Sun Does Shine Quotes

Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun; it shines everywhere.

This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today...But you must play your part and sing a song, one of your best.

Despair was a choice. Hatred was a choice. Anger was a choice. I still had choices, and that knowledge rocked me. I may not have had as many Lester had, but I still had some choices. I could choose to give up or to hang on. Hope was a choice. Faith was a choice. And more than anything else, love was a choice. Compassion was a choice.

ah,the outdoors," Shallan said. "I visited that mythical place once. It was so very long ago, I've nearly forgotten it. Tell me, does the sun still shine, or is that just my dreamy recollection' 'Surely your studies aren't that bad.

Every single one wants to matter. We want our lives, and our stories and the choices we made or didn’t make to matter.

Does the sun ask itself, “Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me?” No, it burns and it shines. Does the sun ask itself, “What does the moon think of me? How does Mars feel about me today?” No it burns, it shines. Does the sun ask itself, “Am I as big as other suns in other galaxies?” No, it burns, it shines.

We need to think about the fact that we are all more than the worst thing we have done.

We are like the moon. The moon shines anyway, but it does not produce its own light. It reflects the light illuminated onto its surface by the Sun and is never proud to say "I am the source of light". God shines through us, hence He deserves the glory; not us.

Humanity does not suffer from the disease of wrong beliefs but humanity suffers from the contagious nature of the lack of belief. If you have no magic with you it is not because magic does not exist but it is because you do not believe in it. Even if the sun shines brightly upon your skin every day, if you do not believe in the sunlight, the sunlight for you does not exist.

THE WEATHER OF LOVE Love Has a way of wilting Or blossoming At the strangest, Most unpredictable hour. This is how love is, An uncontrollable beast In the form of a flower. The sun does not always shine on it. Nor does the rain always pour on it Nor should it always get beaten by a storm. Love does not always emit the sweetest scents, And sometimes it can sting with its thorns. Water it. Give it plenty of sunlight. Nurture it, And the flower of love will Outlive you. Neglect it or keep dissecting it, And its petals will quickly curl up and die. This is how love is, Perfection is a delusional vision. So love the person who loves you Unconditionally, And abandon the one Who only loves you Under favorable Conditions.

It all matters. How we live matters. Do we choose love or do we choose hate? Do we help or do we harm? Because there is no way to know the exact second your life changes forever. You can only begin to know that moment by looking in the rearview mirror. And trust me when I tell you when you never, ever see it coming.

Oh, I'm developing a beautiful character! It droops a bit under cold and frost, but it does grow fast when the sun shines. That's the way with everybody. I don't agree with the theory that adversity and sorrow and disappointment develop moral strength. The happy people are the ones who are bubbling over with kindliness.

The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or — if they think there is not — at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

Love does not cost anything. Kind words and deeds do not cost anything. The real beauty of the world is equal for everyone to see. It was given by God equally to all, without restrictions. Everyone, was given a beautiful vehicle in which to express love to others. Feelings are free to express and give to ourselves and each other through our willingness to give and care. What is complicated about this... Why have we made others feel they have to climb mountains and swim oceans in order to make a difference. All we need to understand my friends, is that human life was given equally to us all, not partially but in totality. The sun was given to all. It does not shine on the few. So, just has nature is indifferent to our station or situation, we need to know that we are all equal. We need to focus on the things that are constant and not place our values on things that can be blown away with the next, great, wind. Value life in what ever house it dwells. For when it comes time that we are all stripped to bare bones before the divine and facing eternity, we will understand that the only law we were meant to follow, was to love ourselves and each other. Nothing more...nothing less.

We look up to see if it is day or night. If stars burn cool and moon does shine, we take to smoke divine and wine. If breath of sun does belch its heat, we boil coffee and prepare to eat.

A relationship that is truly genuine does not keep changing its colors. Real gold never rusts. If a relationship is really solid and golden, it will be unbreakable. Not even Time can destroy its shine.

Everything, I realized, is a choice. And spending your days waiting to die is no way to live.

I was born with the same gift from God we are all born with – the impulse to reach out and lessen the suffering of another human being. It was a gift, and we each had a choice whether to use this gift or not.

This great evil, where's it come from? How'd it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doing this? Who's killing us, robbing us of life and light, mocking us with the sight of what we might've known? Does our ruin benefit the earth, does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?

I look down at our knees, slightly touching. Jeans against jeans. Does she notice the heat transferring from her body to mine? Does she even realize what she's doing to me? I know, I know. I'm not a virgin and the slightest touch of a girl's knee is driving me insane. I don't even know what I'm feeling for Maggie, I just know that I'm feeling. It's something I've tried to avoid and deny until yesterday, when I held her in my arms while her tears spilled onto my shirt. God, our knees touching isn't enough. I need more. She's knotting her fingers together on her lap as if she doesn't know what to do with them. I want to touch her, but what if she pulls away like before? I've never been such a wuss with a girl in my life. I bite my bottom lip as I slide my hand about millionth of a millimeter closer to her hand. She doesn't seem fazed so I move closer. And closer. When the tips of my fingers touch her wrist, she freezes. But she doesn't jerk her hand away. God, her skin is so soft, I think as my fingers trail a path from her wrist to her knuckles to her smooth, manicured nails. I swear touching her like this is driving me nuts. It's more erotic, more intense than any other time with Kendra. I feel awkward and inexperienced as a freshman again. I look up. Everyone else is oblivious to the intensity of emotions running rampant in the back of the public bus. When I look back down at my hand covering hers, I'm grateful she hasn't come to her senses and pulled away. As if she knows my thoughts, we both turn our hands at the same time so our hands are palm against palm...finger against finger. Her hand is dwarfed against mine. It makes her seem more delicate and petite than I'd realize. I feel a need to protect her and be her champion should she ever need one. With a slight shift of my hand, I lace my fingers through hers. I'm holding hands. With Maggie Armstrong. I'm not even going to think about how wrong it is because it feels so right. She's avoided looking right at me, but now she turns her head and our eyes lock. God, how come I never noticed before how long her lashes were and how her brown eyes have specks of gold that sparkle when the sun shine on them? The bus stops suddenly and I look out the window. It's our stop. She must have realized this because she pulls her hand away from mine and stands. I follow behind, still reeling.

Does the sun promise to shine? No, but it will— even behind the darkest clouds, and no promise will make it shine longer or brighter for that is its fate, to burn until it can burn no more. To love you is not my promise but my fate— to burn for you until I can burn no more.

He was a poor man in a criminal justice system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent.

‎"Measure not God's love and favour by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds which hinder the manifestation of the light thereof.

It is your nature to warm all you see, and the sun does not ask forgiveness for shining.

Just as the sun shines on all the trees and flowers as if each were the only one on earth, so does God care for all souls in a special manner.

Remember none of us are the worst thing we have done, and right now, wherever you are, whoever you are, you can reach out to your fellow man or woman and bring your own light to the dark places.

We look up to see if it is day or night. If stars burn cool and moon does shine, We take to smoke divine and wine. If breath of sun does belch its heat, we boil coffee and prepare to eat.

We have to make every ending be a happy ending.

No baby is born a murderer. No toddler dreams of being on death row someday. Every killer on death row was taught to be a killer—by parents, by a system, by the brutality of another brutalized person—but no one was born a killer.

As the sun does not wait for prayers and incantations tob e induced to rise, but immediately shines and is saluted by all, so do you also not wait for clappings of hands and shouts of praise tob e induced to do good, but be a doer of good voluntarily and you will be beloved as much as the sun.

Martin Luther King once said, “A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.

Every time you shudder from the cold or wrap yourself more tightly in your furs, it reminds me that somewhere, the sun shines more brightly than it does here. You carry it in your skin.

...the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, but justice needs help. Justice only happens when good people take a stand against injustice. The moral arc of the universe needs people to support it as it bends. And yes, it also needs people to pick a side.

...Pain and tragedy and injustice happen - they happen to us all. I'd like to believe it's what you choose to do after such an experience that matters the most - that truly changes your life forever.

There’s no sadder place to be in this world than a place where there’s no hope.

Emma rose to her feet, facing the faerie across the fleeing crowd. Gleaming from his weathered, barklike face, his eyes were yellow as a cat's. "Shadowhunter," he hissed. Emma reached back over her shoulder and closed her hand around the hilt of her sword, Cortana. The blade made a golden blur in the air as she drew it and pointed the tip at the fey. "No," she said. "I'm a candygram. This is my costume." The faerie looked puzzled. Emma sighed. "It's so hard to be sassy to the Fair Folk. You people never get jokes." "We are well known for our jests, japes, and ballads," the faerie said, clearly offended. "Some of our ballads last for weeks." "I don't have that kind of time," Emma said. "I'm a Shadowhunter. Quip fast, die young." She wiggled Cortana's tip impatiently. "Now turn out your pockets." "I have done nothing to break the Cold Peace," said the fey. "Technically true, but we do frown on stealing from mundanes," Emma said. "Turn out your pockets or I'll rip off one of your horns and shove it where the sun doesn't shine." The fey looked puzzled. "Where does the sun not shine? Is this a riddle?" Emma gave a martyred sigh and raised Cortana. "Turn them out, or I'll start peeling your bark off. My boyfriend and I just broke up, and I'm not in the best mood." The faerie began slowly to empty his pockets onto the ground, glaring at her all the while. "So you're single," he said. "I never would have guessed.

Justice only happens when good people take a stand against injustice.

Be like the sun. Not only does it shine through the day but also makes its presence felt at night by allowing the moon to reflect its light.

It does not matter if we acknowledge the sun; it contiues to shine reardless of the heed we give it. If my efforts go without recognitioun, then so be it.

sometimes life is so damn heavy the only choice is to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.

Sometimes it felt like life was more a process of elimination than a series of choices.

No one can understand what freedom means until they don’t have it.

We need to understand the dangers posed by the politics of fear and anger that create systems like our capital punishment system and the political dynamics that have made some courts and officials act so irresponsibly. We also need to learn about human dignity, about human worth and value. We need to think about the fact that we are all more than the worst thing we have done.

No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that He does so, not because He is Love, but because we are intrinsically lovable. The Pagans obeyed this impulse unabashed; a good man was "dear to the gods" because he was good. We, being better taught, resort to subterfuge. Far be it from us to think that we have virtues for which God could love us. But then, how magnificently we have repented! As Bunyan says, describing his first and illusory conversion, "I thought there was no man in England that pleased God better than I." Beaten out of this, we next offer our own humility to God's admiration. Surely He'll like that? Or if not that, our clear-sighted and humble recognition that we still lack humility. Thus, depth beneath depth and subtlety within subtelty, there remains some lingering idea of our own, our very own attractiveness. It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little--however little--native luminosity? Surely we can't be quite creatures? - The Four Loves

We weren’t monsters; we were guys trying to survive the best we could.

