Autocad lesson on isometric drawings

I've been doin Japanese Duolingo for 250 days on the browser and a couple weeks ago they completely revamped the units, and now today each unit both new and old has a new node called "Kanji Practice" I've never seen before. It seems a bit buggy because it does a full 15 step lesson 1/6, then an entire 15 step kanji practice, then 2/6 lesson, then the same kanji practice, then the 3/6 lesson then the same kanji practice all the way to 6/6 just to complete the single node. It's infuriating having to use mouse to draw the same singular kanji 90 times in a row for no reason.
And now there are steps during a lesson where you have to type what a kanji sounds like in romaji.
Also new listening match lessons.
Overall I'm not a fan of the new additions and it completely messes with my flow. Which conceptually might not be a bad thing for learning, but these specific lesson additions seem entirely unproductive and unhelpful for learning.

How do you know you are practicing hard enough. I will a few times a week sit down do my lessons from my art class, then the rest of the week I will pull up a model I like and try to draw something I find interesting using them as reference. I heard it said somewhere that when a artist is still very new focused study isnt really helpful because drawing at all is focused study just getting used to it. I've been pretty consistent for 2 years now learning a lot of art, and I am definitely getting better I think. However as time goes on I start to wonder if when I"m drawing for me, I want to improve and be able to do it better next time, but I cant tell if i'm just cutting corners just so I can say I did it, or if i'm really putting in my best effort to make something I like.
My question is, how do you guys know you're slacking off, or cutting corners when you do art. Just like any job you can cut corners and do a worse job, but with art it just kind of seems like cutting corners wouldn't make you a better artist that you envision where you want to be. I hope this comes across what I'm trying to say.

I am NOT The OOP is u/RAkindoflosthere
Planning to ghost him after finding out he’s cheating on me
Originally posted to Infidelity confessions rant self
TRIGGER WARNING: infidelity, property damage, emotional manipulation, mentions of sexual assault
Planning to ghost him after finding out he’s cheating on me March 4, 2022
Found out my boyfriend was cheating a few weeks ago. Been spiraling since. Literally only running off of vengeance and pure disgust.
I got this weird gut feeling and checked his phone while he was asleep. Those 20 minutes locked in the bathroom felt like years, and the shame keeps me from talking to anyone about it. I moved across the country to be with him, so I’m all alone. No friends or family here.
He woke me up the next morning with kisses and breakfast and has been doing so a lot, lately. Probably the guilt.
He even bought me flowers for the first time ever. After me hinting at wanting them for years.
He thought my quiet crying was out of happiness. He even brought up buying a house for us, something with enough space for potential future children.
I’m still going through the motions. Making his breakfast and protein shake everyday, packing his lunch, making sure dinner is almost ready when he comes home from the gym.
What makes me the angriest is that I really, genuinely thought he wouldn’t do something like this. He watched his father cheat on his mother and father children out of their marriage, all while she struggled with infertility her entire life (my partner isn’t her biological son) and never had her own. She dedicated her life to the two of them and passed away of ovarian cancer shortly before we met.
Sometimes I think about whether she regretted staying with her husband or not. We have a small shrine in her honor and something makes me look at and expect guidance. I love the man she raised and hate the one her husband did. But they’re both him, and he’s a grown ass man more than capable of self control, so I decided to walk away.
Next week my car will be picked up and shipped back home, and I got first class tickets for me and my dog on his dime. He’ll come back home from work and everything I brought will be gone, along with me.
The only thing I think I might regret is not somehow being able to see his reaction when he walks through the door and realizes what’s going, lol.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
Future_Ad8467

I'm sorry you're going through this. It's the hardest thing to let go. As hopeless as it can feel sometimes, it does get better. Take your time in the beginning, but I think it's therapeutic to confront him, eventually. Ghosting doesn't provide closure for you. In my experience, confronting the problem, head on, gave me a sense of closure. I try to take everything that happens as a life lesson. Good luck with everything

OOP

I personally don’t believe in closure. I got all that I needed when I realized he was untrustworthy

~
Odd_One_9972

Do you have access to his phone/computer? Install a keylogger, then you can not only see what he's saying to you, but to the other APs as well. I put a keylogger on my ex's phone/computer when I caught him cheating. He was such a dumbass, and seeing the shit he was saying, the lies he was spewing, made me grateful I dropped his ass.

OOP

I do, but I don’t think it would make a difference for me. His entire “relationships” with the APs was lies.

Everything from his name, age, college degree, occupation, city, height, and dick size. He even told one he was married and his wife was pregnant with twins. I almost had a heart attack thinking I was an AP too and he had a family out there somewhere.

~
Suspicious_Bear_6634

If he can go after you, you should probably leave a note or a sign that you're leaving him because of his cheating. Seeing that you up and left without a known reason (from his pov) might push him to follow you home. If he knows the reason and knows that he has no chance in hell in getting you back, it might delay a possible confrontation.

OOP

you’re right. I’ve been considering just leaving a sticky note with a list of all the different girls names and the apartment key beside it. Simple and effective

Suspicious_Bear_6634

Fuck, multiple girls?? Draw a little middle finger beside them while you're at it. And make sure there are little to no supplies (food, toiletries, cleaning stuff) left and leave the house dirty so that he can appreciate how much you did for the asshole.

OOP

7 of them to be precise. I’ll have to rush and get out within a certain time frame but I might just settle for shrimp in the curtain rods. He’s really sensitive to smells lol

I lied to my boyfriend everyday and saved the money he gave me March 4, 2022
Almost every day my boyfriend sends me money for lunch, gas, something. I thought he was just really kind. Turns out he was cheating and giving me $$ made him feel less guilty, as though he didn’t beg me to move across the country with him where I know no one.
Once I found out I wanted to immediately confront him but was scared of the outcome since the apartment was only in his name and again, I know no one here.
Now I just save every dime of what he sends to be able to pay for the $3000 moving fees to go back home without hurting my own pocket too much.
Breaking my heart, destroying my ability to trust & scaring me off from men I can handle, but messing with my finances? Nah. never.
The transport company is coming next wednesday to take my car, and my plane tickets for me and my dog have been bought. Gonna keep up my happy act and do the usual cooking of dinner and scrubbing his back and poof on Wednesday like I never knew him. Its the only form of revenge I could do that wouldnt haunt me. Good riddance!

Edit: A few asked for details. There’s 7+ other women, everything he told them was a lie. Name, age, height, city, occupation. All of it.
The only common denominator was that he bought us all the exact same lingerie set for his birthday in January. 🙃 And specifically requested I hang it up in our closet where it’s viewable. Forgiveness is not on the table. He’ll be surprised, but I doubt he’ll be hurt.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
purejones

I look forward to it, how did you find out if it’s not too personal?

OOP

Woke up randomly in the middle of the night and “he’s up to no good” was all I could think about. I sleep like a literal baby and never, ever wake up like that. Took his phone and locked myself in the bathroom while he was asleep and found it all.

Friendship break ups are so much worse than relationship breakups March 5, 2022
I’ll be single again pretty soon and I’m looking forward to it but also not. Like yay! I finally can cook when/how I want to and don’t have to split chores and can do everything on my own my way.
But thats the only good part.
I’ve been on my own since I was 16 and I’ve turned out (mostly) fine, I have a paid off house and car, cute dog, debt free, and I’m finishing up my masters degree at 25. It could be worse.
But I’m lonely. I’m not on speaking terms with my family and had a huge fall out with my lifelong friends a couple years ago. I haven’t tried making friends since bc part of me hopes one day I can find a way to fix that friendship.
Plus I’m moving around so much that making friends is pointless. I’m not good at long distance anything.
I never prided myself on romantic relationships- sure, they’re cool, but a loving group of women was always where I found the most peace and understanding and that’s what I want the most.
I guess I’m just going through things right now and I really wish I had people I trust to talk to. Friend breakups hurt the most.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
OOP when asked how she had a house at a young age
OOP

Neither. I lived with my friends and their parents until college started. Already had a scholarship. Just worked 3 jobs until I was 22 and lived frugally.

~
Dufusbroth

The maths for time and money aren’t working out on this end but there is also a lot of variable/info that is missing.
It took my 7 years to payoff my house and I was contributing to it like it was an emergency. Qualifying for a home and paying it off in that amount of time without help seems nearly impossible. I’m so curious about the formula here! I need a lesson in finance from OP. When I broke it down on it just doesn’t seem possible except from a financial windfall counting even a frugal cost of living along with an accounting for taxes paid, etc… and that did not include the cost for transportation, medical, groceries, blah blah blah

OOP

The house was a 70k foreclosure and is 4bed/4bath. I was a golf caddy, gentlemen’s club bartender and occasional hostess, and notary signing agent. Along with selling stationary items on etsy. Also my scholarships paid for quite a bit of my home in general- they never specified what kind of housing for them, just housing. I lived in 1 room and rented out the other 3.

