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be5ff7f
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And now I tell you this: do not dwell any more on things in the past that you cannot change. Who made man frail of the flesh? Who made our lusts, our low ways and our high? Did not God? Is not He the author of it all? The appetites we have all come from Him; they have been with us since Eden. If we slip and fall, He understands our weakness. Did not mighty King David lust, and was he not driven through his lust to do great wrong? And yet Go..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b70aeb5
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By the time the seasons turned through four more reapings, he had been crowned king of Yudah. By the time I was counted a man, he had added the crown of the kingdom of Israel
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Geraldine Brooks |
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c9436d8
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Being a father, having an heir, seem to add an extra dimension to David. He had always been of vivid, animating presence in any room he entered. But now he would come from visiting the boy crackling with even greater energy and force. He had been engaged listener, ready to learn what any man might have to offer in discussion, but now there was an additional depth to his questions, a more far-reaching vision behind his decisions. He thought ..
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parenthood
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b37d316
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This morning, light lapped the water as if God had spilt a goblet of molten gold upon a ground of darkest velvet.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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02360db
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And he exercised uncommon tact with his men, meeting them where they stood, rather than demanding that they always be the ones accommodating themselves. I have learned over time that this quality is rare in any man, even more so in a leader.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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400ba80
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I remember arguing that moral greatness had little meaning without action to effect the moral end.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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62049b2
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It galls me, when I catch a stray remark from the master, or between the older English pupils, to the effect that the Indians are uncommonly fortunate to be here.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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d453059
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He is able to put aside personal feelings and see the broad strokes. Experience counts in these things.
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seasoning
statecraft
self-discipline
maturation
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Geraldine Brooks |
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d3d6599
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When the madness came, he would be like a man staggering along the rim of the abyss - which was his rage - and when the edge gave way or he missed his step, he might clutch at anyone within reach and drag that person with him over the precipice.
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relationships
emotions
mental-illness
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Geraldine Brooks |
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cecb2a9
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As wars dwindled to skirmishes and our strength grew, so David was able to spend less time with military commanders and more with the engineers and overseers who were fanning out throughout the land, digging cisterns, making roads, fortifying, connecting, and generally making a nation out of our scattered people.
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leadership
fragmentation
defensiveness
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Geraldine Brooks |
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9b6fbc0
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One did not need to penetrate David's secret counsels or insinuate a man in his bodyguard. All one needed was a pair of years and access to the royal precincts. Just to eavesdrop upon his singing was to develop an accurate idea of his state of mind.
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music
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a709164
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He gave himself fully to the penitent life, fasting, praying, confessing his wickedness and execrating himself in public. He became a better man in the small matters of his days, an even better, wiser king in the great matters of state.
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renewal
regeneration
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3fe5123
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In the heir's world, where everything was available, the unattainable had a wild allure.
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thought-wife
spiritual-warfare
self-discipline
materialism
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Geraldine Brooks |
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e692c14
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It is one thing to know what is to come. It is another thing to confront it.
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preaching
prophecy
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Geraldine Brooks |
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7a30ec3
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I knew that the Name was still with him, animating his soul, even as his body failed.
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renewal
regeneration
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8a89b07
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The laws of the Islamic state would be derived first from the Koran. But since only about six hundred of its six thousand verses are concerned with law, and only about eighty of these deal directly with crime, punishments, contracts and family law, other sources also have to be consulted. The
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Geraldine Brooks |
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2783766
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But perhaps one day I will be entrusted with daughters of my own, and if so, I swear I will not see their minds molded into society's simpering ideal of womanhood. Oh how I would like to raise writers and artists who would make the world acknowledge what women can do!
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a180b75
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The drill sergeants learned that lavishly praising recruits who got it right worked better than abusing those who got it wrong. The women had been raised to please, Tracy Borum discovered,
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Geraldine Brooks |
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ab6a2e8
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It is this notion of women's barely controllable lust that often lies behind justifications for clito-ridectomy, seclusion and veiling.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a19d119
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You did not kill Silas Stone, or Zannah's child. The war killed both of them. You must accept that." "But I might have saved them. There was a man, Jesse, he handed me a gun, and I handed it back to him. I valued my principles more than I valued their lives. And the outcome is, they are slaves again, or dead." "You are not God. You do not determine the outcome. The outcome is not the point." "Then what, pray, is the point?" His voice was a ..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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4774459
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Many men believe in the saying that educating women is like allowing the nose of the camel into the tent: eventually the beast will edge in and take up all the room inside.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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4248c2a
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the women began traveling to remote villages, distributing articles that argued not just against "honor" killings but also against forced marriages and the pernicious way gossip is used in small communities to control the behavior of women and girls."