I was afraid every single day on death row. And I also found a way to find joy every single day. I learned that fear and joy are both a choice.

Innocent men don’t run. Except sometimes innocent men need to run. This is true in Alabama and everywhere. If you’re poor and black, sometimes your best and only chance is to run.

What an awful place to live in England is,... If it isn't snowing or raining or blowing it's misty. And if the sun does shine it's so cold that you can't feel your fingers or toes.

Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free.

You need to hold on to your hope. If you have hope, you have everything.

On April 3, 2015, Anthony Ray Hinton was released from prison after spending nearly thirty years in solitary confinement on Alabama’s death row.

Looking up at that sky, I knew I could get angry or I could have some faith. It was always a choice.

You going to have people dislike you because of whatever reason they find to dislike you. That’s just how the world is. But you have to be knowing that you are responsible for how you treat others, you’re not responsible for how they treat you. Do you understand? I don’t care what people say about you—you don’t drop down to their level. You always treat someone better than what they treat you. Always.

Sunshine If it were possible to place you in my brain to let you roam around in and out my thought waves you would never have to ask why do you love me? This morning as you slept I wanted to kiss you awake say I love you till your brain smiled and nodded yes this woman does love me. Each day the list grows filled with the things that are you things that make my heart jump yet words would sound strange become corny in utterance. In the morning when I wake I don’t look out my window to see if the sun is shining. I turn to you instead.

But too often does youth think that age knows only the wisdom of days that are gone, and therefore profits not. But remember this; the sun that shines today is the sun that shone when thy father was born, and will still be shining when thy last grandchild shall pass into the darkness.

Despair was a choice. Hatred was a choice. Anger was a choice. I still had choices, and that knowledge rocked me. I may not have had as many Lester had, but I still had some choices. I could choose to give up or to hang on. Hope was a choice. Faith was a choice. And more than anything else, love was a choice. Compassion was a choice.

Happy the writer who, passing by characters that are boring, disgusting, shocking in their mournful reality, approaches characters that manifest the lofty dignity of man, who from the great pool of daily whirling images has chosen only the rare exceptions, who has never once betrayed the exalted turning of his lyre, nor descended from his height to his poor, insignificant brethren, and, without touching the ground, has given the whole of himself to his elevated images so far removed from it. Twice enviable is his beautiful lot: he is among them as in his own family; and meanwhile his fame spreads loud and far. With entrancing smoke he has clouded people's eyes; he has flattered them wondrously, concealing what is mournful in life, showing them a beautiful man. Everything rushes after him, applauding, and flies off following his triumphal chariot. Great world poet they name him, soaring high above all other geniuses in the world, as the eagle soars above the other high fliers. At the mere mention of his name, young ardent hearts are filled with trembling, responsive tears shine in all eyes...No one equals him in power--he is God! But such is not the lot, and other is the destiny of the writer who has dared to call forth all that is before our eyes every moment and which our indifferent eyes do not see--all the stupendous mire of trivia in which our life in entangled, the whole depth of cold, fragmented, everyday characters that swarm over our often bitter and boring earthly path, and with the firm strength of his implacable chisel dares to present them roundly and vividly before the eyes of all people! It is not for him to win people's applause, not for him to behold the grateful tears and unanimous rapture of the souls he has stirred; no sixteen-year-old girl will come flying to meet him with her head in a whirl and heroic enthusiasm; it is not for him to forget himself in the sweet enchantment of sounds he himself has evoked; it is not for him, finally, to escape contemporary judgment, hypocritically callous contemporary judgment, which will call insignificant and mean the creations he has fostered, will allot him a contemptible corner in the ranks of writers who insult mankind, will ascribe to him the quality of the heroes he has portrayed, will deny him heart, and soul, and the divine flame of talent. For contemporary judgment does not recognize that equally wondrous are the glasses that observe the sun and those that look at the movement of inconspicuous insect; for contemporary judgment does not recognize that much depth of soul is needed to light up the picture drawn from contemptible life and elevate it into a pearl of creation; for contemporary judgment does not recognize that lofty ecstatic laughter is worthy to stand beside the lofty lyrical impulse, and that a whole abyss separates it from the antics of the street-fair clown! This contemporary judgment does not recognize; and will turn it all into a reproach and abuse of the unrecognized writer; with no sharing, no response, no sympathy, like a familyless wayfarer, he will be left alone in the middle of the road. Grim is his path, and bitterly he will feel his solitude.

The sun of God's glory was made to shine at the center of the solar system of our soul. And when it does, all the planets of our life are held in their proper orbit.

My mama always told me that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar.

I smoothed Colton’s blanket across his chest and tucked him in snug the way he liked—and for the first time since he started talking about heaven, I intentionally tried to trip him up. “I remember you saying you stayed with Pop,” I said. “So when it got dark and you went home with Pop, what did you two do?” Suddenly serious, Colton scowled at me. “It doesn’t get dark in heaven, Dad! Who told you that?” I held my ground. “What do you mean it doesn’t get dark?” “God and Jesus light up heaven. It never gets dark. It’s always bright.” The joke was on me. Not only had Colton not fallen for the “when it gets dark in heaven” trick, but he could tell me why it didn’t get dark: “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp.

I chose to forgive. I chose to stay vigilant to any signs of anger or hate in my heart. They took thiry years of my life. If I couldn't forgive, if I couldn't feel joy, that would be like giving them the rest of my life. The rest of my life is mine. Alabama took thirty years. That was enough.

But pain and tragedy and injustice happen—they happen to us all. I’d like to believe it’s what you choose to do after such an experience that matters the most—that truly changes your life forever.

Last Will Prologue: We, Sacco and Vanzetti, sound of body and mind, Devise and bequeath to all we leave behind, The worldly wealth we inherited at our birth, Each one to share alike as we leave this earth. To Wit: To babies we will their mothers’ love, To youngsters we will the sun above. To spooners who wont to tryst the night, We give the moon and stars that shine so bright. To thrill them in their hours of joy, When boy hugs maid and maid hugs boy. To nature’s creatures we allot the spring and summer, To the doe, the bear, the gold-finch and the hummer. To the fishes we ascribe the deep blue sea, The honey we apportion to the bustling bee. To the pessimist—good cheer—his mind to sooth, To the chronic liar we donate the solemn truth. And Lastly: To those who judge solely seeking renown, With blaring trumpets of the fakir and clown; To the prosecutor, persecutor, and other human hounds, Who’d barter another’s honor, recognizing no bounds, To the Governor, the Jury, who another’s life they’d sell— We endow them with the fiery depths of HELL! (Industrial Worker, Aug. 20, 1927)

The sun began to set behind Bethlehem and the beams were breaking through some white and gray clouds. There was a slight and beautiful chill from the autumn air. I gave thanks for that beautiful day and for the fact that the sun does not know Palestinian from Israeli, Christian from Muslim or Jew, and Asian from American or African, and I asked myself: If the sun shines on all of us as one, how much more does the sun's Creator see and love us all as one?

I was born with the same gift from God we are all born with—the impulse to reach out and lessen the suffering of another human being. It was a gift, and we each had a choice whether to use this gift or not.

But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all came about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house. He sees how men have to rob their brothers in order to live. He sees children starving and women working sixty hours a week to get to eat. He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted. He sees war coming. He sees when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun - the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it.

You know telling someone not to worry is like telling the sun not to shine, don’t you?” she prodded. “It’s just going to keep shining anyway, because that’s what it does.

The death penalty is an enemy of grace, redemption and all who value life and recognize that each person is more than their worst act.

Sun does not need your torch to shine

It’s hard to explain exactly what it feels like to be judged. There’s a shame to it. Even when you know you’re innocent.

Everything, I realized, is a choice. And spending your days waiting to die is no way to live.

The death penalty is broken, and you are either part of the Death Squad or banging on the doors. Choose.

There was no past and no future on the row. We only had the moment we were in, and when you tried to survive moment to moment, there wasn’t the luxury of judgment.

I was afraid every single day on death row. And I also found a way to find joy every single day.

I knew that if the mind could open, the heart would follow.

the race is not given to the quick but to the one who endures.

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.

When the sun rises it casts a shadow on what does not shine as bright as it.

Let the light of late afternoon shine through chinks in the barn, moving up the bales as the sun moves down. Let the cricket take up chafing as a woman takes up her needles and her yarn. Let evening come. Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned in long grass. Let the stars appear and the moon disclose her silver horn. Let the fox go back to its sandy den. Let the wind die down. Let the shed go black inside. Let evening come. To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats, to air in the lung let evening come. Let it come, as it will, and don't be afraid. God does not leave us comfortless, so let evening come.

When you are trying to survive, the superficial things don’t matter anymore. When you are hanging at the end of your rope, does it really matter what color the hand is that reaches up to help you?

The sun descending in the west, The evening star does shine; The birds are silent in their nest, And I must seek for mine. The moon, like a flower, In heaven's high bower, With silent delight Sits and smiles on the night. Farewell, green fields and happy groves, Where flocks have took delight. Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves The feet of angels bright; Unseen they pour blessing, And joy without ceasing, On each bud and blossom, And each sleeping bosom.

Because there’s no way to know the exact second your life changes forever. You can only begin to know that moment by looking in the rearview mirror. And trust me when I tell you that you never, ever see it coming.

The sun descending in the west, The evening star does shine; The birds are silent in their nest. And I must seek for mine. The moon, like a flower In heaven's high bower, With silent delight Sits and smiles on the night

But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house... He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted... He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun—the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it.

Is this a holy thing to see, In a rich and fruitful land, Babes reduced to misery, Feed with cold and usurous hand? Is that trembling cry a song? Can it be a song of joy? And so many children poor? It is a land of poverty! And their sun does never shine, And their fields are bleak & bare, And their ways are fill'd with thorns; It is eternal winter there. For where-e'er the sun does shine, And where-e'er the rain does fall, Babe can never hunger there, Nor poverty the mind appall.

