Something Full Of Wonder And Beauty Quotes

I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover. Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience. You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.

Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you -- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishing frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain. And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we image that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.

[She was] a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it.

When the woman you live with is an artist, every day is a surprise. Clare has turned the second bedroom into a wonder cabinet, full of small sculptures and drawings pinned up on every inch of wall space. There are coils of wire and rolls of paper tucked into shelves and drawers. The sculptures remind me of kites, or model airplanes. I say this to Clare one evening, standing in the doorway of her studio in my suit and tie, home from work, about to begin making dinner, and she throws one at me; it flies surprisingly well, and soon we are standing at opposite ends of the hall, tossing tiny sculptures at each other, testing their aerodynamics. The next day I come home to find that Clare has created a flock of paper and wire birds, which are hanging from the ceiling in the living room. A week later our bedroom windows are full of abstract blue translucent shapes that the sun throws across the room onto the walls, making a sky for the bird shapes Clare has painted there. It's beautiful. The next evening I'm standing in the doorway of Clare's studio, watching her finish drawing a thicket of black lines around a little red bird. Suddenly I see Clare, in her small room, closed in by all her stuff, and I realize that she's trying to say something, and I know what I have to do.

This story was written many moons ago under an apple tree in an orchard in Kent, which is one of England's prettiest counties . . . I had read at least twenty of the [fairy tales] when I noticed something that had never struck me before--I suppose because I had always taken it for granted. All the princesses, apart from such rare exceptions as Snow White, were blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful, with lovely figures and complexions and extravagantly long hair. This struck me as most unfair, and suddenly I began to wonder just how many handsome young princes would have asked a king for the hand of his daughter if that daughter had happened to be gawky, snub-nosed, and freckled, with shortish mouse-colored hair? None, I suspected. They would all have been of chasing after some lissome Royal Highness with large blue eyes and yards of golden hair and probably nothing whatever between her ears! It was in that moment that a story about a princess who turned out to be ordinary jumped into my mind, and the very next morning I took my pencil box and a large rough-notebook down to the orchard and, having settled myself under an apple tree in full bloom, began to write . . . the day was warm and windless and without a cloud in the sky. A perfect day and a perfect place to write a fairy story.

The Song of the Winged Ones is a song of celebration, written as though the singer were standing on the Dragon Isle watching the dragons flying in the sun. The words are full of wonder at the beauty of the creatures; and there is a curious pause in the middle of one of the stanzas near the end, where the singer waits a full four measures in silence for those who listen to hear the music of distant dragon wings. It seldom fails to bring echoes of something beyond the silence, and is almost never performed because many bards fear it. I love it.

Perception of the miraculous requires no faith or assumptions. It is simply a matter of paying full and close attention to the givens of life, i.e., to what is so ever-present that it is usually taken for granted. The true wonder of the world is available everywhere, in the minutest parts of our bodies, in the vast expanses of the cosmos, and in the intimate interconnectedness of these and all things. . . . We are part of a finely balanced ecosystem in which interdependency goes hand-in-hand with individuation. We are all individuals, but we are also parts of a greater whole, united in something vast and beautiful beyond description.

There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed like star dust throughout the universe. It does not roll on like a dead moon, but explodes, and in the space of a few minutes, there is not a trace of it visible in the heavens. In marine life we have a similar effect. it is called implosion. When an amphibian accustomed to the black depths rises above a certain level, when the pressure to which it adapts itself is lifted, the body bursts inwardly. Are we not familiar with this spectacle in the human being also? The norsemen who went berserk, the malay who runs amuck—are these not examples of implosion and explosion? When the cup is full it runs over. but when the cup and that which it contains are one substance, what then? There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such overbrimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. something intangible, something inexplicable, was given out—and received. In the life of a human being it may happen that the moon never comes to the full. In the life of some human beings it would seem, indeed, that the only mysterious phenomenon observable is that of perpetual eclipse. In the case of those afflicted with genius, whatever the form it may take, we are almost frightened to observe that there is nothing but a continuous waxing and waning of the moon. Rarer still are the anomalous ones who, having come to the full, are so terrified by the wonder of it that they spend the rest of their lives endeavoring to stifle that which gave them birth and being. The war of the mind is the story of the soul-split. When the moon was at full there were those who could not accept the dim death of diminution; they tried to hang full-blown in the zenith of their own heaven. They tried to arrest the action of the law which was manifesting itself through them, through their own birth and death, in fulfillment and transfiguration. Caught between the tides they were sundered; the soul departed the body, leaving the simulacrum of a divided self to fight it out in the mind. Blasted by their own radiance they live forever the futile quest of beauty, truth and harmony. Depossessed of their own effulgence they seek to possess the soul and spirit of those to whom they are attracted. They catch every beam of light; they reflect with every facet of their hungry being. instantly illumined, When the light is directed towards them, they are also speedily extinguished. The more intense the light which is cast upon them the more dazzling—and blinding—they appear. Especially dangerous are they to the radiant ones; it is always towards these bright and inexhaustible luminaries that they are most passionately drawn…

The child was left alone to die in the hallway. Here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with Peter. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be. The old man said, "Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, or the position of the electron. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain. And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is. Everything that ever will be, is. In all possible combinations. Though we imagine that it is in motion and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. So any event is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible. And, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view… where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you… beyond the next turning of the canyon walls. —Edward Abbey, “Benediction

They were very bitter tears: everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Maggie: there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt: it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's narrow griefs - perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no super-added life in the life of others; though we who look on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer’s present. Maggie in her brown frock with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay, to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad: thirsty for all knowledge: with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her: with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life and give her soul a sense of home in it.

Two blind men waited at the end of an era, contemplating beauty. They sat atop the world’s highest cliff, overlooking the land and seeing nothing.’ ‘Huh?’ She looked to him. ‘“Can beauty be taken from a man?” the first asked the second. ‘“It was taken from me,” the second replied. “For I cannot remember it.” This man was blinded in a childhood accident. “I pray to the God Beyond each night to restore my sight, so that I may find beauty again.” ‘“Is beauty something one must see, then?” the first asked. ‘“Of course. That is its nature. How can you appreciate a work of art without seeing it?” ‘“I can hear a work of music,” the first said. ‘“Very well, you can hear some kinds of beauty – but you cannot know full beauty without sight. You can know only a small portion of beauty.” ‘“A sculpture,” the first said. “Can I not feel its curves and slopes, the touch of the chisel that transformed common rock into uncommon wonder?” ‘“I suppose,” said the second, “that you can know the beauty of a sculpture.” ‘“And what of the beauty of food? Is it not a work of art when a chef crafts a masterpiece to delight the tastes?” ‘“I suppose,” said the second, “that you can know the beauty of a chef’s art.” ‘“And what of the beauty of a woman,” the first said. “Can I not know her beauty in the softness of her caress, the kindness of her voice, the keenness of her mind as she reads philosophy to me? Can I not know this beauty? Can I not know most kinds of beauty, even without my eyes?” ‘“Very well,” said the second. “But what if your ears were removed, your hearing taken away? Your tongue taken out, your mouth forced shut, your sense of smell destroyed? What if your skin were burned so that you could no longer feel? What if all that remained to you was pain? You could not know beauty then. It can be taken from a man.

I pressed inside her, inch by inch, gazing into her face. Her beauty. Mesmerizing. I was awed that I was inside her . . . or nearly. When I came to the barrier of her virginity, I met her eyes, full of trust and wonder, and whispered, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, sweet Lydia. Mo Chroí." And then I pressed inside, tearing her. She cried out in pain. I wanted to comfort her, but it felt so blessedly good that I could only bring my forehead to hers, holding myself still by sheer force of will, gritting my teeth to stop myself from thrusting, while she became used to my invasion. Why did it have to be that something that felt so wonderful to me hurt her?

I linger near Galileo’s telescopes, then round the corner and stand transfixed: I did not expect this- a dark, cool room full of globes of the night sky from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Globo celeste, they are called in Italian: ‘celestial globe,’ maps of the night sky… I imagine him making another globo celeste, this one smaller, yet still exquisitely painted, still breathtaking in detail. It’s a map of the earth still flowing with creation, one you can spin and when you stop it with your finger, there is some tiny detail…some miraculous beauty, some wonderful example from each location at night. The white flower of a night blooming saguaro cactus, the feathers from a great-horned owl, the crunched, smiling face of a particular bat- here, I’m spinning it, I stop it at in the north, where I want there to be something still- he’s painted the black-and-white feathers of a loon…or a globe of night sounds, so that by touching your location you hear the night there- the cricket song, the ocean surf, the frog mating calls.

