Turned 26 Quotes

When asked about which scientist he'd like to meet, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "Isaac Newton. No question about it. The smartest person ever to walk the face of this earth. The man was connected to the universe in spooky ways. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26.

Sometimes I get depressed about my age. In March I’ll be 26. If man weren’t measured in numbers, but rather letters, I’d be turning Z. And then I’d be dead.

When Alex left for Alaska," Franz remembers, "I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn't believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex. After I dropped off the hitchhikers," Franz continues," I turned my van around, drove back to the store, and bought a bottle of whiskey. And then I went out into the desert and drank it. I wasn't used to drinking, so it made me real sick. Hoped it'd kill me, but it didn't. Just made me real, real sick.

Clearing her throat, Peabody turned the cube on record. "I owe Dallas, Lieutenant Meaniepants Eve, twenty dollars to be paid out of my hard-earned, under-appreciated detective's salary next payday. Peabody, Detective Churchmouse Delia.

When the coffers are empty and their bellies growl, even good men turn bad.

Annapurna, to which we had gone emptyhanded, was a treasure on which we should live the rest of our days. With this realization we turn the page: a new life begins. There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.

There were times Hadrian wondered if Royce was actually a cat that some mischievous witch had turned into a man and then lost track of. The similarities were too numerous to be coincidental. An irritatingly-superior aloof nature, fastidiousness, a habit of roaming at night, and his general propensity for solitude were all evidence.

Fitting in, it turns out, is a very physical process. I have spent years in a battle with my body, trying to make it compliant to the needs of others. I have tried to shrink it as though that could shrink my difference. Am I more welcome if I take up less space?

The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible. The lengthy compositor's error, if such it may be called, occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five. 2. And bye the border of Dan, fromme the east side fo the west side, a portion for Afher. 3. And by the border of Afher, fromme the east side even untoe the west side, a portion for Naphtali. 4. And by the border of Naphtali, from the east side untoe the west side, a portion for Manaffeh. 5. Buggre Alle this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone withe half and oz of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. @ *"Æ@;!* 6. And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east fide even untoe the west fide, a portion for Reuben.* * The Buggre Alle This Bible was also noteworthy for having twenty-seven verses in the third chapter of Genesis, instead of the more usual twenty-four. They followed verse 24, which in the King James version reads: "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life," and read: 25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee? 26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my head next. 27 And the Lord did not ask him again.

I dare say you are planning on a late repentance. You do not know what you are doing. You are planning without God. Repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and they are gifts that He often withholds, when they have been long offered in vain. I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; But I warn you, only one was converted, that no man might presume. I grant you it is written, Jesus is ‘Able to save completely those who come to God through him’ (Hebrews 7:25). But I warn you, it is also written by the same Spirit, ‘Since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you’ (Proverbs 1:24-26). Believe me, you will find it no easy matter to turn to God whenever you please.

Tick Lu-Tze patiently adjusted a tiny mirror to redirect sunlight more favourably on one of the bonsai mountains. He hummed tunelessly under his breath. Lobsang, sitting cross-legged on the stones, carefully turned the yellowing pages of the ancient notebook on which was written, in faded ink, 'The Way of Mrs Cosmopilite'. 'Well?' said Lu-Tze. 'The Way has an answer for everything, does it?' 'Yes.' 'Then...' Lobsang nodded at the little volcano, which was gently smoking, 'how does that work? It's on a saucer!' Lu-Tze stared straight ahead, his lips moving. 'Page seventy-six, I think,' he said. Lobsang turned to the page. ' “Because”, he read.

Committing myself to the task of becoming fully human is saving my life now...to become fully human is something extra, a conscious choice that not everyone makes. Based on my limited wisdom and experience, there is more than one way to do this. If I were a Buddhist, I might do it by taking the bodhisattva vow, and if I were a Jew, I might do it by following Torah. Because I am a Christian, I do it by imitating Christ, although i will be the first to admit that I want to stop about a day short of following him all the way. In Luke's gospel, there comes a point when he turns around and says to the large crowd of those trailing after him, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple" (14:26). Make of that what you will, but I think it was his way of telling them to go home. He did not need people to go to Jerusalem to die with him. He needed people to go back where they came from and live the kinds of lives that he had risked his own life to show them: lives of resisting the powers of death, of standing up for the little and the least, of turning cheeks and washing feet, of praying for enemies and loving the unlovable.

ACT3.26 Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.

Her face turned a bright red under her half mask. “What?! You think you’re funny, huh? You think I brought this awesome army to your front lawn to mess around, huh?!

The Christian soul knows it needs Divine Help and therefore turns to Him Who loved us even while we were yet sinners. Examination of conscience, instead of inducing morbidity, thereby becomes an occasion of joy. There are two ways of knowing how good and loving God is. One is by never losing Him, through the preservation of innocence, and the other is by finding Him after one has lost Him. Repentance is not self-regarding, but God-regarding. It is not self-loathing, but God-loving. Christianity bids us accept ourselves as we really are, with all our faults and our failings and our sins. In all other religions, one has to be good to come to God—in Christianity one does not. Christianity might be described as a “come as you are” party. It bids us stop worrying about ourselves, stop concentrating on our faults and our failings, and thrust them upon the Saviour with a firm resolve of amendment. The examination of conscience never induces despair, always hope…Because examination of conscience is done in the light of God’s love, it begins with a prayer to the Holy Spirit to illumine our minds. A soul then acts toward the Spirit of God as toward a watchmaker who will fix our watch. We put a watch in his hands because we know he will not force it, and we put our souls in God’s hands because we know that if he inspects them regularly they will work as they should…it is true that, the closer we get to God, the more we see our defects. A painting reveals few defects under candlelight, but the sunlight may reveal it as daub. The very good never believe themselves very good, because they are judging themselves by the Ideal. In perfect innocence each soul, like the Apostles at the Last Supper, cries out, “Is it I, Lord” (Matt. 26:22).

02:12:23:26. Two days, twelve hours, twenty-three minutes, twenty-six seconds until Thursday turns into Friday. Solitaire antics today have been focused around the number 2: hundreds of posters, on Post-its on every surface, written on all whiteboards, popping up on the computers. From here I can see that the number 2 is painted in red directly onto the snow of the field. It looks a bit like blood.

He only wished that it wasn't winter. He wanted to turn his face to the sun and feel it warm him. The cold frightened him now. It felt like death, like the long silence of not being, without sense of time or place, only the understanding that he must hold on, that someday, there would be an end to the terrible stillness. He'd been a long time in the dark.

Clay pulled Lucas along and as they were approaching the back door, he called, “Madam Secretary . . . I need you to meet this guy.” She stopped and turned and looked at Lucas and then Clay, did a quick price check on Lucas’s suit, and asked, “How do you do?

You tell me I have to crush a field of babies to keep breathing? Sure. You say people who rely on me aren't going to live unless I turn someone's head into a bowl of gravy? I'm there. I don't feel bad about it. I don't think about it. It just is what it is. It's survival.

When Congress approved the decision to retire the SR-71, the Smithsonian Institution requested that a Blackbird be delivered for eventual display in the Air and Space Museum in Washington and that we set a new transcontinental speed record delivering it from California to Dulles. I had the honor of piloting that final flight on March 6, 1990, for its final 2,300-mile flight between L.A. and D.C. I took off with my backseat navigator, Lt. Col. Joe Vida, at 4:30 in the morning from Palmdale, just outside L.A., and despite the early hour, a huge crowd cheered us off. We hit a tanker over the Pacific then turned and dashed east, accelerating to 2.6 Mach and about sixty thousand feet. Below stretched hundreds of miles of California coastline in the early morning light. In the east and above, the hint of a red sunrise and the bright twinkling lights from Venus, Mars, and Saturn. A moment later we were directly over central California, with the Blackbird’s continual sonic boom serving as an early wake-up call to the millions sleeping below on this special day. I pushed out to Mach 3.3.

...I have read but little of Madame Glyn. I did not know that things like "It" were going on. I have misspent my days. When I think of all those hours I flung away in reading William James and Santayana, when I might have been reading of life, throbbing, beating, perfumed life, I practically break down. Where, I ask you, have I been, that no true word of Madame Glyn's literary feats has come to me? But even those far, far better informed than I must work a bit over the opening sentence of Madame Glyn's foreword to her novel" "This is not," the says, drawing her emeralds warmly about her, "the story of the moving picture entitled It, but a full character study of the story It, which the people in the picture read and discuss." I could go mad, in a nice way, straining to figure that out. ...Well it turns out that Ava and John meet, and he begins promptly to "vibrate with passion." ... ...It goes on for nearly three hundred pages, with both of them vibrating away like steam launches." -Review of the book, It, by Elinor Glyn. Review title: Madame Glyn Lectures on "It," with Illustrations; November 26, 1927.

If you think about it, we get robbed of the mystery of being alive. I think we get robbed of the glory of it because we don't remember how we got here. When you get born, you wake up slowly to everything. From birth to 26, God is slowly turning on the lights, and you are groggy and pointing at things, and say "Circle," and, "Blue,", and, "Car," and, "Sex," and then, "Job," and, "Healthcare". The experience is so slow, you could easily come to believe life isn't that big of a deal, that life isn't staggering. Life IS staggering, and we are just too used to it.

An elementary school student asked me the NOT “politically correct” question, “Is an idiot smarter than a moron?” I had to Google it because I was afraid to respond in today’s PC society and didn’t want to offend him, his parents, or anyone else. Here’s what I found. Technically, a moron is smarter than an idiot. An imbecile is also smarter than an idiot. Although today the words are considered insulting and derogatory, prior to the 1960s they were widely used as actual psychology terms associated with intelligence on an IQ test. An IQ between: 00-25 = Idiot 26-50 = Imbecile 51-70 = Moron Explaining all of this to a nine year old with an IQ of 130 made me feel like society has turned all adults into one of the above, myself included. When I told him that I’m afraid to openly say it, the nine year old said, “Adults are idiots!

In the body of Christ our weakness is an occasion for care rather than judgment. The body of Christ isn’t strong because it has no weaknesses. The body of Christ is strong because it’s the place where weakness is shared. And our weakness, our need for each other, is the very thing that seals this sharing. When I live in Christ, things get turned upside down. The end arrives at the beginning. The last becomes first. The greatest become the least, and the least become types of Christ. In Christ, we’re all bound together. If “one member suffer, all the members suffer with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26).

As a door swings back and forth on its hinges, so the lazy person turns over in bed... Whoever meddles in a quarrel not his own is like one who takes a passing dog by the ears.

ROM11.26 And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob:

The mania for collecting can easily turn simply into accumulating. All one has to do is develop one collecting interest after another, and so on. But collectors of a particular category of articles almost always lose interest once they have reached their goal. When the collection is complete, what else is there to do?...Failure makes it possible to avoid the effort: he simply carries on as before. (pp. 25-26)

If you had to ask the price of W&B’s chocolates, you couldn’t afford them. And if you’d tasted one, and still couldn’t afford them, you’d save and scrimp and rob and sell elderly members of your family for just one more of those mouthfuls that fell in love with your tongue and turned your soul to whipped cream. There was a discreet drain in the pavement in case people standing in front of the window drooled too much.

And who knows what Romance, what Adventure, what Love, is lurking around the next turn of the road, ready to leap out on us if we’ll only travel that far?” –Inscription in George Sterling’s copy of The Road, March 26, 1914

Speaking of African Americans, the horrors of the African slave trade are more connected to the enslavement unleashed by Columbus than most people realize.26 The Portuguese began enslaving and exporting the native peoples of Labrador beginning in 1501. Early in colonial history, the British paid some tribes to capture members of other tribes; the British then sold these captives as slaves. Charleston, South Carolina, was a center for exporting indigenous American slaves before it became a center for importing African ones. Having developed a taste and skill for enslavement of the Tainos, Arawaks, and others in the New World, European colonizers quickly turned to Africa for additional “stock” for their slave market. Even Bartolomé de las Casas at one point recommended importing African slaves so that the indigenous peoples could be released, a recommendation he later regretted and repudiated.

For they mean life to those who find them, and G8health to their whole body. 23 Guard your G9mind with all diligence, for out of it flows the springs of life. 24 Put away from you a froward mouth; false and deceitful speech, and put perverse lips; dishonesty, far from you. 25 Let your eyes look straight ahead, keep your gaze right in front of you. 26 Watch where your feet are going, step only on established paths. 27 Do not turn to the right or the left; walk away from evil.

It was not these policies alone that turned things around; it was also the energy behind the policies: the six-week tour, the firing and hiring, the tough decisions made about the fleet and the fields. A light was burning in the pilothouse, a firm hand had taken hold of the tiller. United Fruit’s stock price stabilized, then began to climb. It doubled in the first two weeks of Zemurray’s reign, reaching $26 a share by the fall of 1933. This had less to do with tangible results—it was too early for that—than the confidence of investors. If you looked in the newspaper, you would see the new head of the company landing his plane on a strip in the jungle, anchoring his boat on the north coast of Honduras, going here and there, working, working, working. In a time of crisis, the mere evidence of activity can be enough to get things moving. Though Zemurray would stay at the helm for another twenty years, United Fruit was saved in his first sixty days.

Peter makes clear in an early sermon in Acts. You are the descendants of the prophets and of the covenant that God gave to your ancestors, saying to Abraham, “And in your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways. (Acts 3:25–26) So before Jesus is the savior of the world, he is the savior of Israel, restoring them to their status and role as God’s elect people.

75:26-30 Indeed when it reaches as high as one's collarbone, and someone says: "WHO IS SUCH A WIZARD?" he will supposed that it means leave-taking, while ONE SHIN WILL TWIST AROUND THE OTHER SHIN [to keep it from moving], TOWARDS YOUR LORD will the Drive be on that day! 2:149, 150 No matter where you may set out from, turn your face towards the Hallowed Mosque ... No matter where you may set out from, TURN YOUR FACES TOWARDS TOWARDS THE HALLOWED MOSQUE, wherever you maybe, turn your faces towards it ...

o a word in season, how good it is!     24 The path of life leads upward  p for the prudent,         that he may turn away from Sheol beneath.     25 The LORD tears down the house of  q the proud         but  r maintains  s the widow’s boundaries.     26  

It turns out that running 26.2 miles, and training body and soul to do it, is useful for heartbreak,” she wrote. “It does not mend anything, your muscles are all broken, and that becomes the point. Everything is weary and strained and exhausted like your heart.

None of us lives to himself . . . .” Romans 14:7     Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible spiritually to God for other people? For instance, if I allow any turning away from God in my private life, everyone around me suffers. We “sit together in the heavenly places . . .” (Ephesians 2:6). “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it . . .” (1 Corinthians 12:26). If you allow physical selfishness, mental carelessness, moral insensitivity, or spiritual weakness, everyone in contact with you will suffer.

Lula swung into the room. “What’s going on? What did I miss? I couldn’t get a hair appointment so I came for lunch.” She spied the guy on the stretcher. “Holy crap! What happened to him?” “He tried to kidnap Grandma, so my mother took him out with her iron,” I said. Lula turned to my mom. “Way to go, Mrs. P.!” She did a high five and a down low with her. “Is he dead?” “Not yet,” Grandma said. “Good thing,” Lula said. “If California found out a guy got killed with an iron, they’d ban them, and all those movie stars would be wrinkled all the time.

And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are. — Mark Strand, from “Lines for Winter,” Selected Poems. (Knopf September 26, 1990)

America’s last step into the Vietnam quagmire came on November 22, 1963, when Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth president of the United States. Unlike Kennedy, Johnson was no real veteran. During World War II he used his influence as a congressman to become a naval officer, and, despite an utter lack of military training, he arranged a direct commission as a lieutenant commander. Fully aware that “combat” exposure would make him more electable, the ambitious Johnson managed an appointment to an observation team that was traveling to the Pacific. Once there, he was able to get a seat on a B-26 combat mission near New Guinea. The bomber had to turn back due to mechanical problems and briefly came under attack from Japanese fighters. The pilot got the damaged plane safely back to its base and Johnson left the very next day. This nonevent, which LBJ had absolutely no active part of, turned into his war story. The engine had been “knocked out” by enemy fighters, not simply a routine malfunction; he, LBJ, had been part of a “suicide mission,” not just riding along as baggage. The fabrication grew over time, including, according to LBJ, the nickname of “Raider” Johnson given to him by the awestruck 22nd Bomber Group.

Lately he's consumed by a sense that he is in fact two separate people, and soon he will have to choose which person to be on a full-time basis, and leave the other person behind. He has a life in Carricklea, he has friends. If he went to college in Galway he could stay with the same social group, really, and live the life he has always planned on, getting a good degree, having a nice girlfriend. People would say he had done well for himself. On the other hand, he could go to Trinity like Marianne. Life would be different then. He would start going to dinner parties and having conversations about the Greek bailout. He could fuck some weird-looking girls who turn out to be bisexual. I've read The Golden Notebook, he could tell them. It's true, he has read it. After that he would never come back to Carricklea, he would go somewhere else, London, or Barcelona. People would not necessarily think he had done well; some people might think he had gone very bad, while others would forget about him entirely. What would Lorraine think? She would want him to be happy, and not care what others said. But the old Connell, the one all his friends know, that person would be dead in a way, or worse, buried alive, and screaming under the earth. (26-27)

Or it can be as subtle as to stop what you are doing and– without fear– turn your full attention to someone approaching and say, “That’s close enough. What can I do for you?” Another is while maintaining the boundary pretend you don’t know the answer to the question or have what he asks for.[26] This derails the typical robbery script.

There is also a trilogy of books out. I started reading right after Christmas Divergent. I went to read Insurgent after, and now I’m on the third one. I don’t know, it’s Detergent or whatever. But it’s written by a 26-year-old girl. It’s brilliant. But I’m about halfway through now on book number three. Wait until you get to book number three. Hello, Google genome project. Technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and yet, morality and ethics are afterthoughts. We’re excited about discovery and advancement, you know? We’re in fact so excited that we don’t even take the time to discuss or debate the moral dilemmas and implications of new technology. Sure, we’re still in control of technology now, but does there come a time when we’re not? Who will be the one that says turn it off? When do things go wrong? I don’t see anyone at Google or in the government or anyone at the forefront of technology boom that is contemplating the ethics and morality issues. Now that is a truly scary thought that doesn’t come in a movie.

The story of the political triumph of an idea that was clearly contradicted by the science has been told numerous times (e.g., references [11, 22, 23, 26, 27]) and yet the phenomenon still persists. Every time you see a low-fat item in the supermarket you are looking at an artifact of one of the most bizarre stories in the history of science.

All told, Finnish fighter pilots shot down 240 confirmed Red aircraft, against the loss of 26 of their own planes. It was standard practice to send at least one interceptor up to meet every Russian bomber sortie within range. Not infrequently the appearance of a single Fokker caused an entire squadron of SB-2s to jettison its bombs into the snow and turn tail.

My Truck Takes Diesel “‘In your anger do not sin’; Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” EPHESIANS 4:26–27 I know she thought she was helping me when my wife filled my truck with gas. The problem is that my truck is a diesel. Now she was phoning me to come rescue her because the truck wouldn’t start! I told her I was on my way, but all I could think about was what my wife’s actions were going to cost me—anything from draining the tank to replacing the engine. I wish I could say I was just a little frustrated, but the truth is I was angry. I prayed and asked Jesus to help me respond in the right way. Then, because I need to be accountable, I called one of my brothers in recovery and told him what had happened and how angry I was. When I saw my wife, the first words out of my mouth were, “I am so sorry this happened to you. I know this wasn’t in your plans today.” It felt good talking to my brother later and telling him that God had helped me with my anger and given me a good response when I saw my wife. I had acted on, rather than reacted to, a bad situation. It turned out the truck was fine. I drained the tank, put diesel in, and it started right up. The best part is that because I made a good choice, I won’t have to make amends. PRAYER Father, thank you for helping me choose to be kind and forgiving rather than rude and judgmental. Things always go better when I surrender to you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Confess your sins to one another” (James 5:16). Those who remain alone with their evil are left utterly alone. It is possible that Christians may remain lonely in spite of daily worship together, prayer together, and all their community through service—that the final breakthrough to community does not occur precisely because they enjoy community with one another as pious believers, but not with one another as those lacking piety, as sinners. For the pious community permits no one to be a sinner. Hence all have to conceal their sins from themselves and from the community. We are not allowed to be sinners. Many Christians would be unimaginably horrified if a real sinner were suddenly to turn up among the pious. So we remain alone with our sin, trapped in lies and hypocrisy, for we are in fact sinners. However, the grace of the gospel, which is so hard for the pious to comprehend, confronts us with the truth. It says to us, you are a sinner, a great, unholy sinner. Now come, as the sinner that you are, to your God who loves you. For God wants you as you are, not desiring anything from you—a sacrifice, a good deed—but rather desiring you alone. “My child, give me your heart” (Prov. 23:26). God has come to you to make the sinner blessed. Rejoice! This message is liberation through truth. You cannot hide from God. The mask you wear in the presence of other people won’t get you anywhere in the presence of God. God wants to see you as you are, wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to go on lying to yourself and to other Christians as if you were without sin. You are allowed to be a sinner. Thank God for that; God loves the sinner but hates the sin.

In the year 2000, wars caused the deaths of 310,000 individuals, and violent crime killed another 520,000. Each and every victim is a world destroyed, a family ruined, friends and relatives scarred for life. Yet from a macro perspective these 830,000 victims comprised only 1.5 per cent of the 56 million people who died in 2000. That year 1.26 million people died in car accidents (2.25 per cent of total mortality) and 815,000 people committed suicide (1.45 per cent).4 The figures for 2002 are even more surprising. Out of 57 million dead, only 172,000 people died in war and 569,000 died of violent crime (a total of 741,000 victims of human violence). In contrast, 873,000 people committed suicide.5 It turns out that in the year following the 9/11 attacks, despite all the talk of terrorism and war, the average person was more likely to kill himself than to be killed by a terrorist, a soldier or a drug dealer.

