I know it’s an addiction. Everyone tells me. But it’s to painful to let go of. It’s always there for me when nothing else is. It makes my brain feel happy again. And I feel so bad to just let go because it’s like my best friend. What’s my addiction you ask? Well it’s...
"Slaves are costing too much these days. The day wages are atrocious. It is time for a crisis. Put the poor into distress, let them be grateful for any slice of bread no matter how small or dry, and let them drag down the middle classes. Once they're fighting it out at the bottom for survival their prices will go down. And, here we'll be, the beloved royal family, sitting pretty at the top, being every so gracious."
Isn’t it funny, that if I had made a different decision I wouldn’t be here now? If I had put a different answer on that sheet, my fate would’ve been written in different ink. Because if I was sat here in a different universe, without you by my side, I would have never become complete.
The blossom opens as if each flower was a book - a book that was more sculpted than written, the ink infusing into the petals to give them their soft glow. It is a tale of eons passed, of the loving care of the soils, the rain and the sun, a tale of the insects, the soil bacteria and fungi. And yet, for all of that, it is a great love story told in its silent way, the brain reading such volumes in an instant of intuition, a fraction of a beautiful moment.
The sun poured out its brilliant hot oranges and reds into the clouds like a pot of molten lava. Never before had I realised how tenuous and thin the tranquil clouds are. Wispy and frail, like they only just exist.
The art of the peacemaker is the their ability to hold on to what love is in the face of confusing statements; those who are distracted by power lust, the need to cover a damaged ego and, sadly, struggling to recover from a lack of real love in their childhood, will mix "the good," "the noble dark" and the "evil" so that many are swayed and lured into war, barbarism and evil deeds.
The peacemaker is immune only if they love so strongly, so fully, and so broadly - their love being for all mankind and all creation - that they will only agree to measures that protect life, liberty, abundance and peace. The peacemaker has the right intuitions for love - that the right paths into our future are always built from empathy, compassion and creative solutions - ones that help all peoples and our Earth.
The warmaker twists the natural sense of love into something tribal and though they speak of noble dark, they are actually emotionally indifferent to the lives of others and are motivated by greed, vanity, power-lust. They have a desire for unearned pride at the expense of others, and are coldly indifferent to whomever they choose as the "outsiders."
And so it is clear, that the key to peace ongoing into our future is love, the sort of love young children have, innocent and pure, welcoming all, joyous and free. As Aristotle said, "An education without love is no education at all"; let's get educated.
That morning, the woods were filled with an ominous brittle silence. There was a shriek from the trees that Henry said was a branch twisting under the sheer weight of ice. I had opened the curtain to the blue dawn, but I hastily closed it against the cold diffusing across the window glass. In our unheated room, our breath was vapor, and the floorboards cold to the pads of our feet. Henry's nose was red, and the tip of mine was numb.
Privilege and advantage are the same thing. Yet often we miss how they are formed from many small benefits that accumulate into large success. It is no coincidence that the brain develops in layers of neurones rather than by singular events, much the same way a house can be built of rows of bricks, hence it takes time to build a true sense of love and trust. Solid learning takes time and a steady, reliable environment. All of these ideas (privilege, success, trust, love and learning) are related because it is how we are wired. Hence in our world money brings the biggest privilege because it buys us the best environment; it is a chance to live in a pocket of plenty - plenty of love, food, water, shelter, family and such. And so the only true way to succeed as a person of privilege, as a person with the advantage of money, is to dedicate yourself to making this a world where everyone has their needs met, where everyone lives well and the "pocket of plenty" is expanded to include all. Having a good environment to thrive in should never be restricted by "pyramid scheme" ideologies" that suppress the advances the masses need.
"Lucy, the thing I don't get is why the defence of creation has been left to the scientists. They're doing an amazing job, but you'd think the theologians would be leading the way to defend the forests and the oceans, to speak of pollution and destruction as the desecration of something so holy."
Only in an atomised society could the word for a person you are yet to meet be "stranger," their label in your thoughts having its roots in the word "strange" with that slight emotional predisposition toward rejection. There are cultures that have no such word because people they haven't met yet are assumed to be friends, the emotional predisposition toward the positive and acceptance. So how about we change the word? What could it be?
Her hair flowed down her back like black ink of a tilted piece of parchment. Her eyes were fox-like and had an icy greyish green hue like the first sprouts of plants in the snow.
Though many items have lost their lustre, they stand in their dusty cabinets with all glory and pride intact. Coats of patina embrace stone and copper sculptures like the varnish of age and wisdom. As I slide my hand on the baroque dining table, feeling the ornate carvings radiate the maker's emotions, I take in the mellow aroma of oak that has never evaporated.