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f19823a
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He was not afraid of silence, which most of us will rush to fill. And this, too: our holiest men have always gone into the wilderness to hear the voice of the Name. Avram
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Geraldine Brooks |
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e3ce6b8
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The stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip.
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leadership
repetitions
gossip
popularity
legend
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Geraldine Brooks |
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e74dd9f
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He found his voice in the silences, where he could sing as loud and as long as he wanted with no one to complain of it.
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solitude
self-criticism
maturation
talent
self-confidence
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Geraldine Brooks |
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271e104
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I think the seeds of my love were planted there, in the ground that my father's madness harrowed.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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eb39a2e
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I have lived most of my life in soldiers' camps. I know what they saw. I know how they think. Their confidence sours as sudden as curdled milk.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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f645960
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I thought it best to add nothing further, to let the line of his thought lead him to his own conclusions.
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leadership
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Geraldine Brooks |
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c3c6583
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used personal and place-names in their transliteration
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Geraldine Brooks |
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0331210
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But it is one thing to transmit the divine through a blasting storm of holy noise, another thing entirely to write a history forged from human voices, imperfect memories, self-interested accounts.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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6baddd4
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He was not afraid of silence, which most of us will rush to fill.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8c01302
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No one sits, as you do, so close to a king, who does not begin to grasp how the levers of power work, and the cost of the oil that must grease them.
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statecraft
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Geraldine Brooks |
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e85ef3b
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Where was his empathy? Buried, I supposed, beneath his self-regard.
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pride
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8ef9354
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This night he was a king before he was a man. At this time, this troubled me. Later, I would have cause to wish it were always so.
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leadership
vulnerability
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Geraldine Brooks |
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0269996
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David was at his best in group settings, soldier enough to join in the raucous jests, king enough to make it matter that he remembered some moments of bravery or sacrifice, and praised each man accordingly.
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influence
leadership
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Geraldine Brooks |
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6584d47
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Curiosity - if not desire, if not plain kindness - might have led him to greater zeal.
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passion
openness
ministry
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3bba1bc
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David ran through concrete advantages. And then set aside the practical. The pragmatist was gone, replaced by the poet and mystic.
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leadership
stewardship
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Geraldine Brooks |
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586447d
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We look at the Ark of the Covenant and remember who we are.
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worship
identity
encouragement
patriotism
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Geraldine Brooks |
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218477c
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The priest Zadok looked stricken. He had hoped to bargain information for a higher price. Now I, as a prophet, had given it to David for free.
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religion
word-of-god
manipulation
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Geraldine Brooks |
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304795f
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Finally, we were notorious enough to give our enemies pause.
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statecraft
intimidation
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b82c216
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David would wear no purple cloth, no symbols of his kingship, when he went to greet the ark. In its presence, we were all of us servants.
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worship
servant-leadership
optics
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Geraldine Brooks |
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aa62839
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I understood that I was being shown the future: shards of what would come to be. Often, I cried out for the pain of it. But other times, I was comforted, because I saw, for an instant, the pattern of the whole.
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prayer
sovereignty-of-god
word-of-god
perspective
prophecy
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b9da148
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He did wrong. He has acknowledged it before the people. He repents it. How many kings have the humility to do that?
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servant-leadership
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8bbf018
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I ceased to serve a king and began, instead, to serve a kingdom.
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personality
legacy
patriotism
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Geraldine Brooks |
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3b1080a
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If soldiering did not interest him, the soldiers themselves were another matter. He loved to sit with the men and draw out their first-hand stories of past campaigns.
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leadership
statecraft
heritage
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Geraldine Brooks |
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2fb2460
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Even those who know better, such as the King, nurse strange ideas about me as a prophet. They do not understand that I am given to see only those matters that roil the heavens. They expect me to know everything.
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exposition
preaching
priorities
distraction
prophecy
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Geraldine Brooks |
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d11bfe3
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You don't need a prophet to tell you to eat.
