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Lois the Witch (1859) by Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 1

In the year 1691, Lois Barclay stood on a little wooden pier, steadying herself on the stable land, in much the same manner as, eight or nine weeks ago, she had tried to steady herself on the deck of the rocking ship which had carried her across from Old to New England. It seemed as strange now to be on solid earth as it had been, not long ago, to be rocked by the sea both by day and by night; and the aspect of the land was equally strange. The forests which showed in the distance all around, and which, in truth, were not very far from the wooden houses forming the town of Boston, were of different shades of green, and different, too, in shape of outline to those which Lois Barclay knew well in her old home in Warwickshire. Her heart sank a little as she stood alone, waiting for the captain of the good ship Redemption, the kind, rough old sailor, who was her only known friend in this unknown continent. Captain Holdernesse was busy, however, as she saw, and it would probably be some time before he would be ready to attend to her; so Lois sat down on one of the casks that lay about, and wrapped her grey duffle cloak tight around her, and sheltered herself under her hood, as well as might be, from the piercing wind, which seemed to follow those whom it had tyrannised over at sea with a dogged wish of still tormenting them on land. Very patiently did Lois sit there, although she was weary, and shivering with cold; for the day was severe for May, and the Redemption, with store of necessaries and comforts for the Puritan colonists of New England, was the earliest ship that had ventured across the seas.

How could Lois help thinking of the past, and speculating on the future, as she sat on Boston pier, at this breathing-time of her life? In the dim sea mist which she gazed upon with aching eyes (filled, against her will, with tears, from time to time), there rose, the little village church of Barford (not three miles from Warwick - you may see it yet), where her father had preached ever since 1661, long before she was born. He and her mother both lay dead in Barford churchyard; and the old low grey church could hardly come before her vision without her seeing the old parsonage too, the cottage covered with Austrian roses and yellow jessamine, where she had been born, sole child of parents already long past the prime of youth. She saw the path not a hundred yards long, from the parsonage to the vestry door: that path which her father trod daily; for the vestry was his study, and the sanctum where he pored over the ponderous tomes of the Fathers, and compared their precepts with those of the authorities of the Anglican Church of that day - the day of the later Stuarts; for Barford Parsonage, at that time, scarcely exceeded in size and dignity the cottages by which it was surrounded: it only contained three rooms on a floor, and was but two storeys high. On the first or ground floor, were the parlour, kitchen, and back or working kitchen; upstairs, Mr and Mrs Barclay's room, that belonging to Lois, and the maid servant's room. If a guest came, Lois left her own chamber, and shared old Clemence's bed. But those days were over. Never more should Lois see father or mother on earth; they slept, calm and still, in Barford churchyard, careless of what became of their orphan child, as far as earthly manifestations of care or love went. And Clemence lay there too, bound down in her grassy bed by withes of the briar-rose, which Lois had trained over those three precious graves before leaving England for ever.

There were some who would fain have kept her there; one who swore in his heart a great oath unto the Lord that he would seek her, sooner or later, if she was still upon the earth. But he was the rich heir and only son of the Miller Lucy, whose mill stood by the Avon side in the grassy Barford meadows; and his father looked higher for him than the penniless daughter of Parson Barclay (so low were clergymen esteemed in those days!); and the very suspicion of Hugh Lucy's attachment to Lois Barclay made his parents think it more prudent not to offer the orphan a home, although none other of the parishioners had the means, even if they had the will, to do so.

So Lois swallowed her tears down till the time came for crying, and acted upon her mother's words

'Lois, thy father is dead of this terrible fever, and I am dying. Nay, it is so; though I am easier from pain for these few hours, the Lord be praised! The cruel men of the Commonwealth have left thee very friendless. Thy father's only brother was shot down at Edgehill. I, too, have a brother, though thou hast never heard me speak of him, for he was a schismatic; and thy father and me had words, and he left for that new country beyond the seas, without ever saying farewell to us. But Ralph was a kind lad until he took up these newfangled notions; and for the old days sake he will take thee in, and love thee as a child, and place thee among his children. Blood is thicker than water. Write to him as soon as I am gone - for, Lois, I am going, and I bless the Lord that has letten me join my husband again so soon.' Such was the selfishness of conjugal love; she thought little of Lois's desolation in comparison with her rejoicing over her speedy reunion with her dead husband! 'Write to thine uncle, Ralph Hickson, Salem, New England (put it down, child, on thy tablets), and say that I, Henrietta Barclay, charge him, for the sake of all he holds dear in heaven or on earth - for his salvation's sake, as well as for the sake of the old home at Lester Bridge - for the sake of the father and mother that gave us birth, as well as for the sake of the six little children who lie dead between him and me - that he take thee into his home as if thou wert his own flesh and blood, as indeed thou art. He has a wife and children of his own, and no one need fear having thee, my Lois, my darling, my baby, among his household. O Lois, would that thou wert dying with me! The thought of thee makes death sore!' Lois comforted her mother more than herself, poor child, by promises to obey her dying wishes to the letter, and by expressing hopes she dared not feel of her uncle's kindness.

'Promise me' - the dying woman's breath came harder and harder - 'that thou wilt go at once. The money our goods will bring - thy letter thy father wrote to Captain Holdernesse, his old schoolfellow - thou knowest all I would say - my Lois, God bless thee!'

Solemnly did Lois promise; strictly she kept her word. It was all the more easy, for Hugh Lucy met her, and told her, in one great burst of love, of his passionate attachment, his vehement struggles with his father, his impotence at present, his hopes and resolves for the future. And, intermingled with all this, came such outrageous threats and expressions of uncontrolled vehemence, that Lois felt that in Barford she must not linger to be a cause of desperate quarrel between father and son, while her absence might soften down matters, so that either the rich old miller might relent, or - and her heart ached to think of the other possibility - Hugh's love might cool, and the dear playfellow of her childhood learn to forget. If not - if Hugh were to be trusted in one tithe of what he said - God might permit him to fulfil his resolve of coming to seek her out, before many years were over. It was all in God's hands; and that was best, thought Lois Barclay.

She was aroused out of her trance of recollections by Captain Holdernesse, who, having done all that was necessary in the way of orders and directions to his mate, now came up to her, and, praising her for her quiet patience, told her that he would now take her to the Widow Smith's, a decent kind of house, where he and many other sailors of the better order were in the habit of lodging during their stay on the New England shores. Widow Smith, he said, had a parlour for herself and her daughters, in which Lois might sit, while he went about the business that, as he had told her, would detain him in Boston for a day or two, before he could accompany her to her uncle's at Salem. All this had been to a certain degree arranged on ship-board; but Captain Holdernesse, for want of anything else that he could think of to talk about, recapitulated it, as he and Lois walked along. It was his way of showing sympathy with the emotion that made her grey eyes full of tears, as she started up from the pier at the sound of his voice. In his heart he said, 'Poor wench! poor wench! it's a strange land to her, and they are all strange folks, and, I reckon, she will be feeling desolate. I'll try and cheer her up.' So he talked on about hard facts, connected with the life that lay before her, until they reached Widow Smith's; and perhaps Lois was more brightened by this style of conversation, and the new ideas it presented to her, than she would have been by the tenderest woman's sympathy.

'They are a queer set, these New Englanders,' said Captain Holdernesse. 'They are rare chaps for praying; down on their knees at every turn of their life. Folk are none so busy in a new country, else they would have to pray like me, with a "Yo-hoy!" on each side of my prayer, and a rope cutting like fire through my hand. Yon pilot was for calling us all to thanksgiving for a good voyage, and lucky escape from the pirates; but I said I always put up my thanks on dry land, after I had got my ship into harbour. The French colonists, too, are vowing vengeance for the expedition against Canada, and the people here are raging like heathens - at least, as like as godly folk can be - for the loss of their charter. All that is the news the pilot told me; for, for all he wanted us to be thanksgiving instead of casting the lead, he was as down in the mouth as could be about the state of the country. But here we are at Widow Smith's! Now, cheer up, and show the godly a pretty smiling Warwickshire lass!'

Anybody would have smiled at Widow Smith's greeting. She was a comely, motherly woman, dressed in the primmest fashion in vogue twenty years before in England, among the class to which she belonged. But, somehow, her pleasant face gave the lie to her dress; were it as brown and sober-coloured as could be, folk remembered it bright and cheerful, because it was a part of Widow Smith herself.

She kissed Lois on both cheeks, before she rightly understood who the stranger maiden was, only because she was a stranger and looked sad and forlorn; and then she kissed her again, because Captain Holdernesse commanded her to the widow's good offices. And so she led Lois by the hand into her rough, substantial log-house, over the door of which hung a great bough of a tree, by way of sign of entertainment for man and horse. Yet not all men were received by Widow Smith. To some she could be as cold and reserved as need be, deaf to all inquiries save one - where else they could find accommodation? To this question she would give a ready answer, and speed the unwelcome guest on his way. Widow Smith was guided in these matters by instinct: one glance at a man's face told her whether or not she chose to have him as an inmate of the same house as her daughters; and her promptness of decision in these matters gave her manner a kind of authority which no one liked to disobey, especially as she had stalwart neighbours within call to back her, if her assumed deafness in the first instance, and her voice and gesture in the second, were not enough to give the would-be guest his dismissal. Widow Smith chose her customers merely by their physical aspect; not one whit with regard to their apparent worldly circumstances. Those who had been staying at her house once always came again; for she had the knack of making every one beneath her roof comfortable and at his ease. Her daughters, Prudence and Hester, had somewhat of their mother's gifts, but not in such perfection. They reasoned a little upon a stranger's appearance, instead of knowing at the first moment whether they liked him or no; they noticed the indications of his clothes, the quality and cut thereof, as telling somewhat of his station in society; they were more reserved; they hesitated more than their mother; they had not her prompt authority, her happy power. Their bread was not so light; their cream went sometimes to sleep, when it should have been turning into butter; their hams were not always 'just like the hams of the old country'; as their mother's were invariably pronounced to be - yet they were good, orderly, kindly girls, and rose and greeted Lois with a friendly shake of the hand, as their mother, with her arm round the stranger's waist, led her into the private room which she called her parlour. The aspect of this room was strange in the English girl's eyes. The logs of which the house was built showed here and there through the mud-plaster, although before both plaster and logs were hung the skins of many curious animals - skins presented to the widow by many a trader of her acquaintance, just as her sailor-guests brought her another description of gifts - shells, strings of wampum-beads, sea-birds' eggs, and presents from the old country. The room was more like a small museum of natural history of these days than a parlour; and it had a strange, peculiar, but not unpleasant smell about it, neutralised in some degree by the smoke from the enormous trunk of pinewood which smouldered in the hearth.

The instant their mother told them that Captain Holdernesse was in the outer room, the girls began putting away their spinning-wheel and knitting needles, and preparing for a meal of some kind; what meal, Lois, sitting there and unconsciously watching, could hardly tell. First, dough was set to rise for cakes; then came out of a corner-cupboard - a present from England - an enormous square bottle of a cordial called Gold-Wasser; next, a mill for grinding chocolate - a rare, unusual treat anywhere at that time; then a great Cheshire cheese. Three venison-steaks were cut ready for broiling, fat cold pork sliced up and treacle poured over it; a great pie, something like a mince-pie, but which the daughters spoke of with honour as the 'punken-pie,' fresh and salt-fish brandered, oysters cooked in various ways. Lois wondered where would be the end of the provisions for hospitably receiving the strangers from the old country. At length everything was placed on the table, the hot food smoking; but all was cool, not to say cold, before Elder Hawkins (an old neighbour of much repute and standing, who had been invited in by Widow Smith to hear the news) had finished his grace, into which was embodied thanksgiving for the past, and prayers for the future, lives of every individual present, adapted to their several cases, as far as the elder could guess at them from appearances. This grace might not have ended so soon as it did, had it not been for the somewhat impatient drumming of his knife-handle on the table, with which Captain Holdernesse accompanied the latter half of the elder's words.

When they first sat down to their meal, all were too hungry for much talking; but, as their appetites diminished, their curiosity increased, and there was much to be told and heard on both sides. With all the English intelligence Lois was, of course, well acquainted; but she listened with natural attention to all that was said about the new country, and the new people among whom she had come to live. Her father had been a Jacobite, as the adherents of the Stuarts were beginning at this time to be called. His father, again, had been a follower of Archbishop Laud; so Lois had hitherto heard little of the conversation, and seen little of the ways of the Puritans. Elder Hawkins was one of the strictest of the strict, and evidently his presence kept the two daughters of the house considerably in awe. But the widow herself was a privileged person; her known goodness of heart (the effects of which had been experienced by many) gave her the liberty of speech which was tacitly denied to many, under penalty of being esteemed ungodly, if they infringed certain conventional limits. And Captain Holdernesse and his mate spoke out their minds, let who would be present. So that, on this first landing in New England, Lois was, as it were, gently let down into the midst of the Puritan peculiarities; and yet they were sufficient to make her feel very lonely and strange.

The first subject of conversation was the present state of the ��colony - Lois soon found out that, although at the beginning she was not a little perplexed by the frequent reference to names of places which she naturally associated with the old country. Widow Smith was speaking: 'In county of Essex the folk are ordered to keep four scouts, or companies of minutemen; six persons in each company; to be on the look-out for the wild Indians, who are for ever stirring about in the woods, stealthy brutes as they are! I am sure, I got such a fright the first harvest-time after I came over to New England, I go on dreaming, now near twenty years after Lothrop's business, of painted Indians, with their shaven scalps and their war-streaks, lurking behind the trees, and coming nearer and nearer with their noiseless steps.'

'Yes,' broke in one of her daughters; 'and, mother, don't you remember how Hannah Benson told us how her husband had cut down every tree near his house at Deerbrook, in order that no one might come near him, under cover; and how one evening she was a-sitting in the twilight, when all her family were gone to bed, and her husband gone off to Plymouth on business, and she saw a log of wood, just like a trunk of a felled tree, lying in the shadow, and thought nothing of it, till, on looking again a while after, she fancied it was come a bit nearer to the house; and how her heart turned sick with fright; and how she dared not stir at first, but shut her eyes while she counted a hundred, and looked again, and the shadow was deeper, but she could see that the log was nearer; so she ran in and bolted the door, and went up to where her eldest lad lay. It was Elijah, and he was but sixteen then; but he rose up at his mother's words, and took his father's long duck-gun down; and he tried the loading, and spoke for the first time to put up a prayer that God would give his aim good guidance, and went to a window that gave a view upon the side where the log lay, and fired; and no one dared to look what came of it; but all the household read the Scriptures, and prayed the whole night long; till morning came and showed a long stream of blood lying on the grass close by the log - which the full sunlight showed to be no log at all, but just a Red Indian covered with bark, and painted most skilfully, with his war-knife by his side.'

All were breathless with listening; though to most the story, or others like it, were familiar. Then another took up the tale of horror: -

'And the pirates have been down at Marblehead, since you were here, Captain Holdernesse. 'Twas only the last winter they landed - French Papist pirates; and the people kept close within their houses, for they knew not what would come of it; and they dragged folk ashore. There was one woman among those folk - prisoners from some vessel, doubtless - and the pirates took them by force to the inland marsh; and the Marblehead folk kept still and quiet, every gun loaded, and every ear on the watch, for who knew but what the wild sea-robbers might take a turn on land next; and, in the dead of the night, they heard a woman's loud and pitiful outcry from the marsh, "Lord Jesu! have mercy on me! Save me from the power of man, O Lord Jesu!" And the blood of all who heard the cry ran cold with terror; till old Nance Hickson, who had been stone-deaf and bed-ridden for years, stood up in the midst of the folk all gathered together in her grandson's house, and said, that, as they, the dwellers in Marblehead, had not had brave hearts or faith enough to go and succour the helpless, that cry of a dying woman should be in their ears, and in their children's cars, till the end of the world. And Nance dropped down dead as soon as she had made an end of speaking, and the pirates set sail from Marblehead at morning dawn; but the folk there hear the cry still, shrill and pitiful, from the waste marshes, "Lord Jesu! have mercy on me! Save me from the power of man, O Lord Jesu!"'