The reason that I have concentrated on non-computability, in my arguments, rather than on complexity, is simply that it is only with the former that I have been able to see how to make the necessary strong statements. It may well be that in the working lives of most mathematicians, non-computability issues play, if anything, only a very small part. But that is not the point at issue. I am trying to show that (mathematical) understanding is something that lies beyond computation, and the Godel (-Turing) argument is one of the few handles that we have on that issue. It is quite probable that our mathematical insights and understandings are often used to achieve things that could in principle also be achieved computationally-but where blind computation without much insight may turn out to be so inefficient that it is unworkable (cf. 3.26). However, these matters are much more difficult to address than the non-computability issue.

for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;  ACT26.17 Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee,  ACT26.18 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in

There is no way to neutralize causes because the source-forms necessitate them. They only appear in existence by the form on which they are based at the source since "there is no changing the words of Allah." (10:64) The words of Allah are not other than the sources of existent things. Timelessness is ascribed to Him in respect to their permanence, and in-time ness is ascribed to them in respect of their existence and appearance. Thus we say, a certain man or guest happened (26) to be with us today." That does not mean that he did not have any existence before this event. For that reason, Allah says about His Mighty Word which is timeless, "No reminder (dhikr) from their Lord comes to them lately renewed (27) without their listening to it as if it were a game," (21:2) and "but no fresh (28) reminder reaches them from the All- Merciful, without their turning away from it." (26:5) The Merciful only brings mercy, and whoever turns away from mercy advances the punishment which is the absence of mercy.

APRIL 17 BIND THE POWERS OF DARKNESS THAT CONTROL THE AIRWAVES MY CHILD, IT is My desire that you will do what is right in My sight and that you will walk in the ways of righteousness. Seek My face, and like My servant Josiah, purge your life and your home of the powers of darkness that arise as altars of wickedness in this present generation. Break down the wickedness of the media, which has corrupted the eyes of this present generation. Take authority over the powers of the enemy that are permeating the airwaves and releasing filth and violence upon this land. Seek My righteousness, and fill the eyes and the ears of this generation with the wonders and miracles of My great love and power. 2 CHRONICLES 34; EPHESIANS 2:2, LEVITICUS 26:30 Prayer Declaration Lord, I take authority over the princes of media in the name of Jesus. Let the high places of witchcraft be destroyed, and let the eyes and ears of this present generation be turned to Your righteousness. Make me a beacon of light in this evil world, and raise up a standard of righteousness in this land.

Second Timothy 2:23–26, “Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” All we can do is love the nonbelievers and try to turn them.

Jesus didn’t just “come to die.” Jesus came to live—to teach, to heal, to tell stories, to turn over tables, to touch people who weren’t supposed to be touched and eat with people who weren’t supposed to be eaten with. To break bread, to pour wine, to wash feet, to face temptation, to tick off the authorities, to fulfill Scripture, to announce the start of a brand-new kingdom, to show us what that kingdom is like, to show us what God is like, to love his enemies to the point of death at their hand, and to beat death by rising from the grave.[26]

In this classic reversal of reality, we do not stand before him, but the King stands before us. We question him; he doesn’t question us. The irony of it all! While the name of the Lord was constantly blasphemed by men, Jesus is now accused of being a blasphemer (Matthew 26:65). Talk about a primitive form of defense—projecting your guilt onto another. Could it be any clearer that Jesus had come to the anti-kingdom, where everything was the opposite of the way it was intended? The mocking was nonstop. Accusers took turns kneeling before him, feigning homage.

How has my industry raised prices at this rate without improving the product? At a few elite institutions, including NYU, we’ve leveraged scarcity. More than a business strategy, it’s become a fetish—believing you are a luxury brand instead of a public servant. Ivy Leagues have acceptance rates of 4–10%. A university president bragging about rejecting 90% of applicants is tantamount to a homeless shelter taking pride in turning away 90% of the needy that arrive each night. And this is not about standards or brand dilution. In an essay explaining his decision to stop conducting application interviews for his alma mater, Princeton, journalist Bryan Walsh observed, “The secret of elite college admissions is that far more students deserve to attend these colleges than are admitted, and there is virtually no discernible difference between those who make it and the many more who just miss out.” In support, he offered this statement from Princeton’s own dean of admissions: “We could have admitted five or six classes to Princeton from the [applicant] pool.”4 So, with a $26 billion endowment, the question becomes, Why wouldn’t you?

For Fortune is a woman who to be kept under must be beaten and roughly handled; and we see that she suffers herself to be more readily mastered by those who so treat her than by those who are more timid in their approaches. And always, like a woman, she favours the young, because they are less scrupulous and fiercer, and command her with greater audacity. Chapter 26 An Exhortation to Liberate Italy from the Barbarians Turning over in my mind all the matters which have above been considered, and debating with myself whether in Italy at the present hour the times are such as might serve to

JUMBO GINGERBREAD NUT MUFFINS Once you try these jumbo-size, nut- and oil-rich muffins, you will appreciate how filling they are. They are made with eggs, coconut oil, almonds, and other nuts and seeds, so they are also very healthy. You can also add a schmear of cream cheese or a bit of unsweetened fruit butter for extra flavor. To fill out a lunch, add a chunk of cheese, some fresh berries or sliced fruit, or an avocado. While walnuts and pumpkin seeds are called for in the recipe to add crunch, you can substitute your choice of nut or seed, such as pecans, pistachios, or sunflower seeds. A jumbo muffin pan is used in this recipe, but a smaller muffin pan can be substituted. If a smaller pan is used, reduce baking time by about 5 minutes, though always assess doneness by inserting a wooden pick into the center of a muffin and making sure it comes out clean. If you make the smaller size, pack 2 muffins for lunch. Makes 6 4 cups almond meal/flour 1 cup shredded unsweetened coconut ½ cup chopped walnuts ½ cup pumpkin seeds Sweetener equivalent to ¾ cup sugar 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 1 tablespoon ground ginger 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg ½ teaspoon ground cloves 1 teaspoon sea salt 3 eggs ½ cup coconut oil, melted 1 teaspoon vanilla extract ½ cup water Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place paper liners in a 6-cup jumbo muffin pan or grease the cups with coconut or other oil. In a large bowl, combine the almond meal/flour, coconut, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sweetener, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and salt. Mix well. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs. Stir in the coconut oil, vanilla, and water. Pour the egg mixture into the almond meal mixture and combine thoroughly. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Per serving (1 muffin): 893 calories, 25 g protein, 26 g carbohydrates, 82 g total fat, 30 g saturated fat, 12 g fiber, 333 mg sodium BRATWURST WITH BELL PEPPERS AND SAUERKRAUT Living in Milwaukee has turned me on to the flavors of German-style bratwurst, but any spicy sausage (such as Italian, chorizo, or andouille) will do just fine in this recipe. The quality of the brat or sausage makes the dish, so choose your favorite. The spices used in various sausages will vary, so I kept the spices and flavors of the sauerkraut mixture light. However, this makes the choice of bratwurst or sausage the crucial component of this dish. You can also add ground coriander, nutmeg, and

ballot you go, the more volatile the polls tend to be: polls of House races are less accurate than polls of Senate races, which are in turn less accurate than polls of presidential races. Polls of primaries, also, are considerably less accurate than general election polls. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, the average poll missed by about eight points, far more than implied by its margin of error. The problems in polls of the Republican primaries of 2012 may have been even worse.26 In many of the major states, in fact—including Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, Michigan, Washington, Colorado, Ohio, Alabama, and Mississippi—the candidate ahead in the polls a week before the election lost.

Why are you fearful, O you of little faith?” Matthew 8:26     When we are afraid, the least we can do is pray to God. But our Lord has a right to expect that those who name His name have an underlying confidence in Him. God expects His children to be so confident in Him that in any crisis they are the ones who are reliable. Yet our trust is only in God up to a certain point, then we turn back to the elementary panic-stricken prayers of those people who do not even know God. We come to our wits’ end, showing that we don’t have even the slightest amount of confidence in Him or in His sovereign control of the world. To us He seems to be asleep, and we can see nothing but giant, breaking waves on the sea ahead of us.

We Catch Glimmers June 26 RELIGION AS A word points to that area of human experience where in one way or another man comes upon mystery as a summons to pilgrimage; where he senses meanings no less overwhelming because they can be only hinted at in myth and ritual; where he glimpses a destination that he can never know fully until he reaches it. We are all of us more mystics than we believe or choose to believe—life is complicated enough as it is, after all. We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves. Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers at least of what the saints are blinded by; only then, unlike the saints, we tend to go on as though nothing has happened. To go on as though something has happened, even though we are not sure what it was or just where we are supposed to go with it, is to enter the dimension of life that religion is a word for. Some, of course, go to the typewriter. First the lump in the throat, the stranger’s face unfurling like a flower, and then the clatter of the keys, the ting-a-ling of the right-hand margin. One thinks of Pascal sewing into his jacket, where after his death a servant found it, his “since about half past ten in the evening until about half past midnight. Fire. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace,” stammering it out like a child because he had to. Fire, fire, and then the scratch of pen on paper. There are always some who have to set it down in black and white.

Sunday, May 7, 1944 I should be deeply ashamed of myself, and I am. What's done can't be undone, but at least you can keep it from happening again...I'm not all that ugly, or that stupid, I have a sunny disposition, and I want to develop a good character! Monday, May 22, 1944 ...Could anyone, regardless of whether they're Jews or Christians, remain silent in the face of German pressure? Everyone knows it's practically impossible, so why do they ask the impossible of the Jews? Thursday, May 25, 1944 The world's been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the lowest of the low rule over young and old, rich and poor...Unless you're a Nazi, you don't know what's going to happen to you from one day to the next. ...We're going to be hungry, but nothing's worse than being caught. Friday, May 26, 1944 ...That gap, that enormous gap, is always there. One day we're laughing at the comical side of life in hiding, and the next day (there are many such days), we're frightened, and the fear, tension and despair can be read on our faces. ...But they also have their outings, their visits with friends, their everyday lives as ordinary people, so that the tension is sometimes relieved, if only for a short while, while ours never is, never has been, not once in the two years we've been here. How much longer will this increasingly oppressive, unbearable weight press down on us? ... ...What will we do if we're ever...no, I mustn't write that down. But the question won't let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I've ever felt is looming before me in all its horror. ... I've asked myself again and again whether it wouldn't have been better if we hadn't gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn't have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven't yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for...everything. Let something happen soon, even an air raid. Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel; at least then we'll know whether we are to be victors or the vanquished. Tuesday, June 13, 1944 Is it because I haven't been outdoors for so long that I've become so smitten with nature? ... Many people think nature is beautiful, many people sleep from time to time under the starry sky, and many people in hospitals and prisons long for the day when they'll be free to enjoy what nature has to offer. But few are as isolated and cut off as we are from the joys of nature, which can be shared by rich and poor alike. It's not just my imagination - looking at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars really does make me feel calm and hopeful. It's much better medicine than Valerian or bromide. Nature makes me feel humble and ready to face every blow with courage! ...Nature is the one thing for which there is no substitute.

At Marburg, Papin continued his experiments. In the late 1680s, observing that water occupies more than a thousand times its previous volume when it turns to steam, he decided that steam rather than gunpowder was the better working medium for his engine. “Since it is a property of water,” he wrote in 1690, “that a small quantity of it, converted into steam by the force of heat, has an elastic force like that of the air”—that is, expands and pushes against the walls of its container—“but, when cold supervenes, is again resolved into water, so that no trace of the said elastic force remains; I felt confident that machines might be constructed, wherein water, by means of no very intense heat, and at small cost, might produce that perfect vacuum which had failed to be obtained by aid of gunpowder.”26

Appendix 1 Seven Points and Fifty-Nine Slogans for Generating Compassion and Resilience POINT ONE Resolve to Begin 1. Train in the preliminaries. POINT TWO Train in Empathy and Compassion: Absolute Compassion 2. See everything as a dream. 3. Examine the nature of awareness. 4. Don’t get stuck on peace. 5. Rest in the openness of mind. 6. In Postmeditation be a child of illusion. POINT TWO Train in Empathy and Compassion: Relative Compassion 7. Practice sending and receiving alternately on the breath. 8. Begin sending and receiving practice with yourself. 9. Turn things around (Three objects, three poisons, three virtues). 10. Always train with the slogans. POINT THREE Transform Bad Circumstances into the Path 11. Turn all mishaps into the path. 12. Drive all blames into one. 13. Be grateful to everyone. 14. See confusion as Buddha and practice emptiness. 15. Do good, avoid evil, appreciate your lunacy, pray for help. 16. Whatever you meet is the path. POINT FOUR Make Practice Your Whole Life 17. Cultivate a serious attitude (Practice the five strengths). 18. Practice for death as well as for life. POINT FIVE Assess and Extend 19. There’s only one point. 20. Trust your own eyes. 21. Maintain joy (and don’t lose your sense of humor). 22. Practice when you’re distracted. POINT SIX The Discipline of Relationship 23. Come back to basics. 24. Don’t be a phony. 25. Don’t talk about faults. 26. Don’t figure others out. 27. Work with your biggest problems first. 28. Abandon hope. 29. Don’t poison yourself. 30. Don’t be so predictable. 31. Don’t malign others. 32. Don’t wait in ambush. 33. Don’t make everything so painful. 34. Don’t unload on everyone. 35. Don’t go so fast. 36. Don’t be tricky. 37. Don’t make gods into demons. 38. Don’t rejoice at others’ pain. POINT SEVEN Living with Ease in a Crazy World 39. Keep a single intention. 40. Correct all wrongs with one intention. 41. Begin at the beginning, end at the end. 42. Be patient either way. 43. Observe, even if it costs you everything. 44. Train in three difficulties. 45. Take on the three causes. 46. Don’t lose track. 47. Keep the three inseparable. 48. Train wholeheartedly, openly, and constantly. 49. Stay close to your resentment. 50. Don’t be swayed by circumstances. 51. This time get it right! 52. Don’t misinterpret. 53. Don’t vacillate. 54. Be wholehearted. 55. Examine and analyze. 56. Don’t wallow. 57. Don’t be jealous. 58. Don’t be frivolous. 59. Don’t expect applause.

RULES TO TEACH YOUR SON 1. Never shake a man’s hand sitting down. 2. Don’t enter a pool by the stairs. 3. The man at the BBQ Grill is the closest thing to a king. 4. In a negotiation, never make the first offer. 5. Request the late check-out. 6. When entrusted with a secret, keep it. 7. Hold your heroes to a higher standard. 8. Return a borrowed car with a full tank of gas. 9. Play with passion or don’t play at all… 10. When shaking hands, grip firmly and look them in the eye. 11. Don’t let a wishbone grow where a backbone should be. 12. If you need music on the beach, you’re missing the point. 13. Carry two handkerchiefs. The one in your back pocket is for you. The one in your breast pocket is for her. 14. You marry the girl, you marry her family. 15. Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like crazy underneath. 16. Experience the serenity of traveling alone. 17. Never be afraid to ask out the best looking girl in the room. 18. Never turn down a breath mint. 19. A sport coat is worth 1000 words. 20. Try writing your own eulogy. Never stop revising. 21. Thank a veteran. Then make it up to him. 22. Eat lunch with the new kid. 23. After writing an angry email, read it carefully. Then delete it. 24. Ask your mom to play. She won’t let you win. 25. Manners maketh the man. 26. Give credit. Take the blame. 27. Stand up to Bullies. Protect those bullied. 28. Write down your dreams. 29. Take time to snuggle your pets, they love you so much and are always happy to see you. 30. Be confident and humble at the same time. 31. If ever in doubt, remember whose son you are and REFUSE to just be ordinary! 32. In all things, give glory to God.

The hard part, evolutionarily, was getting from prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic ones, then getting from single-celled organisms to multicellular ones. Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, a timescale I simply cannot get my head around. Instead let’s imagine’s Earth’s history as a calendar year, with the formation of Earth being January 1 and today being December 31 at 11:59pm. The first life on Earth emerges around February 25. Photosynthetic organisms first appear in late March. Multicellular life doesn’t appear until August or September. The first dinosaurs like eoraptor show up about 230 million years ago, or December 13 in our calendar year. The meteor impact that heralds the end of the dinosaurs happens around December 26. Homo sapiens aren’t part of the story until December 31 at 11:48 pm. Agriculture and large human communities and the building of monolithic structures all occur within the last minute of this calendar year. The Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the invention of basketball, recorded music, the electric dishwasher, and vehicles that travel faster than horses all happen in the last couple of seconds. Put another way: It took Earth about three billion years to go from single-celled life to multicellular life. It took less than seventy million years to go from Tyrannosaurus rex to humans who can read and write and dig up fossils and approximate the timeline of life and worry about its ending. Unless we somehow manage to eliminate all multicellular life from the planet, Earth won’t have to start all over and it will be okay--- at least until the oceans evaporate and the planet gets consumed by the sun. But we`ll be gone by then, as will our collective and collected memory. I think part of what scares me about the end of humanity is the end of those memories. I believe that if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, it does make a sound. But if no one is around to play Billie Holiday records, those songs won’t make a sound anymore. We’ve caused a lot of suffering, but we’ve also caused much else. I know the world will survive us – and in some ways it will be more alive. More birdsong. More creatures roaming around. More plants cracking through our pavement, rewilding the planet we terraformed. I imagine coyotes sleeping in the ruins of the homes we built. I imagine our plastic still washing up on beaches hundreds of years after the last of us is gone. I imagine moths, having no artificial lights toward which to fly, turning back to the moon.

By my second year of college, I found myself thinking more and more about law school as a next step. I’d actually been considering it since my freshman year, when I had taken a class with a political science professor named Robert McClure. He was a tough, no-nonsense professor whose class I loved. I learned quite a bit from him about how to make an argument—and, more importantly, that I loved to argue. By the time I was a junior, I had decided to become a lawyer, which was empowering as a decision. I’d been searching for what my path would be and how I’d take control of my life. Now, finally, I’d seized upon one. From my journal entry on January 26, 1991: I am twenty years old now and have actively begun to make what I want happen. It’s a good feeling, though certainly frightening. I know who I am becoming and who I want to be. The horrifying threat of misplaced nostalgia will never affect me as I age, for—succeed or fail—I will have accomplished the satisfaction of attempting. When I applied to law schools, initially I thought I wanted to go to Notre Dame. It was Irish and Catholic, it was in South Bend, Indiana, and I thought it might be fun to see a different part of the country. Plus, it was a great school. I was turned down by Notre Dame, but got a yes from Albany Law School (ALS), right in my hometown, so I could live at home and save some money. Besides, everyone says it’s the Notre Dame of Albany. I would need all the confidence I got from my family and from Jim, because law school was not for the faint of heart. The work was intense and the competition fierce. However, to my mother’s delight, not only did I thrive in law school, but I paid for it myself.

19 For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, 20 According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. 21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not. 23 For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: 24 Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. 25 And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith; 26 That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.

I daresay you are reckoning on a late repentance.. You know not what you are doing. You are reckoning without God. Repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and gifts that He often withholds, when they have been long offered in vain. I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; but I warn you, only one was converted, that no man might presume. I grant you it is written, Jesus is 'able to save them to the uttermost that come to God by Him' (Heb. 7:25). But I warn you, it is also written by the same Spirit, 'Because I have called, and ye refused, I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh' (Prov. 1:24-26). Believe me, you will find it no easy matter to turn to God just when you please.

MH: In an early letter to William Kennedy you spoke of the "dry rot" of American journalism. Tell me what you think. What's the state of the American press currently? HST: The press today is like the rest of the country. Maybe you need a war. Wars tend to bring out out the best in them. War was everywhere you looked in the sixties, extending into the seventies. Now there are no wars to fight. You know, it's the old argument about why doesn't the press report the good news? Well, now the press is reporting the good news, and it's not as much fun. The press has been taken in by Clinton. And by the amalgamation of politics. Nobody denies that the parties are more alike than they are different. No, the press has failed, failed utterly -- they've turned into slovenly rotters. Particularly The New York Times, which has come to be a bastion of political correctness. I think my place in history as defined by the PC people would be pretty radically wrong. Maybe I could be set up as a target at the other end of the spectrum. I feel more out of place now than I did under Nixon. Yeah, that's weird. There's something going on here, Mr. Jones, and you don't know what it is, do you? Yeah, Clinton has been a much more successfully deviant president than Nixon was. You can bet if the stock market fell to 4,000 and if four million people lost their jobs there'd be a lot of hell to pay, but so what? He's already re-elected. Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate. Or maybe he did, at the end of his life. He got very bitter about the press. And what is it he said? "I tremble for my nation when I reflect that God is just"? That's a guy who's seen the darker side. Yeah, we've become a nation of swine. - HST - The Atlantic , August 26, 1997

Thus we are counseled at length to be careful about the company we keep, recognizing the simple fact that an unexamined lifestyle, in which we are immersed in the materialistic values and behavior of worldly friends, will get us nowhere. Only frustration and inanity will be the result. Shāntideva advises us to fight shy of those whose values are contrary to the Dharma—people he habitually refers to as “those who are like children” (in other words, in terms designed to stimulate feelings of concern rather than resentment). Thus Shāntideva prescribes solitude, a flight from the world—not of course in a puritanical, world-denying sense, but in a spirit of inner freedom. Tranquillity of mind, he says significantly, is “found by people who are happy to be free from worldly ties,” and who for that reason, “never turns . . . a backward glance” (8.4, 8.26). And he is lyrical in his celebration of retreat in the wilderness.