[339] Vita femina. To see the ultimate beauties in a work-all knowledge and good-will is not enough; it requires the rarest, good chance for the veil of clouds to move for once from the summits, and for the sun to shine on them. We must not only stand at precisely the right place to see this, our very soul itself must have pulled away the veil from its heights, and must be in need of an external expression and simile, so as to have a hold and remain master of itself. All these, however, are so rarely united at the same time that I am inclined to believe that the highest summit of all that is good, be it work, deed, man, or nature, has hitherto remained for most people, and even for the best, as something concealed and shrouded-that, however, which unveils itself to us, unveils itself to us but once. The Greeks indeed prayed: "Twice and thrice, everything beautiful!" Ah, they had their good reason to call on the Gods, for ungodly actuality does not furnish us with the beautiful at all, or only does so once! I mean to say that the world is overfull of beautiful things, but it is nevertheless poor, very poor, in beautiful moments, and in the unveiling of those beautiful things. But perhaps this is the greatest charm of life: it puts a gold- embroidered veil of lovely potentialities over itself, promising, resisting, modest, mocking, sympathetic, seductive. Yes, life is a woman!

I’m sorry you lost your mom, but man, you got to look at this a different way. Now you have someone in heaven who is going to argue your case before god. It was silent for a few moments and then the most amazing thing happened, on a dark night in what must surely be the most desolate and dehumanizing place on earth, a man laughed.

How many sunrises and sunsets could one man miss in his life and still have a life?

Be like the sun; it does not look for the spotlight; the limelight travels with it wherever it goes.

The sun does not rise to earn praise; it just shines, and the whole world pays homage.

The sun setting does not mean it’s disappeared, it just means its light’s shining somewhere else,

Let the light shine bright, dim it not to suit the prisoners! Does the sun come with a dimmer, because its radiance dimwits cannot bear!

Life was a crazy, strange mix of tragedy and sorrow and triumph and joy.

I would still pray for a miracle and try not to criticize it if the miracle didn’t look like what I expected.

There’s no racism on death row.

I shouldn’t have had to prove I was innocent—they were supposed to prove I was guilty—but not in this courtroom.

When no one believes a word you say, the best thing you can do is stop talking.

Oh, the sanitized way of saying it is "sentenced to death." But let's call it what it is. They wanted to murder me because I had murdered.

Maybe this is the plan. Maybe I was born to live most of my life in a five-by-seven so I could travel the world. I would have never won Wimbledon if I hadn’t gone to death row.

What I didn’t understand was how any killing could be justified. Man didn’t have the right to take a life. The State didn’t have the right to take a life either

We also need to learn about human dignity, about human worth and value. We need to think about the fact that we are all more than the worst thing we have done.

You are a sun to people like Canthe. It is your nature to warm all you see, and the sun does not ask forgiveness for shining.

You are all misleading one another, and are yourselves deceived. The sun does not go round the earth, but the earth goes round the sun, revolving as it goes, and turning towards the sun in the course of each twenty-four hours, not only Japan, and the Philippines, and Sumatra where we now are, but Africa, and Europe, and America, and many lands besides. The sun does not shine for some one mountain, or for some one island, or for some one sea, nor even for one earth alone, but for other planets as well as our earth. If you would only look up at the heavens, instead of at the ground beneath your own feet, you might all understand this, and would then no longer suppose that the sun shines for you, or for your country alone.

Life is brutal, tragic, unbearable, and inhumane at times. The pain one man can cause another is limitless, but I didn't see, I couldn't see, how creating more pain made anything better.

Why are we here?' 'To make more love.' 'All right, fair enough. But how do we best love this world Allah gave us? We do it by learning it! [...] If you try to understand things, if you look at the world and say, why does this happen, why do things fall, why does the sun come up every morning and shine on us, and warm the air and fill the leaves with green--how does all this happen? What rules has Allah used to make this beautiful world?--Then it is all transformed. God sees that you appreciate it. And even if He doesn't, even if you never know anything in the end, even if it's impossible to know, you can still try. [...] This is God's real work.

I've been through a bad time, Bertie, these last weeks. The sun ceased to shine - " "That's curious. We've had gorgeous weather in London." "The birds ceased to sing." "What birds?" "What the devil does it matter what birds?" said young BIngo, with some asperity. "Any birds. The birds round about here. You don't expect me to specify them by their pet names, do you? I tell you, Bertie, it hit me hard at first, very hard." "What hit you?" I simply couldn't follow the blighter. "Charlotte's calculated callousness.

I forgive because that’s how my mother raised me. I forgive because I have a God who forgives. It’s hard not to wrap your life in a story—a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A story that has logic and purpose and a bigger reason for why things turned out the way they did. I look for purpose in losing thirty years of my life. I try to make meaning out of something so wrong and so senseless. We all do. We have to find ways to recover after bad things happen. We have to make every ending be a happy ending. Every single one of us wants to matter. We want our lives and our stories and the choices we made or didn’t make to matter.

You should know about this energy because it’s yours. It’s your birthright, and it’s unlimited. You can call upon it any time you want. It has nothing to do with age. Some eighty-year-old people have the energy and enthusiasm of a child. They can work long hours for seven days a week. It’s just energy. Energy doesn’t get old, it doesn’t get tired, and it doesn’t need food. What it needs is openness and receptivity. This energy is equally available to everybody. The sun does not shine differently on different people. If you’re good, it shines on you. If you did something bad, it shines on you. It’s the same with the inner energy. The only difference is that with the inner energy, you have the ability to close up inside and block it. When you close, the energy stops flowing. When you open, all the energy rushes up inside of you. True spiritual teachings are about this energy and how to open to it.

A little bit of kindness was amplified on death row, because it was so unexpected. You can scream out in a crowd of voices also screaming out, and no one hears you - but when you yell into the silence, your voice sounds louder. I was going to be that kind voice screaming out on the row, and I was going to make it better for everyone. We were all the same here. We were all discarded like garbage and deemed unworthy to have a life. I was going to prove them wrong.

There are no words for how every death kills a little piece of you off. Your soul dies a little, your mind cracks a bit, your heart pounds and bleeds as a piece of it tears off. A mind, and a heart, and a soul could only take so much.

It took me thirty years to get to this moment. It may take thirty-one years for you. It may take thirty-two or thirty-three or thirty-five years, but you need to hold on. You need to hold on to your hope. If you have hope, you have everything.

I was on death row not by my own choice, but I had made the choice to spend the last three years thinking about killing McGregor and thinking about killing myself. Despair was a choice. Hatred was a choice. Anger was a choice. I still had choices, and that knowledge rocked me. I may not have had as many as Lester had, but I still had some choices. I could choose to give up or to hang on. Hope was a choice. Faith was a choice. And more than anything else, love was a choice. Compassion was a choice.

Don't be afraid of the dark, little one, The earth must rest when the day is done. The sun may be harsh, but moonlight — never! And those stars will be shining forever and ever, Be friends with the Night, there is nothing to fear, Just let your thoughts travel to friends far and near. By day, it does seem that our troubles won't cease, But at night, late at night, the world is at peace.

Wouldn’t that be a choice? I was on death row not by my own choice, but I had made the choice to spend the last three years thinking about killing McGregor and thinking about killing myself. Despair was a choice. Hatred was a choice. Anger was a choice. I still had choices, and that knowledge rocked me. I may not have had as many as Lester had, but I still had some choices. I could choose to give up or to hang on. Hope was a choice. Faith was a choice. And more than anything else, love was a choice. Compassion was a choice.

It's hard to explain exactly what it feels like to be judged. There's a shame to it. Even when you know you're innocent. It still feels like you are coated in something dirty and evil. It made me feel guilty. It made me feel like my very soul was put on trial and found lacking.

Jesus understood that God does not play by our rules. His God is a generous God, who not only allows the sun to shine on both the just and the unjust, but also gives us the ability to live into what should be rather than what is. The parables help us with their lessons about generosity: sharing joy, providing for others, recognizing the potential of small investments. His God wants us to be better than we are, because we have the potential to be. We are made but a little lower than the divine (Ps. 8.6; see Heb. 2.7); we should start acting in a more heavenly matter. Those who pray, “Your kingdom come,” might want to take some responsibility in the process, and so work in partnership with God. We too are to seek the lost and make every effort to find them. Indeed, we are not only to seek; we are to take notice of who might be lost, even when immediately present. The rich man ignores Lazarus at his gate, and the father of the prodigal ignored the elder son in the field. For the former, it is too late; for the latter, whether it is too late or not we do not know. But we learn from their stories. Don’t wait. Look now. Look hard. Count.

Our land is more valuable than your money. As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and animals; therefore, we cannot sell this land. It was put here for us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us. (c. 1880)

As the sun does not wait for prayers and incantations to be induced to rise, but immediately shines and is saluted by all: so do you also not wait for clappings of hands, and shouts and praise to be induced to do good, but be a doer of good voluntarily, and you will be beloved as much as the sun.

Obedience to commandments is the way we build a foundation of truth. Here is the way that works, in words so simple that a child could understand: The truth of most worth is to know God our Heavenly Father, His Son, Jesus Christ, and Their plan for us to have eternal life with Them in families. When God communicates that priceless truth to us, He does it by the Spirit of Truth. We have to ask for it in prayer. Then He sends us a small part of that truth by the Spirit. It comes to our hearts and minds. It feels good, like the light from the sun shining through the clouds on a dark day. He sends...

For the outward world is subjected to the law of imperfection, and again and again the experience is repeated that he too who does not work gets the bread, and that he who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the man who works. In the outward world everything is made payable to the bearer, this world is in bondage to the law of indifference, and to him who has the ring, the spirit of the ring is obedient, whether he be Noureddin or Aladdin, and he who has the world's treasure, has it, however he got it. It is different in the world of spirit. Here an eternal divine order prevails, here it does not rain both upon the just and upon the unjust, here the sun does not shine both upon the good and upon the evil, here it holds good that only he who works gets the bread, only he who was in anguish finds repose, only he who descends into the underworld rescues the beloved, only he who draws the knife gets Isaac.

Do you want to know how God looks upon this world? Do you want to know how He feels about different kinds of people? Then look at the sun. Does the sun shine more brightly on a saint than on anyone else? Is the air more available to the saint? Does the rain fall on one neighbor’s trees more than another’s?