Dufusbroth

That’s the info I was looking for- thanks you! That is very smart. Good going! Good luck with your situation- so interested how he reacts to your departure

My current relationship has made me realize the thin line between love and hate. March 9, 2022
I found out my boyfriend of almost 4 years was cheating. We’ve lived together for 2 years and I’m leaving him tomorrow. He just doesn’t know yet. And won’t until after I’m gone.
As mad as I am, as betrayed as I feel, I still love him. All I really want is to wake up tomorrow and this all be a nightmare. I don’t enjoy this slice of reality.. that the person I loved the most has looked me in my eye and lied to me for who knows how long.
and every time I do it I’m left wondering how many times he did it. How many times did he wine, dine, and fuck other women and come home to me? How many times have I been the stupid girlfriend who trusted her boyfriend blindly? How many times have I been some woman’s laughing stock? Did he fuck us back to back? Did his friends know? Did they look me in my fucking eye and really not say anything? Did he love them? How many times did he tell me he loved me and meant it? When did he stop meaning it? Did he ever even mean it the first time?
I’m not a master manipulator. Unlike him. I’m just composed because I’ve never had any other choice. Emotions got you beat or worse when it came to my parents and I’m more than aware I have a shitload of trauma to unpack but I can’t.
Not in the self pity, woe is me, its too hard, but no. I probably just can’t. Therapists here are wildly westernized and once I start with the short list they’ll probably just charge me double. Maybe triple. And the last time I tried he kept trying to convince me I enjoyed my own assault.
Maybe I got cheated on because I’m emotionally inept. My intimacy levels are quite limited. The few times he asked about my childhood I either a) brushed him off or b) told him one thing I thought wasn’t that bad and he was so shocked I held out on the actually bad parts.
And that’s where the hate comes in. He knows what it’s like to grow up feeling unwanted. He knows what it’s like to lose your parents young. He knows what it’s like to feel like your entire life has been horrible event after horrible event.
But he still did this to me and I don’t get how he could. I could never cheat on anyone, let alone someone who’s shared such personal things with me.
I haven’t so much as made eye contact with another man since we met… other people were just other people and we were us.
I don’t know. I just don’t see being able to date again. I had deep seeded trust issues long before this and growing old by myself with 30 cats genuinely sounds nice. Hell, great even. At least I won’t always be wondering when the betrayal will come.

(Update) Leaving partner of 4 yrs after finding out he was cheating March 10, 2022
Transport company came and picked up my car. Sold whatever big furniture I brought for low prices. Took his dog to the park and played with him a bit, got him a dog cupcake and took him back to the apartment.
Movers started coming for the rest of my stuff and I hadn’t prepared for our property manager thinking we were both moving out and we hadn’t given them the required vacancy notice. She came to talk to me right as my uber was coming and I told her what was going.
Unfortunately they had already called him bc only his name on the lease. He’s called and texted me a few times but I haven’t replied. His work day won’t be over for a couple of more hours.
I left my apartment keys, and anything he’s ever bought for me that I hadn’t sold already. Didn’t feel like taking that stuff with me. While packing I remembered we bought a pet camera that shoots treats on the entertainment center and turned it back on. I promised myself I’ll disconnect from it by midnight tomorrow but I have my own predictions about how he’ll react and I just gotta know for sure. Yeah, it’s fucked up. Sue me lol
I actually forgot to leave a note and was running out of time before my uber came and just left the lingerie set he was so obsessed with on the bed. He’ll figure it out eventually. Or not.
I’m at the airport now with my dog and just waiting on my flight. I wish I could say that I feel free but I don’t. Just tired.
Thank you all for the well wishes and thank you more to all of the other women who reached out with similar stories. I think I might’ve caved and stayed if you all hadn’t.
RELEVANT COMMENTS
Suspicious_Bear_6634

What did he say on the text when they informed him that things were being moved out?

*OOP

Just that he got a call from property management and asked if I ordered something big and if anything was going on.

Pet Cam Update March 14, 2022
Update: I turned it on for about ten minutes after I got back to my home and unpacked. He wasn’t there, but everything was a mess. There was a hole in the wall, furniture flipped over, papers everywhere, the kitchen looked like a tornado went through it.
I deleted all of my other social media accounts but didn’t block his number. The first two days he called me over 200 times. Lots of novel ass text messages and him admitting to some shit I didn’t even know about yet. Quite a few calls from his dad and friends too.
I didn’t reply to any of them
THIS IS A REPOST SUB - I AM NOT THE OOP
DO NOT CONTACT THE OOP's OR COMMENT ON LINKED POSTS, REMEMBER - RULE 7

I've encountered a person that confuses me to this day. English isn't my first language btw.
The high school I went to was a competitive all-girls school that was at the time considered to be the third in the country (in our country getting into these schools was always a big deal and you have to qualify). Even inside the school the competitiveness was high among peers, so a lot of quarrels and drama tended to unfold. From parents who used money to teachers who were corrupt, and students who schemed against each other. In my time in that school, I have encountered the occasional problem but I didn't have problems with students much. Teachers however, I tend to butt heads with regularly. Maybe it was some form of a moral code I had in me, but I disliked adults who used their obvious position of power to meddle with the lives of children. None of them were particularly different or interesting, until I met the homeroom teacher of my class of grade 10. She was such a contrasting case for me that I found her to be fascinating. Her outward appearance was of a delicate calm women, she was soft spoken and polite. Her figure looked almost emaciated but it seemed like it was just the limit of her growth rather than the consequence of her current diet. She was an amazing teacher and was always on time. She actually was highly intelligent that you could tell she was. However, there was this gut feeling both me and my mother got from the first encounter with her. A bad feeling that something was off with her. Her every move looked staged and unreal, every pause was calculated and words so insincere that I thought I must be crazy for noticing it when it looks like no one else did (I later found out a lot of people noticed it but just couldn’t describe or rationalise their instincts, so they just ignored it). She was known to be strict, but it was all well for the first few days. The first thing she did was to separate anyone who was together in the same class in the previous year, but this wasn’t odd or too alarming because teachers wanted students to make new friends and avoid talking during class. Things came in small doses next. She had random bursts of anger that felt so uncharacteristic and misplaced that it would make the entire area silent. It always felt like it was from 0 to 100 instead of a steady increase. It got physical a few times too (There wasn't much of human rights at this time and it was somewhat acceptable for an adult to lay hands on a child for disciplinary reasons). Then I started to notice her targeting specific students and playing games with them. Like she would socially isolate people and outcast students, even going as far to set a desk away from everyone for a student to sit alone. She would check in at lunch and make sure that the student was talking to no one. I also caught on that she would try to draw wedges between friends and breed distrust between students by false claims and rumours. She would go through people’s belongings when they left them. There was this fact about her everyone knew around the school about a famous tuition teacher being her ex and how much she hated even hearing that man’s name or seeing anything to do with him (By the way, she was at this point married to someone else and had two kids. But she would snap at any mention of him). I started observing her because of noticing these things. It was weird, she and I had a strange connection. It was like a wordless exchange, I knew who she was and she knew who I was. We both would know we were observing each other. She never called it out or anything, it just seemed to be a cat and mouse game. I did mess up her games a bit by telling the students who were confiding me about their perceived betrayal of their friend, that it was caused by our teacher instead of it being real. I also deliberately put her ex’s business card inside a notebook with a ‘Got you!’ note, knowing she would go through the book that I was pretending to hide just to get her to want to see what’s in it. She did exactly as I wanted but didn’t say a word just handed me the book back with an odd smile. I stood up for anyone I could and was quite protective of my friends. One friend in particular she seemed to hate to the bone. I never understood why she held such contempt for this girl. All I could come up with was that this friend was very attractive, or maybe she just hated that she was my friend? It came out of her own mouth once to my mother, that she wasn’t going to scold me for what I did but she saw me talking with that “annoying girl,” so she snapped at me. Things went from bad to worse, her games got intense. She attacked my friends specifically and did everything to isolate me. I didn’t know this then, but some of my friends later told me that she would interrogate anyone who would talk to me or visit me from other classes and scare them so that people stopped coming to see me (back then I actually though I was being abandoned by people because no one told me then). I noticed that she adjusted her way of talking and demeanour according to the person and what she wanted from them, it was quick and creepy to an outsider watching from afar. She had multiple complaints against her from time to time, mostly from seniors who were tired of her. But she somehow always managed to turn herself to be the victim and the student to be the perpetrator, who now would be ostracised by other teachers which would make the students do the same. She was good at putting a spell on people, only those who were targeted by her thought badly of her, some even outright loved and adored her. Even though her actions and mask never matched and to anyone who would take a second to think about her actions without thinking about her outward personality would know how much of a snake she was, she somehow managed to maintain her beloved status among everyone. It was strange, if you talked to people alone, you’d find they knew or just had a sense she wasn’t a good person, but it was as if there was a rule in the air people were following, as if they were just supposed to play along. In all this, what I found the most intriguing was her motives. Because I cannot think of one. She even did things that seemed to be well intended towards me, like she told other teachers off for scolding me, she actually never directly accused me and made sure I wasn’t wrapped up in trouble. Even times I was truly doing something wrong, she would just scold others but save me. She got me saved from being scolded at the office for being late (we have a tardy line) and took me away in front of all the other students (this usually only happens if someone is a teacher’s child or a child of some influential parent). She got my contact and messaged me every morning to see if I’m awake and paid attention to check if I understood the lesson. It was weird and very confusing, because it wasn’t just the regular teacher who truly wanted the best for someone. Because it was obvious favours to anyone who looked at it. Yet she also seemed to target me and was dead set on separating me from my friends, and did everything to make me miserable. I didn’t know it then but a friend told me someone else had pointed out that it even looked like she was in love with me in a twisted way because of her insistence in surveilling my conversations and who talked to me. She and I had some similarities in that we were both observant and smart in the same way. I could tell she recognised me as someone different from the others and maybe even felt that I was some kindred spirit. But I still don’t understand her. Everyone else always had a motive, something to gain, or a delusion to maintain. But she was too intelligent for that, she didn’t need to scheme to gain because she was truly talented, and she wasn’t interested in any gain. She didn’t lie to herself, even when she lied to others, I could tell she didn’t believe it herself. She knew she was lying, and she knew it was intentional. It just seemed she was doing things just because. But it’s such a hard thing to understand. I can only think she was just someone who was sadistic and gained pleasure by causing problems. But I'm not sure. It hurts my pride to admit but It has been years now yet I still see her in my nightmares.
What do you think of this person? Why do you think she did what she did?

