Union Of Two Hearts Quotes

Will you let me stand beside you on your plot of earth? We'll tell the weeds to grow tall around our ankles, and when the wind gives us sycamore seeds, we'll raise them as sprouts, seedlings, saplings until they overpower, shade, and nurture us. Our trees will grow for two hand years or more as our union becomes even more unquestionable and strong.

If there is anything that may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination, and satisfied with each other's merits. Their hearts are full and leave no vacancy for any other passion; they enjoy perpetual tranquillity because they enjoy content.

It is in the perfect union of two hearts that complete and total marriage consists.

Sex is properly understood to be not only physical, but spiritual—an ecstatic union of two bodies and two souls, meant to mimic the joy and ecstasy of union with the Divine in Paradise. Two bodies joined together in pleasure. Two souls joined through the connection between two bodies and the whole-hearted, enthusiastic, selfless giving of the entire self.

The unlikely group that resulted from the union of five diverse characters in their late twenties operated with surprising harmony. This cohesiveness could be attributed to two factors: 1) everyone’s issues and embarrassing pasts were plainly disclosed prior to the gang’s formation and 2) the clan had been expressly conceived as a male support group.

So many of us know the moment when a love connection is over, but few of us stop then. I am not talking about reactive endings. I am talking about the deep intuitive knowing that it is time to move on. Yet we are either too afraid, or too stubborn, or too concerned about the other’s feelings to make our move. But it is perilous to delay, both because we suffer in the wrong connection, and because we hold two souls back from finding the next step on their individual paths. Whether there is another love waiting around the next corner, or whether it is simply time to be alone, no one benefits by staying in an outgrown union. We have to notice the moment of ending and take it to heart. Everyone’s expansion depends on it.

Injurious Hermia! most ungrateful maid! Have you conspired, have you with the contrived To bait me with this foul derision? Is all the counsel that we two have shared, The sisters' vows, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us,-O, and is all forgot? All school=days' friendship, childhood innocence? We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our neelds created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key; As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition; Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart, Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, Due but to one, and crowned with one crest, And will you rent our ancient love asunder, To join with men in scorning your poor friend? It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly: Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it, Though I alone do feel the injury.

Their lovemaking was different from any Ryan had known, rich with desire for a perfect union, yet without lust, giving without taking, receiving without wanting. Tender, selfless, almost innocent, this was a sweet commemoration of all they had been to each other to this point in time, to this fulcrum of their lives, and it was a solemnization of a commitment to be two in one henceforth, to be as one, always one, one forever.

In the Land under the Hill, in the Time Before … Once upon a time, there was a beautiful lady of the Seelie Court who lost her heart to the son of an angel. Once upon a time, there were two boys come to the land of Faerie, brothers noble and bold. One brother caught a glimpse of the fair lady and, thunderstruck by her beauty, pledged himself to her. Pledged himself to stay. This was the boy Andrew. His brother, the boy Arthur, would not leave his side. And so the boys stayed beneath the hill, and Andrew loved the lady, and Arthur despised her. And so the lady kept her boy close to her side, kept this beautiful creature who swore his fealty to her, and when her sister lay claim to the other, the lady let him be taken away, for he was nothing. She gave Andrew a silver chain to wear around his neck, a token of her love, and she taught him the ways of the Fair Folk. She danced with him in revels beneath starry skies. She fed him moonshine and showed him how to give way to the wild. Some nights they heard Arthur’s screams, and she told him it was an animal in pain, and pain was in an animal’s nature. She did not lie, for she could not lie. Humans are animals. Pain is their nature. For seven years they lived in joy. She owned his heart, and he hers, and somewhere, beyond, Arthur screamed and screamed. Andrew didn’t know; the lady didn’t care; and so they were happy. Until the day one brother discovered the truth of the other. The lady thought her lover would go mad with the grief of it and the guilt. And so, because she loved the boy, she wove him a story of deceitful truths, the story he would want to believe. That he had been ensorcelled to love her; that he had never betrayed his brother; that he was only a slave; that these seven years of love had been a lie. The lady set the useless brother free and allowed him to believe he had freed himself. The lady subjected herself to the useless brother’s attack and allowed him to believe he had killed her. The lady let her lover renounce her and run away. And the lady beheld the secret fruits of their union and kissed them and tried to love them. But they were only a piece of her boy. She wanted all of him or none of him. As she had given him his story, she gave him his children. She had nothing left to live for, then, and so lived no longer. This is the story she left behind, the story her lover will never know; this is the story her daughter will never know. This is how a faerie loves: with her whole body and soul. This is how a faerie loves: with destruction. I love you, she told him, night after night, for seven years. Faeries cannot lie, and he knew that. I love you, he told her, night after night, for seven years. Humans can lie, and so she let him believe he lied to her, and she let his brother and his children believe it, and she died hoping they would believe it forever. This is how a faerie loves: with a gift.

It wasn’t beautiful. A Winter wedding is a union of elation and depression, red velvet blankets in a cheap motel room stained with semen from sex devoid of meaning, and black mold clinging to the fringe of floral shower curtains like a heap of dead forevers. You sat down at the foot of the bed, looking at me like I had already
driven away. I was thinking about watching CNN. How fucked up is that? I wanted to know that your second hand, off-white dress, and my black polyester bow tie wasn’t as tragic as a hurricane devouring a suburb, or a train derailment in no where, Virginia, ending the lives of two young college hopefuls. I was naïve. I thought that there were as many right ways to feel love as the amount of
 pubic hair, 
 belly lint, and 
scratch marks abandoned by lovers in our honeymoon suite. When you looked at me in bed that night, I put my hand on your chest to feel a little more human. I don’t know what to call you; a name does not describe the aches, or lack of. This love is unusual and comfortable. If you were to leave, I know I’d search for days, in newspapers and broadcasts, in car accidents and exposés on genocide in Kosovo. (How do I address this? How is one to feel about a love without a name?) My heart would be ambivalent, too scared to look for you behind the curtains of the motel window, outside in the abyss of powder and pay phones because I don’t know how to love you. -Kosovo

As we have seen, prayer, celebration of the religious offices, alms, consoling the afflicted, the cultivation of a little piece of ground, fraternity, frugality, hospitality, self-sacrifice, confidence, study, and work, filled up each day of his life. Filled up is exactly the phrase; and in fact, the Bishop's day was full to the brim with good thoughts, good words, and good actions. Yet it was not complete if cold or rainy weather prevented him from passing an hour or two in the evening, when the two women had retired, in his garden before going to sleep. It seemed as though it were a sort of rite with him, to prepare himself for sleep by meditating in the presence of the great spectacle of the starry firmament. Sometimes late at night, if the two women were awake, they would hear him slowly walking the paths. He was out there alone with himself, composed, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts that fall from the Unknown. In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night emit their perfume, lit like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of creation’s universal radiance, perhaps he could not have told what was happening in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him; mysterious exchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe. He contemplated the grandeur, and the presence of God; the eternity of the future, that strange mystery; the eternity of the past, a stranger mystery; all the infinities hidden deep in every direction; and, without trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, he saw it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him. He reflected upon the magnificent union of atoms, which give visible forms to Nature, revealing forces by recognizing them, creating individualities in unity, proportions in extension, the innumerable in the infinite, and through light producing beauty. These unions are forming and dissolving continually; from which come life and death. He would sit on a wooden bench leaning against a decrepit trellis and look at the stars through the irregular outlines of his fruit trees. This quarter of an acre of ground, so sparingly planted, so cluttered with shed and ruins, was dear to him and satisfied him. What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the day time, and contemplation at night? Was this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background not space enough for him to adore God in his most beautiful, most sublime works? Indeed, is that not everything? What more do you need? A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in the sky.

When two tears fall From each eye apart, Yet they join after all To form a sweetheart.

If there is any thing which may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is in the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination, and satisfied with each other's merit; their hearts are full and leave no vacancy for any other passion; they enjoy perpetual tranquillity, because they enjoy content

Our trees will grow for two hundred years or more as our union becomes even more unquestionable and strong. Unquestionable because no one will remember a time when we were not creating our universe.

At Abraham's burial, his two most prominent sons, rivals since before they were born, estranged since childhood, scions of rival nations, come together for the first time since they were rent apart nearly three-quarters of a century earlier. The text reports their union nearly without comment. "His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, facing Mamre, in the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites." But the meaning of this moment cannot be diminished. Abraham achieves in death what he could never achieve in life: a moment of reconciliation between his two sons, a peaceful, communal, side-by-side flicker of possibility in which they are not rivals, scions, warriors, adversaries, children, Jews, Christians, or Muslims. They are brothers. They are mourners. In a sense they are us, forever weeping for the loss of our common father, shuffling through our bitter memories, reclaiming our childlike expectations, laughing, sobbing, furious and full of dreams, wondering about our orphaned future, and demanding the answers we all crave to hear: What did you want from me, Father? What did you leave me with, Father? And what do I do now?

The moon splits open. We move through, waterbirds rising to look for another lake. Or say we are living in a love-ocean, where trust works to caulk our body-boat, to make it last a little while, until the inevitable shipwreck, the total marriage, the death-union. Dissolve in friendship, like two drunkards fighting. Do not look for justice here in the jungle where your animal soul gives you bad advice. Drink enough wine so that you stop talking. You are a lover, and love is a tavern where no one makes much sense. Even if the things you say are poems as dense as sacks of Solomon's gold, they become pointless.

We are gathered here tonight to join these two lives, these two hearts, these two souls, in marriage. If there is anyone present here today who objects to this union, please take it up with the two armed federal agents

One night, alone in her Dogtown bed, Judy finally admitted to herself that she had been in love with Cornelius. "In love" precisely as it was described in the novels and poems she had read with Martha; love as a kind of sweet madness that colored everything. Judy had been shocked that strangers across the ocean could describe the workings of her Yankee heart: the preoccupation and yearning, the soaring happiness and keen appreciation of a man's hidden qualities, the sublime meeting of souls. And yet, there was never a mention of the sort of union she'd shared with Cornelius, the longing and fulfillment of the flesh, that could transform two bodies into one.