All love is alike, knowing no season, sun, or clime, but that damn sun does represent lovers’ ever-changing time. Why does it rise to show lovers nothing lasts? Does it not see those lovers and think, ‘I can eclipse and darken them with a wink. I could kill all love by rising and sending them to their forlorn pasts. I can make them for each other pine, and wait and wait as I rise and set. HA! Buffoons, they are all mine. And every time I shine they owe me a debt.

the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

January? The month is dumb. It is fraudulent. It does not cleanse itself. The hens lay blood-stained eggs. Do not lend your bread to anyone lest it nevermore rise. Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out. Do not rely on February except when your cat has kittens, throbbing into the snow. Do not use knives and forks unless there is a thaw, like the yawn of a baby. The sun in this month begets a headache like an angel slapping you in the face. Earthquakes mean March. The dragon will move, and the earth will open like a wound. There will be great rain or snow so save some coal for your uncle. The sun of this month cures all. Therefore, old women say: Let the sun of March shine on my daughter, but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law. However, if you go to a party dressed as the anti-Christ you will be frozen to death by morning. During the rainstorms of April the oyster rises from the sea and opens its shell — rain enters it — when it sinks the raindrops become the pearl. So take a picnic, open your body, and give birth to pearls. June and July? These are the months we call Boiling Water. There is sweat on the cat but the grape marries herself to the sun. Hesitate in August. Be shy. Let your toes tremble in their sandals. However, pick the grape and eat with confidence. The grape is the blood of God. Watch out when holding a knife or you will behead St. John the Baptist. Touch the Cross in September, knock on it three times and say aloud the name of the Lord. Put seven bowls of salt on the roof overnight and the next morning the damp one will foretell the month of rain. Do not faint in September or you will wake up in a dead city. If someone dies in October do not sweep the house for three days or the rest of you will go. Also do not step on a boy's head for the devil will enter your ears like music. November? Shave, whether you have hair or not. Hair is not good, nothing is allowed to grow, all is allowed to die. Because nothing grows you may be tempted to count the stars but beware, in November counting the stars gives you boils. Beware of tall people, they will go mad. Don't harm the turtle dove because he is a great shoe that has swallowed Christ's blood. December? On December fourth water spurts out of the mouse. Put herbs in its eyes and boil corn and put the corn away for the night so that the Lord may trample on it and bring you luck. For many days the Lord has been shut up in the oven. After that He is boiled, but He never dies, never dies.

After dinner, I went upstairs and found Ren standing on the veranda again, looking at the sunset. I approached him shyly and stood behind him. “Hello, Ren.” He turned and openly studied my appearance. His gaze drifted ever so slowly down my body. The longer he looked, the wider his smile got. Eventually, his eyes worked their way back up to my bright red face. He sighed and bowed deeply. “Sundari. I was standing here thinking nothing could be more beautiful than this sunset tonight, but I was mistaken. You standing here in the setting sun with your hair and skin aglow is almost more than a man can…fully appreciate.” I tried to change the subject. “What does sundari mean?” “It means ‘most beautiful.’” I blushed again, which made him laugh. He took my hand, tucked it under his arm, and led me to the patio chairs. Just then, the sun dipped below the trees leaving its tangerine glow in the sky for just a few more moments. We sat again, but this time he sat next to me on the swinging patio seat and kept my hand in his. I ventured shyly, “I hope you don’t mind, but I explored your house today, including your room.” “I don’t mind. I’m sure you found my room the least interesting.” “Actually, I was curious about the note I found. Did you write it?” “A note? Ah, yes. I just scribbled a few notes to help me remember what Phet had said. It just says seek Durga’s prophecy, the Cave of Kanheri, Kelsey is Durga’s favored one, that sort of thing.” “Oh. I…also noticed a ribbon. Is it mine?” “Yes. If you’d like it back, you can take it.” “Why would you want it?” He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I wanted a memento, a token from the girl who saved my life.” “A token? Like a fair maiden giving her handkerchief to a knight in shining armor?” He grinned. “Exactly.” I jested wryly, “Too bad you didn’t wait for Cathleen to get a little older. She’s going to be very pretty.” He frowned. “Cathleen from the circus?” He shook his head. “You were the chosen one, Kelsey. And if I had the option of choosing the girl to save me, I still would have picked you.” “Why?” “A number of reasons. I liked you. You are interesting. I enjoyed listening to your voice. I felt like you saw through the tiger skin to the person underneath. When you spoke, it felt like you were saying exactly the things I needed to hear. You’re smart. You like poetry, and you’re very pretty.” I laughed at his statement. Me, pretty? He can’t be serious. I was average in so many ways. I didn’t really concern myself with current makeup, hairstyles, or fashionable, but uncomfortable, clothes like other teenagers. My complexion was pale, and my eyes were so brown that they were almost black. By far, my best feature was my smile, which my parents paid dearly for and so did I-with three years of metal braces. Still, I was flattered. “Okay, Prince Charming, you can keep your memento.” I hesitated, and then said softly, “I wear those ribbons in memory of my mom. She used to brush out my hair and braid ribbons through it while we talked.” Ren smiled understandingly. “Then it means even more to me.

In the Library" for Octavio There's a book called "A Dictionary of Angels." No one has opened it in fifty years, I know, because when I did, The covers creaked, the pages Crumbled. There I discovered The angels were once as plentiful As species of flies. The sky at dusk Used to be thick with them. You had to wave both arms Just to keep them away. Now the sun is shining Through the tall windows. The library is a quiet place. Angels and gods huddled In dark unopened books. The great secret lies On some shelf Miss Jones Passes every day on her rounds. She's very tall, so she keeps Her head tipped as if listening. The books are whispering. I hear nothing, but she does.

The inside of the Trace Italian, of course, does not exist. A player can get close enough to see it: it shines in the new deserts of Kansas, gleaming in the sun or starkly rising from the winter cold. The rock walls that protect it meet in points around it, one giving way to another, for days on end. But the dungeons into which you'll fall as you work through the pathways to its gates number in the low hundreds, and if you actually get into the entry hall, there are a few hundred more sub-dungeons before you'll actually reach somewhere that's truly safe. Technically, it's possible to get to the last room in the final chamber of the Trace Italian, but no one will ever do it. No one will ever live that long.

laughing puts people at ease in a way that helps them to listen. It was true on death row, and it’s true outside of death row.

I create an alibi for every single day of my life.

He was a poor man in a criminal justice system that treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. - Bryan Stevenson

I banged on the bars so he would know he mattered. That he was not alone. In the end, I think that’s what we all want. To know that we matter to someone, anyone.

I taught you to believe in yourself even if no one else in the world believes in you. Do you believe in you? Do you?

We all knew grief. We all knew sorrow. We all knew what it was like to be alone. And we were beginning to learn that you can make a family out of anyone.

I try not to ask, “Why me?” That’s a selfish question. Why anyone?

They can beat you, but they can’t break you.

I am just a simple monk. The sun shines on the just and unjust alike. If the sun does not judge, then who am I to do so?

I prefer to think of myself as a devout Narcissist. What does that mean? If the sun is shining, I thank God. If it rains, I blame him.

Be like the sun that does not discriminate but shines on everyone independent of their worthiness.

And spending your days waiting to die is no way to live.

Time was a funny and strange and fluid thing, and I was going to bend it and shape it so that it wasn’t my enemy.

People ask me how I can stay in Alabama. Why wouldn't I leave? Alabama is my home. I love Alabama--the hot days in summer and the thunderstorms in winter. I love the smell of the air and the green of the woods. Alabama has always been God's country to me, and it always will be. I love Alabama, but I don't love the State of Alabama. Since my release, not one prosecutor, or state attorney general, or anyone having anything to do with my conviction has apologized. I doubt they ever will. I forgive them...I made a choice...I chose to forgive.

I had just turned twenty-nine, and honestly, I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Sometimes it felt like life was more a process of elimination than a series of choices.

When you stop believing in God, there is no sudden explosion of light or darkness. The world continues on its accustomed course. The sky does not fall. The sun still shines. Life goes on. But something is lost nonetheless, something important that gives life connectedness, depth and a sense of purpose; that gives you a feeling of participating in something vast and consequential.

A poem does not exist in and of itself but instead exists only in relation to the human being, Wilhelm wrote to Savigny, just as the sun in effect does not shine when we have our eyes closed.

Sometimes I hate this language with its false words like sunset. The sun does not set. It doesn't rise either. It just stays there in one place, yet we get all romantic, huddling on beaches to watch its so-called departure, when it is we who turn away from it, which is a good thing-if the sun could turn, it would never come back, it'd just keep going, look for some better planet to nourish. Moonlight is another lie. It's a luminescent echo. The moon is a politician whose speeches are written by the sun. I long for a world where witnesses in court must place their hands on a dictionary when they swear. A world where an archer must ask an arrow's permission before loading it into a crossbow. A world with inverted flashlights that shoot out beams of darkness, so you can go to the beach and sabotage sunbathers, rob them of their shine. A world where people eat animals they wish to emulate. But who the hell am I? I'm just the spark from two people who rubbed their genitals together like sticks in a forest one October night because they were cold. I'm just burning the firecracker at both ends. Every morning I get up and swallow my weirdness pills. I know the glass is half full, but it's a shot glass, and there are four of us, and we're all very thirsty. I know it's easy not to cry over spilled milk when you've got another carton in the fridge.

Your spirit does not shine when the sun shines and your life is comfortable. It shines when darkness swallows you and you cannot breathe for the strangle of fear. That’s when what was invisible becomes undeniable.

Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens, than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

The laws of nature are sublime, but there is a moral sublimity before which the highest intelligences must kneel and adore. The laws by which the winds blow, and the tides of the ocean, like a vast clepsydra, measure, with inimitable exactness, the hours of ever-flowing time; the laws by which the planets roll, and the sun vivifies and paints; the laws which preside over the subtle combinations of chemistry, and the amazing velocities of electricity; the laws of germination and production in the vegetable and animal worlds, — all these, radiant with eternal beauty as they are, and exalted above all the objects of sense, still wane and pale before the Moral Glories that apparel the universe in their celestial light. The heart can put on charms which no beauty of known things, nor imagination of the unknown, can aspire to emulate. Virtue shines in native colors, purer and brighter than pearl, or diamond, or prism, can reflect. Arabian gardens in their bloom can exhale no such sweetness as charity diffuses. Beneficence is godlike, and he who does most good to his fellow-man is the Master of Masters, and has learned the Art of Arts. Enrich and embellish the universe as you will, it is only a fit temple for the heart that loves truth with a supreme love. Inanimate vastness excites wonder; knowledge kindles admiration, but love enraptures the soul. Scientific truth is marvellous, but moral truth is divine; and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light, has found the lost paradise. For him, a new heaven and a new earth have already been created. His home is the sanctuary of God, the Holy of Holies.

I’ve been praying to God for the DA, for this judge, and especially for the victims. You got to give an account for what you done, and it don’t matter to me, because if I can recall, Jesus was prosecuted, accused falsely for things he didn’t do, and all he did was try to love and save this world, and he died and suffered. If I have to die for something I didn’t do, so be it. My life is not in this judge’s hands. My life is not in your hands, but it’s in God’s hands.

