I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!
Paradise was always over there, a day’s sail away. But it’s a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home.
I don’t know why everyoneis still trying to find out whether heaven and hell exist.Why do we need more evidence?They exist here on this very Earth.Heaven is standing atop Mount Qasiounoverlooking the Damascene sightswith the wind carrying Qabbani’sdulcet words all around you.And hell is only four hours away in Aleppo where children’s cries drown out the explosions of mortar bombsuntil they lose their voice,their families, and their limbs.Yes, hell certainly does existright now, at this moment,as I pen this poem. And all we’re doingto extinguish this hellfireis sighing, shrugging, liking, and sharing.Tell me: what exactly does that makeus? Are we any better than the gatekeepers of hell?
O, weary angels, don’t look at me with those eyes.If that is your state then what of our cries?What can I tell you of goodness that you don’t already know?What can I tell you of faith,of hope and lovethat you yourselves bestow?O, angels, don’t pluck another feather,this isn’t the sky, it’s just the weather.Please, angels, try.We are one all together.Look up and listen, I’ll say it once and then put down my pen:We are sorry for our ignoranceand even though we are worldly,it might happen again.We are sorry for your wearinessand even though you aren’t worldly,we are no more than human.
I continuously see myself on an airplane that has unlimited fuel. I go here and there but can't stop. Always flying over my destination. I've come to realize I must jump off with my parachute on of course. That is how I'm viewing my life right now.Once I find that loophole than I've reached my destination to success.
Feathers!" spluttered Sargatanas. "Feathers are for the birds, my boy. Flaking, peeling, scale-ridden wings, now that's what real beings wear. I'll tell you a secret." He said, and drew me closer. "The eternal pain at having known Paradise and lost it is priceless. I wouldn't swap it for anything.
Katika dunia ya leo ambapo mamilioni ya watu hutegemea utandawazi kupata pesa, kuwa na imani kwamba kupokea pesa kutoka kwa mtu usiyemjua au mtu mwenye nia mbaya na wewe ni kikwazo kikubwa cha maendeleo kwa sababu, karibu kila mtu unayekutana naye ni Shetani. Shetani ni mtu yoyote mwenye nia mbaya na wewe. Hivyo, kama uliwahi kuambiwa kwamba kupokea pesa kutoka kwa mtu usiyemjua ni kitu kibaya futa imani hiyo. Utaachaje kupokea pesa kutoka kwa mtu usiyemjua wakati kila siku unamwomba Mungu akusaidie, na Mungu hutenda kazi zake pale tunapojisahau? La sivyo hutapata pesa unayotamani kupata katika maisha yako, na kamwe hutawaamini watu. Zaka huondoa laana ya mapato. Toa zaka kununua pepo uliyopewa na Mungu.
Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ, and yet grasp each other's hands as friends. It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and despise each other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or the trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other seems beyond the comprehension of man; and yet in all countries where Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us?Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is—not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends even, but that they treat those who differ from them, with simple fairness.We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish Christians to so act that we will not have to forgive them. If all will admit that all have an equal right to think, then the question is forever solved; but as long as organized and powerful churches, pretending to hold the keys of heaven and hell, denounce every person as an outcast and criminal who thinks for himself and denies their authority, the world will be filled with hatred and suffering. To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.
When people talk about destiny, they tend to forget that it isn’t deprived from free will, free will to both accept it or destroy it. If you were meant to find love and then hurt the person that loves you back, you’ve just exercised your free will against destiny, and that destiny, that brought that person to you, will now use the exact same force to pull such person away from you. You cannot violate the spiritual laws of the universe. You will always pay a heavy price for being ignorant about this fact. You have the free will to do whatever you wish in the paradise of life, but only as long as you don’t violate the sacred rules, when eating the fruit of selfishness, the tree of good and evil. That need to explore discernment will cost you your happiness, and expel you from the paradise destined to you.