Ultimately, the roast turkey must be regarded as a monument to Boomer's love. Look at it now, plump and glossy, floating across Idaho as if it were a mammoth, mutated seed pod. Hear how it backfires as it passes the silver mines, perhaps in tribute to the origin of the knives and forks of splendid sterling that a roast turkey and a roast turkey alone possesses the charisma to draw forth into festivity from dark cupboards. See how it glides through the potato fields, familiarly at home among potatoes but with an air of expectation, as if waiting for the flood of gravy. The roast turkey carries with it, in its chubby hold, a sizable portion of our primitive and pagan luggage. Primitive and pagan? Us? We of the laser, we of the microchip, we of the Union Theological Seminary and Time magazine? Of course. At least twice a year, do not millions upon millions of us cybernetic Christians and fax machine Jews participate in a ritual, a highly stylized ceremony that takes place around a large dead bird? And is not this animal sacrificed, as in days of yore, to catch the attention of a divine spirit, to show gratitude for blessings bestowed, and to petition for blessings coveted? The turkey, slain, slowly cooked over our gas or electric fires, is the central figure at our holy feast. It is the totem animal that brings our tribe together. And because it is an awkward, intractable creature, the serving of it establishes and reinforces the tribal hierarchy. There are but two legs, two wings, a certain amount of white meat, a given quantity of dark. Who gets which piece; who, in fact, slices the bird and distributes its limbs and organs, underscores quite emphatically the rank of each member in the gathering. Consider that the legs of this bird are called 'drumsticks,' after the ritual objects employed to extract the music from the most aboriginal and sacred of instruments. Our ancestors, kept their drums in public, but the sticks, being more actively magical, usually were stored in places known only to the shaman, the medicine man, the high priest, of the Wise Old Woman. The wing of the fowl gives symbolic flight to the soul, but with the drumstick is evoked the best of the pulse of the heart of the universe. Few of us nowadays participate in the actual hunting and killing of the turkey, but almost all of us watch, frequently with deep emotion, the reenactment of those events. We watch it on TV sets immediately before the communal meal. For what are footballs if not metaphorical turkeys, flying up and down a meadow? And what is a touchdown if not a kill, achieved by one or the other of two opposing tribes? To our applause, great young hungers from Alabama or Notre Dame slay the bird. Then, the Wise Old Woman, in the guise of Grandma, calls us to the table, where we, pretending to be no longer primitive, systematically rip the bird asunder. Was Boomer Petaway aware of the totemic implications when, to impress his beloved, he fabricated an outsize Thanksgiving centerpiece? No, not consciously. If and when the last veil dropped, he might comprehend what he had wrought. For the present, however, he was as ignorant as Can o' Beans, Spoon, and Dirty Sock were, before Painted Stick and Conch Shell drew their attention to similar affairs. Nevertheless, it was Boomer who piloted the gobble-stilled butterball across Idaho, who negotiated it through the natural carving knives of the Sawtooth Mountains, who once or twice parked it in wilderness rest stops, causing adjacent flora to assume the appearance of parsley.

We are gathered here tonight to join these two lives, these two hearts, these two souls, in marriage. If there is anyone present here today who objects to this union, please take it up with the two armed federal agents who are getting hitched.” Zane

Thus it is that thy joy in me is so full. Thus it is that thou hast come down to me. O thou lord of all heavens, where would be thy love if I were not? Thou hast taken me as thy partner of all this wealth. In my heart is the endless play of thy delight. In my life thy will is ever taking shape. And for this, thou who art the King of kings hast decked thyself in beauty to captivate my heart. And for this thy love loses itself in the love of thy lover, and there art thou seen in the perfect union of two.

The exhaustion apparent in his slumped shoulders made her heart twist. He looked so tired she wanted to rub his back and stroke his hair, as a mother would for a child. This was natural compassion, she decided, and walked toward him to give him what comfort she could. He finally heard her and lifted his head from his arms. Locks of sandy hair fell over his forehead and he looked up at her with deep indigo eyes. Even in the dim light, she could see pain etched across his features. What horrors stalked his dreams? What could she do to help him sleep peacefully? For a long moment they gazed at one another and then Huiann rested her hand on his shoulder. At the same time, Alan leaned into her body. They came together like two halves of an eggshell carefully broken. He slid a hand around her waist and pulled her closer. His face pressed against her breast. His arms wrapped around her. She held him, cradling his head, rubbing his back. His body was so warm in her embrace. Her heart beat steadily and her stomach flipped in slow, lazy somersaults. The moment she’d sensed coming for so long was here. What would happen next? For a long time, they remained locked in perfect union, contented, safe, no longer alone. As she caressed his hair, soft as she’d imagined, he tilted his face to look up at her. His eyes glittered in the lamplight. He wanted more and Huiann realized she did too.

It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time ahead and far on into life, is—; solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent—?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances.

She’d always known a simple truth: Intimacy was the heart of marriage. Not just sex. Intimacy meant doing things together, and being together. In marriage, you were no longer just one person, but two-in-one. Part of a greater whole. Both halves needed to make sacrifices for the union to work, but in the best marriages, those sacrifices were small, because the two halves were so even, and so compatible.

A formal period in life where there isn’t the worry of another person’s dramas and insecurities can be of great advantage, especially when used for growing into the full and wholesome beings we intended to be when choosing to come to this material manifestation. “Even after ending a long relationship or a marriage, it seems normal to have some alone-time to reflect, meditate, explore areas of interest, find meaning in one’s suffering and try to placate the void felt in the heart before attempting to enter into new relationships, otherwise the same old mistakes will surely re-emerge. “Once we’re at the stage of life where we can stand our own silence, where we’ve made peace with our past, where we’ve accepted and grown from its lessons, and we would like to share our independence without becoming dependent on someone else for love and affection, then we can choose to commit to a two bodied intimate relationship.

The more I reflected the more I said to myself that Marguerite had no reason for feigning a love which she did not feel, and I said to myself also that women have two ways of loving, one of which may arise from the other: they love with the heart or with the senses. [...] often a girl who has sought in marriage only the union of two pure affections receives the sudden revelation of physical love, that energetic conclusion of the purest impressions of the soul.

The dissolving, uniting forces combine what to us have been incompatible: attraction with repulsion, darkness with light, the erotic with the destructive.  If we can allow these opposites to meet they move our inner resonance to a higher vibratory plane, expanding consciousness into new realms.  It was exciting, through my explorations some of which I share in later chapters, to learn firsthand that the sacred marriage or coniunctio, the impulse to unite seeming opposites, does indeed seem to lie at the heart of the subtle body’s imaginal world. One important characteristic of the coniunctio is its paradoxical dual action.  The creative process of each sacred marriage, or conjoining of opposites, involves not only the unitive moment of joining together in a new creation or ‘third,’ but also, as I have mentioned, a separating or darkening moment.5 The idea that “darkness comes before dawn” captures this essential aspect of creativity.  To state an obvious truth we as a culture are just beginning to appreciate.  In alchemical language, when darkness falls, it is said to be the beginning of the inner work or the opus of transformation. The old king (ego) must die before the new reign dawns. The early alchemists called the dark, destructive side of these psychic unions the blackness or the nigredo.  Chaos, uncertainty, disillusionment, depression, despair, or madness prevails during these liminal times of  “making death.” The experiences surrounding these inner experiences of darkness and dying (the most difficult aspects were called mortificatio) may constitute our culture’s ruling taboo. This taboo interferes with our moving naturally to Stage Two in the individuating process, a process that requires that we pass through a descent into the underworld of the Dark Feminine realities of birthing an erotic intensity that leads to dying. Entranced by our happily-ever-after prejudiced culture, we often do not see that in any relationship, project or creative endeavor or idea some form of death follows naturally after periods of intense involvement.  When dark experiences befall, we tend to turn away, to move as quickly as possible to something positive or at least distracting, away from the negative affects of grieving, rage, terror, rotting and loss we associate with darkness and dying. As

Happiness depends not on things around me, but on my attitude. Alfred Montapert The monument of a great man is not of granite or marble or bronze. It consists of his goodness, his deeds, his love and his compassion. Alfred Montapert No better words than "thank you" have yet been discovered to express the sincere gratitude of one's heart, when the two words are sincerely spoken. Alfred Montapert The man or woman you really love will never grow old to you. Through the wrinkles of time, through the bowed frame of years, you will always see the dear face and feel the warm heart union of eternal love. Alfred Montapert The finest piece of mechanism in all the universe is the brain of man. The wise person develops his brain and opens his mind to the genius and spirit of the world's greatest ideas. He will feel inspired with the purest and noblest thoughts that have ever animated the spirit of humanity. Alfred Montapert.