Girls aside, the other thing I found in the last few years of being at school, was a quiet, but strong Christian faith – and this touched me profoundly, setting up a relationship or faith that has followed me ever since. I am so grateful for this. It has provided me with a real anchor to my life and has been the secret strength to so many great adventures since. But it came to me very simply one day at school, aged only sixteen. As a young kid, I had always found that a faith in God was so natural. It was a simple comfort to me: unquestioning and personal. But once I went to school and was forced to sit through somewhere in the region of nine hundred dry, Latin-liturgical, chapel services, listening to stereotypical churchy people droning on, I just thought that I had got the whole faith deal wrong. Maybe God wasn’t intimate and personal but was much more like chapel was … tedious, judgemental, boring and irrelevant. The irony was that if chapel was all of those things, a real faith is the opposite. But somehow, and without much thought, I had thrown the beautiful out with the boring. If church stinks, then faith must do, too. The precious, natural, instinctive faith I had known when I was younger was tossed out with this newly found delusion that because I was growing up, it was time to ‘believe’ like a grown-up. I mean, what does a child know about faith? It took a low point at school, when my godfather, Stephen, died, to shake me into searching a bit harder to re-find this faith I had once known. Life is like that. Sometimes it takes a jolt to make us sit and remember who and what we are really about. Stephen had been my father’s best friend in the world. And he was like a second father to me. He came on all our family holidays, and spent almost every weekend down with us in the Isle of Wight in the summer, sailing with Dad and me. He died very suddenly and without warning, of a heart attack in Johannesburg. I was devastated. I remember sitting up a tree one night at school on my own, and praying the simplest, most heartfelt prayer of my life. ‘Please, God, comfort me.’ Blow me down … He did. My journey ever since has been trying to make sure I don’t let life or vicars or church over-complicate that simple faith I had found. And the more of the Christian faith I discover, the more I realize that, at heart, it is simple. (What a relief it has been in later life to find that there are some great church communities out there, with honest, loving friendships that help me with all of this stuff.) To me, my Christian faith is all about being held, comforted, forgiven, strengthened and loved – yet somehow that message gets lost on most of us, and we tend only to remember the religious nutters or the God of endless school assemblies. This is no one’s fault, it is just life. Our job is to stay open and gentle, so we can hear the knocking on the door of our heart when it comes. The irony is that I never meet anyone who doesn’t want to be loved or held or forgiven. Yet I meet a lot of folk who hate religion. And I so sympathize. But so did Jesus. In fact, He didn’t just sympathize, He went much further. It seems more like this Jesus came to destroy religion and to bring life. This really is the heart of what I found as a young teenager: Christ comes to make us free, to bring us life in all its fullness. He is there to forgive us where we have messed up (and who hasn’t), and to be the backbone in our being. Faith in Christ has been the great empowering presence in my life, helping me walk strong when so often I feel so weak. It is no wonder I felt I had stumbled on something remarkable that night up that tree. I had found a calling for my life.

I tell myself that I want to live a happy life, and that the circumstances for happiness just haven’t arisen. But what if that’s not true? What if I’m the one who can’t let myself be happy? Because I’m scared, or I prefer to wallow in self-pity, or I don’t believe I deserve good things, or some other reason. Whenever something good happens to me I always find myself thinking: I wonder how long it will be until this turns out badly. And I almost want the worst to happen sooner, sooner rather than later, and if possible straight away, so at least I don’t have to feel anxious about it anymore. If, as I think is quite possible now, I never have any children and never write any books, I suppose I will leave nothing on this earth to be remembered by. And maybe that’s better. It makes me feel that rather than worrying and theorising about the state of the world, which helps no one, I should put my energy into living and being happy. When I try to picture for myself what a happy life might look like, the picture hasn’t changed very much since I was a child – a house with flowers and trees around it, and a river nearby, and a room full of books, and someone there to love me, that’s all. Just to make a home there, and to care for my parents when they grow older. Never to move, never to board a plane again, just to live quietly and then be buried in the earth. What else is life for? But even that seems so beyond me that it’s like a dream, completely unrelated to anything in reality.

I'd like to repeat the advice that I gave you before, in that I think you really should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day. I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover. Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience. You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances.

The glory that is given to God by the works of his creation is what we call an “external glory.” It is something outside of God. It doesn’t actually add anything to God. It is very much like an artist who has a great talent for painting and a mind full of beautiful images. If the artist puts some of those images on canvas for people to look at and admire, it still hasn’t added anything to the artist himself. It hasn’t made him any better or more wonderful than he was before (p. 5).

You know how I…go through phases?” he asks, and his eyes flash up to Louis who blinks, confused. “Like the strawberries and the gingerbread?” “Exactly,” Harry smiles. “Like those. Well, I’ve always been that way, you see. I become fascinated by something, immerse myself in it…and then I’m done with it. Because, you see, once I’ve adored something, once I’ve found something perfectly beautiful, it is fleeting. It will never be perfect or wonderful to me again because I’ve already experienced it, already taken everything from it that I could.” Louis nods. That’s, maybe, the worst way in the world to think about things, but he nods. Because Harry’s not finished, and this all suddenly feels…very odd. He swallows his last mouthful and sets down his food, waiting for Harry to continue, skin beginning to prickle. “However,” Harry continues calmly, stubbing out his cigarette and setting full eyes on Louis. Full, empty eyes. Shit. “It’s not just objects that I feel that way about. I’m like that with people as well.” Louis shifts under Harry’s gaze, feeling a cold sense of dread spread from the center of his body to every extremity and crevice. “I find people who fascinate me. I play with them. I have fun. I enjoy them. And then?” Harry takes a sip of his sparkling water. “Then I’m done with them. I become bored. And I don’t want them around anymore.” His eyes bore into Louis’ as he sets down his glass. “Last night made me realize, Louis. You’re one of those people.

JANUARY 25 Loving Yourself I begin to realize that in inquiring about my own origin and goal, I am inquiring about something other than myself…. In this very realization I begin to recognize the origin and goal of the world. —MARTIN BUBER In loving ourselves, we love the world. For just as fire, rock, and water are all made up of molecules, everything, including you and me, is connected by a small piece of the beginning. Yet, how do we love ourselves? It is as difficult at times as seeing the back of your head. It can be as elusive as it is necessary. I have tried and tripped many times. And I can only say that loving yourself is like feeding a clear bird that no one else can see. You must be still and offer your palmful of secrets like delicate seed. As she eats your secrets, no longer secret, she glows and you lighten, and her voice, which only you can hear, is your voice bereft of plans. And the light through her body will bathe you till you wonder why the gems in your palm were ever fisted. Others will think you crazed to wait on something no one sees. But the clear bird only wants to feed and fly and sing. She only wants light in her belly. And once in a great while, if someone loves you enough, they might see her rise from the nest beneath your fear. In this way, I've learned that loving yourself requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world—our own self-worth. All the great moments of conception—the birth of mountains, of trees, of fish, of prophets, and the truth of relationships that last—all begin where no one can see, and it is our job not to extinguish what is so beautifully begun. For once full of light, everything is safely on its way—not pain-free, but unencumbered—and the air beneath your wings is the same air that trills in my throat, and the empty benches in snow are as much a part of us as the empty figures who slouch on them in spring. When we believe in what no one else can see, we find we are each other. And all moments of living, no matter how difficult, come back into some central point where self and world are one, where light pours in and out at once. And once there, I realize—make real before me—that this moment, whatever it might be, is a fine moment to live and a fine moment to die.

Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it. No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it.

the only thing the hero knows about the girl is that she is beautiful. He shows no interest in her intellect or personality—or even her sexuality. The man is either a ruler or has the magic power to awaken her, and all she can do is hope that her physical appearance fits the specifications better than the other girls. In the original Cinderella story, the stepsisters actually cut off parts of their feet to try to fit into the glass slipper. Maybe this marks the origins of the first cosmetic surgery. Besides romanticizing Cinderella’s misery, the story also gives the message that women’s relationships with each other are full of bitter competition and animosity. The adult voice of womanly wisdom in the story, the stepmother, advises all her girls to frantically do whatever it takes to please the prince. This includes groveling, cutting off parts of themselves, and staying powerless. I was heartsick to watch Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” with my three-year-old daughter. The little mermaid agrees to give up her voice for a chance to go up on the “surface” and convince her nobleman to marry her. She is told by her local matron sea witch that she doesn’t need a voice—she needs only to look cute and get him to kiss her. And in the story, it works. These are the means to her one and only end: to buy a rich and respected guy. Women are taught to only listen to an outside patriarchal authority. No wonder there is so much self-doubt and confusion when faced with the question, “What do you want out of your life?” This question alone can be enough to trigger an episode of depression. It often triggers a game of Ping-Pong in a woman’s head. Her imagination throws up a possibility and then her pessimistic shotgun mind shoots it down. The dialog may look something like this: “Maybe I want to go back to school.... No, that would be selfish of me because the kids need me…. Maybe I’ll start a business.... No I hate all that dogeat-dog competition…. Maybe I’ll look for a love relationship…. No, I am not sure I am healed ye….” and on it goes.

This long letter is because I'm writing before breakfast. Oh, the beautiful vine leaves! The house is covered with a vine. I looked out earlier, and Mrs. Wilcox was already in the garden. No wonder she sometimes looks tired. She was watching the large red poppies come out. Then she walked off the lawn to the meadow, whose corner to the right I can just see. Trail, trail, went her long dress over the sopping grass, and she came back with her hands full of the hay that was cut yesterday - I suppose for rabbits or something, as she kept on smelling it. The air here is delicious. Later on I heard the noise of croquet balls, and looked out again, and it was Charles Wilcox practising; they are keen on all games. Presently he started sneezing and had to stop. Then I hear more clicketing, and it is Mr. Wilcox practising, and then, "a-tissue, a-tissue": he has to stop too. Then Evie comes out, and does some calisthenic exercises on a machine that is tacked to a greengage-tree - they put everything to use - and then she says "a-tissue," and in she goes. And finally Mrs. Wilcox reappears, trail, trail, still smelling hay and looking at the flowers. I inflict all this on you because once you said that life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which, and up to now I have always put that down as "Meg's clever nonsense.

I have talked to many people about this and it seems to be a kind of mystical experience. The preparation is unconscious, the realization happens in a flaming second. It was on Third Avenue. The trains were grinding over my head. The snow was nearly waist-high in the gutters and uncollected garbage was scattered in a dirty mess. The wind was cold, and frozen pieces of paper went scraping along the pavement. I stopped to look in a drug-store window where a latex cooch dancer was undulating by a concealed motor–and something burst in my head, a kind of light and a kind of feeling blended into an emotion which if it had spoken would have said, “My God! I belong here. Isn’t this wonderful?” Everything fell into place. I saw every face I passed. I noticed every doorway and the stairways to apartments. I looked across the street at the windows, lace curtains and potted geraniums through sooty glass. It was beautiful–but most important, I was part of it. I was no longer a stranger. I had become a New Yorker. Now there may be people who move easily into New York without travail, but most I have talked to about it have had some kind of trial by torture before acceptance. And the acceptance is a double thing. It seems to me that the city finally accepts you just as you finally accept the city. A young man in a small town, a frog in a small puddle, if he kicks his feet is able to make waves, get mud in his neighbor’s eyes–make some impression. He is known. His family is known. People watch him with some interest, whether kindly or maliciously. He comes to New York and no matter what he does, no one is impressed. He challenges the city to fight and it licks him without being aware of him. This is a dreadful blow to a small-town ego. He hates the organism that ignores him. He hates the people who look through him. And then one day he falls into place, accepts the city and does not fight it any more. It is too huge to notice him and suddenly the fact that it doesn’t notice him becomes the most delightful thing in the world. His self-consciousness evaporates. If he is dressed superbly well–there are half a million people dressed equally well. If he is in rags–there are a million ragged people. If he is tall, it is a city of tall people. If he is short the streets are full of dwarfs; if ugly, ten perfect horrors pass him in one block; if beautiful, the competition is overwhelming. If he is talented, talent is a dime a dozen. If he tries to make an impression by wearing a toga–there’s a man down the street in a leopard skin. Whatever he does or says or wears or thinks he is not unique. Once accepted this gives him perfect freedom to be himself, but unaccepted it horrifies him. I don’t think New York City is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters–in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him. New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it–once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough. All of everything is concentrated here, population, theatre, art, writing, publishing, importing, business, murder, mugging, luxury, poverty. It is all of everything. It goes all right. It is tireless and its air is charged with energy. I can work longer and harder without weariness in New York than anyplace else….

He looks around in amazement, taking in the mess. 'Where- Do you really sleep here? Perhaps you ought to set fire to your rooms as well.' 'Maybe,' I say, guiding him to my bed. It is strange to put my hand on his back. I can feel the warmth of his skin through the thin linen of his shirt, can feel the flex of his muscles. It feels wrong to touch him as though he were a regular person, as though he weren't both the High King and also my enemy. He needs no encouragement to sprawl on my mattress, head on the pillow, black hair spilling like crow feathers. He looks up at me with his night-coloured eyes, beautiful and terrible all at once. 'For a moment,' he says, 'I wondered if it wasn't you shooting bolts at me.' I make a face at him. 'And what made you decide it wasn't?' He grins up at me. 'They missed.' I have said that he has the power to deliver a compliment and make it hurt. So, too, can he say something that ought to be insulting and deliver it in such a way that it feels like being truly seen. Our eyes meet, and something dangerous sparks. He hates you, I remind myself. 'Kiss me again,' he says, drunk and foolish. 'Kiss me until I am sick of it.' I feel those words, feel them like a kick in the stomach. He sees my expression and laughs, a sound full of mockery. I can't tell which of us he's laughing at. He hates you. Even if he wants you, he hates you. Maybe he hates you the more for it. After a moment, his eyes flutter closed. His voice falls to a whisper, as though he's talking to himself. 'If you're the sickness, I suppose you can't also be the cure.' He drifts off to sleep, but I am wide awake.

A strange structure untangled itself out of the background like a hallucination, not part of the natural landscape. It was a funny-shaped, almost spherical, green podlike thing woven from living branches of trees and vines. A trellis of vines hung down over the opening that served as a door. Wendy was so delighted tears sprang to her eyes. It was her Imaginary House! They all had them. Michael wanted his to be like a ship with views of the sea. John had wanted to live like a nomad on the steppes. And Wendy... Wendy had wanted something that was part of the natural world itself. She tentatively stepped forward, almost swooning at the heavy scent of the door flowers. Languorously lighting on them were a few scissorflies, silver and almost perfectly translucent in the glittery sunlight. Their sharp wings made little snickety noises as they fluttered off. Her shadow made a few half-hearted attempts to drag back, pointing to the jungle. But Wendy ignored her, stepping into the hut. She was immediately knocked over by a mad, barking thing that leapt at her from the darkness of the shelter. "Luna!" Wendy cried in joy. The wolf pup, which she had rescued in one of her earliest stories, stood triumphantly on her chest, drooling very visceral, very stinky dog spit onto her face. "Oh, Luna! You're real!" Wendy hugged the gray-and-white pup as tightly as she could, and it didn't let out a single protest yelp. Although... "You're a bit bigger than I imagined," Wendy said thoughtfully, sitting up. "I thought you were a puppy." Indeed, the wolf was approaching formidable size, although she was obviously not yet quite full-grown and still had large puppy paws. She was at least four stone and her coat was thick and fluffy. Yet she pranced back and forth like a child, not circling with the sly lope Wendy imagined adult wolves used. You're not a stupid little lapdog, are you?" Wendy whispered, nuzzling her face into the wolf's fur. Luna chuffed happily and gave her a big wet sloppy lick across the cheek. "Let's see what's inside the house!" As the cool interior embraced her, she felt a strange shudder of relief and... welcome was the only way she could describe it. She was home. The interior was small and cozy; plaited sweet-smelling rush mats softened the floor. The rounded walls made shelves difficult, so macramé ropes hung from the ceiling, cradling halved logs or flat stones that displayed pretty pebbles, several beautiful eggs, and what looked like a teacup made from a coconut. A lantern assembled from translucent pearly shells sat atop a real cherry writing desk, intricately carved and entirely out of place with the rest of the interior. Wendy picked up one of the pretty pebbles in wonder, turning it this way and that before putting it into her pocket. "This is... me..." she breathed. She had never been there before, but it felt so secure and so right that it couldn't have been anything but her home. Her real home. Here there was no slight tension on her back as she waited for footsteps to intrude, for reality to wake her from her dreams; there was nothing here to remind her of previous days, sad or happy ones. There were no windows looking out at the gray world of London. There was just peace, and the scent of the mats, and the quiet droning of insects and waves outside. "Never Land is a... mishmash of us. Of me," she said slowly. "It's what we imagine and dream of- including the dreams we can't quite remember.

