancient shrine built where a magnificent white dog dropped a chunk of meat it had stolen from a sacrificial offering. 6.
Paul Anthony Jones (Haggard Hawks and Paltry Poltroons: The Origins of English in Ten Words)
Other humans believed the same way they breathed: it came natural to them. The world was filled with synagogues and churches, mosques and temples, shrines to Elron and Ogko. New faiths rose and fell like breath. They bred like flies. They died like species.
Lavie Tidhar (Central Station)
Tipped, their legs have fallen shut, and the more I look at them the less I believe my eyes. Corruption, in these bugs, is splendid. I've a collection now I keep in typewriter-ribbon tins, and though, in time, their bodies dry and the interior flesh decays, their features hold, as I suppose they held in life, an Egyptian determination, for their protective plates are strong and death must break bones to get in. Now that the heavy soul is gone, the case is light. I suspect if we were as familiar with our bones as with our skin, we'd never bury dead but shrine them in their rooms, arranged as we might like to find them on a visit; and our enemies, if we could steal their bodies from the battle sites, would be museumed as they died, the steel still eloquent in their sides, their metal hats askew, the protective toes of their shoes unworn, and friend and enemy would be so wondrously historical that in a hundred years we'd find the jaws still hung for the same speech and all the parts we spent our life with tilted as they always were—rib cage collar skull—still repetitious, still defiant, angel light, still worthy of memorial and affection. After all, what does it mean to say that when our cat has bitten through the shell and put confusion in the pulp, the life goes out of them? Alas for us, I want to cry, our bones are secret, so we must love what perishes: the muscles and the waters and the fats.
William H. Gass
Any method or process that alleviates human misery, pain, and distress is good. Many churches practice the laying on of hands; others make novenas and visit shrines; all are benefitted according to their mental acceptance or belief.
Joseph Murphy (Believe in Yourself)
The Iranian regime strictly follows Twelver Shiism, the dominant branch of Shiite Islam.1 The Twelvers believe in twelve imams who are directly descended from Muhammad through his daughter Fatima and her husband, Ali (the first imam).2 Fatima and Ali’s two sons were the second and the third imams, and so it continued through the family lineage. Shiites believe all but the twelfth imam were martyred by the Sunnis.3 The twelfth imam, Abu Al Qasim Muhammad ibn Hasan ibn Ali, called al-Mahdi (the Guided One), went into occultation4 (ghayba; disappearance or hiding) when he was five years old. Shiites believe that the Mahdi “disappeared down a well in what is now a golden-domed [Shiite] shrine called Al []Askariyyayn, in Samarra, Iraq.”5 The Mahdi will reappear sometime near the end of the world. Shiites further believe that Jesus will also return and assist the Mahdi to convert the world to Shiite Islam.6 “ ‘The Imam Mahdi will lead the forces of righteousness against the forces of evil in one final apocalyptic battle in which the enemies of the Imam will be defeated.’ ”7 Accordingly, Shiites believe they must hasten the Mahdi’s return. Once he returns, the Mahdi will rule from Jerusalem.8
Jay Sekulow (Unholy Alliance: The Agenda Iran, Russia, and Jihadists Share for Conquering the World)
The ancient pagan notion of the presence of gods derived from the assumption in paganism that the gods could (collectively, not individually) do virtually anything but feed themselves. Therefore it was generally thought that unless people were regularly feeding a god (i.e., bringing food offerings to shrines devoted to him), that god would not hang around those people; in other words, gods gravitated to those places, and only those places, where food was “sent up” to them via sacrifice.72 In the New Covenant, however, it is possible to say that wherever God's people are gathered, he is in fact present there in a special way. This is the result not of the ability of God's people to create a setting of holiness but of God's gracious promise to inhabit his people—each one and all of them—so that where any sort of gathering of two or more Christian believers occurs, their Lord is present.73
Douglas K. Stuart (Exodus: An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture (The New American Commentary Book 2))
Without dioceses, local parishes and village churches could barely continue, even if the villages themselves could have long survived the constant turmoil and bloodshed. And as we have seen, monasteries and shrines could not last for long in an environment of prolonged warfare. The strength of early and medieval Christianity was that it created a sanctified landscape in which Christian institutions were visible everywhere. The weakness of being so heavily invested in real estate was that it left an almost infinite abundance of tempting targets for plunder and destruction, and once these were gone, so were many of the forces that kept believers attached to the faith. The question must arise as to whether some other kind of organization might have offered a better chance of resisting decline. In theory, we can imagine church structures less dependent on monks and clergy, and lacking the tight hierarchy dependent on the empire’s cities. Retroactively, we could even think of a Christianity that looked more Protestant, in the sense of placing more control and initiative in the hands of ordinary believers, whose decentralized church life would depend less on institutions than on direct access to the scriptures. But such an alternative is difficult to conceive realistically, as monasticism and episcopacy were so deeply en-grained in Eastern tradition, while the Protestant idea of access to the Bible assumes forms of printing technology that would not be feasible until centuries afterward. And the annihilation of European heretics like the Cathars suggests that even quite imaginative forms of clandestine organization could not withstand unrelenting persecution.