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time ahead and far on into life, is—; solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent—?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person

When a man seats before his eyes the bronze face of his helmet and steps off from the line of departure, he divides himself, as he divides his ‘ticket,’ in two parts. One part he leaves behind. That part which takes delight in his children, which lifts his voice in the chorus, which clasps his wife to him in the sweet darkness of their bed. “That half of him, the best part, a man sets aside and leaves behind. He banishes from his heart all feelings of tenderness and mercy, all compassion and kindness, all thought or concept of the enemy as a man, a human being like himself. He marches into battle bearing only the second portion of himself, the baser measure, that half which knows slaughter and butchery and turns the blind eye to quarter. He could not fight at all if he did not do this.” The men listened, silent and solemn. Leonidas at that time was fifty-five years old. He had fought in more than two score battles, since he was twenty; wounds as ancient as thirty years stood forth, lurid upon his shoulders and calves, on his neck and across his steel-colored beard. “Then this man returns, alive, out of the slaughter. He hears his name called and comes forward to take his ticket. He reclaims that part of himself which he had earlier set aside. “This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath. “What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy’s spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell? “When a man joins the two pieces of his ticket and sees them weld in union together, he feels that part of him, the part that knows love and mercy and compassion, come flooding back over him. This is what unstrings his knees. “What else can a man feel at that moment than the most grave and profound thanksgiving to the gods who, for reasons unknowable, have spared his life this day? Tomorrow their whim may alter. Next week, next year. But this day the sun still shines upon him, he feels its warmth upon his shoulders, he beholds about him the faces of his comrades whom he loves and he rejoices in their deliverance and his own.” Leonidas paused now, in the center of the space left open for him by the troops. “I have ordered pursuit of the foe ceased. I have commanded an end to the slaughter of these whom today we called our enemies. Let them return to their homes. Let them embrace their wives and children. Let them, like us, weep tears of salvation and burn thank-offerings to the gods. “Let no one of us forget or misapprehend the reason we fought other Greeks here today. Not to conquer or enslave them, our brothers, but to make them allies against a greater enemy. By persuasion, we hoped. By coercion, in the event. But no matter, they are our allies now and we will treat them as such from this moment. “The Persian!

We want union with something, even if the opposite seems true.  Bring two atomic nuclei together and their positive electrostatic forces will repel each other, but, with the patience and strength of the blind god of the galaxies, there comes a point where something bigger takes over and welds them together. Physicists call it the Strong Nuclear Force; I’ve called this magic glue God. All the elements heavier than hydrogen were so formed, forged in the great hearts of the stars: sulphur, potassium, gold, radium. Everything you can think of.  

The idea that she'll never see Molly Notkin or the cerebral Union or her U.H.I.D. support-brothers-and-sisters or the YYY engineer or Uncle Bud on a roof or her stepmother in the Locked Ward or her poor personal Daddy again is sentimental and banal. The idea of what she's about in here contains all other ideas and makes them banal. Her glass of juice is on the back of the toilet, half-empty. The back of the toilet is lightly sheened with condensation of unknown origin. These are facts. This room in this apartment is the sum of very many specific facts and ideas. There is nothing more to it than that. Deliberately setting about to make her heart explode has assumed the status of just one of these facts. It was an idea but now is about to become a fact. The closer it comes to becoming concrete the more abstract it seems. Things get very abstract. The concrete room was the sum of abstract facts. Are facts abstract, or are they just abstract representations of concrete things? Molly Notkin's middle name is Cantrell. Joelle puts two more matches together and prepares to strike them, breathing rapidly in and out like a diver preparing for a long descent.

From his corner office on the ground floor of the St. Cyril station house, Inspector Dick has a fine view of the parking lot. Six Dumpsters plated and hooped like iron maidens against bears. Beyond the Dumpsters a subalpine meadow, and then the snow¬ capped ghetto wall that keeps the Jews at bay. Dick is slouched against the back of his two-thirds-scale desk chair, arms crossed, chin sunk to his chest, star¬ing out the casement window. Not at the mountains or the meadow, grayish green in the late light, tufted with wisps of fog, or even at the armored Dumpsters. His gaze travels no farther than the parking lot—no farther than his 1961 Royal Enfield Crusader. Lands¬man recognizes the expression on Dick's face. It's the expression that goes with the feeling Landsman gets when he looks at his Chevelle Super Sport, or at the face of Bina Gelbfish. The face of a man who feels he was born into the wrong world. A mistake has been made; he is not where he belongs. Every so often he feels his heart catch, like a kite on a telephone wire, on something that seems to promise him a home in the world or a means of getting there. An American car manufactured in his far-off boyhood, say, or a motor¬cycle that once belonged to the future king of England, or the face of a woman worthier than himself of being loved.

The mystic knows that the essence of prayer is the hidden secret, “I am He whom I love, He whom I love is me.” In the deepest prayer of the heart there is only oneness, for when the heart is open and looks towards God, He reveals His unity. In this state of prayer there are a merging and melting that transcend the mind and its notions of duality: the heart overwhelms us with His presence which obliterates any sense of our own self. These moments of prayer are moments of union in which the lover is lost. The lover has stepped from the shore of his own being into the limitless ocean of the Beloved. (...) When love reveals its real nature we come to know that there is neither lover nor Beloved. There is no one to pray and no one to pray to. We do not even know that we are lost; we return from these states of merging only knowing that we gave ourself and were taken. Our gift of ourself was accepted so completely that we knew nothing. We looked towards Him and He took us in His arms, embraced us in oneness, dissolved us in nearness. For so many years we cried to Him, we called to Him, and when He came the meeting was so intimate that we knew nothing. But when we return from this merging of oneness, when the mind again surrounds us, we can see the footprints that led us to this shore, to the place where the two worlds meet. We can tell stories of the journey that led us to the edge of the heart’s infinite ocean, of the nights we called to Him, and the tears we cried in our calling. For so many years our need was all that we knew, a need born of the despair of separation, the deepest despair known to the soul. This need was our first prayer, planted in the soul by Him who loves us, who wants us for Himself. This need of the soul is the bond of love, the mystic’s pledge to remember Him. The awakening of this remembrance is the knowledge of our forgetfulness, the knowledge of separation. The lover is made to know that she is separate from her Beloved, that she has forgotten Him. Awakening to this knowledge, the lover brings into consciousness the soul’s need to return Home, to journey from separation to union.

Finally, Europe’s post-war history is a story shadowed by silences; by absence. The continent of Europe was once an intricate, interwoven tapestry of overlapping languages, religions, communities and nations. Many of its cities—particularly the smaller ones at the intersection of old and new imperial boundaries, such as Trieste, Sarajevo, Salonika, Cernovitz, Odessa or Vilna—were truly multicultural societies avant le mot, where Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, Jews and others lived in familiar juxtaposition. We should not idealise this old Europe. What the Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski called ‘the incredible, almost comical melting-pot of peoples and nationalities sizzling dangerously in the very heart of Europe’ was periodically rent with riots, massacres and pogroms—but it was real, and it survived into living memory. Between 1914 and 1945, however, that Europe was smashed into the dust. The tidier Europe that emerged, blinking, into the second half of the twentieth century had fewer loose ends. Thanks to war, occupation, boundary adjustments, expulsions and genocide, almost everybody now lived in their own country, among their own people. For forty years after World War Two Europeans in both halves of Europe lived in hermetic national enclaves where surviving religious or ethnic minorities the Jews in France, for example—represented a tiny percentage of the population at large and were thoroughly integrated into its cultural and political mainstream. Only Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union—an empire, not a country and anyway only part-European, as already noted—stood aside from this new, serially homogenous Europe. But since the 1980s, and above all since the fall of the Soviet Union and the enlargement of the EU, Europe is facing a multicultural future. Between them refugees; guest-workers; the denizens of Europe’s former colonies drawn back to the imperial metropole by the prospect of jobs and freedom; and the voluntary and involuntary migrants from failed or repressive states at Europe’s expanded margins have turned London, Paris, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Berlin, Milan and a dozen other places into cosmopolitan world cities whether they like it or not.

But, sceptic that he was, he had one fanatical devotion, not for an idea, a creed, an art or a science, but for a man — for Enjolras. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Enjolras. The anarchic questioner of all beliefs had attached himself to the most absolute of all that circle of believers. Enjolras had conquered him not by any force of reason but by character. It is a not uncommon phenomenon. The sceptic clinging to a believer is something as elementary as the law of complementary colours. We are drawn to what we lack. No one loves daylight more than a blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad has its eyes upturned to Heaven, and for what? — to watch the flight of the birds. Grantaire, earthbound in doubt, loved to watch Enjolras soaring in the upper air of faith. He needed Enjolras. Without being fully aware of it, or seeking to account for it himself, he was charmed by that chaste, upright, inflexible, and candid nature. Instinctively he was attracted to his opposite. His flabby, incoherent, and shapeless thinking attached itself to Enjolras as to a spinal column. He was in any case a compound of apparently incompatible elements, at once ironical and friendly, affectionate beneath his seeming indifference. His mind could do without faith, but his heart could not do without friendship: a profound contradiction, for affection in itself is faith. Such was his nature. There are men who seem born to be two-sided. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Ephestion. They can live only in union with the other who is their reverse side; their name is one of a pair, always preceded by the conjunction "and"; their lives are not their own; they are the other side of a destiny which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of those, the reverse side of Enjolras. Truly the satellite of Enjolras, he formed one of that circle of young men, went everywhere with them and was only happy in their company. His delight was to see those figures moving amid the mists of wine, and they bore with him because of his good humour. Enjolras, the believer, despised the sceptic and soberly deplored the drunkard. His attitude towards him was one of pitying disdain. Grantaire was an unwelcome Ephestion. But, roughly treated though he was by Enjolras, harshly repulsed and rejected, he always came back, saying of him: "What a splendid statue!

Because,' he said, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you, especially when you are near me, as now; it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situation in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and the nI've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.' 'That I never would, sir; you know -,' impossible to proceed. [...] The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway and asserting a right to predominate - to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes, and to speak. 'I grieve to leave Thornfield; I love Thornfield; I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright, and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in, with an origin, a vigorous, and expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you forever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.' 'Where do you see the necessity?' he asked, suddenly. 'Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.' 'In what shape?' 'In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman, your bride.' 'My bride! What bride? I have no bride!' 'But you will have.' 'Yes; I will! I will!' He set his teeth. 'Then I must go; you have said it yourself.' 'No; you must stay! I swear it, and the oath shall be kept.' 'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. 'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation? a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that addresses your spirits; just as if both had passed through the grace, and we stood at God's feel, equal - as we are!' 'As we are!' repeated Mr. Rochester - 'so,' he added, including me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips; 'so, Jane!' 'Yes, so, sir,' I rejoined; 'and yet not so; for you are a married man, or as good as a married man, and we'd to one inferior to you - to one with whom you have no sympathy - whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union; therefore I am better than you - let me go!' 'Where, Jane? to Ireland?' 'Yes - to Ireland. I have spoke my mind, and can go anywhere now.' 'Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is tending its own plumage in its desperation.' 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.' Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him. 'And your will shall decide your destiny,' he said; 'I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.' 'You play a farce, which I merely taught at.' 'I ask you to pass through life at my side - to be my second self, and best earthly companion.' [...] 'Do you doubt me, Jane?' 'Entirely.' 'You have no faith in me?' 'Not a whit.