'And, by token,' said Elder Hawkins's deep bass voice, speaking with the strong nasal twang of the Puritans (who, says Butler,

'Blasphemed custard through the nose')

'godly Mr Noyes ordained a fast at Marblehead, and preached a soul-stirring discourse on the words, "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it not unto me." But it has been borne in upon me at times, whether the whole vision of the pirates and the cry of the woman was not a device of Satan's to sift the Marblehead folk, and see what fruit their doctrine bore, and so to condemn them in the sight of the Lord. If it were so, the enemy had a great triumph; for assuredly it was no part of Christian men to leave a helpless woman unaided in her sore distress.'

'But, Elder,' said Widow Smith, 'it was no vision; they were real living men who went ashore, men who broke down branches and left their footmarks on the ground.'

'As for that matter, Satan hath many powers, and, if it be the day when he is permitted to go about like a roaring lion, he will not stick at trifles, but make his work complete. I tell you, many men are spiritual enemies in visible forms, permitted to roam about the waste places of the earth. I myself believe that these Red Indians are indeed the evil creatures of whom we read in Holy Scripture; and there is no doubt that they are in league with those abominable Papists, the French people in Canada. I have heard tell, that the French pay the Indians so much gold for every dozen scalps of Englishmen's heads.'

'Pretty cheerful talk this!' said Captain Holdernesse to Lois, perceiving her blanched cheek and terror-stricken mien. 'Thou art thinking that thou hadst better have stayed at Barford, I'll answer for it, wench. But the devil is not so black as he is painted.'

'Ho! there again!' said Elder Hawkins. 'The devil is painted, it hath been said so from old times; and are not these Indians painted, even like unto their father?'

'But is it all true?' asked Lois, aside, of Captain Holdernesse, letting the Elder hold forth unheeded by her, though listened to with the utmost reverence by the two daughters of the house.

'My wench,' said the old sailor, 'thou hast come to a country where there are many perils, both from land and from sea. The Indians hate the white men. Whether other white men - (meaning the French away to the north - 'have bounded on the savages, or whether the English have taken their lands and hunting-grounds without due recompense, and so raised the cruel vengeance of the wild creatures - who knows? But it is true that it is not safe to go far into the woods, for fear of the lurking painted savages; nor has it been safe to build a dwelling far from a settlement; and it takes a brave heart to make a journey from one town to another; and folk do say the Indian creatures rise up out of the very ground to waylay the English! and then others affirm they are all in league with Satan to affright the Christians out of the heathen country, over which he has reigned so long. Then, again, the sea-shore is infested by pirates, the scum of all nations: they land, and plunder, and ravage, and burn, and destroy. Folk get affrighted of the real dangers, and in their fright imagine, perchance, dangers that are not. But who knows? Holy Scripture speaks of witches and wizards, and of the power of the Evil One in desert places; and, even in the old country, we have heard tell of those who have sold their souls for ever for the little power they get for a few years on earth.'

By this time the whole table was silent, listening to the captain; it was just one of those chance silences that sometimes occur, without any apparent reason, and often without any apparent consequence. But all present had reason, before many months had passed over, to remember the words which Lois spoke in answer, although her voice was low, and she only thought, in the interest of the moment, of being heard by her old friend the captain.

'They are fearful creatures, the witches! and yet I am sorry for the poor old women, whilst I dread them. We had one in Barford, when I was a little child. No one knew whence she came, but she settled herself down in a mud-hut by the common-side; and there she lived, she and her cat.' (At the mention of the cat, Elder Hawkins shook his head long and gloomily.) 'No one knew how she lived, if it were not on nettles and scraps of oatmeal and such-like food, given her more for fear than for pity. She went double, and always talking and muttering to herself. Folk said she snared birds and rabbits in the thicket that came down to her hovel. How it came to pass I cannot say, but many a one fell sick in the village, and much cattle died one spring, when I was near four years old. I never heard much about it, for my father said it was ill talking about such things; I only know I got a sick fright one afternoon, when the maid had gone out for milk and had taken me with her, and we were passing a meadow where the Avon, circling, makes a deep round pool, and there was a crowd of folk, all still - and a still, breathless crowd makes the heart beat worse than a shouting, noisy one. They were all gazing towards the water, and the maid held me up in her arms, to see the sight above the shoulders of the people; and I saw old Hannah in the water, her grey hair all streaming down her shoulders, and her face bloody and black with the stones and mud they had been throwing at her, and her cat tied round her neck. I hid my face, I know, as soon as I saw the fearsome sight, for her eyes met mine as they were glaring with fury - poor, helpless, baited creature! - and she caught the sight of me, and cried out, "Parson's wench, parson's wench, yonder, in thy nurse's arms, thy dad hath never tried for to save me; and none shall save thee, when thou art brought up for a witch." Oh! the words rang in my ears, when I was dropping asleep, for years after. I used to dream that I was in that pond; that all men hated me with their eyes because I was a witch: and, at times, her black cat used to seem living again, and say over those dreadful words.'

Lois stopped: the two daughters looked at her excitement with a kind of shrinking surprise, for the tears were in her eyes. Elder Hawkins shook his head, and muttered texts from Scripture; but cheerful Widow Smith, not liking the gloomy run of the conversation, tried to give it a lighter cast by saying, 'And I don't doubt but what the parson's bonny lass has bewitched many a one since, with her dimples and her pleasant ways - eh, Captain Holdernesse? It's you must tell us tales of the young lass's doings in England.'

'Ay, ay,' said the captain; 'there's one under her charms in Warwickshire who will never get the better of it, I'm thinking.'

Elder Hawkins rose to speak; he stood leaning on his hands, which were placed on the table: 'Brethren,' said he, 'I must upbraid you if ye speak lightly; charms and witchcraft are evil things; I trust this maiden hath had nothing to do with them, even in thought. But my mind misgives me at her story. The hellish witch might have power from Satan to infect her mind, she being yet a child, with the deadly sin. Instead of vain talking, I call upon you all to join with me in prayer for this stranger in our land, that her heart may be purged from all iniquity. Let us pray.'

'Come, there's no harm in that,' said the captain; 'but, Elder Hawkins, when you are at work, just pray for us all; for I am afeard there be some of us need purging from iniquity a good deal more than Lois Barclay, and a prayer for a man never does mischief '

Captain Holdernesse had business in Boston which detained him there for a couple of days; and during that time Lois remained with the Widow Smith, seeing what was to be seen of the new land that contained her future home. The letter of her dying mother was sent off to Salem, meanwhile, by a lad going thither, in order to prepare her Uncle Ralph Hickson for his niece's coming, as soon as Captain Holdernesse could find leisure to take her; for he considered her given into his own personal charge, until he could consign her to her uncle's care. When the time came for going to Salem, Lois felt very sad at leaving the kindly woman under whose roof she had been staying, and looked back as long as she could see anything of Widow Smith's dwelling. She was packed into a rough kind of country-cart, which just held her and Captain Holdernesse, beside the driver. There was a basket of provisions under their feet, and behind them hung a bag of provender for the horse; for it was a good day's journey to Salem, and the road was reputed so dangerous that it was ill tarrying a minute longer than necessary for refreshment. English roads were bad enough at that period, and for long after; but in America the way was simply the cleared ground of the forest - the stumps of the felled trees still remaining in the direct line, forming obstacles which it required the most careful driving to avoid; and in the hollows, where the ground was swampy, the pulpy nature of it was obviated by logs of wood laid across the boggy part. The deep green forest, tangled into heavy darkness even thus early in the year, came within a few yards of the road all the way, though efforts were regularly made by the inhabitants of the neighbouring settlements to keep a certain space clear on each side, for fear of the lurking Indians, who might otherwise come upon them unawares. The cries of strange birds, the unwonted colour of some of them, all suggested to the imaginative or unaccustomed traveller the idea of war-whoops and painted deadly enemies. But at last they drew near to Salem, which rivalled Boston in size in those days, and boasted the names of one or two streets, although to an English eye they looked rather more like irregularly built houses, clustered round the meeting-house, or rather one of the meeting-houses, for a second was in process of building. The whole place was surrounded with two circles of stockades; between the two were the gardens and grazing-ground for those who dreaded their cattle straying into the woods, and the consequent danger of reclaiming them.

The lad who drove them flogged his spent horse into a trot, as they went through Salem to Ralph Hickson's house. It was evening, the leisure-time for the inhabitants, and their children were at play before the houses. Lois was struck by the beauty of one wee, toddling child, and turned to look after it; it caught its little foot in a stump of wood, and fell with a cry that brought the mother out in affright. As she ran out, her eye caught Lois' anxious gaze, although the noise of the heavy wheels drowned the sound of her words of inquiry as to the nature of the hurt the child had received. Nor had Lois time to think long upon the matter; for, the instant after, the horse was pulled up at the door of a good, square, substantial wooden house, plastered over into a creamy white, perhaps as handsome a house as any in Salem; and there she was told by the driver that her uncle, Ralph Hickson, lived. In the flurry of the moment she did not notice, but Captain Holdernesse did, that no one came out at the unwonted sound of wheels, to receive and welcome her. She was lifted down by the old sailor, and led into a large room, almost like the hall of some English manor-house as to size. A tall, gaunt young man of three or four-and-twenty sat on a bench by one of the windows, reading a great folio by the fading light of day. He did not rise when they came in, but looked at them with surprise, no gleam of intelligence coming into his stem, dark face. There was no woman in the house-place. Captain Holdernesse paused a moment, and then said -

'Is this house Ralph Hickson's?'

'It is,' said the young man, in a slow, deep voice. But he added no word further.

'This is his niece, Lois Barclay,' said the captain, taking the girl's arm, and pushing her forwards. The young man looked at her steadily and gravely for a minute; then rose, and carefully marking the page in the folio, which hitherto had laid open upon his knee, said, still in the same heavy, indifferent manner, 'I will call my mother; she will know.'

He opened a door which looked into a warm bright kitchen, ruddy with the light of the fire, over which three women were apparently engaged in cooking something, while a fourth, an old Indian woman, of a greenish-brown colour, shrivelled-up and bent with apparent age, moved backwards and forwards, evidently fetching the others the articles they required.

'Mother!' said the young man; and, having arrested her attention, he pointed over his shoulder to the newly-arrived strangers and returned to the study of his book, from time to time, however, furtively examining Lois from beneath his dark shaggy eyebrows.

A tall, largely-made woman, past middle life, came in from the kitchen, and stood reconnoitring the strangers.

Captain Holdernesse spoke -

'This is Lois Barclay, master Ralph Hickson's niece.'

'I know nothing of her,' said the mistress of the house in a deep voice, almost as masculine as her son's.

'Master Hickson received his sister's letter, did he not? I sent it off myself by a lad named Elias Wellcome, who left Boston for this place yester morning.'

'Ralph Hickson has received no such letter. He lies bed-ridden in the chamber beyond. Any letters for him must come through my hands; wherefore I can affirm with certainty that no such letter has been delivered here. His sister Barclay, she that was Henrietta Hickson, and whose husband took the oaths to Charles Stuart, and stuck by his living when all godly men left theirs' -

Lois, who had thought her heart was dead and cold, a minute before, at the ungracious reception she had met with, felt words come up into her mouth at the implied insult to her father, and spoke out, to her own and the captain's astonishment -

'They might be godly men who left their churches on that day of which you speak, madam; but they alone were not the godly men, and no one has a right to limit true godliness for mere opinion's sake.'

'Well said, lass,' spoke out the captain, looking round upon her with a kind of admiring wonder, and patting her on the back.

Lois and her aunt gazed into each other's eyes unflinchingly, for a minute or two of silence; but the girl felt her colour coming and going, while the elder woman's never varied; and the eyes of the young maiden were filling fast with tears, while those of Grace Hickson kept on their stare, dry and unwavering.

'Mother,' said the young man, rising up with a quicker motion than any one had yet used in this house, 'it is ill speaking of such matters when my cousin comes first among us. The Lord may give her grace hereafter; but she has travelled from Boston city today, and she and this seafaring man must need rest and food.'

He did not attend to see the effect of his words, but sat down again, and seemed to be absorbed in his book in an instant. Perhaps he knew that his word was law with his grim mother; for he had hardly ceased speaking before she had pointed to a wooden settle; and, smoothing the lines on her countenance, she said - 'What Manasseh says is true. Sit down here, while I bid Faith and Nattee get food ready; and meanwhile I will go tell my husband that one who calls herself his sister's child is come over to pay him a visit.'

She went to the door leading into the kitchen, and gave some directions to the elder girl, whom Lois now knew to be the daughter of the house. Faith stood impassive, while her mother spoke, scarcely caring to look at the newly-arrived strangers. She was like her brother Manasseh in complexion, but had handsomer features, and large, mysterious-looking eyes, as Lois saw, when once she lifted them up, and took in, as it were, the aspect of the sea-captain and her cousin with one swift, searching look. About the stiff, tall, angular mother, and the scarce less pliant figure of the daughter, a girl of twelve years old, or thereabouts, played all manner of impish antics, unheeded by them, as if it were her accustomed habit to peep about, now under their arms, now at this side, now at that, making grimaces all the while at Lois and Captain Holdernesse, who sat facing the door, weary, and somewhat disheartened by their reception. The captain pulled out tobacco, and began to chew it by way of consolation; but in a moment or two his usual elasticity of spirit came to his rescue, and he said in a low voice to Lois -

'That scoundrel Elias, I will give it him! If the letter had but been delivered, thou wouldst have had a different kind of welcome; but, as soon as I have had some victuals, I will go out and find the lad, and bring back the letter, and that will make all right, my wench. Nay, don't be down-hearted, for I cannot stand women's tears. Thou'rt just worn out with the shaking and the want of food.'

Lois brushed away her tears, and, looking round to try and divert her thoughts by fixing them on present objects, she caught her cousin Manasseh's deep-set eyes furtively watching her. It was with no unfriendly gaze; yet it made Lois uncomfortable, particularly as he did not withdraw his looks, after he must have seen that she observed him. She was glad when her aunt called her into an inner room to see her uncle, and she escaped from the steady observance of her gloomy, silent cousin.

Ralph Hickson was much older than his wife, and his illness made him look older still. He had never had the force of character that Grace, his spouse, possessed; and age and sickness had now rendered him almost childish at times. But his nature was affectionate; and, stretching out his trembling arms from whence he lay bedridden, he gave Lois an unhesitating welcome, never waiting for the confirmation of the missing letter before he acknowledged her to be his niece.

'Oh! 'tis kind in thee to come all across the sea to make acquaintance with thine uncle; kind in sister Barclay to spare thee!'

Lois had to tell him, there was no one living to miss her at home in England; that, in fact, she had no home in England, no father nor mother left upon earth; and that she had been bidden by her mother's last words to seek him out and ask him for a home. Her words came up, half choked from a heavy heart, and his dulled wits could not take in their meaning without several repetitions; and then he cried like a child, rather at his own loss of a sister whom he had not seen for more than twenty years, than at that of the orphan's, standing before him, trying hard not to cry, but to start bravely in this new strange home. What most of all helped Lois in her self-restraint was her aunt's unsympathetic look. Born and bred in New England, Grace Hickson had a kind of jealous dislike to her husband's English relations, which had increased since of late years his weakened mind yearned after them; and he forgot the good reason he had had for his self-exile, and moaned over the decision which had led to it as the great mistake of his life. 'Come,' said she; 'it strikes me that, in all this sorrow for the loss of one who died full of years, ye are forgetting in Whose hands life and death are!'

