Love

To be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son — it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain.

Forgiveness is to deal with our emotions by sending them away—by denying ourselves the dark pleasures of venting them or fondling them in our minds… Forgiveness is more than a matter of refusing to hate someone. It is also a matter of choosing to demonstrate love and acceptance to the offender… Pain is the consequence of sin; there is no easy way to deal with it. Wood, nails, and pain are the currency of forgiveness, the love that heals.

Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the ‘real soul-mate’ is the one you are actually married to… In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision of marriage as it should have been in an un-fallen world. In this fallen world we have as our only guides, prudence, wisdom, a clean heart, and fidelity of will. Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.

“Behold the One beholding you and smiling.” It is precisely because we have such an overactive disapproval gland ourselves that we tend to create God in our own image. It is truly hard for us to see the truth that disapproval does not seem to be part of God’s DNA. God is just too busy loving us to have any time left for disappointment.

To love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: “You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust yourself.”

“Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says, “It’s kind of cute.” … Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Don’t leave me here all alone! It’s your Sam calling. Don’t go where I can’t follow! Wake up, Mr Frodo!

I exist in two places, here and where you are.

After All this time The Sun never says to the Earth, “You owe me.” Look What happens With a love like that. It lights the Whole Sky.

A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.  -unknown

The deepest desire of our hearts is for union for God.  God created us for union with himself.  This is the original purpose of our lives.

There is a great man who makes every man feel small. But the real great man is the man who makes every man feel great.

Why do we not observe how the benevolence of Christians to strangers...has done the most to advance their cause? For it is disgraceful that...the impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their poor but ours as well, while everyone is able to see that our own people lack aid from us!

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.

We must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.  - Anais Nin Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977), known professionally as Anaïs Nin, /ɑːnəiːs niːn/[1] was an American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the daughter of composer Joaquín Nin and Rosa Culmell, a classically trained singer. Although Nin spent some time in Spain and Cuba, she lived most of her life in the United States, where she became an established author. Beginning at age eleven, Nin wrote journals prolifically for six decades and even up until her death. Her journals, many of which were published during her lifetime, detail her private thoughts and personal relationships, as well as her sexually abusive and incestuous relationship with her father. Her journals also describe her marriages to Hugh Parker Guiler and Rupert Pole, in addition to her numerous affairs, including those with psychoanalyst Otto Rank and writer Henry Miller, both of whom profoundly influenced Nin and her writing. In addition to her journals, Nin wrote several novels, critical studies, essays, short stories, and volumes of erotica. Much of her work, including the collections of erotica Delta of Venus and Little Birds, was published posthumously amid renewed critical interest in her life and work. Nin spent her later life in Los Angeles, California, where she died

If God on the Cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste for death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the Father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin's answer.

Don't hate, it's too big a burden to bear.

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

What we call ‘being in love’ is a glorious state, and, in several ways, good for us. It helps to make us generous and courageous, it opens our eyes not only to the beauty of the beloved but to all beauty, and it sub- ordinates (especially at first) our merely animal sexuality; in that sense, love is the great conqueror of lust. No one in his senses would deny that being in love is far better than either common sensuality or cold self-centredness. But, as I said before, ‘the most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of our own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs’. Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last.

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.

By J.R.R. Tolkien The essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called 'self-realization' (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are told that—even those brought up 'in the Church.’ When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find. The real soul-mate too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along. And of course they are, as a rule, quite right: they did make a mistake. Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to. Only the rarest good fortune brings together the man and woman who are really as it were 'destined' for one another, and capable of a very great and splendid love. The idea still dazzles us, catches us by the throat: poems and stories in multitudes have been written on the theme, more, probably, than the total of such loves in real life. In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an un-fallen world. In this fallen world we have as our only guides, prudence, wisdom (rare in youth, too late in age), a clean heart, and fidelity of will Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth. *Abridged from a letter to Michael Tolkien, March 6-8, 1941. From The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (Mariner Books, 2000).

From this arises an argument: Whether it is better to be loved than feared. I reply that one should like to be both one and the other; but since it is difficult to join them together, it is much safer to be feared than loved when one of the two must be lacking.

Love never claims, it ever gives.