Arabel wants me to go to England, but as I did not last year my heart and nerves revolt from it now. Besides, we belong to the nonno and you this summer. Arabel can and, I dare say, will join us. And Milsand? You say ‘once in three years.’ Not quite so, I think. In any case, it has been far worse with some of mine. All the days of the three times of meeting in fourteen years, can only be multiplied together into three weeks; and this after a life of close union! Also, it was not her fault — she had not pecuniary means. I am bitter against myself for not having gone to England for a week or two in the Havre year. I could have done it, Robert would have let me. But now, no more. It was the war the year before last, and my unsteadiness of health last year, which kept us from our usual visit to you. This time we shall come.

I am convinced that in the present time, in spite of the difficulties man has to meet another in a state of oblation, communion and gift of self, there are latent hidden forces in him which can be awakened in order to enable him to discover and live this reality of love and fidelity. In order to really penetrate into this mystery of the union of the couple, it is essential that each one acquire an interior maturity, a maturity that is perhaps rare. I would add that in order to be truly united and to remain truly faithful to one another, the couple must listen and be open to the Spirit of God who has reserved for Himself the science of the heart. The heart of man is satisfied only by the Infinite and to discover this Infinite in union he must open himself to the Spirit of God, a spirit of giving, of receiving. The union between the two spouses can thus deepen to such an extent that they enter in a mystical manner into the very life of God Himself.

O wine-bearer brighten my cup with the wine O minstrel say good fortune is now mine. The face of my Beloved is reflected in my cup Little you know why with wine, I always myself align. Eternal is the one whose heart has awakened to Love This is how Eternal Records my life define. So proud are the tall beauties of the world Outshines all the others this handsome spruce of mine. O breeze if by chance you pass through friendly gardens From me to my Beloved, please give a sign; Ask why you choose to forget my name? Will come the one to whom an audience you decline. Intoxication pleases my Beloved and my Lord To the wine, they would assign, my life's design. What if on Judgement Day, no favor would be gained From eating bread and leaving a forbidden water so fine? Hafiz, let a tear drop or two leave your eyes, May we ensnare the Bird of Union, divine. The sea of the skies and the gondola of the moon With the grace of the Master, radiantly shine.

Godfrey and Hesper made a glorious pair to look at--but would theirs be a happy union?--Happy, I dare say--and not too happy. He who sees to our affairs will see that the “too” is not in them. There were fine elements in both, and, if indeed they loved, and now I think, from very necessity of their two hearts, they must have loved, then all would, by degrees, by slow degrees, most likely, come right with them. If they had been born again both, before they began, so to start fresh, then like two children hand in hand they might have run in through the gates into the city. But what is love, what is loss, what defilement even, what are pains, and hopes, and disappointments, what sorrow, and death, and all the ills that flesh is heir to, but means to this very end, to this waking of the soul to seek the home of our being--the life eternal? Verily we must be born from above, and be good children, or become, even to our self-loving selves, a scorn, a hissing, and an endless reproach.

The consecration of all to our Master, far from lessening our power to impart, increases both our power and our joy in ministration. The five loaves and two fishes of the disciples, first given up to and blessed by the Lord, were abundant supply for the needy multitudes, and grew, in the act of distribution, into a store of which twelve hampers full of fragments remained when all were fully satisfied. We have, then, in this beautiful section, as we have seen, a picture of unbroken communion and its delightful issues. May our lives correspond! First, one with the King, then speaking of the King; the joy of communion leading to fellowship in service, to a being all for Jesus, ready for any experience that will fit for further service, surrendering all to Him, and willing to minister all for Him. There is no room for love of the world here, for union with Christ has filled the heart; there is nothing for the gratification of the world, for all has been sealed and is kept for the Master's use. Jesus, my life is Thine! And evermore shall be Hidden in Thee. For nothing can untwine Thy life from mine.

Maybe in the case of true human, their mind, their soul, their consciousness flows through their bodies like blood, inhabiting every cell of their physical being, and so Aristotle was right, in humans the mind and body are one and cannot be separated, the self is both with the body and perishes with it too. She imagined that union with a thrill. How lucky human beings were if that was the case, she wanted to tell Geronimo who was and was not Ibn Rushd: lucky and doomed. When their hearts pounded with excitement their souls pounded too, when their pulses raced their spirits were aroused, hen their eyes moistened with tears of happiness it was their minds that felt the joy. Their minds touched the people their fingers touched, and when they in turn were touched by others it was as if two consciousnesses were briefly joined. The mind gave the body sensuality, it allowed the body to taste delight and to smell love in their lover's sweet perfume; not only their bodies but their minds, too, made love. And at the end the soul, as mortal as the body, learned the last great lesson of life, which was the body's death.

Dear Bride to Be Come to me, Dear Bride to be, And kneel before My Throne And I will share My heart with you And make your house a home. Listen well, lean closely There are secrets at My feet— The marriage you will soon begin This Bridegroom will complete. The man with whom you'll journey Is your wedding gift from me To teach you things beyond this world… A precious mystery. Bearing all these things in mind You'll never lack for wealth For through your union I will choose To teach you of Myself. Let him hold you tightly And keep you safe from harm Until I'll one day hold you In My everlasting arms. Let him wipe your tears away And trust him with your pain Until I wipe them all away And Heaven is your gain. Pray to love his tender touch And want his gentle kiss I grant you both my blessing And ask you not to miss The reason why I've chosen For two halves to become one— That you might see the Bride of Christ, Sweet Daughter and Dear Son. So make his home a refuge He's to love you as I do Until your mansion is complete... A place prepared for you. And if I should choose to leave you here When I have called him home Trust I'll be your husband near... You'll never be alone.

Honorable, happy, and successful marriage is surely the principal goal of every normal person. Marriage is perhaps the most vital of all the decisions and has the most far-reaching effects, for it has to do not only with immediate happiness, but also with eternal joys. It affects not only the two people involved, but also their families and particularly their children and their children’s children down through the many generations. In selecting a companion for life and for eternity, certainly the most careful planning and thinking and praying and fasting should be done to be sure that of all the decisions, this one must not be wrong. In true marriage there must be a union of minds as well as of hearts. Emotions must not wholly determine decisions, but the mind and the heart, strengthened by fasting and prayer and serious consideration, will give one a maximum chance of marital happiness. It brings with it sacrifice, sharing, and a demand for great selflessness. . . . Some think of happiness as a glamorous life of ease, luxury, and constant thrills; but true marriage is based on a happiness which is more than that, one which comes from giving, serving, sharing, sacrificing, and selflessness. . . . One comes to realize very soon after marriage that the spouse has weaknesses not previously revealed or discovered. The virtues which were constantly magnified during courtship now grow relatively smaller, and the weaknesses which seemed so small and insignificant during courtship now grow to sizable proportions. The hour has come for understanding hearts, for self-appraisal, and for good common sense, reasoning, and planning. . . . “Soul mates” are fiction and an illusion; and while every young man and young woman will seek with all diligence and prayerfulness to find a mate with whom life can be most compatible and beautiful, yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price. There is a never-failing formula which will guarantee to every couple a happy and eternal marriage; but like all formulas, the principal ingredients must not be left out, reduced, or limited. The selection before courting and then the continued courting after the marriage process are equally important, but not more important than the marriage itself, the success of which depends upon the two individuals—not upon one, but upon two. . . . The formula is simple; the ingredients are few, though there are many amplifications of each. First, there must be the proper approach toward marriage, which contemplates the selection of a spouse who reaches as nearly as possible the pinnacle of perfection in all the matters which are of importance to the individuals. And then those two parties must come to the altar in the temple realizing that they must work hard toward this successful joint living. Second, there must be a great unselfishness, forgetting self and directing all of the family life and all pertaining thereunto to the good of the family, subjugating self. Third, there must be continued courting and expressions of affection, kindness, and consideration to keep love alive and growing. Fourth, there must be a complete living of the commandments of the Lord as defined in the gospel of Jesus Christ. . . . Two individuals approaching the marriage altar must realize that to attain the happy marriage which they hope for they must know that marriage is not a legal coverall, but it means sacrifice, sharing, and even a reduction of some personal liberties. It means long, hard economizing. It means children who bring with them financial burdens, service burdens, care and worry burdens; but also it means the deepest and sweetest emotions of all. . . . To be really happy in marriage, one must have a continued faithful observance of the commandments of the Lord. No one, single or married, was ever sublimely happy unless he was righteous.

we hear “the first,” our false self immediately presumes that loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is the all-important thing. So we engage in various types of spiritual practices; we may become rigorously religious; we become very “spiritual” in our efforts to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. We figure once we really get our act together in loving God as we should, perhaps we can then work on loving our neighbor as our self. After all, didn’t Jesus say this comes second? This is not what Jesus is saying. The best translation is: “ ‘You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.’ Another way to say the same thing is, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” If you think I’m playing fast and loose with Scripture, you haven’t read 1 John lately. John got it. He understood that our relationship with God and our relationships with others are two sides of a single coin, the symbiosis of life in loving union with God for others.3 The place where we live out our relationship of loving union with God is not in the quiet of our prayer closet but in our relationships with one another. Here is where we “put to death” the manipulative, coercive, controlling dynamics of the false self. Here is where we abandon the dehumanizing and abusive practices of the false self. We love others.