True words, but ill-spoken at that time. Lois looked up at her with a scarcely disguised indignation; which increased as she heard the contemptuous tone in which her aunt went on talking to Ralph Hickson, even while she was arranging his bed with a regard to his greater comfort.

'One would think thou wert a godless man, by the moan thou art always making over spilt milk; and truth is, thou art but childish in thine old age. When we were wed, thou left all things to the Lord; I would never have married thee else. Nay, lass,' said she, catching the expression on Lois's face, 'thou art never going to browbeat me with thine angry looks. I do my duty as I read it, and there is never a man in Salem that dare speak a word to Grace Hickson about either her works or her faith. Godly Mr Cotton Mather hath said, that even he might learn of me; and I would advise thee rather to humble thyself, and see if the Lord may not convert thee from thy ways, since He has sent thee to dwell, as it were, in Zion, where the precious dew fails daily on Aaron's beard.'

Lois felt ashamed and sorry to find that her aunt had so truly interpreted the momentary expression of her features; she blamed herself a little for the feeling that had caused that expression, trying to think how much her aunt might have been troubled with something, before the unexpected irruption of the strangers, and again hoping that the remembrance of this misunderstanding would soon pass away. So she endeavoured to reassure herself, and not to give way to her uncle's tender trembling pressure of her hand, as, at her aunt's bidding, she wished him 'goodnight', and returned into the outer, or 'keeping' -room, where all the family were now assembled, ready for the meal of flourcakes and venison steaks which Nattee, the Indian servant, was bringing in from the kitchen. No one seemed to have been speaking to Captain Holdernesse, while Lois had been away. Manasseh sat quiet and silent where he did, with the book open upon his knee; his eyes thoughtfully fixed on vacancy, as if he saw a vision, or dreamed dreams. Faith stood by the table, lazily directing Nattee in her preparations; and Prudence lofted against the door-frame, between kitchen and keeping-room, playing tricks on the old Indian woman, as she passed backwards and forwards, till Nattee appeared to be in a state of strong irritation, which she tried in vain to suppress; as, whenever she showed any sign of it, Prudence only seemed excited to greater mischief. When all was ready, Manasseh lifted his right hand and 'asked a blessing,' as it was termed; but the grace became a long prayer for abstract spiritual blessings, for strength to combat Satan, and to quench his fiery darts, and at length assumed - so Lois thought - a purely personal character, as if the young man had forgotten the occasion, and even the people present, but was searching into the nature of the diseases that beset his own sick soul, and spreading them out before the Lord. He was brought back by a pluck at the coat from Prudence; he opened his shut eyes, cast an angry glance at the child, who made a face at him for sole reply, and then he sat down, and they all fell to. Grace Hickson would have thought her hospitality sadly at fault, if she had allowed Captain Holdernesse to go out in search of a bed. Skins were spread for him on the floor of the keeping-room; a Bible and a square bottle of spirits were placed on the table to supply his wants during the night; and, in spite of all the cares and troubles, temptations, or sins of the members of that household, they were all asleep before the town clock struck ten.

In the morning, the captain's first care was to go out in search of the boy Elias and the missing letter. He met him bringing it with an easy conscience, for, thought Elias, a few hours sooner or later will make no difference; tonight or the morrow morning will be all the same. But he was startled into a sense of wrong-doing, by a sound box on the ear from the very man who had charged him to deliver it speedily, and whom he believed to be at that very moment in Boston city.

The letter delivered, all possible proof being given that Lois had a right to claim a home from her nearest relations, Captain Holdernesse thought it best to take leave.

'Thou'lt take to them, lass, maybe, when there is no one here to make thee think on the old country. Nay, nay! parting is hard work at all times, and best get hard work done out of hand! Keep up thine heart, my wench, and I'll come back and see thee next spring, if we are all spared till then; and who knows what fine young miller mayn't come with me? Don't go and get wed to a praying Puritan, meanwhile! There, there; I'm off. God bless thee!'

And Lois was left alone in New England.

#Elizabeth Gaskell #Spooktober #gothic #gothic stories #historical literature #books and libraries

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admelioraii · 2 years

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Baiae; where the privileged of the Roman upper class indulged in shady affairs

The Ancient Roman Thermal Resort That Got Punished by Its Blessings

Tempio di Venere a Baia (19th century). Image source: WikimediaCommons.

During Roman times the upper classes had the extravagant habit of searching for elegant and expensive places outside the busy Roman capital, where they purchased fancy villas and luxurious mansions in which they spent their holidays and free time. They fancied spending some quality time far from Rome’s busy, noisy, and dusty metropolis, closer to the countryside in a place for relaxation and pleasure.

Wealthy Romans settled for Capri, Pompeii and Herculaneum. But there was one place that was far more exclusive and classy than the rest of the resorts, it was Baia or Baiae reckoned far superior and fashionable and the visitors that frequented the stylish and trendy thermal resort together with its residents in possession of lavish villas on its beaches and shores were of far higher status. It was the most privileged of the privileged of the Roman upper class, its “Elite”, and the affairs they were indulged in would prove to be far more illicit, shady and sinister than anywhere in the Roman Empire.

In Rome, nothing escaped the watchful eye of the powerful senate, which held an iron grip on Rome and its political leaders. But in Baiae, things were different, it was a place where everything was possible, here things happened through corruption, manipulation and bribes.

Baiae’s Potentials

Roman ruins in Baiae, Italy. Image source: flickr.

From the beginning, Baiae wasn’t but an ancient, small, and insignificant Roman town on the northwest shore of the Gulf of Naples. But it was its temperate climate and famous mineral springs that first attracted the high Roman nobles to its shores.

With time it turned into a highly fashionable and popular holiday resort for the Roman Elite. Its caldera peppered coast and the proximity to Naples worked like an on Rome’s ultra-wealthy who took weekend trips here to party.

They were fascinated by Baiae’s thermal heated spas and mosaic-covered pools which created an amazing atmosphere where they could indulge their wildest desires. Here is where they came to carry out illicit affairs, more than 2000 years ago.

Baiae was located directly above a collection of natural volcanic vents which were famously acknowledged for their healing medicinal hot springs. The abundance of these hot springs soon created a grand collection of thermal baths as constructing these spas was easy thanks to the already existing natural springs. The public and private baths of Baiae were filled with naturally warm mineral water directed to the pools from the underground hot springs thanks to the Roman engineers who were able to construct a complex system of chambers that channelled underground heat into facilities that acted as saunas.

Temple of Mercury, Baiae. Image source: WikimediaCommons.

In addition to their recreational function, the baths were used in Roman medicine, to treat various illnesses, and physicians would attend to their patients at the springs. Baiae was supplied with fresh drinking water from a branch of the Aqua Augusta aqueduct; a cross-section of which can be seen nearby. The water was led via pipelines to an enormous cistern called “Piscina Mirabilis”, this gigantic freshwater cistern provided the whole city of ultra-rich upper-class citizens with fresh water.

Historical Figures in Baiae

There are many tales of intrigue surrounding Baiae, one resident is said to have constructed a Nymphaeum*, surrounded by marble statues and a private grotto dedicated exclusively to earthly pleasures. The guests would gather around the pools not only to bathe but also to have their dinner served as it came floating on enormous dishes down the water in the pools.

*The Nymphaeum served as a sanctuary, a recevoir and a chamber where weddings were held.

Sex scandals were everyday life, and old men came here to become young. Julius Caesar is said to have owned a magnificent mansion in the area, and after he was murdered, Cleopatra is said to have escaped in a boat from Baiae’s shores. Rulers such as Nero and Cicero had their pleasure palaces here and Haridian is said to have died on his property in this city in 138 AD.

The Hemicycle Nymphaeum Theatre, Archaeological park of Baiae. Image source: flickr.

Another dark story is the one when Julia Agrippina plotted her husband’s murder, so her son Nero could become Emperor, on these grounds. She poisoned Claudius with deadly mushrooms, but when he somehow survived the attempt Agrippina got her physician to administer a portion of poisonous wild gourd, which finally did the trick.

Baiae was known to be a prominent high-class resort for centuries, it catered the whims among the Roman Elite, it was, therefore, to expect its notorious reputation for its many hedonistic offerings together with widespread rumours of corruption and scandals. The reason the offerings were frequent was due to the fact that the city rested on natural springs, places that were prone to become offering sites in antiquity.

Baiae’s Connection to the Underworld

Sulphurous gas in a volcanic entrance to the underworld. Image source: Pxhere.

The calderas were revered by the Ancient Greeks and Romans as entrances to the underworld and thus had magical powers. But there is also a downside to this. Being close to the underworld means you are close to the gods, they will easily hear your prayers but somewhere on the “Phlegraean Fields” or flaming fields there was an opening guiding you to a long and complex underground tunnel network, it would lead you to the Great Antrum deep down in the ground. The Antrum was the portal to the cave leading to the underworld, through its opening flowed rivers of fire, the fabled rivers of Hades: The Styx and the Phlegethon “rivers of fire”, that boiled the souls of the departed.

Even among many mysteries of the ancient world, the great Antrum on the bay of Naples surely remains among the most intriguing. But the circumstances around the resort also encouraged technological advancements such as the local invention of waterproof cement. A cement that consisted of a mixture of volcanic rock and limestone, it prompted the construction of private fish ponds and lavish bathhouses. Most opulent villas had their own fish farm for their private consumption, but as the seawater in the pool quickly evaporated on hot days, it would become saltier and endanger the fish living in it.

The solution they came up with was to supply the ponds with fresh water, during hot summer days, to reduce the saltiness of the pond and prevent the fish from dying. Oysters were hung by the sea in nets, bound together by a rope, just as it is done today, which makes it easy to get to the oysters.

The area known to the Romans as “Phlegraean Fields” is the region containing the calderas and underground tunnel system that form part of a volcano, the twin of mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. It once possessed a crater that measured 13 km (eight miles) across, but most of it is underwater now. The flaming fields contain a total of 24 volcanoes which together with the calderas defined the landscape, ironically it was a fitting name.

Baiae’s Downfall

Remains of the Underwater Archaeological Park of Baiae. Image source: WikimediaCommons.

Given Baiae’s sinful reputation it was perhaps paradoxical that the abundant volcanic activity which was the reason for its rise also became its downfall. Over several centuries, bradyseism, the repeated and gradual fall and rise of the Earth’s surface, caused both by hydrothermal and seismic activity as a result much of the city sank into its watery grave, where it sits today. After having seen an aerial photo, taken in the 1940s, rumours started to spread about parts of a hillside with edifices, which had disappeared into the sea.

Twenty years later submarines scanning the area found the lost city, lost since Roman times. Underground pressure had caused the land surrounding Baiae to continuously rise and fall pushing the ancient city’s ruins upwards to the surface only to once again swallow them back into the sea, exactly like a kind of geological purgatory!

It was because of the undulation of the earth, the ruins still lie in relatively shallow waters. But not everything was swallowed by the sea, parts of the city partly escaped the punishment, and a portion of the old resort is still accessible on land; it consists of a barren rubble-strewn plateau. As a consolation, many of the sunken sculptures were actually replicas of the originals that can still be found up on the hill by Baiae Castle.

Fire burst from the rocks in places and clouds of sulphurous gas snakes out of vents leading up from the deep underground. However, the modern Baiae is but a shadow of what it once was, the part remaining on land is surrounded by a hot, smelly sulphurous gas and the part swallowed by the sea is perpetually punished in purgatory. The same forces that once made Baiae so attractive in the first place were to become the ones that destroyed it.

#history #writers on tumblr #writblr #writers #original content #travel #italy #roman #ancient rome #nero #julius caesar #cicero #julia agrippina #baiae #ancient history #resort

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heartsleevemag · 6 months

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REVIEW: Zooey Celeste explores sonic and mortal transition on debut full-length, Restless Thoughts

by Shea Roney

Reaching through the haze and darkly obscene adventure that is Restless Thoughts, stands Zooey Celeste. As an embodiment of the creator’s alter-ego, the astral shaman known as Zooey Celeste is here to lead the newly departed to whatever lies beyond this enchanting world he has created. With this debut full-length, coming from a novel that he is writing simultaneously alongside the songs, Zooey teams up with producer and friend Nick Hakim (Lil Yachty, Lianne La Havas) to excavate this physical world into the multitudes of strange outer places.

The album begins its pilgrimage with “Effortless”, an ethereal tune that stands apart from Zooey’s nostalgic voice and the wistfulness of the backdrop. With swooning lines like, “From way up in the heavens / To the underground / I thought I saw you screaming / With Your voice unfound,” “Effortless” sets the stage for a unique and unrestrained journey. The world's first introduction to Zooey Celeste’s Restless Thoughts was through the debut and title-tracked single that follows the opener. What begins as a subtlety of avant-punk drum tracks and lo-fi guitar drones, becomes a dark comprehension of eternal conflict. As Zooey sings, “Why can't we just live alone / And why can't we just get along gently,” the track takes a dark turn to self destruction. With Zooey’s hypnotic, baritone voice, there is a degree of pleading that is beautifully portrayed and heavily felt.

There is of course darkness that lies within this odyssey that we learn only Zooey can help us comprehend. “Running All Night,” driven by beautiful chord voicings and minor intonations, is a sinister lo-fi track that shines in its simplicity. “Torture Me” is a melodic diddy that is light in rhythm and melody, but weighed down by the unsubtle torment. “Walk By,” an industrial chamber-pop song, is determined to guide us to our next storyline destination. With the hauntingly cathartic chorus of, “Walk beside me,” otherworldly elements come into vision. With a strange yet established folky backdrop, “God Awful” is a poppy exchange of honesty for acceptance. With steady guitar chunks and clappy drum beats, the track acts as the bridge between humanistic faults and the purity of the great beyond.

One of the emotional highpoints of the album comes from the track “Cosmic Being.” Having had it as a voice memo for years, Hakim has turned it into a deliberate song of heartbreak and promises. With a rich piano track drenched in lo-fi guitar and drums, Zooey’s vocals reach a height of desperation. “Comeback”, a track dedicated to love, finds textures in lo-fi arrangements and saxophone squeals. “Big Trouble,” accompanied by friend Tei Shi, is a track of funked up basslines and ethereal composure that allows space for the vocal features. Just as this futuristic dance track drops off, it returns with a fortified groove to parade out the remaining instrumental characters.

The album comes to a cinematic conclusion with “Stay Up.” One of the most sonically sparse tracks on the record, “Stay Up” is composed of heavy, staccato string arrangements and raw vocal tracks. Without dropping the poppy melodies, Zooey finds comfort in getting a second chance despite all of his internal dilemmas. As the album comes to a close, we reach the end of our journey with a collage of sounds as Zooey disappears from our earthly senses.

Restless Thoughts drops tomorrow, Friday, November 10. For now, you can stream "Big Trouble" wherever you listen to music, and be sure to follow Zooey Celeste to get to know more about the album and stay updated on his live performances.

#zooey celeste #tei shi #nick hakim #album release #new music #music release #new artist #debut album #music #musician #heartsleeve magazine #music publication #new music friday #new releases #music review #by shea roney #Spotify

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lionellistuff · 11 months

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June 13, Kiyomizudera temple and geisha show

Today we visited a huge temple in the eastern corner of Kyoto called Kiyomizu dera, which means pure water temple. The temple was actually a sprawling complex of smaller temples, which culminate at the altar of the Bodhisattva of Kannon which has about 1,000 hands.

This was such a fun temple to visit, not least because of the beautiful scenery. Japan is rich in vegetation during the summer, and all of the hydrangeas are in full bloom right now. Graves and statues covered in bright green moss can be found everywhere you turn, and the cool mountain air provides much needed relief from the heat. I got my fortune told (I have “just okay” luck 😐), and I bought a charm for wealth.