He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

An idea, my dear,” Myron tutted, “can never be stolen, because it cannot be owned. Just as the sun cannot be owned and the air cannot be owned and the rain cannot be owned. A seed is planted in the ground and grows thanks to the gifts of sun and rain. Does the seed own the idea of growing? Does the sun own the idea of shining, or the rain own the idea of watering the earth? Of course not. Ideas are self-replicating. The notion that they can be limited or hoarded is nonsense.

am driving us home to Mrs. Lush in her shiny kitchen with a checked tablecloth in a house where the grass looks as if it’s been Hoovered. You see, only in the land of Croca-Colas does the sun shine in Technicolor. Life lived at the end of the rainbow.

If you could design a new structure for Camp Half-Blood what would it be? Annabeth: I’m glad you asked. We seriously need a temple. Here we are, children of the Greek gods, and we don’t even have a monument to our parents. I’d put it on the hill just south of Half-Blood Hill, and I’d design it so that every morning the rising sun would shine through its windows and make a different god’s emblem on the floor: like one day an eagle, the next an owl. It would have statues for all the gods, of course, and golden braziers for burnt offerings. I’d design it with perfect acoustics, like Carnegie Hall, so we could have lyre and reed pipe concerts there. I could go on and on, but you probably get the idea. Chiron says we’d have to sell four million truckloads of strawberries to pay for a project like that, but I think it would be worth it. Aside from your mom, who do you think is the wisest god or goddess on the Olympian Council? Annabeth: Wow, let me think . . . um. The thing is, the Olympians aren’t exactly known for wisdom, and I mean that with the greatest possible respect. Zeus is wise in his own way. I mean he’s kept the family together for four thousand years, and that’s not easy. Hermes is clever. He even fooled Apollo once by stealing his cattle, and Apollo is no slouch. I’ve always admired Artemis, too. She doesn’t compromise her beliefs. She just does her own thing and doesn’t spend a lot of time arguing with the other gods on the council. She spends more time in the mortal world than most gods, too, so she understands what’s going on. She doesn’t understand guys, though. I guess nobody’s perfect. Of all your Camp Half-Blood friends, who would you most like to have with you in battle? Annabeth: Oh, Percy. No contest. I mean, sure he can be annoying, but he’s dependable. He’s brave and he’s a good fighter. Normally, as long as I’m telling him what to do, he wins in a fight. You’ve been known to call Percy “Seaweed Brain” from time to time. What’s his most annoying quality? Annabeth: Well, I don’t call him that because he’s so bright, do I? I mean he’s not dumb. He’s actually pretty intelligent, but he acts so dumb sometimes. I wonder if he does it just to annoy me. The guy has a lot going for him. He’s courageous. He’s got a sense of humor. He’s good-looking, but don’t you dare tell him I said that. Where was I? Oh yeah, so he’s got a lot going for him, but he’s so . . . obtuse. That’s the word. I mean he doesn’t see really obvious stuff, like the way people feel, even when you’re giving him hints, and being totally blatant. What? No, I’m not talking about anyone or anything in particular! I’m just making a general statement. Why does everyone always think . . . agh! Forget it. Interview with GROVER UNDERWOOD, Satyr What’s your favorite song to play on the reed pipes?

The rising full moon does not “shine,” it does not illuminate the forest. Even to say that it “glows” would not be accurate. All our words for lighting seem inappropriate. They are active verbs, suggesting doing, while the moon does not do. It lets itself be seen, not crowding out the darkness but rending it visible. The sun transforms the world in its image, the moon evokes it in its primordial presence. It is by moonlight that I have seen, with a searing clarity, that Being is not convertible with nothing.

The Old World science found in the Bible would not be considered “wrong” or “false” as much as it would just offer a perspective from a different vantage point. Even today we can consider it true that the sky is blue, that the sun sets and that the moon shines. But we know that these are scientifically misleading statements. Science, however, simply offers one way of viewing the world, and it does not have a corner on truth. The Old World science in the Bible offers the perspective of the earthbound observer.

That villainous crew- greed, infatuation, jealousy, arrogance, and pride haunts the mind only so long as the Divine does not take up His abode there. Attachment to the world is like a dark night fully advanced, which is so delightful to the owls of attraction and aversion; it abides in the heart of a creature only so long as the sun of the Lord’s glory does not shine there. Having seen Your lotus feet, O Rāma, I am now quite well and my grave fears have been set at rest. The threefold torments of mundane existence cease to have any effect on him who enjoys Your favor, my gracious lord. I am a demon vilest of nature and have never done any good act. Yet the Lord whose beauty even sages fail to perceive with their mindís eye has been pleased to clasp me to His bosom.

I compared what was really known about the stars with the account of creation as told in Genesis. I found that the writer of the inspired book had no knowledge of astronomy -- that he was as ignorant as a Choctaw chief -- as an Eskimo driver of dogs. Does any one imagine that the author of Genesis knew anything about the sun -- its size? that he was acquainted with Sirius, the North Star, with Capella, or that he knew anything of the clusters of stars so far away that their light, now visiting our eyes, has been traveling for two million years? If he had known these facts would he have said that Jehovah worked nearly six days to make this world, and only a part of the afternoon of the fourth day to make the sun and moon and all the stars? Yet millions of people insist that the writer of Genesis was inspired by the Creator of all worlds. Now, intelligent men, who are not frightened, whose brains have not been paralyzed by fear, know that the sacred story of creation was written by an ignorant savage. The story is inconsistent with all known facts, and every star shining in the heavens testifies that its author was an uninspired barbarian. I admit that this unknown writer was sincere, that he wrote what he believed to be true -- that he did the best he could. He did not claim to be inspired -- did not pretend that the story had been told to him by Jehovah. He simply stated the "facts" as he understood them. After I had learned a little about the stars I concluded that this writer, this "inspired" scribe, had been misled by myth and legend, and that he knew no more about creation than the average theologian of my day. In other words, that he knew absolutely nothing. And here, allow me to say that the ministers who are answering me are turning their guns in the wrong direction. These reverend gentlemen should attack the astronomers. They should malign and vilify Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Herschel and Laplace. These men were the real destroyers of the sacred story. Then, after having disposed of them, they can wage a war against the stars, and against Jehovah himself for having furnished evidence against the truthfulness of his book.

The sun does not shine differently on different people. If you’re good, it shines on you. If you did something bad, it shines on you. It’s the same with the inner energy. The only difference is that with the inner energy, you have the ability to close up inside and block it.

Things were supposed to change. Life was not supposed to be exactly the same every day—breakfast at 3:00, lunch at 10:00, dinner at 2:00. You weren’t supposed to spend every single day in a small box doing exactly the same thing as you did the day before and that you would do tomorrow.

Our land is more valuable than your money. As long as the sun shines and the waters flow, this land will be here to give life to men and animals; therefore, we cannot sell this land. It was put here for us by the Great Spirit and we cannot sell it because it does not belong to us. Blackfoot chief, (c. 1880)

I sit, this evening, far away, From all I used to know, And nought reminds my soul to-day Of happy long ago. Unwelcome cares, unthought-of fears, Around my room arise; I seek for suns of former years But clouds o'ercast my skies. Yes—Memory, wherefore does thy voice Bring old times back to view, As thou wouldst bid me not rejoice In thoughts and prospects new? I'll thank thee, Memory, in the hour When troubled thoughts are mine— For thou, like suns in April's shower, On shadowy scenes wilt shine. I'll thank thee when approaching death Would quench life's feeble ember, For thou wouldst even renew my breath With thy sweet word 'Remember'!

that white is a color. It is not a mere absence of color; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black. When, so to speak, your pencil grows red-hot, it draws roses; when it grows white-hot, it draws stars. And one of the two or three defiant verities of the best religious morality, of real Christianity, for example, is exactly this same thing; the chief assertion of religious morality is that white is a color. Virtue is not the absence of vices or the avoidance of moral dangers; virtue is a vivid and separate thing, like pain or a particular smell. Mercy does not mean not being cruel or sparing people revenge or punishment; it means a plain and positive thing like the sun, which one has either seen or not seen. Chastity does not mean abstention from sexual wrong; it means something flaming, like Joan of Arc. In a word, God paints in many colors; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.

Despair was a choice. Hatred was a choice. Anger was a choice. I still had choices, and that knowledge rocked me. I may not have had as many as Lester had, but I still had some choices. I could choose to give up or to hang on. Hope was a choice. Faith was a choice. And more than anything else, love was a choice. Compassion was a choice.

provided I may look upon the sun and the moon and gaze at the other planets; provided I may trace their risings and settings, their periods and the causes of their travelling faster or slower; provided I may behold all the stars that shine at night – some fixed, others not travelling far afield but circling within the same area; some suddenly shooting forth, and others dazzling the eye with scattered fire, as if they are falling, or gliding past with a long trail of blazing light; provided I can commune with these and, so far as humans may, associate with the divine, and provided I can keep my mind always directed upwards, striving for a vision of kindred things – what does it matter what ground I stand on?

Tomás shudders. He lifts his head. A breeze is blowing. In whatever direction he looks, there is majestic normalcy: wild growth here, tilled fields over there, the road, the sky, the sun. Everything is in its place, and time is moving with its usual discretion. Then, in an instant, without any warning, a little boy tripped everything up. Surely the fields will notice; they will rise, dust themselves, and come closer to take a concerned look. The road will curl up like a snake and make sad pronouncements. The sun will darken with desolation. Gravity itself will be upset and objects will float in existential hesitation. But no. The fields remain still, the road continues to lie hard and fixed, and the morning sun does not stop shining with unblinking coolness.

When you took a life, it didn’t bring back a life. It didn’t undo what was done. It wasn’t logical. We were just creating an endless chain of death and killing, every link connected to the next. It was barbaric. No baby is born a murderer. No toddler dreams of being on death row someday. Every killer on death row was taught to be a killer—by parents, by a system, by the brutality of another brutalized person—but no one was born a killer. My friend Henry wasn’t born to hate. He was taught to hate, and to hate so much that killing was justified. No one was born to this one precious life to be locked in a cell and murdered. Not the innocent like me, but not the guilty either. Life was a gift given by God. I believed it should and could only be taken by God as well.

I learned that dying is just a part of our journey of life. We are all on this journey and dying is a part of it for each of us. That does not mean that hope is hone. Hope just changes to a very realistic, practical hope... Sometimes hope becomes more beautiful than ever in our lives because it is about hope for the present moment and hope that is natural, such as, 'I hope the sun shines today'.

