#cross

The poets say some moths will do anything out of love for a flame [...] The moth takes off again, and we both step back, because he's circling at eye level now and seems to have lost rudder control, smacking into the wall on each round. He circles lower and lower, spinning around the candle in tighter revolutions, like a soap sud over an open drain. A few times he seems to touch the flame, but dances off unhurt. Then he ignites like a ball of hair, curling into an oily puff of fumes with a hiss. The candle flame flickers and dims for a moment, then burns as bright as before. Moth Smoke Lingers. ↗

— Mohsin Hamid

#insects #love #moth #smoke #star-crossed

For the church, the many abuses of human life, liberty, and dignity are a heartfelt suffering. The church, entrusted with the earth’s glory, believes that in each person is the Creator’s image and that everyone who tramples it offends God. As holy defender of God’s rights and of his images, the church must cry out. It takes as spittle in its face, as lashes on its back, as the cross in its passion, all that human beings suffer, even though they be unbelievers. They suffer as God’s images. There is no dichotomy between man and God’s image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being abuses God’s image, and the church takes as its own that cross, that martyrdom. ↗

— Oscar A. Romero

#christian-living #church #cross #god #martyrdom

To some, the image of a pale body glimmering on a dark night whispers of defeat. What good is a God who does not control his Son's suffering? But another sound can be heard: the shout of a God crying out to human beings, "I LOVE YOU." Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice. Any discussion of how pain and suffering fit into God's scheme ultimately leads back to the cross. ↗

— Philip Yancey

#justice #pain #suffering #love

Capturing any member of any terrorist cell or any insurgent cell that we may happen to come across is always very, very valuable, and the thing that interests me is that in most instances after a time people talk and they tell us what they know. ↗

— John Abizaid

#after #always #any #capturing #cell

I've sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment; I've helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes; I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup. ↗

— Alan Alda

#any #ate #blow #catch #could

You know, I don't really understand a suburban environment. I want to be out in the woods, I want to be where it's wild, I want to wake up and hear birds, I want to walk outside and see a gaggle of turkeys bouncing across my lawn - I want to be someplace like that - or I want to be right in the middle of an urban environment. ↗

— Karen Allen

#birds #bouncing #environment #hear #i

I don't know what any individual should do about crossing her own borders. I only know that I live a happier, more adventurous life, by crossing borders. ↗

— Sherman Alexie

#adventurous #any #borders #crossing #happier

I haven't given up on working... across the aisle on issues and maybe it'll take an election or two for that to fully ferment, maybe it you know sometimes it takes awhile for people to realize what the best path is. ↗

— David Axelrod

#aisle #awhile #best #election #ferment

I'm not a rock singer and I don't want to be a rock singer. I'm not interested. It doesn't seem to get across. ↗

— Van Morrison

#get #i #interested #not interested #rock

Vatican II was a force that seized the mind of the Roman Catholic Church and carried it across centuries from the 13th to the 20th. ↗

— Lance Morrow

#carried #catholic #catholic church #centuries #church