Passing alone to those realms The object erst of thine exalted thought, I would rise to infinity: then I would compass the skill Of industries and arts equal to the objects. [18] There would I be reborn: there on high I would foster for thee Thy fair offspring, now that at length cruel Destiny hath run her whole course Against the enterprise whereby I was wont to withdraw to thee. Fly not from me, for I yearn for a nobler refuge That I may rejoice in thee. And I shall have as guide A god called blind by the unseeing. May Heaven deliver thee, and every emanation Of the great Architect be ever gracious unto thee: But turn thou not to me unless thou art mine. Escaped from the narrow murky prison Where for so many years error held me straitly, Here I leave the chain that bound me And the shadow of my fiercely malicious foe Who can [19] force me no longer to the gloomy dusk of night. For he who hath overcome the great Python [20] With whose blood he hath dyed the waters of the sea Hath put to flight the Fury that pursued me. [21] To thee I turn, I soar, O my sustaining Voice; I render thanks to thee, my Sun, my divine Light, For thou hast summoned me from that horrible torture, [22] Thou hast led me to a goodlier tabernacle; [23] Thou hast brought healing to my bruised heart. Thou art my delight and the warmth of my heart; [24] Thou makest me without fear of Fate or of Death; Thou breakest the chains and bars Whence few come forth free. Seasons, years, months, days and hours -- The children and weapons of Time -- and that Court Where neither steel nor treasure [25] avail Have secured me from the fury [of the foe]. Henceforth I spread confident wings to space; I fear no barrier of crystal or of glass; I cleave the heavens and soar to the infinite. And while I rise from my own globe to others And penetrate ever further through the eternal field, That which others saw from afar, I leave far behind me. [26]

Although I have afflicted you, . . . I will afflict you no more. (Nahum 1:12) There is a limit to our affliction. God sends it and then removes it. Do you complain, saying, “When will this end?” May we quietly wait and patiently endure the will of the Lord till He comes. Our Father takes away the rod when His purpose in using it is fully accomplished. If the affliction is sent to test us so that our words would glorify God, it will only end once He has caused us to testify to His praise and honor. In fact, we would not want the difficulty to depart until God has removed from us all the honor we can yield to Him. Today things may become “completely calm” (Matt. 8:26). Who knows how soon these raging waves will give way to a sea of glass with seagulls sitting on the gentle swells? After a long ordeal, the threshing tool is on its hook, and the wheat has been gathered into the barn. Before much time has passed, we may be just as happy as we are sorrowful now. It is not difficult for the Lord to turn night into day. He who sends the clouds can just as easily clear the skies. Let us be encouraged—things are better down the road. Let us sing God’s praises in anticipation of things to come. Charles H. Spurgeon “The Lord of the harvest” (Luke 10:2) is not always threshing us. His trials are only for a season, and the showers soon pass. “Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5). “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Cor. 4:17). Trials do serve their purpose. Even the fact that we face a trial proves there is something very precious to our Lord in us, or else He would not spend so much time and energy on us. Christ would not test us if He did not see the precious metal of faith mingled with the rocky core of our nature, and it is to refine us into purity and beauty that He forces us through the fiery ordeal. Be patient, O sufferer! The result of the Refiner’s fire will more than compensate for our trials, once we see the “eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” Just to hear His commendation, “Well done” (Matt. 25:21); to be honored before the holy angels; to be glorified in Christ, so that I may reflect His glory back to Him—ah! that will be more than enough reward for all my trials. from Tried by Fire Just as the weights of a grandfather clock, or the stabilizers in a ship, are necessary for them to work properly, so are troubles to the soul. The sweetest perfumes are obtained only through tremendous pressure, the fairest flowers grow on the most isolated and snowy peaks, the most beautiful gems are those that have suffered the longest at the jeweler’s wheel, and the most magnificent statues have endured the most blows from the chisel. All of these, however, are subject to God’s law. Nothing happens that has not been appointed with consummate care and foresight. from Daily Devotional Commentary

The hard part, evolutionarily, was getting from prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic ones, then getting from single-celled organisms to multi cellar ones. Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, a timescale I simply cannot get my head around. Instead let’s imagine’s Earth’s history as a calendar year, with the formation of Earth being January 1 and today being December 31 at 11:59pm. The first life on Earth emerges around February 25. Photosynthetic organisms first appear in late March. Multicellular life doesn’t appear until August or September. The first dinosaurs like eoraptor show up about 230 million years ago, or December 13 in our calendar year. The meteor impact that heralds the end of the dinosaurs happens around December 26. Homo sapiens aren’t part of the story until December 31 at 11:48 pm. Agriculture and large human communities and the building of monolithic structures all occur within the last minute of this calendar year. The Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the invention of basketball, recorded music, the electric dishwasher, and vehicles that travel faster than horses all happen in the last couple of seconds. Put another way: It took Earth about three billion years to go from single-celled life to multicellular life. It took less than seventy million years to go from Tyrannosaurus rex to humans who can read and write and dig up fossils and approximate the timeline of life and worry about its ending. Unless we somehow manage to eliminate all multicellular life from the planet, Earth won’t have to start all over and it will be okay--- at least until the oceans evaporate and the planet gets consumed by the sun. I know the world will survive us – and in some ways it will be more alive. More birdsong. More creatures roaming around. More plants cracking through our pavement, rewilding the planet we terraformed. I imagine coyotes sleeping in the ruins of the homes we built. I imagine our plastic still washing up on beaches hundreds of years after the last of us is gone. I imagine moths, having no artificial lights toward which to fly, turning back to the moon.

It will happen again and again that the person who is charged with offering the prayer for the fellowship will not feel at all in the spiritual mood to do so, and will much prefer to turn over his task to another for this day. Such a shift is not advisable, however. Otherwise, the prayer of the fellowship will too easily be governed by moods which have nothing to do with spiritual life. It is precisely when a person, who is borne down by inner emptiness and weariness or a sense of personal unworthiness, feels that he would like to withdraw from his task, that he should learn what it means to have a duty to perform in the fellowship, and the brethren should support him in his weakness, in his inability to pray. Perhaps it is right here that one will realize the profound truth of Paul’s words: ‘We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’ (Rom. 8.26). Everything depends on the fellowship’s understanding and supporting and praying the brother’s prayer with him as its prayer.

The historic importance of the Khidr story is unfortunate, given another lesson that emerges from it in Islamic tradition: don’t kill children, unless you know they’re going to grow up to be unbelievers. One early Muslim, Najda, recalled, “The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) used not to kill the children, so thou shouldst not kill them unless you could know what Khadir had known about the child he killed, or you could distinguish between a child who would grow up to be a believer (and a child who would grow up to be a non-believer), so that you killed the (prospective) non-believer and left the (prospective) believer aside.”26 This interpretation may help to explain the persistent phenomenon of honor killing in Islamic countries and even among Muslims in the West, in which a Muslim kills a daughter or other relative who has “shamed” him by engaging in allegedly un-Islamic activity, such as dating a non-Muslim boy or adopting Western clothing. Muslims who take the Koran literally can find a justification in this passage for such acts by claiming his victim was turning into an unbeliever.

The Son of God dies in splendor and majesty, not in defeat and loss. The crucifixion event covers about six hours. During those six hours, the gospel writers capture a series of seven sayings of Christ from the tree of death—sometimes referred to as the Seven Last Words. The first three statements are horizontal in nature, describing Christ’s conclusion of His dealings with mankind. They are characterized by: Forgiveness: “Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing’” (Luke 23:34). Redemption: “He said to [the thief on the cross], ‘Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise’” (23:43). Compassion: “When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ From that hour the disciple took her into his own household” (John 19:26-27). * Even in the middle of His pain and anguish, Jesus took the time to perform the duty of the oldest son in caring for His mother. Having cared for those around Him,* the Savior turned His attention heavenward and to the ultimate task at hand. His final four statements engage His Father in the redemptive act that is occurring on the cross of Calvary. These statements express the spiritual aspects of Christ’s work as He progresses through these stages: Abandonment: “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” (Matthew 27:46). Readiness: “After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished, to fulfill the Scripture, said, ‘I am thirsty’” (John 19:28). Fulfillment: “Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’ And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit” (John 19:30). Release: “Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ Having said this, He breathed His last” (Luke 23:46). The charge that was placed above His head read: “this is Jesus the King of the Jews” (Matthew 27:37). Everything about His crucifixion spoke of His true majesty, not only as the King of the Jews but also as the King of kings.

Christ is not wisdom and righteousness only to His people, but sanctification also. Men sometimes try to make themselves holy first of all, and sad work they make of it. They toil and labour, and turn over new leaves, and make many changes; and yet, like the woman with the issue of blood, before she came to Christ, they feel “nothing bettered, but rather worse.” (Mark v. 26.) They run in vain, and labour in vain; and little wonder, for they are beginning at the wrong end. They are building up a wall of sand; their work runs down as fast as they throw it up. They are baling water out of a leaky vessel: the leak gains on them, not they on the leak. Other foundation of “holiness” can no man lay than that which Paul laid, even Christ Jesus. “Without Christ we can do nothing.” (John xv. 5.) It is a strong but true saying of Traill’s, “Wisdom out of Christ is damning folly—righteousness out of Christ is guilt and condemnation—sanctification out of Christ is filth and sin—redemption out of Christ is bondage and slavery.” Do you want to attain holiness? Do you feel this day a real hearty desire to be holy? Would you be a partaker of the Divine nature? Then go to Christ.

out. This was the turning point: “From this illness, my father never quite recovered.”26 Had there been any possibility of Eleanor’s experiencing the joys or even routine of childhood, that time was now passing. In August, she was sent away to Grandmother Hall’s, and at Tivoli learned that her brother Elliott Roosevelt, Jr., had been born on September 29. She wrote a letter to her father, in which she wished her parents well, offered advice to the baby’s nurse should the newborn cry, then came straight to the crucial question about any child of Anna Roosevelt’s: “How does he look? Some people tell me he looks like an elephant and some say he is like a bunny.”27 Except for one pitiable moment at Half-Way Nirvana when Eleanor identified an Angora kitten as an “Angostura,”28 those aromatic bitters that flavored her father’s liquor, she showed few signs of registering the impact of addiction on their lives. “Little Eleanor is as happy as the day is long,” Elliott convinced himself during the heavy self-medicated month following his accident: “Plays with her kitten, the puppy & the chickens all the time & is very dirty as a general rule. I am the only ‘off’ member of the family.”29

Wisdom’s Rebuke 20Out in the open wisdom calls aloud, she raises her voice in the public square; 21on top of the walld she cries out, at the city gate she makes her speech: 22“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? 23Repent at my rebuke! Then I will pour out my thoughts to you, I will make known to you my teachings. 24But since you refuse to listen when I call and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand, 25since you disregard all my advice and do not accept my rebuke, 26I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you; I will mock when calamity overtakes you— 27when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. 28“Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me, 29since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the LORD. 30Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, 31they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. 32For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; 33but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.

Wisdom’s Rebuke 20Out in the open wisdom calls aloud, she raises her voice in the public square; 21on top of the wall[4] she cries out, at the city gate she makes her speech: 22“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? 23Repent at my rebuke! Then I will pour out my thoughts to you, I will make known to you my teachings. 24But since you refuse to listen when I call and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand, 25since you disregard all my advice and do not accept my rebuke, 26I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you; I will mock when calamity overtakes you— 27when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. 28“Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me, 29since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the LORD. 30Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, 31they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. 32For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; 33but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.

Lies flee in the presence of truth. And the Devil turns powerless when our minds turn to our all-powerful God. Here’s where I become quite fascinated. Jesus had access to thousands of scriptures from the Old Testament. He knew them. He could have used any of them. But He chose three specific ones. I’ve decided I want these three to be at the top of my mind. I Want a Promise for My Problem of Feeling Empty Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deuteronomy 8:3) My soul was hand designed to be richly satisfied in deep places by the Word of God. When I go without the nourishment of truth, I will crave filling my spiritual hunger with temporary physical pleasures, thinking they will somehow treat the loneliness inside. These physical pleasures can’t fill me, but they can numb me. Numb souls are never growing souls. They wake up one day feeling so very distant from God and wondering how in the world they got there. Since Satan’s goal is to separate us from the Lord, this is exactly where he wants us to stay. But the minute we turn to His Word is the minute the gap between us and God is closed. He is always near. His Word is full and fully able to reach those deep places inside us desperate for truth. I Want a Promise for My Problem of Feeling Deprived “Fear the LORD your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name” (Deuteronomy 6:13). Another version of this verse says, “Worship Him, your True God, and serve Him.” (THE VOICE) When we worship God, we reverence Him above all else. A great question to ask: Is my attention being held by something sacred or something secret? What is holding my attention the most is what I’m truly worshipping. Sacred worship is all about God. Is my attention being held by something sacred or something secret? Secret worship is all about something in this world that seems so attractive on the outside but will devour you on the inside. Pornography, sex outside of marriage, trading your character to claw your way to a position of power, fueling your sense of worth with your child’s successes, and spending outside of your means to constantly dress your life in the next new thing—all things we do to counteract feelings of being left out of and not invited to the good things God has given others—these are just some of the ways lust sneaks in and wreaks havoc. Two words that characterize misplaced worship or lust are secret excess. God says if we will direct our worship to Him, He will give us strength to turn from the mistakes of yesterday and provide portions for our needs of today. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (PSALM 73:25–26) And I Certainly Want a Promise for My Problem of Feeling Rejected Do not put the LORD your God to the test. (Deuteronomy 6:16)

In 2012, the U.S. government estimated that 660,000 Americans were using heroin and more than 3,000 dying of it every year because Mexico was boosting the supply.22 About a quarter of all people who try heroin will become dependent on it, according to government estimates,23 and the precise appeal of methamphetamine to Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel was that it was “ragingly addictive,” according to the New York Times.24 Forbes reports that there is “little doubt” that the heroin that killed Philip Seymour Hoffman came from Mexico.25 These aren’t “big city” problems: They’re Mexico-is-on-our-border problems. Missouri had 18 heroin overdose deaths in 2001; ten years later, there were 245.26 Heroin deaths in Minnesota shot from 3 to 98 between 1999 and 2013.27 Michigan saw fatal heroin overdoses surge from a few dozen a year in 2002 to more than 100 a year starting in 2009.28 In just one year, heroin-related fatalities in Connecticut nearly doubled, to 257 in 2013.29 Between 2007 and 2012, heroin use in the United States is estimated to have increased by almost 80 percent.30 And that’s just heroin. More than 40,000 Americans were killed from all illegal drug use in 2010, surpassing car accidents and shootings as a cause of death.31 The addicts who die may be the lucky ones. In 2001, a seventeen-year-old boy in New Jersey who scored 700 on the math SAT took a heroin overdose that left him unable to stand, walk, or bathe himself. His mother, a globetrotting executive with Citibank, was forced to quit her job and become his full-time caretaker. After a year of hospitalization and more than a decade of therapy, he still needs his mother to carry him to the toilet. He has no recollection of taking an overdose, but packets of heroin and marijuana were found stored in a secret compartment in his bedroom.32

Anger itself is not a sin but what you do with it can lead to sin. “Be angry and do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26 esv). Anger can propel you to action—to correct an injustice. “He [Jesus] looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Then he said to the man, ‘Hold out your hand.’ So the man held out his hand, and it was restored!” (Mark 3:5 nlt). Anger can be learned behavior, so be careful who you choose as friends. “Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered, or you may learn their ways and get yourself ensnared” (Proverbs 22:24–25). Anger can lead to abusive language. “You must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips” (Colossians 3:8). Anger can lead to fighting. “An angry person starts fights; a hot-tempered person commits all kinds of sin” (Proverbs 29:22 nlt). God wants you to be slow to anger. “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19–20). God wants you to refrain from anger. “Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil” (Psalm 37:8). God wants you to deal with your anger quickly. “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry” (Ephesians 4:26). God wants you to free yourself from anger. “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” (Ephesians 4:31). God wants you to talk to Him about your anger. “In my distress I prayed to the Lord, and the Lord answered me and set me free” (Psalm 118:5 nlt). God wants you to be saved through faith in Christ so you do not experience His anger. “God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).

I wondered why nobody realized what a crazy experience we all were having. I'd be lying in bed, or walking down a hallway in college, and the realization that I was alive would startle me, as though it had come up from behind and slammed two books together. I suddenly realized I was breathing air and stuck to the planet and temporary. And that realization felt as though I had come from some other existence and was experiencing this magical life for the first time. If you think about it, we get robbed of the mystery of being alive. It's a fairly amazing thing, you know. Even if you believe life is an accident, that we are all here by accident, it's still an amazing thing. It might even be a more amazing thing if we are really here by accident. What are the chances, honestly? Still, I think we get robbed of the glory of it, because we don't remember how we got here. When you get born, you wake up slowly to everything. Your brain doesn't stop growing until you turn 26, you know. So from birth to 26, God is slowly turning on the lights, and you are groggy and pointing at things and saying ‘circle’ and ‘blue’ and ‘car,’ and then ‘sex’ and ‘job’ and ‘healthcare.’ The experience is so slow, you can easily come to believe life isn't that big a deal, that life isn't staggering. What I'm saying is, I think life IS staggering, and we are just too used to it. We are all of us like spoiled children, no longer impressed with the gifts we are being given. It’s just another sunset, just another rainstorm moving over the mountains, just another child being born, just another funeral. When I was writing myself into a movie, I felt the way God feels as he writes the world, sitting over the planets, placing tiny people in tiny wombs. If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me specifically into the story. And He put us in with the sunsets and the rainstorms as though to say, ‘Enjoy your place in My story. The very beauty of it means it’s not about you, and in time, that will give you comfort.

The turning-point [in Klosters, Switzerland in 1988] [Diana’s sister] Jane’s wonderfully solid. If you ring up with a drama, she says: ‘Golly, gosh, Duch, how horrible, how sad and how awful’ and gets angry. But my sister Sarah swears: ‘Poor Duch, such a shitty thing to happen.’ My father says: ‘Just remember we always love you.’ But that summer [1988] when I made so many cock-ups I sat myself down in the autumn, when I was in Scotland, and I remember saying to myself: ‘Right, Diana, it’s no good, you’ve got to change it right round, this publicity, you’ve got to grow up and be responsible. You’ve got to understand that you can’t do what other 26- and 27-year olds are doing. You’ve been chosen to do a position so you must adapt to the position and stop fighting it.’ I remember my conversation so well, sitting by water. I always sit by water when contemplating. Stephen Twigg [a therapist] who comes to see me said once: ‘Whatever anybody else thinks of you is none of your business.’ That sat with me. Then once someone said to me, when I said I’ve got to go up to Balmoral, and they said: ‘Well, you’ve got to put up with them but they’ve also got to put up with you.’ This myth about me hating Balmoral--I love Scotland but just the atmosphere drains me to nothing. I go up ‘strong Diana.’ I come away depleted of everything because they just suck me dry, because I tune in to all their moods and, boy, are there some undercurrents there! Instead of having a holiday, it’ the most stressful time of the year. I love being out all day. I love the stalking. I’m much happier now. I’m not blissful but much more content than I’ve ever been. I’ve really gone down deep, scraped the bottom a couple times and come up again and it’s very nice meeting people now and talking about tai-chi and people say: ‘Tai-chi--what do you know about tai-chi?’ and I said: ‘An energy flow,’ and all this and they look at me and they say: ‘She’s the girl who’s supposed to like shopping and clothes the whole time. She’s not supposed to know about spiritual things.

Is a Can Opener a Can Opener . . . ? As we explain in The Shaping of Things to Come,[157] one of the “trick questions” we use to get group discussion going around the idea of purpose is, “Is a can opener a can opener if it can’t open cans anymore?” This usually initiates a lively discussion around the idea of essence versus function. When the discussion turns to the application to the idea of church, it generates insight into the issue of purpose of the church. Is the church simply a church because it confesses Christ, or is there some functional test that must be applied? When answering the question, “What do you do with a can opener that doesn’t open cans anymore?” most people will say that unless it is fixable, it is not fulfilling that which it was designed for and it should be thrown away. Without getting too heavy about it, and recognizing that we do live by the grace and love of God, we must recognize that in the Hebraic worldview, fruitfulness and functionality are very important and tend to trump the concept of “essence,” which derives largely from Platonic idealism and Greek philosophy. (Idealism basically states that concepts and ideas are real in themselves and are the essence of reality, and forms are just expressions of preexisting ideas.) This is why Jesus always applies the very Hebraic test of fruitfulness to any claims of belief (e.g., Matt. 7:16–20; 12:33; 21:19; Luke 3:8; 13:6–9; John 15; Rev. 2–3). The ultimate test of faithfulness in the Scriptures is not correct intellectual belief (e.g., Matt. 25; Luke 6:46; James 2:12, 21–26) but rather an ethical-functional one—in 1 John it is whether we love or fail in love; in James it is faith with works, about how we care for widows and orphans; in the letters of Peter it is our capacity to suffer in our witness for Jesus; in Hebrews to stay true to the journey. And as politically incorrect as it is to say it, judgment regarding fruitfulness is a vital aspect of the revelation of God in the Scriptures (e.g., John 15; Rev. 2–3; as well as the many parables of judgment that lace Jesus’s teachings).

The hard part, evolutionarily, was getting from prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic ones, then getting from single-celled organisms to multicellular ones. Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, a timescale I simply cannot get my head around. Instead let’s imagine’s Earth’s history as a calendar year, with the formation of Earth being January 1 and today being December 31 at 11:59pm. The first life on Earth emerges around February 25. Photosynthetic organisms first appear in late March. Multicellular life doesn’t appear until August or September. The first dinosaurs like eoraptor show up about 230 million years ago, or December 13 in our calendar year. The meteor impact that heralds the end of the dinosaurs happens around December 26. Homo sapiens aren’t part of the story until December 31 at 11:48 pm. Agriculture and large human communities and the building of monolithic structures all occur within the last minute of this calendar year. The Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the invention of basketball, recorded music, the electric dishwasher, and vehicles that travel faster than horses all happen in the last couple of seconds. Put another way: It took Earth about three billion years to go from single-celled life to multicellular life. It took less than seventy million years to go from Tyrannosaurus rex to humans who can read and write and dig up fossils and approximate the timeline of life and worry about its ending. Unless we somehow manage to eliminate all multicellular life from the planet, Earth won’t have to start all over and it will be okay--- at least until the oceans evaporate and the planet gets consumed by the sun. I know the world will survive us – and in some ways it will be more alive. More birdsong. More creatures roaming around. More plants cracking through our pavement, rewilding the planet we terraformed. I imagine coyotes sleeping in the ruins of the homes we built. I imagine our plastic still washing up on beaches hundreds of years after the last of us is gone. I imagine moths, having no artificial lights toward which to fly, turning back to the moon.

