Within Our Gates Quotes

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one's own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage alone a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come. I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.

Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly -- something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate. They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream

But there are no safe spaces. 'Home' can be unsafe and dangerous because it bears the likelihood of intimacy and thus thinner boundaries. Staying 'home' and not venturing out from our group comes from woundedness, and stagnates our growth. To bridge means loosening our borders, not closing off to others. Bridging is the work of opening the gate to the stranger, within and without.

We each have within ourselves the ability to shape our own destinies. That much we understand. But, more important, each of us has an equal ability to shape the destiny of the universe. Ah, that you find more difficult to believe. But I tell you it is so. You do not have to be the leader of the Council. You do not have to be king or monarch or the head of a clan to have a significant impact on the world around you. In the vastness of the ocean, is any drop of water greater than another? No, you answer, and neither has a single drop the ability to cause a tidal wave. But, I argue, if a single drop falls into the ocean, it creates ripples. And these ripples spread. And perhaps - who knows - these ripples may grow and swell and eventually break foaming upon the shore. Like a drop in the vast ocean, each of us causes ripples as we move through our lives. The effects of whatever we do - insignificant as it may seem - spread out beyond us. We may never know what far-reaching impact even the simplest action might have on our fellow mortals. Thus we need to be conscious, all of the time, of our place in the ocean, of our place in the world, of our place among our fellow creatures. For if enough of us join forces, we can swell the tide of events - for good or for evil.

The Vicar did feel then as if his share of duties would be easy. But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly — something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us, and who breaks his leg within our gates.

I hope with all my soul that the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be loyal in their very hearts and souls, to the principles of the Constitution of our country. From them we have derived the liberty that we enjoy. They have been the means of guaranteeing to the foreigner that has come within our gates, and to the native born, and to all the citizens of this country, the freedom and liberty that we possess. We cannot go back upon such principles as these.

I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Adrian. My husband. If anyone had told me a year ago that I'd be married, I would've said they were joking. If they'd told me I'd be married to a vampire, I would've said they were delusional. Looking at Adrian now, I felt a surge of love well up within me, despite our earlier tension. I could no longer imagine a life without him in it. It was impossible. Could I imagine a life with him that didn't involve us being trapped in a suite of rooms with his mother while both our people reviled us and made plans against us? Definitely. There were any number of futures I'd love to have for us, but his was our current path until something spectacular happened. Outside, the Court's gates, my people wanted to imprison me. Inside them, his people wanted to assault him. At least in this suite, we were safe. Most importantly, we were together.

Such are the limitations of the human mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner until the storm calls all hands to the pumps. Prophets, indeed, were abundant before the war; but who cares for prophets while their predictions remain unfulfilled, and the calamities of which they tell are masked behind a blinding blaze of national prosperity?

There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one’s own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come. I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.

A lot happens in our everyday life, but it always happens within the same routine, and more than anything else it has changed my perspective of time. For, while previously I saw time as a stretch of terrain that had to be covered, with the future as a distant prospect, hopefully a bright one, and never boring at any rate, now it is interwoven with our life here and in a totally different way. Were I to portray this with a visual image it would have to be that of a boat in a lock: life is slowly and ineluctably raised by time seeping in from all sides. Apart from the details, everything is always the same. And with every passing day the desire grows for the moment when life will reach the top, for the moment when the sluice gates open and life finally moves on.

We women have within us a depth, a capacity for striving, that men for all their swords and wars don't comprehend. We can endure where they are brittle, we can persevere where they snap. It is our unique form of grace. And we will endure. We will persevere.

But Duty has a trick of behaving unexpectedly—something like a heavy friend whom we have amiably asked to visit us and who breaks his leg within our gates.

My neighbourhood has been filled with arts, songs, and dance. The gipsy boys were playing guitars and fiddles Craving emotions at the gates of our blurry days. The gipsy girls taught us how to shift graciously Within music charm, depicting wonderful stories All through ideas and emotions. Their colourful skirts rounding circles in delight Brought love from the gods Straight in our hearts.

Such are the limitations of the common mind, and so thoroughly engrossing are the cares of common life, that only the few among men can discern through the glitter and dazzle of present prosperity the dark outlines of approaching disasters, even though they may have come up to our very gates, and are already within striking distance. The yawning seam and corroded bolt conceal their defects from the mariner until the storm calls all hands to the pumps.

[I]f my faith depends on fear of punishment, what will happen to my faith when perfect love (Jesus) comes to cast it out? (1 John 4: 18) If God thinks that fear of punishment is something to be “cast out” like a demon, then our Gospel and our preaching better not rest on that foundation! Fear-based faith (a paradox) is the ultimate deception. We need to examine closely whether the devil has been hiding in plain sight - squatting within the very message that we’ve preached. Parasite and deceiver that he is, he found the ultimate host to help disseminate his terror campaign - the Church! If our faith message begins in fear, as it did for many evangelicals like me, it’s in trouble. I am reminded of Jesus’ warning, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are” (Matt 23:15). The negation of negation. Does preaching on hell produce converts? Oh yes! But if in the process it also saddles someone with fear of punishment, then it has simultaneously reproduced a “son of hell.

To “purify” the senses is to release them, so far as human beings may, from the tyranny of egocentric judgments; to make of them the organs of direct perception. This means that we must crush our deep-seated passion for classification and correspondences; ignore the instinctive, selfish question, “What does it mean to me?” learn to dip ourselves in the universe at our gates, and know it, not from without by comprehension, but from within by self-mergence.

Long black hair and deep clean blue eyes and skin pale white and lips blood red she's small and thin and worn and damaged. She is standing there. What are you doing here? I was taking a walk and I saw you and I followed you. What do you want. I want you to stop. I breathe hard, stare hard, tense and coiled. There is still more tree for me to destroy I want that fucking tree. She smiles and she steps towards me, toward toward toward me, and she opens he r arms and I'm breathing hard staring hard tense and coiled she puts her arms around me with one hand not he back of my head and she pulls me into her arms and she holds me and she speaks. It's okay. I breathe hard, close my eyes, let myself be held. It's okay. Her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and my heart slows and I stop shaking an the Fury melts into her safety an she holds me and she says. Okay. Okay. Okay. Something else comes and it makes me feel weak and scared and fragile and I don't want to be hurt and this feeling is the feeling I have when I know I can be hurt and hurt deeper and more terribly than anything physical and I always fight it and control it and stop it but her voice calms me and her arms warm me and her smell lightens me and I can feel her heart beat and if she let me go right now I would fall and the need and confusion and fear and regret and horror and shame and weakness and fragility are exposed to the soft strength of her open arms and her simple word okay and I start to cry. I start to cry. I want to cry. It comes in waves. THe waves roll deep and from deep the deep within me and I hold her and she holds me tighter and i let her and I let it and I let this and I have not felt this way this vulnerability or allowed myself to feel this way this vulnerability since I was ten years old and I don't know why I haven't and I don't know why I am now and I only know that I am and that it is scary terrifying frightening worse and better than anything I've ever felt crying in her arms just crying in her ams just crying. She guides me to the ground, but she doesn't let me go. THe Gates are open and thirteen years of addiction, violence, hell and their accompaniments are manifesting themselves in dense tears and heavy sobs and a shortness of breath and a profound sense of loss. THe loss inhabits, fills and overwhelms me. It is the loss of a childhood of being a Teeenager of normalcy of happiness of love of trust anon reason of God of Family of friends of future of potential of dignity of humanity of sanity f myself of everything everything everything. I lost everything and I am lost reduced to a mass of mourning, sadness, grief, anguish and heartache. I am lost. I have lost. Everything. Everything. It's wet and Lilly cradles me like a broken Child. My face and her shoulder and her shirt and her hair are wet with my tears. I slow down and I start to breathe slowly and deeply and her hair smells clean and I open my eyes because I want to see it an it is all that I can see. It is jet black almost blue and radiant with moisture. I want to touch it and I reach with one of my hands and I run my hand from the crown along her neck and her back to the base of her rib and it is a thin perfect sheer and I let it slowly drop from the tips of my fingers and when it is gone I miss it. I do it again and again and she lets me do it and she doesn't speak she just cradles me because I am broken. I am broken. Broken. THere is noise and voices and Lilly pulls me in tighter and tighter and I know I pull her in tighter and tighter and I can feel her heart beating and I know she can feel my heart beating and they are speaking our hearts are speaking a language wordless old unknowable and true and we're pulling and holding and the noise is closer and the voices louder and Lilly whispers. You're okay. You're okay. You're okay.

I stood still an hour or thereabouts without trespassing on our orders (for so long the caravan was in passing the gate), to look at it on every side, near and far off; I mean what was within my view: and the guide, who had been extolling it for the wonder of the world, was mighty eager to hear my opinion of it. I told him it was a most excellent thing to keep out the Tartars; which he happened not to understand as I meant it and so took it for a compliment; but the old pilot laughed! "Oh, Seignior Inglese," says he, "you speak in colours." "In colours!" said I; "what do you mean by that?" "Why, you speak what looks white this way and black that way - gay one way and dull another. You tell him it is a good wall to keep out Tartars; you tell me by that it is good for nothing but to keep out Tartars. I understand you, Seignior Inglese, I understand you; but Seignior Chinese understood you his own way.

Maybe our parents' lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only gate there is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins.