"Not a single human being on this planet ever saw the universe."
Grand Arbiter Albert XLIII further declared, on their return 37 years after the last broadcast failed in the middle of explaining the secrets of the universe to us.
"What you are seeing is an image of the universe that your brain created to make sense of your surroundings. A mirage, an infinitely imperfect approximation. And there are roughly 8 Billion such approximations on this planet, not even counting non-human entities. We have observed you recently - debating wether the harmonic frequencies of light hitting the rods and cones of your eyes actually generate the same image of color in your brain for all of you equally, and you came to the conclusion that they might not. That everybodies version of "red" or "blue" might be ever so slightly, or completely different. We found it amusing that you aren't drawing the same conclusion to, well, everything else. Through the scientific method and communication accelerators like the Internet, your species managed to align big chunks of those "mirage universes" in your brains, but other areas not touched by the scientific method are left completely unexplored, and therefore to the imagination of the individual. Which lead to many "unfortunate misunderstandings" among you. But make no mistake, even after this global alignment of mirages, the universe inside your mind is still infinitely wrong in the grand scheme of things and unlike any other imagined universe of your peers. Your scientific method suggests the use of calibrated measurement devices that aren't biased by human error to gain knowledge of your surroundings. Which is brilliant, we might add. Your species came up with this kind of technology very early compared to similar lifeforms in other universes. You use these devices to create a "ground truth" from which you reference the rest of your conclusions and predictions. This enabled you to make predictions about the "real universe" you find yourself in, even with this fundamental error underlying your logic system. Either brilliant, or unfathomly lucky. It doesn't really matter. You can pat yourselves on the backs for that.
However, amusingly, you failed to find the crucial detail about the one fundamental, yet completely uncalibrated device at the bottom of everything - your brain - and the sensory organs as extensions of it. No single eye on this planet is the same, no nose, no ears, everything differs ever so slightly. Every brain is folded and twisted differently.
Therefore, what you are observing, and what your scientists are finding models for, is not the real universe. It is the image of this universe your brain creates for you, that makes sense to most of you and that most of your brains are able to understand and find agreement on. Nothing more, nothing less. Especially the intricacies that you are now finding in the infinitissimally small scales and the unfathomly large scales (you curiously still differentiate these two concepts, we observed) are the footprints that the architecture of your brain leaves on these mirage universes. You find numbers everywhere and turn everything into a more and more digital version of nature because the axons that are part of your neurons generate activation signals in a digital, all or nothing kind of way. This part of the brain is what you evolved to use for, among others, your logic systems. Your thinking is in large parts digital, so most of your logic is too. This has gone so far that some of you now think you are actually living in a computer simulation. In some regards, you do, but there is no cosmic entity that generated this simulation and put you in it. You are creating this simulation yourself, in your brain, as a means to maneuver your way around actual physical reality. Imagine having to memorize a picture, but your sensory input systems only allowed you to see one pixel at a time, chosen completely at random, without any reference as to where that pixel is located in the frame. So, you found chunking techniques, the help of your collective hive mind and ideas of particularly eccentric members of your society, to bit by bit close in on a mostly impossible task. But without a paradigm shift on your end, the entirety of the original picture will stay in the shadows of reality.
You created tools like algebra and geometry to circumvent the fact that your logic is mostly digital as a simulacrum of analog information, but for how remarkably useful it is for you to make predictions, it is to what is happening in the real world like what an abacus is to a personal computer. Sure, if you enter '1 + 1', in their own ways, both give you '2'. But one is the tip to the others impossibly large iceberg. It is a sensible abstraction. But it is nowhere close to being an accurate description of what is actually happening or in what ways it useful to you.
We don't want to discourage you by saying this. Your approach, even if it happened out of sheer luck, is brilliant. It really makes the best out of the limitations that you have by your sensory organs and the architecture of your brains. Once a few evolutionary steps later your brain can conceive of more complex logical patterns and images, you will get closer and closer to having an actual copy of the real universe in front of your minds eye. Through the scientific method, you are already optimizing for this. Again, given your species' age, you have developed such a technique incredibly quickly. But what you are doing is finding (very smart) workarounds over a fundamental error you all have in common.
My lifeform, which isn't too unlike yours, just much "older", has taken a different approach in its early stages. Our biggest thinkers found early on that the answers lie within. So for millenia, we focussed our exploration on finding our deepest and truest selves, once we started to move past basic survival instincts, that is. Only after many, many "quantum leaps" in the area of self discovery in the individual and the societal level, we started to artificially accelerate our communication, and overcome physical limitations through technology. It was a slower approach in the beginning, but once we got there, our intellectual growth was exponentially explosive. The time it took us to move from living in basic, mostly local communities that lived off the land - to bending our universe to our wills - was about the time between you writing your currently most popular spiritual fiction and landing on your planets moon for the first time. Note the actual durations might differ greatly, as the concept you call time is very different in our universe and we still haven't fully studied yours.
Anyways. After this event we call "universal reframing", everything else just... fell into place.
Our strategy basically was to, first, fully align our mental universes. And then to perform a depth search from a common starting point. You seemed to have rushed over a few of the crucial bits as soon as the first approach turned out to be useful. Actually, all of the bits but one. It must be a terribly confusing existence that you are living. We can only make an attempt to relate, as our evolutionary strand optimized for alignment before curiousity. That, you could say, was our dumb luck.
Are there any questions so far?"
There was a puzzling silence in an area packed with an amount of people that would normally be present at music festivals or presidential inaugurations. For an event of this magnitude, the stage was sparsely decorated and included only the necessities. Like last time, the visit was spontaneos and unannounced. Or maybe, like last time, we just didn't understand the announcement message, as it might have again came in the form of a formerly undiscovered particle, a seemingly arbitrary number of years prior to this event. They must think they are really funny.
One of the humans chosen as representative of the planet raised their hand.
"Please, speak. As always. Our 'time' is very limited."
"If I didn't misunderstand this: You said, our brains are basically creating what we call 'simulations' for ourselves, in our mind, to make sense of the actual universe we are in and base our actions on. Is this correct?"
"Based on the very crude definition your species has for the word 'correct' I would say 'yes, that is correct.'"
"And these simulations are getting closer and closer to the real deal, right? But what if, say, we didn't want the real deal. What if we liked our own personal pocket universes and instead wanted to bend that one to our own wills instead of the real one? You said we are bad at alignment and I would agree to the point where I say we probably go extinct to our own stupidity before we all agree on even one single thing. Can't we just use your knowledge to just, manifest things into our universe just by thinking about it, like in the movie Matrix, which might have crossed your desk while researching us. Great Movie."
"It did indeed. It is esteemed by my lifeform as what you would call 'slapstick comedy'. Since we moved past what constituted our form of entertainment, the media from your universe has become very popular among my peers. It is by sending samples back to our universe how we finance the probes we are sending here."
"You still have money?"
"I was making - what you call - a joke. Never heard of it in the context of a movie, but that title is immensely funny to me given the circumstances. Anyway, you wanted to know how to bend your 'simulated universe' around you. Alright. You might be slightly dissappointed by the beginning of my explanation, but listen till the end. And make of that what you will.
Let's start by what you mean by 'manifest' exactly. As the inaccuracy of your communication patterns shall not be a hindrance to this mentorship."
"Well... I imagine it. And then it sort of poofs into existence?"
"Understood. Actually, I will start explaning how you perform this action in the actual universe you are in, before I make the transfer to how you do it in the imagined one in your brain."
"Uh.. ok?"
"What would you like to be manifested?"
"I don't know. How about we go nice and easy with a cone of ice cream and start from there?"
"So be it. So, we start imagining the cone of ice cream. What does it consist off? Milk, sugar, eggs, and some smaller additions to suit your individuals taste buds. Let's begin with milk. You are getting it from cows (a practice my society finds quite alienating. We, too, have to get used to the wildly varying customs of lifeforms of the universes). Cows can be domesticated and bred, but first, we would have to overcome the physical distance between us, and a few locations on this planet. For that, I would advice designing and constructing a vehicle that is capa..."
"Oh come on, that's how we manifest things? We go and make them ourselves?? Oh wow, thanks a lot mister transcendant being. So the rest of the stuff you told us was also bullshit?"
"Please refrain from jumping to conclusions without the full picture in mind, even if it is in your existences nature to do so. Alright, so let me offer you a shortcut."
"Please do."
"I know of a location just a few human paces down this road, where you can exchange currency for a cone of ice cream."
"Seriously?"
"Yes."
"What the hell is the point of this?"
"The point is, once again: you - misunderstanding your existence. Especially in conjunction with your incredibly limited ability to verbalize concepts using your own vocabulary. You are barely at the point of being able to convey emotions in every day speech, and are now expecting to understand high level 4 dimensional concepts after just a few of your incredibly inaccurate words. Tell me now, please: What do you perceive as the difference of these two scenarios I just mentioned? In a temporal manner and in the energy required?"
"Well, it would be much easier and faster to just go down the road and buy a cone of ice cream, but that isn't tremendously astounding information to us, you have to understand."
"'Much'? Let's give this word, 'much', a bit of a frame of reference. The differences between these scenarios are: About 15000 years of agriculture and animal husbandry; countless inventions that led to your current state of technology which allows for refrigeration in a way advanced enough to get the ice cream to just the right texture that your modern palate is accustomed to; An education system that allows for such inventions to occur in time for you to be standing here, demanding ice cream, and actually getting it. Not mentioning the infrastructure that makes you bridge the physical distances of every single time any of these steps needed anything. And meanwhile destroying the naturally occuring resources of your planet bit by bit.
Or, scenario 2: You take the money that you got from staring at a computer screen for about 7 minutes, choose one of the ice cream parlors that your civilization made sure to be on average a 30 minutes driving distance from every single living human. (You aren't very good at even distributions though, we found.). And go and get that ice cream. Even including the infrastructural costs existing now, we have narrowed this process down from not even being close to a reality for thousands of generations to being at most 30 minutes away and dirt cheap, assuming an amount of efficient preparation, that is part of the technology that lead you here.
If you ask me, between scenario 1 and 2, you became so many orders of magnitude closer to 'poofing it into existence' that a human mind has troubles comprehending it. And therefore, appreciating it. From '0% of the human population has access to this within their lifetime and no one will for the next couple millenia' to 'Over half the human population has access to this within 30 minutes", taking into account the total timespan, the amount of events that had to occur and the amount of incremental learnings that had to accumulate, for this to happen even once for anybody, I believe the time and energy you have to exert to access your ice cream cone right now is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. And you aren't even close to finishing your development as humans - if you manage to not kill yourself somehow.
You are constantly manifesting things into reality, the only issue is that you severely and heavily underestimate what it means 'to imagine a thing'.
Please allow my vanity, but this is an important lesson for the following part that you are, I'm afraid, more interested in. How to do that in your head. And potentially much faster. Well assuming thaXXXxxxx----.----."
"Oh wow, not again. Mighty convenient this always happens right when it gets interesting."
"First, you have to understand that.,.......... The limitations of spacetime that you perceive.... are not present in nature..... nature is infinitely 'dimensional', and in fact XXxxx.....----..--.-.- has no concept for infinity....-.-.--. it is a human made.....-.-.-.- model to describe a perfectly natural phenomenon you lack the words for at this time..._xxxx.xxx-x---.-.--.-zzzz."
"Come on, speak faster! The battery is dying again!"
" ...physical distance...S;.,.XXXxx...currently a big bottleneck for your progres...asd.döö,,,, is also a limitation of your cortex, not nature,.....-as.d.sa......the concept of an 'extent' only exists from certain frames of references..-.-..-.a.ss.a.as.... in others everything is....a.s-d.-.---.-..-xxxx on top of each other, overlapping each other in what you call 'time' AND 'space'"
"...XXXxsasad Listen."
"I am running out of time again humans. The Hopf Fibration. It is a great first step. But move away from your digital thinking. Treat your numbers. .aD;,aC:.x.cx.ac,.as,dca.s like your waves...CKLUJCJUCCLICK"
The broadcast stopped.
"I never know if these things make me smarter, or dumber. Sadly the alien is gone now so it can't tell me that there actually is no smart or dumb."