Joni Mitchell had it right: "They paved paradise / and put up a parking lot." But perhaps, in the near future, we could add a line of hopeful epilogue to that song: then they tore down the parking lot / and raised up a paradise
Good gods are scarce because the majority of gods are created by evil men
Why do religious believers hate unbelievers? The feel threatened by them, they feel besieged by them. Religions consider themselves as separate tribes in their own rights and feel like unbelievers will one day overrun their strongholds
Every word that comes after "And the Lord told me. . . “is a pious lie
Some people are so stiff and inhumane as the dogma's they believe in
Give me something to worship whatever.” Cries the human soul
Spiritual leaders, priests and prophets are lamps burning in the dark, seeking meaning for humanity.
Science cannot disprove god. Science studies the things that are. The eternal question is who or what made them to be
Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.
Can really anybody put his hand on his heart and profess to know beyond doubt what happens on the other side of this life?
There is nothing behind the curtains of religions, people put there whatever their imaginations can fathom
Once you believe that god is not a private property of anybody, you are on your way to becoming a new messiah. Maybe your own if not the world's
Theology is like assuming that there is a black cat in a dark room where in fact there is no black cat, and endeavoring to study the cat's properties and how it may have evolved from its ancestors.
The eyes of god are upon you, I mean the eyes of society. We are prisoners of societies in which we live
You take away my golden dreams and my visions of paradise, in its place you wake me up and hand me your reasons and facts and crude reality. You have ruined my life. If I commit murder or hang myself, let the god I used to pray to repay you in full.
If you believe that God is good and that He loves you without regard to whom you are or what you do, you will worship Him wholeheartedly. You will praise him with thanksgiving. If you believe He is angry against you, you will come to him with fear and trying to appease his anger. And you don't know when His anger will be over. Such a god keeps you in a perpetual psychological anguish. That is the typical kind of god we usually worship. That is the typical god approved by authority.
Each mind conceives god in its own way. There may be as many variation of the god figure as there are people in the world
God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him on that level they are all equal
What is needed is not that a religion be true, meaning that what it claims exist beyond the ink it is written with in a holy book. That is hard to prove. What is important is that a religion be a good system to help us mere mortal deal with our short and troubled life in the universe. Whether what we hope for in the afterlife materializes or not is not important, what is important is that we believe it will materialize and that gives us hope.
Much terror in religion is not the will of god, it is created by power hungry clerics who thirst for absolute power and claim it for god. God does not seek power, he is already powerful.
No one knows what god thinks of anything. He only knows and no one can claim to penetrate into his mysteries. Those who do that are liars and must be avoided at all costs
It's utter arrogance to think that we can know what god ought to be or do. If we don't understand we must continue our search or recognize our ignorance
All religions are "revealed" and "inspired". After all nothing happens without the "will" of god.
If we believe that god is the creator of evil, maybe there is evil also in heaven, if that is the case, we are not out of the woods yet
Don't create unbelief or doubt in people's minds. When you do so you ruin their lives and you have nothing to give them in its place. It's ok if people delude themselves those delusions keep their day running.
An atheist is a disappointed true believer he is an angry and hungry soul who has failed to find a real god to whom he can anchor his hope
All religions are man-made God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.
When you have doubts about God, the right position to take is agnosticism, atheism is outright arrogance
The more time you invest into studying religion, the more likely you are to disbelieve in the gods
Religion is a theory about everything that needs to be proved only after death those who prove or disprove it never come back to us to tell the story
It's impossible to do science without faith. Sometimes scientists build theories on the premises of faulty assumptions until they discover they were in error and begin again from square one until they discover the true theory. It's quite different with theologians, they build false theory upon false theory until they give you detailed descriptions of heaven and hell and construct dogmas to protect their errors and if you dare say they are in error they condemn you to eternal damnation they arrived at through false theories
I believe only in one God, creator of everything that exists, visible and invisible, good and evil. I believe that he will ultimately save every soul and give it eternal life.