My son, hear thy father’s instruction, and forsake not thy mother’s teaching. 9 For they shall be a comely ornament unto thine head, and as chains for thy neck. 10 My son, if sinners do entice thee, consent thou not. 11 If they say, Come with us, we will lay wait for blood, and lie privily for the innocent without a cause: 12 We will swallow them up alive like a grave even whole, as those that go down into the pit: 13 We shall find all precious riches, and fill our houses with spoil: 14 Cast in thy lot among us: we will all have one purse: 15 My son, walk not thou in the way with them: refrain thy foot from their path. 16 For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. 17 Certainly as without cause the net is spread before the eyes of all that hath wing: 18 So they lay wait for blood and lie privily for their lives. 19 Such are the ways of everyone that is greedy of gain: he would take away the life of the owners thereof. 20 Wisdom crieth without: she uttereth her voice in the streets. 21 She calleth in the high street, among the prease in the enterings of the gates, and uttereth her words in the city, saying, 22 O ye foolish, how long will ye love foolishness? and the scornful take their pleasure in scorning, and the fools hate knowledge? 23 (Turn you at my correction: lo, I will pour out my mind unto you, and make you understand my words) 24 Because I have called, and ye refused: I have stretched out mine hand, and none would regard. 25 But ye have despised all my counsel, and would none of my correction. 26 I will also laugh at your destruction, and mock, when your fear cometh. 27 When your fear cometh like sudden desolation, and your destruction shall come like a whirlwind: when affliction and anguish shall come upon you, 28 Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer: they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me, 29 Because they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord. 30 They would none of my counsel, but despised all my correction. 31 Therefore shall they eat of ye fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. 32 For ease slayeth the foolish, and the prosperity of fools destroyeth them. 33 But he that obeyeth me, shall dwell safely, and be quiet from fear of evil.

With the introduction of radio, we now had a superfast. convenient, and wireless way of communicating over long distances. Historically, the lack of a fast and reliable communication system was one of the great obstacles to the march of history. (In 490 BCE, after the Battle of Marathon between the Greeks and the Persians, a poor runner was ordered to spread the news of the Greek victory as fast as he could. Bravely, he ran 26 miles to Athens after previously running 147 miles to Sparta, and then, according to legend, dropped dead of sheer exhaustion. His heroism, in the age before telecommunication, is now celebrated in the modern marathon.) Today, we take for granted that we can send messages and information effortlessly across the globe, utilizing the fact that energy can be transformed in many ways. For example, when speaking on a cell phone, the energy of the sound of your voice converts to mechanical energy in a vibrating diaphragm. The diaphragm is attached to a magnet that relies on the interchangeability of electricity and magnetism to create an electrical impulse, the kind that can be transported and read by a computer. This electrical impulse is then translated into electromagnetic waves that are picked up by a nearby microwave tower. There, the message is amplified and sent across the globe. But Maxwell's equations not only gave us nearly instantaneous communication via radio, cell phone, and fiber-optic cables, they also opened up the entire electromagnetic spectrum, of which visible light and radio were just two members. In the 166os, Newton had shown that white light, when sent through a prism, can be broken up into the colors of the rainbow. In 1800, William Herschel had asked himself a simple question: What lies beyond the colors of the rainbow, which extend from red to violet? He took a prism, which created a rainbow in his lab, and placed a thermometer below the color red, where there was no color at all. Much to his surprise, the temperature of this blank area began to rise. In other words, there was a "color" below red that was invisible to the naked eye but contained energy. It was called infrared light. Today, we realize that there is an entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, most of which is invisible, and each has a distinct wavelength. The wavelength of radio and TV, for example, is longer than that of visible light. The wavelength of the colors of the rainbow, in turn, is longer than that of ultraviolet and X-rays. This also meant that the reality we see all around us is only the tiniest sliver of the complete EM spectrum, the smallest approximation of a much larger universe

Thirty-Nine Ways to Lower Your Cortisol 1 Meditate. 2 Do yoga. 3 Stretch. 4 Practice tai chi. 5 Take a Pilates class. 6 Go for a labyrinth walk. 7 Get a massage. 8 Garden (lightly). 9 Dance to soothing, positive music. 10 Take up a hobby that is quiet and rewarding. 11 Color for pleasure. 12 Spend five minutes focusing on your breathing. 13 Follow a consistent sleep schedule. 14 Listen to relaxing music. 15 Spend time laughing and having fun with someone. (No food or drink involved.) 16 Interact with a pet. (It also lowers their cortisol level.) 17 Learn to recognize stressful thinking and begin to: Train yourself to be aware of your thoughts, breathing, heart rate, and other signs of tension to recognize stress when it begins. Focus on being aware of your mental and physical states, so that you can become an objective observer of your stressful thoughts instead of a victim of them. Recognize stressful thoughts so that you can formulate a conscious and deliberate reaction to them. A study of forty-three women in a mindfulness-based program showed that the ability to describe and articulate stress was linked to a lower cortisol response.28 18 Develop faith and participate in prayer. 19 Perform acts of kindness. 20 Forgive someone. Even (or especially?) yourself. 21 Practice mindfulness, especially when you eat. 22 Drink black and green tea. 23 Eat probiotic and prebiotic foods. Probiotics are friendly, symbiotic bacteria in foods such as yogurt, sauerkraut, and kimchi. Prebiotics, such as soluble fiber, provide food for these bacteria. (Be sure they are sugar-free!) 24 Take fish or krill oil. 25 Make a gratitude list. 26 Take magnesium. 27 Try ashwagandha, an Asian herbal supplement used in traditional medicine to treat anxiety and help people adapt to stress. 28 Get bright sunlight or exposure to a lightbox within an hour of waking up (great for fighting seasonal affective disorder as well). 29 Avoid blue light at night by wearing orange or amber glasses if using electronics after dark. (Some sunglasses work.) Use lamps with orange bulbs (such as salt lamps) in each room, instead of turning on bright overhead lights, after dark. 30 Maintain healthy relationships. 31 Let go of guilt. 32 Drink water! Stay hydrated! Dehydration increases cortisol. 33 Try emotional freedom technique, a tapping strategy meant to reduce stress and activate the parasympathetic nervous system (our rest-and-digest system). 34 Have an acupuncture treatment. 35 Go forest bathing (shinrin-yoku): visit a forest and breathe its air. 36 Listen to binaural beats. 37 Use a grounding mat, or go out into the garden barefoot. 38 Sit in a rocking chair; the soothing motion is similar to the movement in utero. 39 To make your cortisol fluctuate (which is what you want it to do), end your shower or bath with a minute (or three) under cold water.

God has not given us the spirit of fear. He has given us the spirit of Love and a competent mind. Love conquers fear, because Love has Power, that creates a competent mind, that allows a person to make rational decisions and use righteous judgment to resolve or solve problems. Through this God-given process, we are able to endure and persevere in times of hardships, and when facing a crisis. When our spirit is broken by hate, and heavy loads are placed upon us, we turn to God for strength in our storms of life. And we seek his Love to restore us to wholeness. He restores us with Hope. From within him we receive Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance as it is noted in Galatians 5:22. Because of God's Love for us, we are able to have the patience to wait for his Power to restore us so that we are in control of our mind to over-power fear and to lead a successful life to meet our goals and create a greater opportunity filled with his blessings. He has created us to be a victorious people. Therefore, we are able to create far greater opportunities through Love. God gives power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increases strength. (Isaiah 40:29) When we are broken by the storms of life, God's Love restore us. We bow before him, in a humble spirit at his throne of grace, and ask in prayer for mercy and renewed strength. It is here that we find the needed strength to forgive those who have wronged us and the Power to Love. Those who wait upon the Lord, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31) Fear is powerless. It torments the mind and paralyzes the thought process. It causes panic. Thereby, leaving the person, feeling a sense of hopelessness and unwilling to trust others. It closes possibilities to allow for change. The prophet Isaiah noted; Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. (Isaiah 40:30) And when Jesus disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, "It is a spirit," and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I, be not afraid. (Matthew 14:26, 27) Fear is a person's worst enemy; it causes panic, that results in making irrational decisions. Such behavior is based on poor judgment, that was made due to a lack of patience, to make an adequate investigation of the situation before proceeding. The outcome will create serious problems that can cause serious harm. LOVE is the chain that binds us together. Do not allow hate to separate us. There is One God One family One faith One world We are not defined by belief or by faith nor religion. We are the family of God. Written by: Ellen J. Barrier Source of Scriptures: King James Version Bible

In Vietnam, lying became so much part of the system that sometimes not lying seemed immoral...The teenage adrenaline-drained patrol leader has to call in the score so analysts, newspaper reporters, and politicians back in Washington have something to do. Never mind that Smithers and his squad may have stopped a developing attack planned to hit the company that night, saving scores of lives and maintaining control over a piece of ground. All they'll be judged on, and all their superiors have to be judged on, is the kill ratio. Smithers's best friend has just been killed. Two other friends are missing pieces of their bodies and are going into shock. No one in the squad knows if the enemy is 15 meters away waiting to open up again or running. Smithers is tired and has a lot of other things on his mind. With scorekeepers often 25 kilometers away, no one is going to check on the score. In short, Smithers has a great incentive to lie. He also has a great need to lie. His best friend is dead. "Why?" he asks himself. This is where the lying in Vietnam all began. It had to fill the long silence following Smithers's anguished "Why?" So it starts. "Nelson, how many did you get?" Smithers asks. PFC Nelson looks up from crying over the body of his friend Katz and says, "How the fuck do I know?" His friend Smithers says, "Well, did you get that bastard that came around the dogleg after Katz threw the Mike-26?" Nelson looks down at Katz's face, hardening and turning yellow like tallow. "You're goddamn right I got him," he almost whispers. It's all he can offer his dead friend. "There's no body." "They drug the fucker away. I tell you I got him!" Nelson is no longer whispering. … The patrol leader doesn't have a body, but what are the odds that he's going to call his friend a liar or, even more difficult, make Katz's death meaningless, given that the only meaning now lies in this one statistic? No one is congratulating him for exposing the enemy, keeping them screened from the main body, which is the purpose of security patrols. He calls in one confirmed kill. ... Just then PFC Schroeder comes crawling over with Kool-Aid stains all around his mouth and says, "I think I got one, right by the dogleg of the trail after Katz threw the grenade." "Yeah, we called that one in." "No, it ain't the one Nelson got. I tell you I got another one." Smithers thinks it was the same one but he's not about to have PFC Schroeder feeling bad, particularly after they've all seen their squad mate die. … the last thing on Smithers's mind is the integrity of meaningless numbers. The message gets relayed to the battalion commander. He's just taken two wounded and one dead. All he has to report is one confirmed, one probable. This won't look good. Bad ratio. He knows all sorts of bullets were flying all over the place. It was a point-to-point contact, so no ambush, so the stinkin' thinking' goes round and round, so the probable had to be a kill. But really if we got two confirmed kills, there was probably a probable. I mean, what's the definition of probable if it isn't probable to get one? What the hell, two kills, two probables. Our side is now ahead. Victory is just around the corner. … [then the artillery has to claim their own additional kills…] By the time all this shit piles up at the briefing in Saigon, we've won the war.

The ‘teaching’ that the disciples are to do reproduces what Jesus himself has done with them. He has been their ‘teacher’ (cf. Matt 12:38; 19:16; 22:16, 24, 36; 26:18), and as Jesus has taught them they have grown in knowledge and understanding. The disciples are now, in turn, to make new disciples by teaching them to obey everything commanded by their Master. This ‘making-disciples-by-teaching’ corresponds to preaching the gospel in the parallel mission mandate in Luke, where Jesus says “repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:47).

We see such a refreshing mind-set in young David. Do you remember the times when David refused to harm Saul? In 1 Samuel 24 and 26, David had already been anointed as the rightful king of Israel, and King Saul by this point was a murderous, power-hungry lunatic. David had two perfect opportunities to remove Saul from power and claim the throne he had been promised, yet he refused to take matters into his own hands: “The LORD forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the LORD’s anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the LORD’s anointed” (24:6). Why does this attitude seem so foreign? Saul was a terrible leader who had actively turned against God, but David somehow had a holy fear of harming those God had placed in authority. Nowadays, if a leader makes a mistake, no matter how small or innocent, we are quick to criticize and move on. Forgiveness is rare and almost nonexistent toward ministers. We flippantly use the strongest language to rant against leadership. I’m not arguing in favor of abusive leaders, nor am I saying that every leader has God’s blessing. All I’m asking is that we show some humility and respect, even to those who don’t deserve it. Let’s be people of grace.

The universe is a self-playing game. We are the players. The universe is a self-solving equation. We are the active nodes of that equation. We breathe fire into the equations and animate and propel them. The universe is a self-optimising mathematical system. It’s the ultimate alchemical experiment. It turns bare, unclear monads (base metal; potential) into full, clear monads (gold; actuality). The universe exists to transform souls into Gods. The universe is an evolving divinity – a God factory – a dialectical system for producing mathematical perfection.

XIV [Every day you play with the light of the universe.]” Every day you play with the light of the universe. Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water. You are more than this white head that I hold tightly as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands. You are like nobody since I love you. Let me spread you out among yellow garlands. Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south? Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed. Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window. The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish. Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them. The rain takes off her clothes. The birds go by, fleeing. The wind. The wind. I can contend only against the power of men. The storm whirls dark leaves and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky. You are here. Oh, you do not run away. You will answer me to the last cry. Cling to me as though you were frightened. Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes. Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle, and even your breasts smell of it. While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth. How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me, my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running. So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes, and over our heads the gray light unwind in turning fans. My words rained over you, stroking you. A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body. I go so far as to think that you own the universe. I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells, dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Trans. W.S. Merwin (Penguin Classics; Bilingual edition, December 26, 2006)

The evidence that sleep is important is irrefutable. Some strategies you might use in your consultant role include: Often when the advice comes from a third, nonparental party, kids are more willing to take it seriously. With a school-aged child, tell her that you want to get her pediatrician’s advice about sleep—or the advice of another adult the child respects. If you have a teenager, ask her if she would be open to your sharing articles about sleep with her. With school-aged kids and younger, you can enforce an agreed-upon lights-out time. Remind them that as a responsible parent, it’s right for you to enforce limits on bedtime and technology use in the evening (more on this later). Because technology and peer pressure can make it very difficult for teens to go to bed early, say, “I know this is hard for you. I’m not trying to control you. But if you’d like to get to bed earlier and need help doing it, I’m happy to give you an incentive.” An incentive is okay in this case because you’re not offering it as a means to get her to do what you want her to do, but to help her do what she wants to do on her own but finds challenging. It’s a subtle but important distinction.26 For older kids, make privileges like driving contingent on getting enough sleep—since driving while sleep deprived is so dangerous. How to chart their sleep is more complicated. Reliable tools for assessing when a child falls asleep and how long he stays asleep, such as the actigraph, require extensive training and are not something parents can use at home to track their kids’ sleep. Moreover, Fitbits are unfortunately unreliable in gathering data. But you can ask your child to keep a sleep log where she records what time she turned out the lights, and (in the morning) how long she thinks it took her to fall asleep, and whether she was up during the night. She may not know how long it took her to fall asleep; that’s okay. Just ask, “Was it easier to fall asleep than last night or harder?” Helping kids figure out if they’ve gotten enough rest is a process, and trust, communication, and collaborative problem solving are key to that process. Encourage your child to do screen-time homework earlier and save reading homework for later so she gets less late light exposure. Ask questions such as “If you knew you’d be better at everything you do if you slept an extra hour and a half, would that change your sense of how important sleep is?” And “If you knew you’d be at risk for developing depression if you didn’t sleep enough, would that change your mind?” Talk to her about your own attempts to get to bed earlier. Ask, “Would you be open to us supporting each other in getting the sleep we need? I’ll remind you and you remind me?

THE ARIZONA WAS scheduled to return to Bremerton, Washington, in late November for an overhaul in their shipyard. We were all looking forward to it. It meant we would get to spend December in the States, celebrate Christmas there, maybe even be given leave to go home. In October, though, those plans abruptly changed. We were on maneuvers from October 18 to 26, and the weather was foggy and rainy almost the entire time. The schedule had been stepped up during that month. None of the officers told us why. We wondered what they knew that we didn’t. Of course, we didn’t ask. They added zigzag maneuvers—timed turns made in unison with other ships—to the normal routine of target practice. They were evasive moves to be used if submarines were in the area or whenever she was in range of an enemy’s big guns.

generally with seven hours being the point where weight gain starts. Sleeping five to six hours was associated with a more than 50 percent increased risk of weight gain.26 The more sleep deprivation, the more weight gained. MECHANISMS SLEEP DEPRIVATION IS a potent psychological stressor and thus stimulates cortisol. This, in turn, results in both high insulin levels and insulin resistance. A single night of sleep deprivation increases cortisol levels by more than 100 percent.27 By the

The Origins of Suffering, according to the Judeo-Christian Tradition The Bible is very clear about the original source of human suffering. In the Genesis story, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness’ ” (Gen. 1:26 [New International Version]), and Adam and Eve were placed in an idyllic garden. The first humans were innocent and happy: “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Gen. 2:25). They are given only one command: “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17). The serpent tells Eve that she will not die if she eats from that tree, but rather that “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:5). The serpent turns out to be correct, to a degree, because when the fruit is eaten, “The eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked” (Gen. 3:7).

Contrary to the headmistress’s instructions, Miss Susan did not let the children do what they liked. She let them do what she liked. It had turned out to be a lot more interesting for everyone.

my glass as I spoke. “I can’t go into details, but Francis Allard is dead.” Monica Toups gasped out loud and almost dropped her glass. “He’s dead? But I just spoke with him last week. It…but what happened?” “Like I said, I can’t get into it, but I do need to ask you about a girl’s graduation ring he might’ve had in his possession.” “Oh, yeah, that was Sarah’s ring. He wouldn’t tell me how he came to have it, but he said it was in Derrick Landry’s possession.” “Did you find that suspicious?” “No, I knew about it.” She excused herself and went inside the house. When she returned, she was holding a boy’s graduation ring. She handed it to me. “This was Derrick’s graduation ring. He had Sarah’s ring and she had his. I didn’t find out about it until after we lost her. I’ve been tempted to approach him and get the ring back, but I don’t trust myself around him. If I wouldn’t hit him, I’d definitely spit in his face, because deep down in my heart, I know he’s responsible for what happened to Sarah.” I mulled over what I had learned. A possibility was starting to emerge. “Do you think she went out on the lake with Derrick?” “That’s what Phil thinks.” She frowned. “I’m just not sure how Derrick’s involved, but I know he is.” “What does Phil think?” “He thinks Derrick picked Sarah up at the front of the street and they went to the lake. He thinks they were in a boating accident and Derrick left Sarah to drown. He believes Derrick’s dad was called and they cleaned up the debris before the police could get to the lake and investigate.” “Why would he make such an effort to cover up an accident?” “Because he would go to jail for statutory rape, that’s why, and it would ruin any chances of him getting a football scholarship.” She grunted. “He used to walk around bragging that he would be the next Cajun Cannon and that he would play for the Saints someday.” “I’m guessing that didn’t happen.” “No, he ended up running his dad’s store. He never did go to college, and I’ve often wondered if the guilt was too much for him to bear.” I still didn’t have any evidence on Derrick Landry, and I knew Monica Toups didn’t have any answers, so I wrapped up my visit with her. “Will you please find out what happened to my daughter?” “I’ll do my best, ma’am,” I said, wondering if I should be making such a promise. After all, Francis Allard made a similar promise, and look what happened to him. CHAPTER 26 While it had started out nice and cool, the day had quickly turned hot. Despite the canopy over the boat, Susan was dripping sweat. She glanced over at Melvin. He was also swimming in his clothes. “I’m seeing shell casings behind every clump of mud,” Melvin mumbled as he turned away from the monitor on the endoscope and rubbed his tired eyes. “I think we’ve found all there is to find.” Susan was thoughtful. They had located a total of twenty-four casings and Clint and Amy had located one, so there were still

Look, I’m not joking around. Smartphones are dangerous. Not because they may cause stress, anxiety, and even depression, but because they change your behavior. It seems like we can’t focus on one thing for more than 5 seconds. Why? Well, we can’t because our smartphone is constantly going off. Not because people are calling you (it seems like people are afraid of calling these days, but that’s another topic), but because you’re constantly getting notifications about THINGS THAT DON’T MATTER. Change Your Smartphone Behavior The same study I mentioned above also found something else: “Researchers asked participants to perform a concentration test under four different circumstances: with their smartphone in their pocket, at their desk, locked in a drawer and removed from the room completely.” The results are significant — test results were lowest when the smartphone was on the desk, but with every additional layer of distance between participants and their smartphones, test performance increased. Overall, test results were 26% higher when phones were removed from the room.” Sure, it’s just a study. And you don’t have to believe everything you read. But this is something I can personally attest. For the past two years, I’ve significantly changed my smartphone behavior. Namely: I have turned off ALL my notifications except messages and calls I’ve removed myself from all Whatsapp groups except for one with my closest friends I’ve removed all news apps (if something important happens, you’ll hear it from the people around you) I only consume music, paid journalism, articles from specific authors I follow, podcasts, YouTube videos (mostly to learn, but also for entertainment because I’m not a robot), books, and audiobooks on it For the rest, I use my phone to call, text, and to take notes, photos and videos Also, I’ve stopped immediately responding to notifications. That doesn’t mean I don’t value other people who try to reach me. It means that I refuse to be a slave to my phone. I control my phone. For most of us, it’s the other way around. In the past, Facebook, Instagram, Apple, Google, etc, all controlled my mind. Obviously, they still do because the only way to escape those idiots is to cut yourself off and run to the woods. That’s not realistic. I like my phone. But I don’t need it. The results have been great since I started using my smartphone in the above way. During the past two years, I got more things done than ever. And, I still have time to work out daily, hang out with my friends, have dinner with my family, and