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Geraldine Brooks |
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df75be4
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What the extremists were doing was entirely contrary to the Koran, which excoriates anyone who impugns a woman's reputation and sentences them to eighty lashes.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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682e18a
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I had come in stages to a different belief about how one should be in this life. I now felt convinced that the greater part of a man's duty consists in abstaining from much that he is in the habit of consuming.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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cb08be9
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This is called My Youth in Vienna. It's a very nice edition--an association copy, Schnitzler to his Latin master, one Johann Auer, 'with thanks for the Auerisms.' [...] Here he apologizes for writing so much on 'the so-called Jewish question.' But he says that no Jew, no matter how assimilated, was allowed to forget the fact of his birth. [...] 'Even if you managed to conduct yourself so that nothing showed, it was impossible to remain comp..
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racism
judaism
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Geraldine Brooks |
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711b785
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Somehow, the telling of all this rinsed my mind clean and left me able to think clearly once more. By gathering and sorting my own feelings so, I was finally able to fashion a scale on which I could weigh my father's nature and find a balance between my disgust for him and an understanding of him; my guilt in the matter of his death against the debt he owed me for the manner of my life. At the finish of it, I felt free of him, and I was abl..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a7d2e3d
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A man's thoughts and the ability to express them come from God, and if my words find favor, may it be to his honor.
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god
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b2c28fd
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nomenclature
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Geraldine Brooks |
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5426a14
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Men raised in a culture of blood revenge do not change in a day.
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legalism
renewal
regeneration
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Geraldine Brooks |
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53f714c
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If our forefathers make the world awry, must our children be the ones who pay to right it?
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Geraldine Brooks |
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206c6af
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His radicalism took many forms. A vegetarian, he founded a commune, Fruitlands, so extreme in its Utopianism that members neither wore wool nor used animal manures, as both were considered property of the beasts from which they came. One reason the venture failed in its first winter was that when canker worms got into the apple crop, the nonviolent Fruitlanders refused to take measures to kill them. The Mr. March of Little Women departs fro..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a620d55
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She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them and gazed at me. 'I wonder if you know how you have changed. It is the one good, perhaps, to come out of this terrible year. Oh, the spark was clear in you when you first came to me - but you covered your light as if you were afraid of what would happen if anybody saw it. You were like a flame blown by the wind until it is almost extinguished. All I had to do was put the glass around you..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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0c3c08e
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Often the women are burned, so that the death can be passed off as an accident. The killer usually becomes a local hero: a man who has done what was necessary to clear his family name.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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468e48b
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We're seeing a rise in the school dropout rate for girls because their families' incomes are falling and girls' schooling is the first place they economize," she sighed. The"
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Geraldine Brooks |
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ff6387f
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West Bank women's groups argued that the time wasn't right, that the struggle for independence from Israeli rule had to come before questions of women's rights could be raised. The
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8acb5e8
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Until Islam's articulate spokeswomen such as Rana Kabbani target their misguided coreligionists with the fervor they expend on outside critics, the grave mistake of conflating Islam with clitoridectomy and honor killings will continue. And much more importantly, so will the practices themselves, at the cost of so many Muslim women's health and happiness.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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443c43e
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In Muslim societies men's bodies just weren't seen as posing the same kind of threat to social stability as women's. Getting
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Geraldine Brooks |
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622d4c9
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She would have had to keep her headscarf on, never laugh, never smile--if she smiles at a man he will think, 'Ah, she loves me,' " Mohamed explained. As"
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Geraldine Brooks |
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1abf78d
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The word for mother, umm, is the root of the words for "source, nation, mercy, first principle, rich harvest; stupid, illiterate, parasite, weak of character, without opinion." In"
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Geraldine Brooks |
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af7f10e
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If Islamic countries can't come up with their own principles for women's competition," she said in one widely reported speech, "then the way dictated by Western oppressing countries will be imposed on us." Iran"
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Geraldine Brooks |
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f33d92f
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What he says may be true for English, but why should I want to go into this God's house if only English are there? If God wanted us in this house than he would have sent our ancestors such a book.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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7216312
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His task was to survive and endure through the harsh winter months, winnowing his soul until it could cross to the spirit world. There, he would undertake the search for his guide, a god embodied in some kind of beast or bird, who would protect him throughout his life. His spirit guide would enlighten his mind and guide his steps in myriad ways, until the end of his life. In those cold woods, he would learn his destiny. He said that if the ..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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048701a
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Perhaps it was pride, merely, to seek these souls that God had chosen to abandon. Perhaps it was in itself a sin....
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3ebfae4
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girls were subjected to both clito-ridectomy--the excision of the clitoris--and infibulation--the cutting away of the labia and the sealing of the wound to leave only a tiny opening for urination and menstruation. If the malnourished little girls didn't bleed to death from the procedure itself, they often died from resulting infections or debilitating anemia. In others, scar tissue trapped urine or menstrual fluid, causing pelvic infections..
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Geraldine Brooks |