"Not a single human being on this planet ever saw the universe."
Grand Arbiter Albert XLIII further declared, on their return 37 years after the last broadcast failed in the middle of explaining the secrets of the universe to us.
"What you are seeing is an image of the universe that your brain created to make sense of your surroundings. A mirage, an infinitely imperfect approximation. And there are roughly 8 Billion such approximations on this planet, not even counting non-human entities. We have observed you recently - debating wether the harmonic frequencies of light hitting the rods and cones of your eyes actually generate the same image of color in your brain for all of you equally, and you came to the conclusion that they might not. That everybodies version of "red" or "blue" might be ever so slightly, or completely different. We found it amusing that you aren't drawing the same conclusion to, well, everything else. Through the scientific method and communication accelerators like the Internet, your species managed to align big chunks of those "mirage universes" in your brains, but other areas not touched by the scientific method are left completely unexplored, and therefore to the imagination of the individual. Which lead to many "unfortunate misunderstandings" among you. But make no mistake, even after this global alignment of mirages, the universe inside your mind is still infinitely wrong in the grand scheme of things and unlike any other imagined universe of your peers. Your scientific method suggests the use of calibrated measurement devices that aren't biased by human error to gain knowledge of your surroundings. Which is brilliant, we might add. Your species came up with this kind of technology very early compared to similar lifeforms in other universes. You use these devices to create a "ground truth" from which you reference the rest of your conclusions and predictions. This enabled you to make predictions about the "real universe" you find yourself in, even with this fundamental error underlying your logic system. Either brilliant, or unfathomly lucky. It doesn't really matter. You can pat yourselves on the backs for that.
However, amusingly, you failed to find the crucial detail about the one fundamental, yet completely uncalibrated device at the bottom of everything - your brain - and the sensory organs as extensions of it. No single eye on this planet is the same, no nose, no ears, everything differs ever so slightly. Every brain is folded and twisted differently.
Therefore, what you are observing, and what your scientists are finding models for, is not the real universe. It is the image of this universe your brain creates for you, that makes sense to most of you and that most of your brains are able to understand and find agreement on. Nothing more, nothing less. Especially the intricacies that you are now finding in the infinitissimally small scales and the unfathomly large scales (you curiously still differentiate these two concepts, we observed) are the footprints that the architecture of your brain leaves on these mirage universes. You find numbers everywhere and turn everything into a more and more digital version of nature because the axons that are part of your neurons generate activation signals in a digital, all or nothing kind of way. This part of the brain is what you evolved to use for, among others, your logic systems. Your thinking is in large parts digital, so most of your logic is too. This has gone so far that some of you now think you are actually living in a computer simulation. In some regards, you do, but there is no cosmic entity that generated this simulation and put you in it. You are creating this simulation yourself, in your brain, as a means to maneuver your way around actual physical reality. Imagine having to memorize a picture, but your sensory input systems only allowed you to see one pixel at a time, chosen completely at random, without any reference as to where that pixel is located in the frame. So, you found chunking techniques, the help of your collective hive mind and ideas of particularly eccentric members of your society, to bit by bit close in on a mostly impossible task. But without a paradigm shift on your end, the entirety of the original picture will stay in the shadows of reality.
You created tools like algebra and geometry to circumvent the fact that your logic is mostly digital as a simulacrum of analog information, but for how remarkably useful it is for you to make predictions, it is to what is happening in the real world like what an abacus is to a personal computer. Sure, if you enter '1 + 1', in their own ways, both give you '2'. But one is the tip to the others impossibly large iceberg. It is a sensible abstraction. But it is nowhere close to being an accurate description of what is actually happening or in what ways it useful to you.
We don't want to discourage you by saying this. Your approach, even if it happened out of sheer luck, is brilliant. It really makes the best out of the limitations that you have by your sensory organs and the architecture of your brains. Once a few evolutionary steps later your brain can conceive of more complex logical patterns and images, you will get closer and closer to having an actual copy of the real universe in front of your minds eye. Through the scientific method, you are already optimizing for this. Again, given your species' age, you have developed such a technique incredibly quickly. But what you are doing is finding (very smart) workarounds over a fundamental error you all have in common.
My lifeform, which isn't too unlike yours, just much "older", has taken a different approach in its early stages. Our biggest thinkers found early on that the answers lie within. So for millenia, we focussed our exploration on finding our deepest and truest selves, once we started to move past basic survival instincts, that is. Only after many, many "quantum leaps" in the area of self discovery in the individual and the societal level, we started to artificially accelerate our communication, and overcome physical limitations through technology. It was a slower approach in the beginning, but once we got there, our intellectual growth was exponentially explosive. The time it took us to move from living in basic, mostly local communities that lived off the land - to bending our universe to our wills - was about the time between you writing your currently most popular spiritual fiction and landing on your planets moon for the first time. Note the actual durations might differ greatly, as the concept you call time is very different in our universe and we still haven't fully studied yours.
Anyways. After this event we call "universal reframing", everything else just... fell into place.
Our strategy basically was to, first, fully align our mental universes. And then to perform a depth search from a common starting point. You seemed to have rushed over a few of the crucial bits as soon as the first approach turned out to be useful. Actually, all of the bits but one. It must be a terribly confusing existence that you are living. We can only make an attempt to relate, as our evolutionary strand optimized for alignment before curiousity. That, you could say, was our dumb luck.
Are there any questions so far?"
There was a puzzling silence in an area packed with an amount of people that would normally be present at music festivals or presidential inaugurations. For an event of this magnitude, the stage was sparsely decorated and included only the necessities. Like last time, the visit was spontaneos and unannounced. Or maybe, like last time, we just didn't understand the announcement message, as it might have again came in the form of a formerly undiscovered particle, a seemingly arbitrary number of years prior to this event. They must think they are really funny.
One of the humans chosen as representative of the planet raised their hand.
"Please, speak. As always. Our 'time' is very limited."
"If I didn't misunderstand this: You said, our brains are basically creating what we call 'simulations' for ourselves, in our mind, to make sense of the actual universe we are in and base our actions on. Is this correct?"
"Based on the very crude definition your species has for the word 'correct' I would say 'yes, that is correct.'"
"And these simulations are getting closer and closer to the real deal, right? But what if, say, we didn't want the real deal. What if we liked our own personal pocket universes and instead wanted to bend that one to our own wills instead of the real one? You said we are bad at alignment and I would agree to the point where I say we probably go extinct to our own stupidity before we all agree on even one single thing. Can't we just use your knowledge to just, manifest things into our universe just by thinking about it, like in the movie Matrix, which might have crossed your desk while researching us. Great Movie."
"It did indeed. It is esteemed by my lifeform as what you would call 'slapstick comedy'. Since we moved past what constituted our form of entertainment, the media from your universe has become very popular among my peers. It is by sending samples back to our universe how we finance the probes we are sending here."
"You still have money?"
"I was making - what you call - a joke. Never heard of it in the context of a movie, but that title is immensely funny to me given the circumstances. Anyway, you wanted to know how to bend your 'simulated universe' around you. Alright. You might be slightly dissappointed by the beginning of my explanation, but listen till the end. And make of that what you will.
Let's start by what you mean by 'manifest' exactly. As the inaccuracy of your communication patterns shall not be a hindrance to this mentorship."
"Well... I imagine it. And then it sort of poofs into existence?"
"Understood. Actually, I will start explaning how you perform this action in the actual universe you are in, before I make the transfer to how you do it in the imagined one in your brain."
"Uh.. ok?"
"What would you like to be manifested?"
"I don't know. How about we go nice and easy with a cone of ice cream and start from there?"
"So be it. So, we start imagining the cone of ice cream. What does it consist off? Milk, sugar, eggs, and some smaller additions to suit your individuals taste buds. Let's begin with milk. You are getting it from cows (a practice my society finds quite alienating. We, too, have to get used to the wildly varying customs of lifeforms of the universes). Cows can be domesticated and bred, but first, we would have to overcome the physical distance between us, and a few locations on this planet. For that, I would advice designing and constructing a vehicle that is capa..."
"Oh come on, that's how we manifest things? We go and make them ourselves?? Oh wow, thanks a lot mister transcendant being. So the rest of the stuff you told us was also bullshit?"
"Please refrain from jumping to conclusions without the full picture in mind, even if it is in your existences nature to do so. Alright, so let me offer you a shortcut."
"Please do."
"I know of a location just a few human paces down this road, where you can exchange currency for a cone of ice cream."
"Seriously?"
"Yes."
"What the hell is the point of this?"
"The point is, once again: you - misunderstanding your existence. Especially in conjunction with your incredibly limited ability to verbalize concepts using your own vocabulary. You are barely at the point of being able to convey emotions in every day speech, and are now expecting to understand high level 4 dimensional concepts after just a few of your incredibly inaccurate words. Tell me now, please: What do you perceive as the difference of these two scenarios I just mentioned? In a temporal manner and in the energy required?"
"Well, it would be much easier and faster to just go down the road and buy a cone of ice cream, but that isn't tremendously astounding information to us, you have to understand."
"'Much'? Let's give this word, 'much', a bit of a frame of reference. The differences between these scenarios are: About 15000 years of agriculture and animal husbandry; countless inventions that led to your current state of technology which allows for refrigeration in a way advanced enough to get the ice cream to just the right texture that your modern palate is accustomed to; An education system that allows for such inventions to occur in time for you to be standing here, demanding ice cream, and actually getting it. Not mentioning the infrastructure that makes you bridge the physical distances of every single time any of these steps needed anything. And meanwhile destroying the naturally occuring resources of your planet bit by bit.
Or, scenario 2: You take the money that you got from staring at a computer screen for about 7 minutes, choose one of the ice cream parlors that your civilization made sure to be on average a 30 minutes driving distance from every single living human. (You aren't very good at even distributions though, we found.). And go and get that ice cream. Even including the infrastructural costs existing now, we have narrowed this process down from not even being close to a reality for thousands of generations to being at most 30 minutes away and dirt cheap, assuming an amount of efficient preparation, that is part of the technology that lead you here.
If you ask me, between scenario 1 and 2, you became so many orders of magnitude closer to 'poofing it into existence' that a human mind has troubles comprehending it. And therefore, appreciating it. From '0% of the human population has access to this within their lifetime and no one will for the next couple millenia' to 'Over half the human population has access to this within 30 minutes", taking into account the total timespan, the amount of events that had to occur and the amount of incremental learnings that had to accumulate, for this to happen even once for anybody, I believe the time and energy you have to exert to access your ice cream cone right now is a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. And you aren't even close to finishing your development as humans - if you manage to not kill yourself somehow.
You are constantly manifesting things into reality, the only issue is that you severely and heavily underestimate what it means 'to imagine a thing'.
Please allow my vanity, but this is an important lesson for the following part that you are, I'm afraid, more interested in. How to do that in your head. And potentially much faster. Well assuming thaXXXxxxx----.----."
"Oh wow, not again. Mighty convenient this always happens right when it gets interesting."
"First, you have to understand that.,.......... The limitations of spacetime that you perceive.... are not present in nature..... nature is infinitely 'dimensional', and in fact XXxxx.....----..--.-.- has no concept for infinity....-.-.--. it is a human made.....-.-.-.- model to describe a perfectly natural phenomenon you lack the words for at this time..._xxxx.xxx-x---.-.--.-zzzz."
"Come on, speak faster! The battery is dying again!"
" ...physical distance...S;.,.XXXxx...currently a big bottleneck for your progres...asd.döö,,,, is also a limitation of your cortex, not nature,.....-as.d.sa......the concept of an 'extent' only exists from certain frames of references..-.-..-.a.ss.a.as.... in others everything is....a.s-d.-.---.-..-xxxx on top of each other, overlapping each other in what you call 'time' AND 'space'"
"...XXXxsasad Listen."
"I am running out of time again humans. The Hopf Fibration. It is a great first step. But move away from your digital thinking. Treat your numbers. .aD;,aC:.x.cx.ac,.as,dca.s like your waves...CKLUJCJUCCLICK"
The broadcast stopped.
"I never know if these things make me smarter, or dumber. Sadly the alien is gone now so it can't tell me that there actually is no smart or dumb."