Dr. Stamler said as much about the Mediterranean diet on the occasion of his hundredth birthday.2483 The centenarian remained committed to his pioneering research2484 even after turning one hundred. We lost him on January 26, 2022, at the age of 102.2485

In Psalm 30:5, King David declared, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” In Psalm 30:11, David proclaimed, “You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.” In Psalm 16:11, David said, “You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” In Nehemiah 8:10, Nehemiah stated, “Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” In Philippians 4:4, the Apostle Paul proclaimed, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.” PEACE: When the enemy attacks you with anxiety and worry, reply to him by citing the following scriptures. In Psalm 29:11, David declared, “The Lord will give strength to His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.” In Isaiah 26:3, the Prophet Isaiah said, “You (God) will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because He trusts in You.” In John 16:33, Jesus stated, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” In John 14:27, Jesus proclaimed, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, give I onto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” In Ephesians 2:14, Paul declared, “For He Himself (Jesus) is our peace.” In Philippians 4:6-7, Paul said, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Three American business school professors decided to find out. In a first-of-its-kind study, they analyzed more than 26,000 earnings calls from more than 2,100 public companies over six and a half years using linguistic algorithms similar to the ones employed in the Twitter study. They examined whether the time of day influenced the emotional tenor of these critical conversations—and, as a consequence, perhaps even the price of the company’s stock. Calls held first thing in the morning turned out to be reasonably upbeat and positive. But as the day progressed, the “tone grew more negative and less resolute.” Around lunchtime, mood rebounded slightly, probably because call participants recharged their mental and emotional batteries, the professors conjectured. But in the afternoon, negativity deepened again, with mood recovering only after the market’s closing bell. Moreover, this pattern held “even after controlling for factors such as industry norms, financial distress, growth opportunities, and the news that companies were reporting.”8 In other words, even when the researchers factored in economic news (a slowdown in China that hindered a company’s exports) or firm fundamentals (a company that reported abysmal quarterly earnings), afternoon calls “were more negative, irritable, and combative” than morning calls.9 Perhaps more important, especially for investors, the time of the call and the subsequent mood it engendered influenced companies’ stock prices. Shares declined in response to negative tone—again, even after adjusting for actual good news or bad news—“leading to temporary stock mispricing for firms hosting earnings calls later in the day.” While the share prices eventually righted themselves, these results are remarkable. As the researchers note, “call participants represent the near embodiment of the idealized homo economicus.” Both the analysts and the executives know the stakes. It’s not merely the people on the call who are listening. It’s the entire market. The wrong word, a clumsy answer, or an unconvincing response can send a stock’s price spiraling downward, imperiling the company’s prospects and the executives’ paychecks. These hardheaded businesspeople have every incentive to act rationally, and I’m sure they believe they do. But economic rationality is no match for a biological clock forged during a few million years of evolution. Even “sophisticated economic agents acting in real and highly incentivized settings are influenced by diurnal rhythms in the performance of their professional duties.

He had never been in conflict with his own desire before this place. It used to be so easy. Want and have. See and take. Run and chase. Thirst and slake. Now everything was complicated. So much of what he longed for he could not pursue, and every day he felt more turned from his own true….

Those who remain alone with their evil are left utterly alone. It is possible that Christians may remain lonely in spite of daily worship together, prayer together, and all their community through service. We are not allowed to be sinners. Many Christians would be unimaginably horrified if a real sinner were suddenly to turn up among the pious. So we remain alone with our sin, trapped in lies and hypocrisy... However, the grace of the gospel, which is so hard for the pious to comprehend, confronts us with the truth. It says to us, you are a sinner, a great, unholy sinner. Now come, as the sinner that you are, to your God who loves you. For God wants you as you are, not desiring anything from you-a sacrifice, a good deed- but rather desiring you alone. "My child, give me your heart" (Prov. 23:26). God has come to you to make the sinner blessed. Rejoice! This message is liberation through truth. It is not experience with life but experience of the cross that makes one suited to hear confession. The most experienced judge of character knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the cross of Jesus.

Enthusiasm is bad. Calm and resolution constitute the strength of virtue. “That is the state of health in moral life, whereas the affect, even when it is excited by the idea of the good, is a momentarily lustrous phenomenon which leaves behind lassitude.”25 Juliette’s friend Clairwil makes exactly the same observation with regard to vice.26 “My soul is hardened, and I am far from preferring sensibility to the happy indifference I now enjoy. Oh Juliette . . . perhaps you are deceiving yourself about the dangerous sensibility prized by so many fools.” Apathy arises at the turning points in bourgeois history, as in the history of antiquity, when the pauci beati become aware of their powerlessness in face of the overwhelming historical tendency. It marks the retreat of the individual’s spontaneity into the private sphere, which is thus established as the truly bourgeois form of existence. Stoicism—which is the bourgeois philosophy—makes it easier for the privileged to look what threatens them in the eye by dwelling on the suffering of others. It affirms the general by elevating private existence, as protection from it, to the status of a principle. The private sphere of the bourgeois* is an upper-class cultural asset which has come down in the world.

The great breakthrough that permitted man to count far beyond 10 with just ten different symbols was the invention of this turning point—a concept that mathematicians call positional notation. Positional notation means that each digit in a number has a particular value based on its position. In a decimal number, the first (farthest right) digit represents 1’s, the next digit 10’s, the next 100’s, and so on. The number 206 stands for six 1’s, no 10’s, and two 100’s: Add it all up: and you get 206. This number, incidentally, demonstrates why mathematicians consider the invention of a symbol that represents nothing (i.e., the number 0) to have been a revolutionary event in man’s intellectual history. Without zero, there would be no positional notation, because there would be no difference between 26 and 206 and 2,000,006. The Romans, for all their other achievements, never hit on the idea of zero and thus were stuck with a cumbersome system of M’s, C’s, X’s, and I’s which made higher math just about impossible. With

A sudden motion pushed them away from the wall, and then he thought he heard Casati’s oar slide into the water, and they were off. All he heard after that was the soft rubbing of the oar in the curve of the fórcola, the hiss of water along the sides of the boat, and the occasional squeak of one of Casati’s shoes as his weight shifted forwards or backwards. Brunetti gave himself to motion, glad of the passing breeze that tempered the savagery of the heat. He hadn’t thought to bring a hat, and he had scoffed at Paola’s insistence that he bring sunscreen. Real men? Brunetti had rowed since he was a boy, but he knew he had little to contribute to the smoothness of this passage. There was not the slightest suggestion of stop and go, of a point where the thrust of the oar changed force: it was a single forward motion, like a bird soaring on rising draughts of air, or a pair of skis descending a slope. It was a whish or a shuuh, as hard to describe as to hear, even in the midst of the silence of the laguna. Brunetti turned his head to one side, then to the other, but there was only the soft, low hiss. He wanted to turn and look at Casati, as though by watching him row, he might store the motions away and copy them later, but he didn’t want to shift his weight and thus change the balance of the boat, however minimally.

THE TWENTY WHITE GIRL NAMES THAT BEST SIGNIFY HIGH-EDUCATION PARENTS* (YEARS OF MOTHER’S EDUCATION IN PARENTHESES) Lucienne Marie-Claire Glynnis Adair Meira Beatrix Clementine Philippa Aviva Flannery Rotem Oona Atara Linden Waverly Zofia Pascale Eleanora Elika Neeka (16.60) (16.50) (16.40) (16.36) (16.27) (16.26) (16.23) (16.21) (16.18) (16.10) (16.08) (16.00) (16.00) (15.94) (15.93) (15.88) (15.82) (15.80) (15.80) (15.77) Now for the boys’ names that are turning up these days in high-education households.

The Triumph of Goodness" If only the reality was like cartoons like teenager books and stories or like the countless movies and soap operas produced specially for the naïve in which goodness triumphs at the end… Anyone who follows the reality of the world closely and deeply, shall find that the triumph of goodness is nothing but a myth a trick created by the evildoers themselves to trick us into thinking that goodness, honesty, and virtues win in the end… The world turns upside down when we discover that all these good and well-selected virtues are nothing but myths fabricated by the vicious and the evil ones to permanently maintain their control over the naïve who believe that goodness triumphs just like at the end of movies… [Original poem published in Arabic on February 26, 2024 at ahewar.org]

Do not judge others. (Matthew 7:1) Love your enemies. (Luke 6:35) Wives, submit to your husband. (Colossians 3:18, Ephesians 5:22) Husbands love your wives. (Ephesians 5:25) Don’t exasperate your children. (Ephesians 6:4) Visit prisoners, care for the sick, clothe the needy. (Matthew 25:36) Practice hospitality. (Romans 12:13) Reconcile others to God. (II Corinthians 5:17-22) Restore sinners gently. (Galatians 6:1) Don’t go to bed angry. (Ephesians 4:26) Forgive seventy times seven. (Luke 18:22) Love your neighbor as yourself. (Luke 10:27) Be patient. (I Corinthians 13; I Thessalonians 5:14) Never tire of doing right. (Galatians 6:9) Endure hardship. (II Timothy 2:3; 4:5) Be self-controlled. (I Thessalonians 5:6) Give thanks in all circumstances. (I Thessalonians 5:18) Be joyful always. (I Thessalonians 5:16) Don’t worry about anything; pray about everything. (Philippians 4:8) Be content in all things. (Philippians 4:12) Avoid even the hint of sexual immorality. (Ephesians 5:3) Hate evil. (Romans 12:9) Do not repay evil with evil. (Romans 12:17) Don’t put your hope in wealth. (I Timothy 6:17) Turn away from godless chatter. (I Timothy 6:20, II Timothy 2:16) Do not be ashamed to testify about your Lord. (Romans 1:16, I Timothy 1:12) Live a life worthy of your calling. (II Thessalonians 1:11; Ephesians. 4:1) Devote yourselves to prayer. (Colossians 4:2) Rejoice with those who rejoice. (Romans 12:15) Mourn with those who mourn. (Romans 12:15) Do not lie. (Colossians 3:9)

All of this told of harm done, of a drug that made a child depressed, lonely, and filled with a sense of inadequacy, and when researchers looked at whether Ritalin at least helped hyperactive children fare well academically, to get good grades and thus succeed as students, they found that it wasn’t so. Being able to focus intently on a math test, it turned out, didn’t translate into long-term academic achievement. This drug, Sroufe explained in 1973, enhances performance on “repetitive, routinized tasks that require sustained attention,” but “reasoning, problem solving and learning do not seem to be [positively] affected.”26 Five years later, Herbert Rie was much more negative. He reported that Ritalin did not produce any benefit on the students’ “vocabulary, reading, spelling, or math,” and hindered their ability to solve problems. “The reactions of the children strongly suggest a reduction in commitment of the sort that would seem critical for learning.”27 That same year, Russell Barkley at the Medical College of Wisconsin reviewed the relevant scientific literature and concluded “the major effect of stimulants appears to be an improvement in classroom manageability rather than academic performance.”28 Next it was James Swanson’s turn to weigh in. The fact that the drugs often left children “isolated, withdrawn and overfocused” could “impair rather than improve learning,” he said.29 Carol Whalen, a psychologist from the University of California at Irvine, noted in 1997 that “especially worrisome has been the suggestion that the unsalutary effects [of Ritalin] occur in the realm of complex, high-order cognitive functions such as flexible problem-solving or divergent thinking.”30 Finally, in 2002, Canadian investigators conducted a meta-analysis of the literature, reviewing fourteen studies involving 1,379 youths that had lasted at least three months, and they determined that there was “little evidence for improved academic performance.”31

Wild Love Ride September 21, 2024 at 8:26 AM Verse 1: I saw you standing by the old oak tree, With a smile that could set my heart free. But then you turned and walked away, Left me wondering what to say. Chorus: I love you, I hate you, I like you, I hate you, I love you, This rollercoaster ride, I can’t see through. One minute we’re dancing in the moonlight, The next we’re fighting till the break of daylight. Verse 2: We share a bottle of whiskey, under the stars, Talking 'bout dreams and old battle scars. But then the silence cuts like a knife, In this crazy game of love and strife. Chorus: I love you, I hate you, I like you, I hate you, I love you, This rollercoaster ride, I can’t see through. One minute we’re dancing in the moonlight, The next we’re fighting till the break of daylight. Bridge: Maybe it’s the way we are, wild and free, Two old souls in a tangled melody. But no matter how hard we fight, I can’t let go, it just feels right. Chorus: I love you, I hate you, I like you, I hate you, I love you, This rollercoaster ride, I can’t see through. One minute we’re dancing in the moonlight, The next we’re fighting till the break of daylight. Outro: So here’s to us, in this crazy ride, With love and hate standing side by side. I love you, I hate you, I like you, I hate you, I love you, In this wild, wild love, we’ll see it through.

[A former croft worker] hated the industrial system and had found liberation by operating a market garden on the edge of the moors where he had the use of a powerful telescope erected on his land. Indoors he gave magic-lantern shows of the heavens and their constellations, and on clear evenings at the dark of the year we were invited to view the rings around Saturn, the beauty of the Milky Way or the craters and valleys of the Moon. After carefully sighting the objects he turned to us solemnly, “Sithee, lasses, isn’t that a marvelous seet; a stupendous universe, yet we fritter our lives away i’ wars and petty spites!” As youngsters we gazed, inclined to giggle; then came a moment of silent awe as awareness of “night clad in the beauty of a thousand inauspicious stars—the vast of night and its void”—seeped into consciousness.26

It would take far longer than ten minutes—and more than a gratuitous slap at Captain Smith—to get the Californian off the hook. On the afternoon of April 26, the Senate Committee heard in turn Gill, Lord, and Evans…and ultimately rejected the Captain’s version of events. Putting all the evidence together, the Committee found that the Californian was less than 19 miles away, saw the Titanic’s rockets, and “failed to respond to them in accordance with the dictates of humanity, international usage, and the requirements of law.

We turned the pages. It was an amazing production. Interesting, I should imagine, to a psychologist. It set out, with such terrible clarity, the fury of thwarted egoism.

The leader’s mood is quite literally contagious, spreading quickly and inexorably throughout the business…. The same holds true in the office, boardroom, or shop floor; group members inevitably “catch” feelings from one another.”26 When you step up to leadership, whether you like it or not, there’s no option to turn off the broadcast feature on whatever you’re feeling.

26. In intimate relationships is your inability to linger over conversations an impediment? 27. Are you always on the go, even when you don’t really want to be? 28. More than most people, do you hate waiting in line? 29. Are you constitutionally incapable of reading the directions first? 30. Do you have a hair-trigger temper? 31. Are you constantly having to sit on yourself to keep from blurting out the wrong thing? 32. Do you like to gamble? 33. Do you feel like exploding inside when someone has trouble getting to the point? 34. Were you hyperactive as a child? 35. Are you drawn to situations of high intensity? 36. Do you often try to do the hard things rather than what comes easily to you? 37. Are you particularly intuitive? 38. Do you often find yourself involved in a situation without having planned it at all? 39. Would you rather have your teeth drilled by a dentist than make or follow a list? 40. Do you chronically resolve to organize your life better only to find that you’re always on the brink of chaos? 41. Do you often find that you have an itch you cannot scratch, an appetite for something “more” and you’re not sure what it is? 42. Would you describe yourself as hypersexual? 43. One man who turned out to have adult ADD presented with this unusual triad of symptoms: cocaine abuse, frequent reading of pornography, and an addiction to crossword puzzles. Can you understand him, even if you do not have those symptoms? 44. Would you consider yourself an addictive personality? 45. Are you more flirtatious than you really mean to be? 46. Did you grow up in a chaotic, boundaryless family? 47. Do you find it hard to be alone? 48. Do you often counter depressive moods by some sort of potentially harmful compulsive behavior such as overworking, overspending, overdrinking, or overeating? 49. Do you have dyslexia? 50. Do you have a family history of ADD or hyperactivity?

While at a convention, Bill, Jim, and Scott shared a hotel suite on the 75th floor. After a long day of meetings, they were shocked to find that the hotel elevators were broken and that they'd have to climb all the way up to their room. “I have a way to break the monotony,” said Bill. “I’ll tell jokes for 25 flights, Jim can sing songs for the next 25, and Scott can tell sad stories the rest of the way.” As they started walking up, Bill told his first joke. At the 26th floor, Jim began to sing. At the 51st floor, it was Scott’s turn. “I will tell my saddest story first,” he said. “Once there was a man who left the room key in the car.

Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin shared some revealing insights about how the company turns non-paying users into revenue generating ones.[xxiii] In 2011, Libin published a chart now known as the “smile graph.” With the percentage of sign-ups represented on the Y-axis and time spent on the service on the X-axis, the chart showed that, although usage plummeted at first, it rocketed upward as people formed a habit of using the service. The resulting down and up curve gave the chart its emblematic smile shape (and Evernote’s CEO a matching grin). In addition, as usage increased over time, so did customers’ willingness to pay. Libin noted that after the first month, only 0.5 percent of users paid for the service; however, this rate gradually increased. By month 33, 11 percent of users had started paying. At month 42, a remarkable 26 percent of customers were paying for something they had previously used for free.

shining example of perseverance is renowned pastor John Wesley. Let’s take a peek into his diary . . .   Sunday, A.M. May 5 Preached in St. Anne’s. Was asked not to come back anymore. Sunday, P.M. May 5 Preached in St. Jude’s. Can’t go back there, either. Sunday, A.M. May 19 Preached in St. Somebody Else’s. Deacons called special meeting and said I couldn’t return. Sunday, P.M. May 19 Preached on street. Kicked off street. Sunday, A.M. May 26 Preached in meadow. Chased out of meadow as bull was turned loose during service. Sunday, A.M. June 2 Preached out at the edge of town. Kicked off the highway. Sunday, P.M. June 2 Afternoon, preached in a pasture. Ten thousand people came out to hear me.6

accommodates his discourse to the way of speaking and acting amongst men; for he knoweth all things, and needeth not to go anywhere for information. Note here, that two of the three angels went away immediately for Sodom; whilst the third, who represented the Lord, remained with Abraham. 18:22. And they turned themselves from thence, and went their way to Sodom: but Abraham as yet stood before the Lord. 18:23. And drawing nigh, he said: Wilt thou destroy the just with the wicked? 18:24. If there be fifty just men in the city, shall they perish withal? and wilt thou not spare that place for the sake of the fifty just, if they be therein? 18:25. Far be it from thee to do this thing, and to slay the just with the wicked, and for the just to be in like case as the wicked; this is not beseeming thee: thou who judgest all the earth, wilt not make this judgment. 18:26. And the Lord said to him: If I find in Sodom fifty just within the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake. 18:27. And Abraham answered, and said: Seeing I have once begun, I will speak to my Lord, whereas I am dust and ashes. 18:28. What if there be five less than fifty just persons? wilt thou for five and forty destroy the whole city: And he said: I will not destroy it, if I find five and forty. 18:29. And again he said to him: But if forty be found there, what wilt thou do? He said: I will not destroy it for the sake of forty. 18:30. Lord, saith he, be not angry, I beseech thee, if I speak: What if thirty shall be found there? He answered: I will not do it, if I find thirty there. 18:31. Seeing, saith he, I have once begun, I will speak to my Lord: What if twenty be found there? He said: I will not destroy it for the sake of twenty.

The first stacked dolls better known as Russian Nesting Dolls, matryoshka dolls or Babushka Dolls, were first made in 1890 by Vasily Zvyozdochkin. Much of the artistry is in the painting of the usual 5 dolls, although the world record is 51 dolls. Each doll, which when opened reveals a smaller doll of the same type inside ending with the smallest innermost doll, which is considered the baby doll and is carved from a single piece of wood. Frequently these dolls are of a woman, dressed in a full length traditional Russian peasant dress called a sarafan. When I served with the Military Intelligence Corps of the U.S.Army, the concept of onion skins was a similar metaphor used to denote that we were always encouraged to look beyond the obvious. That it was essential to delve deeper into a subject, so as to arrive at the essence of the situation or matter. This is the same principle I employed in writing my award winning book, The Exciting Story of Cuba. Although it can be considered a history book, it is actually a book comprised of many stories or vignettes that when woven together give the reader a view into the inner workings of the Island Nation, just 90 miles south of Key West. The early 1950’s are an example of this. At that time President Batista was hailed a champion of business interests and considered this a direct endorsement of his régime. Sugar prices remained high during this period and Cuba enjoyed some of its best years agriculturally. For those at the top of the ladder, the Cuban economy flourished! However, it was during this same period that the people lower on the economic ladder struggled. A populist movement was started, resulting in a number of rebel bands to challenge the entrenched regime, including the followers of autocrats such as Fidel and Raul Castro. Castro’s M 26 7 militia had a reputation of indiscriminately placing bombs, one of which blew a young woman to pieces in the once-grand theater, “Teatro America.” A farmer, who failed to cooperate with Batista’s army, was locked into his home with his wife and his daughter, which was then set on fire killing them all. What had been a corrupt but peaceful government, quickly turned into a war zone. Despite of Batista’s constitutional abuses and his alliance with the Mafia, the years under his régime were still the most prosperous ones in Cuba’s history. Of course most of the money went to those at the top of the economic ladder and on the lower end of the scale a house maid was lucky to make $25 to $30 a month.

