“I recognized the poem from Maulana Rumi and felt touched to the depths of my heart when I realized that Pari was committing both of us to God’s care. “I will never abandon you. You are the star that I follow always.” Pari’s eyes misted. “Yes,” she said softly, “you alone of all my servants have truly loved me.” “With all my heart.”
“I don’t have royal blood,” I told her, “but we two could have been twins. It was as if we swam in the same fluids in our mother ’s womb, so that some of my maleness became hers and some of her femaleness mine. That made us strange in the eyes of the world, which does not care for in-between beings. We have both taken blows because of it. She was protean, as am I. She was fierce and affectionate and smart and unpredictable. That is why I loved her . . . that is why!”
“But when I allowed
myself to think of her, I remembered the delicacy of her brown body under her orange robe, and I
drew courage from knowing that she had needed nothing to guide her but her determined heart. Had
there ever been a man who could claim to be as fearless? She had never even held the heavy swords
and sharp daggers that gave soldiers their swagger. Khadijeh may have been a slave, but in her heart,
she was a lion-woman.”
“But when I allowed myself to think of her, I remembered the delicacy of her brown body under her orange robe, and I drew courage from knowing that she had needed nothing to guide her but her determined heart. Had there ever been a man who could claim to be as fearless? She had never even held the heavy swords and sharp daggers that gave soldiers their swagger. Khadijeh may have been a slave, but in her heart, she was a lion-woman.”
“Shamkhal and Majeed exchanged a glance of excitement and Majeed leapt up, his face glowing with triumph, to repeat what Ibrahim had said to another noble, and then he sped to the other side of the room to make sure the words traveled from man to man.”
“...a habit that had become one of those necessary things for the night... surely a body-friendly if not familiar-lying next to you. Someone whose touch is a reassurance, not an affront or a nuissance. Whose heavy breathing neither enrages nor discusts you, but amuses you like that of a cherished pet.”
“It brings me
back to the moment,
and I want to live
the moment with everything I’ve got.”
“Jesus was the son of God, after all," Ryan said, remembering how odd it was to think that English confused Christ's solar virtues, as the bringer of light to dispel the darkness, with his divine filial status. Son = sun. "God and Son of God, the mysteries of the Trinity." "It certainly is a mystery," she replied, "one of the ancient mysteries. One powerful enough to reach out and touch the two of us — and bring us together in this bizarre quest. The progenitor, the generated, and the energy flowing between them. Remember the words — divus filius divi-inscribed on my aureus?”
“Husbands are not Christ. But they are called to be like him. And the specific point of likeness is the husband's readiness to suffer for his wife's good without threatening or abusing her. This includes suffering to protect her from any outside forces that would harm her, as well as suffering disappointments of abuses even from her. This kind of love is possible because Christ died for both husband and wife. Their sins are forgiven. Neither needs to make the other suffer for sins. Christ has borne that suffering. Now as two sinful and forgiven people we can return good for evil.”
“By embracing the “outcast,” Jesus underscored the “sinfulness” of the persons and systems that cast them out.”
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