There is nothing,” she said, and then, still looking away into the woods, reached sideways and took Ernald's arm firmly, “but be said by me, there was something hunting along our trail not a sennight since, and should it come here, see you and yours are within the gates.” She shook him gently. “Do not be slighting it, Ernald, great strong lad that you are and brave as a bear: it is something terrible, that no one should run to meet.

if I find that I have some pain or sin within, I need to open up and communicate it to God and others, so that I can be healed. Confessing pain and sin helps to “get it out” so that it does not continue to poison me on the inside (1 John 1:9; James 5:16; Mark 7:21–23). And when the good is on the outside, we need to open our gates and “let it in.” Jesus speaks of this phenomenon in “receiving” him and his truth (Rev. 3:20; John 1:12). Other people have good things to give us, and we need to “open wide our hearts” to them (2 Cor. 6:11–13). Often we will close our boundaries to good things from others, staying in a state of deprivation. In short, boundaries are not walls. The Bible does not say that we are to be “walled off” from others; in fact, it says that we are to be “one” with them (John 17:11). We are to be in community with them. But in every community, all members have their own space and property.

We are the sum of all people we have ever met; you change the tribe and the tribe changes you." - Fierce People Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until… in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus "A man like to me, Thou shalt love be loved by forever. A hand like this hand shall throw open the gates of new life to thee!" Robert Browning "Courage is grace under pressure." Ernest Hemingway "For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, for love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” ― Mahatma Gandhi “Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.” ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching "Behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." James Russel Lowell "My God, my Father, and my friend. Do not forsake me in the end." Wentworth Dillon

IN MY OPINION THE APOCALYPSE … MUST BE PRIMARILY AN INTERNAL, SPIRITUAL EVENT, AND ONLY IN A SECONDARY WAY AN EXTERNAL CATASTROPHE. THE GATES OF THE WATCHTOWERS … ARE MENTAL CONSTRUCTIONS. WHEN THEY ARE OPENED, THEY WILL ADMIT [SATAN] NOT INTO THE PHYSICAL WORLD BUT INTO OUR SUBCONSCIOUS MINDS.... THE APOCALYPSE IS A MENTAL TRANSFORMATION THAT WILL OCCUR, OR IS PRESENTLY OCCURRING, WITHIN THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS OF THE HUMAN RACE. —Donald Tyson, “The Enochian Apocalypse

There was a time when a traveller, if he had the will and knew only a few of the secrets, could send his barge out into the Summer Sea and arrive not at Glastonbury of the monks, but at the Holy Isle of Avalon; for at that time the gates between the worlds drifted within the mists, and were open, one to another, as the traveller thought and willed. For this is the great secret, which was known to all educated men in our day: that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

Nazi persecution didn’t limit itself to race. Religion, national origin, alternative lifestyles, persons with disabilities—all were targets. How would you characterize the Slavs? Gypsies? Moors? All the lines get blurred. Even within Judaism, there are many races. There are Negro Jews in Ethiopia and Middle Eastern Jews in Iraq. There have been Jews in Japan since the 1860s. Poland was fractionally Jewish, but there were still three and a half million Jews living there in the 1930s.” “But still, today it all seems so incomprehensible.” Ben raised his eyebrows. “Incomprehensible because we’re Americans? Land of the free and home of the brave? Let’s not kid ourselves. We’ve authored our own chapters in the history of shame, periods where the world looked at us and shook its head. Early America built an economy based on slavery and it was firmly supported by law. Read the Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott. We trampled entire cultures of Native Americans. ‘No Irish Need Apply’ was written on factory gates in nineteenth-century New York.” Ben shook his head. “We’d like to think we’re beyond such hatred, but the fact is, we can never let our guard down. That’s why this case is so important. To you and to me. It’s another reminder of what can happen when evil is allowed to incubate. Find a reason to turn your nose up at a culture, to denigrate a people because they’re different, and it’s not such a giant leap from ethnic subjugation to ethnic slaughter.” Catherine

They all have mechanisms for taking in and processing sensory data—and they all have mechanisms for reducing the amount of sensory inflows. They possess what are called sensory gating channels—or as William Blake and Aldous Huxley more comprehensively described the phenomenon, we all have within us the doors of perception. Sensory gating channels can be thought of as tiny apertures or gates or doors in specific sections of the nervous system’s neural network. They are similar to the lens in our eyes

Soon after the raid was over, the White House released the now-famous photo of all of us watching the video in that small conference room. Within hours, I received from a friend a Photoshopped version with each of the principals shown dressed in superhero costumes: Obama was Superman; Biden, Spiderman; Hillary, Wonder Woman; and I, for some reason, was the Green Lantern. The spoof had an important substantive effect on me. We soon faced a great hue and cry demanding that we release photos of the dead Bin Laden, photos we had all seen. I quickly realized that while the Photoshop of us was amusing, others could Photoshop the pictures of Bin Laden in disrespectful ways certain to outrage Muslims everywhere and place Americans throughout the Middle East and our troops in Afghanistan at greater risk. Everyone agreed, and the president decided the photos would not be released. All the photos that had been circulating among the principals were gathered up and placed in CIA’s custody. As of this writing, none has ever leaked.

When we hear the old bells ringing out on a Sunday morning, we ask ourselves: can it be possible? This for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was the son of God. The proof of such a claim is wanting. Within our times the Christian religion is surely an antiquity jutting out from a far-distant olden time; and the fact that people believe such a claim...is perhaps the oldest part of this heritage. A god who conceives children with a mortal woman; a wise man who calls us to work no more; to judge no more; but to heed the signs of the imminent apocalypse; a justice that accepts the innocent man as a proxy sacrifice; someone who has his disciplines drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of the afterlife, to which death is the gate; the figure of the cross as a symbol, in a time that no longer knows the purpose and shame of the cross - how horribly all this wafts over us, as from the grave of the ancient past! Are we to believe that such things are still believed?

In the third part of the year When men begin to gather fuel Against the coming cold Here hooves run hard on frosty ground Begins our song: For centuries we lived alone high on the moors Herding the deer for milk and cheese For leather and horn Humans came seldom nigh For we with our spells held them at bay And they with gifts of wine and grain Did honour us. Returning at evening from the great mountains Our red hoods rang with bells. Lightly we ran Until before our own green hill There we did stand. She is stolen! She is snatched away! Through watery meads Straying our lovely daughter. She of the wild eyes! She of the wild hair! Snatched up to the saddle of the lord of Weir Who has his castle high upon a crag A league away. Upon the horse of air at once we rode To where Weir's castle looks like a crippled claw Into the moon. And taking form of minstrels brightly clad We paced upon white ponies to the gate And rang thereon "We come to sing unto my lord of Weir A merry song." Into his sorry hall we stepped Where was our daughter bound? Near his chair. "Come play a measure!" "Sir, at once we will." And we began to sing and play To lightly dance in rings and faster turn No man within that hall could keep his seat But needs must dance and leap Against his will This was the way we danced them to the door And sent them on their way into the world Where they will leap amain Till they think one kind thought For all I know they may be dancing still. While we returned with our own Into our hall And entering in Made fast the grassy door. from "The Dancing of the Lord of Weir

If you'll cast your mind back to the situation in the early years of the Christian era and imagine the mentality of a Roman aristocrat, a person of power in Roman society. Their physics is drawn from democritean atomism, in other words they are thoroughgoing materialists. Their social theory is drawn from Epictetus and Plato. They are in fact extremely modern people by our own standards. However, among the gardeners and kitchen help and stable boys, there is news of a momentous event in the Middle East - a Jewish rabbi has triumphed over death and risen after three days in the tomb. Should the master of the Roman household have caught wind of this kind of superstitious talk among the help, he would have just dismissed it with a sneer, "What preposterous idea!" And it is a preposterous idea, nevertheless, the fact that an idea is preposterous has never held it back from making zealous converts, and within a 120 years after the annunciation of the birth of Christianity, its missionaries were beating on the gates of Rome attempting to convert the Emperor.

The guard locks the gates of the turbeh, letting the heavy sound of the lock fall into the dark interior, as though leaving the name of the key inside. Dispirited, like me, he sits down on the stone beside me and closes his eyes. Just when I think he has dozed off in his part of the shade, the guard lifts his hand and points to a moth fluttering above the entrance to the tomb, having come out of our clothes or the Persian carpets in the turbeh. "You see," he says to me casually, "the moth is way up there by the white wall of the doorway, and it is visible only because it moves. From here it almost looks like a bird in the sky. That's probably how the moth sees the wall, and only we know it is wrong. But it doesn't know that we know. It doesn't even know we exist. You try to communicate with it if you can. Can you tell it anything in a way it understands; can you be sure it understood you completely?" "I don't know," I replied. "Can You?" "Yes," the old man said quietly, and with a clap of his hands he killed the moth, then profered its crushed body on the palm of his hand. "Do you think it didn't understand what I told it?" "You can do the same thing with a candle, extinguish it with your two fingers to prove you exist," I commented. "Certainly, if a candle is capable of dying... Now, imagine," he went on, "that there is somebody who knows about us what we know about the moth. Somebody who knows how, with what, and why this space that we call the sky and assume to be boundless, is bounded-- somebody who cannot approach us to let us know that he exists except in one way-- by killing us. Somebody, on whose garments we are nourished, somebody who carries our death in his hand like a tongue, as a means of communicating with us. By killing us, this anonymous being informs us about himself. And we, through our deaths, which may be no more than a warning to some wayfarer sitting alongside the assassin, we, I say, can at the last moment perceive, as through an opened door, new fields and other boundaries. This sixth and highest degree of deathly fear (where there is no memory) is what holds and links us anonymous participants in the game. The hierarchy of death is, in fact, the only thing that makes possible a system of contacts between the various levels of reality in an otherwise vast space where deaths endlessly repeat themselves like echoes within echoes...