He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

‘Is it?…is it?’ I whispered to my guide. ‘Not at all,’ said he. ‘It’s someone ye’ll never have heard of. Her name on Earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.’ ‘She seems to be…well, a person of particular importance?’ ‘Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.’ ‘And who are these gigantic people…look! They’re like emeralds…who are dancing and throwing flowers before her?’ ‘Haven’t ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her .’ ‘And who are all these young men and women on each side?’ ‘They are her sons and daughters.’ ‘She must have had a very large family, Sir.’ ‘Every young man or boy that met her became her son— even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.’ ‘Isn’t that a bit hard on their own parents?’ ‘No. There are those that steal other people’s children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.’ C.S.

JFK-Phx Quotes: The were three words in Greek which covered most kind of love (Eros = sexual love, storge = family affection, Philia = friendship) but the NT word for 'love' or 'charity' is Agape, which has hardly any use in classical Gk.--I.e., it is a new word for a new thing. It is obvious that it cannot mean 'an involuntary sentiment.' we all say God is wise, and habitually argue as if He were a fool! How could He be commanding the involuntary? Agape is best seen, i think, in the words 'love your neighbors as yourself', i.e. By an act of will, aim at your neighbor's good in  the same way you aim at your own.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

I always knew that you do great things I didn't ever want to slow you down I was there when you learned to use your wings And I saw you leave the ground The time spent in your sweet arms Was the best time that I've known Maybe the reason I was here at all was to see you carry on Don't you know I still remember How once I was someone to you Girl your were meant for something better Doesn't matter anymore what you think of me Just proud to be part of your history

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being 'in love' which any of us can convince ourselves we are...Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two. Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin 9/31/15- reading the book for the first time, overcome with emotion the minuet I caught the first part of the quote. Have known the quote for years, but was reading the book without having connected the dots.

Brennan Manning’s book entitled, “Ragamuffin Gospel.” In it he describes a rather solemn scene between a surgical physician and a young couple. The book reads: I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, somewhat clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, had been severed. She will be this way from now on. I had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, the moment is a private one. Who are they, I ask myself? He and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at each other so generously, so lovingly. The young woman speaks. ''Will my mouth always be like this?' she asks. "Yes, I say, it will. It is because the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says, “It’s kind of cute. All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a God moment. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works.”

These impious Galileans (Christians) not only feed their own, but ours also; welcoming them with their agape, they attract them, as children are attracted with cakes… Whilst the pagan priests neglect the poor, the hated Galileans devote themselves to works of charity, and by a display of false compassion have established and given effect to their pernicious errors. Such practice is common among them, and causes contempt for our gods.

Dear Jesse, as the moon lingers a moment over the bitterroots, before its descent into the invisible, my mind is filled with song. I find I am humming softly; not to the music, but something else; some place else; a place remembered; a field of grass where no one seemed to have been; except a deer; and the memory is strengthened by the feeling of you, dancing in my awkward arms. For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding. As time passed, my father struggled for more to hold on to, asking me again and again: had I told him everything. And finally I said to him, 'maybe all I know about Paul is that he was a fine fisherman.' 'You know more than that,' my father said; 'he was beautiful.' And that was the last time we spoke of my brother's death. My brother stood before us, not on a bank of the Big Blackfoot River...but suspended above the earth...free from all its laws, like a work of art. And I knew just as surely, just as clearly, that life is not a work of art, and that the moment could not last. - Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you.” ― A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner “If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together... there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart... I'll always be with you.” “Some people care too much. I think it's called love.” “You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” “It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?” “Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.” “I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.” “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” “I knew when I met you an adventure was going to happen.” “Sometimes,' said Pooh, 'the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.” “Promise me you'll never forget me because if I thought you would, I'd never leave.” “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” “What day is it?" It's today," squeaked Piglet. My favorite day," said Pooh.” “I used to believe in forever, but forever's too good to be true” “The things that make me different are the things that make me.” “I don’t feel very much like Pooh today," said Pooh. "There there," said Piglet. "I’ll bring you tea and honey until you do.” “Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.” “It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily. "So it is." "And freezing." "Is it?" "Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately.” “Oh Tigger, where are your manners?" "I don’t know, but I bet they’re having more fun than I am.”