Their mother came in now, and Maggie rushed away, that her burst of tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe upstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Maggie; there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Maggie felt; it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother’s narrow griefs, perhaps of her father’s heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer’s present. Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it. No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it.

THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT FRENCH CINEMA, specifically the women of today’s French cinema—a subject as vital as life and as irresistible as movies. Yet many Americans, unfamiliar with French film, will hear “women of today’s French cinema” and immediately imagine something forbidding or austere. Other more refined cineastes may know and appreciate the French movies that play at art houses and arrive on DVD in this country, but they can’t know the full story. They are not in a position to know that what they are seeing is just a hint of something vast and extraordinary. The full story is that for the last two decades France has been in the midst of an explosion of female talent. What is happening in France today is a blossoming of female brilliance and originality of a kind that has never happened anywhere or at any period of film history, with but one glorious exception—in the Hollywood of the 1930s. Indeed, today’s Hepburns, Davises, Crawfords, Garbos, and Stanwycks are not American. They’re French. They are working constantly, appearing up to three or four times each year in films geared to their star personalities and moral meaning. These films, often intelligent, personal, and insightful investigations into what it means to be human in the twenty-first century, are the kinds of films that many Americans want to see. And they wonder why no one is making them. But people are making them, just not in the United States. Moreover, women are not only working in front of the camera in France but behind it, too. Important actresses are writing and directing films, and many of the country’s biggest and most acclaimed directors are women. Truly, this is a halcyon period, happening as we speak, and to miss this moment would be like living in 1920 and never seeing a silent comedy, or like living in 1950 and never seeing a film noir. It would be to miss one of the most enriching cinematic movements of your time. Yet most Americans, virtually all Americans, have been missing it.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. …yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; Nor do we merely feel these essences For one short hour; no, even as the trees That whisper round a temple become soon Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon, The passion poesy, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, That, whether there be shine, or gloom o’ercast, They alway must be with us, or we die. For ‘twas the morn: Apollo’s upward fire Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre Of brightness so unsullied, that therein A melancholy spirit well might win Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass Of nature’s lives and wonders puls’d tenfold, To feel this sun-rise and its glories old. With a faint breath of music, which ev’n then Fill’d out its voice, and died away again. Within a little space again it gave Its airy swellings, with a gentle wave, To light-hung leaves, in smoothest echoes breaking Through copse-clad vallies,—ere their death, oer-taking The surgy murmurs of the lonely sea. All I beheld and felt. Methought I lay Watching the zenith, where the milky way Among the stars in virgin splendour pours; And travelling my eye, until the doors Of heaven appear’d to open for my flight, I became loth and fearful to alight From such high soaring by a downward glance: So kept me stedfast in that airy trance, Spreading imaginary pinions wide. When, presently, the stars began to glide, And lo! from opening clouds, I saw emerge The loveliest moon, that ever silver’d o’er A shell for Neptune’s goblet: she did soar So passionately bright, my dazzled soul Commingling with her argent spheres did roll Through clear and cloudy, even when she went At last into a dark and vapoury tent— Whereat, methought, the lidless-eyed train Of planets all were in the blue again. To commune with those orbs, once more I rais’d My sight right upward: but it was quite dazed By a bright something, sailing down apace, Making me quickly veil my eyes and face: What I know not: but who, of men, can tell That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet, If human souls did never kiss and greet?

The way I see things, Feyre, you have two options. The first, and the smartest, would be to accept my offer.' I spat at his feet, but he kept pacing, only giving me a disapproving look. 'The second option- and the one only a fool would take- would be for you to refuse my offer and place your life, and thus Tamlin's, in the hands of chance.' He stopped pacing and stared hard at me. Though the world spun and danced in my vision, something primal inside me went still and cold beneath that gaze. 'Let's say I walk out of here. Perhaps Lucien will come to your aid within five minutes of my leaving. Perhaps he'll come in five days. Perhaps he won't come at all. Between you and me, he's been keeping a low profile after his rather embarrassing outburst at your trial. Amarantha's not exactly pleased with him. Tamlin even broke his delightful brooding to beg for him to be spared- such a noble warrior, your High Lord. She listened, of course- but only after she made Tamlin bestow Lucien's punishment. Twenty lashes.' I started shaking, sick all over again to think about what it had to have been like for my High Lord to be the one to punish his friend. Rhysand shrugged, a beautiful, easy gesture. 'So, it's really a question of how much you're willing to trust Lucien- and how much you're willing to risk for it. Already you're wondering if that fever of yours is the first sign of infection. Perhaps they're unconnected, perhaps not. Maybe it's fine. Maybe that worm's mud isn't full of festering filth. And maybe Amarantha will send a healer, and by that time, you'll either be dead, or they'll find your arm so infected that you'll be lucky to keep anything above the elbow.' My stomach tightened into a painful ball. 'I don't need to invade your thoughts to know these things. I already know what you've slowly been realising.' He again crouched in front of me. 'You're dying.' My eyes stung and I sucked my lips into my mouth. 'How much are you willing to risk on the hope that another form of help will come?' I stared at him, sending as much hate as I could into my gaze. He'd been the one who'd caused all this. He'd told Amarantha about Clare, he'd made Tamlin beg. 'Well?' I bared my teeth. 'Go. TO. Hell.' Swift as lightning, he lashed out, grabbing the shard of bone in my arm and twisting. A scream shattered out of me, ravaging my aching throat. The world flashed black and white and red. I thrashed and writhed but he kept his grip, twisting the bone a final time before releasing my arm. Panting, half sobbing as the pain reverberated through my body, I found him smirking at me again. I spat in his face. He only laughed as he stood, wiping his cheek with the dark sleeve of his tunic. 'This is the last time I'll extend my assistance,' he said pausing by the cell door. 'Once I leave this cell, my offer is dead.' I spat again, and he shook his head. 'I bet you'll be spitting on Death's face when she comes to claim you, too.

Is beauty something one must see, then?’ the first asked. “‘Of course. That is its nature. How can you appreciate a work of art without seeing it?’ “‘I can hear a work of music,’ the first said. “‘Very well, you can hear some kinds of beauty—but you cannot know full beauty without sight. You can know only a small portion of beauty.’ “‘A sculpture,’ the first said. ‘Can I not feel its curves and slopes, the touch of the chisel that transformed common rock into uncommon wonder?’ “‘I suppose,’ said the second, ‘that you can know the beauty of a sculpture.’ “‘And what of the beauty of food? Is it not a work of art when a chef crafts a masterpiece to delight the tastes?

Sometimes I’ve wondered what it would be like to re-record Beauty and the Beat the way I would like it to sound, with thick, full tones and texture. But then I remember the ephemeral spirit infusing the recording process, the anticipation and joy of a fleeting time, and I know something else was captured that could never be reproduced.

The ceremony was beautiful, and as Hope and Mark stood beneath the towering floral arch, I couldn't help but think this scene truly looked like something out of a fairytale wedding. I even started feeling a little emotional--- until they started to recite their vows. Hope had told me earlier that she and Mark had written their own vows but failed to say more about them. At first, I thought my hearing had failed or I was having some kind of stroke. "What language is that?" I whispered to Dom from our perch in the back. "I... I actually think it's a pretend language," he replied. "What are you talking about?" I asked. "What do you mean pretend language?" "Do you have one of the programs with you?" he asked. "I bet there's a note in there about it." "No, but let me grab one." I didn't have to go far before I found the table at the back of the aisle and a basket full of programs. Each program was iridescent, in the shape of a flower with a beautiful lilac ribbon tied at the bottom. Under the order of service, a small line read: "The bride and groom have chosen to recite their own vows to one another in their favorite mythical tongue: Sindarin, one of the Elvish languages of Tolkein." My eyes were wide as saucers. Both the Elvish and English translations were printed below for everyone to follow along. Dom was going to lose it for sure. I quietly moved back to my seat next to Dom, who was still filming. "You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you," I whispered as I casually fanned myself with the floral program. "What is it?" he asked. "It's Elvish," I said, holding back a laugh. "What?" he replied a little too loud. "Keep your voice down," I said, now pointing to the line in the program as proof. "Like, from The Lord of the Rings?" "I can't believe she didn't mention this to me earlier," I said. "But yes, I think so. This wedding is just full of surprises." "For once, I'm at a loss for words," Dom said. "They are clearly perfect for each other if this was something they both enjoyed. I bet they go to all those conferences for people who like fantasy stuff." "Maybe that's what they're doing for their honeymoon," I added. "I haven't asked them about it yet. If it is, I'm going to die." We were both holding back giggles at this point, but thankfully the couple finished reciting whatever it was they were saying to each other. I wondered whether we'd need to add subtitles to our video if we showed this part of the ceremony. As soon as the officiant pronounced them man and wife, the ceremony musicians played a set of chimes and the officiant asked for every guest to open the small box that was placed at the base of every bench. Inside each box was a butterfly that flew into the air and fluttered around the entire area above all the guests. I supposed that since real fairies weren't available, butterflies were the next best option. It was actually the perfect ending to this mythical ceremony, and everyone cheered in delight.