We all want to become more than we are, we want to live forever, that is why we hate death and create the afterlife.
All religions are guesswork
My gut instinct is that these heavens and hells exist nowhere else except in our hearts and minds
Don’t curse the gods you will feel shame when you have to call on them for help
God is powerful. Even those who claim not to believe in him fear him. Though their mouths may confess to disbelieve in him, their hearts yearn for him.
All atheists will go to heaven. If god exists, not believing in him does not take him away and he cannot justly condemn those who seek him earnestly and cannot find him. He would even reward their earnest search for him.
He is an atheist anyone who does not believe in my god and the wrath of god is upon him; I am in my right to meet that wrath on him," thunders the fanatic
You can't have it both ways. Either you believe in my god or you go to hell
Atheists are the most honest of the human race. These people are unable to live a double life; they are unable to lie to themselves. Of course it's an evolutionary handicap, and if that handicap was widespread, our species would run the risk of extinction
From the club of what atheist call false hope and false god (which offer solace to weak minds), atheist are calling you to their club of no god and no hope (which offers nothing in return. Join the club only if you are a strong minded individual capable of handling your life alone without the help of gods. )
An atheist is someone who is disappointed in his search of god. He is a man who strongly needed god but couldn't find him. Atheism is a cry of despair
I know what is going on in the heart of an atheist. Deep anguish that there is nothing beyond, nothing to live for, nothing to give him hope. I know because I endured the same predicament.
After losing faith, even an atheist feels a yawning void in his soul that needs filling; there is nothing imaginable that he can fill with it. It was all along meant to be filled with the sacred, with the unknown and unknowable power. That's the curse or blessing of humanity
We the living are to blame for the painfulness of being dead.
Peter stands by the gate, And Michael by the throne. 'Peter, I would pass the gate And come before the throne.' 'Whose spirit prayed never at the gate In life nor at the throne, In death he may not pass the gate To come before the throne:' Peter said from the gate; Said Michael from the throne.
God's command to have dominion over every living thing is a call to service, a test of responsibility, a rule of love, a cooperation with nature, whereas Satan's use of force for the sake of getting gain renders the earth uninhabitable. Brigham Young's views on the environment direct attention to man's responsibility to beautify the earth, to eradicate the influences of harmful substances, and to use restraint, that the earth may return to its paradisiacal glory.
Aging and the prospect of dying by no means enhance the attractiveness of fictitious comforts to come in paradise, or the veracity of malicious myths about hellfire and damnation. Fear and feeblemindedness cannot be credibly pressed into service to support fantastic claims about the cosmos and our ultimate destiny.Whether one would even consider turning to religion in advanced years has much to do with upbringing, which makes all the more important standing up to the presumptions of the religious in front of children. One would regard the Biblical events – a spontaneously igniting bush, a sea’s parting, human parthenogenesis, a resurrected prophet and so on – that supposedly heralded God’s intervention in our affairs as the stuff of fairy tales were it not for the credibility we unwittingly lend them by keeping quiet out of mistaken notions of propriety.
I have drunk the night and swallowed the stars. I am dancing with abandon and singing with rapture. There is not a thing I do not love. There is not a person I have not forgiven. I feel a universe of love. I feel a universe of light. Tonight, I am with old friends and we are returning home. The moon is our witness.
What is happiness? What is a good life? Is it a life without suffering? Something like that doesn't exist... Life is filled with suffering and sorrow. So it's no wonder that to those who fear suffering, the world seems like a living hell! And still...those who bravely keep going and try to push through this hell... They'll find that it's only a small stretch of the road to happiness. The truly great are those who never lose hope, even when thrown into hell... And as long as we have faith in ourselves, even hell itself can be a paradise!
