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" Dear human,modern incarnatefor a brief moment.Neither of the angels,neither of the demons.Dear human,you, where evil and light wrangle,on some daybreak, will awakento remember the reasonof this existence.Meanwhile, dear human,through the twists and turnsyou know that you belong hereand through this wounded lifetime,teach others to heal...-Tara Estacaan, " Dear Human" , June 2016 "
28
" Dear human,
modern incarnate
for a brief moment.
Neither of the angels,
neither of the demons.
Dear human,
you, where evil and light wrangle,
on some daybreak, will awaken
to remember the reason
of this existence.
Meanwhile, dear human,
through the twists and turns
you belong here
and through this wounded lifetime,
teach others to heal...
Tara Estacaan, 'Dear Human "
―
29
" I sing to you of many more gods, gods of wind and water, gods of each mineral and the events that created them. I sing to you of the gods of protons, of quarks, of atomic forces binding and holding. I sing to you of the god of the dust that flies off the ice-burned comet, and the god of the spaces in between. I sing to you of the god that twists like a serpent at the center of every sun and is found again coiled within every electron, shared by both and worshiped by each in its own way. I sing to you of the god that collects asteroids together in mockeries of his sister’s solar systems, jealous of his elder sibling’s power. I sing to you of all these, and many, many more." - Lupa, " The Forgotten Gods of Nature "
30
" I don't have any big adventures." " But of course you have big adventures," Papa said. You have adventures of all sorts, all the time." " Not like Radish in the Book of Tales," Geraldine said, scuffing a toe along the ground. " I could never be like Radish." " No, you don't have adventures exactly like Radish," Papa said. " But that's because you're not Radish and you must have your own adventures. All creatures must." " Happy ones?" Geraldine asked." In the end, yes. But they won't all seem that way at first. They'll have unexpected twists and turns. You must let them play out to the end, like a story in the Book of Tales. Follow God, speak to him and listen to him, and all tales will be beautiful in their time. "
33
" Such a nasty bruise,” he says, staring straight into my eyes. I am stunned he can see it. Delicate to the touch and tender on every side, the bruise is deeper than days. My hand automatically moves to my chest.
Science taught me with valid assurance that my heart was fixed in my rib cage, but life has since shown me otherwise. My heart in fact dangles from a tangle of strings. The ends are grasped tight by numerous people who yank and release, having caused many painful bruises over time. I cry because they are invisible to most.
“Such a nasty bruise,” he repeats, tugging on my poor heart.
His kind eyes fall away from mine as I feel a squeeze on my arm. He twists it enough to show me a small, round patch of purple surrounded by a sickly yellowish corona.
“Oh. My elbow.” I let the air exhale from my lungs. Another bruise forms where my heart has hit the floor. It is jerked up again.
“Can I do anything for you?” I see in his eyes the mirror image of a finger—his finger—wrapped in one of the dangling strings. He tugs and I feel it.
“No,” I reply to his question. But it is a lie. There is something he could do, along with all who grasp a portion of the web entangling my heart. I wish they would mercifully let go. "
― Richelle E. Goodrich , Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year
36
" Every action is a losing, a letting go, a passing away from oneself of some bit of one’s own reality into the existence of others and of the world. In Jesus Christ, this character of action is not resisted, by trying to use our action to assert ourselves, extend ourselves, to impose our will and being upon situations. In Jesus Christ, this self-expending character of action is joyfully affirmed. I receive myself constantly from God’s Parenting love. But so far as some aspects of myself are at my disposal, these I receive to give away. Those who would live as Jesus did—who would act and purpose themselves as Jesus did—mean to love, i.e., they mean to expend themselves for others unto death. Their being is meant to pass away from them to others, and they make that meaning the conscious direction of their existence.
Too often the love which is proclaimed in the churches suppresses this element of loss and need and death in activity. As a Christian, I often speak of love as helping others, but I ignore what this does to the person who loves. I ignore the fact that love is self-expenditure, a real expending and losing and deterioration of the self. I speak of love as if the person loving had no problems, no needs, no limits. In other words, I speak of love as if the affluent dream were true. This kind of proclamation is heard everywhere. We hear it said: 'Since you have no unanswered needs, why don’t you go out and help those other people who are in need?' But we never hear people go on and add: 'If you do this, you too will be driven into need.' And by not stating this conclusion, people give the childish impression that Christian love is some kind of cornucopia, where we can reach to everybody’s needs and problems and still have everything we need for ourselves. Believe me, there are grown-up persons who speak this kind of nonsense. And when people try to live out this illusory love, they become terrified when the self-expending begins to take its toll. Terror of relationship is [that] we eat each other.
But note this very carefully: like Jesus, we too can only live to give our received selves away freely because we know our being is not thereby ended, but still and always lies in the Parenting of our God....