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

God is love. That is why he suffers. To love our suffering world is to suffer...The one who does not see God's suffering does not see his love. So, suffering is down at the centre of things, deep down where the meaning is. Suffering is the meaning of our world. For love is meaning. And love suffers. The tears of God are the meaning of history. We are all one in suffering. Some are wealthy, some bright; some athletic, some admired. But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. Blessings to those who mourn, cheers to those who weep, hail to those whose eyes are filled with tears, hats off to those who suffer, bottoms up to the grieving. How strange, how incredibly strange! When you and I are left to our own devices, it's the smiling, successful ones of the world that we cheer. "Hail to the victors." The histories we write of the odyssey of humanity on earth are the stories of the exulting ones-the nations that won in battle, the businesses that defeated their competition, the explorers who found a pass to the Pacific, the scientists whose theories proved correct, the athletes who came in first, the politicians who won their campaigns. We turn away from the crying ones of the world. Our photographers tell us to smile. "Blessed are those who mourn." What can it mean? One can understand why Jesus hails those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, why he hails the merciful, why he hails the pure in heart, why he hails the peacemakers, why he hails those who endure under persecution. These are qualities of character which belong to the life of the kingdom. But why does he hail the mourners of the world? Why cheer tears? It must be that mourning is also a quality of character that belongs to the life of his realm. Who then are the mourners? The mourners are those who have caught a glimpse of God's new day, who ache with all their being for that day's coming, and who break out into tears when confronted with its absence. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is no one blind and who ache whenever they see someone unseeing. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one hungry and who ache whenever they see someone one starving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one falsely accused and who ache whenever they see someone imprisoned prisoned unjustly. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who fails to see God and who ache whenever they see someone unbelieving. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one who suffers oppression and who ache whenever they see someone beat down. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm there is no one without dignity and who ache whenever they see someone treated with indignity. They are the ones who realize that in God's realm of peace there is neither death nor tears and who ache whenever they see someone crying tears over death. The mourners are aching visionaries.

Few value [friendship] because few experience it. Friendship is—in a sense not at all derogatory to it—the least natural of loves; the least instinctive, organic, biological, gregarious and necessary. It has least commerce with our nerves; there is nothing throaty about it; nothing that quickens the pulse or turn you red and pale. It is essentially between individuals; the moment two men are friends they have in some degree drawn apart from the herd. Without Eros none of us would have been begotten and with Affection none of us would have been reared; but we can live and breed without Friendship. The species, biologically considered, has no need of it. Lamb says somewhere that if, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but “A’s” part in “C,” while C loses not only A but “A’s part in B.” In each of my friends there is something that only some other friends can fully bring out. Hence we pictures lovers face to face but Friends side by side; their eyes look ahead. That is why those pathetic people who simply “want friends” can never make any. The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. Where the truthful answer to the question Do you see the same truth? would be “I see nothing and I don’t care about the truth; I only want a Friend,” no Friendship can arise—though Affection of course may. There would be nothing for Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice. Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers. ...The mark of perfect Friendship is not that help will be given when a pinch comes (of course it will) but that, having been given, it makes no difference at all. — C.S. Lewis Another version…. Lamb says somewhere that if, of three friends (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but “A’s part in C,” while C loses not only A but “A’s part in B.” In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never again see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him “to myself” now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald. Hence true Friendship is the least jealous of loves. Two friends delight to be joined by a third, and three by a fourth, if only the newcomer is qualified to become a real friend. They can then say, as the blessed souls say in Dante, “Here comes one who will augment our loves.” For in this love “to divide is not to take away.” Of course the scarcity of kindred souls – not to mention practical considerations about the size of rooms and the audibility of voices – set limits to the enlargement of the circle; but within those limits we possess each friend not less but more as the number of those with whom we share him increases. In this, Friendship exhibits a glorious “nearness by resemblance” to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision are crying “Holy, Holy, Holy” to one another (Isaiah VI, 3) The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.”

"It doesn’t happen all at once.", said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. Thats why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

And if your light goes out, I ache to be that spark, To reignite, you’ll never, Have to feel in the dark.