Our Europe cannot perish. Her religion - which is also mine - has in it those victorious energies of defense which neither merchants nor philosophers can understand, and which are yet the prime condition of establishment. Europe, though she must always repel attacks from within and from without, is always secure; the soul of her is a chivalric. And the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it. She will not dissolve by expansion, nor be broken by internal strains. She will not suffer that loss of unity which would be for all her members death, and for her history and meaning and self an utter oblivion. She will certainly remain.

I mean, if you accept the framework that says totalitarian command economies have the right to make these decisions, and if the wage levels and working conditions are fixed facts, then we have to make choices within those assumptions. Then you can make an argument that poor people here ought to lose their jobs to even poorer people somewhere else... because that increases the economic pie, and it's the usual story. Why make those assumptions? There are other ways of dealing with the problem. Take, for example rich people here. Take those like me who are in the top few percent of the income ladder. We could cut back our luxurious lifestyles, pay proper taxes, there are all sorts of things. I'm not even talking about Bill Gates, but people who are reasonably privileged. Instead of imposing the burden on poor people here and saying "well, you poor people have to give up your jobs because even poorer people need them over there," we could say "okay, we rich people will give up some small part of our ludicrous luxury and use it to raise living standards and working conditions elsewhere, and to let them have enough capital to develop their own economy, their own means." Then the issue will not arise. But it's much more convenient to say that poor people here ought to pay the burden under the framework of command economies—totalitarianism. But, if you think it through, it makes sense and almost every social issue you think about—real ones, live ones, ones right on the table—has these properties. We don't have to accept and shouldn't accept the framework of domination of thought and attitude that only allows certain choices to be made... and those choices almost invariably come down to how to put the burden on the poor. That's class warfare. Even by real nice people like us who think it's good to help poor workers, but within a framework of class warfare that maintains privilege and transfers the burden to the poor. It's a matter of raising consciousness among very decent people.

The nymph who laments, guardian of our spring of tears, Dares come only within the compass of praising, of song, - She who watches over the settling of the precipitate, That it be clear, on that same rock That bears the gates and the altars. - See, about her shoulders so tranquil there rises The sensation that she must be the youngest Of those sisters, to be disposed so. Exultation knows, and fierce Desire acknowledges, - Only Lamentation must still learn; with a maiden’s hand She counts out the old sorrows through the night. But suddenly, slantwise and unpractised, She holds aloft a constellation of our voices Against the heavens, left unobscured by her breath.

Midnight has fallen on the darkened streets of Haught and Battens Hill, and the watchman saith, All is well. We have prospered by the day, set our lock and bolt, and tried the windows, and all is well. Want, murder, desperation, and despair still roam in the filthy alleys and tenements of The Steps and breed countless wrongs in their path, yet the watchman passing cries, All is well. The watchman clears away the hungry children who hunt for scraps behind the New Theatre while a nobleman’s carriage rolls by, but decent folk turn, sighing in their sleep, and faintly hear the report: all is well. The prison gates are shut, and what is within is surely confined there, and touches us not; therefore, all is well.

Only last Sunday, when poor wretches were gay—within the walls playing with children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace Garden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more Elysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles filtering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Lady to say a word or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little gridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing Paris with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking, tomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and much murderous refuse, animate and inanimate—only last Sunday, my Lady, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair, almost hated her own maid for being in spirits. She cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies before her, as it lies behind—her Ariel has put a girdle of it round the whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped—but the imperfect remedy is always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced. Fling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless avenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let it be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck glittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain—two dark square towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it aslant, like the angels in Jacob's dream!

The Stranger within my gate, He may be true or kind, But he does not talk my talk-- I cannot feel his mind. I see the face and the eyes and the mouth, But not the soul behind. The men of my own stock, They may do ill or well, But they tell the lies I am wanted to, They are used to the lies I tell; And we do not need interpreters When we go to buy or sell. The Stranger within my gates, He may be evil or good, But I cannot tell what powers control-- What reasons sway his mood; Nor when the Gods of his far-off land Shall repossess his blood. The men of my own stock, Bitter bad they may be, But, at least, they hear the things I hear, And see the things I see; And whatever I think of them and their likes They think of the likes of me. This was my father's belief And this is also mine: Let the corn be all one sheaf-- And the grapes be all one vine, Ere our children's teeth are set on edge By bitter bread and wine.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dikes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip. "Hold

Most of our readers will remember, that, until within a very few years past, there was a kind of iron cage in the wall of the Fleet Prison, within which was posted some man of hungry looks, who, from time to time, rattled a money-box, and exclaimed in a mournful voice, ‘Pray, remember the poor debtors; pray remember the poor debtors.’ The receipts of this box, when there were any, were divided among the poor prisoners; and the men on the poor side relieved each other in this degrading office. Although this custom has been abolished, and the cage is now boarded up, the miserable and destitute condition of these unhappy persons remains the same. We no longer suffer them to appeal at the prison gates to the charity and compassion of the passersby; but we still leave unblotted the leaves of our statute book, for the reverence and admiration of succeeding ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction.

I seemed to hear a voice of lamentation out of the Golden Age. It told me that we are imperfect, incomplete, and no more like a beautiful woven web, but like a bundle of cords knotted together and flung into a comer. It said that the world was once all perfect and kindly, and that still the kindly and perfect world existed, but buried like a mass of roses under many spadefuls of earth. The faeries and the more innocent of the spirits dwelt within it, and lamented over our fallen world in the lamentation of the wind-tossed reeds, in the song of the birds, in the moan of the waves, and in the sweet cry of the fiddle. It said that with us the beautiful are not clever and the clever are not beautiful, and that the best of our moments are marred by a little vulgarity, or by a pin-prick out of sad recollection, and that the fiddle must ever lament about it all. It said that if only they who live in the Golden Age could die we might be happy, for the sad voices would be still; but alas! alas! they must sing and we must weep until the Eternal gates swing open.

The valley of Minas Morgul passed into evil very long ago, and it was a menace and a dread while the banished Enemy dwelt yet far away, and Ithilien was still for the most part in our keeping. As you know, that city was once a strong place, proud and fair, Minas Ithil, the twin sister of our own city. But it was taken by fell men whom the Enemy in his first strength had dominated, and who wandered homeless and masterless after his fall. It is said that their lords were men of Númenor who had fallen into dark wickedness; to them the Enemy had given rings of power, and he had devoured them: living ghosts they were become, terrible and evil. After his going they took Minas Ithil and dwelt there, and they filled it, and all the valley about, with decay: it seemed empty and was not so, for a shapeless fear lived within the ruined walls. Nine Lords there were, and after the return of their Master, which they aided and prepared in secret, they grew strong again. Then the Nine Riders issued forth from the gates of horror, and we could not withstand them. Do not approach their citadel. You will be espied. It is a place of sleepless malice, full of lidless eyes. Do not go that way!

Our freedom does not lie outside us, but within us. One can be bound outside, and yet one will still feel free since one has burst inner bonds. One can certainly gain outer freedom through powerful actions, but one creates inner freedom only through the symbol. The symbol is the word that goes out of the mouth, that one does not simply speak, but that rises out of the depths of the self as a word of power and great need and places itself unexpectedly on the tongue. It is an astonishing and perhaps seemingly irrational word, but one recognizes it as a symbol since it is alien to the conscious mind. If one accepts the symbol, it is as if a door opens leading into a new room whose existence one previously did not know. But if one does not accept the symbol, it is as if one carelessly went past this door; and since this was the only door leading to the inner chambers, one must pass outside into the streets again, exposed to everything external. But the soul suffers great need, since outer freedom is of no use to it. Salvation is a long road that leads through many gates. These gates are symbols. Each new gate is at first invisible; indeed, it seems at first that it must be created, for it exists only if one has dug up the spring’s root. To find the mandrake, one needs the black dog, since good and bad must always be united first if the symbol is to be created. The symbol can be neither thought up nor found: it becomes. Its becoming is like the becoming of human life in the womb. Pregnancy comes about through voluntary copulation. It goes on through willing attention. But if the depths have conceived, then the symbol grows out of itself and is born from the mind, as befits a God. But in the same way a mother would like to throw herself on the child like a monster and devour it again. In the morning, when the new sun rises, the word steps out of my mouth, but is murdered lovelessly, since I did not know that it was the saviour. The newborn child grows quickly, if I accept it. And immediately it becomes my charioteer. The word is the guide, the middle way which easily oscillates like the needle on the scales. The word is the God that rises out of the waters each morning and proclaims the guiding law to the people. Outer laws and outer wisdom are eternally insufficient, since there is only one law and one wisdom, namely my daily law, my daily wisdom. The God renews himself each night.