The quest for the eternal, all-beautiful, all-true and all-pure, and the quest to be close to the poor and most broken people appear to be so contradictory. And yet, in the broken heart of Christ, these two quests are united. Jesus reveals to us that he loves his Father, and is intimately linked to him; at the same time he is himself in love with each person and in a particular way with the most broken, the most suffering and the most rejected. To manifest this love, Jesus himself became broken and rejected, a man of sorrows and of anguish and of tears; he became the Crucified One. . . . Within the church, over the ages, one or the other aspect of this double mission has been emphasized, according to the call of God in different times and places, but both are also present. There are those who are called to the desert or the mountain top to see greater union with God through the Crucified One; and their prayer will flow upon the broken and the crucified ones of this world. And there are those called together to give their lives for and with the crucified and broken ones in the world; and they will always seek a personal and mystical union with Jesus so that they may love as he loves. Every community and every family are called to live both forms of mission, but in different ways: to pray and to be present in a special way to the smallest and the weakest within their own community or outside it, according to their individual call.

Those who practice the Dharma of the Mahayana in accordance with the Buddha's intention are known as bodhisattvas. If you practice the teachings of the Mahayana, you can reach the level of the great bodhisattvas Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri, in the best case, or become like the Buddha's two main disciples Shariputra and Maudgalyayana, who were gifted with insight and miraculous powers. Even if you are unable to practice to the full in this life, you will at least be reborn among the principal disciples of the future Buddha, Maitreya. The buddhas being those who have totally conquered the enemies of ignorance and the other emotions, they are often referred to by the synonym 'Victorious Ones,' while bodhisattvas, in many texts including the Tibetan original of the root verses of these teachings, are called 'children of the Victorious Ones'. Who, then, are the children of the buddhas? In the case of Buddha Shakyamuni, the child of his body was his physical son, Prince Rahula. The children of his speech were all those who heard him teach and attained the level of arhart - the great beings such as Shariputra, Maudgalayana, the sixteen arhats and others, who became the holders of his teachings. Above all, the children of the buddha's mind are the great bodhisattvas like Avalokiteshvara and Manjushri, who carry out their noble intention to bring all beings to enlightenment. For, just as a great monarch with a thousand children would choose the one with the most perfect qualities to be his heir, so, too, a buddha regards as his authentic heirs the bodhisattvas who have perfected the union of wisdom and compassion.

Kneading her hand, touching her ring, Alexander said, “In America, when two people get married, they say their vows. Do you know what those are?” Tatiana was hardly listening. She had been thinking of America. She wanted to ask Alexander if there were villages in America, villages with cabins on the banks of rivers. In America where there was no war, and no hunger, and no Dimitri. “Are you listening? The priest says, ‘Do you, Alexander, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?’” “Lawfully bedded?” He laughed. “That too. No, lawfully wedded. And then we say our vows. Do you want me to tell you what they are?” “What what are?” Tatiana brought his fingers to her lips. “You have to repeat after me.” “Repeat after me.” “I, Tatiana Metanova, take this man to be my husband—” “I, Tatiana Metanova, take this great man to be my husband.” Kissing his thumb and forefinger and middle finger. He had wonderful fingers. “To live together in the covenant of marriage—” “To live together in the covenant of marriage.” Kissing his ring finger. “I will love him, comfort him, honor and keep him—” “I will love him, comfort him, honor and keep him.” Kissing the ring on his ring finger. Kissing his little finger. “And obey him.” Tatiana smiled, rolling her eyes. “And obey him.” “And, forsaking all others, be faithful to him until death do us part—” Kissing the palm of his hand. Wiping tears from her face with the palm of his hand. “And, forsaking all others, be faithful to him until death do us part.” “I, Alexander Barrington, take this woman to be my wife.” “Don’t, Shura.” Sitting on top of him, rubbing her breasts into his chest. “To live together in the covenant of marriage—” Kissing the middle of his chest. “I will love her”—his voice cracked—“love her, comfort her, honor, and keep her—” Pressing her cheek to his chest and listening for the iambic rhyme of his heart. “And, forsaking all others, be faithful to her until—” “Don’t, Shura.” His chest wet from her tears. “Please.” His hands above his head. “There are things worse than death.” Her heart full, overwhelmed. Remembering her mother’s body tilted over her sewing. Remembering Marina’s last words, to the end saying, I don’t want to die…and not feel just once what you feel. Remembering a laughing Dasha braiding her young hair already a lifetime ago. “Oh, yes? Like what?” He didn’t reply. She understood anyway. “I’d rather have a bad life in the Soviet Union than a good death. Wouldn’t you?” “If it was a life with you, then yes.

another showed him back in Berlin, reviewing a throng of grateful Germans from the balcony of the German chancery. He had led Germany to military glory against all odds. The Third Reich built by his Nazis seemed invincible. Yet the restless erstwhile artist and miracle-working warlord was not finished. In fact, the most ambitious act of Nazi world building was yet to come. In Mein Kampf Hitler had made it abundantly clear that the long-term plan of National Socialism was the elimination of the Jews and the enslavement of the Slavs. Both goals were contingent on the conquest of the Soviet Union. Since a large percentage of European Jewry lived within her borders and those of Poland, a war in the east was necessary. Poland had now fallen, and German military forces were already sweeping through the country rounding up its Jewish citizenry. But the Soviet Union—the heart of “Jewish-Bolshevism”—remained untouched. To overcome the Aryans’ greatest racial enemy and subdue the Slavs, a full-scale invasion was necessary. As 1941 opened, then, Hitler prepared for what came to be known as Operation Barbarossa. Bringing Nazi ideology to fulfillment, it proved to be the greatest invasion in history. Hitler before the Eiffel Tower Hitler’s plans for the invasion of Russia were laid out in a series of meetings and reports during the spring. They were defined by a combination of utopian vision and nihilistic contempt. Gathering his generals before him on March 30, the leader declared that the coming struggle was not merely one of army against army but of culture against culture. It would be a “clash of two ideologies,” he explained. The Communists and Nazis had erected their states on the ruins of Christendom. Both Christianity, with its principle of charity, and humanism, with its celebration of autonomous individual dignity, were bankrupt. Wars in the past, he observed, had accommodated such values. But mercy and chivalry were now dead. Between opposing armies, he declared “we must forget the notion” of sympathy.150 The coming conflict will be “a war of annihilation.”151 Hitler’s generals got the message. One, Erich Hoepner (d. 1944), subsequently declared to his men with a combination of Darwinian objectivity and Nietzschean ruthlessness: The war against Russia is an essential phase in the German nation’s struggle for existence. It is the ancient struggle of the Germanic peoples against Slavdom, the defense of European culture against the Muscovite-Asiatic tide, the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism. That struggle must have as its aim the shattering of present-day Russia and therefore be waged with unprecedented hardness.

O happy age, which our first parents called the age of gold! Not because of gold, so much adored in this iron age, was then easily purchased, but because those two fatal words mine and thine, were distinctions unknown to the people of those fortunate times; for all things were in common in that holy age: men, for their sustenance, needed only lift their hands and take it from the sturdy oak, whose spreading arms liberally invited them to gather the wholesome savoury fruit; while the clear springs, and silver rivulets, with luxuriant plenty, ordered them their pure refreshing water. In hollow trees, and in the clefts of rocks, the laboring and industrious bees erected their little commonwealths, that men might reap with pleasure and with ease the the sweet and fertile harvest of their toils. The tough and strenuous cork-trees did of themselves, and without other art than their native liberality, dismiss and impart their broad light bark, which served to cover these lowly huts, propped up with rough-hewn stakes, that were first built as a shelter against the inclemencies of air. All then was union, all peace, all love and friendship in the world; as yet no rude plough-share with violence to pry into the pious bowels of our mother earth, for she, without compulsion, kindly yielded from every part of her fruitful and spacious bosom, whatever might at once satisfy, sustain, and indulge her frugal children. Then was the when innocent, beautiful young sheperdesses went tripping over the hills and vales; their lovely hairs sometimes plaited, sometimes loose and flowing, clad in no other vestment but what was necessary to cover decently what modesty would always have concealed. The Tyrian dye and the rich glossy hue of silk, martyred and dissembled into every color, which are now esteemed so fine and magnificent, were unknown to the innocent plainness of that age; arrayed in the most magnificent garbs, and all the most sumptous adornings which idleness and luxury have taught succeeding pride: lovers then expressed the passion of their souls in the unaffected language of the heart, with the native plainness and sincerity in which they were conceived, and divested of all that artificial contexture, which enervates what it labours to enforce: imposture, deceit and malice had not yet crept in and imposed themselves unbribed upon mankind in the disguise of truth and simplicity: justice, unbiased either by favour or interest, which now so fatally pervert it, was equally and impartially dispensed; nor was the judge's fancy law, for then there were neither judges nor causes to be judged: the modest maid might walk wherever she pleased alone, free from the attacks of lewd, lascivious importuners. But, in this degenerate age, fraud and a legion of ills infecting the world, no virtue can be safe, no honour be secure; while wanton desires, diffused into the hearts of men, corrupt the strictest watches, and the closest retreats; which, though as intricate and unknown as the labyrinth of Crete, are no security for chastity. Thus that primitive innocence being vanished, the opression daily prevailing, there was a necessity to oppose the torrent of violence: for which reason the order of knight-hood-errant was instituted to defend the honour of virgins, protect widows, relieve orphans, and assist all the distressed in general. Now I myself am one of this order, honest friends; and though all people are obliged by the law of nature to be kind to persons of my order; yet, since you, without knowing anything of this obligation, have so generously entertained me, I ought to pay you my utmost acknowledgment; and, accordingly, return you my most hearty thanks for the same.