A single word can brighten the faceof one who knows the value of words.Ripened in silence, a single wordacquires a great energy for work.War is cut short by a word,and a word heals the wounds,and there’s a word that changespoison into butterand honey.Let a word mature inside yourself.Withhold the unripened thought.Come and understand the kind of wordthat reduces money and riches to dust.Know when to speak a wordand when not to speak at all.A single word turns the universe of hellinto eight paradises.Follow the Way. Don’t be fooledby what you already know. Be watchful.Reflect before you speak.A foolish mouth can brand your soul.Yunus, say one last thingabout the power of words –Only the word “I”divides me from God.
A worshipper perceives that he is near to God because he is awake all night worshipping God. But after worship, your prayers are for health, long life, wealth, and for the damsels and slaves of the Paradise. Ponder! Did you ever pray to God, ‘O’ God, I desire from Thee nothing but Thee’?
Since both the departed saints and we ourselves are in Christ, we share with them in the 'communion of saints.' They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. When we celebrate the Eucharist they are there with us, along with the angels and archangels. Why then should we not pray for and with them? The reason the Reformers and their successors did their best to outlaw praying for the dead was because that had been so bound up with the notion of purgatory and the need to get people out of it as soon as possible. Once we rule out purgatory, I see no reason why we should not pray for and with the dead and every reason why we should - not that they will get out of purgatory but that they will be refreshed and filled with God's joy and peace. Love passes into prayer; we still love them; why not hold them, in that love, before God?
A dying man asked a dying man for eternal life; a man without possessions asked a poor man for a Kingdom; a thief at the door of death asked to die like a thief and steal Paradise. One would have thought a saint would have been the first soul purchased over the counter of Calvary by the red coins of Redemption, but in the Divine plan it was a thief who was the escort of the King of kings into Paradise. If Our Lord had come merely as a teacher, the thief would never have asked for forgiveness. But since the thief's request touched the reason of His coming to earth, namely, to save souls, the thief heard the immediate answer:'I promise thee, this day thou shalt beWith Me in Paradise'(Luke 23:43)It was the thief's last prayer, perhaps even his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything, and found everything. When even the disciples were doubting and only one was present at the Cross, the thief owned and acknowledged Him as Saviour.
I look forward to seeing you in the “jungle” as our warriors meet and join the battle drum that calls for unity in the struggle for breaking the chains of modern slavery—like the butterflies flying the skies and the birds over the seas, all are welcomed for both ear and eye—promises of victory are high, for even if unattainable today, tomorrow still holds the torch and dream, like fire of paradise, glory of life, glory of eternity!
In particular, we must take account of the well-known and striking saying of Jesus to the dying brigand beside him, recorded by Luke (23.43). 'Today,' he said, 'you will be with me in paradise.' 'Paradise' is not the final destination; it is a beautiful resting place on the way there. But notice. If there is anyone in the New Testament to whom we might have expected the classic doctrine of purgatory to apply, it would be this brigand. He had no time for amendment of life; no doubt he had all kinds of sinful thoughts and desires in what was left of his body. All the standard arguments in favour of purgatory apply to him. And yet Jesus assures him of his place in paradise, not in a few days or weeks, not if his friends say a lot of prayers and masses for him, but 'today.
The moon was low but not full. The men set out along the dock in conversation. As they dropped onto the dark beach, Simmons declared, ‘There can be no better place in the world than this.’Henderson had to agree. The beach was beautiful. The stars lit the sand and balmy air rode in as the waves washed up on paradise
If you are poor and go without food and clothes, don't hope for wealth in paradise, you are already forsaken
I always wish there was a portal to an unknown and unseen place from my home and yours too. Where the time would always stay froze and nothing changes ever. Where no other human exists except us and everything is utterly beautiful. Where we can say forever and really mean it and live it every single day.
A woman who has found her match with respect to depth of soul and who has quenched her thirst with her children is no different than the women of Paradise, and the home structured around such a person is no different than the gardens of Paradise. And it is no wonder that her children, who grow up savoring affection in the shelter of this paradise, will be no different than heavenly beings. Indeed those who are fortunate enough to be raised in such an atmosphere of affection will live in state of otherworldy joy as if they have been exalted to the heavens, inspiring high spirits all around through their smiles.