The first gate he came to he started in; I had neither whip nor spur, and so I simply argued the case with him. He resisted argument, but ultimately yielded to insult and abuse. He backed out of that gate and steered for another one on the other side of the street. I triumphed by my former process. Within the next six hundred yards he crossed the street fourteen times and attempted thirteen gates, and in the meantime the tropical sun was beating down and threatening to cave the top of my head in, and I was literally dripping with perspiration. He abandoned the gate business after that and went along peaceably enough, but absorbed in meditation. I noticed this latter circumstance, and it soon began to fill e with apprehension. I said to myself, this creature is planning some new outrage, some fresh deviltry or other - no horse ever thought over a subject so profoundly as this one is doing just for nothing. The more this thing preyed upon my mind the more uneasy I became, until the suspense became almost unbearable and I dismounted to see if there was anything wild in his eye - for I had heard that the eyef this noblest of our domestic animals is very expressive. I cannot describe what a load of anxiety was lifted from my mind when I found that he was only asleep.

The Search for Happiness Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of [children]. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate. —PSALM 127:5     Storm Jameson, a twentieth-century English writer, wrote, “Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.” Parents want to make their children happy, employers want to make employees happy, married couples want a happy marriage, etc. “Just make me happy, and I’ll be satisfied!” Isn’t that what people (ourselves included) think and expect of others a lot of the time? Yet, we run into so many unhappy people—clearly these expectations are rarely met. Our newspapers are full of stories about unhappy people. They rob, they kill, they steal, they take drugs. They, they, they. Everywhere one looks, there is unhappiness. Then how does one become happy? I’ve found that happiness comes from one’s own perception. No one else is responsible for your happiness. Look in the mirror, and you can see who is responsible for your happiness! Gerald Brenan wrote: One road to happiness is to cultivate curiosity about everything. Not only about people but about subjects, not only about the arts but about history and foreign customs. Not only about countries and cities, but about plants and animals. Not only about lichened rocks and curious markings on the bark of trees, but about stars and atoms. Not only about friends but about that strange labyrinth we inhabit which we call ourselves. Then if we do that, we will never suffer a moment’s boredom.56 Happiness comes from within. It’s what you do: the choices you make, the interests you pursue, the attitudes you have, the friends you make, the faith you embrace, and the peace you live. You, you, you bring happiness to your life—no one else. Turn to the One who created you, inside and out, and follow His lead to happiness and wholeness.

Neamh. Evie. Neamh. Evie. Lend, Lend, Lend. Neamh. Evie. “What are you doing, my love?” I scowled at Reth for breaking my concentration. “Thinking. Shut up.” The Light Queen was speechifying up on a podium made of liquid light, her radiance bathing all the faeries in a glow that was nearly overpowering. Within a few seconds of being around this much faerie glamour I was having a hard time seeing straight and found myself slack-jawed and dazed. Thus, the name equivalent of pinching myself. I realized at some point she had stopped talking, and now every single set of faerie eyes—a few hundred of them—were trained intently on me. “Oh, uh, hey.” I waved. “What did I miss?” I whispered to Reth. “You’re supposed to tell us how to convince the Dark Court to join us.” “I—What? Seriously? I’m only here to make sure everything happens. I thought the queen would have a plan! I’m a glorified doorman. I open the gate, I close the gate. Nowhere in my job description of Empty One does it say I also manage to convince a mob of anti-Evie faeries to saunter through the gate.” Reth smiled. “And just when she’d finished praising human ingenuity and assuring us that everything will work out according to plan.” “Yes! Plan! Her plan! Gosh, you guys are sucking it up all over the place. Aren’t you supposed to have these things in place for centuries, or were you too busy writing pretty little poems to describe the plans that you never bothered actually making them?” His golden eyes, now with fine lines around them, twinkled with amusement. “We had a plan, my love. I was to fill you up and you were to open a fate for us immediately. But I seem to recall you doing everything in your power to resist and change that plan. So now we’ve had to account for all the other creatures from our world and conform to your requirements. I think you’ll find that we fey, while obviously superior in nearly every way, are not quite as adaptable as temporary creatures. If you want improvisations, you’ll have to provide it yourself.

We then reached a fork in the valley. Should we go left or right? Dad called it left. I had a very powerful intuition that right was the choice we should make. Dad insisted left. I insisted right. It was a fifty-fifty call and he relented. Within two hundred yards we stumbled across a snowy track through the woods and followed it excitedly. Within a mile it came out on a mountain road, and within ten minutes we had flagged down a lift from a car heading up the hill in the darkness. We had found salvation, and I was beat. The car dropped us off at the gates of the garrison thirty minutes later. It was, by then, late into the night, but I was suddenly buzzing with energy and excitement. The fatigue had gone. Dad knew that I had made the right call up there--if we had chosen left we would still be trudging into the unknown. I felt so proud. In truth it was probably luck, but I learned another valuable lesson that night: Listen to the quiet voice inside. Intuition is the noise of the mind. As we tromped back through the barracks, though, we noticed there was an unusual amount of activity for the early hours of a weekday morning. It soon became very clear why. First a sergeant appeared, followed by another soldier, and then we were ushered into the senior officers’ block. There was my uncle, standing in uniform looking both tired and serious. I started to break out into a big smile. So did Dad. Well, I was excited. We had cheated a slow, lingering hypothermic death, lost together in the mountains. We were alive. Our enthusiasm was countered by the immortal words from my uncle, the brigadier, saying: “I wouldn’t smile if I was you…” He continued, “The entire army mountain rescue team is currently out scouring the mountains for you, on foot and in the air with the search-and-rescue helicopter. I hope you have a good explanation.” We didn’t, of course, save that we had been careless, and we had got lucky; but that’s life sometimes. And the phrase: “I wouldn’t smile if I was you,” has gone down into Grylls family folklore.

Pull in Friendships and Fresh Adventures: Five men are walking across the Golden Gate Bridge on an outing organized by their wives who are college friends. The women move ahead in animated conversation. One man describes the engineering involved in the bridge's long suspension. Another points to the changing tide lines below. A third asked if they've heard of the new phone apps for walking tours. The fourth observes how refreshing it is to talk with people who aren't lawyers like him. Yes, we tend to notice the details that most relate to our work or our life experience. It is also no surprise that we instinctively look for those who share our interests. This is especially true in times of increasing pressure and uncertainty. We have an understandable tendency in such times to seek out the familiar and comfortable as a buffer against the disruptive changes surrounding us. In so doing we can inadvertently put ourselves in a cage of similarity that narrows our peripheral vision of the world and our options. The result? We can be blindsided by events and trends coming at us from directions we did not see. The more we see reinforcing evidence that we are right in our beliefs the more rigid we become in defending them. Hint: If you are part of a large association, synagogue, civic group or special interest club, encourage the organization to support the creation of self-organized, special interest groups of no more than seven people, providing a few suggestions of they could operate. Such loosely affiliated small groups within a larger organization deepen a sense of belonging, help more people learn from diverse others and stay open to growing through that shared learning and collaboration. That's one way that members of Rick Warren's large Saddleback Church have maintained a close-knit feeling yet continue to grow in fresh ways. imilarly the innovative outdoor gear company Gore-Tex has nimbly grown by using their version of self-organized groups of 150 or less within the larger corporation. In fact, they give grants to those who further their learning about that philosophy when adapted to outdoor adventure, traveling in compact groups of "close friends who had mutual respect and trust for one another.

Then on the fifth of October, to cheer the populace, we are given a new calendar. From this day forward, no one is to celebrate the Catholic festivals or use the calendar that dates from Christ’s birth. “We are a nation of thinkers,” Danton declares, “and as such, we shall celebrate the glorious rationalism that has brought us to such liberty.” Not a single journalist in all of Paris dares to point out that our new liberty has imprisoned us within the city. That our dead are buried the same day they die—in mass graves—because there is no longer room and even gravediggers are not allowed outside the city gates. And so we all must pretend to embrace this new calendar. Those who do not use it are branded enemies of the patrie.

As we drove out of one of The Kruger National Park’s main gates, before I could think further, I added, “That was a lekker holiday!” If South Africa had taught me one thing, it is that South Africans who are natural collectors of little moments understand that the feelings of contentment should have a scale to measure where exactly a person is on the range of gratitude. And lekker is exactly that, one word to measure the depth of one’s connection to the feelings of life within one. In that moment, my scale of contentment was sky high, and by the way I had just pronounced that word, I had just made it clear to the world that I was starting to understand the value of one word to convey a complete thought of happiness through its shifting context of interpretation – the gift of acknowledgement of an instant spark of awareness within. Lekker, simply stated -- a visceral connection to our understanding of the wealth of happiness residing in our heart by means of a single moment unfolding right now – in front of us. Lekker…enough said.

It appears, gentlemen, that our highness is nearly ready for you. Though all preparations have been set aside, I trust you will observe the protocol for greeting a king. Honor him as you would King Donald of your realm.”Roger busted out laughing. Grinning, I replied, “Our realm is not ruled by a king at all, but a man chosen by vote. And the one we call President Trump is hardly a king, and how one might greet him depends…Some honor him. Some would just as well throw poop at him.”Lancelot cocked his head. “Poop?”Roger interjected, “I think what Elijah means to say is that we are not at all familiar with the formalities associated with royalty.”“Very well,”Lancelot said. “Though I should note that your realm must be in a dreadful state if there are those among you who would treat your head of state with such contempt.”“You have no idea,”I added. “These days it seems that people are only capable of respecting leaders selectively.”Lancelot looked confused. “It’s a democracy,”Roger added. “People choose their own leader by a vote.”“But those who did not choose him feel they owe your leader no honor?”Lancelot asked. “In our realm,”I said, shaking my head, “people only seem to honor those with whom they agree.”“Such a realm,”Lancelot said, “cannot stand for long. Such is the state of many kingdoms apart from our own. Without a sense of honor and duty, without a common purpose, such realms are always in a state of war.”“But not Camelot?”I asked. “A divided kingdom,”Lancelot explained, “is prone to war for many reasons. None of these, however, pertain to Camelot under Arthur Pendragon.”“What reasons?”Roger asked. “First, a divided kingdom is so accustomed to conflict within that it cannot help but resort to the same when dealing without. Likewise, however, a divided kingdom is especially vulnerable and therefore attractive to others who would exploit them or, perhaps, aspire to conquer them. A divided realm is like a heated pot of oil. It takes only the slightest thing to upset it and turn it into a rage against itself.