What might this mean?' Moo questioned. 'That all that's beautiful and green will turn to ash. That the sun will no longer shine upon a fruitful land, instead it will shine where there's but naught a sprout to grow. Humankind may cease to exist as it does presently, and all that remains will be a corruption darker than our lands have ever known. The Darkness will rise, perhaps in more ways than one.

How then should we regard the past? Indeed, why should we study it at all but to prove to our fellow men that we can, and for the skill of disputation? The answer lies not in preferring the blurred, grand vision to the scrupulous detail, nor does it lie in the opposite prejudice: neither contains sufficient truth. Instead, we must find our own way, in the sure knowledge that we too will enter that underworld, where the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. If we wish to understand our own place on earth, we must seek to understand those who have gone on before us. We must look beyond the present moment and see ourselves reflected in the deep pool of time as individual elements of a greater humanity, and not as the passing shapes that we may glimpse every day in a looking glass, which then are gone forever.

As tears become rivers emptying into a sea of pain, there you'll find my heart, smashed into a thousand pieces littered in the rain. Amongst the shadows is where you'll see a glimpse of the woman I used to be. I used to believe in the good of everything, everyone; an optimist...nothing could cloud my day; my world I met him on a sunny June day and knew he was heaven sent the sun shined brighter, the world was happier; here standing in front of me was the one I'd waited my whole life for Him, my destroyer, the man that cracked my universe and taught me things and people weren't always what they seemed and no matter how I tried, there was no longer a sun in sight to see I trusted him, gave my heart to him; he used me; did he ever love me? Does he know what love means? Loyalty?  Please! He has none, except to himself... I lost myself in him and his world; who am I? I'm not sure They call me Ananda, I call me damaged I'm not who I used to be and unsure of who I'm supposed to be and there is the problem... I'm a broken reflection of someone I used to know and can never be again am I better or worse after him? My heart is definitely worse, but my spirit--the one thing he couldn't touch is unbroken my spirit survived his wrath and in due time so will I....

Control: February 15 Sometimes, the gray days scare us. Those are the days when the old feelings come rushing back. We may feel needy, scared, ashamed, unable to care for ourselves. When this happens, it’s hard to trust ourselves, others, the goodness of life, and the good intentions of our Higher Power. Problems seem overwhelming. The past seems senseless; the future, bleak. We feel certain the things we want in life will never happen. In those moments, we may become convinced that things and people outside of ourselves hold the key to our happiness. That’s when we may try to control people and situations to mask our pain. When these “codependent crazies” strike, others often begin to react negatively to our controlling. When we’re in a frenzied state, searching for happiness outside ourselves and looking to others to provide our peace and stability, remember this: Even if we could control things and people, even if we got what we wanted, we would still be ourselves. Our emotional state would still be in turmoil. People and things don’t stop our pain or heal us. In recovery, we learn that this is our job, and we can do it by using our resources: ourselves, our Higher Power, our support systems, and our recovery program. Often, after we’ve become peaceful, trusting, and accepting, what we want comes to us—with ease and naturalness. The sun begins to shine again. Isn’t it funny, and isn’t it true, how all change really does begin with us? I can let go of things and people and my need to control today. I can deal with my feelings. I can get peaceful. I can get calm. I can get back on track and find the true key to happiness—myself. I will remember that a gray day is just that—one gray day.

I will tell you these things you wish to know because I am becoming an old man, and an old tongue loves to wag. And when youth comes to age for advice he receives the wisdom of years. But too often does youth think that age knows only the wisdom of days that are gone, and therefore profits not. But remember this, the sun that shines today is the sun that shone when thy father was born, and will still be shining when thy last grandchild shall pass into the darkness.

Lester, I’ve won Wimbledon five times. I’ve played third base for the Yankees and led the league in home runs for ten straight years. I’ve traveled the world. I’ve married the most beautiful women. I’ve loved and I’ve laughed and I’ve lost God and found God again and wondered for too many hours what the purpose is for me going to death row for something I didn’t do. And sometimes I think there is no purpose—that this is just the life I was meant to live. I’ve made a home here and a family out of some of the most terrifying men you’d ever meet. And you know what I’ve learned? We’re all the same. We’re all guilty of something, and we’re all innocent at the same time. And I’m sorry, but a man can go crazy trying to make it all fit into some plan. Maybe this is the plan. Maybe I was born to live most of my life in a five-by-seven so I could travel the world. I would have never won Wimbledon if I hadn’t gone to death row. Do you see what I’m saying, Lester? Do you understand what I’m saying?

They called all of us monsters. But I didn’t know any monsters on the row. I knew guys named Larry and Henry and Victor and Jesse. So knew Vernon and Willie and Jimmie. Not monsters. Guys with names who didn’t have mothers who loved them or anyone who had ever shown them a kindness that was even close to love. Guys who were born broken or broken by life. Guys who has been abused as children and had their minds and their hearts warped by cruelty and violence long before they ever stood in front of a judge and a jury.

MOTHER. I do not believe that there is anything sweeter in the world than the ideas which awake in a mother’s heart at the sight of her child’s tiny shoe; especially if it is a shoe for festivals, for Sunday, for baptism, the shoe embroidered to the very sole, a shoe in which the infant has not yet taken a step. That shoe has so much grace and daintiness, it is so impossible for it to walk, that it seems to the mother as though she saw her child. She smiles upon it, she kisses it, she talks to it; she asks herself whether there can actually be a foot so tiny; and if the child be absent, the pretty shoe suffices to place the sweet and fragile creature before her eyes. She thinks she sees it, she does see it, complete, living, joyous, with its delicate hands, its round head, its pure lips, its serene eyes whose white is blue. If it is in winter, it is yonder, crawling on the carpet, it is laboriously climbing upon an ottoman, and the mother trembles lest it should approach the fire. If it is summer time, it crawls about the yard, in the garden, plucks up the grass between the paving-stones, gazes innocently at the big dogs, the big horses, without fear, plays with the shells, with the flowers, and makes the gardener grumble because he finds sand in the flower-beds and earth in the paths. Everything laughs, and shines and plays around it, like it, even the breath of air and the ray of sun which vie with each other in disporting among the silky ringlets of its hair. The shoe shows all this to the mother, and makes her heart melt as fire melts wax.

We all do it. Replay the horrific moments of our lives and reimagine them by going left instead of right, being this person instead of that person, making different choices. You don’t have to be locked up to occupy your mind and your days trying to rewrite a painful past or undo a terrible tragedy or make right a terrible wrong. But pain and injustice happen- they happen to us all. I’d like to believe it’s what you choose to do after such an experience that matters the most- that truly changes your life forever. I’d really like to believe that.

We weren’t monsters; we were guys trying to survive the best we could. Sometimes you should make family where you find it, and I knew that to survive I had to make family of these men and they had to make a family of me. It didn’t matter who was black and who was white- all that kind of fell away when you lived a few feet from an electric chair. Right now, we all had more in common than not. We all faced execution. We were all scrambling to survive. Not monsters. Not the worst thing we had ever done. We were so much more than what we had been reduced to- so much more than could be contained in one small cage.

The Lama of the Crystal Monastery appears to be a very happy man, and yet I wonder how he feels about his isolation in the silences of Tsakang, which he has not left in eight years now and, because of his legs, may never leave again. Since Jang-bu seems uncomfortable with the Lama or with himself or perhaps with us, I tell him not to inquire on this point if it seems to him impertinent, but after a moment Jang-bu does so. And this holy man of great directness and simplicity, big white teeth shining, laughs out loud in an infectious way at Jang-bu’s question. Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, 'Of course I am happy here! It’s wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!' In its wholehearted acceptance of what is, this is just what Soen Roshi might have said: I Feel as if he had struck me in the chest. I thank him, bow, go softly down the mountain: under my parka, the folded prayer flag glows. Butter tea and wind pictures, the Crystal Mountain, and blue sheep dancing on the snow - it's quite enough! Have you seen the snow leopard? No! Isn't that wonderful?

Just as summer-killed meat draws flies, so the court draws spurious sages, philosophists, and acosmists who remain there as long as their purses and their wits will maintain them, in the hope (at first) of an appointment from the Autarch and (later) of obtaining a tutorial position in some exalted family. At sixteen or so, Thecla was attracted, as I think young women often are, to their lectures on theogony, thodicy, and the like, and I recall one particularly in which a phoebad put forward as an ultimate truth the ancient sophistry of the existence of three Adonai, that of the city (or of the people), that of the poets, and that of the philosophers. Her reasoning was that since the beginning of human consciousness (if such a beginning ever was) there have been vast numbers of persons in the three categories who have endeavored to pierce the secret of the divine. If it does not exist, they should have discovered that long before; if it does, it is not possible that Truth itself should mislead them. Yet the beliefs of the populace, the insights of the rhapsodists, and the theories of the metaphysicians have so far diverged that few of them can so much as comprehend what the others say, and someone who knew nothing of any of their ideas might well believe there was no connection at all between them. May it not be, she asked (and even now I am not certain I can answer), that instead of traveling, as has always been supposed, down three roads to the same destination, they are actually traveling toward three quite different ones? After all, when in common life we behold three roads issuing from the same crossing, we do not assume they all proceed toward the same goal. I found (and find) this suggestion as rational as it is repellent, and it represents for me all that monomaniacal fabric of argument, so tightly woven that not even the tiniest objection or spark of light can escape its net, in which human minds become enmeshed whenever the subject is one in which no appeal to fact is possible. As a fact the Claw was thus an incommensurable. No quantity of money, no piling up of archipelagoes or empires could approach it in value any more than the indefinite multiplication of horizontal distance could be made to equal vertical distance. If it was, as I believed, a thing from outside the universe, then its light, which I had seen shine faintly so often, and a few times brightly, was in some sense the only light we had. If it were destroyed, we were left fumbling in the dark.

This isn't your time to die, son. It's not. You have a work to do. you have to prove to them that my baby is no killer. You have to show them. You are a beacon. You are the light. Don't you listen to that fool devil telling you to give up. I didn't raise no child of mine to give up when things get tough. Your life isn't your life to take. It belongs to God. You have a work to do. Hard work. I'm going to talk at you all night long if I have to and all day and all night again, and I will never stop until you know who you are. You were not born to die in this cell. God has a purpose for you. He has a purpose for all of us. I've served my purpose.