It is wonderful then to see how tactfully Chopin puts one at one's ease; how intuitively he identifies, I might say, with the thoughts of the person to whom he is speaking or listening; with what delicate nuances of behaviour he adapts his own being to that of another. To encourage me, he tells me among other things, 'It seems to me that you don't dare to express yourself as you feel. Be bolder, let yourself go more. Imagine you're at the Conservatoire, listening to the most beautiful performance in the world. Make yourself want to hear it, and then you'll hear yourself playing it right here. Have full confidence in yourself; make yourself want to sing like Rubini, and you'll succeed in doing so. Forget you're being listened to, and always listen to yourself. I see that timidity and lack of self-confidence form a kind of armour around you, but through this armour I perceive something else that you don't always dare to express, and so you deprive us all. When you're at the piano, I give you full authority to do whatever you want; follow freely the ideal you've set for yourself and which you must feel within you; be bold and confident in your own powers and strength, and whatever you say will always be good. It would give me so much pleasure to hear you play with complete abandon that I'd find the shameless confidence of the "vulgaires" unbearable by comparison.

I suppose the most important memory is of Mr. Electrico. On Labor Day weekend, 1932, when I was twelve years old, he came to my hometown with the Dill Brothers…. He was a performer sitting in an electric chair and a stagehand pulled a switch and he was charged with fifty thousand volts of pure electricity. Lightning flashed in his eyes and his hair stood on end. I sat below, in the front row, and he reached down with a flaming sword full of electricity and he tapped me on both shoulders and then the tip of my nose and he cried, 'Live, forever!' And I thought, 'God, that’s wonderful. How do you do that?'...So when I left the carnival that day I stood by the carousel and I watched the horses running around and around to the music of 'Beautiful Ohio' and I cried. Tears streamed down my cheeks because I knew something important had happened to me that day because of Mr. Electrico. I felt changed. And so I went home and within days I started to write. And I’ve never stopped.

It's just the two of us. She shows me more secret passageways through the woods until the trees clear to reveal a large, moonlit meadow. We stop at the edge. Emma's looking at me expectantly, and at first I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see. I see tall, unkempt grass surrounded by trees. Then, like my eyes are playing tricks on me, fluorescent green lights flash on and off in the field, some of them rising up like bubbles in a pot of boiling water, some shooting across and lighting up the ground below them. "Whoa." "Pretty, right?" Emma says, turning her neck slowly from me to the meadow. "I almost never see fireflies." "I did some research, and they're not even supposed to exist west of Kansas. I have no idea why there's so many of them here." We walk through the field together, and in the blinking green lights I can see Emma's hand inches from my own, I see the curves and dips of her face in profile and I wonder how it is that I can find the space between things beautiful. Emma stops for a second and reaches into the waist-high grass, her hand disappearing in the dark. She pulls it back out to reveal a berry I have never seen before, not in the smorgasbord of rainbow-colored fruit at American grocery stores and definitely not anywhere in Mexico. It is the size of a child's fist, and the skin is prickly, like a lychee's. "When I was a kid, if I was mad at my mom, I'd hide out here for the day, picking out berries," Emma says. "I had no way of knowing if they were poisonous, but I'd feast on them anyway." She digs her thumb into the skin to reveal a pulpy white interior. She takes a bite out of it and then hands it to me. It's sweet and tangy and would be great in a vinaigrette, as a sauce, maybe along with some roasted duck. "I don't even think anyone else knows about these, because I've never seen them anywhere else. I'm sure she'd put it on her menu if she found out about them, but I like keeping this one thing to myself." We grab them by the handful, take them with us down the hill toward the lake. Sitting on the shore, gentle waves lapping at our ankles, we peel the berries one by one. A day or two ago, I thought of Emma as pretty. Tonight, her profile outlined by a full moon, she looks beautiful to me. I wish I could drive the thought away, but there it is anyway. The water---or something else about these nights---really does feel like it can cure hopelessness.

UNCONVENTIONAL DESTINATION WEDDING LOCALES Destination Wedding Jan 6 This wedding season, fall in love with endearing unconventional destination wedding locales Theme Weavers Designs Since all the travel restrictions have been lifted, destination weddings are back in vogue. However, the pandemic has led to a major paradigm shift. In this case, Indian couples are looking into hidden gems to take on as their wedding destination, instead of opting for an international location. With the rich cultural heritage and a myriad of local traditions, it has been observed by industry insiders that couples feel closer to their past and history after getting married in a regional wedding destination. At the same time, it is a very cumbersome task to find the perfect wedding destination - it has to be perfectly balanced in terms of the services it offers as well as having breathtaking views. This wedding season, choose something offbeat, by opting for an unexplored destination, that is both visually appealing and has a romantic vibe to them. Start off your wedding journey with an auspicious location. Rishikesh, on the banks of the holy river Ganges is one of the most sacred places a couple can tie the knot. This tiny town’s interesting traditions, picturesque locales, and ancient customs make this one of the most underrated places to get married in india. Perfect for a riverside wedding in extravagant outdoor tents, this wedding season, it is high time Rishikesh gets the hype it deserves. “The Glasshouse on the Ganges,” is one of the most stunning places to get married. While becoming informed travellers, this place is interred with a vast and vibrant cultural history. It offers an extremely unique experience as it revitalises ruined architectural wonders for the couple to tour or get married in, making it a heartwarming and wonderful experience for all those who are involved. Steep your wedding party in the lap of nature, in Naukuchiatal, Nainital, Uttarakhand. This place is commonly referred to as “treasure of natural beauty,” where it offers mesmerising natural spectacles for a couple to get married in a gorgeous outdoor ceremony. Away from the hustle and bustle of the urban jungles that have slowly been taking over the Indian subcontinent, this location provides a much needed breath of fresh air. This location also provides much needed reprieve from the fast paced lifestyle that we live, making a wedding a truly relaxing affair. As this is a quaint hill station, surrounded with lush greens, there are numerous ideas to create a natural and sustainable wedding. The most distinguishing feature of this location is the nine-cornered lake, situated 1,220 m above sea level. There is something classic and timeless about the Kerala backwaters. This location is enriching and chock full of unique cultural traditions. With spectacular and awe-inspiring views of the backwaters, Kumarakom in Kerala easily qualifies as one of the top wedding destinations in india. Just like Naukuchiatal, this space is a study in serenity, where it is far away from the noisy streets and bazaars. Perfect for a cozy and intimate wedding, the Kerala backwaters are a gorgeous choice for couples who are opting for a socially distant wedding, along with having a lot of indigenous flora and fauna. Punctuated with the salty sea and the sultry air, the backwaters in Kerala are an underrated gem that presents couples with a unique wedding location that is perfect for a historical and regal wedding. The beaches of Goa and the forts of Rajasthan are a classic for a reason, but at the same time, they can get boring. Couples have been exploring more underrated wedding locations in order to experience the diverse local cultures of India that can also host their weddings

A Morning of Being Grateful Dear Father God, I thank you for waking me up today, another day of life. You have given me another sunrise to enjoy. Thank you, Lord God, for the wonderful sounds of nature and the cool breeze brushing through the trees making the birds sing beautiful melodies. You are a great Father, Lord, always full of grace and mercy. I praise you, Father, for allowing me to live another beautiful day in Your Kingdom. Thank you for the gift of family and friends. Holding them in my heart is one of the most precious things I can never get tired of. Bless everyone, Father, for they deserve all the goodness you have given to me. If I may do something wrong today, please forgive me. I also thank you for always being the reason in my head when it comes to decision-making. I pray to You, Your Son, Jesus Christ and all the angels in heaven. Amen.