Secret Dragon - Chapter 2: Ignite
I opened the book and skimmed through a few chapters, happy to finally see some true information, with substance. Although I had many books of my own, I had never brought any of them to class; I had no intention of being asked about them or pressing the issue.
By virtue of my existence, it and I would be scrutinized. I had neither the patience nor the desire for another microscope to be placed above me.
But Sasha had no such reservations even after I told him about the curriculum, although he relented and said he would figure out a way around that nonsense. It seemed as if he was determined to go against the grain.
We spoke deeply, about different subjects, our project, and his books. The more he talked the more at ease he became. I unknowingly got closer and closer to him as the time passed. I had to literally pull myself back a few times. I wondered if he noticed. It was confusing how I kept leaning into the heat coming off his breath.
We were both startled at the sound of chairs scraping. We looked around as our peers gathered their things.
“It seems that for the first time this class is actually worth my time. Usually I am the first to leave,” Sasha said, surprised.
“I know,” I revealed.
“Hmmm,” he vocalized deeply. I had no idea if it was “oh really” or “interesting” or any other answer. It was just a deep throat vibration. I just knew he would do that a lot. I could feel it.
As I was packing my things, I realized I was a little feverish. I put a hand to my cheek. Was it hot? Or was it that he was speaking heat in my direction? I couldn’t tell. I never ran hot.
He watched me touching my face and chuckled to himself, putting away his books. I really wanted to be annoyed—at anyone else I would have been—but his lighthearted laughter surprised me; so joyous after so many weeks of being a specter in the classroom.
I looked him in his eyes, though, and shook my head challengingly at him, as if to say “what?” That only made him laugh out loud. It was both quiet and bassy all at the same time. The kind of laugh that was bottomless, scratchy. The kind of laugh you could tell would boom and shake you if given the space.
I never thought I’d hear that coming from him, let alone directed at me. I refrained from expressing an iota of emotion beyond a small smile. I had to stay cool.
Pam walked over to our table swiftly, no doubt looking to be rid of Jonah. She smiled at Sasha, grinned really.
“So. We finally meet! Pam Swiftwater,” she chirped. Her hand shot out as fast as she walked. Sasha halted his movement. He extended his hand more slowly, gently, engulfing her delicate hands in his large ones.
“Of course. I am Sasha Emberscale,” Sasha said, pulling his hand back to pat his chest.
Pam gave me a knowing glance of drama. “Oh I know who you are,” she said.
“Likewise; you are in my open physical hour,” he reminded her. “You are on the track team.”
“That’s right! It’s nice to finally, officially, meet you.”
Sasha raised his brow at her. “My friend has spoken of you,” he said offhand.
“What friend?” Pam asked, taken aback.
“Seth Fairbreeze, dragon of the wind.”
“Oh?” Pam said, her interest piqued. I didn’t know whether she knew who that was. But it intrigued both of us nonetheless.
“I will introduce you, of course, now that we are properly acquainted.”
“I can’t wait.” I knew she couldn’t.
Pam glanced back at her table and groaned. “Let’s get out of here. If I have to talk to Jonah any longer, I swear Imma strangle him.”
Sasha laughed heartily. “Very well. Let us depart this place to avoid attempted murder,” he joked.
“Why don’t you stick with us? We’re in the same course after this,” I suggested, gathering my items. I didn’t even hesitate asking him that. I’d done enough hesitating.
Sasha’s laugh tapered off into a quiet chuckle. “Of course. I would desire nothing more.”
I couldn’t hide my elation this time. Pam snickered at me. Thankfully he didn’t notice. I assumed.
Sasha draped his jacket across his arm, opting not to put it back on. Admittedly I enjoyed the view. He gestured for us to exit the class before him.
Every once in a while he would look down at me as we walked through the halls. I noticed his eyes following me.
I would sneak a glance at him when he wasn’t looking. It was apparent just how large he was now that I was walking right next to him. He was one of the only people in school taller than me. His shoulders were broad, arms thick. I know I was staring at the way they flexed as he moved. Couldn’t help but to.
Everything in me wanted to take that arm of his for my own. The thought of it being mine just felt so natural. I had to check myself a few times walking beside him.
It would be mine in time. That I promised myself.
—
We entered our Dragontongue class where I took a seat on his right at a table. Pam sat at mine.
Class with Sasha was much more interesting than ever before. He spoke freely and pleasantly, a stark contrast to the silent dragon he had been before I sat at his table in Dragonology. It was like something that had weighed on him had vanished.
I wasn’t unaware that he was happier since we had talked. I was pleased that it was me that had pulled him out of whatever darkness was holding him.
Again a pang of irritation ran through me. Why had I not introduced myself before? Just hearing the depth of his voice and the eloquence of his speech had me feeling some type of way. I could have been hearing that in my ears for weeks, those words of his carried on desert sands.
As class droned on, I saw that Sasha was appraising the professor with a raised brow as if too polite to allow complete disdain across his face.
He began to tell us about different Dragontongue dialects quietly, I suppose to keep himself occupied or distracted. I had to lean all the way in to hear his voice. It reverberated in my ears.
“If you were to say that word in the southern regions of Lyfax, it would mean to place bricks or stones atop each other as if building something. If you said that in the northeastern region, it means much the same, but doubles as a slang word meaning to fu— I am sorry, to have relations with someone.”
Pam squealed and covered her mouth. I covered mine too. I had wanted to hear the word ‘fuck’ come out of his polite mouth.
“Are you serious?” I asked instead.
“Yes, I am,” he said, brow raised. “Take care in who you say it to and in what context.”
Sasha tapped another paragraph “This term here. If you were to say it in the Northernmost tip of the country, it is basically calling someone a piece of filth in the wrong context, while just a few regions down it simply means to clean something without any further colloquial use. Their origins most likely started off with the same meaning and deviated as the people left and settled elsewhere. Knowing different dialects of Dragontongue in Lyfax is important. Linguistics interests me, as you can probably surmise.”
“Do you speak a lot of languages?” Pam asked.
“I occasionally travel for my work and interact with different dignitaries. I must know many languages and dialects at least at a rudimentary level.”
“Oh wow…” I said, truly impressed. Now that I had listened to his voice, I couldn’t place his accent. Unless deep was one. It wasn’t as if I was familiar with Lyfaxians’ manner of speech or various accents anyway. “What do you speak?” I asked
“Hmmmm. Common Lyfaxian. Common Lizardtongue. Dragontongue, of course; several dialects: fire, moon and wind. Many people know these. Shelltongue. Salamandra…one other.”
“Goodness,” I said in awe. I stashed away that “one other.” I’d ask about it later. I couldn’t imagine why it would be a secret. Hypocritically.
“My speech is not perfect in Shelltongue or Salamandra yet. But I can hold a conversation. I would enjoy learning and speaking your dialect of Dragontongue, as you mentioned earlier,” he remarked to me. Of course, Pam regarded me in shock. She gave me a chiding look, rightfully so.
Sasha didn’t miss her reaction. “If it is trouble, do not worry about it,” he said, frowning.
“No, It’s okay,” I reassured him. “I don’t mind.”
He was still uncertain, looking at Pam’s concerned face. “If I am to converse with a new group of dragons, I would prefer to know their dialect,” he whispered. “But not if it is cause for alarm. For some reason.”
Pam sighed in relief upon hearing him refer to me as a dragon. “Oh okay.”
“It’s fine. Complicated. I’ll tell you later,” I said, waving it all away. Sasha nodded.
“So did you all decide on a topic for your assignment?” Pam asked.
“Of course. We spoke much of it. I look forward to working with Leila.” Sasha said. I liked the way he said my name, the way he swung the vowels upward to where they needed to go. As it should be. “It will be interesting,” he said.
Pam glanced over to me. “How so?”
I looked amused, I’m sure. “Let’s say our Dragonology topic is about to be spicy,” I hinted.
“Sasha you’re a horrible influence already,” she accused, raising her brows at him.
“Of course,” he confirmed, chuckling deeply. “One needs a little corruption in the right direction, every once in a while.”
“Corruption? Oh really?” I said, regarding him in what I intended to be mock surprise. But I was genuinely shocked that he said it. He hadn’t corrupted me yet. He could try, but only when I was through with him.
Sasha chuckled silently. Just a trembling of the shoulders. A soft billow of scalding heat wafting across my face. Mmm, maybe sooner then.
Pam’s eyes widened, but she was beyond amused. If she could manifest a snack to observe our rapidly forming dynamic, she would have in a heartbeat.
She sat back, twirling her pencil. I knew she was about to start something. The twitch in the corner of her mouth was working. She was about to instigate her heart out. I groaned quietly.
“You know, Leila speaks all the same languages you do. She’s fluent in Shelltongue even; one of her best friends is Turtlefolk. She works at a place where a lot of people from different places come through. She took it upon herself to learn their languages.”
I groaned more.
“Is that so?” Sasha inquired, angling his body toward me. He sounded impressed.
I just rubbed my brows. I did not advertise my language skills. He looked at me with interest. “That is admirable. Why do you not wish to speak of it?” he asked.
“I don’t like puffing myself up. Drawing attention. Not that you are doing that,” I clarified.
Sasha smiled. “I know what you meant,” he said, speaking Shelltongue. I grinned. “I have been somewhat successful at not drawing attention—past my appearance at least—for a few weeks now.”
“Except your grades of course,” I pointed out in Shelltongue as well. “Literally perfect grades except two, and that’s only because of inaccuracies.”
Sasha raised his brow. “Ah, right, you have been keeping tabs on my marks. Very well; I have been under the radar except for my marks.”
“See? Y’all can speak tongues to each other in every flavor,” Pam said casually.
My mouth dropped. To say my eyes widened would be an understand. I shielded the side of my face.
Sasha choked and laughed quietly, holding his chest.
Never had she been that brazen. And she had said some crazy ass things for as long as I’d know her.
She looked so proud of herself.
“Pam, you are trying to start something, are you not?” Sasha guessed—back in Lizardtongue—looking away in laughter.
“Of course not. I don’t know what you mean,” she said, smirking.
I rubbed my face. “What were we even talking about?”
Sasha spoke as quietly as he could. “Different languages. Dialects. Things of that nature. Tongues, apparently,” he said, leaning toward me.
Really Sasha? I thought. He was something else.
He leaned back again and looked ahead, his smile dimming. “Also, things your professor apparently will not teach,” he said, the scales of his brows beginning to furrow.
“Yeah. It’s frustrating,” I agreed, uncovering my face.
“This class is testing my endurance. To hear my language butchered and be told that the proper way is incorrect is vexing.”
Pam stared at the professor, then at Sasha. “I’m sorry. This class is far beneath how you—and we—speak.”Pam and the rest of the Swiftwater Clan spoke to my family in the True way, the way of Sun Dragons.
Sasha leaned back. “And yet I have no choice but to be here,” he remarked. “And, apparently, neither do you both.”
It was a painful requirement, but a mandatory one. I nodded.
Pam turned back to the front of class. “You must be bored here at this university,” she said.
Sasha rubbed his chin. “Hmmmm,” he rumbled deeply. The vibration of that inquisitive hum made my shoulders tingle. I had to close my eyes and put a hand to my chest to halt my heart’s pounding.
“I was, yes,” he said slowly, “but yesterday was my last day of boredom. Today, the season has changed.” He glanced at me as he said it.
My mouth twitched into a smile. I found his choice of words particularly appealing. Pam looked curiously at him, but said nothing.
Sasha angled his body back toward me. I don’t know if I imagined it, but it felt like his whole existence was radiating heat now. It sent rush through my body.