My simple explanation of why we human beings, the most advanced species on earth, cannot find happiness, is this: as we evolve up the ladder of being, we find three things: the first, that the tension between the range of opposites in our lives and society widens dramatically and often painfully as we evolve; the second, that the better informed and more intelligent we are, the more humble we have to become about our ability to live meaningful lives and to change anything, even ourselves; and consequently, thirdly, that the cost of gaining the simplicity the other side of complexity can rise very steeply if we do not align ourselves and our lives well.
But can't you even imagine what it must feel like to have a true home? I don't mean heaven. I mean a real earthly home. Not some fortress you bought and built up and have to keep everybody locked in or out. A real home. Not some place you went to and invaded and slaughtered people to get. Not some place you claimed, snatched because you got the guns. Not some place you stole from the people living there, but your own home, where if you go back past your great-great-grandparents, past theirs, and theirs, past the whole of Western history, past the beginning of organized knowledge, past pyramids and poison bows, on back to when rain was new, before plants forgot they could sing and birds thought they were fish, back when God said Good! Good!-- there, right there where you know your own people were born and lived and died. Imagine that, Pat. That place. Who was God talking to if not to my people living in my home?""You preaching, Reverend.""No, I'm talking to you, Pat. I'm talking to you.
Even heaven would become hell if you were alone in it, or away from a loved one. And even if you were with your loved one, but in hell, eventually you would cry to have you and your loved one together in heaven. So to create your own heaven on earth, make sure you and your loved one are in a place you both love, because what could be heaven for one, could be hell for the other.
The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.
When I am a good host, I can order the world precisely as I believe it ought to be. It is a world that I have created in my mind and in my own image, and it gladdens me profoundly to see it unfold without original sin, without expulsions and floods and disobedience and illness. When I am a good guest, I have returned to Eden, where everything I need is provided for me, including companionship and a benevolent deity at my shoulder serving me and protecting me. The concept of paradise may be backward-looking but the concept of heaven is anticipatory. Perhaps this is what heaven will be like? A great table of oak worn smooth with age and candle wax; a dimly lit room, a quartet of angels playing Sarah Vaughan in the corner; this blissful throb of quiet, intelligent conversation; bubbling pots and aromatic stews that no one seems to have worked to prepare; and you - you have nothing to worry about, not now, not here, not for all eternity. Leave it all behind at the threshold, forget everything, for here in heaven, you are my guest.
Some men are sent to heaven by torturers who thought they were doing god's work by sending them to hell
His biggest gripe with religion was the concept of heaven, of paradise, that we could only get there after we died. He said any philosophy that cared more about life after death than life before death wasn’t anything he could believe in. That’s why he called this farm Paradise. He said Paradise was ours if we wanted it. It was ours to make in the here and now, not something out there in the future that we had to wait for.
There is no greater heaven than the heart of a loving motherShe takes care of you when you are still in her womb.She nurtures you after you are born.She hurts when you fall,She celebrates when you make your first steps.She is the only person who genuinely cares about you.She loves you as she loves herself.Her heart is your true paradise.I love you mama.
Deeply immersed in a constant bubble bath of sin, you cannot communicate with Jesus Christ unless you are ready to get out of the bath. John 1:9
Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, light-less, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful.But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it.Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns.And then he desired sex.He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. The he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together.Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet.But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied.He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.”And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?
I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie, and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise.
SOON, he replied, which makes better sense under the rules of that country than ours. VERY SOON! he added, clasping my hands; then, unable to keep from laughing, he pushed off from the rock like a boy going for the first cold swim of spring; and the current got him. The stream was singing aloud, and I heard him singing with it until he dropped away over the edge.