After I had finished giving the account of my shame, he spoke, impatiently. ''Listen,' he said, piercing me with his cold, blue gaze. 'You must deal with this. You must get those guys, one by one, and crush them. Especially that guy!' My father named the main protagonist, and continued. ''Not yet; you must wait a couple of days. You must catch him by surprise. A good beating from you is what he needs, and I can assure you – he will never think of crossing you again! You see, if you don't do this now, others will come and push you around. You must show them you're not a doormat!'' My father's whole being was charged with some unseen energy, a power which, since I never felt any real closeness to him, seemed frightening to me. I knew he loved me; I knew he would kill for me – I was sure that he would die for me if he had to; yet, since our relationship was deprived of tenderness, there was no sense of warmth to bridge the gap between my gentle, undeveloped heart and his manly strength. I did not feel protected that night, and I did not feel understood. My heart strained under the weight of the utter loneliness which rushed in, adding to the effect of the assault that had taken place earlier. I did not know it at the time, but I do now: it was not an exhortation that I needed, no call to battle. I hungered for understanding and compassion; I yearned for manly warmth, to be held and loved by the one who was stronger than me – the one who would make all things right in the end, regardless of what I did or didn’t do. Instead, I felt helpless and alone. It is difficult, indeed impossible, to develop a fighter's heart and be a warrior who fights to defend himself and others, unless one has first been so nurtured with masculine love and so immersed in it as a boy, that his confidence and strength he is called to display later in life are not false, but genuine, deep and natural, flowing from within. A boy cannot do that by himself; he first needs to belong in the world of men... And it was that which I doubted – my ability to qualify for belonging in that world; the world of my father. This was the only world I ever desired to enter, and now, finally, just as I had feared it would happen, the gate to that world was shut in my face. Not being good enough to gain the right to enter, I lost the opportunity to possess all that could have been granted to me there: an identity, self-worth, and manly courage.

Livia’s song flows from my lips easily. I have known her since she was a baby. I held her, cuddled her, loved her. I sing of her strength. I sing of the sweetness and humor that I know still live within her, despite the horrors she has endured. I feel her body strengthening, her blood regenerating. But as I knit her back together, something is not right. I move down from her heart to her belly. My consciousness flinches back. The baby. He—and my sister is right, it is a he—sleeps now. But there is something wrong with him. His heartbeat, which instinct tells me should sound like the gentle, swift thud of a bird’s wings, is too slow. His still-developing mind too sluggish. He slips away from us. Skies, what is the child’s song? I do not know him. I know nothing about him except that he is part Marcus and part Livia and that he is our only chance for a unified Empire. “What do you want him to be?” the Nightbringer asks. At his voice, I jump, so deep in healing that I forgot he was here. “A warrior? A leader? A diplomat? His ruh, his spirit, is within, but it is not yet formed. If you wish him to live, then you must shape him from what is there—his blood, his family. But know that in doing so, you will be bound to him and his purpose forever. You will never be able to extricate yourself.” “He is family,” I whisper. “My nephew. I wouldn’t want to extricate myself from him.” I hum, searching for his song. Do I want him to be like me? Like Elias? Certainly not like Marcus. I want him to be an Aquilla. And I want him to be a Martial. So I sing my sister Livia into him—her kindness and laughter. I sing him my father’s conviction and prudence. My mother’s thoughtfulness and intelligence. I sing him Hannah’s fire. Of his father, I sing only one thing: his strength and skill in battle—one quick word, sharp and strong and clear—Marcus if the world had not ruined him. If he had not allowed himself to be ruined. But there is something missing. I feel it. This child will one day be Emperor. He needs something deeply rooted, something that will sustain him when nothing else will: a love of his people. The thought appears in my head as if it’s been planted there. So I sing him my own love, the love I learned in the streets of Navium, in fighting for my people, in them fighting for me. The love I learned in the infirmary, healing children and telling them not to fear. His heart begins to beat in time again; his body strengthens. I feel him give my sister an almighty kick, and, relieved, I withdraw.

By the grace of the Mother, she was paranoid enough about any new allies or companions that she hid the Horn and Harp. She created a pocket of nothingness, she told me, and stashed them there. Only she could access that pocket of nothingness—only she could retrieve the Horn and Harp from its depths. But she remained unaware that Pelias had already told the Daglan of their presence. She had no idea that she was allowed to live, if only for a time, so they might figure out where she’d concealed them. So Pelias, under their command, might squeeze their location out of her. Just as she had no idea that the gate she had left open into our home world … the Daglan had been waiting a long, long time for that, too. But they were patient. Content to let more and more of Theia’s forces come into the new world—thus leaving her own undefended. Content to wait to gain her trust, so she might hand over the Horn and Harp. It was a trap, to be played out over months or years. To get the instruments of power from Theia, to march back into our home world and claim it again … It was a long, elegant trap, to be sprung at the perfect moment. And, distracted by the beauty of our new world, we did not consider that it all might be too easy. Too simple. Midgard was a land of plenty. Of green and light and beauty. Much like our own lands—with one enormous exception. The memory spanned to a view from a cliff of a distant plain full of creatures. Some winged, some not. We were not the only beings to come to this world hoping to claim it. We would learn too late that the other peoples had been lured by the Daglan under similarly friendly guises. And that they, too, had come armed and ready to fight for these lands. But before conflict could erupt between us all, we found that Midgard was already occupied. Theia and Pelias, with Helena and Silene trailing, warriors ten deep behind them, stood atop the cliff, surveying the verdant land and the enormous walled city on the horizon. Bryce’s breath caught. She’d spent years working in the company of the lost books of Parthos, knowing that a great human civilization had once flourished within its walls, but here, before her, was proof of the grandeur, the human skill that had existed on Midgard. And had been entirely wiped away.

Now Where Do You Find Customers? When novice entrepreneurs search for opportunities, they too often look beyond their Zone of Influence. They think the action is happening somewhere else, in some other location or industry. But seasoned entrepreneurs almost always find and create opportunities within the context of who they are, what they know, and especially who they know. In each of the examples above, the business validation process begins with potential customers in the entrepreneur’s orbit. Actual people with names. Tribes you belong to or are interested in, most of whom are already self-organized online. People you know how to reach, today. Though it’s rarely a part of their official origin stories, the biggest companies in the world—even the viral apps now worth billions—started through personal networks and real human connections. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in a weekend by emailing friends to use it. Version 1 did well, validating it. And Microsoft started with Bill Gates building software for a guy in Albuquerque. He had a CUSTOMER FIRST. In the beginning, founders should reach out to their friends, their former colleagues, their communities. You may think your business is unique, but trust me, it’s not. Every successful business can start this way. For example, Anahita loves her dogs and wanted healthier snacks for them. She started taking her homemade organic dog treats to her local dog park. She would sell out every time. A year later she now has a store called the Barkery, a dog bakery. Before you even think about picking a business idea, make sure you have easy access to the people you want to help. An easy way to do this is to think about where you have easy access to a targeted group of people whom you really want to help—like, say, new moms in Austin, cyclists, freelance writers, and taco obsessives (like me!). CHALLENGE Top three groups. Let’s write out your top three groups to target. Who do you have easy access to that you’d be EXCITED to help? This can be your neighbors, colleagues, religious friends, golf buddies, cooking friends, etc. The better you understand your target group, the better you can speak to them. The more specifically you can speak to their problems, the better and easier you can sell (or test products). Note how this process prioritizes communication with people, through starting (taking the first iteration of your solution straight to customers) and asking (engaging them in a conversation to determine how your solution can best fix their problem). Business creation should always be a conversation! Nearly every impulse we have is to be tight with our ideas by doing more research, going off alone to build the perfect product—anything and everything to avoid the discomfort of asking for money. This is the validation shortcut. You have to learn to fight through this impulse. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it.

There is something profoundly cynical, my friends, in the notion of paradise after death. The lure is evasion. The promise is excusative. One need not accept responsibility for the world as it is, and by extension, one need do nothing about it. To strive for change, for true goodness in this mortal world, one must acknowledge and accept, within one’s own soul, that this mortal reality has purpose in itself, that its greatest value is not for us, but for our children and their children. To view life as but a quick passage along a foul, tortured path – made foul and tortured by our own indifference – is to excuse all manner of misery and depravity, and to exact cruel punishment upon the innocent lives to come. I defy this notion of paradise beyond the gates of bone. If the soul truly survives the passage, then it behooves us – each of us, my friends – to nurture a faith in similitude: what awaits us is a reflection of what we leave behind, and in the squandering of our mortal existence, we surrender the opportunity to learn the ways of goodness, the practice of sympathy, empathy, compassion and healing – all passed by in our rush to arrive at a place of glory and beauty, a place we did not earn, and most certainly do not deserve.