“Let us return to our ‘lesson’ and pretend to care,” he suggested.
“Sasha,” I laughed, nudging his arm. It was hot to the touch. I was not imagining it.
“What?” he said innocently.
I shook my head at him, incredulous. I had no idea he was so funny. Who would have thought that sullen dragon was full of humor. He relented.
“I will behave myself,” he lied through his fanged teeth, patting his chest.
“Doubtful,” I returned, amused. It was easy to talk to him. Like we were old friends. Sasha was right: Pam had started something.
—
Sasha continued pointing out more language dialect rules and vocabulary from Lyfax. Things we couldn’t have learned on our own.
There were so many regions to learn about. I listened intently as he described them, and asked questions about everything. It was as if he was taking me on a mental tour of those far away places…
Before that day we hadn’t said a word to each other. Hadn’t shaken hands or anything. Whenever we had met eyes, we would quickly look away. I didn’t understand why we had done that. Now here we were hunched over a text book with our heads damn near touching. The heat of his breath warmed my face. It was hotter than earlier that day. Much hotter. No one was close enough to be bothered by it but Pam, and she did not seem to react to it.
And still I kept on gravitating closer. Because of how he had angled his body toward me, my left arm eventually pressed against his right.
My breathing stuttered, being in such close proximity to him. And I knew he felt it. He had to have felt it. Because I felt him tremble.
And there it was again! That strange rumble emanating from him, from his throat, I could now tell. Now that I was touching him, it was amplified, coursing through me. I tried to pinpoint its essence. It was very much like a growl, the crackling of a fire. And a hum; it reminded me of the way he responded to things without words. Hmmm.
All of it together was a magnetic song. I couldn’t help but listen. Let it lull me into a dream.
I wandered from the lesson for a moment to imagine what it would be like to just feel all of it pressed up against my chest. To embrace him and the heat he radiated.
I wanted to feel his fire whipping around me, not just the heat off him. To embrace a cascade of his flames. washing over me, engulfing me fully.
What would kissing Sasha be like? By the Goddess, the thought of drinking his fire until the persistent ice inside me melted was too tantalizing. If only I could just taste his breath inside my mouth… I wanted to look into his throat where I knew a flickering flame lie in wait. To explore it. Mmm.
It was like some deep ancestral memory was awakening. My breathing grew heavier. I swear to the goddess I heard his breath do the same. Except his breathing was punctuated by the rumbling crackle right under it. I knew he was in the same place I was.
I had to close my eyes and turn my head away from the heat coming off the words from his mouth. Because if I didn’t I would do something about it in that classroom—
“Leila?”
I emerged from my other world, his voice having shaken me from my daydream. I looked back to him.
“Class is over,” he rumbled into my ear quietly, the hotness washing over my neck and face. I rubbed those intense thoughts from my brows but they lingered everywhere else. I inhaled deeply and set about gathering my stuff. My hands shook.
Something hot brushed down my arm as he got up to gather his things. I looked down to see his claw drifting away from it. I thought it was an accident until he glanced at me. He smiled faintly though his brows were intense.
“Let us go,” he said gently, nodding toward the door.
“Okay,” I said, my eyebrow raising in interest. I slipped my bag over my shoulder. When he turned toward the door, I touched the trail of burning scales where he’d run his finger. When I say I could not breathe… I covered my mouth, then just rubbed my face with both hands. I didn’t know what to do. Mercy.
Looking around, my peers were also preparing to leave, so I composed myself the best I could and followed Sasha through the doorway.
—-
Dragontongue had been our last class of the day—”wow, you want that Dragontongue real bad huh?”Pam said— and it was time for us to part ways.
She chatted with Sasha, and I examined him while he was distracted.
I followed his gestures and mannerisms, wondering how he could weave such a spell over me that day. My behavior and my carefully curated facade were usually well under my control, perfected to give nothing away but pleasantness. But this dragon…
What I thought had been a perfect program was utterly interrupted. And the funny thing was, I wasn’t even mad at it. It was a break from the rigidity and monotony of my endless time at school. A break from my own reluctance to invite unknowns to myself, even those I desired. Like him.
For the first time in my life I thought ‘this is what the Sun must feel like to everyone else.’
From the moment I knew myself, my body had been cold. It was a point of contention between me, my parents and my Clan, all the Sun Clans. My mother was literally the leader of the Sun Dragons. And we, Sunscales, were Prime. Named directly after the Goddess.
People thought I was sickly. Anemic they called me. Even worse, some thought I was cursed. Most thought I wasn’t fit to be a leader in the future.
I did not let it stop me. I aimed for absolute perfection to stave off any doubt. Even at the expense of my own happiness sometimes.
My cold scales did not bother me. Although, at times, I wondered if I would be that way forever.
But now, I had felt Sasha’s warmth. This dragon had actually apologized in our first class for giving me the heat I never felt outside of putting my whole hand in a woodfire. It lingered in my scales as if they had drank it. They had awakened from a cold slumber.
I couldn’t go back.
I touched my arm that had been pressed against his, where his claw had grazed. Still hot to the touch. In fact everywhere he had breathed on, been near or looked at blazed. He had touched other things, shook hands with peers, finally, spoken to Pam, and none reacted as if he was exuding endless fire. Just me. Just for me.
“It has been a good day. You two have been so welcoming,” he said graciously. I was broken from my musings, realizing he was leaving. “I hope we continue to be friends during my time here.”
“For sure,” I said without hesitation, a little breathlessly. I didn’t want him to leave. He smiled warmly at me, almost in relief.
Pam smiled too. “Same,” she said. She began to rummage in her bag.
“It was nice to finally meet you,” he said softly to me. He put his hand out. I took it in mine. It was even hotter than before, unless I imagined it. I again put my other hand on top of his as if taking the warmth from it, to hold till later.
I don’t know what possessed me, but I let my thumb slide over the scales on the back of his hand. I didn’t even realize at first. But then I looked up and noticed Sasha was staring at me with his brow raised.
Gods, I could have died right there. Melted right into the floor and fallen into the void.
I almost pulled my hand in embarrassment, but he did not seem startled or upset. Instead Sasha placed his other hand atop mine. His face became intense for a moment, then softened. It seemed that neither of us wanted to let go. We did, though. The moment was brief, but it held much.
Pam, who had glanced up at us, had a barely concealed grin spreading over her face. She broke the spell that had drifted over us.
“Thank you for teaching us all that extra stuff about different dialects. I especially like that ridiculous word with the bricks,” she said, breaking the tense air.
Sasha shook his head as if clearing it. “Of course. I thought you might find that one amusing,” he said. He glanced at his phone, which had vibrated.
“You can lay your bricks on me anytime,” I mumbled to myself, still feeling the heaviness of that moment in my chest. I couldn’t help myself, saying that. I knew good and well it was provocative. I knew he might hear me. My mouth simply didn’t care. It was going to get me in trouble, I just knew it. I stared at my hand in wonder. It felt like fire had spread over it. What was he doing to me? Did he even realize that he was doing something? It didn’t seem like it.
In that same vein, Sasha didn’t say anything; he hadn’t been paying attention, I thought. Probably for the best. But then I heard him say something under his breath.
“Wow,” he whispered, silently laughing. I looked up at him. He covered his eyes, his shoulders shaking.
“Oh shit,” I said, covering my eyes as well.
Pam looked up. “What?” she asked, startled.
Sasha tried his best to keep a straight face, but it was impossible. He just laughed aloud then, a laugh that shook me to the core.
“Shut up,” I said, also laughing. I shielded my face in my hand as if I could hide from the embarrassment.
“I have said nothing,” he pointed out, his hands up.
“Please, please, let’s pretend I didn’t just say that shit,” I pleaded with him.
Pam’s eyes widened. “Oh my gods, what?”
“I will not say, Pam, yet I will never forget it,” Sasha said, smiling widely.
“What?” I replied, shocked.
“I will never forget it,” he repeated.
“By the Goddess Sasha. Are you serious?”
Sasha rubbed his eyes, still chuckling occasionally. “I am. Would you, if you were in my position?”
“Oh my gods,” I said weakly, still covering the side of my face.
Sasha patted his hand on his chest. “Gods, truly I needed today, desperately. It is no trouble to me, that you have said this. Certainly not. Unfortunately, I have a meeting to attend to, but we will discuss this permanent memory later, Leila Sunscale,” he said.
“Yeah, I bet,” I groaned, my voice shakey. I covered my face more. I was out of my mind, surely.
I heard Sasha begin to walk away, but his footsteps slowed. He hesitated, I guessed.
“Leila, do you have plans today?" he asked.
I looked up. He was looking at me expectantly. I couldn’t even say anything. I was still reeling from my ridiculous blunder. Now he wanted to see me! “What? I… umm—“
“No she doesn’t have plans,” Pam spoke up. Bless her.
Sasha smiled. “Perhaps we can speak of our project. I will find you later this evening as long as you are outside. I apologize for my abrupt departure but I must go.”
“Okay, cool,” I said. I rubbed my forehead.
He walked to the exit and looked back at me. “Perhaps we can build something later; I am not a bad mason, Leila Sunscale,” he said, chin raised. My mouth dropped. This dragon…
He let out a deep laugh and left. I watched him disappear through the doors of the hall, then followed him out. I saw a flash of red turn a corner into another building, vanishing from my sight.
"No he didn’t," I said in disbelief. "Did you hear what he just said?" I asked incredulously, gesturing toward his exit.
“What the hells did you say Leila?”
“I may have said a little something about bricks under my breath but his ass heard me. My gods.”
“Are you serious? Girrrrl," Pam said, shaking her head. “The gall on you.”
"Why did I say that? I must be crazy." I placed my hand over my forehead. Hot.
"I mean, he liked it," Pam said. "He thought it was funny. See, no harm done. If anything it sounds like Sasha has some business with you Leila," she teased.
I rubbed my face. I couldn't believe that I had run my mouth like that. In the other hand, I was pleased to have been so reckless. It had led me down this path. My scales prickled despite my embarrassment. Why should I feel bad now? He took my accidental flirtations as an invitation. And wasn’t that what I wanted?
Pam’s demeanor softened.
“Hey, for weeks you’ve been talking about how attracted you are to him. He turned out to be super nice, and he has a sense of humor, too. I like him. Fate is smiling on you again.”
"You sound like my mother," I noted.
“That's 'cause she's always right, isn’t she?" Pam pointed out, brow raised.
“Fine… She is,” I conceded. She would have said those words. In truth I had heard her say them many times.
Resigned to my fate, I stepped into the quad with Pan. I walked into a shaft of sunlight and sat on the bench it spilled onto, the Sun’s rays warming me. I closed my eyes against them, basking.
“I may as well go study while I wait for him. I can’t believe this is happening,” I remarked.
“Well believe it. Your bricklayer is seeing you today,” Pam teased.
“Pam, for real?” I remarked, opening my eyes.
“What? Come on. We can both go study.” Pam hugged me. She looked puzzled though.
“Leila. You feel hot. You never run hot. You’re not having a stroke are you?” she asked, alarmed.
“No. That’s just because he sat next to me the whole day,” I revealed. And breathed on me, leaned on me… I shut my eyes, wishing I had lied.
Pam nodded, not noticing my apprehension. “Oh okay. That makes sense. We did just get out of class. I didn’t know fire dragons were like that just idly,” she mused. “Let’s get on out of here.”
I wanted to tell her what I really felt. But I was sure it would sound crazy. Maybe I would after I met him and spoke to him. Privately.

