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Quote by James Baldwin

“Fear and love cannot long remain in the same bed together. And how many nights I lay there, while Barbara slept, filled with an indescribable bewilderment; feeling that all that held me to life was being gnawed away, and feeling myself sink, like a weighted corpse, deeper and deeper in the sea of uncertainty.”

Quote by James Baldwin

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James Baldwin

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“The Indians around here tell a cautionary fable about a great saint who was always surrounded in his Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day, the saint and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the saint had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the saint, in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours a day, only during meditation, so as to not disturb anyone. This became a habit – tying the cat to the pole and then meditating on God – but as years passed, the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. Then one day the cat died. The saint's followers were panic-stricken. It was a major religious crisis – how could they meditate now, without a cat to tie to a pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.”

GodReligionMeditationIndia
Book:Eat, Pray, Love
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“Were they taken apart like this? But they seemed to be able to function after, though I couldn’t imagine how we would. We clung to each other. After a while I started to cry. Annalise held me. “‘In the book,’ she said, ‘they say that after fucking one is omnivorously sad.’ “‘It’s not that.’ “‘What then?’ “‘It’s so easy for you.’ “‘Easy?’ She looked at me and her grin slipped off, right off into nowhere. ‘Easy? We could die of this. Don’t you feel it? Right now, we could be dying of each other. How do you think that feels, when I could be thrown out like garbage any day? And you, you are the heir to everything.’ “She had never talked about it before. Now I was so far into my own fear that it took me time to realize they were the same fears. We lay in silence, holding each other tight, until I caught up to it and passed ahead. “‘How can she hurt them?’ I said finally. ‘What if…?’ “‘You are not her,’ said Annalise, which she had said before, but now, she took my shoulders fiercely and held me so she could look into my face. ‘You are not hers,’ she said. The difference was immense, and she struck my fear away easily. I was washed with gratitude, relief. ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘You never cry.’ “‘I never knew stuff before,’ I said. ‘How this changes everything. How it’s full of fear. In the books I read, it’s full of joy. In the books you read, it shows you how to put your hands into me and pull my heart out.’ “‘Poor princess,’ she said. ‘And what have you done with mine heart? You have eaten it all up.’ “After that we were shy and had to start to make stupid jokes, though I could not imagine ever seeing the light of day again, I felt so different.”

LoveFearFriendshipHealingTraumaDevotion
Book:Black Wine
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