Grayden and I, along with Dahnath, Drael and countless others, stayed to keep vigil, sitting on the hillside until the funeral blaze consumed itself, settling into cinders. In the early hours of the morning, a light, almost magical snow began to fall, and the moon’s glow as it reflected off the ground brightened the scenery, making everything seem new. My uncle’s death had again set my family reeling. While we were accustomed to picking up pieces, sorting through rubble and holding on to memories, the brothers who had died had been the pillars of our family, strong leaders in Hytanica’s military, and shining examples of all that was good and honorable within our kingdom. But this time, beneath the grieving, there was hope--hope that glowed like the remaining embers. This land was again our own, the Province Wall would be torn down, and we citizens would once more walk through the city gates without fear or suspicion. I shivered, and Grayden put his arm around me, snuggling me close to him, and a melancholy smile played across my face. My uncle had promised he would find a husband for me who would meet my father’s standards. And at what did the Captain of the Guard fail?

Directs That a Man Should Repress Talkativeness, Saying:  'Never Leave Aimless Wandering Unpunished.' [504] Chapter I We Must Remain Within Our Heart Awaiting GOD’S Coming HE would be greatly to blame who, when some high dignitaries were about to visit him, left his home at the time they were expected. It would appear insulting, and the guests might seek some other dwelling, leaving their indifferent host to himself, to give him a lesson and teach him to welcome those who came to honor his house by a visit. If the patriarch Abraham had not been in his tent, he would not have deserved to receive the angels who promised him a longed-for son.[505] Had Lot been negligent in welcoming pilgrims, instead of waiting for them at the gate of the city, he would not have deserved to entertain the angels who delivered him from the burning of Sodom and placed him in safety.[506] Unless Laban had been in his house, the men who were the cause of his future prosperity would not have lodged there.[507] Yet if these men were careful to stay at home and show hospitality to the guests of whose visits they had no certainty, much more should every devout soul be spiritually solicitous while awaiting to welcome within itself God, who is to be its guest.

Words processed only by our heads, words that come through the eye or ear gates but only go a few inches farther, don’t change us. It is the words that somehow arise within our spirit and then move into our soul and mind that change us.

We look up to her, as on a Star that guides us, shining through the dark clouds of human uncertainty. The annual Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception shines bright from within the background of the Advent liturgy. We contemplate Our Lady in the divine economy of salvation as the ‘Gate of heaven’ through which the Redeemer comes into the world.[398]

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” The Sabbath is not introduced as a new institution but as having been founded at creation. It is to be remembered and observed as the memorial of the Creator’s work. Pointing to God as the Maker of the heavens and the earth, it distinguishes the true God from all false gods. All who keep the seventh day signify by this act that they are worshipers of Jehovah. Thus the Sabbath is the sign of man’s allegiance to God as long as there are any upon the earth to serve him. The fourth commandment is the only one of all the ten in which are found both the name and the title of the Lawgiver. It is the only one that shows by whose authority the law is given. Thus it contains the seal of God, affixed to his law as evidence of its authenticity and binding force. God has given men six days wherein to labor, and he requires that their own work be done in the six working days. Acts of necessity and mercy are permitted on the Sabbath, the sick and suffering are at all times to be cared for; but unnecessary labor is to be strictly avoided. “Turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and ...honor him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure.” Isaiah 58:13. Nor does the prohibition end here. “Nor speaking thine own words,” says the prophet. Those who discuss business matters or lay plans on the Sabbath are regarded by God as though engaged in the actual transaction of business. To keep the Sabbath holy, we should not even allow our minds to dwell upon things of a worldly character. And the commandment includes all within our gates. The inmates of the [308] house are to lay aside their worldly business during the sacred hours. All should unite to honor God by willing service upon his holy day.

In the dark, when night’s chill cuts Cold as death they climb the hill Breaking door and windowpane They come to burn, slash, and kill. Shadows pounding on the door They beat the drums of fear Place your faith in Maribor And loudly, so he hears. Waves they crash upon the bow Of withered ship at sea Wind and weather rip the sails There’s little hope for thee. Shadows pounding on the hull They beat the drums of fear Place your faith in Maribor And loudly, so he hears. Within darkling wood you walk So foolish after all Footsteps follow, catching up You run until you fall. Shadows pounding on the path They beat the drums of fear Place your faith in Maribor And loudly, so he hears. When man stood upon the brink Novron saved us all Sent by god above he was In answer to our call. Shadows pounding on the gate They beat the drums so near If your faith’s in Maribor He’s with you, never fear.

Started in Argentina, escrache has spread to other Latin American countries as a popular movement to oust, shame and ostracize retired generals, politicians and other powerful figures who have committed unpunished crimes. After locating the criminal in question, the organizers would inform his neighbors that here lives a state-sanctioned mass murderer or torturer, or a looter of public funds. Later, thousands of people would converge on this man's house to publicly indict the blood-drenched fat cat. Though this Latin American version of a Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush or Obama is never physically attacked, the monster will be shunned by many of his neighbors, with local businesses even refusing to sell him a meal or a newspaper. Critics of escrache have denounced it as a form of vigilante justice and, as the outburst of an angry mob, something that should be declared illegal, but the protesters are only reacting to acts that are themselves clearly illegal, not to mention outrageously immoral. The protesters' public harassment does not compare to their targets' torturing and/or raping, then throwing their victims from airplanes into the ocean, or kidnapping their children and erasing their identities. Too often, the state will use the legality argument to bind its opponents, while doing whatever it pleases, legal or not. Not satisfied with a monopoly on violence, the state also wants to be the sole interpreter of what's right and wrong, as implied by the often-bandied-about legality question, and the more criminal the state is, the more illegal, the more it will shriek about the need for everyone else to walk the straight and narrow, according to its own power-drunk markings. Talking to Borzutsky's class, I asked the students to consider escrache in the North American context. Who are our criminals in high places and what should we do about them? Unlike our southern neighbors, we have neither the clarity to identify our enemies from within, nor the courage or unity to confront them. To be fair, though, our top criminals don't move among us, with many never even being mentioned by our obfuscating media, as great a killer of brain cells as any, and worse than any glue. Even when not anonymous, however, the most malignant Americans are hidden behind guarded gates, bulletproof glass or acres of real estate, so that it would take considerable enterprise to target them. When faced with an illegal and ultraviolent enemy, we must resort to any and all tricks, be extra clever and strike hard, for real, but most of us are too tightly bound to our bifurcated harness to do more the jiggle, every once in a while, an electronic voting machine. Geez, I wonder who they'll let us pretend to vote for next time, if there's a next time?

Christmas is the spark within our hearts that ignites as each day grows closer and burns brightly with the promise of compassion, love and generosity of spirit.

April 19 MORNING “Behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.” — Matthew 27:51 NO mean miracle was wrought in the rending of so strong and thick a veil; but it was not intended merely as a display of power — many lessons were herein taught us. The old law of ordinances was put away, and like a worn-out vesture, rent and laid aside. When Jesus died, the sacrifices were all finished, because all fulfilled in Him, and therefore the place of their presentation was marked with an evident token of decay. That rent also revealed all the hidden things of the old dispensation: the mercy-seat could now be seen, and the glory of God gleamed forth above it. By the death of our Lord Jesus we have a clear revelation of God, for He was “not as Moses, who put a veil over his face.” Life and immortality are now brought to light, and things which have been hidden since the foundation of the world are manifest in Him. The annual ceremony of atonement was thus abolished. The atoning blood which was once every year sprinkled within the veil, was now offered once for all by the great High Priest, and therefore the place of the symbolical rite was broken up. No blood of bullocks or of lambs is needed now, for Jesus has entered within the veil with his own blood. Hence access to God is now permitted, and is the privilege of every believer in Christ Jesus. There is no small space laid open through which we may peer at the mercy-seat, but the rent reaches from the top to the bottom. We may come with boldness to the throne of the heavenly grace. Shall we err if we say that the opening of the Holy of Holies in this marvellous manner by our Lord’s expiring cry was the type of the opening of the gates of paradise to all the saints by virtue of the Passion? Our bleeding Lord hath the key of heaven; He openeth and no man shutteth; let us enter in with Him into the heavenly places, and sit with Him there till our common enemies shall be made His footstool.

The gospel news is of an all-or-nothing venture undertaken by our blessing God. He pursued us all the way into the far country of our lost and forsaken condition. He ran his game plan until it killed him. The final report is simple and all encompassing: Jesus is risen. Therefore life wins. Death loses. God wins. Satan loses. Grace wins. Sin loses. Jesus is risen and he comes to us even now within locked doors saying, “Peace be with you.” Let’s consider how the news of this story rallies us to bless the triune God even today. We, too, may well have locked the doors against the world. Hurt in love, many of us have locked the doors of our heart, hoping never to be vulnerable again. Betrayed, we have locked the doors of hope and put on a mask of clever cynicism. We don’t ever again want to be surprised and embarrassed for trusting. We will be negative first; we will expect the worst and mock anyone trying to love in good faith. Struck down by failures, we have locked the doors against the world, hiding away the passion that used to urge us to dare more, try more. We will not venture out again. We will not show what matters most to us to anyone. But the risen Jesus trampled the gates of death and hell. He is not kept out by any paltry locked doors. They don’t stop him. He comes to us with a blessing hand upraised. “Peace be with you.” He shows us his wounds. “Look, I understand. I bear the same wounds you have. I was pierced for my faithfulness, mocked for my trust, cursed for living out my passion to bless. I died at the hands of those I came to save. But I live again. I have overcome the world. See my wounds. See how I have been where you have been. See me alive again. You too will live again. Not only in the next life but in this life! Be of good cheer.