Eventually, at 7:22 A.M. on the morning of May 26, 1998, with tears still pouring down my frozen cheeks, the summit of Mount Everest opened her arms and welcomed me in. As if she now considered me somehow worthy of this place. My pulse raced, and in a haze I found myself suddenly standing on top of the world. Alan embraced me, mumbling excitedly into his mask. Neil was still staggering toward us. As he approached, the wind began to die away. The sun was now rising over the hidden land of Tibet, and the mountains beneath us were bathed in a crimson red. Neil knelt and crossed himself on the summit. Then, together, with our masks of, we hugged as brothers. I got to my feet and began to look around. I swore that I could see halfway around the world. The horizon seemed to bend at the edges. It was the curvature of our earth. Technology can put a man on the moon but not up here. There truly was some magic to this place. The radio suddenly crackled to my left. Neil spoke into it excitedly. “Base camp. We’ve run out of earth.” The voice on the other end exploded with jubilation. Neil passed the radio to me. For weeks I had planned what I would say if I reached the top, but all that just fell apart. I strained into the radio and spoke without thinking. “I just want to get home.” The memory of what went on then begins to fade. We took several photos with both the SAS and the DLE flags flying on the summit, as promised, and I scooped some snow into an empty Juice Plus vitamin bottle I had with me.* It was all I would take with me from the summit. I remember having some vague conversation on the radio--patched through from base camp via a satellite phone--with my family some three thousand miles away: the people who had given me the inspiration to climb. But up there, the time flew by, and like all moments of magic, nothing can last forever. We had to get down. It was already 7:48 A.M. Neil checked my oxygen. “Bear, you’re right down. You better get going, buddy, and fast.” I had just under a fifth of a tank to get me back to the Balcony. I heaved the pack and tank onto my shoulders, fitted my mask, and turned around. The summit was gone. I knew that I would never see it again. *Years later, Shara and I christened our three boys with this snow water from Everest’s summit. Life moments.

earned fame and the Medal of Honor for the steel nerves and sheer guts he showed in turning back the Japs that night. Later, I read an interview where Basilone told how he did what seemed impossible against the charging Japs—not once but over and over again—with three machine guns and a pistol. “We kept firing and drove them back, but our ammunition was getting low,” he said, “so I left the guns and started running to the next outfit to get some more. Soon after I got back, a runner came in and told me that at the emplacements on the right, Japs had broken through . . . and the guns were jammed. “I took off up the trail to see what happened. . . . After that I came back to my own guns, grabbed one of them, and told the crew to follow me. Up the trail we went. I was carrying the machine gun by the tripod. We left six dead Japs on the trail. “While I fixed the jams on the other two guns up there, we started to set up. We were really pinned down. Bullets were smacking into the sandbags. “The Japs were still coming at us, and I rolled over from one gun to the other, firing them as fast as they could be loaded. . . . We all thought our end had come. “Some Japs would sneak through the lines and behind us. It got pretty bad because I’d have to stop firing every once in a while and shoot behind me with my pistol. “At dawn, our guns were just burnt out. Altogether we got rid of 26,000 rounds.” More

On television and on the front pages of the major newspapers, Trump clearly seemed to be losing the election. Each new woman who came forward with charges of misbehavior became a focal point of coverage, coupled with Trump’s furious reaction, his ever darkening speeches, and the accompanying suggestion that they were dog whistles aimed at racists and anti-Semites. “Trump’s remarks,” one Washington Post story explained, summing up the media’s outlook, “were laced with the kind of global conspiracies and invective common in the writings of the alternative-right, white-nationalist activists who see him as their champion. Some critics also heard echoes of historical anti-Semitic slurs in Trump’s allegations that Clinton ‘meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty’ and that media and financial elites were part of a soulless cabal.” This outlook, which Clinton’s campaign shared, gave little consideration to the possibility that voters might be angry at large banks, international organizations, and media and financial elites for reasons other than their basest prejudices. This was the axis on which Bannon’s nationalist politics hinged: the belief that, as Marine Le Pen put it, “the dividing line is [no longer] between left and right but globalists and patriots.” Even as he lashed out at his accusers and threatened to jail Clinton, Trump’s late-campaign speeches put his own stamp on this idea. As he told one rally: “There is no global anthem, no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship. From now on, it’s going to be ‘America first.’” Anyone steeped in Guénon’s Traditionalism would recognize the terrifying specter Trump conjured of marauding immigrants, Muslim terrorists, and the collapse of national sovereignty and identity as the descent of a Dark Age—the Kali Yuga. For the millions who were not familiar with it, Trump’s apocalyptic speeches came across as a particularly forceful expression of his conviction that he understood their deep dissatisfaction with the political status quo and could bring about a rapid renewal. Whether it was a result of Trump’s apocalyptic turn, disgust at the Clintons, or simply accuser fatigue—it was likely a combination of all three—the pattern of slippage in the wake of negative news was less pronounced in Trump’s internal surveys in mid-October. Overall, he still trailed. But the data were noisy. In some states (Indiana, New Hampshire, Arizona) his support eroded, but in others (Florida, Ohio, Michigan) it actually improved. When Trump held his own at the third and final debate on October 19, the numbers inched up further. The movement was clear enough that Nate Silver and other statistical mavens began to take note of it. “Is the Presidential Race Tightening?” he asked in the title of an October 26 article. Citing Trump’s rising favorability numbers among Republicans and red-state trend lines, he cautiously concluded that probably it was. By November 1, he had no doubt. “Yes, Donald Trump Has a Path to Victory” read the headline for his column that day, in which he

Until 25, I was a master of all and carried a dream to be a famous guy in at least one of em’. It was that sudden realization when I turned 26 that I had to narrow the list down, pick one and struggle for the same again, for then, it must start again and I wondered how could the destiny compensate me for the ‘Master of all’ efforts & struggles I have had. Clueless, answer-less, feeling-less and motionless.

Frank Fiorini, better known as Frank Sturgis, had an interesting career that started when he quit high school during his senior year to join the United States Marine Corps as an enlisted man. During World War II he served in the Pacific Theater of Operations with Edson’s Raiders, of the First Marine Raiders Battalion under Colonel “Red Mike.” In 1945 at the end of World War II, he received an honorable discharge and the following year joined the Norfolk, Virginia Police Department. Getting involved in an altercation with his sergeant, he resigned and found employment as the manager of the local Havana-Madrid Tavern, known to have had a clientele consisting primarily of Cuban seamen. In 1947 while still working at the tavern, he joined the U.S. Navy’s Flight Program. A year later, he received an honorable discharge and joined the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer. Again, in 1949, he received an honorable discharge, this time from the U.S. Army. Then in 1957, he moved to Miami where he met former Cuban President Carlos Prío, following which he joined a Cuban group opposing the Cuban dictator Batista. After this, Frank Sturgis went to Cuba and set up a training camp in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, teaching guerrilla warfare to Castro’s forces. He was appointed a Captain in Castro’s M 26 7 Brigade, and as such, he made use of some CIA connections that he apparently had cultivated, to supply Castro with weapons and ammunition. After they entered Havana as victors of the revolution, Sturgis was appointed to a high security, intelligence position within the reorganized Cuban air force. Strangely, Frank Sturgis returned to the United States after the Cuban Revolution, and mysteriously turned up as one of the Watergate burglars who were caught installing listening devices in the National Democratic Campaign offices. In 1973 Frank A. Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio R. Martínez, G. Gordon Liddy, Virgilio R. “Villo” González, Bernard L. Barker and James W. McCord, Jr. were convicted of conspiracy. While in prison, Sturgis feared for his life if anything he had done, regarding his associations and contacts, became public knowledge. In 1975, Sturgis admitted to being a spy, stating that he was involved in assassinations and plots to overthrow undisclosed foreign governments. However, at the Rockefeller Commission hearings in 1975, their concluding report stated that he was never a part of the CIA…. Go figure! In 1979, Sturgis surfaced in Angola where he trained and helped the rebels fight the Cuban-supported communists. Following this, he went to Honduras to train the Contras in their fight against the communist-supported Sandinista government. He also met with Yasser Arafat in Tunis, following which he was debriefed by the CIA. Furthermore, it is documented that he met and talked to the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, or Carlos the Jackal, who is now serving a life sentence for murdering two French counter intelligence agents. On December 4, 1993, Sturgis suddenly died of lung cancer at the Veterans Hospital in Miami, Florida. He was buried in an unmarked grave south of Miami…. Or was he? In this murky underworld, anything is possible.

The preferred worlds to simulate were either sci-fi or Edo-period Japan, as if the two breaks of the Meiji restoration (1868) and the occupation (1945) had not happened. Azuma links simulation to the practice of détournement or the fan-based making of derivative works, which “official” products then borrow from in turn: “the products of otaku culture are born into a chain of infinite imitations and piracy” (O26). Simulacra thus float free from both the notion of an historical time and from the authoring of original works.

In one of our conversations, she told me about Finland’s development of sisu, a rough cognate for grit. Etymologically, sisu denotes a person’s viscera, their “intestines (sisucunda).” It is defined as “having guts,” intentional, stoic, constant bravery in the face of adversity. 21 For Finns, sisu is a part of national culture, forged through their history of war with Russia and required by the harsh climate. 22 In this Nordic country, pride is equated with endurance. When Finnish mountain climber Veikka Gustafsson ascended a peak in Antarctica, it was named Mount Sisu. The fortitude to withstand war and foreign occupations is lyrically heralded in the Finnish epic poem, The Kalevala. 23 Even the saunas—two million, one for every three Finns in a country of approximately five and a half million—involve fortitude: A sauna roast is often followed by a nude plunge into the ice-cold Baltic Sea. If Iceland is happier than it has any right to be considering the hours the country spends plunged in darkness each year, Finland’s past circumstances, climate, and developed culture have turned it into one of the grittiest. Finland’s educational system is also currently ranked first, ahead of South Korea, now at number two. 24 The United States is midway down the list. 25 In Finland, there is no after-school tutoring or training, no “miracle pedagogy” in the classrooms, where students are on a first-name basis with their teachers, all of whom have master’s degrees. There is also more “creative play.” 26 Perhaps the tradition of sisu and play, I suspect, are part of the larger, unstated reason for its success. 27 “Wouldn’t it be great if you heard people talking about how they were going to do something to build their grit?” Duckworth asked.

It is curious how little countenance radical pluralism has ever had from philosophers. Whether materialistically or spiritually minded, philosophers have always aimed at cleaning up the litter with which the world apparently is filled. They have substituted economical and orderly conceptions for the first sensible tangle; and whether these are morally elevated or only intellectually neat, they were at any rate always aesthetically pure and definite, and aimed at ascribing to the world something clean and intellectual in the way of structure. As compared with all these rationalizing pictures, the pluralistic empiricism which I profess offers but a sorry appearance. It is a turbid, muddled, gothic sort of affair, without sweeping outline and with little pictorial nobility. (James 1977, p. 26)

If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” “I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Now, 2.6 million years after we started making tools, the last 0.016 per cent of our history as produced the most change, an exponential curve turning vertical. It's why I keep saying 'a recent idea' to anything less than a couple of centuries old. That change is young, its paint is still wet. And it's still external, due to mechanisation and its effects, it hasn't really changed humans except to make the affluent fat—and by affluent I mean anyone who shits in good drinking water.

We don’t simply have a problem when it comes to the amount of tax collected. We have a huge problem when it comes to the way we collect taxes. Take corporate taxes as an example. We impose taxes at the second highest rate in the rich world (35%), yet the corporate tax code is riddled with incentives, subsidies, exemptions, and loopholes.13 The result is crazy. We give firms a huge disincentive to earn money at home (because our basic tax rate is so high), while giving them huge incentives to play the system. And remember: the United States boasts some of the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial companies. If we give those guys an incentive to find ways around our tax code, they’ll turn out to be world-beaters. World-beaters like General Electric, for example.14 GE earned $14.2 billion of profit in 2010, of which $5.1 billion was generated in the US. I’m guessing that you earned less than $5 billion that year, but I’m damn sure you had a more painful settlement with the taxman. In 2010, GE’s net corporation tax obligation to the US government was sub-zero. The firm actually derived a net benefit from the government. In the five years to 2010, GE accumulated $26 billion in American profits and booked a net benefit of $4.1 billion from the IRS. That’s completely insane. You don’t, however, need to be GE to outperform in this way. Big Oil can play the same game to almost equal effect. According to a Citizens for Tax Justice report out in 2011, ‘Over the past two years, Exxon Mobil reported $9,910 million in pretax US profits. But it enjoyed so many tax subsidies that its federal income tax bill was only $39 million‌—‌a tax rate of only 0.4%.’15

Now, we can do this the hard way or the easy way,’ he said. ‘The easy way is for you to simply turn around and walk out of the terminal with the two of us.’ Holbeche lowered his head, then reached inside his jacket and pulled out a 9-millimetre Glock 26 subcompact pistol. He aimed the weapon directly at Simpson’s stomach and smiled bitterly. ‘Did you really think you could get onto an aircraft carrying that?’ Simpson asked, apparently unfazed by the threat. ‘With my diplomatic passport and a carry permit issued by the Metropolitan Police, it wouldn’t have been difficult,’ Holbeche said. ‘Now get the hell out of my way, Simpson.’ ‘I’m sorry, Holbeche, but you’re going nowhere.

Groupon is a study of the hazards of pursuing scale and valuation at all costs. In 2010, Forbes called it the “fastest growing company ever” after its founders raised $135 million in funding, giving Groupon a valuation of more than $1 billion after just 17 months.5 The company turned down a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google and went public in 2011 with one of the biggest IPOs since Google’s in 2004.6 It was one of the original unicorns. However, the business model had serious problems. Groupon sometimes sold so many Daily Deals that participating businesses were overwhelmed . . . even crippled. Other businesses accused Groupon of strong-arming them to sign up for Daily Deals. Customers started to view the group discount (the company’s bread and butter) as a sign that a participating business was desperate. Businesses stopped signing up. Journalists suggested that Groupon was prioritizing customer acquisition over retention — growth over value — and that it had gone public before it had a solid, proven business model.7 Groupon is still a player, with just over $3 billion in annual revenue in 2015. But its stock has fallen from $26 a share to about $4 today, and it has withdrawn from many international markets. Also revealing is that the company is suing IBM for patent infringement, something that will not create customer value.8 Many promising startups have paid the price for rushing to scale. We can see clues to potential future failures in the recent “down rounds” (stock purchases priced at a lower valuation than those of previous investors) hitting companies like Foursquare, Gilt Group, Jet, Jawbone, and Technorati. In their rush to build scale, executives and founders search for shortcuts to sustainable, long-term revenue growth.

Repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and they are gifts that He often withholds, when they have been long offered in vain. I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; But I warn you, only one was converted, that no man might presume. I grant you it is written, Jesus is "Able to save completely those who come to God through him" (Hebrews 7:25). But I warn you, it is also written by the same Spirit, "Since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you" (Proverbs 1:24, 26).

Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods which you have not known” (Deut. 11: 26–28, NIV). The curse is the judgment of God on disobedience, on

Our turn was near at hand. An hour after we received the order to advance on the Russian guns. With the blame, on whomsoever it may lie of that rash order, I have nothing to do. That vexatious question can never be settled, since he on whose shoulders they place it lies in the valley of Balaklava, the first who fell, and cannot raise his voice to reply, or give the lie, if it be a lie, to his calumniators. If Louis Nolan were to blame, his love for our Arm, and his jealousy over its honour, his belief that Light Cavalry would do the work of demigods, and his irritation that hitherto we had not been given the opportunity we might have had, must plead his excuse; and I think his brilliant courage, and the memory of that joyous cheer which ended in the wild death-cry which none who heard can ever forget, might silence the angry jar and jangle of contention above his grave, and set the seals of oblivion upon his error!

Ralph swept back the yellow curtain to look out on the street. The leaves were turning red, the whole block ablaze. Across the street stood a barbershop that shared a storefront with a black bookstore. Next door, the hair salon spewed steam onto the street, the fried chicken spot, a jewelry shop with crucifixes and chains glittering on display, and the beauty supply store that blasted soca and flashed neon lights onto the sidewalk. This particular corner didn't have a view of any of the coffee shops that had opened farther east. Those had plush furniture and abstract art on the walls, stainless-steel espresso pumps. They were always crowded with young people in jeans and plaid, typing away on their laptops. There were the bars, too, with a dozen local beers on tap, and short menus that consisted mostly of nuts, pickles, cheese. Penelope could see the changes, of course, but she still recognized the neighborhood - it wasn't like Fort Greene or Williamsburg, which were no longer themselves. Strangers still said hello to her as they lounged on their stoops at sundown. She still had to ignore the whistles from the young men who stood in front of the bodega for so long each day it was clear they were dealing. Church bells rang on the hour and floors thumped with praise for Jesus in the Baptist churches, the one-room Pentecostal churches, the regal AME tabernacles, worship never ceasing in Bed-Stuy. The horizon on Bedford Avenue was just as long, the sirens of the police cars ars persistent, the wheeze of the B26 loud enough to wake her up at night.

Kennedy saw himself and all Americans as the in-group and Khrushchev and the Soviets as the out-group. All of the biases we’ve seen accrued: Americans saw themselves as trustworthy, and any aggressive behaviors by the United States (even as judged by international standards) were justified; any aggressive behaviors by the Soviets showed their true nature as vicious, heartless, and irrational agents bent on destruction. The turning point came when Khrushchev broke through all of the bravado and rhetoric and asked Kennedy to consider things from his perspective, to use a little empathy. He implored Kennedy several times to “try to put yourself in our place.” He then pointed out their similarities, that both of them were leaders of their respective countries: “If you are really concerned about the peace and welfare of your people, and this is your responsibility as President, then I, as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, am concerned for my people. Moreover, the preservation of world peace should be our joint concern, since if, under contemporary conditions, war should break out, it would be a war not only between the reciprocal claims, but a world wide cruel and destructive war.” In effect, Khrushchev pointed to a group in which he and Kennedy were both members—leaders of major world powers. In so doing, he turned Kennedy into an in-group member from an out-group member. This was the turning point in the crisis, opening up the possibility for a compromise solution that resolved the crisis on October 26, 1962.

By putting our focus on giving to others and meeting their very real needs, we can battle the greed in our hearts. Christmas is a season not of getting, but of giving, because at Christmas we are celebrating that God is the most generous and outrageous Giver in the universe. After all, he gave us his Son. Proverbs says, “Some people are always greedy for more, but the godly love to give!” (Proverbs 21:26). To pour ourselves into becoming outrageous givers is to pursue becoming more like God. God turns greedy, grasping, fearful hoarders into generous, honest, cheerful givers.

The earth’s weight has been estimated at six sextillion tons (that’s a six with twenty-one zeros). Yet it is perfectly balanced and turns easily on its axis. It rotates daily at the rate of more than a thousand miles per hour, or 25,000 miles each day. This adds up to nine million miles a year. Considering the tremendous weight of six sextillion tons rolling at this fantastic speed around an invisible axis, held in place by unseen bands of gravitation, the words of Job 26:7 take on unparalleled significance: “He poised the earth on nothingness.

God’s Anger at Sin 18 But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.* 19 They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. 20 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. 21 Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. 22 Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. 23 And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. 25 They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. 26 That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. 27 And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.

The Difference Your Life Can Make He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins. James 5:20 One of the Christian's greatest deterrents from sin is the life of another Christian. Some Christians maintain that it is none of their business if another chooses to sin. They are convinced that they are being judgmental if they respond to someone in sin. The world persuades them not to get involved, but this inaction prevents them from being an effective intercessor. As Christians we are aware that sin brings death (Rom. 6:23). Sin kills relationships, dismantles marriages, stifles joy, and destroys peace. When we see someone wander from the truth into error, how should we respond? When Jesus saw sin, it broke His heart. He wept over entire cities as He saw them rejecting the truth (Matt. 23:37–39). He prayed fervently for His disciples to be strong when they were tempted (John 17). He warned those who were heading toward spiritual failure (Matt. 26:20–25, 34). Jesus was even willing to die to save people from their sins because He knew the devastation that sin causes. Jesus never stood idle as those around Him were led astray by their sin. He always took an active role in turning them back to God. “Minding your own business” will save you some discomfort, but it will not help a brother or sister who needs to return to the Lord. If you are truly aware of the grave consequences for those who continue in sin, you will be moved to weep even as Jesus wept. Pray fervently for your friend. That will safeguard your motives and prepare you to minister to him. Be alert, in the event that God asks you to confront your friend. If you do so, be loving and gentle lest you, too, be tempted (Gal. 6:1).

How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge? 1:23 Turn you at my reproof: behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make known my words unto you. 1:24 Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; 1:25 But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: 1:26 I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; 1:27 When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when

Capitalism not only validates precapitalist notions of the domination of nature by man; it turns the plunder of nature into society’s law of life, To quibble with this kind of system about its values, to try to frighten it with visions about the consequences of growth is to quarrel with its very metabolism. One might more easily persuade a green plant to desist from photosynthesis than to ask the bourgeois economy to desist from capital accumulation. There is no one to talk to. Accumulation is determined not by the good or bad intentions of the individual bourgeois, but by the commodity relationship itself, by what Marx so aptly called the cellular unit of bourgeois economy.”26 —Murray Bookchin

Proverb 1:20-33 1:20 Wisdom calls aloud in the street. She utters her voice in the public squares. 1:21 She calls at the head of noisy places. At the entrance of the city gates, she utters her words: 1:22 "How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity? How long will mockers delight themselves in mockery, and fools hate knowledge? 1:23 Turn at my reproof. Behold, I will pour out my spirit on you. I will make known my words to you. 1:24 Because I have called, and you have refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no one has paid attention; 1:25 but you have ignored all my counsel, and wanted none of my reproof; 1:26 I also will laugh at your disaster. I will mock when calamity overtakes you; 1:27 when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when your disaster comes on like a whirlwind; when distress and anguish come on you. 1:28 Then will they call on me, but I will not answer. They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me; 1:29 because they hated knowledge, and didn't choose the fear of the Lord. 1:30 They wanted none of my counsel. They despised all my reproof. 1:31 Therefore they will eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own schemes. 1:32 For the backsliding of the simple will kill them. The careless ease of fools will destroy them. 1:33 But whoever listens to me will dwell securely, and will be at ease, without fear of harm.

Means headed for Des Moines with the hair sample and Lucas called Robertson, who was working north of I-80. “I got nothing, nothing, and nothing. I thought I had something for a minute, but it turned out to be nothing,” he said. “More’n I got,” Lucas said. “I never even thought I had something. What’d you think you had?

LEFT the Varied Industries building, took a right outside the door, and continued up the street, searching the crowd. Something had changed. He remembered the moment when he’d seen Whitehead, the woman who looked like Marlys Purdy, and it had prodded his unconscious mind with an idea. He’d tracked the idea down in his own head, and it had turned into something. Now he was struck by the same feeling: he’d seen or heard something important, in the street, in the last minute or so, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He cast his mind back, trying to track it down. Had he seen something in the building he’d just left? He turned and looked back at it, but it didn’t seem right. It wasn’t in the building . . . Where was it? And it wasn’t a face . . . So what was it? Wasn’t the phone calls from Wood. Nothing about a grenade. Was it Greer? Something to do with Greer? Why would it be Greer? He looked at his watch: ten-twenty. The march would be starting in ten minutes. He was at the end of the route, had seen nothing. He turned back, thought about walking down the other side of the street, but that felt wrong.

He headed back up the midway. At the end of it, he looked down to his right. That was the Concourse. He’d have to walk down that later, anyway, so he turned to his left and followed a much less-crowded street past a miscellany of buildings, and at the end, looked past a gate and over an extensive campground.

When the people of God avoid syncretistic entanglements, it is a sign that the Lord is with them (Josh. 22:31). By contrast, when they oppress one another and follow other gods, it is because truth has perished (Jer. 7:28) and the people have rejected the word of the Lord (Jer. 8:9). Again and again Deuteronomy warns the people to be careful to follow all that the Lord has commanded, to avoid entanglements, including marriage, with the surrounding peoples, for fear of learning and following their ways (e.g., Deut. 4; 6:13-19; 7:21-26; 13:6-8). In part, the preservation of the covenant community depends on each generation carefully passing on to the next the exclusive greatness and covenant fidelity of Yahweh (chapter 6). The people are not even to inquire about how the surrounding pagans worship, lest they be tempted to follow them (12:30). “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates” (12:31). God’s people are not even to have idols in their hearts (Ezek. 14:1-5). Some of the severity of Ezra and Nehemiah turns on the fact that the Exile was supposed to have obliterated any tendency toward compromise with idolatry, so that when residual hankerings reappeared, these leaders were struck with horror and fear.

MIRACULOUS!” . . . “Revolutionary!” . . . “Greatest ever!” We are inundated by a flood of extravagant claims as we channel surf the television or flip magazine pages. The messages leap out at us. The products assure that they are new, improved, fantastic, and capable of changing our lives. For only a few dollars, we can have “cleaner clothes,” “whiter teeth,” “glamorous hair,” and “tastier food.” Automobiles, perfume, diet drinks, and mouthwash are guaranteed to bring happiness, friends, and the good life. And just before an election, no one can match the politicians’ promises. But talk is cheap, and too often we soon realize that the boasts were hollow, quite far from the truth. “Jesus is the answer!” . . . “Believe in God!” . . . “Follow me to church!” Christians also make great claims but are often guilty of belying them with their actions. Professing to trust God and to be his people, they cling tightly to the world and its values. Possessing all the right answers, they contradict the gospel with their lives. With energetic style and crisp, well-chosen words, James confronts this conflict head-on. It is not enough to talk the Christian faith, he says; we must live it. “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them?” (2:14). The proof of the reality of our faith is a changed life. Genuine faith will inevitably produce good deeds. This is the central theme of James’ letter, around which he supplies practical advice on living the Christian life. James begins his letter by outlining some general characteristics of the Christian life (1:1–27). Next, he exhorts Christians to act justly in society (2:1–13). He follows this practical advice with a theological discourse on the relationship between faith and action (2:14–26). Then James shows the importance of controlling one’s speech (3:1–12). In 3:13–18, James distinguishes two kinds of wisdom—earthly and heavenly. Then he encourages his readers to turn from evil desires and obey God (4:1–12). James reproves those who trust in their own plans and possessions (4:13—5:6). Finally, he exhorts his readers to be patient with each other (5:7–11), to be straightforward in their promises (5:12), to pray for each other (5:13–18), and to help each other remain faithful to God (5:19, 20). This letter could be considered a how-to book on Christian living. Confrontation, challenges, and a call to commitment await you in its pages. Read James and become a doer of the Word (1:22–25).

final word from Paul: “The Holy Spirit was right when he said to your ancestors through Isaiah the prophet, 26 ‘Go and say to this people:   When you hear what I say,        you will not understand.   When you see what I do,        you will not comprehend. 27 For the hearts of these people are hardened,        and their ears cannot hear,        and they have closed their eyes—   so their eyes cannot see,        and their ears cannot hear,        and their hearts cannot understand,   and they cannot turn to me        and let me heal them.’[*] 28 So I want you to know that this salvation from God has also been offered to the Gentiles, and they will accept it.

It’s critical to understand the definition of the word currency. So for me currency is information between a buyer and a seller. Two people are involved in a transaction where the money symbolizes the exchange of value. So, I buy a sweater. We agree that it’s worth 20 units of whatever. The sweater is the thing with the value; the money is not, of course. Money is not valuable at all, but money allows you to buy things, which are valuable. This distinction should be understood. And it’s not generally known or appreciated by most people.”26

Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known.” – DEUTERONOMY 11:26-28

Shrieking out his terror, the soldier clawed with puny fingers at the shaggy breast in vain endeavor to push away the grinning jaws. The lion lowered his head, the gaping fangs closed with a single sickening crunch upon the fear-distorted face, and turning strode back across the body of the dead horse dragging his limp and bloody burden with him.

But it was not love. I did not know what love was until I knew that Korak lived," and she turned toward The Killer with a smile.

February 10 Is Your Imagination of God Starved? Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things. Isaiah 40:26 The people of God in Isaiah’s day had starved their imagination by looking on the face of idols, and Isaiah made them look up at the heavens; that is, he made them begin to use their imagination aright. Nature to a saint is sacramental. If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in Nature. In every wind that blows, in every night and day of the year, in every sign of the sky, in every blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real coming of God to us if we will simply use our starved imagination to realise it. The test of spiritual concentration is bringing the imagination into captivity. Is your imagination looking on the face of an idol? Is the idol yourself? Your work? Your conception of what a worker should be? Your experience of salvation and sanctification? Then your imagination of God is starved, and when you are up against difficulties you have no power, you can only endure in darkness. If your imagination is starved, do not look back to your own experience; it is God Whom you need. Go right out of yourself, away from the face of your idols, away from everything that has been starving your imagination. Rouse yourself, take the gibe that Isaiah gave the people, and deliberately turn your imagination to God. One of the reasons of stultification in prayer is that there is no imagination, no power of putting ourselves deliberately before God. We have to learn how to be broken bread and poured-out wine on the line of intercession more than on the line of personal contact. Imagination is the power God gives a saint to posit himself out of himself into relationships he never was in.

February 24 Disappointed For this is contained in Scripture: Behold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious corner stone, And he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.—1 Peter 2:6 (NASB) Life is full of disappointments. I have walked through numerous disappointments. A job was declined. I broke my foot (falling down ONE step). I had to cancel a trip to Montana to see my aunt who passed away shortly afterwards. All of this happened in a span of two months. We all experience things in our lives that disappoint us. As women, we develop expectations in our minds of how a certain situation is supposed to turn out. If you had asked me at the age of twenty-one what I would be doing at age twenty-six, the single life would not have been my answer. I expected to be married to the man of my dreams by now and starting our own family. However, God’s plan and my expectations were different, very different! While there are times that I am disappointed with the way life is going, I know that I will not be disappointed in the end. You see, as believers, our hope and focus is not on life here on earth. Our focus is on Jesus Christ, our precious corner stone. If we believe in him and walk in his light, we will not be disappointed in the end. We have eternal life! Scripture is not saying that it is wrong for us to be disappointed at times. He knows when our heart is breaking because a relationship did not turn out the way we wanted. He knows the drop in our stomach that comes when we learn of a family member’s illness or death. He knows our frustration when things at work just keep going the wrong direction. Trust me, whatever disappointment you are walking through right now, God knows. What Scripture does say is that ultimately we will not be disappointed. When life on earth is over, we will have eternal life with our Savior. Now that is something to celebrate.

The LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.” —NUMBERS 6:25–26

OCTOBER 13 TAKE TIME TO BE STILL in My Presence. The more hassled you feel, the more you need this sacred space of communion with Me. Breathe slowly and deeply. Relax in My holy Presence while My Face shines upon you. This is how you receive My Peace, which I always proffer to you. Imagine the pain I feel when My children tie themselves up in anxious knots, ignoring My gift of Peace. I died a criminal’s death to secure this blessing for you. Receive it gratefully; hide it in your heart. My Peace is an inner treasure, growing within you as you trust in Me. Therefore, circumstances cannot touch it. Be still, enjoying Peace in My Presence. “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” —PSALM 46:10 “The LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.” —NUMBERS 6:25–26

Scripture and Tradition Scriptural exegesis was no mere school exercise. The New Testament text became the battleground for the fierce debates over the nature of Jesus, God and man, that were waged in the fifth century and exegesis was the weapon that all the combatants wielded with both skill and conviction.23 The scriptural witness, often couched in familiar, popular, and even homely language, had to be converted into the abstract and learned currency of theology, the language of choice of the Church’s intelligentsia. Scripture, as it turned out, was merely the starting point. The steering mechanism was exegesis, and behind the exegesis, the helmsman at the rudder, stood another elemental principle: tradition.24 Judaism, Christianity, and Islam each possessed a Scripture that was, by universal consent, a closed Book. But God’s silence was a relative thing, and his providential direction of the community could be detected and “read” in other ways. Early within the development of Christianity, for example, one is aware of a subtle balance operating between appeals to Scripture and tradition. It was not a novel enterprise. By Jesus’ time the notion of an oral tradition separate from but obviously connected to the written Scriptures was already familiar, if not universally accepted, in Jewish circles. Jesus and the Pharisees debated the authority of the oral tradition more than once, and though he does not appear to have denied the premise, Jesus, his contemporaries remarked, “taught on his own authority,” not on that of some other sage. He substituted his authority for the tradition of the Fathers. Thus Jesus was proposing himself as the source of a new tradition handed on to his followers and confirmed by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The Christian view that there was a tradition distinct from the Scriptures may have begun with the early understanding of Scripture as synonymous with the Bible—serious exegetical attention did not begin to be paid to the Gospels until the end of the second century—whereas the “tradition” was constituted of the teachings and redemptive death of Jesus, both of which Jesus himself had placed in their true “scriptural” context.25 Thus, even when parts of Jesus’ teachings and actions had been committed to writing in the Gospels, and so began to constitute a new, specifically Christian Scripture, the distinction between Scripture in the biblical sense and tradition in the Christian sense continued to be felt in the Christian community.26

HOW TO MAKE A HAND-TIED BOUQUET This bouquet has a lush, loose, casual feel. You make it by holding a stem in one hand and adding other stems around it in a spiral fashion. Because it’s not tightly wrapped in ribbon, it can easily be stored in a glass of water until showtime. (Do make sure it’s dry before it gets anywhere near your dress!) MATERIALS: • 15 to 20 stems of fairly long-stemmed flowers (no more than 3 or 4 varieties for a mixed bouquet; if using a variety of colors make sure they are evenly distributed) • Florist’s knife • 5 to 10 stems of greenery • 26-gauge florist’s wire or ordinary twine • Floral shears • Ribbon for finishing 1. Cut each of the stems on the diagonal and place in water while you work. Remove any thorns by gently scraping them off with a florist’s knife (take care not to gouge too deeply) and any foliage from the bottom half of the stem. 2. Take the largest flower in the bunch—this will form the center of the bouquet. Hold its stem in your left hand, between your thumb and first finger, about 6 to 8 inches from the base of the flower head. 3. With your right hand, add 4 to 6 clusters of greenery evenly around the center flower, tucking them in just below the head, allowing the stems to cross at the bottom and turning the bouquet clockwise as you work. 4. Tuck the end of a long piece of wire or twine in between two of the stems, and then wind it around the whole bunch of stems a couple of times to begin to hold everything together. Do not cut the wire. 5. Holding the bouquet in your left hand as in step 2, place 5 or 6 more flowers around the greenery, turning the bouquet clockwise as you work. Secure this next layer of stems with a couple of twists of wire in the same place as before. Continue adding greenery, flowers, or whatever you like to add mass to the bouquet until it reaches the desired size and shape. (Look at it from all angles to make sure you like the silhouette.) 6. Finish with a ring of greenery to give it a nice decorative cuff (optional). 7. Secure all the stems together one last time by winding the wire gently but firmly around several times, and then cut it off and tuck it in. 8. Using floral shears, cut the stems to the desired length, all at the same level. (Don’t chop them too short or your bouquet will look top heavy.) 9. Wrap ribbon around the stems to cover the wire, and tie in a droopy bow. If your ribbon is narrow, wrap it around several times before tying a bow to ensure that you’ve covered all your work. Leave the ends of the bow long and trim them at an angle.

I thought of you when I read this quote from "A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace" by Brian Zahnd - "Jesus is introduced. (Standing ovation.) He stands before Congress and begins to deliver his speech. “Blessed are the poor …the mourners … the meek.” “Love your enemies.” “Turn the other cheek.” After a few perfunctory applauses early on, I’m pretty sure there would be a lot of squirming senators and uncomfortable congressmen. The room would sink into a tense silence. And when Jesus concluded his speech with a prophecy of the inevitable fall of the house that would not act upon his words (Matt. 7:26–27), what would Congress do? Nothing. They would not act. They could not act. To act on Jesus’s words would undo their system. The Sermon on the Mount doesn’t work in Cain’s system—no matter how noble or sophisticated. In the end, the US Congress would no more adopt the policies Jesus set out in the Sermon on the Mount than they were adopted by the Jewish Sanhedrin or the Roman Senate.

is a sure source of silver, a place where gold is refined. 2Iron is taken from the earth; rock is smelted into copper. 3Humansx put an end to darkness, dig for ore to the farthest depths, into stone in utter darkness, 4open a shaft away from any inhabitant, places forgotten by those on foot, apart from any human they hang and sway. 5Earth--from it comes food-- is turned over below ground as by fire.y 6Its rocks are the source for lapis lazuli; there is gold dust in it. 7A path-- no bird of prey knows it; a hawk's eye hasn't seen it; 8proud beasts haven't trodden on it; a lion hasn't crossed over it. 9Humans thrust their hands into flint, pull up mountains from their roots, 10cut channels into rocks; their eyes see everything precious. 11They dam up the sources of rivers; hidden things come to light. Wisdom's value 12But wisdom, where can it be found; where is the place of understanding? 13Humankind doesn't know its value; it isn't found in the land of the living. 14The Deepz says, "It's not with me"; the Seaa says, "Not alongside me!" 15It can't be bought with gold; its price can't be measured in silver, 16can't be weighed against gold from Ophir, with precious onyx or lapis lazuli. 17Neither gold nor glass can compare with it; she can't be acquired with gold jewelry. 18Coral and jasper shouldn't be mentioned; the price of wisdom is more than rubies. 19Cushite topaz won't compare with her; she can't be set alongside pure gold. 20But wisdom, where does she come from? Where is the place of understanding? 21She's hidden from the eyes of all the living, concealed from birds of the sky. 22Destructionb and Death have said, "We've heard a report of her." 23God understands her way; he knows her place; 24for he looks to the ends of the earth and surveys everything beneath the heavens. 25In order to weigh the wind, to prepare a measure for waters, 26when he made a decree for the rain, a path for thunderbolts, 27then he observed it, spoke of it, established it, searched it out, 28and said to humankind: "Look, the fear of the LORD is wisdom; turning from evil is understanding.

Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.” —John 7:24 (NIV) Driving home from work, I glanced into my rearview mirror to see a beautiful pink sky. It looked like another great sunset. I turned onto my street and noticed three young teenage boys hanging out two doors down from where I live. Too bad they won’t notice this great sunset, I thought. I pulled into my driveway and walked inside. My husband, Johnny, called out from the backyard, “Beautiful sunset tonight! Come on out!” The sky had turned a bright crimson red with streaks of leftover pink etched through it. I glanced to where the boys were still talking. “Those boys have no clue that there is a magnificent sunset happening right before their eyes! Too bad,” I said, shaking my head. At that moment, I heard one of them call out, “Hey, guys, check it out! The sky’s all red! It looks awesome!” “Wow!” the others exclaimed in unison. “Cool!” “Oh my,” I said, dismayed, “I sure jumped to a mighty quick conclusion.” Later that evening, I read an inspirational quote that comes daily to my in-box: “When you’re forming your opinions, do it carefully—go slow; hasty judgments oft are followed by regretting—that I know. —Anon.” After work the next day, I saw the boys again. I pulled the car over and rolled down the window. “Hey, guys,” I called out, “great sunset last night, huh?” “Yes, ma’am!” they all replied. One of the boys held up his cell phone. “I got a really good picture of it on my phone. Want to see?” “Sure,” I said with a big smile. “I’d love to.” Forgive me, Lord, for I truly want to see the best in everyone—right from the start. —Melody Bonnette Swang Digging Deeper: Prv 12:18, 31:26

ON MARCH 26th GitHub, an American-based website for programmers, began to suffer what it says is its biggest ever denial-of-service attack. The means and apparent motive were just as noteworthy: the Great Firewall, China’s web-filtering infrastructure, was used. The assault seems to have been intended to persuade GitHub to drop content the Chinese authorities object to, including the Chinese-language edition of the New York Times. The attackers’ identities will probably never be confirmed. But the rules of online engagement with China have taken a nasty turn. As its nickname suggests, the

We are to submit to the governing bodies, pray for them, and pay our taxes. But the kingdom of God is not commanded to make the kingdom of Rome more moral. Interestingly, whenever Jesus was lured into political debates, He always “transformed these kingdom-of-the-world questions into kingdom-of-God questions and turned them back on His audience (Matt. 22:15–22; Luke 12:13–15).”26 That’s because our mission is not to solve all the world’s problems but to embody and proclaim the kingdom of God as the place where those problems are solved.

But the kingdom of God is not commanded to make the kingdom of Rome more moral. Interestingly, whenever Jesus was lured into political debates, He always “transformed these kingdom-of-the-world questions into kingdom-of-God questions and turned them back on His audience (Matt. 22:15–22; Luke 12:13–15).”26 That’s because our mission is not to solve all the world’s problems but to embody and proclaim the kingdom of God as the place where those problems are solved.

I am all for encouraging the arts and literature, but I do think writers should seek out their own publishers and write their own introductions. The perils of doing this sort of thing was illustrated when I was prevailed upon to write a short introduction to a book about a dreaded man-eater who had taken a liking to the flesh of the good people of Dogadda, near Lansdowne. The author of the book could hardly write a decent sentence, but he managed to string together a lengthy account of the leopard's depradations. He was so persistent, calling on me or ringing me up that I finally did the introduction. He then wanted me to edit or touch up his manuscript; but this I refused to do. I would starve if I had to sit down and rewrite other people's books. But he prevailed upon me to give him a photograph. Months later, the book appeared, printed privately of course. And there was my photograph, and a photograph of the dead leopard after it had been hunted down. But the local printer had got the captions mixed up. The dead animal's picture earned the line: 'Well-known author Ruskin Bond.' My picture carried the legend: 'Dreaded man-eater, shot after it had killed its 26th victim.' The printer's devil had turned me into a serial killer. Now

Breakfast Burrito Serves: 2 ½ cup chopped onion 1 cup chopped green bell pepper 1 cup sliced mushrooms 1 cup diced tomatoes 3 cups baby spinach or baby kale 8 ounces (½ block) firm tofu (or 3 eggs whites, see Note) 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast 1 teaspoon MatoZest*, Mrs. Dash, or other no-salt seasoning blend to taste 2 (100% whole grain) flour tortillas Water-sauté onions, peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes until onion is translucent. Add greens and continue cooking until just wilted. Squeeze out as much water as possible from the tofu, then crumble it over the vegetable mixture and cook until tofu is just starting to turn golden. Stir in nutritional yeast and seasoning. Spread the cooked mixture on the tortillas and roll up to form burritos. Note: This recipe can be made with egg whites instead of or in addition to the tofu. Blend egg whites with ¼ cup nondairy milk, pour over the vegetable tofu mixture, and cook until eggs are done. PER SERVING: CALORIES 370; PROTEIN 26g; CARBOHYDRATE 50g; TOTAL FAT 9.6g; SATURATED FAT 1.5g; SODIUM 234mg; FIBER 12.4g; BETA-CAROTENE 9832mcg; VITAMIN C 199mg; CALCIUM 377mg; IRON 6.7mg; FOLATE 69mcg; MAGNESIUM 67mg; ZINC 1.8mg; SELENIUM 4.4mcg

them. 23.  But whoever turns away and disbelieves. 24.  God will punish him with the greatest punishment. 25. To Us is their return. 26.  Then upon Us rests their reckoning. 89. The Dawn (al-Fajr) In the name of God, the Gracious, the Merciful. 1. By the daybreak. 2. And ten nights. 3.  And the even and the odd. 4.  And the night as it recedes. 5.  Is there in this an oath for a rational person? 6.  Have you not seen how your Lord dealt with Aad? 7. Erum of the pillars. 8.  The like of which was never created in the land. 9.  And Thamood-those who carved the rocks in the valley. 10. And Pharaoh of the Stakes. 11.  Those who committed excesses in the lands. 12. And spread much corruption therein. 13.  So your Lord poured down upon them a scourge of punishment. 14.  Your Lord is on the lookout. 15.  As for man, whenever his Lord tests him, and honors him, and prospers him, he says, "My Lord has honored me." 16.  But whenever He tests him, and restricts his livelihood for him, he says, "My Lord has insulted me." 17.  Not at all. But you do not honor the orphan. 18.  And you do not urge the feeding of the poor. 19.  And you devour inheritance with all greed. 20.  And you love wealth with immense love. 21.  No-when the earth is leveled, pounded, and crushed. 22.  And your Lord comes, with the angels, row after row. 23.  And on that Day, Hell is brought forward. On that Day, man will remember, but how will remembrance avail him? 24.  He will say, "If only I had forwarded for my life." 25.  On that Day, none will punish as He punishes. 26.  And none will shackle as He shackles. 27.  But as for you, O tranquil soul. 28.  Return to your Lord, pleased and accepted. 29. Enter among My servants. 30. Enter My Paradise. 90.

Hugging stimulates the pressure receptors under the skin, which increases the activity of the vagus nerve, which in turn triggers an increase in oxytocin levels. Oxytocin can decrease heart rate and cause a drop in the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine. It can also improve immune function, promote faster healing from wounds and diseases. It also increases the levels of good hormones, like serotonin and dopamine, which in turn reduce anxiety and depression.

Instead of striking back, which would be both justifiable and equal retribution and a part of Moses’ “no mercy” law, Jesus creates an almost laughable scene of grace: “turn to them the other cheek also.” This is how Jesus did respond (Matt 26:67).

Now, data is democratizing, and American spy agencies are struggling to keep up. More than half the world is online,25 conducting five billion Google searches each day.26 Cell phone users are recording and posting events in real-time—turning everyone into intelligence collectors, whether they know it or not.27 Anyone with an Internet connection can access Google Earth satellite imagery, identify people using facial recognition software, and track events on Twitter.

man.” 25But they wouldn’t listen to him. So the Levite took hold of his concubine and pushed her out the door. The men of the town abused her all night, taking turns raping her until morning. Finally, at dawn they let her go. 26At daybreak the woman returned to the house where her husband was staying. She collapsed at the door of the house and lay there until it was light. 27When her husband opened the door to leave, there lay his concubine with her hands on the threshold. 28He said, “Get up! Let’s go!” But there was no answer.* So he put her body on his donkey and took her home. 29When he got home, he took a knife and cut his concubine’s body into twelve pieces. Then he sent one piece to each tribe throughout all the territory of Israel.

Look how the Harlem’s stock has risen! If that franchise were, perchance, to be rescinded, think how fast the stock would drop! If the aldermen were to sell the Harlem short—if they were to speculate on an anticipated drop in the stock’s price by borrowing shares they did not own, selling them, and then buying them back at a much lower price to replace the borrowed shares—think how much money there was to be made as the stock plummeted! What he said made eminent sense to the honorable aldermen. Led by Drew, they each borrowed as much money as possible and began shorting the Harlem’s stock, selling, selling, always selling. Learning of the scheme, the Commodore began buying. When the council repealed the ordinance on June 25 and the court of common pleas issued an injunction to prohibit construction of the new Harlem line along Broadway to the Battery, the aldermen gleefully sat back and waited for the stock to dive. As it fell from 110 to 72, they cheered. Their glee, however, turned to terror the next day when, inexorably, inexplicably, horribly, the stock began rising. The Commodore had cornered the market—had bought every outstanding share of the Harlem. By June 26, the stock was at 97lA. The next day it rose again, up to 106. In a panic, the august aldermen repealed their repeal of the franchise to placate the Commodore. That didn’t help. The stock continued to rise. All the while, they begged the Commodore to stop, to allow them to buy the stock back from him to cover their short positions. No, the Commodore said. It was important for them to learn their lesson. The stock continued to rise: to 150, to 170, to 179. There was no limit to their losses. The higher the stock rose, the more money they were losing. The only way to stop these terrible losses was to buy back stock to replace their borrowed shares, but there was not a single share available.

then a small stream just above the bottom of the canyon. There are good campsites in this area. Cross the bridge over the Middle Fork of the Swan River and go right for 50 feet on Middle Fork Road at mile 17.1 (10,203). The Colorado Trail diverges left into the woods onto a single-track trail. The trail crosses a small stream and curves right in the next 2 miles. Reach the North Fork of the Swan River and marshy bottom at about mile 19.4, crossing on a raised walkway and bridge, beyond which there is good camping. The trail turns right (east) and then curves left as it follows the perimeter of the camping area. Cross a road at mile 19.7 (9,981). Go right at an intersection at mile 20.1 (10,067). From here, the trail begins to climb out of the drainage. Keystone Ski Resort eventually comes into view along the high point of the ridge to the northeast. Where the trail twice intersects the West Ridge Loop Trail (from Keystone Gulch), first at mile 22.6 (11,114) and then at mile 23.8 (11,022), stay left. After a long descent on a series of switchbacks, the trail intersects Red Trail at mile 26.1 (10,035) and goes to the left again. After dropping into a small valley and passing a power line, take a right at the fork at mile 27.5 (9,973). Cross Horseshoe Gulch at mile 28.8 (9,458) and follow the trail as it heads north with camping 0.2 mile ahead. Intersect and go left at Blair Witch Trail at mile 29.4 (9,458). Intersect and go left at Hippo Trail at mile 29.7 (9,700). Descending with Breckenridge coming in view, at a switchback intersect Campion Trail at mile 31.8 (9,240), and go left. Reach neighborhood and pond at mile 31.9 (9,200). Cross Swan River on a bridge, then cross Revette Drive where one could park for a few hours. At mile 32.5 (9,203), cross CO Hwy 9 adjacent to where the free Summit Stage bus stops. Go right (north) on bike path, cross Blue River on a bridge, and reach Gold Hill Trailhead at mile 32.7 (9,197). Follow the bike path for 0.2 mile until reaching the Gold Hill Trailhead on the left and the end of Segment 6 at mile 32.9 (9,197).

without discerning and challenging idols.118 A good example of this is the preaching of Saint Paul in Athens (Acts 17) and Ephesus (Acts 19). Paul challenged the gods of the city of Ephesus (Acts 19:26), which led to such an alteration in the spending patterns of new converts that it changed the local economy. That in turn touched off a riot led by local merchants. Contemporary observers have often noted that modern Christians are just as materialistic as everyone else in our culture. Could this be because our preaching of the gospel does not, like Saint Paul’s, include the exposure of our culture’s counterfeit gods?

And then, according to the scientific publication describing the experiment, “at day 162 postfusion, we performed a caesarean section . . . One bucardo female weighing 2.6 kg [5.7 pounds] was obtained alive without external morphological abnormalities. The newborn displayed a normal cardiac rhythm as well as other vital signs at delivery (i.e., open eyes, mouth opening, legs and tongue movements) . . . To our knowledge, this is the first animal born from an extinct subspecies.” It was Wednesday, July 30, 2003, a turning point in the history of biology. For on that date, all at once, extinction was no longer forever.

The words love and fear in the Course represent two complete and mutually exclusive thought systems, both of which need to be understood if you’re ever going to know what it really is that you’re choosing between. In fact, your unconscious belief system is held in place by not looking at it.25 What kind of a service are you rendering people if you don’t turn them on to the fact that the thought system of fear, which they have denied and projected outwards,26 must be closely examined in their lives if they are to be free of it?

The state put a Broad-trained superintendent, Randy Ward, in charge of the Oakland schools ... Ward embraced the small schools but went further; his school reform plan aimed to turn the district into a marketplace of school choice while overhauling the bureaucracy. He closed low-performing schools and opened charter schools. He attracted $26 million in grants from the Broad Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Dell Foundation, and corporations based in Oakland.

You shall serve Yahweh your God, and I shall bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness from your midst. 23:25 None shall miscarry their young, nor be barren in your land, and I will give you the full measure of your days. 23:26 I will send fear of me before you, and I will destroy all the people to whom you come. I will make your enemies turn their backs to you. 23:27 I will send hornets before you, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite and the Hittite, from before you. 23:28 I will not drive them out in one year, lest the land become desolate and the beasts of the field multiply against you. 23:29 Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until your numbers increase, and you inherit the land. 23:30 I will set your boundaries from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the river. And I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out. 23:31 You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. 23:32 They must not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me. For if you serve their gods, they will surely ensnare

Frasi iniziali di Bleach "Il nostro mondo non ha alcun significato neppure noi che ci viviamo abbiamo alcun significato noi privi di significato pensiamo al mondo nonostante anche l'essere consci che non abbia significato farlo sia privo di significato." (Volume 22 - Conquistadores - Ulquiorra) "Noi siamo il pesce davanti alla cascata, siamo l'insetto in gabbia. Siamo un relitto in balia dei marosi, il khakkara del teschio un violente torrente di forza la balena che lo ingoia. Noi siamo il toro a cinque corna noi siamo il mostro che soffia fuoco un bambino che grida piangendo. Aah, noi siamo avvelenati dalla luce della Luna." (Volume 23 - Mala Suerte! - Ikkaku) "Finite in pezzi, tutti quanti." (Volume 24 - Immanent God Blues - Grimmjow) "Noi tutti nasciamo già morti. La fine è già lì ancor prima dell'inizio. Se vivere significa continuare a imparare è la fine l'ultima cosa che impareremo e, una volta scoperta, ciò che conosceremo appieno sarà la morte. Non dobbiamo cercare d'imparare nulla, coloro che non possono trascendere la morte non devono tentare di sapere nulla." (Volume 25 - No Shaking Throne - Shirosaki) "Quella voce che come una lama mi trapassa il petto somiglia a un incessante grido di gioia." (Volume 26 - The Mascaron Drive - Luppi) " Noi come singolo non possiamo mischiarci, come coppia non abbiamo la stessa forma. Non possediamo gli occhi del terzo, quindi nella direzione del quarto non vi è speranza. Il quinto è nel posto del cuore." (Volume 27 - Goodbye, Halcyon Days- Orihime) "Mio signore, noi vi guardiamo con l'espressione di chi osserva un magnifico pavone adornata di qualcosa d'infinito simile alla speranza, all'adorazione e alla paura." (Volume 28 - Baron's Lecture Full-Course - Dordoni) "Ti ostini ad agghindarti pur sapendo che ti aspetta la falce. Ti ostini a farti bella pur sapendo che ti aspetta la falce. E' spaventoso, è spaventoso il momento in cui verrai falciata. I tuoi capelli recisi somiglieranno a te, priva di vita. Sia i miei capelli che le mie unghie sono stupendi, come tesori perché basta che vengano separati dal mio corpo per diventare qualcosa di sporco e disgustoso? La risposta è semplice: essi così non sono altro che l'immagine della mia morte." (Volume 29 - The Slashing Ópera - Cirucci) "La tua ferita è profonda come gli abissi dell'oceano Il tuo delitto scarlatto scolorirà con la morte." (Volume 30 - There Is No Heart Without You - Kaien Shiba) "Dimmi che sono colui che odi di più al mondo." (Volume 31 - Don't Kill My Volupture - Szayel Aporro Granz) "Il re arriva la galoppo liberandosi della sua ombra, facendo stridere l'armatura calciando le ossa succhiando carne e sangue digrignando distrugge il cuore e la mente lungo il cammino solitario verso un luogo remoto e lontano." (Volume 32 - Howling - Grimmjow) "Noi siamo parassiti vermi che strisciano sotto l'ombra di un intento malvagio indissolvibile Alzerò la testa più in alto della luna finché non vedrò più voialtri miserabili" (Volume 33 - The Bad Joke - Nnoitra) "Se mi darai un paio di ali, io volerò per te anche se la terra intera dovesse venire sommersa dall'acqua Se tu mi darai una spada, io combatterò per te anche se il cielo intero dovesse trapassarti di luce" (Volume 34 - King Of The Kill - Nel) "Nascere è come morire" (Volume 35 - Higher Than The Moon - Mayuri) "E' ancora presto per credere" (Volume 36 - Turn Back The Pendolum - Shinji) "Non penso che gli esseri umani siano belli ma penso che i fiori lo siano L'unico momento in cui l'essere umano somiglia ad un fiore è quando cade a terra colpito da una spada" (Volume 37 - Beauty Is So Solitary - Yumichika) "L'unica cosa di cui ho paura è diventare un guerriero che non conosce la paura" (Volume 38 - Fear For The Fight- Hisagi) "Errare è umano uccidere è diabolico" (Volume 39 - El Verdugo - Quimera Parca)

hypothesis that psychically sensitive individuals may somehow, through some as-yet-undiscovered “psychic retina,” be detecting large, rapid changes in entropy as bright beacons on the landscape ahead in time.24 May’s argument makes a certain amount of sense given the classical equivalence of time’s arrow with entropy. Things that are very rapidly dissipating heat, such as stars and nuclear reactors and houses on fire, or even just a living body making the ultimate transition to the state of disorder called death, could perhaps be seen as concentrated time. But steep entropy gradients also represent a category of information that is intrinsically interesting and meaningful to humans and toward which we are particularly vigilant, whatever the sensory channel through which we receive it. An attentional bias to entropy gradients has been shown for the conventional senses of sight and hearing, not just psi phenomena. Stimuli involving sudden, rapid motion, and especially fire and heat, as well as others’ deaths and illness, are signals that carry important information related to our survival, so we tend to notice and remember them.25 Thus, an alternative explanation for the link between psi accuracy and entropy is the perverse pleasure—that is, jouissance—aroused in people by signs of destruction. Some vigilant part of us needs be constantly scanning the environment for indications of threats to our life and health, which means we need on some level to find that search rewarding. If we were not rewarded, we would not keep our guard up. Entropic signals like smoke from an advancing fire, or screams or cries from a nearby victim of violence or illness, or the grief of a neighbor for their family member are all signifiers, part of what could be called the “natural language of peril.” We find it “enjoyable,” albeit in an ambivalent or repellent way, to engage with such signifiers because, again, their meaning, their signified, is our own survival. The heightened accuracy toward entropic targets that May observed could reflect a heightened fascination with fire, heat, and chaotic situations more generally, an attentional bias to survival-relevant stimuli. Our particular psychic fascination with fire may also reflect its central role as perhaps the most decisive technology in our evolutionary development as well as the most dangerous, always able to turn on its user in an unlucky instant.26 The same primitive threat-vigilance orientation accounts for the unique allure of artworks depicting destruction or the evidence of past destruction. In the 18th century, the sublime entered the vocabulary of art critics and philosophers like Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant to describe the aesthetic appeal of ruins, impenetrable wilderness, thunderstorms and storms at sea, and other visual signals of potential or past peril, including the slow entropy of erosion and decay. Another definition of the sublime would be the semiotic of entropy.

Abdulaziz responded by calling his third national conference in less than a year. The meeting was held in September 1929 at Ash Sha’ra between Riyadh and Mecca, and this time it was decisive. The king sought and received firm public support for harsh retribution against Daweesh and his followers. The resolution stated that those who revolted would now be tried and punished as common criminals according to Islamic law for the deaths they had caused. Anyone giving them aid would have their property confiscated.26 Those living in the “corrupted” Ikhwan camps would be evicted. This was the turning point in Saudi Arabian history that established the supremacy of the central government over the tribes. Those who supported the old ways were now outlaws, not holy warriors. Nothing like this had ever happened in Arabia before—and still has not happened in either Yemen or Afghanistan.

The spreading out of garments likewise belongs to the tradition of Israelite kingship (cf. 2 Kings 9:13). What the disciples do is a gesture of enthronement in the tradition of the Davidic kingship, and it points to the Messianic hope that grew out of the Davidic tradition. The pilgrims who came to Jerusalem with Jesus are caught up in the disciples’ enthusiasm. They now spread their garments on the street along which Jesus passes. They pluck branches from the trees and cry out verses from Psalm 118, words of blessing from Israel’s pilgrim liturgy, which on their lips become a Messianic proclamation: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mk 11:9-10; cf. Ps 118:26). This acclamation is recounted by all four evangelists, albeit with some variation in detail. There is no need here to go into the differences, important though they are for “tradition criticism” and for the theological vision of the individual evangelists. Let us try merely to understand the essential outlines, especially since the Christian liturgy has adopted this greeting, interpreting it in the light of the Church’s Easter faith. First comes the exclamation “Hosanna!” Originally this was a word of urgent supplication, meaning something like: Come to our aid! The priests would repeat it in a monotone on the seventh day of the Feast of Tabernacles, while processing seven times around the altar of sacrifice, as an urgent prayer for rain. But as the Feast of Tabernacles gradually changed from a feast of petition into one of praise, so too the cry for help turned more and more into a shout of jubilation (cf. Lohse, TDNT IX, p. 682). By the time of Jesus, the word had also acquired Messianic overtones.

with a smile. Bowden turned away from him and

A few minutes later they reached the east side of Bayport. Frank turned into Springdale Avenue. By the time they passed a small stone house numbered fifty-two, they had entered a section where the sidewalks came to an end and buildings were far apart. The car bumped along an uneven dirt road. “We’re practically out in the country,” said Joe. “I’ll bet we’re beyond the city limits.

One of the most devastating consequences of chronic stress is that it damages stress’s off switch.26, 27 This makes the body stress resistant, allowing cortisol to rise to uncontrollably high levels that damage the body28 and mind.29 Exercise protects the brain from the damaging effects of chronic stress by supplying it with a dose of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF).30, 31 BDNF acts like a fertilizer that promotes the growth, function, and survival of brain cells, including those that turn off the stress response. Immediately after exercising, our brain cells are bathed in BDNF, which protects those cells against the toxic effects of high stress.

famous quote from Michael Jordan: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

On April 26, 1965, the list of inventory items turned over to RFK included a nonspecific entry of “gross material” in a 7-by-8" stainless-steel box. Was that the brain? What else could it be? There is nothing else that would even remotely qualify. Of course, it was the president’s brain!

Sun gods and gods of light were popular among Roman emperors. When Christianity turned up, classical critics saw it as an unremarkable continuation of this; indeed there was so much sun imagery in early Christianity that one Christian author would feel the need to defend Christians from accusations that they were merely sun worshippers, what with their Sunday (in Latin, dies solis – the ‘day of the sun’) worship and their tendency to pray towards the east.26 Sometimes even Christians themselves seemed a trifle confused. A remarkable third-century mosaic discovered in the Vatican Necropolis shows Jesus represented as the sun god Helios, with that god’s typical rays coming from his head, riding on his chariot.

The ritual performance of Eucharist, and the communal memory on which it rests, in large measure generated the profound theological insights that unfolded in the first few centuries of Christian traditions. Early Christian worship orbited around a remarkable insight: God makes God’s own self vulnerable to the ecstasies and foibles of bodily human intimacy. “Take, eat,” Jesus says; “this is my body given for you” (Matthew 26:26). He says this with no guarantee whatsoever that this offering will be received well if at all. Notably, God initiates this moment of self-giving, and not in response to any request from God’s creatures but instead from God’s own desire for intimacy and union with us and indeed the rest of God’s creation. The audacity of Christian faith shimmers most vividly there, in a liturgical act routinely performed weekly by the vast majority of worldwide Christians and sometimes daily. Perhaps the rite’s repetition has blunted our collective awareness of the extravagance of that ostensibly simple act. Gathering to share a meal of bread and wine offers a profound declaration at the core of Christian faith: the meaning of human life and of the whole creation derives from the hope for communion. This is first and foremost God’s desire, which is only then the hope of God’s creatures. More audaciously still, this desire and this hope for communion constitutes the one story of the cosmos, of God’s own creation, to which Christian faith bears witness and in which Christians participate every time we celebrate the Eucharist. One further step remains to bring this theological audacity more fully into view: we can refresh our Christian witness to this profound story by turning to human sexual intimacy as a poignant instance of divine desire. Christians might readily imagine turning there when we experience such intimacy as ecstatically fulfilling; but we can also reflect on sexual intimacy, and perhaps especially so, when it leaves residual disappointment or even trauma in its wake. In all its delicate rhythms and relational frustrations, this bodily signpost in spiritual practice can stimulate Christian witness to the One Story—the deep desire and abiding hope for divine communion.7

The ritual performance of Eucharist, and the communal memory on which it rests, in large measure generated the profound theological insights that unfolded in the first few centuries of Christian traditions. Early Christian worship orbited around a remarkable insight: God makes God’s own self vulnerable to the ecstasies and foibles of bodily human intimacy. “Take, eat,” Jesus says; “this is my body given for you” (Matthew 26:26). He says this with no guarantee whatsoever that this offering will be received well if at all. Notably, God initiates this moment of self-giving, and not in response to any request from God’s creatures but instead from God’s own desire for intimacy and union with us and indeed the rest of God’s creation. The audacity of Christian faith shimmers most vividly there, in a liturgical act routinely performed weekly by the vast majority of worldwide Christians and sometimes daily. Perhaps the rite’s repetition has blunted our collective awareness of the extravagance of that ostensibly simple act. Gathering to share a meal of bread and wine offers a profound declaration at the core of Christian faith: the meaning of human life and of the whole creation derives from the hope for communion. This is first and foremost God’s desire, which is only then the hope of God’s creatures. More audaciously still, this desire and this hope for communion constitutes the one story of the cosmos, of God’s own creation, to which Christian faith bears witness and in which Christians participate every time we celebrate the Eucharist. One further step remains to bring this theological audacity more fully into view: we can refresh our Christian witness to this profound story by turning to human sexual intimacy as a poignant instance of divine desire. Christians might readily imagine turning there when we experience such intimacy as ecstatically fulfilling; but we can also reflect on sexual intimacy, and perhaps especially so, when it leaves residual disappointment or even trauma in its wake. In all its delicate rhythms and relational frustrations, this bodily signpost in spiritual practice can stimulate Christian witness to the One Story—the deep desire and abiding hope for divine communion.