Philip Jenkins (The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died)
I had this, but then I lost it.” “You can have that one, then. I hope your shrine to me is appropriately unsettling, Anya. I don’t believe in half measures.” “Oh, I’ve got the votive candles and surveillance shots, sure,” Anna teases right back, the shadow that passed over her chased by another brilliant smile. “Do I need a lock of your hair too?
Lola Keeley (The Music and the Mirror)
Shinto theology has no place for the dogma of “original sin.” On the contrary, it believes in the innate goodness and God-like purity of the human soul, adoring it as the adytum5 from which divine oracles are proclaimed. Everybody has observed that the Shinto shrines are conspicuously devoid of objects and instruments of worship, and that a plain mirror hung in the sanctuary forms the essential part of its furnishing. The presence of this article is easy to explain: it typifies the human heart, which, when perfectly placid and clear, reflects the very image of the Deity. When you stand, therefore, in front of the shrine to worship, you see your own image reflected on its shining surface, and the act of worship is tantamount to the old Delphic injunction, “Know Thyself.” But self-knowledge does not imply, either in the Greek or Japanese teaching, knowledge of the physical part of man, not his anatomy or his psycho-physics; knowledge was to be of a moral kind, the introspection of our moral nature. Mommsen, comparing the Greek and the Roman, says that when the former worshiped he raised his eyes to heaven, for his prayer was contemplation, while the latter veiled his head, for his was reflection.
Nitobe Inazō (Bushido: The Soul of Japan (AmazonClassics Edition))
I asked myself, “What are these people up to, coming to this place, so carefully curated, traveling these great distances, looking at these paintings? And what do they believe they are up to?” One painting featured the Immaculate Conception of Mary, brilliantly composed. The Mother of God was rising to heaven, in a beatific state, encapsulated in a mandorla of clouds, embedded with the faces of putti. Many of the people gathered were gazing, enraptured, at the work. I thought, “They do not know what that painting means. They do not understand the symbolic meaning of the mandorla, or the significance of the putti, or the idea of the glorification of the Mother of God. And God, after all, is dead—or, so goes the story. Why does the painting nonetheless retain its value? Why is it in this room, in this building, with these other paintings, in this city—carefully guarded, not to be touched? Why is this painting—and all these others—beyond price and desired by those who already have everything? Why are these creations stored so carefully in a modern shrine, and visited by people from all over the world, as if it were a duty—even as if it were desirable or necessary?” We treat these objects as if they are sacred. At least that is what our actions in their vicinity suggest. We gaze at them in ignorance and wonder, and remember what we have forgotten; perceiving, ever so dimly, what we can no longer see (what we are perhaps no longer willing to see). The unknown shines through the productions of great artists in partially articulated form. The awe-inspiring ineffable begins to be realized but retains a terrifying abundance of its transcendent power. That is the role of art, and that is the role of artists. It is no wonder we keep their dangerous, magical productions locked up, framed, and apart from everything else. And if a great piece is damaged anywhere, the news spreads worldwide. We feel a tremor run through the bedrock of our culture. The dream upon which our reality depends shakes and moves. We find ourselves unnerved.
Jordan B. Peterson (Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life)
The guardian goddess Ginikanwa, who was said to have vanquished evil with nothing but her pure heart and a song of love, sounded about as believable as the missionaries' promises of riches for those who did as they were told. The shrine had been pretty and full of flowers, but ultimately useless.