External worship, material worship," say the scriptures, "is the lowest stage; struggling to rise high, mental prayer is the next stage, but the highest stage is when the Lord has been realised." Mark, the same earnest man who is kneeling before the idol tells you, "Him the Sun cannot express, nor the moon, nor the stars, the lightning cannot express Him, nor what we speak of as fire; through Him they shine." But he does not abuse any one's idol or call its worship sin. He recognises in it a necessary stage of life. "The child is father of the man." Would it be right for an old man to say that childhood is a sin or youth a sin? If a man can realise his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To him all the religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realise the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun.

prior probability that the sun will rise, since it’s prior to seeing any evidence. It’s not based on counting the number of times the sun has risen on this planet in the past, because you weren’t there to see it; rather, it reflects your a priori beliefs about what will happen, based on your general knowledge of the universe. But now the stars start to fade, so your confidence that the sun does rise on this planet goes up, based on your experience on Earth. Your confidence is now a posterior probability, since it’s after seeing some evidence. The sky begins to lighten, and the posterior probability takes another leap. Finally, a sliver of the sun’s bright disk appears above the horizon and perhaps catches “the Sultan’s turret in a noose of light,” as in the opening verse of the Rubaiyat. Unless you’re hallucinating, it is now certain that the sun will rise. The crucial question is exactly how the posterior probability should evolve as you see more evidence. The answer is Bayes’ theorem. We can think of it in terms of cause and effect. Sunrise causes the stars to fade and the sky to lighten, but the latter is stronger evidence of daybreak, since the stars could fade in the middle of the night due to, say, fog rolling in. So the probability of sunrise should increase more after seeing the sky lighten than after seeing the stars fade. In mathematical notation, we say that P(sunrise | lightening-sky), the conditional probability of sunrise given that the sky is lightening, is greater than P(sunrise | fading-stars), its conditional probability given that the stars are fading. According to Bayes’ theorem, the more likely the effect is given the cause, the more likely the cause is given the effect: if P(lightening-sky | sunrise) is higher than P(fading-stars | sunrise), perhaps because some planets are far enough from their sun that the stars still shine after sunrise, then P(sunrise | lightening sky) is also higher than P(sunrise | fading-stars).

End Of The World Why does the sun go on shining Why does the sea rush to shore Don't they know it's the end of the world 'Cause you don't love me any more Why do the birds go on singing Why do the stars glow above Don't they know it's the end of the world It ended when I lost your love I wake up in the morning and I wonder Why everything's the same as it was I can't understand, no, I can't understand How life goes on the way it does Why does my heart go on beating Why do these eyes of mine cry Don't they know it's the end of the world It ended when you said goodbye Why does my heart go on beating Why do these eyes of mine cry Don't they know it's the end of the world It ended when you said goodbye

Anyone with an adequate education will easily acknowledge that in the mythology of the Eddas itself the essential element does not correspond to the pathos of the emerging and unleashing of elementary forces and of the struggle against them...the essential, in the tradition in question, is to be found in what are ultimately ‘Olympian’ meanings. These are implied, for instance, by the idea of Miðgarðr, which reflects the general idea of a supreme centre and fundamental order of the world, and which, in a way, may be considered the metaphysical basis of the idea of empire; by the symbolism of Valhalla as a mountain whose frozen and bright peak shines of an eternal light beyond all clouds; and, connected to this, the motif of the so called Light of the North in its many variants. In relation to this, I should recall the symbolism of the golden realm of Glaðsheimr, ‘brighter than the sun’...and the image of the celestial place of Gimlé, ‘more magnificent than any other and brighter than the sun,’ which ‘will endure even when the heavens and the earth pass away.’ In this and many other motifs...a trained eye is bound to detect a testimony to a higher dimension in ancient Nordic mythology...According to Völuspá and Gylfaginning, after Ragnarök a ‘new sun’ and ‘new race’ will arise, the ‘divine heroes’... will return to Iðavöllr and find gold, which symbolises the primordial tradition of luminous Asgard and the original state.

And that weird feeling comes, the one I always get when I'm here, like I'm me as I am now, but I'm also every age I've ever been - a baby, a toddler, a girl, a teenager. Then the other feeling comes, the one that sometimes stops me in my tracks, the one about the simple weirdness of being me. Why am I me, Louise Brooks, and not somebody else? Why am I not Dark Star or the woman in the garden? Why am I a human being and not a bird or a fish or a seal? Why am I alive, not dead? Why am I not a wave of water, or a rock or an anything? … But why? Why does the sun shine and the wind blow and… No answers. Such questions have no answers. So don’t ask them, Louise. But I can’t stop asking them. I’ll never stop asking them.

We were quiet for a while after that. I looked around the visiting area. I had spent so much time here over the last few decades. I had eaten a lot of key lime pie out of the vending machine. And I had come to respect and love this man who sat in front of me. He was tired too, and I was just one of many battles he was fighting. We both deserved a win. It was time. And if it wasn’t, then I would take my Thursday. I would eat my last meal, and I would thank Lester for being the best friend a guy could ever have, and I would tell Bryan Stevenson that he couldn’t save everyone and I knew he had done everything he could. I would have joy knowing that I lived as big a life as anyone ever could live in a five-by-seven cell.

The sound of the wind stretches its limbs. The jazz music witholds some of its ruckus. Hands move something in the dark. I say: just an old romanticism... No matter, the place will fit everything. Vision descends upon flaccid pathways and rides them on cheap metal. Dried out trees and others take their water from the drowned sand by force. I say: a passing depression. No matter, the place will fit everything. During the day the sun approaches the mountain, places its hand upon it, its cold hand of lovers, strikes stone with stone. Mountain scrub dances behind the stone. The sun does not see it. Only the moon shines upon it all the way beyond the bend and the guardian stones watch from afar. I say: a passing coincidence. No matter, the place will fit everything.

It was a glorious morning. The wind had fallen quite, and the sun was shining as if he would say, "Keep up your hearts; I am up here still. I have not forgotten you. By and by you shall see more of me." But Nature lay dead, with a great white sheet cast over face and form. Not dead?—Just as much dead as ever was man, save for the inner death with which he kills himself, and which she cannot die. It is only to the eyes of his neighbours that the just man dies: to himself, and to those on the other side, he does not die, but is born instead: "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." But the poor old lord felt the approaching dank and cold of the sepulchre as the end of all things to him—if indeed he would be permitted to lie there, and not have to get up and go to worse quarters still.

God created us for play and amusement just as he created us for work, prayer, and community. In particular he created us for art and culture: to create and look at images; to fashion stories and music and dance, and to perform and enjoy them; to explore imaginative scenarios of good and evil, of conflict and resolution. It is in our nature to engage in and to enjoy these things, as it is the nature of stars to shine and plants to grow. And, just as the sun glorifies God by shining and plants by growing, so we please and glorify him when we participate in wholesome aesthetic activities and amusements. In fact, because man has free will, he pleases God in a special way when he freely participates in the goods proper to his nature. If he does so with a will to glorify God, it can even be meritorious

A Remarkable Woman She is so exquisite Even without make-up on her face She is very special Even if she lets others seem important She is selfless Even when the selfish surround her She offers a lot of love Even so, she needs it often She has a big heart Even though she appears small She lets others belong But she longs to be appreciated She adds value Despite her own worth being undermined She is attentive Nonetheless; no one pays attention to her needs She is patient No matter how long it takes, she waits She is giving While no one could be willing to give She is forgiving Much as the worst was done against her She is trusting Albeit her trust was broken a countless times She is wise In spite of being treated otherwise by some She works hard Notwithstanding that she requires to rest She is helpful Yet, there is none to lend her a hand She makes life seem easy Whilst going through difficult times herself She stands by others Although there is no one to stand by her She chooses to be peaceful Against being somehow provoked She is calm Undeterred by what is not She is bold In defiance of tough battles ahead She shows bravery Still in the presence of adversity She is fearless Though she may seem helpless She is spirited Contrary to attempts to bring her down She is never destroyed Irrespective of storms she faces sometimes She keeps moving forward Granting the hindrances along the way She does not look down on others Regardless of some doing so to her She recognizes those who shielded her on rainy days Whenever the sun shines upon her She keeps on running her race Because she knows for her, grace is abundant She puts a smile on, always Since prayer keeps her in the right place She is an inspiration A pioneer of transformation True leader of economic revolution How the world aspires for such A remarkable woman!

For love that flows “from a pure heart” thinks this way: “God has commanded me to direct my love to my neighbor. My heavenly Father wants me to be favorable to everyone, whether friends or enemies, just as he is. He lets the sun rise and shine on both good and evil people.” God shows goodness to those who continually dishonor him and misuse what he has provided through their disobedience, blasphemy, sin, and shameful behavior. In the same way, he lets rain fall on both the thankful and the unthankful. He gives money, property, and all types of things from the earth to the very worst scoundrels. Why does he do this? He does it out of genuine, pure love. His heart is full and overflowing with love. He pours his love over everyone, leaving no one out, whether good or bad, worthy or unworthy. This love is righteous, godly, whole, and complete. It doesn’t single out certain people or separate people into groups. He freely gives his love to all.

is a city of delightful ease, of freedom and sunshine, of torrid heat. There it does not matter what you do, nor when, nor how you do it. There is none to hinder you, none to watch. Each takes his ease, and is content that his neighbour should do the like. Doubtless people are lazy in Seville, but good heavens! why should one be so terribly strenuous? Go into the Plaza Nueva, and you will see it filled with men of all ages, of all classes, 'taking the sun'; they promenade slowly, untroubled by any mental activity, or sit on benches between the palm-trees, smoking cigarettes; perhaps the more energetic read the bull-fighting news in the paper. They are not ambitious, and they do not greatly care to make their fortunes; so long as they have enough to eat and drink--food is very cheap--and cigarettes to smoke, they are quite happy. The Corporation provides seats, and the sun shines down for nothing--so let them sit in it and warm themselves. I daresay it is as good a way of getting through life as most others.

The core physics relies on a process known as quantum tunneling. Imagine a particle, an electron for instance, encountering a solid barrier, say a slab of steel ten feet think, that classical physics predicts it can't penetrate. A hallmark of quantum mechanics is that the rigid classical notion of "can't penetrate" often translates into the softer quantum declaration of "has a small but nonzero probability of penetrating." The reason is that the quantum jitters of a particle allow it, every so often, to suddenly materialize on the other side of an otherwise impervious barrier. The moment at which such quantum tunneling happens is random; the best we can do is predict the likelihood that it will take place during one interval or another. But the math says that if you wait long enough, penetration through just about any barrier will happen. And it does happen. If it didn't, the sun wouldn't shine: for hydrogen nuclei to get close enough to fuse, they must tunnel through the barrier created by the electromagnetic repulsion of their protons.