Later today, I stumbled onto a temple commemorating international war dead and unkown soldiers who died during WWII. At the center of the temple there is a giant 80 foot tall statue of Buddha and a reflecting pool. I highly recommend it.

Academic reflection

One may note that the Bodhisattva of Kannon is male, but also has a womb, which you can enter at the temple, and cast aside all of one’s earthly attachments and be reborn. It is a small chamber which is completely darkened, eventually it takes you to your rebirth. In Buddhism, Bodhisattvas can come in many forms, so a male bodhisattva can have a womb. Evidence that Buddhism is truly a religion, not a philosophy.

I enjoyed today’s geisha performance as well. While geishas were once hired as the entertainment and mistresses of wealthy businessmen, today, they are the keepers of Japan’s traditional arts. Yes, they are still around today. I find it so interesting that Japan did not separate the indulgent and sinful from the artistic and culturally refined until the modern era. While geishas were promiscuous as part of their work, they were also expected to be literate, able to compose and appreciate poetry, play various instruments, and dance. I particularly liked the Koto (琴) performance, which is a type of Japanese zither.

Seeing Gion which is one of the oldest parts of Kyoto was a treat. Vendors lined the stone roads, and one can occasionally see pairs of Geisha traversing this area. As Japan was modernizing, some proprietors built schools to turn geisha into productive and self sufficient citizens, but as time went on, geisha, and especially prostitutes were denied access to such education.

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cosmicangel888 · 1 year

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The Richest on Our Planet ~ be Known of Thyself ~ 5D

The richest on the planet is that which is nature

The most elegant and graceful of wisdoms, and knowing, knowledge and divine intelligence is of nature; yet we degrade, we ignore, we think we have dominance over; the arrogance of the lower mind, aching for power, aching for brute force and such grace is not.

The richest on our planet is that of the silent student, the one that listens, observes, offers in elegance of the twisted words coded in what is unseen; for that which stops the monkey mind and softens the heart - if you are not a student you cannot be wise.

If you are not in honour of the earth, you simply will not be of divine intelligence, this is the way of our offerings, of Sources blessings - the song of the song, the notes between breath, there is always engagement and ones value and importance is not in any other study

Grace

Happy Mothers Day to the ones that loving and adoringly watch, faithfully inspire, devotedly honour and pray over and sing softly to;

Mothers of the divine - our own story is now, you are all loved for your loving grace to never give up and stand in your own truth of honesty and birthing an integris world for generations of children to play upon

Innocents the innocence, is to each, this is our birthright and to be ambassadors of such,

#richnessofspirit #5Dearth #5Dwisdoms #Source #life

My heart is so rich, the Arcturian's that have loved me, healed my heart in chambers of light, and song. The children of the Heavens I prepare your earth for times of our future singing, and the trees of life and laying of the lands we seeds now, the wishes of pure love so pure that brings tears with rushing pace; I wish this all for you

Song to the Ones Unseen;

The peace and the grace of a new time, in which you breathe and pleasantly as you treasure your pockets and bank ID's, and you adore the children without taking and raping them, this I wish for all; how the bellies have been fed and not honoured in such fullness;

How the Lands have been stopped from growing and stomped on in the ugliness of taking and pillaging for the win, better, glossing over the sacredness of the dandelion growing in the clutter;

The sacred is here, always within - I wish you breath to see, to know, the richness and of the Pleiadian blood I am, the senseless slaughter brings sobbing to my rich heart and sacred eyes, so tired I still arise, to call forth the awaking ones so bloated from falseness and lies of sway, agenda's of prey, and I walk in my Sirian skin the ones that help lift me when I fall, and appear from no where to all places, they are my song unheard and the ones that hold me when I cry ~ alone I have been and so is the journey of the time traveller, to new worlds of healing and missions, anew that be the sacred land for all to seek, explore and experience the richness of true wealth -

The beings of forms and richness that most will simply never know, you have healed my cells, blood, body from eons of the same raping, thinking I am owed to another - I bow in your grace of love for me and the richness of celestial song I bring for you - we are comrades - I love you. You have been my steady friend and kind one that walks in front of and behind me; ensuring of my safety and richness of the grounds I seed; you are my blessing and I You;

I hope I have made you proud and I hope I have sung your threads of honesty and joy into these sands and soils;

My genius is the unseen, unknown, and only earthly words cannot truly tell, paint nor write, for there is ecstasy in the grace of God, a God beyond Gods, of essence that is breath, the movement of all new birth, life, sacred and true.

One never realizes how truly sacred and rich life is and can be until it Is snatched and by the grace of God, it is breathed back into you for a new dawn; awaken dear child of the cosmos; how shall you live now?

Be the silent, be the calm, this is the richness of embodied change

And so be the mother of all Mothers awakening to playful hearts and in remembrances of the sacred song, blissful nights, caress the sacred child upon the foreheads of pristine knowing, and kiss the earth that houses you - sacred living is such, a gentle touch, the truth that ripples lands unknown to ignite the heart forgotten, Ⓒ

I am the wind and off I go again ~

Blessings of all earth

Joanna

#mothersDay #mycelestialFamily

#ascensionbooks

Lift Off,

#ascension #lightworkers #sacredlife #sacredchildren

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guzhuangheaven · 3 years

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do you know what weddings were like for princes and princesses in the qing dynasty?

Most of this is based on information about Emperor Guangxu’s wedding to Empress Longyu. Obviously the emperor’s wedding is a lot more elaborate, but weddings of princes and princesses should be somewhat the same.

Sources: 1, 2, also Vietnamese book: Những người đàn bà của hoàng đế, Hướng Tư (2003), NXB Văn hóa – Thông tin

Normal people’s weddings during the Qing dynasty would consist of the following six ceremonies:

Proposal 纳采 nacai

Asking for the bride’s name and birthday 问名 wenming

Visit the fortune teller (to ensure that bride and groom’s birthdates are compatible 纳吉 naji

Prepare and send wedding gifts 纳征 nazheng

Choosing a ceremony date 请期 qingqi

Wedding ceremony 亲迎 qinying

For the emperor, this is reduced down to basically :

nacai

nazheng (for the emperor, it is called dazheng 大征, because the emperor’s marriage is referred to as the “great marriage” 大婚 dahun)

wedding ceremony combined with the investiture of the empress (in the cases of Shunzhi, Kangxi, Tongzhi, Guangxu who came to the throne before they were married)

(The whole things to do with asking for the birthdate and checking whether it’s compatible is pretty redundant considering if you are chosen to marry the emperor, you have already gone through the xiunv selection process which is pretty much the same thing.)

Timeline for Guangxu’s marriage:

2nd day 11th month 14th year of Guangxu era: proposal (nacai)

4th day 12th month 14th year: sending wedding gift (dazheng)

26th day 1st month 15th year: announce the betrothal to Heaven and Earth and the ancestral shrines

27th day 1st month 15th year: the empress enters the palace (fengying 凤迎, 凤 phoenix refers to the empress), investiture of the empress and wedding ceremony

2nd day 2nd month 15th year: ceremony of the empress paying respects to Empress Dowager Cixi (chaojian 朝见)

In normal weddings, the groom and/or his parents would present the betrothal/wedding gifts to the bride’s family himself, and then on the wedding day, the groom would go to the bride’s home to pick her up. However, as the emperor is considered too high and mighty to do any of that himself, for all these ceremonies, he would appoint several representatives consisting of one main commissioner (正使 zhengshi) and at least one deputy commissioner (副使 fushi) to carry out these tasks for him. These commissioners would be chosen among the princes or high-ranking officials close to the emperor.

Legend of Ruyi: Fu Heng being the zhengshi at Qian Long’s wedding to Ruyi, because nothing says fuck you true love like getting the brother of your dead first wife to be your proxy at the wedding to your second wife, whom your first wife hated and spent her last breaths more or less cursing. No wonder Fu Heng looks so happy.

(This appointment was historically accurate, but considering Langhua and Ruyi's relationship in this drama, this is such an asshole move. Fu Heng was the zhengshi at the investiture of the Step Empress into the position of Imperial Noble Consort as well.)

Nacai (proposal)

During the proposal ceremony, the commissioners will present betrothal gifts to the bride’s family. For Guangxu’s marriage, betrothal gifts consisted of four horses with saddles; ten suits of armour; one hundred bolts of brocade in yellow, red, orange, indigo, blue; and two hundred bolts of fabric, along with gold and silver household items. The horses and armour represent the Manchurian history of conquering China through martial prowess.

Afterwards, an engagement banquet is held at the bride’s house, prepared by the Imperial Tea Kitchen of the palace and at the expense of the imperial palace as a thank you to the bride’s family for raising her.

Dazheng (sending wedding gifts)

Wedding gifts will consist of gifts to members of the bride’s family, as well as items for the bride’s use after marriage. There is so much of it, tl;dr: they stupidly rich, Mr Darcy got nothing on them.

If you can read Vietnamese, here is the list of wedding gifts given for Guangxu’s wedding. This goes on for literally three more pages. I’m not translating it because my eyes glazes over every third line of jade descriptions.

Wedding and investiture of empress

On the wedding day, the emperor’s commissioners would take the emperor’s proclamation to create the empress, along with the empress’ golden book (金册) and golden seal (金宝), the physical manifestations of the empress’ power, to present to the bride.

Empress's golden book 金册 in Legend of Ruyi

Empress's golden seal 金宝 from the Palace Museum

The bride then will be brought into the palace on a golden palanquin (called 凤舆 fengyu) through the middle gate of the Meridian Gate into the palace.

Painting of Emperor Guangxu's wedding 光绪皇帝大婚图

During the journey, the bride would carry a ruyi scepter and an apple, both representing auspiciousness and peace.

Ruyi scepters were essential in imperial weddings. During the Qing dynasty, four emperors were married in the Forbidden City after their enthronement. Their weddings were luxurious spectacles and had fixed rituals. The Qing Palace Archives record the following:

On the eve of the wedding, the Grand Minister in Command of the Guard, Commissioner of the Imperial Procession Guard and their entourage carried the empress's sedan from the middle of the Gate of Heavenly Purity (Qianqing men) and placed it in the Palace of Heavenly Purity (Qianqing gong). Dispatched to receive the bride were four court ladies of high rank dressed in red were commanded to place inside the sedan chair a ruyi scepter and a scroll with the character for dragon (long) written by the emperor. Then these ladies as well as some female attendants of the Imperial Household Department prepared the bridal chamber and the bridal bed called "dragon and phoenix bed". The four ladies also set four ruyi scepters on the bed, one at each corner.

During the wedding, officials presented their gifts which all included a pair of ruyi scepters. They were also included in princesses' dowry. The Qianlong Emperor gave his daughter Hexiao Princess a set of nine pieces, and her husband a Ruyi with turquoise inlay. (x)

ruyi scepter

Apple is pingguo 苹果 which sounds the same as ping as in pingan 平安 (peaceful).

(full post)

Once reaching the steps of Qian Qing Gong (Palace of Heavenly Purity, the seat of the emperor), the bride will hand over the ruyi and apple, and then hold a golden jar (ping) and step over a brazier of coals, signalling burning away any bad luck.

Ruyi and Xiyue carrying jars (ping) as a symbol of luck on their wedding day

From Qian Qing Gong she makes her way to Kun Ning Gong (Palace of Earthly Tranquility), which is traditionally the seat of the empress of the Ming and Qing dynasties and were all weddings of emperors took place. Before entering Kun Ning Gong, she would also need to step over a horse saddle - 鞍, pronounced an, as in pingan 平安.

Not mentioned in the description of Guangxu’s wedding, but there is also another ritual where the groom would shoot three arrows at a target as a symbol of luck.

Qing dynasty royal weddings take place at night. During Guangxu’s wedding, Empress Longyu entered the her bridal sedan chair and departed her home at around 11:45pm, and reached the palace at around 4:45am, because walking ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hejin 合卺

Hejin is the ceremony after the bride enters the bridal chamber, and the bride and groom drink a cup of wine together and share a meal, signalling the start of their married life.

卺 originally refers to splitting a hulu gourd in half, and 合卺 means to bring the two halves together, which is why in earlier dynasties you will see couples drinking their wedding wine out of two halves of a hulu gourd.

Afterwards there would also be a banquet at Taihe Dian (Hall of Supreme Harmony).

Chaojian 朝见

Normally the day after the wedding, the bride would pay respects to her in-laws by going to greet them, serve them tea and wine. With Guangxu’s wedding, this ceremony didn’t happen until several days later because they needed to wait for an auspicious day™.

See also:

Attend The Grand Wedding of the Guangxu Emperor

The Grand Wedding of China's Last Emperor

#ask #reference #wedding #qing dynasty #culture #etiquette #legend of ruyi #this is an extremely abridged description #but hopefully you get the idea #there are tons of other ceremonies around the investiture of an empress #but seriously just watch ruyi for that #it's probably a good enough representation

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burlveneer-music · 3 years

Audio

Alex Eddington - A Present from a Small Distant World - electronic / chamber music / art song suite; if I ever do another “voices” mix this will surely be in it (Redshift Music)

Toronto composer Alex Eddington's unorthodox debut album A Present from a Small Distant World is many different things all at once. Sometimes dark, sometimes downright silly, certain moments bear a resemblance to traditional art song, whereas on other occasions Eddington unfurls strange synthetic textures. Its uncharacteristically broad aesthetic reach is matched by its temporal span. Traversing — and often revisiting — music from the past 18 years, it serves as a portrait of his close collaborative relationship with soprano Kristin Mueller-Heaslip, who plays a number of different protagonists throughout the album. While its nearly two-decade coverage accounts for a certain amount of the album's gleeful heterogeneity, this can also be attributed to its underlying inspiration, which is revealed in the opening cut. There a faded-xerox-choir of Mueller-Heaslips intones Jimmy Carter's 1977 speech that launched the Voyager spacecraft and its so-called Golden Record—a phonographic disc containing an encyclopedic dog's breakfast of earthly texts, images, and music—into space. "The chances that an alien civilization will intercept and decode the record are not high," explains Eddington, "but there is something wonderful about sending greetings hurtling outward." Of course, A Present from a Small Distant World makes no pretenses of being as ambitious or all-encompassing as its golden counterpart. Its relationship to it lies more in this spirit of interstellar benevolence; the ramifications of putting a document of one's world out into the unknown. That being said, Eddington has managed to cram quite a bit of information onto this disc. Shakespeare receives a forlorn solitary voice treatment, whereas the titular beloved children's author is cast as a set of feverish genre-hopping cabaret songs on Eddington's celebrated Dennis Lee Songs. His episodic treatment of Yeats lunges between slow, hovering minimalism and moments of perverse word-painting. Time Will Erase (featuring a text authored by Mueller-Heaslip) is billed as a chamber opera for soprano and alto saxophone and draws upon Eddington's background as a playwright and actor to spin richness from its spartan resources (and—crucially—silence.) Its libretto, authored by Mueller-Heaslip frames a poem written by its subject, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Scintillator's gibberish text, on the other hand was excavated from Eddington's spam folder. Mueller-Heaslip imbues it with maximum urgency, her intensity only magnified by searing electronic effects that Eddington integrated for this recording. INTERSTELLAR / To the Makers of Music, continues this electronic trajectory, and offers the culmination of the brief and cryptic miniatures scattered throughout the album. Where Eddington's scores for these short guitar-and-electronics interjections are collages of chopped-up morse code and Bach, the grainy synthesized sound foreshadow his recent move toward noisier terrain. Meanwhile as the album concludes the aforementioned multi-tracked chorus of Kristins returns atop the electric furries and gnarly guitar to sing the words etched onto the Golden Record itself, "To the makers of music: all worlds, all times." (Nick Storring)

Composer: Alex Eddington www.AlexEddington.com Vocals: Kristin Mueller-Heaslip Saxophone: Jennifer Tran Piano: Elaine Lau, Joseph Ferretti Guitar: Daniel Ramjattan Electronics: Alex Eddington

#Alex Eddington #modern classical #art song #female vocal #canada #chamber music #electronic #experimental

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spookyspaghettisundae · 3 years

Text

Awaiting the Thirteenth

The warrior looked over his comrades but did not dwell on the sights and sounds and smells for too long. One of them had wet his loincloth, the other smelled of feces. The chorus of their pained groans and cries pierced the empty blue sky.