Isi Hendrix (Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans (Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans, 1))
Instead of hiding bodies in mass graves, corpses were triumphantly displayed, as when the Jalisco New Generation (while still part of El Chapo’s Sinaloa cartel) dumped the thirty-five bodies on an avenue in Veracruz in September 2011. In reply, the Zetas scattered twenty-six corpses in Jalisco and a dozen in Sinaloa. On closer inspection, the bodies were those of ordinary citizens, not criminals: they were workers and students who had been abducted and murdered and displayed in order to strike fear in the heart of anyone who doubted the murderous resolve of the Zetas... In To Die in Mexico: Dispatches from Inside the Drug War, John Gibler writes about a related series of bizarre and violent episodes that took place in Torreón, in Coahuila state, bordering Texas: “Who would believe, for example, that the warden of a state prison would let convicted killers out at night and loan them official vehicles, automatic assault rifles, and bulletproof vests, so that they could gun down scores of innocent people in a neighboring state and then quickly hop back over the state line and into prison, behind bars, a perfect alibi. Who would believe that a paramilitary drug-trafficking organization formed by ex−Special Forces of the Mexican Army would kidnap a local cop and torture him into confessing all of the above details about the prisoners’ death squad, videotape the confession, execute the cop on camera with a shot to the heart, and then post the video on YouTube? Who could fathom that the federal attorney general would, within hours of the video-taped confession and execution being posted online, arrest the warden, and then a few days later hold a press conference fully acknowledging that the prisoners’ death squad had operated for months, killing ten people in a bar in January 2010, eight people in a bar in May 2010, and seventeen people at a birthday party in July?” Yet all of this actually happened. During April 2012, when El Chapo was at war with the Zetas, fourteen torsos — armless and legless bodies — were found in a car by the side of the road in Nuevo Laredo. Dead Zetas. Some of the torsos were in the trunk, for which there is a specific narco term: encajuelado (“trunked”; therefore, trunks trunked). Soon after, in Michoacán state, the Zetas met their match in the person of Nazario Moreno (called El Más Loco, the Craziest One), leader of the ruthless Templarios, the Knights Templar cartel, whose recruits were required to eat human flesh—their victims’— as part of their initiation rites. When Moreno was gunned down by the Mexican army in 2014, the Zetas flourished, and remain dominant. But there was a posthumous bonus for the Craziest One: he was promoted to sainthood. In and around his birthplace in Apatzingán, shrines and altars were erected to Saint Nazario, the dead capo represented as a holy figure in robes, venerated by credulous Michoacanos.
Paul Theroux
Does your family observe jesa?" "No." Isak smiled. No one in his family observed the rituals for the dead. The Protestants he knew didn't either. "My husband thought it was unnecessary. He told me so, but I still make his favorite foods and prepare a shrine for him. I do it for his parents and my own. His parents thought it was important. They were very good to me. I clean their graves and the ones for all my dead babies. I talk to the dead although I don't believe in ghosts. But it makes me feel good to speak with them. Maybe that is what God is. A good God wouldn't have let my babies die. I can't believe that. My babies did nothing wrong.
Min Jin Lee (Pachinko)
Gwendolyn's mother had been a foolish woman, inclined to believe any passing nonsense. Of such people were patriots made, in Gwendolyn's opinion. More's the pity.
Kate Atkinson (Shrines of Gaiety)
Setting aside the issues of homicide and suicide for the time being, let us examine what it means to be a true fan. My harried therapist once asked if I could delineate my specific philosophy in a concise and economical fashion, if only for the edification of the vulgar. Hey, no problem, Doc. I just happen to have a tattered old piece of paper in my wallet setting forth the fan canon; it had been given to me as a boy by a rakish carny who claimed to have once been Dizzy Dean’s grocery boy. It consisted of the following items: Never switch allegiances. Show some respect. Visit the shrines. Never give up. Never give in. Never leave early. Neither a front-runner not a Johnny-come-lately be. Accept no substitutes. Wait until next year. Never turn down tickets to see Jordan.
Joe Queenan (True Believers: The Tragic Inner Life of Sports Fans)
Good, because I don't believe in the capitalist system that makes the rich richer and keeps the poor enslaved. Did you know the Nazis that you fought against just reinvented themselves after the war? Persuaded the United States that they were a lesser evil than the Soviets. They made the world fear communism more than fascism, to enable them to infiltrate and control the levers of power. They've even kept their shrine right here in this city.
David Canford (Betrayal in Venice: A story of deceit, dilemma and heartache in the world's most beguiling city (European City Stories))
The sea-goddesses were also oracular goddesses. The oldest of them, Tethys, had an oracular shrine amongst the Etruscans. Her granddaughters, the daughters of Nereus, could often—or so it was believed—rescue seamen in danger of shipwreck. It was they, too, who revealed to men the mysteries of Dionysos and of Persephone.
Karl Kerényi (The Gods of The Greeks)
The song really wasn’t about me at all. (I know. I could hardly believe it, either.) It was “The Fall of Jason Grace.” In the last verses, I sang of Jason’s dream for Temple Hill, his plan to add shrines until every god and goddess, no matter how obscure, was properly honored.
Rick Riordan (The Tyrant’s Tomb (The Trials of Apollo, #4))