Theologians have sometimes asked whether we shall ‘know one another’ in Heaven, and whether the particular love-relations worked out on earth would then continue to have any significance. It seems reasonable to reply: ‘It may depend on what kind of love it had become, or was becoming, on earth.’ For, surely, to meet in the eternal world someone for whom your love in this, however strong, had been merely natural, would not be (on that ground) even interesting. Would it not be like meeting in adult life someone who had seemed to be a great friend at your preparatory school solely because of common interests and occupations? If there was nothing more, if he was not a kindred soul, he will now be a total stranger. Neither of you now plays conkers. You no longer want to swop your help with his French exercise for his help with your arithmetic. In Heaven, I suspect, a love that had never embodied Love Himself would be equally irrelevant. For Nature has passed away. All that is not eternal is eternally out of date. From The Four Loves The Four Loves. Copyright © 1960 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

They don’t just love you. They love loving you. Tattoos on the heart

It was when he tried to talk about 'the boat' that his words began to falter and tears welled up in his eyes...Finally, watching Joe struggle for composure over and over, I realized that 'the boat' was something more than just the shell or its crew. To Joe, it encompassed but transcended both - it was something mysterious and almost beyond definition. It was a shared experience - a singular thing that had unfolded in a golden sliver of time long gone, when nine good-hearted young men strove together, pulled together as one, gave everything they had for one another, bound together forever by pride and respect and love. Joe was crying, at least in part, for the loss of that vanished moment but much more, I think, for the sheer beauty of it.

What mattered more than how hard a man rowed was how well everything he did in the boat harmonized with what the other fellows were doing. And a man couldn’t harmonize with his crewmates unless he opened his heart to them. He had to care about his crew.

“But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer.”

Technology does make possible advance toward shalom; progress in mastery of the world can bring shalom nearer. But the limits of technology must also be acknowledged; technology is entirely incapable of bringing about shalom between ourselves and God, and it is only scarcely capable of bringing about the love of self and neighbour.

That's why I loved you, for your magnanimous heart! And you do not need my forgiveness, nor I yours; it's all the same whether you forgive or not, all my life you will remain a wound in my soul, and I in yours—that's how it should be...

You can never replace anyone because everyone is made up of such beautiful specific details.

The best way of casting out an impure affection is to admit a pure one . . . It is only when, as in the gospel, acceptance is bestowed as a present, without money and without price, that the security which man feels in God is placed beyond the reach of disturbance. Only then can he repose in him as one friend reposes in another . . . The only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one.

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, they may accuse you of being selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway. If you are successful you will win some false friends and true enemies; Succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway. What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you've got anyway. You see, in the end, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.

See, from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown. Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small; love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

You don't love a woman because she is beautiful, but she is beautiful because you love her.

Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us. Either we don't know what part of ourselves to give or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them - we can love completely without complete understanding.

The more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.

We are all one in suffering. Some are wealthy, some bright; some athletic, some admired. But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving.

If I slip into the place that can be filled by Christ alone, making myself the first necessity to a soul instead of leading it to fasten upon Him, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

Love begins when the needs of someone else become more important than your own.

That a god should put up with adversity, I could understand. The gods of Hinduism face their fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnapers and usurpers. What is Ramayana but the account of one long, bad day for Rama? Adversity, yes. Reversals of fortune, yes. Treachery, yes. But humiliation? Death? I couldn't imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped, naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified--at at the hands of mere humans to boot. I'd never heard of a Hindu god dying. But divinity should not be blighted by death. It's wrong...It was wrong of this Christian God to let his avatar die. That is tantamount to letting a part of himself die. For if the Son is to die, it cannot be fake. If God on the cross is God shamming a human tragedy, it turns the Passion of Christ into the Farce of Christ. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me that it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it; there must be a certain stench at the right hand of God the father. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect?

Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.

Why not leave death to mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin’s answer….

That lesson stuck with me my whole life. When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better. Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.

It is far safer to be feared than loved.

He was a man of black and white. And she was color. All the color he had.

People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had. Chapter 8. A Man Who Was Ove and a Pair of His Father’s Old Footprints

But he never disagreed with her. Maybe to her destiny was “something”; that was none of his business. But to him, destiny was “someone.”