Amidst all the pressure to keep going and to keep going, may you also take time to learn the art of being; being Loved, being Held, being Seen, being in the Presence of the One who calls you to rest. For beyond your accomplishments and your calendars, and your lists, you were made with purpose and intention to reflect Glorious Light and to abide in Love that reminds you even in the pause you are still where you need to be. No matter how yesterday unfolded before your eyes and no matter the stacks of worries burdening your mind that have left you unsettled or confused, Light is still pouring in reminding you over and over again to surrender, to let go, for these troubles are bound to shadows that cannot survive in this new light. Bask in these beams of sun as you find your new beginnings, a new way of seeing, a grace-filled way of living. Oh, how steady hope makes the soul in the river rush of things you cannot control. For somehow through it all, you have still been made whole. Because as sure as the water makes way past the river stones, so does hope carry you past the depth of your unknowns, under fogged and white-gray skies that demand the most of tired eyes, the sound of the rushing river gently speaks: all is passing, truly passing. What if all the imperfections and the flaws were only part of your story— not the sum of who you are? What if all along, you were made to be beautiful, and it was only the dirt from this broken world that made you doubt your shining self? And what if you were not alone, as you once thought, and when a friend told you she would be there, she truly meant it? What if for every time you were afraid, you remember how you were brave, and it only escaped your memory because bravery is natural these days? Perhaps there are a million reasons to never take the leap, to never take the time to think your presence means anything, but I hope you know there are more reasons to believe this life is worth living for. I hope you can look down into that warped well of your imperfections knowing whatever you find there can never even compare to the greatness in your soul, shining wildly through.

I stand on a vast grass field of many gently sloping hills. It is night, yet the sky is bright. There is no sun, but a hundred blazing blue stars, each shining in a long river of nebulous cloud. The air is warm, pleasant, fragrant with the perfume of a thousand invisible flowers. In the distance a stream of people walk toward a large vessel of some type, nestled between the hills. The ship is violet, glowing; the bright rays that stab forth from it seem to reach to the stars. Somehow I know that it is about to leave and that I am supposed to be on it. Yet, before I depart, there is something I have to discuss with Lord Krishna. He stands beside me on the wide plain, his gold flute in his right hand, a red lotus slower in his left. His dress is simple, as is mine - long blue gowns that reach to the ground. Only he wears a single jewel around his neck - the brilliant Kaustubha gem, in which the destiny of every soul can be seen. He does not look at me but toward the vast ship, and the stars beyond. He seems to be waiting for me to speak, but for some reason I cannot remember what he said last. I only know that I am a special case. Because I do not know what to ask, I say what is most on my mind. "When will I see you again, my Lord?" He gestures to the vast plain, the thousands of people leaving. "The earth is a place of time and dimension. Moments here can seem like an eternity there. It all depends on your heart. When you remember me, I am there in the blink of an eye." "Even on earth?" He nods. "Especially there. It is a unique place. Even the gods pray to take birth there." "Why that, my Lord?" He smiles faintly. His smile is bewitching. It has been said, I know, that the smile of the Lord has bewildered the minds of the angels. It has bewildered mine. "One quest always leads to another question. Some things are better to wonder about." He turns toward me finally, his long black hair blowing in the soft night breeze. The stars reflect in his black pupils; the whole universe is there. The love that flows from him is the sweetest ambrosia in all the heavens. Yet it breaks my heart to feel because I know it will soon be gone. "It is all maya," he says. "Illusion." "Will I get lost in this illusion, my Lord?" "Of course. It is to be expected. You will be lost for a long time.

Hitherto all that has given colour to existence has lacked a history: where would one find a history of love, of avarice, of envy, of conscience, of piety, of cruelty? Even a comparative history of law, as also of punishment, has hitherto been completely lacking. Have the different divisions of the day, the consequences of a regular appointment of the times for labour, feast, and repose, ever been made the object of investigation? Do we know the moral effects of the alimentary substances? Is there a philosophy of nutrition? (The ever-recurring outcry for and against vegetarianism proves that as yet there is no such philosophy!) Have the experiences with regard to communal living, for example, in monasteries, been collected? Has the dialectic of marriage and friendship been set forth? The customs of the learned, of trades-people, of areists, and of mechanics have they already found been found and thought about? There is so much in them to think about! All that up till now has been considered as the "conditions of existence," of human beings, and all reason, passion and superstition in this consideration have they been investigated to the end? The observation alone of the different degrees of development which the human impulses have attained, and could yet attain, according to the different moral climates, would furnish too much work for the most laborious; whole generations, and regular co-operating generations of the learned, would be needed in order to exhaust the points of view and the material here furnished. The same is true of the determining of the reasons for the differences of the moral climates ("on what account does this sun of a fundamental moral judgment and standard of highest value shine here and that sun there?") And there is again a new labour which points out the erroneousness of all these reasons, and determines the entire essence of the moral judgments hitherto made. Supposing all these labours to be accomplished, the most critical of all questions would then come into the foreground: whether science is in a position to provide goals for human action, after it has proved that it can take them away and destroy them and then would be the time for a process of experimenting, in which every kind of heroism could satisfy itself, an experimenting for centuries, which would put into the shade all the great labours and sacrifices of previous history. Science has not as yet built its Cyclopic buildings; but for that also the time will come.

XVIII TO HIS LADY                Beloved beauty who inspires             love from afar, your face concealed             except when your celestial image             stirs my heart in sleep, or in the fields         5  where light and nature’s laughter             shine more lovely;             was it maybe you who blessed             the innocent age called golden,             and do you now, blithe spirit,       10  soar among men? Or does the miser, fate,             who hides you from us save you for the future?                No hope of seeing you alive             remains for me now,             except when, naked and alone,       15  my soul will go down a new street             to an unfamiliar home. Already, at the dawning             of my dark, uncertain day,             I imagined you a fellow traveler             on this parched ground. But no thing on earth       20  compares with you; and if someone             who had a face like yours resembled you             in word and deed, still she would be less lovely.                In spite of all the suffering             that fate assigned to human life,       25  if there was anyone on earth             who truly loved you as my thought portrays you,             this life for him would be a joy.             And I see clearly how your love             would still inspire me to seek praise and virtue,       30  the way I used to in my early years.             Though heaven gave no comfort for our suffering,             still mortal life with you would be             like what in heaven becomes divinity.                In the valleys, where you hear       35  the weary farmer singing             and I sit and mourn             my youth’s illusions leaving me;             and on the hills where I turn back             and lament my lost desires,       40  my life’s lost hope, I think of you             and start to shake. In this sad age             and sickly atmosphere, I try             to keep your noble look in mind;             without the real thing, I enjoy the image.       45     Whether you are the one and only             eternal idea that eternal wisdom             disdains to see arrayed in sensible form,             to know the pains of mournful life             in transitory dress;       50  or if in the supernal spheres another earth             from among unnumbered worlds receives you,             and a near star lovelier than the Sun             warms you and you breathe benigner ether,             from here, where years are both ill-starred and brief,       55  accept this hymn from your unnoticed lover.

Sometimes the sun is covered by dense layers of dark clouds. A person looking up would swear that there is no sun. But still the sun shines. At night, when there is no light, still the sun shines. During rain or hail or hurricane or tornado, still the sun shines. Does the sun ask itself, "Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me?" No, it burns and it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "What does the moon think of me? How does Mars feel about me today?" No, it burns, it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "Am I as big as other suns in other galaxies?" No, it burns, it shines. In this country in the coming years, I think that there will be a terrible storm. I think that the skies will darken beyond all recognition. Those who walk the streets will walk them in darkness. Those who are in prisons and mental institutions will not see the sky at all, only the dark out of barred windows. Those who are hungry and in despair may not look up at all. They will see the darkness as it lies on the ground in front of their feet. Those who are raped will see the darkness as they look up into the face of the rapist. Those who are assaulted and brutalized by madmen will stare intently into the darkness to discern who is moving toward them at every moment. It will be hard to remember, as the storm is raging, that still, even though we cannot see it, the sun shines. It will be hard to remember that still, even though we cannot see it, the sun burns. We will try to see it and we will try to feel it, and we will forget that it warms us still, that if it were not there, burning, shining, this earth would be a cold and desolate and barren place. As long as we have life and breath, no matter how dark the earth around us, that sun still burns, still shines. There is no today without it. There is no tomorrow without it. There was no yesterday without it. That light is within us—constant, warm, and healing. Remember it, sisters, in the dark times to come.

Although I am still far from this kind of interior understanding of myself, with profound respect for its significance I have sought to preserve my individuality―worshipped the unknown God. With a premature anxiety I have tried to avoid coming in close contact with those things whose force of attraction might be too powerful for me. I have sought to appropriate much from them, studied their distinctive characteristics and meaning in human life, but at the same time guarded against coming, like the moth, too close to the flame. I have had little to win or to lose in association with the ordinary run of men, partly because what they do―so-called practical life―does not interest me much, partly because their coldness and indifference to the spiritual and deeper currents in man alienate me even more from them. With few exceptions my companions have had no special influence upon me. A life that has not arrived at clarity about itself must necessarily exhibit an uneven side-surface; confronted by certain facts [*Facta*] and their apparent disharmony, they simply halted there, for, as I see it, they did not have sufficient interest to seek a resolution in a higher harmony or to recognize the necessity of it. Their opinion of me was always one-sided, and I have vacillated between putting too much or too little weight on what they said. I have now withdrawn from their influence and the potential variations of my life's compass resulting from it. Thus I am again standing at the point where I must begin again in another way. I shall now calmly attempt to look at myself and begin to initiate inner action; for only thus will I be able, like a child calling itself "I" in its first consciously undertaken act, be able to call myself "I" in a profounder sense. But that takes stamina, and it is not possible to harvest immediately what one has sown. I will remember that philosopher's method of having his disciples keep silent for three years; then I dare say it will come. Just as one does not begin a feast at sunrise but at sundown, just so in the spiritual world one must first work forward for some time before the sun really shines for us and rises in all its glory; for although it is true as it says that God lets his sun shine upon the good and the evil and lets the rain fall on the just and the unjust, it is not so in the spiritual world. So let the die be cast―I am crossing the Rubicon! No doubt this road takes me into battle, but I will not renounce it. I will not lament the past―why lament? I will work energetically and not waste time in regrets, like the person stuck in a bog and first calculating how far he has sunk without recognizing that during the time he spends on that he is sinking still deeper. I will hurry along the path I have found and shout to everyone I meet: Do not look back as Lot's wife did, but remember that we are struggling up a hill." ―from_Journals_, (The Search for Personal Meaning)