My admiration stranger within our gates, who hesitates not to speak the truth.

Because our perceptions and judgments are determined by our own attitudes and values, people's evaluations of police officers and police work in their communities normally have very little to do with the performance standards within the department. I have listened to harsh, critical comments made about "cops" and been struck by how little most people know about the realities of policing. Denial of the harsh, violent, or dangerous aspects of the world is a commonly used psychological defense that allows us to go about our lives without constant fear of harm. If we were unsuccessful at "blocking out" unpleasant parts of our world, the horror we would feel each day at the violence and suffering that are always taking place would overwhelm us.

January 29 MORNING “The things which are not seen.” — 2 Corinthians 4:18 IN our Christian pilgrimage it is well, for the most part, to be looking forward. Forward lies the crown, and onward is the goal. Whether it be for hope, for joy, for consolation, or for the inspiring of our love, the future must, after all, be the grand object of the eye of faith. Looking into the future we see sin cast out, the body of sin and death destroyed, the soul made perfect, and fit to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Looking further yet, the believer’s enlightened eye can see death’s river passed, the gloomy stream forded, and the hills of light attained on which standeth the celestial city; he seeth himself enter within the pearly gates, hailed as more than conqueror, crowned by the hand of Christ, embraced in the arms of Jesus, glorified with Him, and made to sit together with Him on His throne, even as He has overcome and has sat down with the Father on His throne. The thought of this future may well relieve the darkness of the past and the gloom of the present. The joys of heaven will surely compensate for the sorrows of earth. Hush, my fears! this world is but a narrow span, and thou shalt soon have passed it. Hush, hush, my doubts! death is but a narrow stream, and thou shalt soon have forded it. Time, how short — eternity, how long! Death, how brief — immortality, how endless! Methinks I even now eat of Eshcol’s clusters, and sip of the well which is within the gate. The road is so, so short! I shall soon be there. When the world my heart is rending     With its heaviest storm of care, My glad thoughts to heaven ascending,     Find a refuge from despair. Faith’s bright vision shall sustain me     Till life’s pilgrimage is past; Fears may vex and troubles pain me,     I shall reach my home at last.

Boukman’s prayer (first set down by Haitian poet and politician Hérard Dumesle in 1824): The god who created the earth; who created the sun that gives us light. The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our God who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watch us from where you are. You see all that the whites had made us suffer. The white man’s god asks him to commit crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It’s He who will direct our arms and bring us the victory. It’s He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men’s god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that speaks in all our hearts.

Sometimes we have bad on the inside and good on the outside. In these instances, we need to be able to open up our boundaries to let the good in and the bad out. In other words, our fences need gates in them. For example, if I find that I have some pain or sin within, I need to open up and communicate it to God and others, so that I can be healed. Confessing pain and sin helps to “get it out” so that it does not continue to poison me on the inside (1 John 1:9; James 5:16; Mark 7:21–23). And when the good is on the outside, we need to open our gates and “let it in.

Worship of Chains (The Sonnet) Enough with the worship of chains! Enough with celebration of selfishness! Time it is to shatter the altars of separation. Time it is to be the ravager of primitiveness. Let us hang all our sectarian gods and idols. Let us start a new worship of love and liberty. Let us be prophets and messengers of harmony. Let us be disintegrated in realization of inclusivity. Let us go insane and kick all prison-gates down. Let us burn locks to ashes with flames of heart. Let us call upon the vigor eternal from within. Let us hunt down the last trace of inhuman dirt. Let us draw a noble anatomy for civilization. Let us lay ourselves as cornerstones of ascension.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend. ​— ​Cicero

One of my favorite prayers in Gates of Prayer, the New Union Prayer Book, is called “Welcoming Sabbath” and it goes like this: Our noisy day has now descended with the sun beyond our sight. In the silence of our praying place we close the door upon the hectic joys and fears, the accomplishments and anguish of the week we have left behind. What was but moments ago the substance of our life has become memory; what we did must now be woven into what we are. On this day we shall not do, but be. We are to walk the path of our humanity, no longer ride un-seeing through a world we do not touch and only vaguely sense. No longer can we tear the world apart to make our fire. On this day heat and warmth and light must come from deep within ourselves.6

God promises something that has never yet been true of the earthly Jerusalem: “I will make peace your governor and righteousness your ruler. No longer will violence be heard in your land, nor ruin or destruction within your borders, but you will call your walls Salvation and your gates Praise” (vv. 17-18).

THEY are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate. They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream.

Universities are society’s primary mechanism of knowledge discovery. Academic research is supposed to be the ultimate genie—a marketplace of ideas unlike any other, with rigorous rules and standards, and processes like peer review that institutionalize collaborative thinking to create a hyper-efficient truth-finding machine. But when a research institution is hijacked by a golem within its midst, all of those rules change. Peer review stops filtering out falsehoods and starts filtering out ideas that threaten the golem. The research institution becomes an instrument of the golem, serving not the veritas plaque above its gates but the needs of its new golem boss: feeding it with confirmation and protecting it from doubt. This cripples our society’s ability to learn new things. ⬥

In Olsson’s view, there could be other ways to regulate electrical impulses in mycelial networks to create “brain-like circuits, gates, and oscillators.” In some fungi, hyphae are divided into compartments by pores, which can be sensitively regulated. Opening or closing a pore changes the strength of the signal that passes from one compartment to another, whether chemical, pressure, or electrical. If sudden changes in the electrical charge within a hyphal compartment could open or close a pore, Olsson mused, a burst of impulses could change the way subsequent signals passed along the hypha and form a simple learning loop. What’s more, hyphae branch. If two impulses converged on one spot, they would both influence pore conductivity, integrating signals from different branches. “You do not need much knowledge of how computers work to realize that such systems can create decision gates,” Olsson told me.

Civilization itself seemed to be burning in the fire, my hopes, the hopes of women, our hopes for our planet, and for peace. I thought of all those thinkers burned at the stake, all those who stood up against the forces and orthodoxies of their time, and I felt myself and my whole disenfranchised kind bound now by strong chains and engulfed by the awful blaze, the West itself on fire, Rome burning, the barbarians not at the gates but within, our own barbarians, nurtured by ourselves, coddled and glorified by ourselves, enabled by ourselves, as much our own as our children, rising like savage children to burn the world that made them, claiming to save it even as they set it ablaze. It was the fire of our doom and it would take half a century or more to rebuild what it destroyed. Yes, I suffer from hyperbole, it is the previously existing condition for which I need healthcare, but just sometimes a paranoid man is really being pursued, just sometimes the world is more heightened, more exaggerated, more hyperbolically infernal than even a hyperbolist-infernalist could ever, at his wildest, have dreamed.

One of the crucial documents for the Ordine dei Medici, it turned out, was an Italian passport. Until then nobody had bothered to mention this potentially insurmountable obstacle. It happened I did have a right to citizenship, but since it would be bestowed on me automatically by my Italian husband (Italian husbands are less powerful nowadays), the passport logically hung on Italian recognition of our American marriage, which was in turn predicated on Italian recognition of my husband’s American divorce from a prior marriage. The divorce certification, based on various Byzantine legal fictions, was a long time coming. One time there was a false sighting of his Italian divorce, and I optimistically went down to the Anagrafe or Central Registry to see whether I could get my citizenship papers. At the end of the forty-five-minute line a small man with slicked-down hair took my documents with a yawn and disappeared into the dark forest of files. When the clerk emerged, the bored look was gone from his face. He invited me to follow him along the long bank of teller windows, he on his side me on mine, and then pass through a little gate to the employee side. He sat me down, then paced between piled-up dossiers for a minute, no grille window to screen him off, before speaking. “Ms. Levenstein,” he said kindly, “You have applied for Italian citizenship on the grounds of being married to a certain Andrea Di Vecchia.” I admitted that was true. He paced a little more, lit a cigarette. “Ms. Levenstein,” he said again, even more gently, and I should have caught on from the way he repeated it. “I must tell you something. This Mr. Di Vecchia—he is already married to another woman!” His hand was already out to give a comforting squeeze to my shoulder, but it dropped when I laughed and explained that the problem was red tape, not bigamy. I thought later, high drama must be rare behind the certificate window, and he had risen to its call. How many American file clerks would have been so ready for their unexpected moment of glory? Another problem involved my residence papers, a crucial component in any pile of documents. All residents in Italy must communicate changes of address to the State within three months, and when we left my mother-in-law’s for our own place eight months earlier we had duly registered the move. But when I went to pick up an identity document I was told it couldn’t be issued because I was still listed at my old address. I slyly told the clerk in the cage to hold on, scurried over from his Identity Card window to the Certificate window three paces away, had the printer spit out a Residence Certificate bearing my name and the new address, and carried it back in triumph. He wasn’t impressed. “Oh, that certificate. That’s from the computer, it’s not worth anything. Your address has been changed in the computer, but the computerized part of the system doesn’t count.