And so it turned out that Ove became a night cleaner instead. And if this hadn’t happened, he would never have come off his shift that morning and caught sight of her. With those red shoes and the gold brooch and all her burnished brown hair. And that laughter of hers, which, for the rest of his life, would make him feel as if someone was running around barefoot on the inside of his breast. She often said that “all roads lead to something you were always predestined to do.” And for her, perhaps, it was something. But for Ove it was someone. Chapter 9. A Man Called Ove Bleeds a Radiator

“You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away,” she said to him once, when he asked her why she had to be so upbeat the whole time. Chapter 14. A Man Who Was Ove and a Woman on a Train

Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn’t. Chapter 16. A Man Who Was Ove and a Truck in the Forest

And when she took hold of his lower arm, thick as her thigh, and tickled him until that sulky boy’s face opened up in a smile, it was like a plaster cast cracking around a piece of jewelry, and when this happened it was as if something started singing inside Sonja. And they belonged only to her, those moments.

And when one of her girlfriends asked why she loved him she answered that most men ran away from an inferno. But men like Ove ran into it. Chapter 18. A Man Who Was Ove and a Cat Called Ernest

“You have to love me twice as much now,” she said. And then Ove lied to her for the second—and last—time: he said that he would. Even though he knew it wasn’t possible for him to love her any more than he already did. Chapter 21. A Man Who Was Ove and Countries Where They Play Foreign Music in Restaurants

Sonja never found out the exact reason why they weren’t charged for any of the food they ate in José’s restaurant that week. But she laughed until she was positively simmering every time the little Spanish man who owned the restaurant lit up like a sun when he saw Ove, held out his arms, and exclaimed: “Señor Saab!!!”

Many years later it occurred to Sonja to ask him about all that. When Ove at last told her, she shook her head both long and hard. “So while I was sleeping you sneaked out and helped people in need . . . and mended their fences? People can say whatever they like about you, Ove. But you’re the strangest superhero I ever heard about.” Chapter 23. A Man Who Was Ove and a Bus That Never Got There

It was the first time since the accident that he heard Sonja laughing. As if it was pouring out of her, without the slightest possibility of stopping it, like she was being wrestled to the ground by her own giggling. She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors, as if they meant to do away with the laws of time and space. It made Ove feel as if his chest was slowly rising out of the ruins of a collapsed house after an earthquake. It gave his heart space to beat again.

Every human being needs to know what she’s fighting for. That was what they said. And she fought for what was good. For the children she never had. And Ove fought for her. Because that was the only thing in this world he really knew. Chapter 24. A Man Called Ove and a Brat Who Draws in Color

Everything else on the paper is drawn in black, but the figure in the middle is a veritable explosion of color. A riot of yellow and red and blue and green and orange and purple. “You’re the funniest thing she knows. That’s why she always draws you in color,” Chapter 25. A Man Called Ove and a Piece of Corrugated Iron

Afterwards it was only memories for Ove, and a lack of them for Rune. And there were very likely people who thought one could not interpret men’s feelings by the cars they drove.

Ove stops at a safe distance from the counter. As if someone might give him a hug if he gets too close.

Ove carried her upstairs to the bedroom. She nagged him for years about moving into the empty downstairs guest room, but Ove refused. After a decade or so she realized that this was his way of showing her that he had no intention of giving up. That God and the universe and all the other things would not be allowed to win. Chapter 35. A Man Called Ove and Social Incompetence

“Loving someone is like moving into a house,” Sonja used to say. “At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren’t actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather for its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it’s cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.” Chapter 37. A Man Called Ove and a Lot of Bastards Sticking Their Noses In

Maybe most of all they speak of courage. Sonja would have liked it, Ove knows that much. But he tries not to smile so much that Parvaneh notices. Chapter 39. A Man Called Ove

Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him. There is no time to heal that sort of wound. Acknowledgments

don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

‘Yes,’ answered Frodo. ‘I would rather see him than all the towers and palaces in the world.’

‘The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.

for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.

It had always been a notion of his that the kindness of dear Mr. Frodo was of such a high degree that it must imply a fair measure of blindness.

Gollum in his own way, and with much more excuse as his acquaintance was much briefer, may have made a similar mistake, confusing kindness and blindness.

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom.

South.’ ‘Neither have those others who go with thee. They go only because they would not be parted from thee –because they love thee.’ Then she turned and vanished into the night.

And yet, Éomer, I say to you that she loves you more truly than me; for you she loves and knows; but in me she loves only a shadow and a thought: a hope of glory and great deeds, and lands far from the fields of Rohan.

Legolas. ‘For all those who come to know him come to love him after their own fashion,

Then Gimli bowed low. ‘Nay, you are excused for my part, lord,’ he said. ‘You have chosen the Evening; but my love is given to the Morning.