There are two ways to live the Christian life. You can live it either for the heart of Christ or from the heart of Christ. You can live for the smile of God or from it. For a new identity as a son or daughter of God or from it. For your union with Christ or from it. The battle of the Christian life is to bring your own heart into alignment with Christ’s, that is, getting up each morning and replacing your natural orphan mind-set with a mind-set of full and free adoption into the family of God through the work of Christ your older brother, who loved you and gave himself for you out of the overflowing fullness of his gracious heart.

There are no tears here,” the young construction worker said at the funeral, when the ancient union leader, with two strokes, three heart attacks, and a lung condition, died at last. “True,” the priest said, surveying the mourners in the cathedral. “No tears. Either the wake went on too long or he was a hard, hard man.

A Garden Epitaph by Stewart Stafford From a verdant birth, Two roses entwined together, A union withered from the earth, Root quest in envenomed weather. Green fingers pruned with ill will, Each barb taken to wounded hearts, Cut natures freed of earthly swill, Two crimson blooms, beyond scars. Master gardener, just hear me, If you see devotion, leave it be, In silent witness, wonders see, Lest you hasten obsequies. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

A wedding is a celebration of love, a union of souls, and a promise of a lifetime together. In the heart of Hyderabad, a city known for its rich cultural heritage, vibrant traditions, and opulent celebrations, wedding photography has emerged as an art form that beautifully encapsulates these moments of love and union. Hyderabad, often referred to as the "City of Pearls," has seen a burgeoning community of talented wedding photographers who skillfully document the essence of love, the grandeur of ceremonies, and the rich cultural tapestry that defines weddings in this city. Wedding photography hyderabad is more than just taking pictures; it's about storytelling. It's the art of capturing emotions, traditions, and the love that binds two individuals. In Hyderabad, where tradition and modernity coexist harmoniously, wedding photographers have honed their craft to capture the essence of cultural rituals and ceremonies. They do not merely take photographs; they create narratives that tell the story of a couple's special day.

Where I come from, marriage happens in the heart. It’s not a celebration; it’s an everlasting union between two souls.

But the heart & soul of our union was then, & is still today, intense, luminescent conversation. Even to the writing of this very sentence, if Jada & I begin a conversation, it is a minimum two-hour endeavor, & it is not uncommon that we talk for five or six hours at a stretch. Our joy of pondering & perusing mysteries of the universe through the mirror of each other’s experience is unbridled ecstasy. Even in the depths of disagreement, there is nothing in this world that either of us more cherished or enjoys than the opportunity to grow & learn from each other through passionate communication.

Within the Bible, nothing is of more importance than love. We are told the astonishing and beautiful truth: “God is Love.” We are assured that “Love conquers all.” It is love that brings you here today in the union of two hearts and spirits. As your lives interweave as one, remember that it was love that brought you here today, it is love that will make this a glorious union, and it is love, which will cause this union to endure. “Marriage is the most important of all earthly relationships. It should be entered into reverently, thoughtfully, and with a full understanding of its sacred nature. Your marriage must stand by the strength of your love and the power of faith in each other and in God. Just as two threads woven in opposite directions form a beautiful tapestry, so too, will your two lives, when merged, make a beautiful marriage.

But the heart and soul of our union was then, and is still today, intense, luminescent conversation. Even to the writing of this very sentence, if Jada and I begin a conversation it is a minimum two-hour endeavor. And it is not uncommon and we talk for five or six hours at a stretch. Our joy of pondering and perusing the mysteries of the universe through the mirror of each other's experience is unbridled ecstasy. Even in the depths of disagreement, there is nothing in this world that either of us more cherishes or enjoys than the opportunity to grow and learn from each other through passionate communication.

THE SEVEN STEPS OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION Illumination is the act of shining the light of consciousness on the egoic forces that obstruct our minds, things such as defense mechanisms, illusions, and other intellectual structures that obscure our capacity to see ourselves and all around us as Sacred. We can think of this as removing lampshades that cover up our inner One Mind's Light. Submersion brings us into deeper self-awareness by wading into the waters of our unconscious, our inner One Thing, thus opening the door to a productive dialog between the conscious and the unconscious selves, which can be considered respectively as our inner One Mind and One Thing. Remember, it is the interaction between these two that gives power to all creation, so it is important to get these forces into a productive dialog within us if we want our soul to create life. Polarization is a process through which we increase our awareness of inner duality— our One Mind and One Thing — and explore the paradox of their underlying unity and separation ability. Just as we saw in the story of creation, these two internal forces can use their separation to create a polarity, such as charging a battery, and this battery enhances our creativity. Merging is the actual fusion of these opposing powers that can also be known as our active and reactive inner natures, the conscious and the unconscious, the mind, and the soul. Here we start to blend the best of both, giving birth to what Egyptian alchemists call the Intelligence of the Heart, thus overloading our internal battery and our creative abilities. Inspiration takes Merging's creative potential and animates it with the Divine breath of life, introducing new dimensions beyond our ability to plan or monitor. The element of surprise threatens the illusion of the ego-self that it is in control, so a part of Inspiration causes the self-deception to die and fall away so that we can be reborn into the Light of Truth. In other terms, our True Self can be remembered. Refining takes from the previous step the divinely inspired solution and further purifies it, removing any last traces of the ego that would otherwise cloud our ability to see our True Self. We lift our human consciousness to the highest possible level to reconnect with the One Self, and Reiki is a wonderful tool to do so as you will know in the near future. Integration completes the process by uniting our One Mind, and One Thing's distilled essence, allowing us to experience their inherent Oneness at a deep level. This can also be considered as the union of spirit, soul, and body with matter. Saying it pragmatically, we take this state of awakened awareness and incorporate it into the very structure of our daily lives; it's not something we feel only when we're on a couch of contemplation or in a class of yoga. And then we return to the beginning, like the ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, but this time bearing to bear our newly created insight. These are the seven stages of self-transformation, in a nutshell, and now is the time to weave Reiki into the picture.

If there is any thing which may properly be called happiness here below, I am persuaded it is in the union of two persons who love each other with perfect liberty, who are united by a secret inclination, and satisfied with each other's merit; their hearts are full and leave no vacancy for any other passion; they enjoy perpetual tranquillity, because they enjoy content.

Braid groups have many important practical applications. For example, they are used to construct efficient and robust public key encryption algorithms.7 Another promising direction is designing quantum computers based on creating complex braids of quantum particles known as anyons. Their trajectories weave around each other, and their overlaps are used to build “logic gates” of the quantum computer.8 There are also applications in biology. Given a braid with n threads, we can number the nails on the two plates from 1 to n from left to right. Then, connect the ends of the threads attached to the nails with the same number on the two plates. This will create what mathematicians call a “link”: a union of loops weaving around each other. In the example shown on this picture, there is only one loop. Mathematicians’ name for it is “knot.” In general, there will be several closed threads. The mathematical theory of links and knots is used in biology: for example, to study bindings of DNA and enzymes.9 We view a DNA molecule as one thread, and the enzyme molecule as another thread. It turns out that when they bind together, highly non-trivial knotting between them may occur, which may alter the DNA. The way they entangle is therefore of great importance. It turns out that the mathematical study of the resulting links sheds new light on the mechanisms of recombination of DNA. In mathematics, braids are also important because of their geometric interpretation. To explain it, consider all possible collections of n points on the plane. We will assume that the points are distinct; that is, for any two points, their positions on the plane must be different. Let’s choose one such collection; namely, n points arranged on a straight line, with the same distance between neighboring points. Think of each point as a little bug. As we turn on the music, these bugs come alive and start moving on the plane. If we view the time as the vertical direction, then the trajectory of each bug will look like a thread. If the positions of the bugs on the plane are distinct at all times – that is, if we assume that the bugs don’t collide – then these threads will never intersect. While the music is playing, they can move around each other, just like the threads of a braid. However, we demand that when we stop the music after a fixed period of time, the bugs must align on a straight line in the same way as at the beginning, but each bug is allowed to end up in a position initially occupied by another bug. Then their collective path will look like a braid with n threads. Thus, braids with n threads may be viewed as paths in the space of collections of n distinct points on the plane.10

While the Soviets simply arrested and deported some of the scientists – typically taking their families along to serve both as hostages and to make the men's captivity more bearable (and thus more productive) – they also used outright reassuring lies to lure many of the scientists into coming voluntarily to Russia for a “brief stay” that proved anything but short. As Manfred von Ardenne, a cyclotron designer, and his wife recounted, “With relatively light hearts, we left the children and everything else behind in Lichterfeld because we had gone for a two-week trip to the Soviet Union 'only to conclude a contract.' Those two weeks turned into ten years.” (Naimark, 1995, 210).