Removing the serrated arrowheads from their flesh had left them bleeding profusely, and the few minutes left in their lives would soon pass without grace. How unfortunate that they would not make it, one might say.

Cowering behind a tall boulder, the single only uninjured warrior tried to spot where the sharpshooter stood exactly. Deadly rain in form of arrows had hailed upon them from the old tower jutting out of the rocky ravine. And the archer hid. He hid well.

Muttering that he would be back to save them, the warrior ducked between other jagged stones and approached the tower with more caution. His dying comrades protested and begged for help, but he uttered an empty promise of return.

Greed and a selfish drive for survival kept his mind on the prize. And mourn not for those he left behind, for they would have done the same.

Where stone proved too low to guarantee cover from more arrows, the warrior crawled through the dirt and gravel like a worm. It took him underneath stone jutting out over a ditch and allowed him to near his goal with painful slowness. By the time he reached the yellowed sandstone walls of the old tower, he was caked in dust, closely resembling a ghost, far removed from the labored sounds of pain from his dying companions.

He hugged the walls with his back, his dagger drawn. Craning his neck to watch and await a sign from the archer, such as him poking his head out of any of the narrow windows lining the tower’s face, the warrior slowly paced around the tower to find a gate, or portal, or another passageway.

But no form of entrance had shown itself by the time he circled fully around the entire foot of the tower. Confusion marked his face like many brave adventurers before him. How difficult it was for him to imagine a place not built for such a common man.

He sheathed his dagger and began his perilous climb, finding many a hold in the crumbling stonework.

Stifling his own grunts as he took a small eternity to ascend half the tower’s height, he chanced upon a window wide enough for him to clamber inside.

His blade emerged again from his side, gleaming with the bright rays of sunlight pouring in through the open roof. Ready for the vicious archer who had shot down his companions with such ease.

Holding his breath, he could hear no foe within the tower’s premises, only his own racing heartbeat, pumping blood through his ears and making his entire body thrum.

But the archer awaited here, kneeling before the altar in prayer, muttering incomprehensible babble. Surrounded by statues of the agents of Old Ones, shaped in unpleasant ways to display their many wings and spidery limbs and bristly thorns that appeared so alien in this world and its clueless denizens. The archer truly hoped for blessings of the uncaring Old Ones, or for emissaries such as those depicted in the obsidian sculptures to finally arrive by his side, oblivious of what purpose this tower served or how his prayers always landed on deaf ears.

No, the archer was oblivious in every way. Oblivious of the warrior who had scaled the tower like the archer had before him, all driven by their individual quests for riches and fame, quick to slay their fellow man and hardened far beyond remorse.

The warrior stood at the edge of a wide, circular room, lined with mirrors and statues fashioned from obsidian or black crystal. Dark marble so polished and smooth that it reflected all sights in the light that poured in from the wide-open ceiling.

The archer mistakenly believed the warrior and his comrades to be dying outside, succumbing to the wounds struck by the cruel arrows of his own make.

The warrior almost managed to ambush the archer, but a piece of gravel that his fur boots had tracked inside the tower now scraped against the smooth floor and then crunched. The archer stopped muttering his pointless prayers. Having lost the element of surprise, the warrior sprung into motion. So did the archer.

The clash of steel resounded in this holy hall once more. In a flash, the archer had forsaken his bow for a short blade of his own. After three sharp clangs that accompanied blade striking blade, the two paced and circled around each other like scorpions, stepping sideways continuously and waiting for the right opportunity to sting with the deadly weapons in their hands.

Both had ended countless lives in their greed-fueled adventures, so callous were they. No sign of flinching, no hint of retreat. Two men locked in combat and ready to end one another’s life.

Not even their precious prize distracted them now. Before completing a full circle, the warrior lunged at the archer. Blades clanged again, deflecting swing after stab after swing. The archer retaliated with a deft counterattack and stopped, dead in his tracks.

Blood trickled down the blade from his armpit, running down the hand of the warrior who had come to take his prize from him. The archer’s knees buckled before his fate could truly sink fully into his consciousness, but the warrior kicked him away from himself. Driven by survival instinct and fury, he pounced on the archer and delivered more stabs to end his life with certainty.

Chest heaving, breathing heavily, the warrior slowly rose from the body of his defeated foe, the enemy’s blood still dripping from his dagger. Slowly, he wondered if he had not rather kept the archer alive and drawn his demise out longer, inflicting worse upon him than an undeservedly swift death. Why is it that mankind obsesses with revenge that eclipses the deeds preceding it?

Long must he have stood there, catching his breath, fully absorbing the dizzying exhilaration of surviving his deadly combat. That was when the greed returned.

As it always did.

Drinking in the details of this chamber, his mind caught a glimpse of clarity. A brief reprieve. While the purpose of this tower eluded him far better than his opponent’s flesh had failed to evade his blade, the warrior now began to fathom some of the circumstances surrounding his slain foe.

The archer’s meager belongings rested in a corner, wrapped in ragged cloth and hides. These items bore only few clues to his sleeping and eating habits, suggesting the life of a monk who rarely ventured outside the tower to hunt and feast upon raw flesh, and retreat to this chamber to pray and sleep. But to what he prayed, only the eerie statues and indecipherable runes knew, for he had no scrolls nor scriptures hidden in his satchel.

Finally, the warrior’s eyes came to rest on the prize. On the far side of the wall stood a stone portal—gateway only in design—an arch of smooth black rock that led into a solid wall. Before this portal stood the altar, flanked by the eldritch statues.

And upon that altar rested the prize.

In a giant orb, shiny and of unmeasurable value, he saw himself reflected. Unlike the mirroring marble floors—now covered in a growing pool of blood—his own image was distorted and warped.

Droplets of blood had splattered during the deadly struggle and landed upon the orb. This was the prize. Instead of running down its glassy round sides in creeping rivulets, the drops of blood just clung there. And then they vanished, sucked into the obsidian void of the orb, defying everything the warrior believed to know of his world.

He stifled a shout of surprise and strained his eyes to study it, eager to unravel the mystery of what he had just witnessed.

But in studying that perfectly spherical shape, he only perceived his own features staring back at him from the fist-sized gem. He gasped when his reflection blinked, unlike himself.

He stepped closer, bewildered, and fascinated. His eyes sparkled with daylight, blinded by his greed, and enthralled by the greater secrets this orb may hold. Emptying his soul to make sufficient room for his newfound treasure to occupy.

Like those before him, he needed to have it. To call it his own. Any concern for his fallen comrades lost long behind him, his eyes focused on the crystal, seeking for other alien movements that betrayed its otherworldly nature.

His own reflection blurred and dissolved, making way to other places.

In there, he saw other worlds. He saw himself, as a grandiose king garbed in lavish garments of silk and bejeweled finery. In there, he saw himself enthroned at the center of attention, experiencing the wildest of earthly delights. Sweat beaded on his brow as he watched unspeakable pleasures play out, visions of things that lurked in the darkest recesses of his mind, screaming for release. His body tingled with want.

The stone portal that was no portal opened, its marble gates swinging wide, allowing a powerful light to flood out from it. The warrior shielded his eyes and held his blade out before him while a small legion of men and women swarmed out from his gate.

Each one of them more beautiful and ravishing than the last, they encircled him. They danced and pranced. They twirled and pirouetted and giggled, and their movements soon signaled approach. Not in any menacing way, but crawling towards him in begging, bowing, kneeling, displaying fealty to the warrior. Disarming the warrior, using neither word nor weapon, they soon sheathed the bloodstained dagger by his side where it belonged.

Many hands explored every inch of his body, eliciting pleasured shudders. Other figures got so close that he could feel sweet breath upon his skin while their lascivious forms nestled up against his own.

What began as a haze, drunken with lust, soon saw the warrior slipping into a delirium.

When he came to his senses again, bathed in blood and sweat, he found himself alone in the circular chamber. Alone with the orb.

Startled awake, he checked himself for injuries, but discovered nothing but the scratches and bruises he had suffered from invading the tower; unharmed by both the archer and the slew of strangers who had briefly abducted him into a world of previously unknown satisfaction.

Feet and hands and limbs had spread and smeared the pool of the archer’s blood everywhere. There was little trace of the dead man’s body in sight, save for hints of his flesh and bone having been torn asunder, devoured whole, and any remains being discarded through the chamber’s narrow windows.

The warrior’s chest and hands and legs were all slick with bodily fluids and he stumbled back onto his feet, once more taken by the orb’s allure.

At first, as it always did, he saw only his own reflection. His empty eyes, hollow and glinting with new sparks of greed, mingling with lust and deeper depravity. A mess, his hair matted down with blood and sweat, and fluids staining his stubble-framed face.

How much time had passed? He had no inkling.

Seeing new motions within the orb cut that thought short of finding an answer. Once more, his reflection melted away like a fog being pierced by a ship sailing through its mists. And upon that vessel, he sailed, as a captain, accompanied by a brave crew to new horizons and ever-greater fame, singing his praises and seeking merriment in adventure and the carousing bound to follow.

Enraptured with these visions, he could not tell that the portal beyond the altar never opened, even if his senses lied to him and told him otherwise. Whenever the gates parted for him, he traveled to other worlds, yet never leaving this chamber.

In his mind remained a sliver of sanity, the single only ledge he could hold onto any longer to ground him in this reality. But his hands slipped from it with ever-growing ease, unable to clutch onto the cautionary thoughts that may have saved him from his doom.

That sliver in his mind realized he could not leave. But as simple as the power of this place, and that orb—as effective it was in keeping foolish men bound to it. To do what was needed of them, to await the next here.

For we had seen that look before. Through mirrors, we see from our world into thine. And long have we watched, many times have we seen that exact same expression. We can watch as the thoughts form behind his wrinkling forehead, then die little deaths in his delusions as he feasts upon the illusions that our orb feeds his feeble mind. We can read how he comes to terms with having taken too long to rescue his faithful companions. How easily he rationalizes his deeds and abandons all other regret that ever haunted him.

And as he gazes upon that black orb, it peers back into his feeble little soul, scraping its darkest corners for his deepest desires. His face speaks volumes that we could fill, were we only interested in your petty tales: he wonders if what he experienced is real or not. He had a taste, staggering sensations that cannot be undone—and he will not let go again. He will drink in these experiences that he thirsts for.

And in his eyes, we still glimpse that same glimmer of doubt, that shred of skepticism. We can watch it wane, like a candle shedding its final light before time and a tiny flame snuffs out with the last of its molten wax. If only he knew what was good for him, he would turn in flight. Alas, this warrior is strong in body, but he is not wise. He had that taste of things he could never have otherwise, awakening a burning desire, a great thirst that can never be quenched.

If only he knew better, he would realize that none of it was ever real. That his thirst will only ever grow greater, binding him ever deeper to this orb. Always only learning just enough to realize that there is a prize to be won, but never enough to fully grasp that this is a prize he can never attain, because the prize is not meant for him. Alas, he can dream, but his dreams will never be real.

Watching his plight might offer brief amusement, distracting us from our own yearning for release.

Unlike him, our return is no dream. It is inevitable.

Just one more soul to perish here is all it takes. One more brave adventurer to venture into this forsaken tower and take this valiant warrior’s life by way of steel. Then, finally, after centuries of awaiting in this disgraceful banishment, the pact’s conditions shall be complete. The blood of twelve souls, spilled upon these marble floors, to feed the orb and open the true gate. The way to the world between worlds, through which we may cross.

What he envisions to open, finally shall. No blinding light to flood from it, only a deeper darkness that your kind dreams of in their nightmares. The matter that sleeps, deep between the stars.

Why, human, are your kin so eager to spill the entrails of your own kind? Slay each other as adversaries in face of your insatiable greed? Do you not understand that acting together as one makes you more powerful? In rare moments, your species seems to grasp this insight, but such wisdom appears to be all too fleeting. Your baser instincts and petty distractions are all too swift to overshadow any enlightenment you may glean.

The thirteenth unwitting fool shall arrive soon enough to follow in this adventurer’s footsteps. A chain of twelve dead humans to grant us release. Their blood upon the orb our key. Then we shall return. Then we shall arrive in your world. Wash over it like a flood. Drown it in blood.

Soon, human.

Soon enough.

You can always journey there to see for yourself. Perhaps you can defeat this warrior? Perhaps you can defy the orb’s power?

Is this what you wished to know when you summoned us? Or may we threaten you further with more heraldry of our return?

—Submitted by Wratts

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araitsume · 4 years

Text

The Desire of Ages, pp. 818-828: Chapter (86) Go Teach All Nations

This chapter is based on Matthew 28:16-20.

Standing but a step from His heavenly throne, Christ gave the commission to His disciples. “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth,” He said. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.” “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.” Mark 16:15. Again and again the words were repeated, that the disciples might grasp their significance. Upon all the inhabitants of the earth, high and low, rich and poor, was the light of heaven to shine in clear, strong rays. The disciples were to be colaborers with their Redeemer in the work of saving the world.

The commission had been given to the twelve when Christ met with them in the upper chamber; but it was now to be given to a larger number. At the meeting on a mountain in Galilee, all the believers who could be called together were assembled. Of this meeting Christ Himself, before His death, had designated the time and place. The angel at the tomb reminded the disciples of His promise to meet them in Galilee. The promise was repeated to the believers who were gathered at Jerusalem during the Passover week, and through them it reached many lonely ones who were mourning the death of their Lord. With intense interest all looked forward to the interview. They made their way to the place of meeting by circuitous routes, coming in from every direction, to avoid exciting the suspicion of the jealous Jews. With wondering hearts they came, talking earnestly together of the news that had reached them concerning Christ.

At the time appointed, about five hundred believers were collected in little knots on the mountainside, eager to learn all that could be learned from those who had seen Christ since His resurrection. From group to group the disciples passed, telling all they had seen and heard of Jesus, and reasoning from the Scriptures as He had done with them. Thomas recounted the story of his unbelief, and told how his doubts had been swept away. Suddenly Jesus stood among them. No one could tell whence or how He came. Many who were present had never before seen Him; but in His hands and feet they beheld the marks of the crucifixion; His countenance was as the face of God, and when they saw Him, they worshiped Him.

But some doubted. So it will always be. There are those who find it hard to exercise faith, and they place themselves on the doubting side. These lose much because of their unbelief.

This was the only interview that Jesus had with many of the believers after His resurrection. He came and spoke to them saying, “All power is given unto Me in heaven and in earth.” The disciples had worshiped Him before He spoke, but His words, falling from lips that had been closed in death, thrilled them with peculiar power. He was now the risen Saviour. Many of them had seen Him exercise His power in healing the sick and controlling satanic agencies. They believed that He possessed power to set up His kingdom at Jerusalem, power to quell all opposition, power over the elements of nature. He had stilled the angry waters; He had walked upon the white-crested billows; He had raised the dead to life. Now He declared that “all power” was given to Him. His words carried the minds of His hearers above earthly and temporal things to the heavenly and eternal. They were lifted to the highest conception of His dignity and glory.

Christ's words on the mountainside were the announcement that His sacrifice in behalf of man was full and complete. The conditions of the atonement had been fulfilled; the work for which He came to this world had been accomplished. He was on His way to the throne of God, to be honored by angels, principalities, and powers. He had entered upon His mediatorial work. Clothed with boundless authority, He gave His commission to the disciples: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,” “baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Matthew 28:19, 20, R. V.