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provision
ministry
discipleship
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Geraldine Brooks |
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d3285f1
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We will need to give you a Muslim name...does Leila suit you?" "I don't deserve this kindness," she whispered. "That you, Muslims, should help a Jew--" "Come now!" Serif said, realizing that she was about to cry. "Jews and Muslims are cousins, the descendants of Abraham. Your new name, do you know it means 'evening' both in Arabic, the language of our Holy Koran, and also in Hebrew, the language of your Torah?" --
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Geraldine Brooks |
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c0c599d
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At first, Lola was a little afraid of Serif, who was almost as old as her father. But his gentle, courtly manners soon put her at her ease. For a while, she couldn't say what it was about him that was so different from other people she had known. And then one day, as he patiently drew her out on some subject or another, listening to her opinion as if it were worthy of his consideration, and then guiding her subtly to a fuller view of the is..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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391b5df
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My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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17e646d
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The cottage was set hard into the side of the hill, crouching before the winter winds that roared across the moors. It announced itself by smell long before you could catch sight of it. Sometimes sickly sweet, sometimes astringent, the scents of herbal brews and cordials wafted powerfully from the precincts of the little home.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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bcfc646
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when every day was tainted by the foul breath of a fear that could not be faced forthrightly, yet could not be ignored.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b392ad7
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But as I have resolved to set down a full account here, so I must begin with an honest accounting of myself. That morning, I was afraid.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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f025bf5
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How little we know, I thought, of the people we live amongst. It is not as if, had you asked me, I would have claimed to fathom the thoughts and sentiments of two whose station in life was so far distant from mine. But in my own unexamined way I had believed that, working in their house and seeing to their needs, watching their comings and goings and their dealings with others, I had come to know them. How little, how very little, that know..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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b68b5dc
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Sometimes, I think if you took all the universities and all the hospitals out of greater Boston, you'd be able to fit what's left into about six city blocks
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Geraldine Brooks |
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f3b6e97
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But while I fill up my mouth with prayers, they bring no comfort. My words rattle against each other like the last beech leaves on a winter branch, and though a hard wind scours the forest, it cannot free them from the bough; it will not lift them upward into the wide white sky.
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religion
sadness
praying
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Geraldine Brooks |
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ae4bc66
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Sera que existem duas palavras mais intimamente relacionadas que coragem e covardia? Penso que nao existe um homem que nao queira possuir a primeira, mas tema ser acusado da segunda. Enquanto uma e considerada o apogeu do carater de um individuo, a outra pode ser vista como o seu nadir. E, no entanto, a meu ver, as duas ocupam posicoes paralelas no circulo da vida, afastadas uma da outra pelo mero grau de um arco.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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fef62fe
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Dentre meus novos deveres, tinha certeza, finalmente nenhum seria indigno de ser narrado a minha mulher. Por fim, eu me encarregaria de um trabalho cujo objetivo era melhorar a vida, em vez de assistir a seu fim.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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826b693
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From a minaret, the khoja called the faithful to aksham, the evening prayer. It was a sound I associated with hot places--Cairo, Damascus--not a place where frost crunched underfoot and pockets of unmelted snow gathered in the crotch between the mosque's dome and its stone palisade. I had to remind myself that Islam had once swept north as far as the gates of Vienna; that when the haggadah had been made, the Muslims' vast empire was the bri..
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Geraldine Brooks |
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a5b8638
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A short distance away, just outside the town of Harvard, Bronson Alcott's Fruitlands dream lives on in a way he could not have imagined, as an intriguing museum and a place of exceptional beauty.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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c47db98
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Very frank about his many seductions. But also he writes a great deal on the rise of the Judenfressers--that means Jew Eaters, because the term anti-Semitism was not yet coined when he was a boy. Schnitzler was Jewish, of course.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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59ac21c
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The brave man, the real hero, quakes with terror, sweats, feels his very bowels betray him, and in spite of this moves forward to do the act he dreads. And yet I do not think
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Geraldine Brooks |
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1241f15
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To lessen or destroy sexual pleasure is to lessen temptation; a fallback in case the religious injunctions on veiling and seclusion somehow fail to do the job.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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6334a29
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But the stories that grow up around a king are strong vines with a fierce grip. They pull life from whatever surfaces they cling to, while the roots, maybe, wither and rot until you cannot find the place from which the seed of the vine has truly sprung. That was my task: to uncover those earliest roots. And he had directed me to the seedbed.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8fe76d2
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Most of the time, he found it hard to explain to his wife that his work as a sofer--a scribe of God's holy languages--made him rich, despite the very few maravedis it earned them. But as he looked at her, smiling slightly as she cleared the table, he was glad that for once she seemed to understand him.
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Geraldine Brooks |
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8ed8136
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Sarai was a lovely woman still, and even after two dozen years he could grow hard if she looked at him a certain way. Sometimes, he wondered about Vistorini, and how he could live a life without a woman's warmth in his bed. Or children. What would it be, to miss the sight of them, sweet-faced infants growing, changing, year by year, finding their paths to an honorable maturity? He wondered if the wine his friend drank so excessively was a w..
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Geraldine Brooks |