Then Éowyn looked in the eyes of Aragorn, and she said: ‘Wish me joy, my liege-lord and healer!’ And he answered: ‘I have wished thee joy ever since first I saw thee. It heals my heart to see thee now in bliss.’

She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the dynamite of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual hygiene itself —and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied instead. 46 She longs for other human beings: she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.

Spiritual hygiene includes ends like these —goals, purposes, primary intended consequences. The point of our lives is not to get smart or to get rich or even to get happy. The point is to discover God’s purposes for us and to make them our own. The point is to learn ways of loving God above all and our neighbor as ourselves and then to use these loves the way a golfer uses certain checkpoints to set up for a drive. The point is to be lined up right, to seek first the kingdom of God (Matt. 6: 33), to try above all to increase the net amount of shalom in the world.

Perversion is an ends-and-purposes disease. Most broadly understood, perversion is the turning of loyalty, energy, and desire away from God and God’s project in the world: it is the diversion of construction materials for the city of God to side projects of our own, often accompanied by jerry-built ideologies that seek to justify the diversion.

In idolatry a third party gets in between God and human persons, adulterating an exclusive loyalty. 58 Idolatry violates both negative and positive law, both the first commandment’s prohibition of idolatry (“ You shall have no other gods before me” [Deut. 5: 7]) and also the summary love command of the Deuteronomic code (“ Love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” [6: 5]).

These unhappy attitudes do break the summary law of love to God, but more basically they threaten the vital covenant relation.

Scriptural writers fear “double-mindedness” not merely because it shows disloyalty and ingratitude but also because its perpetrator becomes its victim. Divided worship destroys worshipers. Divided love destroys lovers.

Sin is fruitful just because, like a virus, it attaches the life force and dynamics of its host. 139 Sowing and reaping, human longing, children’s natural trust of their parents —such things belong among the springs and roots of a good creation. Sin does not remove these things; it attaches them and converts them to new uses. A faithful father, for instance, accepts his small daughter’s trust and love, strengthens them, and tries to extend them toward God and out toward the world. A sexually abusive father also accepts his daughter’s trust and love, but he uses them to bind his daughter to his lust. Sooner or later, he converts trust to fear and love to resentment. He strengthens these emotions with each episode of abuse, and, whether he wants to or not, may extend them toward God and out toward the world. The parasitic nature of sin accounts for the fruitfulness

Vices have to masquerade as virtues —lust as love, thinly veiled sadism as military discipline, envy as righteous indignation, domestic tyranny as parental concern.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy; O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

I stand by the bed where a young woman lays, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks. 'Will my mouth always be like this?' she asks. 'Yes,' I say, 'it will. It is because the nerve was cut.' She nods, and is silent. But the young man smiles. 'I like it,' he says. 'It is kind of cute.' All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works. I remember that the gods appeared in ancient Greece as mortals, and I hold my breath and let the wonder in.

We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Every lament is a love-song.

The measure of love is to love without measure.

Loving someone is like moving into a house. At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made.

To love a person means to see them as God intended them to be.

To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God.

The way to love anything is to realise that it might be lost.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Love. That was what she had that IT did not have.

Teach them the quiet verbs of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.

In families, there are no crimes beyond forgiveness.

In 'Beauty and the Beast,' it is only when the Beast discovers that Beauty really loves him in all his ugliness that he himself becomes beautiful. In the experience of Saint Paul, it is only when we discover that God really loves us in all our unloveliness that we ourselves start to become godlike. Paul's word for this gradual transformation is sanctification, and he sees it as the second stage in the process of salvation. Being sanctified is a long and painful stage because with part of themselves sinners prefer their sin, just as with part of himself the Beast prefers his glistening snout and curved tusks. Many drop out with the job hardly more than begun, and among those who stay with it there are few if any who don't drag their feet most of the way. But little by little—less by taking pains than by taking it easy—the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person. God does most of it. The end of the process, Paul says, is eternal life.

We can love completely what we cannot completely understand.

It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.

Listen! My beloved! Behold, he is coming, climbing on the mountains, leaping on the hills!

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors…

To the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us…

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

...I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, 'The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. Love never fails.

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain… for he gives to his beloved sleep.

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?