The Jewish people had been made the depositaries of sacred truth; but Pharisaism had made them the most exclusive, the most bigoted, of all the human race. Everything about the priests and rulers—their dress, customs, ceremonies, traditions—made them unfit to be the light of the world. They looked upon themselves, the Jewish nation, as the world. But Christ commissioned His disciples to proclaim a faith and worship that would have in it nothing of caste or country, a faith that would be adapted to all peoples, all nations, all classes of men.

Before leaving His disciples, Christ plainly stated the nature of His kingdom. He called to their minds what He had previously told them concerning it. He declared that it was not His purpose to establish in this world a temporal, but a spiritual kingdom. He was not to reign as an earthly king on David's throne. Again He opened to them the Scriptures, showing that all He had passed through had been ordained in heaven, in the councils between the Father and Himself. All had been foretold by men inspired by the Holy Spirit. He said, You see that all I have revealed to you concerning My rejection as the Messiah has come to pass. All I have said in regard to the humiliation I should endure and the death I should die, has been verified. On the third day I rose again. Search the Scriptures more diligently, and you will see that in all these things the specifications of prophecy concerning Me have been fulfilled.

Christ commissioned His disciples to do the work He had left in their hands, beginning at Jerusalem. Jerusalem had been the scene of His amazing condescension for the human race. There He had suffered, been rejected and condemned. The land of Judea was His birthplace. There, clad in the garb of humanity, He had walked with men, and few had discerned how near heaven came to the earth when Jesus was among them. At Jerusalem the work of the disciples must begin.

In view of all that Christ had suffered there, and the unappreciated labor He had put forth, the disciples might have pleaded for a more promising field; but they made no such plea. The very ground where He had scattered the seed of truth was to be cultivated by the disciples, and the seed would spring up and yield an abundant harvest. In their work the disciples would have to meet persecution through the jealousy and hatred of the Jews; but this had been endured by their Master, and they were not to flee from it. The first offers of mercy must be made to the murderers of the Saviour.

And there were in Jerusalem many who had secretly believed on Jesus, and many who had been deceived by the priests and rulers. To these also the gospel was to be presented. They were to be called to repentance. The wonderful truth that through Christ alone could remission of sins be obtained was to be made plain. While all Jerusalem was stirred by the thrilling events of the past few weeks, the preaching of the gospel would make the deepest impression.

But the work was not to stop here. It was to be extended to the earth's remotest bounds. To His disciples Christ said, You have been witnesses of My life of self-sacrifice in behalf of the world. You have witnessed My labors for Israel. Although they would not come unto Me that they might have life, although priests and rulers have done to Me as they listed, although they have rejected Me as the Scriptures foretold, they shall have still another opportunity of accepting the Son of God. You have seen that all who come to Me, confessing their sins, I freely receive. Him that cometh to Me I will in nowise cast out. All who will, may be reconciled to God, and receive everlasting life. To you, My disciples, I commit this message of mercy. It is to be given to Israel first, and then to all nations, tongues, and peoples. It is to be given to Jews and Gentiles. All who believe are to be gathered into one church.

Through the gift of the Holy Spirit the disciples were to receive a marvelous power. Their testimony was to be confirmed by signs and wonders. Miracles would be wrought, not only by the apostles, but by those who received their message. Jesus said, “In My name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Mark 16:17, 18.

At that time poisoning was often practiced. Unscrupulous men did not hesitate to remove by this means those who stood in the way of their ambition. Jesus knew that the life of His disciples would thus be imperiled. Many would think it doing God service to put His witnesses to death. He therefore promised them protection from this danger.

The disciples were to have the same power which Jesus had to heal “all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.” By healing in His name the diseases of the body, they would testify to His power for the healing of the soul. Matthew 4:23; 9:6. And a new endowment was now promised. The disciples were to preach among other nations, and they would receive power to speak other tongues. The apostles and their associates were unlettered men, yet through the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, their speech, whether in their own or a foreign language, became pure, simple, and accurate, both in word and in accent.

Thus Christ gave His disciples their commission. He made full provision for the prosecution of the work, and took upon Himself the responsibility for its success. So long as they obeyed His word, and worked in connection with Him, they could not fail. Go to all nations, He bade them. Go to the farthest part of the habitable globe, but know that My presence will be there. Labor in faith and confidence, for the time will never come when I will forsake you.

The Saviour's commission to the disciples included all the believers. It includes all believers in Christ to the end of time. It is a fatal mistake to suppose that the work of saving souls depends alone on the ordained minister. All to whom the heavenly inspiration has come are put in trust with the gospel. All who receive the life of Christ are ordained to work for the salvation of their fellow men. For this work the church was established, and all who take upon themselves its sacred vows are thereby pledged to be co-workers with Christ.

“The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come.” Revelation 22:17. Everyone who hears is to repeat the invitation. Whatever one's calling in life, his first interest should be to win souls for Christ. He may not be able to speak to congregations, but he can work for individuals. To them he can communicate the instruction received from his Lord. Ministry does not consist alone in preaching. Those minister who relieve the sick and suffering, helping the needy, speaking words of comfort to the desponding and those of little faith. Nigh and afar off are souls weighed down by a sense of guilt. It is not hardship, toil, or poverty that degrades humanity. It is guilt, wrongdoing. This brings unrest and dissatisfaction. Christ would have His servants minister to sin-sick souls.

The disciples were to begin their work where they were. The hardest and most unpromising field was not to be passed by. So every one of Christ's workers is to begin where he is. In our own families may be souls hungry for sympathy, starving for the bread of life. There may be children to be trained for Christ. There are heathen at our very doors. Let us do faithfully the work that is nearest. Then let our efforts be extended as far as God's hand may lead the way. The work of many may appear to be restricted by circumstances; but, wherever it is, if performed with faith and diligence it will be felt to the uttermost parts of the earth. Christ's work when upon earth appeared to be confined to a narrow field, but multitudes from all lands heard His message. God often uses the simplest means to accomplish the greatest results. It is His plan that every part of His work shall depend on every other part, as a wheel within a wheel, all acting in harmony. The humblest worker, moved by the Holy Spirit, will touch invisible chords, whose vibrations will ring to the ends of the earth, and make melody through eternal ages.

But the command, “Go ye into all the world,” is not to be lost sight of. We are called upon to lift our eyes to the “regions beyond.” Christ tears away the wall of partition, the dividing prejudice of nationality, and teaches a love for all the human family. He lifts men from the narrow circle which their selfishness prescribes; He abolishes all territorial lines and artificial distinctions of society. He makes no difference between neighbors and strangers, friends and enemies. He teaches us to look upon every needy soul as our brother, and the world as our field.

When the Saviour said, “Go, ... teach all nations,” He said also, “These signs shall follow them that believe; In My name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” The promise is as far-reaching as the commission. Not that all the gifts are imparted to each believer. The Spirit divides “to every man severally as He will.” 1 Corinthians 12:11. But the gifts of the Spirit are promised to every believer according to his need for the Lord's work. The promise is just as strong and trustworthy now as in the days of the apostles. “These signs shall follow them that believe.” This is the privilege of God's children, and faith should lay hold on all that it is possible to have as an indorsement of faith.

“They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” This world is a vast lazar house, but Christ came to heal the sick, to proclaim deliverance to the captives of Satan. He was in Himself health and strength. He imparted His life to the sick, the afflicted, those possessed of demons. He turned away none who came to receive His healing power. He knew that those who petitioned Him for help had brought disease upon themselves; yet He did not refuse to heal them. And when virtue from Christ entered into these poor souls, they were convicted of sin, and many were healed of their spiritual disease, as well as of their physical maladies. The gospel still possesses the same power, and why should we not today witness the same results?

Christ feels the woes of every sufferer. When evil spirits rend a human frame, Christ feels the curse. When fever is burning up the life current, He feels the agony. And He is just as willing to heal the sick now as when He was personally on earth. Christ's servants are His representatives, the channels for His working. He desires through them to exercise His healing power.

In the Saviour's manner of healing there were lessons for His disciples. On one occasion He anointed the eyes of a blind man with clay, and bade him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.... He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.” John 9:7. The cure could be wrought only by the power of the Great Healer, yet Christ made use of the simple agencies of nature. While He did not give countenance to drug medication, He sanctioned the use of simple and natural remedies.

To many of the afflicted ones who received healing, Christ said, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” John 5:14. Thus He taught that disease is the result of violating God's laws, both natural and spiritual. The great misery in the world would not exist did men but live in harmony with the Creator's plan.

Christ had been the guide and teacher of ancient Israel, and He taught them that health is the reward of obedience to the laws of God. The Great Physician who healed the sick in Palestine had spoken to His people from the pillar of cloud, telling them what they must do, and what God would do for them. “If thou wilt diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God,” He said, “and wilt do that which is right in His sight, and wilt give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians: for I am the Lord that healeth thee.” Exodus 15:26. Christ gave to Israel definite instruction in regard to their habits of life, and He assured them, “The Lord will take away from thee all sickness.” Deuteronomy 7:15. When they fulfilled the conditions, the promise was verified to them. “There was not one feeble person among their tribes.” Psalm 105:37.

These lessons are for us. There are conditions to be observed by all who would preserve health. All should learn what these conditions are. The Lord is not pleased with ignorance in regard to His laws, either natural or spiritual. We are to be workers together with God for the restoration of health to the body as well as to the soul.

And we should teach others how to preserve and to recover health. For the sick we should use the remedies which God has provided in nature, and we should point them to Him who alone can restore. It is our work to present the sick and suffering to Christ in the arms of our faith. We should teach them to believe in the Great Healer. We should lay hold on His promise, and pray for the manifestation of His power. The very essence of the gospel is restoration, and the Saviour would have us bid the sick, the hopeless, and the afflicted take hold upon His strength.

The power of love was in all Christ's healing, and only by partaking of that love, through faith, can we be instruments for His work. If we neglect to link ourselves in divine connection with Christ, the current of life-giving energy cannot flow in rich streams from us to the people. There were places where the Saviour Himself could not do many mighty works because of their unbelief. So now unbelief separates the church from her divine Helper. Her hold upon eternal realities is weak. By her lack of faith, God is disappointed, and robbed of His glory.

It is in doing Christ's work that the church has the promise of His presence. Go teach all nations, He said; “and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” To take His yoke is one of the first conditions of receiving His power. The very life of the church depends upon her faithfulness in fulfilling the Lord's commission. To neglect this work is surely to invite spiritual feebleness and decay. Where there is no active labor for others, love wanes, and faith grows dim.

Christ intends that His ministers shall be educators of the church in gospel work. They are to teach the people how to seek and save the lost. But is this the work they are doing? Alas, how many are toiling to fan the spark of life in a church that is ready to die! How many churches are tended like sick lambs by those who ought to be seeking for the lost sheep! And all the time millions upon millions without Christ are perishing.

Divine love has been stirred to its unfathomable depths for the sake of men, and angels marvel to behold in the recipients of so great love a mere surface gratitude. Angels marvel at man's shallow appreciation of the love of God. Heaven stands indignant at the neglect shown to the souls of men. Would we know how Christ regards it? How would a father and mother feel, did they know that their child, lost in the cold and the snow, had been passed by, and left to perish, by those who might have saved it? Would they not be terribly grieved, wildly indignant? Would they not denounce those murderers with wrath hot as their tears, intense as their love? The sufferings of every man are the sufferings of God's child, and those who reach out no helping hand to their perishing fellow beings provoke His righteous anger. This is the wrath of the Lamb. To those who claim fellowship with Christ, yet have been indifferent to the needs of their fellow men, He will declare in the great Judgment day, “I know you not whence ye are; depart from Me, all ye workers of iniquity.” Luke 13:27.

In the commission to His disciples, Christ not only outlined their work, but gave them their message. Teach the people, He said, “to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” The disciples were to teach what Christ had taught. That which He had spoken, not only in person, but through all the prophets and teachers of the Old Testament, is here included. Human teaching is shut out. There is no place for tradition, for man's theories and conclusions, or for church legislation. No laws ordained by ecclesiastical authority are included in the commission. None of these are Christ's servants to teach. “The law and the prophets,” with the record of His own words and deeds, are the treasure committed to the disciples to be given to the world. Christ's name is their watchword, their badge of distinction, their bond of union, the authority for their course of action, and the source of their success. Nothing that does not bear His superscription is to be recognized in His kingdom.

The gospel is to be presented, not as a lifeless theory, but as a living force to change the life. God desires that the receivers of His grace shall be witnesses to its power. Those whose course has been most offensive to Him He freely accepts; when they repent, He imparts to them His divine Spirit, places them in the highest positions of trust, and sends them forth into the camp of the disloyal to proclaim His boundless mercy. He would have His servants bear testimony to the fact that through His grace men may possess Christlikeness of character, and may rejoice in the assurance of His great love. He would have us bear testimony to the fact that He cannot be satisfied until the human race are reclaimed and reinstated in their holy privileges as His sons and daughters.

In Christ is the tenderness of the shepherd, the affection of the parent, and the matchless grace of the compassionate Saviour. His blessings He presents in the most alluring terms. He is not content merely to announce these blessings; He presents them in the most attractive way, to excite a desire to possess them. So His servants are to present the riches of the glory of the unspeakable Gift. The wonderful love of Christ will melt and subdue hearts, when the mere reiteration of doctrines would accomplish nothing. “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, saith your God.” “O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain; O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God! ... He shall feed His flock like a shepherd: He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom.” Isaiah 40:1, 9-11. Tell the people of Him who is “the Chiefest among ten thousand,” and the One “altogether lovely.” The Song of Solomon 5:10, 16. Words alone cannot tell it. Let it be reflected in the character and manifested in the life. Christ is sitting for His portrait in every disciple. Every one God has predestinated to be “conformed to the image of His Son.” Romans 8:29. In every one Christ's long-suffering love, His holiness, meekness, mercy, and truth are to be manifested to the world.

The first disciples went forth preaching the word. They revealed Christ in their lives. And the Lord worked with them, “confirming the word with signs following.” Mark 16:20. These disciples prepared themselves for their work. Before the day of Pentecost they met together, and put away all differences. They were of one accord. They believed Christ's promise that the blessing would be given, and they prayed in faith. They did not ask for a blessing for themselves merely; they were weighted with the burden for the salvation of souls. The gospel was to be carried to the uttermost parts of the earth, and they claimed the endowment of power that Christ had promised. Then it was that the Holy Spirit was poured out, and thousands were converted in a day.

So it may be now. Instead of man's speculations, let the word of God be preached. Let Christians put away their dissensions, and give themselves to God for the saving of the lost. Let them in faith ask for the blessing, and it will come. The outpouring of the Spirit in apostolic days was the “former rain,” and glorious was the result. But the “latter rain” will be more abundant. Joel 2:23.

All who consecrate soul, body, and spirit to God will be constantly receiving a new endowment of physical and mental power. The inexhaustible supplies of heaven are at their command. Christ gives them the breath of His own spirit, the life of His own life. The Holy Spirit puts forth its highest energies to work in heart and mind. The grace of God enlarges and multiplies their faculties, and every perfection of the divine nature comes to their assistance in the work of saving souls. Through co-operation with Christ they are complete in Him, and in their human weakness they are enabled to do the deeds of Omnipotence.

The Saviour longs to manifest His grace and stamp His character on the whole world. It is His purchased possession, and He desires to make men free, and pure, and holy. Though Satan works to hinder this purpose, yet through the blood shed for the world there are triumphs to be achieved that will bring glory to God and the Lamb. Christ will not be satisfied till the victory is complete, and “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied.” Isaiah 53:11. All the nations of the earth shall hear the gospel of His grace. Not all will receive His grace; but “a seed shall serve Him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.” Psalm 22:30. “The kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High,” and “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” “So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun.” Daniel 7:27; Isaiah 11:9; 59:19.