Those who love in the name of Jesus Christ... serve the needs of others willingly, even to the point of being exposed in their own neediness.... They do not cope with their own needs. They do not anguish over how their own needs may be met by the twists and turns of their circumstances, by the whims of their society, or by the strategies of their own egos. At the center of their life—the very innermost center—they are grateful to God, because... they do not fear neediness. That is what frees them to serve the needy, to companion the needy, to become and be one of the needy. "
― Arthur C. McGill , Dying Unto Life
38
" My mom says, " Do you know what the AIDS memorial quilt is all about?" Jump to how much I hate my brother at this moment.I bought this fabric because I thought it would make a nice panel for Shane," Mom says. " We just ran into some problems with what to sew on it." Give me amnesia.Flash.Give me new parents.Flash.Your mother didn't want to step on any toes," Dad says. He twists a drumstick off and starts scraping the meat onto a plate. " With gay stuff you have to be so careful since everything means something in secret code. I mean, we didn't want to give people the wrong idea." My Mom leans over to scoop yams onto my plate, and says, " Your father wanted a black border, but black on a field of blue would mean Shane was excited by leather sex, you know, bondage and discipline, sado and masochism." She says, " Really, those panels are to help the people left behind." Strangers are going to see us and see Shane's name," my dad says. " We didn't want them thinking things." The dishes all start their slow clockwise march around the table. The stuffing. The olives. The cranberry sauce. " I wanted pink triangles but all the panels have pink triangles," my mom says. " It's the Nazi symbol for homosexuals." She says," Your father suggested black triangles, but that would mean Shane was a lesbian. It looks like female pubic hair. The black triangle does." My father says, " Then I wanted a green border, but it turns out that would mean Shane was a male prostitute." My mom says, " We almost chose a red border, but that would mean fisting. Brown would mean either scat or rimming, we couldn't figure which." Yellow," my father says, " means watersports." A lighter shade of blue," Mom says, " would mean just regular oral sex." Regular white," my father says, " would mean anal. White could also mean Shane was excited by men wearing underwear." He says, " I can't remember which." My mother passes me the quilted chicken with the rolls still warm inside.We're supposed to sit and eat with Shane dead all over the table in front of us.Finally we just gave up," my mom says, " and I made a nice tablecloth out of the material." Between the yams and the stuffing, Dad looks down at his plate and says, " Do you know about rimming?" I know it isn't table talk.And fisting?" my mom asks.I say, I know. I don't mention Manus and his vocational porno magazines.We sit there, all of us around a blue shroud with the turkey more like a big dead baked animal than ever, the stuffing chock full of organs you can still recognize, the heart and gizzard and liver, the gravy thick with cooked fat and blood. The flower centerpiece could be a casket spray.Would you pass the butter, please?" my mother says. To my father she says, " Do you know what felching is? "
39
" Taut, intelligent, and intense suspense that is deeply human.”—Mark Greaney, New York Times Bestselling Author of Gunmetal Gray“Exciting and well-layered....David Bell is a master storyteller with a sure hand at crafting characters you feel for and stories you relish.”—Allen Eskens, USA Today Bestselling Author of The Life We Bury“A tense and twisty suspense novel about the dark secrets that lie buried within a community and a father who can save his daughter only by uncovering them. Will leave parents wondering just how well they truly know their children.”—Hester Young, author of The Gates of Evangeline and The Shimmering Road“A gripping, immersive tour-de-force full of twists and turns. BRING HER HOME kept me flipping the pages late into the night. Don’t expect to sleep until you’ve finished reading this book. I could not put it down!”—A. J. Banner, bestselling author of The Good Neighbor and The Twilight Wife“In David Bell’s riveting BRING HER HOME, the unthinkable is only the beginning. From there, the story races through stunning twists all the way to its revelation, without letting its heart fall away in the action. Intense, emotional, and deeply satisfying. This one will keep you up late into the night. Don't miss it!”—Jamie Mason, author of Three Graves Full and Monday’s Lie“Spellbinding and pulse-raising, BRING HER HOME hooked me from the first sentence and surprised me until the final pages. Sharply written and richly observed, this book is about the secrets we keep, the mysteries that keep us, and the lengths a father will go to for the daughter he loves. David Bell is a masterful storyteller who has perfected the art of suspense in BRING HER HOME.”—Sarah Domet, author of The Guineveres "
40
" From her handbag she takes a round gilt compact with violets on the cover. She opens it, unclosing her other self, and runs her fingertip around the corners of her mouth, left one, right one; then she unswivels a pink stick and dots her cheeks and blends them, changing her shape, performing the only magic left to her.
Rump on a packsack, harem cushion, pink on the cheeks and black discreetly around the eyes, as red as blood as black as ebony, a seamed and folded imitation of a magazine picture that is itself an imitation of a woman who is also an imitation, the original nowhere, hairless lobed angel in the same heaven where God is a circle, captive princess in someone's head. She is locked in, she isn't allowed to eat or shit or cry or give birth, nothing goes in, nothing comes out. She takes her clothes off or puts them on, paper doll wardrobe, she copulates under strobe lights with the man's torso while his brain watches from its glassed-in control cubicle at the other end of the room, her face twists into poses of exultation and total abandonment, that is all. She is not bored, she has no other interests. "
― Margaret Atwood , Surfacing