now and had a merry smile on his face. ‘Well, goddammit, boys! If I ain’t just remembered! There’s a whorehouse open all night long just outside Pens’cola! You’re sure you won’t come with me?’ We were sure. He dropped us at the main gate of the station with cheery shouts of farewell and drove off about 1.30 in the morning to ‘round off his evening’. We were soon to learn that certain ‘Southern gentlemen’ dropped in to the local brothel with the easy nonchalance Englishmen pop into their local pub—but without their wives, of course! Generally speaking, it was rare for us to leave the station other than at weekends. Our working hours were long and our leisure hours short; so we had to find our entertainment within the station. However, almost every day we found time to swim in the lagoon which separates the mainland from Santa Rosa Island, where the big flying-boats taxied in and out, the deep rumble of their Pratt and Whitneys music to our ears. We became expert with surf-boards—rectangles of wood about the size of a large tea-tray with a pair of rope reins, towed behind a fast motor-boat. Was it the fore-runner of water-skis? The technique seems to have been virtually the same. But, whatever one’s leisure activities, life

Sometimes I think the Fates must Grin as we denounce and insist The only reason we can’t win Is the Fates themselves that miss Yet there lives on an ancient claim We win or lose within ourselves The shining trophies on our shelves Can never win tomorrow’s game You and I know deeper down There’s always a chance to win the crown But when we fail to give our best We simply haven’t met the test Of giving all, and saving none Until the game is really won Of showing what is meant by grit Of fighting on when others quit Of playing through, not letting up It’s bearing down that wins the cup Of taking it and taking more Until we gain the winning score Of dreaming there’s a goal ahead Of hoping when our dreams are dead Of praying when our hopes have fled Yet losing, not afraid to fall If bravely, we have given all For who can ask more of a man Than giving all within his span Giving all, it seems to me Is not so far from victory And so the Fates are seldom wrong No matter how they twist and wind It is you and I who make our fates We open up or close the gates On the road ahead or the road behind.

Time and Reincarnation Scientific observation "Quantum Physics" and the realization of Universal Consciousness "Samadhi" (as well as the effect of ongoing experiential Universal Consciousness referred to as "Satori") carry the singular understanding that time is relative, and a construct of third dimensional "existence". However, as can be directly experienced within the Divine Human Prototype that is our microcosmic "human" manifestation (as above so below), we are capable of explosively experiencing multi-dimensions of consciousness transcendent of time or space without the necessity of "birth and death" as the doorway. Once this realization of Universal Consciousness occurs, the birth/death cycle of third dimensional "reality" is transcended; not as a belief, but as direct experience, and as the Tibetans say you have evolved beyond "The Wheel". Gate' Gate' Param Gate' Parasam Gate' Bhodhi Svaha....

We are, for the most part, the product of what we think about the most. Our minds are fertile beds, like these flower boxes. What would happen if the gardener did not pull out the weeds? Like this little one,” he said, pointing out a small weed in one of the boxes. “They would grow and overrun the garden eventually,” Sera replied. “Precisely. It takes little effort to pull one up now.” And he did so and set it down on the stone railing for the gardener to collect. “But they are much more difficult to remove when their roots grow deeper. There is a tendency within the very nature of all things to degrade. On clear days, the ruins of Sempringfall Abbey can be seen from my estate. People like to wander the grounds there and look at the bones of the abbey. There are a few arches still, but most of the place has crumbled. People who visit there always comment about the structure and imagine what might have caused the desolation.” “Why was the abbey destroyed?” “It wasn’t destroyed, Sera. It was neglected. Eventually the decay grew so bad that a roof collapsed. It became dangerous. Rather than spending time and money fixing it, the people who lived there ignored the problems until the entire place was ruined utterly. To reconstruct the abbey would have required enormous funds. A small decision not to fix broken roof shingles led to another decision to put off the problem. And another and another. Eventually, given enough time, there will not be two stones left standing.

The second gate surprises us: the places that have not known love. This is, to my mind, original and important. Weller writes: These are the places within us that have been wrapped in shame and banished to the farthest shores of our lives. . . . These neglected pieces of soul live in utter despair. . . . The proper response to any loss is grief, but we cannot grieve for something that we feel is outside the circle of worth.

Indeed, conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend HIS country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. It is for that purpose that America has within a short time spent four hundred million dollars. Just think of it—four hundred million dollars taken from the produce of the PEOPLE. For surely it is not the rich who contribute to patriotism. They are cosmopolitans, perfectly at home in every land. We in America know well the truth of this. Are not our rich Americans Frenchmen in France, Germans in Germany, or Englishmen in England? And do they not squander with cosmopolitan grace fortunes coined by American factory children and cotton slaves? Yes, theirs is the patriotism that will make it possible to send messages of condolence to a despot like the Russian Tsar, when any mishap befalls him, as President Roosevelt did in the name of HIS people, when Sergius was punished by the Russian revolutionists.

Do I get charged if I miss my flight?-missing a flight Most airlines only charge a no-show fee for missing a flight if the passenger seems to have a habit of doing it purposely, commonly known as skiplagging, in which a passenger books a ticket with no intention of taking the secondary legs of a trip in order to secure a cheaper fare If you’re yet to arrive at the airport, but know you’re going to miss your flight, call your airline’s customer service number. Just arrived at the airport? Some airports have airline desks in the check-in hall, so if you’re at the airport but haven’t gone through security, you can head to the right desk and speak to representatives in person. If not, visit your airline’s check-in desks and alert an employee. What happens if you miss your United flight?-United Airlines If you miss a United Airlines flight, there are several options available to you. You can choose to wait for the next available flight, or you can cancel your ticket and request a refund. you can head to the right desk and speak to representatives in person. If not, visit your airline’s check-in desks and alert an employee. What to do if you miss your flight? United The first thing you need to do if you miss your flight is contact your airline. If you’re yet to arrive at the airport, but know you’re going to miss your flight, call your airline’s customer service number. Just arrived at the airport? Some airports have airline desks in the check-in hall, so if you’re at the airport but haven’t gone through security, you can head to the right desk and speak to representatives in person. If not, visit your airline’s check-in desks and alert an employee. If you’ve gone through security but you haven’t reached your gate, your best course of action will be to call your airline, unless you can find cabin crew to point you in the right direction. By your gate? Representatives from your airline should be able to explain where you need to go next. What is the phone number for United Airlines missed flight? Use delay and cancellation options to change your flight, see bag info and more Use Agent on Demand if you’re within 24 hours of your flight Call one of our contact centers for help

What is the phone number for United Airlines missed flight? Use delay and cancellation options to change your flight, see bag info and more Use Agent on Demand if you’re within 24 hours of your flight Call one of our contact centers for help Do I get charged if I miss my flight?-missing a flight Most airlines only charge a no-show fee for missing a flight if the passenger seems to have a habit of doing it purposely, commonly known as skiplagging, in which a passenger books a ticket with no intention of taking the secondary legs of a trip in order to secure a cheaper fare If you’re yet to arrive at the airport, but know you’re going to miss your flight, call your airline’s customer service number. Just arrived at the airport? Some airports have airline desks in the check-in hall, so if you’re at the airport but haven’t gone through security, you can head to the right desk and speak to representatives in person. If not, visit your airline’s check-in desks and alert an employee. What happens if you miss your United flight?-United Airlines If you miss a United Airlines flight, there are several options available to you. You can choose to wait for the next available flight, or you can cancel your ticket and request a refund. you can head to the right desk and speak to representatives in person. If not, visit your airline’s check-in desks and alert an employee. What to do if you miss your flight? United The first thing you need to do if you miss your flight is contact your airline. If you’re yet to arrive at the airport, but know you’re going to miss your flight, call your airline’s customer service number. Just arrived at the airport? Some airports have airline desks in the check-in hall, so if you’re at the airport but haven’t gone through security, you can head to the right desk and speak to representatives in person. If not, visit your airline’s check-in desks and alert an employee. If you’ve gone through security but you haven’t reached your gate, your best course of action will be to call your airline, unless you can find cabin crew to point you in the right direction. By your gate? Representatives from your airline should be able to explain where you need to go next.

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What happens if you miss your United flight?-United Airlines If you miss a United Airlines flight, there are several options available to you. You can choose to wait for the next available flight, or you can cancel your ticket and request a refund. you can head to the right desk and speak to representatives in person. If not, visit your airline’s check-in desks and alert an employee. What to do if you miss your flight? United The first thing you need to do if you miss your flight is contact your airline. If you’re yet to arrive at the airport, but know you’re going to miss your flight, call your airline’s customer service number. Just arrived at the airport? Some airports have airline desks in the check-in hall, so if you’re at the airport but haven’t gone through security, you can head to the right desk and speak to representatives in person. If not, visit your airline’s check-in desks and alert an employee. If you’ve gone through security but you haven’t reached your gate, your best course of action will be to call your airline, unless you can find cabin crew to point you in the right direction. By your gate? Representatives from your airline should be able to explain where you need to go next. What is the phone number for United Airlines missed flight? Use delay and cancellation options to change your flight, see bag info and more Use Agent on Demand if you’re within 24 hours of your flight Call one of our contact centers for help Do I get charged if I miss my flight?-missing a flight Most airlines only charge a no-show fee for missing a flight if the passenger seems to have a habit of doing it purposely, commonly known as skiplagging, in which a passenger books a ticket with no intention of taking the secondary legs of a trip in order to secure a cheaper fare If you’re yet to arrive at the airport, but know you’re going to miss your flight, call your airline’s customer service number. Just arrived at the airport? Some airports have airline desks in the check-in hall, so if you’re at the airport but haven’t gone through security, you can head to the right desk and speak to representatives in person. If not, visit your airline’s check-in desks and alert an employee.

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