No ancient Jew was ever promised, or expected, a heavenly life. That was a wild and outrageous teaching of Jesus. Holy text never offers a heavenly hope--before Jesus. Think about it: No matter how faithful Adam would have been, he could never graduate to heaven. Going to heaven was a 'Jesus teaching.' It simply does not exist in Torah.pg xxvii
In the beginning, there was the earth, formless and empty. Darkness hung over the surface of the deep. And then there was light. It spilled over the waters, vast and powerful, and its creation severed the unity that had come before. This light was a separate entity from the darkness. Something novel and cruelly different. The spirits called it “day.” Its opposite was called “night.” Between them was evening and morning—the First Day. This division marked the end of peace in the universe. Everything has been pretty much fucked up since then.
Indeed, for the righteous is attainment - Gardens and grapevines And full-breasted [companions] of equal age And a full cup. No ill speech will they hear therein or any falsehood - [As] reward from your Lord, [a generous] gift [made due by] account, [From] the Lord of the heavens and the earth and whatever is between them, the Most Merciful. They possess not from Him [authority for] speech.[The Quran, 78:31-37]
He reached out for her hand and she grabbed onto his. “Eena, when you’re ready to talk about it, I’ll be here. That’s what best friends are for.” She let the tears fall. He’d never know they were for him. He’d think they were because of Derian. They held hands silently throughout the night, Ian unaware that this was by far her most tortured nightmare ever. Paradise so close, and yet completely unattainable.
When the sun goes down, melting away his caresses into the sky which consonants with the ocean, lively colors are scattered through the deep pale depth during some short sensuous instants. Later, as by art of magic, light is consumed into the infinite horizon giving space to the poked voidness and its full-cristal-covered vastness. Then, to mystify the night, a marvelous and alluring sentinel rests next to us through the vivid night, just until the next prismatic fest arrives with its celebrating aperture.
The possibility of paradise hovers on the cusp of coming into being, so much so that it takes powerful forces to keep such a paradise at bay. If paradise now arises in hell, it's because in the suspension of the usual order and the failure of most systems, we are free to live and act another way.
This is a paradise of rising to the occasion that points out by contrast how the rest of the time most of us fall down from the heights of possibility, down into diminished selves and dismal societies. Many now do not even hope for a better society, but they recognize it when they encounter it, and that discovery shines out even through the namelessness of their experience. Others recognize it, grasp it, and make something of it, and long-term social and political transformations, both good and bad, arise from the wreckage. The door to this ear's potential paradises is in hell.
Kessler depicts his developing intimacy with a handful of dairy goats and offers an enviable glimpse of the pastoral good life. Yet he also cautions, "Wherever the notion of paradise exists, so does the idea that it was lost. Paradise is always in the past." The title Goat Song is a literal rendering of the Greek word traghoudhia, tragedy. Reading it, I was reminded of Leo Marx's analysis of Thoreau's Walden. In The Machine in the Garden, Marx names Thoreau a tragic, if complex pastoralist. After failing to make an agrarian living raising beans for commercial trade (although his intent was always more allegorical than pecuniary), Thoreau ends Walden by replacing the pastoral idea where it originated: in literature. Paradise, Marx concludes, is not ultimately to be found at Walden Pond; it is to be found in the pages of Walden.
Loving me is like entering a dungeon with a lot of doors. I cannot guarantee you that you will get the key of every door you come across, I cannot tell you which door leads you where and what is behind it, I cannot assure you that you will head back out again the way you came in. All I can say is if you manage to open every right door and the last one too, I will make you one of my secrets forever, you will see and feel things that you have never come across, which will never let you leave again from the paradise that you have reached.
Deep in the heart of the hot, wet African rainforest, there lives a tribe of peacemakers who share a multiplicity of pleasures and make a very special kind of love. South of the sprawling Congo River, in the midst of war-ravaged territory, some 2,000 miles from the arid Ethiopian desert where the oldest human fossils have been found, lies this lush and steamy jungle paradise, the only natural habitat of the bonobo.
After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication.