21
" Many, if not most, of the miracles recorded in the Gospels can, in fact, be directly connected to the earlier miracle of the Creation. The same Being who, as Jehovah, organized the elements and framed the heavens and the earth was thus, as the Man of Galilee, able to control the winds and the waves. He could change water to wine, multiply loaves and fishes, heal bodies, and restore sight by the same power...that he had exercised in the beginning. "
― , The Miracles of Jesus
22
" There are a range of useful and illuminating analyses of the media construction of organised abuse as it became front-page news in the 1980s and 1990s (Kitzinger 2004, Atmore 1997, Kelly 1998), but this book is focused on organised abuse as a criminal practice; as well as a discursive object of study, debate and disagreement. These two dimensions of this topic are inextricably linked because precisely where and how organised abuse is reported to take place is an important determinant of how it is understood.
Prior to the 1980s, the predominant view of the police, psychiatrists and other authoritative professionals was that organised abuse occurred primarily outside the family where it was committed by extra-familial ‘paedophiles’. This conceptualisation; of organised abuse has received enduring community support to the present day, where concerns over children’s safety is often framed in terms of their vulnerability to manipulation by ‘paedophiles’ and ‘sex rings’. This view dovetails more generally with the medico-legal and media construction of the ‘paedophile as an external threat to the sanctity of the family and community (Cowburn and Dominelli 2001) but it is confounded by evidence that organised abuse and other forms of serious sexual abuse often originates in the home or in institutions, such as schools and churches, where adults have socially legitimate authority over children. "
― , Organised Sexual Abuse
25
" No matter how cleverly we disguise our anxieties they bear witness to the imperfect nature of the human heart. To be is to become. To become is not to be. We are a work-in-progress, incomplete, imperfect, unrealised, and by virtue of temporal actions, temporary - a verb more than a noun, an inner quest and an outward odyssey framed by metaphors, like Escher's " Print Gallery" ; we make the endless journey round the pictures, retracing our steps in forgetfulness, avoiding but mindful of the space where there are no pictures, where there is no gallery, where there is nothing at all. And like flies in a fly bottle, trapped by a failure of vision, we go round and round and round the moebius loop of a print gallery of our own making, a picture inside a picture inside a picture, forever. "
30
" Time, I think, is like walking backward away from something: say, from a kiss. First there is the kiss; then you step back, and the eyes fill up your vision, then the eyes are framed in the face as you step further away; the face then is part of a body, and then the body is framed in a doorway, then the doorway framed in the trees beside it. The path grows longer and the door smaller, the trees fill up your sight and the door is lost, then the path is lost in the woods and the woods lost in the hills. Yet somewhere in the center still is the kiss. That's what time is like. "
― John Crowley , Engine Summer
35
" Advice" I must do as you do? Your way I ownIs a very good way, and still,There are sometimes two straight roads to a town,One over, one under the hill.You are treading the safe and the well-worn way,That the prudent choose each time;And you think me reckless and rash to-dayBecause I prefer to climb.Your path is the right one, and so is mine.We are not like peas in a pod,Compelled to lie in a certain line,Or else be scattered abroad.'T were a dull old world, methinks, my friend,If we all just went one way;Yet our paths will meet no doubt at the end,Though they lead apart today.You like the shade, and I like the sun;You like an even pace,I like to mix with the crowd and run,And then rest after the race.I like danger, and storm, and strife,You like a peaceful time;I like the passion and surge of life,You like its gentle rhyme.You like buttercups, dewy sweet,And crocuses, framed in snow;I like roses, born of the heat,And the red carnation's glow.I must live my life, not yours, my friend,For so it was written down;We must follow our given paths to the end,But I trust we shall meet--in town. "
40
" The first stanza of Eyes In Moonlight Drown, a poem from DeadVerse.
With your face framed in a halo of stars,
your hair melts into trailing clouds,
and your eyes in moonlight drown.
A man could lose himself
in those freckled irises,
reflecting the galaxies above;
surely he could fall into their promise
of eternity, of Heaven, of love.
Your lips glisten, part, and beckon,
a smile of warm invitation,
a suggestion of sweet intensity,
a loss of self in addictive agony.
For we translate these aesthetics
into something mystical;
ideas of fantasy, of fiction,
obscuring the clinical truth
of chemical reactions,
electric sparks, responses
as sure as gravity,
measurable yet beyond cold,
above philosophy and below truth. "
― Scott Kaelen , DeadVerse, Poetry Volume One