A Morning of Being Grateful Lord I thank you for waking me up today, another day of life. You have given me another sunrise to enjoy. Thank you, Lord, for the wonderful sounds of nature and the cool breeze brushing through the trees making the birds sing beautiful melodies. You are a great Father, Lord, always full of grace and mercy. I praise you, Father, for allowing me to live another beautiful day in Your Kingdom. Thank you for the gift of family and friends. Holding them in my heart is one of the most precious things I can never get tired of. Bless everyone, Father, for they deserve all the goodness you have given to me. If I may do something wrong today, please forgive me. I also thank you for always being the reason in my head when it comes to decision-making. Amen.

So our branding company came up with Unfurl, and we all liked it. Again, it’s classy. Discreet. And the act of unfurling feels noble. Positive. And also natural. For a flower to unfurl its petals and showcase its full beauty is an inevitable act of nature and a wonderful thing. That’s its destiny, and it’s something we should be celebrating. Not curtailing.

He has all the beauty of an angel--- a chiseled face and a faint glow. But there's something wrong about him. A rawness that never melted down. His smile is crooked, forged by a false sense of happiness. Though, he is undeniably enthralling. Golden hair and sharpened bones. Fox-like eyes that trail my body as if it's for show. Silently undressing me. Ready to pounce. In another world, I might have let him. I smile, fawning naivety as he takes a step closer. His red lips part with a grin as he brushes a weft of hair over my shoulder. I shiver as he trails my bare skin. His touch is delicate, careful not to startle me as my breathing hitches. Slowly, his fingers trace the vulnerable part of my throat, grazing gently instead of drawing blood. He's careful in his movements, taking his time, awakening my senses until I let out a kitten cry. His hand perches beneath my chin. Our eyes lock, trapped in honeyed heat, as his thumb strokes the fullness of my bottom lip. "You're immaculate," he says. His voice is lush and dark. I tense, trying not to tremble as his tether possesses me. It becomes harder when he whispers, "I have never seen such a beautiful girl." Electric shovers rattle my bones. My knees slacken, and he stabilizes my balance. I refuse to give him the upper hand. I press my palm against his chest, grazing right where his blouse parts. My eyes turn doe-like with wonder, honoring his beauty and tending his fragile ego. "Are we to be married now? I can't wait a moment longer." He grins. "Soon, coquette." I move my hand up to his neck. Not slow and delicate like he was with me. But feral, delicious, wanting. "I need you." I nearly pant. That's it. That's enough to make him tick. He drinks me in like nectar, a sweet ambrosia brewed just for him. "Come," he says, offering his arm.

I am grappling with fullness and emptiness and the unnameable something that could change everything. I am thinking of spells chosen, not cast, of polarity, of clear mirrors. I wonder at how the body can brace itself and choose surrender all at once. I contemplate the way Ink bleeds through from one page to the next, and how all the stories do this really, the way the lines of my tattoo soften into my skin over time. The way all lines blur in the end. I hold the language and complexity and sovereignty of my yes. I imagine the spaces where sacred and tender and profane and primal meet and dance. The intimacy that exists between us and how it takes me by surprise every single time. I dream of the way a future want can also feel like a memory lived, where the body inexplicably knows what it has not yet experienced. Of the way that the doing and the undoing of me are sometimes the very same thing. Of the hunger of my skin and my holy pleasure and the turning inward and the space where they collide. Of lighting seeking ground. Of the first taste of coffee in the morning and the way my body unfolds into it. Of the infinities of her and how and where I might one day find and taste them. How sometimes, when I dive into the root of what my lonely feels like, it is just that the light is so beautiful here, and I want someone else to feel it with me. Do you feel it? Tell me you do. Please. Tell me you do.

Bennett,” she murmured, her brow damp from labor. “I’d like to call him Bennett.” She held the babe out to me, and I rocked him. But even as I did, my hands itched to hold something else. When I passed Bennett back to Petra, I slipped my fingers into my pocket for the Providence Cards I kept there. Only then did I smile. I took Bennett to the wood. Asked the Spirit to bless him with her magic. A day later, his infant veins were dark as ink. His magic was the antithesis of mine, the trees told me. My heir, my counterweight. But that was our secret, his and mine. Our fond, silent riddle. More children were born. Boys—all yellow of eye like me. Lenor. Fenly. A pair of twins, Afton and Ilyc, so alike I could hardly tell them apart even when I took the time to try. I visited their nurseries, their rooms and tutor sessions, but often I was in another chamber, one I had built around the stone in the meadow. I brought my sons to the wood—asked the Spirit to bless them with magic. But for all four, she kept her gifts to herself. Then, a little girl was born. Tilly. Full of whim and a deviousness that reminded me of Ayris. Only, unlike my sister, the Spirit christened Tilly with the fever, and she was granted strange, wonderful magic. She could heal. With a single touch of her little hand, Tilly could wipe away any wound—and often did so without intention. The cuts I’d dealt myself, bartering for Providence Cards, vanished whenever Tilly reached for me. It hurt, feeling her touch. But when the pain was gone, I was left with nary a scar. But it cost her, little Tilly, to heal. Every time she did, her own body grew more frail. And so, for my next Providence Card, I asked the trees, the Spirit, for magic that healed. Magic that made its user as beautiful and unblemished as a pink rose—Tilly’s favorite flower.

LORD GOD, You rule on high and we are here below, confused and longing to make sense of our brief existence. We feel there is something in life we have missed. We are here only for a fleeting moment—far too short to spend stumbling in the dark. Shine Your light upon us. It is only in Your light we see light. Rouse us from our sluggishness. Open our understanding to perceive the glory, the wonder, the beauty of Your purposes of grace. Help us to discern the splendor of the Story in which we find ourselves. And lead our feet on the path where Your light shines ever brighter till the fullness of day. Amen.

Ken Wharfe In 1987, Ken Wharfe was appointed a personal protection officer to Diana. In charge of the Princess’s around-the-clock security at home and abroad, in public and in private, Ken Wharfe became a close friend and loyal confidant who shared her most private moments. After Diana’s death, Inspector Wharfe was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and made a Member of the Victorian Order, a personal gift of the sovereign for his loyal service to her family. His book, Diana: Closely Guarded Secret, is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. He is a regular contributor with the BBC, ITN, Sky News, NBC, CBS, and CNN, participating in numerous outside broadcasts and documentaries for BBC--Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Channel 5 News, News 24, and GMTV. My memory of Diana is not her at an official function, dazzling with her looks and clothes and the warmth of her manner, or even of her offering comfort among the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed. What I remember best is a young woman taking a walk in a beautiful place, unrecognized, carefree, and happy. Diana increasingly craved privacy, a chance “to be normal,” to have the opportunity to do what, in her words, “ordinary people” do every day of their lives--go shopping, see friends, go on holiday, and so on--away from the formality and rituals of royal life. As someone responsible for her security, yet understanding her frustration, I was sympathetic. So when in the spring of the year in which she would finally be separated from her husband, Prince Charles, she yet again raised the suggestion of being able to take a walk by herself, I agreed that such a simple idea could be realized. Much of my childhood had been spent on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, a county in southern England approximately 120 miles from London; I remembered the wonderful sandy beaches of Studland Bay, on the approach to Poole Harbour. The idea of walking alone on miles of almost deserted sandy beach was something Diana had not even dared dream about. At this time she was receiving full twenty-four-hour protection, and it was at my discretion how many officers should be assigned to her protection. “How will you manage it, Ken? What about the backup?” she asked. I explained that this venture would require us to trust each other, and she looked at me for a moment and nodded her agreement. And so, early one morning less than a week later, we left Kensington Palace and drove to the Sandbanks ferry at Poole in an ordinary saloon car. As we gazed at the coastline from the shabby viewing deck of the vintage chain ferry, Diana’s excitement was obvious, yet not one of the other passengers recognized her. But then, no one would have expected the most photographed woman in the world to be aboard the Studland chain ferry on a sunny spring morning in May. As the ferry docked after its short journey, we climbed back into the car and then, once the ramp had been lowered, drove off in a line of cars and service trucks heading for Studland and Swanage. Diana was driving, and I asked her to stop in a sand-covered area about half a mile from the ferry landing point. We left the car and walked a short distance across a wooded bridge that spanned a reed bed to the deserted beach of Shell Bay. Her simple pleasure at being somewhere with no one, apart from me, knowing her whereabouts was touching to see. Diana looked out toward the Isle of Wight, anxious by now to set off on her walk to the Old Harry Rocks at the western extremity of Studland Bay. I gave her a personal two-way radio and a sketch map of the shoreline she could expect to see, indicating a landmark near some beach huts at the far end of the bay, a tavern or pub, called the Bankes Arms, where I would meet her.

A person desires to leave a mark of goodness on earth before death arrives. All artists are creators in the face of death. All of life a person seeks to salvage something worthwhile and enduring from living a tragic life. We must eventually dance with death. A person begins on a road leading to personal enlightenment by giving up false beliefs, quelling destructive desires, overcoming fearfulness, and by seeking truth. In order to lead an evocative life full of truth, I must stop living a false life, conquer my fearfulness, and begin expressing love, wonder, and gratitude for all the beauty and splendor of the world.

The elaborateness of the cover story made him feel like a criminal. This is what criminals must feel like as they prepare to do a job, he thought, constructing a world based on the fullness (and falseness) of the cover story. And yet he was not going to commit a murder or rob a bank or burglarize a house. He was only going to do something so normal the wonder was that it did require such an elaborate preparation. But it was the combination of secretness and commonness that made it so sweet. It was what everyone wanted and almost nobody did, to slip out of or through the structure that gave your life a shape into a room where your life took the shape you wanted it to have, to love and be loved by someone perfectly beautiful.

I watched him play every perfect chord as if it were an entire song, every song as if it were a grand sonata. The old man was lost in the captivating music and I was lost too—in his commanding presence, in his seamless movement, in his unmatched talent. His fingers floated effortlessly over the worn strings of the acoustic guitar, each one crossing over the other with calming ease. I found it hard to distinguish where one part ended and another began, inspiring and stirring my soul like a miracle. Elsie watched him with great intent, with great wonder, as did I. Then she got up from her leather armchair in the corner, walked over to the parlor grand piano, and joined in just as the song began to swell to its airy peak. They played together flawlessly, a man and a woman, for what could have been the thousandth time. Yet as I watched them, as the music filled me like the warmth of coming home, I could see it was new to them too, though ancestral and old. I was swept away, amazed at how each part was so distinct, so solitary in and of itself, and how yet it could only capture its full potential, its full beauty, as a part of something greater. I thought of how we are all pieces of music, of how one person would cease to swell without the other, of how the part that moves us the most freely in ourselves might not exist at all. I watched Johnny as he continued to strum, then Elsie as her fingers darted from place to place on the keys of the piano. The music swept over me like a memory of summertime, and I closed my eyes, letting it take me where it would, to a place so strikingly beautiful that everything else was silently perfect, letting the melody lead the moment. The hopeful sound filled my expectant ears and my emotions felt new again, as if I were a child, the moment peacefully pure, like rocking a newborn back to sleep. Wet streams of tears escaped my soft, emotional eyes as I let the notes take their full effect. To Johnny and Elsie, music was a language that didn't require words. In fact, it exceeded them. For what was flowing from the withered hands of the couple before me now was in itself perfection. Words could only ruin a moment this pure. As I watched them, I realized I wanted to care about anything as much as they did about music. A tear ran down my cheek as the last note hung softly, like a butterfly might hang on air. I decided right then that some things in life were much too beautiful not to cry about. This, I now knew, was one of them.

Slowly, as though touching it might destroy the image, he reached up and put trembling fingers to her forehead . . . her cheek . . . her nose . . . her lips.  The image did not go away.  It did not waver.  And as he stared in wonder and a sort of frozen disbelief, he saw the shyness and joy in the face that stared back at him. A face that he was, after two long months, seeing for the very first time. He saw a square jaw and high, prominent cheekbones that lent her a look of gauntness and strength; dark, velvety-brown eyes fringed by long black lashes; a shy and smiling mouth; full, dusky lips; and glossy hair the color of strong coffee, tightly braided and pinned in a coronet around her head.  She was beautiful, even if not in the conventional sense, striking, slightly exotic, with flawlessly smooth skin of a slightly bronzed tone, not unlike that of a sailor who's spent his life in the sun. It was a lovely color. A warm, toasted, caramel-color that made him want to put his lips to it and kiss her all over. "Amy," he repeated, in a disbelieving whisper.  "I can see you."  He swallowed hard, and traced the shape of her mouth with his fingers.  "I can see you." And he could also see something else.  Mist in those huge, soft eyes — and a sort of awkwardness, if not fear, about his first visual impression of her. "And just what is it you see, Charles?" "I see a beautiful young woman — " he grinned — "garbed in the most singularly hideous gown imaginable." "Oh, Charles," she cried, impulsively flinging her arms around him.  He embraced her in turn.  They remained like that, holding each other, both of them laughing and rejoicing and rocking back and forth in the straw. "It was that damned horse!" he managed, setting her back to gaze into her rapt, mobile face.  "The blow must've done something, must've jarred something loose inside my head.  Don't you think?" "Either that, or your sight was just plain destined to return anyhow.  Maybe God simply decided that the time had come for you to have it back again." "So that I could see you!" "So you could write your own letters!" "So I could find my way without a cane!" Laughing with joy, he hugged her once more, then set her back, trailing his finger down her cheek, the edge of her jaw.  Gently, he tipped her chin up so that her luminous gaze held his.  "And look into the eyes of the woman who has become my dearest and very best friend." And look he did; then, before he even knew what he was about, he closed his eyes and kissed her. Unlike

That evening he put me up at the Glasshouse Mountains Motel, a few miles from the zoo. Steve was very chivalrous. I met his parents and had dinner with the whole family. I also got my first taste of Australian humor. That night at dinner, I poured myself what I thought was a nice glass of juice. The entire Irwin family sat quiet and straight-faced. As I took a big swig, it nearly choked me. That’s when I learned about cordial, which is supposed to be mixed with water. I had poured it full strength. We all had a good laugh. The next night Steve and I went to dinner in Caloundra, a nearby town. He took me to a resort that featured an all-you-can-eat buffet dinner--seafood banquet, my favorite. I loaded my plate high with prawns, crab, oysters, and everything I loved. I didn’t know it then, but Steve was a bit worried that I was going to eat more than he did. At one point a little piece of crab flicked onto the crook of my arm. I deftly reached down with my tongue and managed to grab it off my elbow and eat it. Suddenly I felt self-conscious. Steve was staring at me. He looked at me with such love in his eyes, and I thought, He’s going to say something wonderful. Steve leaned forward and said affectionately, “ Gosh, you aren’t ladylike at all.” I burst out laughing. Apparently I’d done the right thing. I reflected back on my dad’s advice: No matter what, always be yourself. And it sure had worked. As we left the restaurant, Steve said, “You know, I smell ducks.” We walked outside, and sure enough, there was a flock of beautiful ducks bobbing around on a pond. “Steve, you are the most amazing bushman I’ve ever met,” I said. Of course, the resort and the pond had been there for years, and Steve had known about the ducks for just as long. “I smell ducks” was a Crocodile Dundee trick that had nevertheless worked its magic on this naïve American girl. And then, suddenly, the weekend was over. Steve drove me back down to Brisbane. I had the biggest ache in my heart. I had fallen hard. As we said good-bye, he put his arms around me for the first time, and I felt all his strength and warmth in that embrace. But it was over. I was going back to my side of the world. I had no idea if I would ever see Steve Irwin again.

This was the pain of being happy, something she hadn't felt since she was a girl, when the future had been full of hope and the world had been wonderful and all life's possibilities lay ahead. This was the pain of light and beauty and a man's tender kiss. It was the burn in your eyes when you looked into the bright, shining sun, and the pinch in your chest when you saw the first green shoots of springtime, and the lump in your throat when you heard the sound of a newborn baby's cry. It was life, life, life.

A Morning of Being Grateful Dear Father God, I thank you for waking me up today, another day of life. You have given me another sunrise to enjoy. Thank you, Lord God, for the wonderful sounds of nature and the cool breeze brushing through the trees making the birds sing beautiful melodies. You are a great Father, Lord, always full of grace and mercy. I praise you, Father, for allowing me to live another beautiful day in Your Kingdom. Thank you for the gifts of family and friends. Holding them in my heart is one of the most precious things I can never get tired of. Bless everyone, Father, for they deserve all the goodness you have given to me. If I may do something wrong today, please forgive me. I also thank you for always being the reason in my head when it comes to decision-making.

It was a brave thing you did, Susannah." Something unfamiliar in his eyes warmed Susannah clear through, and at the same time made her feel strangely bare. "I wasn't trying to be brave." Kit's lovely mouth lifted at the corner. "Which is what makes it brave." His expression was still difficult to read. He seemed so somber, almost shy, if she didn't know better. Humble? No, that couldn't be. But the warmth in it was unmistakable. "You'll be a little sore tomorrow." He absently reached out and kneaded her upper arm. Susannah closed her eyes to slits; the kneading felt wonderful. It was almost more intimate than a kiss, but then again, almost nothing seemed intimate in comparison to having one's hand thrust up a horse, and Susannah, at the moment, didn't care. Kit abruptly dropped her hand. She opened her eyes fully again. And they stood again quietly together for a moment, simply looking at each other. A peculiar peace stole over Susannah, a lovely, dreamy sort of fullness.

Rare is the ministry praying that they would be worthy of the giftedness of Black minds and hearts. So we must remind ourselves. It’s the only way to spit out the poison. We must remind ourselves and one another that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, arming ourselves against the ultimate message of whiteness—that we are inferior. We must stare at ourselves in the mirror and repeat that we, too, are fully capable, immensely talented, and uniquely gifted. We are not tokens. We are valuable in the fullness of our humanity. We are not perfect, but we are here, able to contribute something special, beautiful, lasting to the companies and ministries to which we belong.

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One should win the privilege of looking down on such a scene, and because I had done nothing to earn a glimpse of these remote beauties I felt that I was cheating and that this nasty, noisy little impertinence, mechanically transporting me, was an insult to the mountains. You will probably accuse me of a tiresome outburst of romanticism-but I'm not sure you'll be right. The more I see of unmechanized places and people the more convinced I become that machines have done incalculable damage by unbalancing the relationship between Man and Nature. The mere fact that we think and talk as we do about Nature is symptomatic. For us to refer to Nature as a separate entity-something we admire or avoid or study or paint-shows how far we've removed ourselves from it. Marco Polo saw it as the background to human adventures and endeavours — a healthy reaction possible only when our lives are basically in harmony with it. (Granted that Roz is a machine and that to be logical I should have walked or ridden from Ireland, but at least one exerts oneself cycling and the speed is not too outrageous and one is constantly exposed to the elements.) I suppose all our scientific advances are a wonderful boost for the superior intellect of the human race but what those advances are doing to us seems to me quite literally tragic. After all, only a handful of people are concerned in the excitement and stimulation of discovering and developing, while millions lead feebler and more synthetic lives because of the achievements of that handful. When Sterne toured France and Italy he needed more guts and initiative than the contemporary traveller needs to tour the five continents; people now use less than half their potential forces because 'Progress' has deprived them of the incentive to live fully. All this has been brought to the surface of my mind by the general attitude to my conception of travelling, which I once took for granted as normal behaviour but which strikes most people as wild eccentricity, merely because it involves a certain amount of what is now regarded as hardship but was to all our ancestors a feature of everyday life using physical energy to get from point A to point B. I don't know what the end result of all this 'progress' will be-something pretty dire, I should think.

It is only in the context of understanding something of God's character, of his righteousness and perfection, that we begin to understand the tremendous nature of saying that God truly is love, and his love has a depth, texture, fullness, and beauty to it that we, in our present state, can only begin to wonder at.

A water-bearer in India had two large pots hanging at the ends of a pole that he carried across his neck. One of the pots was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house. The other pot had a crack in it, and by the time it reached its destination, it was only half full. Every day for two years the water-bearer delivered only one and one-half pots of water to the master’s house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments—perfect to the end for which it was made. The poor little cracked pot was ashamed of its imperfections and miserable that it could accomplish only half of what it had been designed to do. After two years of what the imperfect pot perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water-bearer and said, “I am ashamed of myself and I want to apologize to you.” “Why?” asked the water-bearer. “What are you ashamed of?” “Well, for these past two years, I have been able to deliver only half a load of water each day because this crack in my side allows water to leak out the whole way back to the master’s house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all this work without getting the full value of your efforts,” the pot said. The water-bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in his compassion he said, “As we return to the master’s house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path.” Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot noticed the beautiful wildflowers on the side of the path. But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because half of its load had leaked out once again. Then the water-bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path and not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I’ve always known about your flaw and took advantage of it by planting flower seeds on your side of the path. Every day as we walked back from the stream, you watered those seeds, and for two years I have picked these beautiful flowers to decorate my master’s table. Without you being just what you are, he would not have had this beauty to grace his house.”1 Like that cracked pot, you too can accomplish wonderful things. It doesn’t matter that you have flaws and limitations. Don’t let what you perceive to be a weakness keep you from taking bold steps inspired by hope. 2 Corinthians 12:10 says: “… When I am weak [in human strength], then am I [truly] strong (able, powerful in divine strength).” Isn’t that comforting to know? Even when you’re weak, you’re strong because God is with you. He is using every part of your life—even the cracks—to create something beautiful. Get Your Hopes Up!

When you look for His fingerprint in nature, you find it everywhere. The design really is amazing. I think about how much He must love us to have created it this way, you know? If He wanted to create life, He could have just done it like an ant farm. He could have just created a surface for us and left it at that. But instead, He made something so intricate and full of wonder. I come out here every evening, and every evening, without fail, there is a different sky for me to look at. Sometimes it's full of color, sometimes there are clouds that look like someone honest-to-goodness painted them with a paintbrush, sometimes there are dark, ominous-looking clouds, and sometimes it's just all blue or all grey. Every single day, He creates a different backdrop for me. He gives me a picture in the sky that constantly changes. I just can't help but be thankful when I think about His creation. He must really just love us to make something so beautiful, you know?" Lances words caused tears to sting my eyes. It was a truth that I took for granted. I was thankful to him for reminding me that God cared enough to paint a different picture in the sky every day.

When you actually live with nature day in and day out, you get to see it at its least dignified. This is a good, even necessary way of looking at nature, because it is honest. Nature is not always beautiful. It can be grotesque, it can be cruel, and it can be comical. If humans hope to achieve a more harmonious relationship with the natural world, we will have to see it in full: breathtaking, dirty, and inspiring, and annoying all at the same time. All too often we see only the good, or only the bad. If we can love nature for what it really is--not just as idealized perfection--we'll have a real chance of ending the strife between civilization and wilderness and replacing it with something like intimacy.

Twould take me half a lifetime to describe to you the wonders and the horrors of the future world. The garderobe, what they call the ODEC, is housed within a large chamber—a strange room with mechanical monstrosities and a dreadful buzz in the air as if lightning were always just about to strike, a sound they are all indifferent to, much as I became indifferent to the odors of Southwark. And this chamber in turn is inside a vast building, which is on a street full of vast buildings, in a city of streets with vast buildings. Larger than cathedrals some of them, but without ornament or even shape. Like building blocks for giants, so they are. No imagination or love of beauty at all. Everything functions without human or magical assistance, but I confess most breathlessly that whatever power keeps humanity and its many mechanical servants humming . . . it is far more dazzling than any magic I have ever seen performed. And I tell you straight out: suspicious this makes me, for what is the cause to bring magic back when it has been replaced by something clearly more serviceable? So the first riddle I put my mind to was this: in a world where carriages travel without beasts to pull them, and food is effortlessly abundant, and there is ample light to sunder any darkness, from all manner of peculiar torches, none of them given to burning down a place even if it is all wood, and where all and sundry wear grander clothes than most anyone in London and an astonishing variety what’s more . . . something there must be, some commodity or advantage, that magic can attain but mankind cannot yet. Nothing material can it be, for no magic I ever knew summoned such luxuries for royalty as everyday folk here take as commonplace.

When, in a woman, full maturity is combined with character and with pride, it creates a special beauty unattainable by the very young. Her strong chin was high, and there was a look around her mouth of a person who has tasted something slightly spoiled. It’s pride, he thought. That damn rare wonderful thing. A proud man will keep getting up. Break both his legs and he’ll still give it a try. A proud woman won’t whine. She won’t give you the stifled sob and sheep-dog routine. She’ll square her pretty shoulders and stick those knockers out like a bureau drawer and suck in her tummy, and put a little swing in her hips, and spit right square in your eye.