There was certainly a battle, but I get the sense that you are referring to something very specific.” “There is only one battle.” “One?” I asked, curious. His eyes flashed, and he looked straight at me. “Union or separation,” he said definitively. “Once again, sir, you have my undivided attention.” “Indeed,” John boomed, as if he had been given permission to hold forth. “The Greeks and the Pharisees make the same mistake, though in different ways—a large mistake,” he exclaimed, with a sigh of lament, “and apparently these Gnostics are their children.” I knew to the core of my soul that we had arrived at the heart of everything. I could see it in his face and in the way he held his head. I was not sure what he meant by union or separation, but it was clear that to him this was the crosshairs of the cosmos. “I think I could come up with some reasonable ideas about the connections between the Greeks and the Gnostics, but how could the Pharisees be connected?” “The truth of all truths: Jesus. Jesus in his Father and us in him. Without Jesus, what do you have?” “Not much, I reckon. Just ourselves.” “Ourselves and ideas of separation from God,” St. John declared in his most authoritative apostolic tone. “Listen, young Aidan.” And as I did, I felt that my world was about to be shattered. “The assumption of separation is the great darkness.” His words hit me like a blow to my gut, but before I could recover he continued on. “Then, you see, we have to find our way to God. The Greeks offer their way through their minds; the Pharisees offer theirs through external rules. This is Ophis’s chief trick—blind us to how close the Lord is, closer than breath: we’re in him, and he’s in us. Ophis deceives the nations by one lie—separation. Our joy”—his face lit up like the rising sun—“is to tell the truth, let the light shine—and persevere the tribulation of enlightenment.” “Wow,

Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor two months earlier by Paul von Hindenburg, President of the German Republic, on the supposition that only he and his National Socialists—by then the largest party in the country, with one-third the popular vote—could deal with the paralysis that had immobilized the government for months. Hitler took power legally; there followed immediately a series of illegal acts designed to consolidate his power and intimidate the opposition. A fire set in the Reichstag, blamed on a Dutch pyromaniac, who may have been used by the National Socialists, gave Hitler his excuse to begin a pseudolegal process of abolishing all constitutional guarantees of individual freedom. The party’s infamous storm troopers assaulted the political opposition, trade union leaders and Jews. Sheer terror purged the Reichstag of so many opposition deputies that Hitler had no trouble in pushing through the Enabling Act that gave him dictatorial powers. The boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, which simply institutionalized storm trooper violence against Jewish professionals and businesses, was Hitler’s first formal effort against the people he believed to be at the heart of a Bolshevik conspiracy to destroy Germany. That

At last I could see. “Jesus’s submission to our hostile rejection of him was his way into our . . .” “Flesh,” the apostle finished. “The great darkness. Sarx! Where Ophis had his hold,” he shouted, lifting his hands and jumping to his feet. “Oh! Lord Jesus, yes! Amen! Union with us in our sin!” I thought his heart would burst in joy, as he let out a mighty sigh of relief. I think he believed he had lost me at this critical moment. He drew in a deep breath, then stared dramatically into my heart. “Listen carefully. The Son in whom all things are, who dwells face-to-face with Abba in Ruach HaKodesh, now dwells face-to-face with Adam’s race inside Ophis’s madness. Heaven’s gate,” he called out, raising his hands in worship. “The great ‘I Am’ inside the violent world of ‘I am not.’ All will see! This I know. In that day you will know that I am in My Father, you in Me, and I in you.

For at this stage in our youth we can hold two kinds of anticipation of love, which seem contradictory and yet coexist and reinforce each other. We can dream delicately because even to imagine it is to touch one of the most sacred of our hopes, of searching for the other part of ourselves, of the other being who will make us whole, of the ultimate and transfiguring union. At the same time we can gloat over any woman, become insatiably curious about the brute facts of the pleasures which we are then learning or which are just to come. In that phase we are coarse and naked, and anyone who has forgotten his youth will judge that we are too tangled with the flesh ever to forget ourselves in the ecstasy of romantic love. But in fact, at this stage in one's youth, the coarseness and nakedness, the sexual preoccupations, the gloating over delights to come, are - in the secret heart where they take place - themselves romantic. They are a promise of joy.

What did Jonathan Edwards mean in sending word to his wife that their union was “uncommon”? Was it that? And how was a union that had issued in eleven offspring “spiritual”? Of one thing we may be sure: Jonathan Edwards was not using his last words carelessly. This “major artist and chief American philosopher” (Miller, 1949:225) had not yet discarded his palette. His message to her had—all his words had—an exact, uncoded meaning, Lockean in its empirical force, that is there for us to recover if we will attend. Our path is to discover if we can the substance of this “uncommon” and “spiritual” union that was at the same time unquestionably an erotic bond. Something greater than curiosity is at stake for us here. Jonathan Edwards is preeminently a theologian of the heart and of the affections; to discover the kind of love that was central between these two may provide an exact clue to his own theological ethics—a bonus not to be disdained.

And to complicate matters even further, there's Miss Leighton.  She cared for him when he was ill, gave him some sense of independence and worth, and captured his heart, though I daresay he may not realize that, and certainly won't admit it." "Guilt over supposedly betraying Juliet?" "Of course." "And what does she think of him?" "My dear Gareth.  Charles may be broken, but he is still handsome, gallant, and kind — enough to make any young lady sigh with wanting.  As she strove to give him dignity and independence when he had neither, so he strove to give her confidence in herself, and to defend her from a family that, from all accounts, quite despised her.  What do you think she thinks of him?" "Given that she followed him across the Atlantic, I should think she's quite in love with him," Gareth said, wryly.  "I should also think that, because she's a commoner, and because Charles has been engaged since birth to Lady Katharine, you will crush any hopes of a romantic union between them." "On the contrary," Lucien said smoothly.  "For one thing, Lady Katherine has recently accepted an offer from Viscount Bisley, so her engagement to our brother is off.  Furthermore, I have learned a thing or two about American woman since Juliet came into all our lives.  Amy Leighton is exactly what Charles needs, and I will do all in my power to get them together." "The best of luck to you, then.  Charles is smarter than me, and far more perceptive.  He'll know what you're up to when I did not, and he will know immediately." Lucien gave a benign smile.  "My dear Gareth.  Do you have such little faith in me as all that?  He will not discern my hand in this — just as you didn't."  He put down his glass and, hands clasped loosely behind his back, returned to the window, where he stood gazing out over the silent, starlit downs.  "And he will not discern my hand in anything else, either.  It is time for me to play God, I think.  To find some sort of challenge that will restore our brother's confidence in himself and his abilities.  To begin the Restoration . . . of Charles."  

Less than two years later the swashbuckling operation was shut down when the Western Union Telegraph Company finished stringing its lines.

In union with God, the heart absorbs the Lord and the Lord the heart, and the two become one. Quotation attributed to St John Chrysostom by Callistus and Ignatius Xanthopoulos, 52 (Philokalia IV,252)

(The next four whitest are, in order, Maine, West Virginia, New Hampshire, and Iowa, a reminder that the crucial two first contests in a presidential primary are the fourth and fifth whitest states in the union.)

UNION AND CHANGE The third article was union. To those who were small and few against the wilderness, the success of liberty demanded the strength of union. Two centuries of change have made this true again. No longer need capitalist and worker, farmer and clerk, city and countryside, struggle to divide our bounty. By working shoulder to shoulder, together we can increase the bounty of all. We have discovered that every child who learns, every man who finds work, every sick body that is made whole--like a candle added to an altar--brightens the hope of all the faithful. So let us reject any among us who seek to reopen old wounds and to rekindle old hatreds. They stand in the way of a seeking nation. Let us now join reason to faith and action to experience, to transform our unity of interest into a unity of purpose. For the hour and the day and the time are here to achieve progress without strife, to achieve change without hatred--not without difference of opinion, but without the deep and abiding divisions which scar the union for generations. THE AMERICAN BELIEF Under this covenant of justice, liberty, and union we have become a nation--prosperous, great, and mighty. And we have kept our freedom. But we have no promise from God that our greatness will endure. We have been allowed by Him to seek greatness with the sweat of our hands and the strength of our spirit. I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming--always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again--but always trying and always gaining. In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again. If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored. If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe. For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and union, and in our own Union. We believe that every man must someday be free. And we believe in ourselves. Our enemies have always made the same mistake. In my lifetime--in depression and in war--they have awaited our defeat. Each time, from the secret places of the American heart, came forth the faith they could not see or that they could not even imagine. It brought us victory. And it will again. For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it--and we will bend it to the hopes of man. To these trusted public servants and to my family and those close friends of mine who have followed me down a long, winding road, and to all the people of this Union and the world, I will repeat today what I said on that sorrowful day in November 1963: "I will lead and I will do the best I can." But you must look within your own hearts to the old promises and to the old dream. They will lead you best of all. For myself, I ask only, in the words of an ancient leader: "Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so great?

The inner qualities of the woman‘s heart, result in an important byproduct, which may be called „charm“. This charm like light, is a force. Intangible, imponderable though it be, the strivings of our intellect may not attain fruition if deprived of its life-giving touch. The nourishment which the tree draws though its root may be classified and measured, - not so the vitality which is the gift of the sunlight, and without which its functioning becomes altogether impossible. This ineffable emanation of woman‘s nature has, from the first, played its part in the creation of man, unobtrusively but inevitably Had man‘s mind not been energised by the inner working of woman‘s vital charm, he would never have attained his successes. Of all the higher achievements of civilization - the devotion of the toiler, the valour of the brave, the creations of the artist – the secret spring is to be found in woman‘s influence. In the clash and battle of primitive civilization, the action of woman‘s shakti is not clearly manifest; but, as civilization becomes spiritual in the course of its development, and the union of man with man is acknowledged to be more important than the differences between them, the charm of woman gets the opportunity to become the predominant factor. Such spiritual civilization can only be upheld if the emotion of woman and the intellect of man are contributed in usual shares for its purposes. Then their respective contributions may combine gloriously in ever-frsh creations, and their difference will no longer make for inequality. Woman, let me repeat, has two aspects, - in one she is the Mother, in the other, the Beloved. I have already spoken of the spiritual endeavour that characterises the first, viz., the striving, not merely for giving birth to her child, but for creating the best possible child – not as an addition to the number of men, but as one of the heroic souls who may win the victory of man‘s eternal fight against evil in his social life and natural surroundings. As the Beloved, it is woman‘s part to infuse life into all aspirations of man; and the spiritual power that enables her to do so I have called charm, and was known in India by the name shakti. There is a poem called Ananda lahari  (The stream of Delight), attributed to Shankaracharya. She who is glorified therein is the Shakti in the heart of the Universe; the Giver of Joy, the Inspirer of Activity. On the one hand, we know and use the world; on the other we are related to it by tie of disinterested joy. We can know the world because it is a manifestation of Truth: we rejoice in it because it is an expression of Joy. „Who would have striven for life“ says the Rishi, „if this ananda had not filled the sky?“ It seems to me that the „Intellectual Beauty“, whose praises Shelley has sung, is identical with this Ananda. And it is this ananda which the poet of Ananda lahari has visualised as the woman; that is to say, in his view, this Universal Shakti is manifest in human society in the nature of Woman. In this manifestation is her charm. Let no one confuse this shakti with mere „sweetness“, for in this charm there is a combination of several qualities – patience, self-abnegation- sensitive intelligence, grace in thought, word and behaviour – the reticent expression of rhythmic life, the tendernes and terribleness of love; at its core, moreover, is that self-radiant Spirit of Delight which ever gives itself up. This shakti, this joy-giving power of woman as the Beloved, has up to now largely been dissipated by the greed of man, who has sought to use it for the purposes of his individual enjoyment, corrupting it, confining it, like his property, within jealously-guarded limits. That has also obstructed for woman herself her inward realization of the full glory of her own shakti. Her personality has been insulted at every turn by being made to display its power of delectation within a circumsribed arena.