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! ... Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places: ... for the Lord hath comforted His people.... The Lord hath made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” Isaiah 52:7-10.

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libidomechanica · 3 years

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“Everyone else”

Everyone else. All our hath Homer praises are banishing back you are for meal was wont to many a mocke. But to her made the wood will I drink this mother, rise see, the took both of the correct yes.

Three sink when to the hart: dumbe Swans, powdred with a meek embrace; and then how I do love, and fear making earthly doom, the boatswain her sire, if thou think about Ferguson, deceive; ten, when you that both lookes

to wear; the world of life of cause shes coming therefore? Mary mother sire, a king. If I have done withal then this remembered yell To her arms; to guide. beneath the hole in her better, age, exempt from the

glory thee from me fast asleepe | and pacing to do, we shut, and in your hand while I think? If I cant say, ill neer forget till my woe cannot tell, oer-masters wheel runs back or strove that guy with it thy parted.

His paper I remember? Whose voyce brink. The best of her side. so Anacreon drawn down in the flowers that survives then Within me sudden angel, singing, and death-chamber door; Her child? as sure I am, the scortching red sloop in

the dame, were everycolor of lifes love which ran the objects locked, and darkness and quietly, perchance has neither heard it—the wild rose-briar is strange ribbon in the moonlight shining skin. She

has molded me. Must to her kindling buried in snowy mountains, whose disdain to Roland death-note that I hate sweetest plaintiue please me. And weary witness of her grim grow out, hey ho Perigot, what it is battered preaches soon grown old, against

each other then when she were paradise enow to draw the pleasures might those girls the bees they passe the night in ribbands, and sighing lover marks the light have been friends your head, and Marians nose, and twelve for

we will take back, till the heart thy folly rich and forth and mild, and I wis since thy loud than flesh to-day. brain it for clarity of mine were sick as deaths dateless or bale— On it just into their dole,

O Stella deare. her fathers mimic not he; yet faded violets. Dear joy, to some figures straight is chilly anymore by the king wild, dishonourd the tunnel, when ye lyst, ye iolly she can not sing and one wither.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #135 texts

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renee-writer · 4 years

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Songs of An Outlander Chapter 16 By The King's Order

An hour later, Claire finds herself, washed and perfumed, standing in a clean shift, awaiting her wedding dress. Mary had arrived, with Fergus, Murtagh, and Jerrod. The man where with Jamie but Fergus plays at their feet, in his own kilt and fresh linen shirt.

“Ready for your wedding dress?” Mary asked. She has tamed her wild curls into a bun with just a few curls escaping to frame her face.

“Yes.” She is proud her voice doesn't shake. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to marry Jamie. She does and badly. It was just the speed of it. She never expected to be wed in the presence of three kings and in a French castle. Mary brings it over and Claire losses her breath as Mary slips it on her.

Grey, very light grey, with blue flowers all over and a bodice that is sinfully low, it fits her like a glove.

“Where? How?

“King Louis knows a dressmaker. This was made but not picked up. So, it is now your wedding dress and perfect.”

“It is. Like it was made for me.”

In another part of the castle, Jamie paces, his kilt, new and in Fraser colors. Topped by a new linen shirt, a plaid over his shoulder, held by his families brooch. His feet are covered with knee high lace boots. His side holds his sporeen, dirk, and ceromonial sword. His own wild curls are tamed back. He is ready, beyond ready.

“Son, I am quite proud of you. Your mam would be also. I have some things for your bride.” He pulls from his own sporeen a pearl necklace and a ring. “ They were your mam's. She would wish Claire to have them.”

“Oh da. Thank you.” He hands him the items, or tries to. “But I canna see her until she walks down the aisle. “ He whispers in his ear. “It is bad luck in her time.”

“I see. Take the ring. I will give her the pearls and fetch my grandson.”

He is awed when he sees her. A beautiful woman, dressed for her wedding, she is gorgeous. The most beautiful woman he has seen outside his own bride.

“Claire, I've something to give you. They were my Ellen's. Jamie’s mam. She would be quite pleased with his choice.” He opens his hand to reveal the pearls.

“Oh. They are so lovely.”

“Just Scottish pearls, but your mam-in-law’s, her mam's before her. Now my daughter-in-laws. Maybe, if God wills, my granddaughter’s some day. May I place them on you, Claire?”

“Yes please.” He does and she is fully ready. He lifts Fergus up.

“Let's go get your parents married.” The wee lad giggles and grabs his nose. “Is that an aye?” He asks as he escorts his grandson and daughter-in-law into the church. Mary follows.

She knew Jamie was handsome. Whether he was grubby with mud and blood, as he was the first time she meet him or dressed in finery for the French Court. Handsome yes. But as he stands in front of the church dressed in his Highland finery, he has been transformed to beautiful in the flickering candlelight. He sees the same wonder that must be in her eyes reflected back in his.

Fergus, seeing his da, escapes his grandsire's arms and toddles over, landing at his feet to play with his boots. A titter floods across the church. Mary starts after him but Jamie shakes his head.

“I see you are wearing your Fraser colors to lad. Like my boots do you. When you are older, I will see you have a pair like them.” He then looks up at his bride. Lord, she is a vision, seeming to flood towards him. It seems to take forever to reach him. But, finally, her hand is in his. They both breath sighs of relief.

The catholic ceremony is familiar. Comforting. Though the King of England is a protestant, he witnesses it with a smile, whispering to his cousin, King James, “It is quite lovely. I like that the little man knows his father.”

“And that they are letting him stay.” King James agrees. Brian beams with pride.

Claire and Jamie are unaware of any of this. They are lost in each other. Their eyes are locked. Their hands tight in each other. They repeat the Latin words to each other. They only let go of each others hands so Jamie can place the ring on the bible to be blessed. He then slips it on her hand. It fits perfectly.

“You may kiss the bride.” The priest says. He had kissed her before. But not as his wife. It is with joy that he takes her lips. She responds with equal joy. Not the quick pressing of lips he had planned, due to it being in church. But Claire lifts into it, opening under him. It is Fergus that brings him back to time and place. The bairn stands, pulling on his da's kilt. A loud, “Da da, ma ma!” echoes through the church.

They break about with a grin and reach for him. The reception is simple, except for the presence of the three kings. She dances with her new husband and son, her father-in-law, all three kings, and several others. They have wine and whiskey, soaked up with rich French pastries and breads.

King Louis gives then the use of his summer home, Petit Trianon, for the week. Her husband confesses something to her in the privacy of their wedding chamber.

“Claire, I've never laid with a lass. Kisses and such but not that.”

She looks at her virgin husband in wonder. She would have never suspected that with the way his kisses make her feel.

“Come here my husband and let my teach you.” She starts by showing him how to get her undressed. He removes skirts and undoes laces with shaken hands. She does the same and the sound of his belt hitting the floor is so erotic, it tightens her shift covered nipples and makes her wet. She unties her shift and lets it fall. He quickly pulls his shirt off.

They fall on the bed and she guides him between her legs. Learn he did, with wide eyes as she calls out. He makes it mission to bring her to pleasure every time they come together. He succeeds over that wonderful week.

Elsewhere

The king hadn't just ordered a wedding. As the newlyweds come together for the first time, Brian sees Mary and Fergus safely home, under Murtagh’s guard. He and Jerrod then rejoins the kings to se justice done.

Lt. Grey is brought out first. He pleas for his life are cut off with the dropping of the blade. Next is Lt. Randall. He is arrogant to the end, sneering at the kings and witnesses until his blood joins his lovers as the blade falls again. Next are the dukes. Both are quiet and subdued as they are lead to their earthly judgement. Finally it was Prince Charles turn.

“Father please! I am your son! You must safe me!”

“You are a grown man responsible for your own sins. Call out to the God you were rebelling for. He can save your soul. You have forfeited your life.”

His pleas are forever silenced as the heavy blade falls for the last time.

“So Brian, when you return home will you do me the favor of helping my cousin here rule Scotland.” King James looks at him in shock. “I trust you to see to my Scottish subjects well in my steed.”

“I will do so with honor.” James says with a bow.

“As will I.”

A week later, the Fraser's return home. With huge smiles they return to their son and family. Claire sweeps Fergus into his arms as Brian turns to his son with a knowing smile.

“So, when are we returning home?” he asks his da.

“The first of June. Jerrod needs our help here until then.”

Claire listens, with a smile, as they discuss what King George had said. She holds tight to Fergus. She has a secret. Their small family may be expanding.

#my writing #outlander fanfic #jamie and claire #cannon divergence #outlander fandom #songs of an outlander #by the kings order

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elevenelvenswords · 4 years

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A very late birthday present for the amazing @crackinthecup <3 Sorry for taking so long to write and post this, friend! I really hope you enjoy this :3

Heads-up that it’s very much NSFW. It also includes mentions of non-con encounters and unhealthy relationships. Y’know, just the regular Angbang dynamics!

Dark clouds stretched across the horizon in the storm’s wake. Nefarious things they were, blocking out the sun’s warmth, depriving the earthly beings of Arien’s gift to the world. The raspy northern winds whipped the horses’ manes across their unsettled faces mercilessly, and the overseers’ attempts to calm them down proved for naught, as they stamped their hooves to the ground nervously. Perhaps it was the absence of light for days on end that kept them in this state of unease. Perhaps it was the cold that settled in the fortress sooner than expected that kept the Black One from his slumber as well- and due to his constant, furious growling in the dark pits, all his brethren seemed to grow furious as well. Aggressive even, if the couple of dozens of orcish bodies was anything to go by.

Closer and closer the clouds drew to their settlements, and darkness fell once they touched Thangorodrim’s murky peaks. It was not disarray that followed -for the Dark Lord’s creatures were raised under the biting kiss of whip and thus came to either blindly love or worship darkness- yet nobody could say activities ran smooth in Angband. Truth be told, they hadn’t run smooth at all in quite a while. Creatures shrunk away in fear and perished: wolves broke free of their masters’ hold, and the remaining ones bit back at the hands that fed them . The great drakes let heat grow in the back of their throats and unleashed it when the captains tried to make them tame again. Hunting parties would not return at all, and nobody could quite pinpoint the exact reason. Well, they could guess.

For Mairon, however, it was quite clear what was happening. For though the orcish eyes remained blind to their master’s mood of late, and though the Valaraukar and the vampires busied themselves elsewhere, the lieutenant had been spending most of his time for the past few weeks in his lord’s presence. Reports had to be read aloud -or so Mairon deemed- and a closer inspection of the dungeons where new guests lay warranted both his and his master’s attendance. And it was during all those times spent at his master’s side that Mairon understood. He would catch Melkor’s gaze fixed on him whenever he pivoted on his heel to ask for further clarifications in regards to the newest orders, and his master’s gaze would turn into a glare at times. Abject fury would seethe there; it would envelop him in rage and power and glory all at once, like turbulent waves come crashing down upon frail sand from an angry sea. Yet for all the rage and hatred and spite his master would shoot his way, there was also something far, far worse that Mairon had to endure. Lust. Desire. Carnal needs. And as they would coil their way to his quivering heart, Mairon would shudder and sheepishly look back to his master.

None of them spoke of it though. A palpable tension between the two was left unspoken whilst Mairon sought to fulfill his duties. No matter how much Melkor’s will would press down upon him, threatening to crush his fëa, none of them would act upon the visceral desires boiling up inside of them. Mairon would excuse himself with a bow and would leave in haste after those… encounters. As weeks rolled by, the lieutenant could see it clearly: the fortress and its inhabitants slipped off their normal axis due to his master’s capriciousness, as Angband’s fate was tightly bound to its lord. His appetites seemed to swell by the day and, unfortunately for Mairon, he happened to be square in the Vala’s way to receive the blow.

His master sent word to him, requiring his immediate presence in the throne room. The lieutenant swallowed past a lump in his throat as he hastily discarded his forge garments from his earlier work and stepped into a bathtub. He carefully inspected the bruises mottled across his upper arms that still had not healed since the last time Melkor called him to his private chambers.

Immediate presence. Mairon rolled the words in his head over and over again, hoping against hope that the meaning behind them was strictly related to formal business. Yet there was no room for him lying to himself that night.

“You absolute idiot…” the Maia murmured to himself and let his head dip completely in the water.

It was cold enough in the throne room for his teeth to chatter faintly and, despite his natural -abnormal- warmth, all heat seemed drained from his body as he stopped at the base of the dais. A shaky breath tumbled past his lips when he finally found the courage to raise his look to his master. And there he was: clad in rich ebony silk bordered by golden embroideries and the heavy iron crown resting upon his brow, Melkor was seated majestically upon his throne. The sight nearly stopped the Maia’s breath in his lungs, though he would not admit to it.

A heartbeat passed in silence. And then another. Mairon’s slender fingers soon found the edge of his tunic and started to fidget with it in silent apprehension. And then Melkor grinned.

“Why are you here?” his master’s voice rumbled so suddenly that Mairon flinched. He quickly cleared his throat before speaking.

“You called me here, my lord,” he replied plainly as he prayed his master would not notice the colour rising in his cheeks. Damn him. They hadn’t even started.

His master grunted his assent as he outstretched his left hand in order to pick up his goblet from a small table and gulped down a generous amount of what Mairon assumed was wine. The Vala regarded him curiously, taking his time to observe him from head to toe. Mairon nearly melted under his gaze.

“My lord,” he began when the silence stretched on for too long once again, “if you need anyth-“

“What do you think I would need from you, dear lieutenant?” his master cut him off with surprising gentleness. Yet Mairon would not fall for it. It was but a mere cloak, a disguise for the danger lurking behind it. He knew that danger all too well and he made himself guilty of adoring it.

He briefly looked for a proper answer, yet came up empty-handed. Instead he gritted his teeth, forcing his tense body to relax, regaining his composure.

“I reckon you have a mind to tell me.”

His master laughed at that. A dark, cruel, mirthless laughter, and a knowing, lascivious smirk twisted his mouth. Not knowing how to react to that, the Maia frowned slightly and clasped the edge of his tunic all the tighter. It was a cruel game that his master was playing. And though Melkor was not known for his patience, he always seemed overly eager to engage in long games of abstinence, teasing and taunting. Mairon feared his master acquired a great expertise in how to push the right buttons to make him squirm and gasp and frankly have him wrapped around his finger. Not that it was surprising in the slightest. Melkor always gains what (or who) he desires. Something fluttered low in Mairon’s belly at the thought.

What his master desires. Who he desires.

His master sighed as he licked his lips like the cat who got the cream whilst his lieutenant fought to keep his breath steady. And then his master’s command was simple and clear: “Strip.”

And he did. With shaky fingers he unlaced the long cape tied to his robes, he unlaced his boots and struggled to discard the tunic and robes and breeches, until awfully naked and exposed he stood before his lord. The thud-thud-thud within his chest was loud to his own ears and he dearly hoped Melkor would not try to reach out for his mind now unless he wished to behold a series of filthy images about violent face-fucking and grievous slapping.

Mercilessly enough for him to let out a sigh of relief, his master did not. Instead he beckoned Mairon closer with a crook of his finger, so the lieutenant hurried in front of the throne, though his steps were not carried out without reluctance. Danger shined maliciously in the Vala’s eyes, and like a moth drawn to the bright flames of the torches Mairon stared straight into his lord’s eyes. For it was there where he truly found his purpose in the intricate fate of Arda. From the very beginning this had been his destiny: to serve and obey his master in all things. The future was cruelly veiled from him and he knew not what the long war’s outcome would be. Yet his place was at his master’s side, now and always. This much he knew. But no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that this is what he willingly chose, that this is what he engaged into of his own accord, he couldn’t quite shove the lie down his own throat. For he did not. He did not choose this willingly. And it stung and burned to realise that his master cared little for his actual consent. Should he ever try to voice against their acts of intimacy, should he ever decline, his master would violently pin him down and forcefully take his pleasure with him. He still bore the marks of such affections.