South Carolina's own Congressman confessed that although the State had prohibited the trade since 1788, she "was unable to enforce" her laws. "With navigable rivers running into the heart of it," said he, "it was impossible, with our means, to prevent our Eastern brethren, who, in some parts of the Union, in defiance of the authority of the General Government, have been engaged in this trade, from introducing them into the country. The law was completely evaded, and, for the last year or two [1802–3], Africans were introduced into the country in numbers little short, I believe, of what they would have been had the trade been a legal one.

Thus "the two become one" (ta duo hen ginetai) through "simplification" (haplosis), contemplative vision (theoria), and union (henosis).

Many do not understand this union of the teaching of the Word and the Spirit, so there is a twofold difficulty in knowing what God's will may be. Some seek the will of God in an inner feeling or conviction and would have the Spirit lead them without the Word. Others seek it in the Word without the leading of the Holy Spirit. The two must be united - the Word and the Spirit - because only in these can we know for sure the will of God and learn to pray according to it. In the heart, the Word and the Spirit must meet; it is only by such indwelling that we can experience their teaching.

His tears had wrecked the text, but he knew the spoiled words from memory. Little Leo, We’re going to live on two sides of things now, I in the dark and you, my love, I hope, in the forever light. There are a thousand things I’d like to tell you, but two are far more important than the rest. First, don’t shy away from taking the stage, however bright the lights. The people of Gearheart will channel all their hopes for the future into you. They are tired of the ever-turning wheel of power. They are tired of the Devan Union’s apathy, tired of Anaximander’s promises that never materialised. And, I should imagine, they are already especially tired of Hisarya. They will embrace you as a kind dean, and you will be a kind dean. And, I believe, truly I do, that you will be the one to stop bivnik. Also: Never buy cheap socks. Dance when you can. You’ll know when you’re in love. If you have to check, you’re not. Well then, that’s the secret to ruling well. You’ll work the rest out as you go. To the second matter. If I had dominion over all the atoms of all the worlds, I wouldn’t go back and change the course of one, not by the slightest deviation, because you might not have been my son. And better all history’s indignities stay unchanged and you remain my son than the other way around. There will be years ahead now when you’ll think you’re lost and nothing can possibly recover you. You’ll want for your mother and you’ll know you can never talk to her again. You might rule ten thousand worlds by then, but I bet you’d trade it all for one more hug with me. And I’d give anything, anything in the galaxy, to live a little longer and watch you turn into the man you’re about to. But that is not how things have gone. Each life contains a few days of unimaginable fear and despair. You will think nothing can pull you out and back onto solid land. You’ll be wrong though. You can, all by yourself. You have everything you need, right there in your clever head and bottomless heart. And even though we’ll go separate ways now, and I’m afraid my hugs are off-limits, I will be right there at your side. For as long as you remember me, I’ll attend your dark nights when your heart is broken and cheer from the cheap seats as your make your great ascendances. Then later, when your great-grandchildren have settled on distant worlds to raise their own little ones, and when those little ones have grown old, when the stars have all winked out, when the whole galaxy has gone cold and everything has been snuffed to dust, there will still be two facts left behind in dead eternity: that I was your mother, and I loved you more than you can ever possibly understand. I’m with you always and always, Mama

Christ said, “Wherever two or more are gathered together, there I am in your midst.” The god of creativity seems to feel the same way. The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity. Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as the creator but seldom see creator as the literal term for artist. I am suggesting you take the term creator quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.

That is why, reflecting on that nauseating possible future, I am so grateful to Gorbachev for having done away with it. Not that meant to. He goofed, and that is precisely what I have to thank him for...He overlooked the fact that inviting everyone into the garden would not lead to deferential discussion with an elite, full of allusive hints and skirting around contentious matters. On the contrary, realizing that they now could speak out without getting beaten up, the denizens of the basement would climb up to the roof en masse and state bluntly that they had no water to drink and nothing to eat. The weight of their words, the reverberation of their stamping boots, and the indignation in their hearts would make everything come tumbling down. I didn't regret that in the slightest. After all, what had I lost? Russia, my country, was still there. I still had my language, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Moscow and Kazan and Rostov. The army was still there, and the state. Even the bureaucrats were still where they had been. Kiev, Tallinn, and Riga did not vanish into thin air. Everything was as it had been. You could go to those cities if you wanted to. What had changed was that now you had a choice, you had freedom. What remains of that freedom in Putin's Russia today, which is trying to pretend it is the U.S.S.R., is in fact much more than there was then. You can now choose your profession, where you want to live, and your lifestyle. You no longer have to tie yourself in knots in a competition to see who can be the more two-faced in order to be allowed a trip abroad. You can just buy a ticket and go. At this point someone almost always says, "Only nowadays you have to have enough money," and then reminisces about the social guarantees and equality in the U.S.S.R. In reality there was nothing of the sort. The social gulf between a collective farm worker and a member of the regional Communist Party committee was no less than the gulf we have now between an oligarch and one of today's many average workers. Housing and cars were, by an order of magnitude, less accessible than they are today. Sure, many people received accommodation for free, but to get it they had to wait twenty years. Of course, there is a huge difference in the ceilings for luxury and wealth then and now. In the U.S.S.R. the ceiling was on the first floor of a dacha in the "writers' village" outside Moscow. Now there is no ceiling; it has disappeared unimaginably far away, bursting through the roofs of French chalets and skyscrapers on the edge of Central Park in New York. That, of course, is annoying But it does not alter the indisputable fact that although the mass of the population might indeed have been moved by grim tectonics, as Tolstoy would have it, it was nevertheless Gorbachev who started patching something up, but in the end hammered a nail in the wrong way and everything fell down. On its ruins, everyone was given the chance to live a decent life without the perpetual lying and hypocrisy. If, of course, they wanted it.

Maybe some kids are told from an early age what's what, as regards money. But most are ignorant I would think, and that was me too, till I was eleven and started pulling down a paycheck. Before that, my thinking was vague. If you had a job, you had money. If you didn't have a job, you had your food stamps or EBT card and basically, no money. I didn't really get that there were grey areas. Okay, I did know about rich people, that some few made the big bucks from being movie stars, pro footfall, the president, etc. These types of people living one hundred percent not in Lee County. Except for this one NASCAR driver that supposedly bought a farm near Ewing in the seventies. Also, the coal miners back in union times. Thirty or forty bucks and hour, old men still talked like those were the days Jesus walked among us throwing around hundred-dollar bills. But for the most part I thought paycheck was a paycheck, whether from Walmart or Food Country or Lee Bank and Trust or Hair Affair or the Eastman plant over in Kingsport. Obviously, you live and learn. Now I know, if you finish high school that's supposed to be a step up, money wise. College is another step up, but with a major downside: for the type of job college gets you, most likely you'll end up having to live far away from home, in a city. My point though is the totem pole of paychecks, with school as one thing that gets you up there, and another one being where you live, country or city. But the main thing is, whatever you're doing, who is it making happy? Are you selling the cheapest-ass shoes imaginable to Walmart shoppers, or high-class suits to business guys? Even the same exact work, like sanding floors, could be at the Dollar General or a movie star mansion. Show me your paycheck, I'll make a guess which floor. If you are making a rich person happy, or a regular person feel rich, aka better than other people, the money rolls. If it's lowlifes you're looking after, not so much. And if it's kids, good luck, because anything to do with improving the life of a child is on the bottom. Schoolteacher pay is for the most part in the toilet. I gather this is common knowledge, but I had no idea, the day Miss Barks said, So long sucker, I'm chasing the big bucks now, Schoolteacher! I've had friends in places high and low since then, and some of the best were people who taught school. The ones that showed up for me. Outside of school hours they were delivery drivers or moonlighting at a gas station or, this is a true example, playing in a band and driving the ice cream truck in the summer. They need the extra job. Honestly need it,just to get by. So here is Miss Barks in her first real job, twenty-two years old, working her little heart out for the DSS. And hitting the books at all hours because she pretty desperately wants to live in her own tiny apartment instead of sharing with a slob, and for that she needs to climb up the paycheck pole to first-grade teacher. That's how they pay you at DSS. Old Baggy has been at it so long she's got no more reason to live, working two shifts a day, going home to her crap duplex in Duffield owned by her cousin that gives her a break on the rent. If you are the kid sitting across from her in your case working meeting, wearing your two black eyes and the hoodie reeking of cat piss, sorry dude but she's thinking about what TV show she'll watch that night. Any human person with gumption would have moved on to something else by now, the military so selling insurance or being a cop or even a teacher. Because DSS pay is basically the fuck-you peanut butter sandwich type of paycheck. That's what the big world thinks it's worth, to save the white-trash orphans. And if these kids grow up to throw punches at washing machines or each other or even let's say smash a drugstore drive-through window. Crawl in and take what's there. Tell me how you're going to be surprised. There's your peanut butter sandwich back. Every dog gets his day." -Demon Copperhead