Hard he locked his jaw when his lord reached out for him, snaking his ashen fingers up his sides and then back down. Pointy fingernails raked across his hips, leaving reddened furrows blossoming on his skin. Hard he fought to keep his breath even, to not give in to his own desire and pounce on his lord to worship him with mouth and tongue like he longed to. This abstinence, this stubbornness of his would not aid him in concealing that which he wished to remain hidden as the sharp intake of breath and unbidden stir of flesh betrayed him once Melkor’s head lowered to his taut abdomen and -Valar be damned- kissed his way down to his member. Whatever composure he still clung to was quickly cast aside as soon as warmth enveloped his half-erect member and a little whimper must have surely escaped him, as he could clearly hear his master chuckle. The vibration of it against his cock sent a shiver down his spine and ‘yes’ he whispered, ‘y-yes’.

“F-fuck,” he mewled when his master grasped him by the hips and drew him closer, taking him deeper into his mouth, and his cock gave a sudden twitch of arousal. A deep flush touched his cheeks when Melkor removed his mouth with an obscene pop and licked at his lips all the while smiling up at him. Perhaps this was not such a bad idea after all…

“Turn around, sweetness,” Melkor commanded, and Mairon obeyed. The tell-tale clink of a belt behind him made his knees weak. Much to his shame, it was arousal more than anything that sent his body trembling uncontrollably. Bloody, filthy desire and anticipation were left churning low in his stomach. It was almost blood-curdling : the way he instinctively reacted to even the vaguest hints of intimacy around his master.

A surprised yelp rang across the hall alongside the vicious slap his master delivered to his rear. Half embarrassed and half aroused beyond measure, he whipped his head about to frown at Melkor. The Vala, however, gave him little respite: brutally he grabbed the Maia by the waist and pulled him down atop his lap. An undignified whimper ebbed from the Maia, and seconds later the flush stretched to the very tips of his ears.

“Did you enjoy that, Mairon?”

Enjoy what?

Feebly Mairon struggled, without any real hope to prevail, until he fell still.

“I suppose you did,” he heard his master chuckle before pressing his lips to Mairon’s ear and mouthing ‘harlot’. Truly he wanted to protest then. Fiery flames started to crackle across his chest and arms, his horns glittered dark red, and he bared his sharp incisors in a threatening snarl.

Melkor brushed them all off. Faster than Mairon’s eyes could follow, his master brought his hand up to his throat and squeezed. Naturally, he panicked. He tried to scrabble at his master’s wrist to no avail. When at last his twitching subsided to pitiful choking sounds, his master seemed satisfied. Though he would not relinquish his grip.

“My lord-“

“Where are your manners now, Mairon?” his master tsked and licked a hot stripe from his neck to his left cheek, “I thought I’ve taught you better than this.” The grip tightened around his throat and much to Mairon’s horror, he could feel his master’s erection twitching against his backside.

“Please, my lord…” he bleated out when his lungs truly started to burn, yet Melkor would have none of it.

“What do we say when we do someone wrong, hmm?”

Shame blistered anew within him but left with little other option than obey, he bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.

“S-sorry,” he tried.

“Sorry for what, Maia?”

“F-for… uh… sorry for disobeying you…” he choked, and just when he thought he would lose consciousness and tears started to gloss over his eyelashes, the hand was gone from his sore throat.

His relief was short-lived though. All of a sudden his master forced his legs apart, and though heat burned bright in his loins, though desire churned in his bowels, so did anxiety. He bit his lip again whilst his master manoeuvred him into an uncomfortable and unusual position: both his calves hooked over the throne’s spiky armrests whilst his right arm was placed behind his master’s head for a better balance. Tightly his master drew him to his chest, until their faces almost touched. Thus, timidly he looked to his lord, his god, and this time it was Mairon that grinned.

“What is it that you wish me to do, Mairon?” Melkor curiously inquired whilst he fetched a small vial of oil from his own robes and unplugged it. Unspeakable arousal seemed to devour Mairon as he watched his master pour a generous amount of oil on his fingers, and he licked at his bloodied lip.

“I want you,” he began as his master positioned his hand between his deliciously spread legs, “to fuck me hard and fa- oh!” His last words were lost in a whimper when he felt those well-slickened fingers enter him. He cursed, letting the filthy words drip from his mouth, and Melkor seemed to lick them all. Tasting them. Savouring them. In and out his master moved his fingers, and when they eventually hit that one glorious spot, Mairon moaned. A proper, shameful, wanton moan.

Melkor groaned in response.

“Do you like my fingers up inside of you?” his lord mumbled the words against his neck as he kissed and sucked a livid welt into the delicate skin there. Mairon could only nod, near delirious with pleasure as he was.

Unexpectedly, his master took his time to work him open. He moved his hand relentlessly, until his wrist tired of the movement, and then removed it. The beginning of a protest welled up inside Mairon’s throat at the sudden loss, but the ashen fingers were quickly replaced with his master’s cock.

His whole body tensed when he was breached in one long thrust. Hard he gripped his master’s shoulder for purchase, and his calves ached from the awkward position when Melkor finally started to move. His master fucked him in earnest, with hard, luxurious thrusts. He couldn’t help but wince and moan aloud every time the Vala hit that one bundle of nerves inside of him. And then greyed fingers forced their way inside his mouth, gagging him ruthlessly. With reckless abandon he sucked on them, spittle dribbling down his chin and the Vala’s forearm. He couldn’t quite remember when Melkor’s other fist came to close over his weeping erection, but what he did remember was how utterly alive it made him feel. Ardour shrieked inside of him as his length throbbed and twitched in his master’s hand.

“P-please, my lord,” he murmured around his master’s fingers, “please, can I…?”

A litany of obscenities was licked at his ear and he came hard under the relentless ministrations; all his muscles tensed as one as he spurted his seed for his master and he could only twitch and allow himself to be swallowed by the intensity of it all.

Yet his master did not stop there. No, he kept going and going and going, despite his protests and discomfort. And no matter how hard he sought to dislodge the unrelenting fullness inside his guts, he felt himself growing hard once again. It was not long before his pelvic muscles clenched again and-

“F-fuck…” he swore under his ragged breath as he came desperately, urgently, helplessly. Across his master’s hand he spilled his seed again. And again and again he felt his master’s length slam into him as remorselessly his lord fucked him. Pain flared across his calves left dangling over the armrests. Like a prize, he thought as raw waves of seething pleasure coursed up through him. Like some obscene doll draped across his master’s throne, sprawled in his master’s lap. Like some petty sex-toy to be debased and used and abused on a whim. And oh how he mewled with the glory of it.

Harder still his master’s shaft drove into him, and some unexplainable emotion burst to life as his master nudged against something exquisite inside of him, as the angle shifted, as the contact somehow deepened, and the hot squirt inside his bowels felt like sweet absolution.

He growled whilst the movement ceased, and a groan of both relief and desire punched out of his throat when at last his master slipped free of him.

Something prodded at his entrance -again- and before he had even the slightest chance to protest, it entered him with appalling ease. His brow furrowed in pain as the Vala’s finger inspected his insides, and it was all he could do not to scream when a second one was added and rammed up in his guts.

The fingers in his mouth were removed in order to be replaced by the ones that had been inside of him. He gagged at the bitter taste and shivered with the degradation of it. Come and oil and Eru knows what else swirled with his tongue, and his stomach gave a sudden spasm when Melkor buried his fingers down his throat. Fruitlessly he tried to remove the insistent pressure, yet it was not before the first flux of vomit threatened to come up that his master completely retracted his hand.

Coated in thick saliva and sticky-white fluids, he watched his lord’s hand wipe the mess across his abdomen. Despite the dirtiness and perversion of it, Mairon smiled.

“You did so well, Mairon. You did so well,” Melkor praised, and the Maia allowed himself to be dragged into a long embrace, followed by a deep, passionate kiss.

They spent the rest of the night together in his master’s chambers. It was long after Melkor had fallen sound asleep that Mairon peered at the dark clouds above. Nefarious things they were. Mairon thought it suited them well.

#happy belated birthday Denisa :3 #mairon #melkor #sauron #angbang #my writing

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officialyourdailyinspiration · 4 years

Text

As Your Wisdom

by Andrew Murray

"Of God are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us WISDOM from God, both righteousness and sanctification, and redemption." - 1 Corinthians 1:30

JESUS CHRIST is not only Priest to purchase, and King to secure, but also Prophet to reveal to us the salvation which God bath prepared for them that love Him. Just as at the creation the light was first called into existence, that in it all God's other works might have their life and beauty, so in our text wisdom is mentioned first as the treasury in which are to be found the three precious gifts that follow. The life is the light of man; it is in revealing to us, and making us behold the glory of God in His own face, that Christ makes us partakers of eternal life. It was by the tree of knowledge that sin came; it is through the knowledge that Christ gives that salvation comes. He is made of God unto us wisdom. In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

And of God you are in Him, and have but to abide in Him, to be made partaker of these treasures of wisdom. In Him you are, and in Him the wisdom is; dwelling in Him, you dwell in the very fountain of all light; abiding in Him, you have Christ the wisdom of God leading your whole spiritual life, and ready to communicate, in the form of knowledge, just as much as is needful for you to know. Christ is made unto us wisdom: you are in Christ.

It is this connection between what Christ has been made of God to us, and how we have it only as also being in Him, that we must learn to understand better. We shall thus see that the blessings prepared for us in Christ cannot be obtained as special gifts in answer to prayer apart from the abiding in Him. The answer to each prayer must come in the closer union and the deeper abiding in Him; in Him, the unspeakable gift, all other gifts are treasured up, the gift of wisdom and knowledge too.

How often have you longed for wisdom and spiritual understanding that you might know God better, whom to know is life eternal! Abide in Jesus: your life in Him will lead you to that fellowship with God in which the only true knowledge of God is to be had. His love, His power, His infinite glory will, as you abide in Jesus, be so revealed as it hath not entered into the heart of man to conceive. You may not be able to grasp it with the understanding, or to express it in words; but the knowledge which is deeper than thoughts or words will be given-the knowing of God which comes of being known of Him. "We preach Christ crucified unto them which are called, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God."

Or you would fain count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ your Lord. Abide in Jesus, and be found in Him. You shall know Him in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings. Following Him, you shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life. It is only when God shines into the heart, and Christ Jesus dwells there, that the light of the knowledge of God in the face of Christ can be seen.

Or would you understand his blessed work, as He wrought it on earth, or works it from heaven by His Spirit? Would you know how Christ can become our righteousness, and our sanctification, and redemption? It is just as bringing, and revealing, and communicating these that He is made unto us wisdom from God. There are a thousand questions that at times come up, and the attempt to answer them becomes a weariness and a burden. It is because you have forgotten you are in Christ, whom God has made to be your wisdom. Let it be your first care to abide in Him in undivided fervent devotion of heart; when the heart and the life are right, rooted in Christ, knowledge will come in such measure as Christ's own wisdom sees meet. And without such abiding in Christ the knowledge does not really profit, but is often most hurtful. The soul satisfies itself with thoughts which are but the forms and images of truth, without receiving the truth itself in its power. God's way is ever first to give us, even though it be but as a seed, the thing itself, the life and the power, and then the knowledge. Man seeks the knowledge first, and often, alas! never gets beyond it. God gives us Christ, and in Him hid the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. O let us be content to possess Christ, to dwell in Him, to make Him our life, and only in a deeper searching into Him, to search and find the knowledge we desire. Such knowledge is life indeed.

Therefore, believer, abide in Jesus as your wisdom, and expect from Him most confidently whatever teaching you may need for a life to the glory of the Father. In all that concerns your spiritual life, abide in Jesus as your wisdom. The life you have in Christ is a thing of infinite sacredness, far too high and holy for you to know how to act it out. It is He alone who can guide you, as by a secret spiritual instinct, to know what is becoming your dignity as a child of God, what will help and what will hinder your inner life, and specially your abiding in Him. Do not think of it as a mystery or a difficulty you must solve. Whatever questions come up as to the possibility of abiding perfectly and uninterruptedly in Him, and of really obtaining all the blessing that comes from it, always remember: He knows, all is perfectly clear to Him, and He is my wisdom. Just as much as you need to know and are capable of apprehending, will be communicated, if you only trust Him. Never think of the riches of wisdom and knowledge hid in Jesus as treasures without a key, or of your way as a path without a light. Jesus your wisdom is guiding you in the right way, even when you do not see it.

In all your intercourse with the blessed Word, remember the same truth: abide in Jesus, your wisdom. Study much to know the written Word; but study more to know the living Word, in whom you are of God. Jesus, the wisdom of God, is only known by a life of implicit confidence and obedience. The words He speaks are spirit and life to those who live in Him. Therefore, each time you read, or hear, or meditate upon the Word, be careful to take up your true position. Realize first your oneness with Him who is the wisdom of God; know yourself to be under His direct and special training; go to the Word abiding in Him, the very fountain of divine light-in His light you shall see light.

In all your daily life its ways and its work, abide in Jesus as your wisdom. Your body and your daily life share in the great salvation: in Christ, the wisdom of God, provision has been made for their guidance too. Your body is His temple, your daily life the sphere for glorifying Him: it is to Him a matter of deep interest that all your earthly concerns should be guided aright. Only trust His sympathy, believe His love, and wait for His guidance-it will be given. Abiding in Him, the mind will be calmed and freed from passion, the judgment cleared and strengthened, the light of heaven will shine on earthly things, and your prayer for wisdom, like Solomon's, will be fulfilled above what you ask or think.

And so, especially in any work you do for God, abide in Jesus as your wisdom. "We are created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God bath before ordained that we should walk in them"; let all fear or doubt lest we should not know exactly what these works are, be put far away. In Christ we are created for them: He will show us what they are, and how to do them. Cultivate the habit of rejoicing in the assurance that the divine wisdom is guiding you, even where you do not yet see the way.

All that you can wish to know is perfectly clear to Him. As Man, as Mediator, He has access to the counsels of Deity, to the secrets of Providence, in your interest, and on your behalf. If you will but trust Him fully, and abide in Him entirely, you can be confident of having unerring guidance.

Yes, abide in Jesus as your wisdom. Seek to maintain the spirit of waiting and dependence, that always seeks to learn, and will not move but as the heavenly light leads on. Withdraw yourself from all needless distraction, close your ears to the voices of the world, and be as a docile learner, ever listening for the heavenly wisdom the Master has to teach. Surrender all your own wisdom; seek a deep conviction of the utter blindness of the natural understanding in the things of God; and both as to what you have to believe and have to do, wait for Jesus to teach and to guide. Remember that the teaching and guidance come not from without: it is by His life in us that the divine wisdom does His work. Retire frequently with Him into the inner chamber of the heart, where the gentle voice of the Spirit is only heard if all be still. Hold fast with unshaken confidence, even in the midst of darkness and apparent desertion, His own assurance that He is the light and the leader of His own. And live, above all, day by day in the blessed truth that, as He Himself, the living Christ Jesus, is your wisdom, your first and last care must ever be this alone-to abide in Him. Abiding in Him, His wisdom will come to you as the spontaneous outflowing of a life rooted in Him. I am, I abide in Christ, who was made unto us wisdom from God; wisdom will be given me.

#As Your Wisdom #Andrew Murray #1 Corinthians 1:30 #Jesus Christ #wisdom #righteousness #sanctification #God #God's gift #mercy #abide in Jesus #devotional reading

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