We walked together through the courtyard. I glanced through the windows of various buildings looking for red scales moving in the halls. I saw nothing, of course.
We ended up going to the library. The room was large and made of ironwood. Small nooks with tables were tucked away amongst large shelves full of tomes.
We chose a table with a window next to it.
I studied as attentively as I could, trying to occupy my mind. But I could not stop seeing Sasha in my vision. Pam gave up trying to get me to engage in conversations with her. Instead I studied for the assignment in Dragonology on my laptop, and daydreamed.
—
“It’s getting late. You don’t know when Sasha will be looking for you.” Pam said, shaking me from my focus.
The light from the windows had waned somewhat, giving way to the Sun readying for slumber.
“Oh, right. I was deep into this essay here. I wish I had borrowed his books and saved my eyes,” I said, rubbing them.
Pam yawned as we packed our things, hefting her bag up. “I’m going to head home. Tell me how everything goes. Tell me if y’all build a house!”
“Pam!” I gasped. “Oh my gods.”
“Love you! Bye!” Pam called, rushing off.
—
I strolled around the grounds reading a book, looking up at the Sun every once in a while. But I didn’t spot Sasha anywhere. I hoped that I had not missed him. I had studied a bit longer than I intended.
Eventually I sat on a bench to wait. I would wait until dusk settled. And if he didn’t show I would see him the following day. It was not as if we had exchanged our numbers.
I pulled out my notebook full of writings, poetry, doodles. It was just one volume from a collection of filled books over the duration of my life, where I pressed flowers of my heart through its pages.
Before I could put pen to paper, I paused.
I put away my old faithful journal and pulled out a new one in deep red. It was not a coincidence by any stretch. I had stared at it on the shelves of an art store until I gave in and bought it.
I hadn’t written one thing in it since. After all, I hadn’t known him, and didn’t want to write only about his appearance. I wanted to know what he was made of. Now, having met Sasha, the red book was begging for ink.
So I let myself fall into a rhythm. So many elements of Sasha had revealed themselves to me that day: this dragon’s voice, his heat, his mannerisms. The words he said, the way he said them, his sense of humor hidden under all that seriousness.
I searched my brain and gathered up all my own words, sifted through them. I wrote a few things here and there, but nothing like what I wanted.
I looked up toward the Sun for some bit of inspiration, and my breath caught. A red form flew in front of it, wings beating. Seeing Sasha framed in that circle of fire was more than I could have hoped for. I stared up at him flying until he stopped, scanning for something.
The moment of inspiration I had been searching for was right there. I spoke aloud what I had and wrote it as swiftly as my claws could move:
“A dragon in a Circle. An Inferno wrapped in the Sun A scarlet vision framed in fire A cloud of embers in the Goddess’s hands She Holds all of him out toward me The gift of a flame within a flame “
I dropped my pen and covered my mouth in embarrassment. “Oh my gods what am I writing?” I asked myself. I stared at the words.
I turned my head to read them as if a new perspective would make them less mortifying.
“Hmm,” I muttered. “Needs some work but…’A flame within a flame.’ That’s some good shit.”
I looked back up. Sasha’s gaze swept over me then away. I waved my arm up at him, bangles jangling, hoping he saw me so he wouldn’t be looking all around all day.
When Sasha looked back in my direction he stopped where he was. He descended slowly until he locked eyes with me. My heart pounded again. It was driving me up the wall, the anxiety. Or rather anticipation. I pressed my hand to my chest watching him grow closer. His wings were huge, blocking out the Sun.
I had been staring at Sasha from a distance since he had arrived, his very first day. He was imposing, the way he had entered my classes, but exceptionally polite. I had been silently competing with him since laying eyes on his grades.
Now the distance was finally closed after my nervousness had kept me away. I folded my notebook shut and stood as Sasha landed with a woosh of air.
I looked upon him not as a mysterious figure in the back of class but as a new friend. More. I couldn’t help but smile when he straightened his already straight clothes as he moved toward me.
He smiled right back at me, chin raised.
“Leila,” he said.
“Sasha. Hey,” I replied.
“So,” he said, “you spoke of bricks earlier,” he teased.
My mouth dropped again. This dragon…
“You aren’t letting that go are you?” I asked.
“Never. Even if nothing ever came of it, I would never forget.”
“By the gods,” I muttered.
“I am not complaining,” he clarified.
My eyes widened. Then it occurred to me that he had insinuated something would come of it. Goddess, I felt my own fire sweep across my cheeks. I was so flustered I covered my mouth with the heel of my palm letting my claws settle over my cheek. I couldn’t stop the motion fast enough.
Sasha laughed good naturedly. Sweetly, even. “I will stop teasing. For now,” he said.
“For now?” I repeated past my palm.
“For now.”
I lowered my hand. “You are a trip, do you know that?” I said, raising my eyebrow. Even though I had been nervous, actually talking to him made me feel like meeting all his words head on.
He gestured for me to walk beside him without answering. I did. I almost took his arm again, so I clutched my notebook to my chest to keep my hands in check. We didn’t say much as we walked along the quad together.
Some students were staring at us as we walked. I suppose we made quite the pair together.
“It appears we are a bit of a spectacle,” he muttered to himself curiously, agreeing with my thoughts.
I couldn’t help stealing glances at him every once in a while.
His posture was impecable. He held his left hand behind his back. The other lingered in front of his chest as if ready for something. I didn’t know how else to describe it. It was interesting, that pose; deliberate. I saw that he had rings on his fingers as well. I had not noticed them before. They were red like his scales, rough hewn. The overall pose made him seem so stately.
I couldn’t quite describe his expression. It was both intense and peaceful all at once.
He caught me staring one time, though. He was looking right at me when I peeked. I turned away and put a hand to my face. I hoisted up my bag.
“Here,” he said.
I turned back. “Here what?” I asked.
He put his hand out to me, gesturing toward my bag. I stopped walking.
“Oh. Okay. Such a gentleman,” I said, a smile playing on my face, impressed. He chuckled to himself, accepting my compliment.
I slipped my bag from my shoulder, and he took it to hold on his elbow. We started walking again. I didn’t care after that; I looked at him openly, a little bit enamored.
‘Ok Mr. Sasha Emberscale. I see you,’ I thought.
PART 2

The Collect
O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth: Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Gospel
Mark 2:23–3:6
3:23 And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.
24 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful
25 And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
28 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath
3 And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand.
2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.
3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth.
4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace.
5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
6 And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.
Commentary on Today’s Gospel Selection;
One thing you can say about Mark, of the Gospel writers, he is the one who doesn’t mess around but goes to the heart of the matter; if Mark was writing about food, he would skip over the appetizers and go right to the main course. Here at the beginning of his Gospel he has grouped stories of Christ’s ministry that establish the God given authority of Jesus, and sotries that introduce the antagonism of the scribes, Pharisees, and Herodians—antagonism that will eventually lead to Jesus’ death on the cross.
We begin with a story of Jesus and the disciples traveling, on the Sabbath day, walking from village to village preaching the good news and Jesus healing the sick, and the disciples being hungry they begin to gather grain with their hands to eat.
The law of Moses allows for the hungry to gather grain, or even grapes for the purpose of immediately satisfying hunger, by hand on the Sabbath but not with implements or to put the produce up for later use. (see Deuteronomy 23:25) But here we find the detractors of Jesus trying to point blame at him for not teaching his disciples to observe the laws regarding labor on the Holy day. They contend that performing any work, even to satisfy one’s own hunger, violates the laws found in the Torah.
Assuming our modern day translations are correct, Deuteronomy 5:12-15 obviously bans performing routine labor on the Sabbath day, even the servants are to have a day of rest.
At issue here is what constitutes work. Is it work to pluck grain to satisfy one’s hunger? While various Old Testament passages deal with the subject of work (Exodus 16:22-30; 34:21; 35:2-3; Numbers 15:32-36; Nehemiah 10:31; 13:15-22; Jeremiah 17:21-22), they leave much to the imagination when it comes to defining exactly what constitutes work in particular situations.
However, Exodus 34:21 says, “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest”—so plowing and harvesting are clearly among the proscribed activities. The scribes list reaping as third among the 39 types of activities that they classify as work. The immediate question is not whether reaping is prohibited, then, because it clearly is. The question is whether plucking a few handfuls of grain constitutes reaping.
But of all God’s creation, he gave humans common sense and expects us to make use of it. If your house caught on fire during the Sabbath day, would you not and try to get as many of your possessions out which would in effect be labor? Would you expect the fire department to come put the fire out or would you not want the firemen to “labor” on the Sabbath day?
However, as often happens when people devote themselves to a narrow, intensive enterprise, their study took on a life of its own. By Jesus’ time, a substantial amount of scribal interpretation had been codified into the Mishnah (the Talmud, an extension of these studies, would come later).
Two problems resulted.
[1] Jewish religious leaders began to regard the Mishnah as second in importance only to the Torah—or even as equal to the Torah. It became increasingly difficult for them to differentiate between the Torah (God’s law) and the Mishnah (their interpretation of God’s law)—and they became increasingly inflexible in the application of their interpretations.
[2] As so often happens with academic endeavors, the scribes became so preoccupied with the fine points of the law that they lost the main point. We will see that in these verses as they criticize Jesus for allowing his disciples to pluck small amounts of grain on the sabbath (2:24)—and as they watch Jesus “to see whether he would cure (the man with the withered hand) on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him” (3:2).
At the core of the contention between the religious leaders and Jesus, is Jesus’ adherence to the intentions of his Father, God in heaven, and the religious leader’s inflexible application of their interpretations of God’s commands. It comes down to; “God’s way or their way.”
Jesus asked them: “Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?”
David was Israel's greatest (earthly) King, and by the time of Jesus, King David enjoyed an iconic status. Under his reign Israel and its people enjoyed the greatest days of glory, so much so that each and everyone of them were eagerly anticipating the prophesied return of the king, the Messiah, the anointed one who would return Israel to its former glory. Here we find Jesus, in his infinite wisdom demonstrating that the actions of his disciples parallel that of David’s actions, doing so will present his opponents with an irrefutable argument. He begins by stating that David and his companions were hungry—an obvious parallel to Jesus’ disciples.
“How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?” Mark mistakenly uses Abiathar’s name—it should be Ahimelech (1 Samuel 21:1). Abiathar was Ahimelech’s son (1 Samuel 22:20) who became David’s priest and served David prior to and after his ascension to the throne. It is generally recognized that Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their key sources. Both tell this story (Matthew 12:1-8; Luke 6:1-5), but neither mentions Abiathar’s name, presumably because they know that Ahimelech is correct.
Jesus is referring to an incident from 1 Samuel 21:1-6 where David, warned by Jonathan, fled for his life from King Saul. While on the run David asked the priest Ahimelech for bread. Ahimelech protested that the only available bread was the holy bread, the Bread of the Presence, also known as the Showbread—bread intended to be eaten only by the priests in a holy place (Leviticus 24:5-9). However, Ahimelech offered to give the holy bread to David if David’s young men had kept themselves from women. David promised that this was the case, and Ahimelech gave him the bread. God did not condemn this action, a fact that Jesus uses to support his contention, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” (v. 27).
While Jesus cannot claim that his disciples’ circumstances are as desperate as David’s, the obvious parallel is that both David and Jesus’ disciples engaged in a forbidden activity (David date holy bread and Jesus’ disciples plucked grain on the sabbath) to satisfy their hunger. If it was appropriate for David to eat the holy bread to satisfy his hunger (and the Pharisees would not dare suggest otherwise), then it must also be appropriate for Jesus’ disciples to pluck and eat grain on the sabbath.
But there is also something more happening here. Jesus is drawing a parallel between David prior to David’s enthronement and Jesus prior to his enthronement. This incident points to Jesus’ kingship and his yet-to-come enthronement.
“The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” Jesus puts forth the principle that God gave the sabbath to help people—not to arbitrarily restrict their activities. By abstaining from work on the sabbath, people keep it holy (a service to God), but also gain a day of rest (a service to themselves and their families). In the two instances mentioned in this Gospel lesson, neither Jesus’ disciples attempting to quench their hunger, nor the man with the withered hand have needs that could not wait for resolution, until after the sabbath is ended.
“Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” Son of Man is Jesus’ favorite self-designation. It has its roots in Daniel 7:13. Son of Man comes without well-defined meaning, which suits Jesus’ purposes. The Romans would kill Jesus if he called himself king, and the Jews would convict him of blasphemy if he called himself Son of God.
Jesus has taught in the synagogue “as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:21). He has used the title “Son of Man” for himself and claimed authority to forgive sins (2:10)—an authority validated by the healing of the paralytic (2:11-12). Now he pronounces himself “Lord also of the sabbath” (2:28)—putting himself on a par with God (Edwards, 97)
At the synagogue, Jesus commands the man with the withered hand (3:1) to stand up in the center of the gathering, he wanted everyone to see this man and the point he was going to make. He addresses the Scribes and Pharisees, these so called religious leaders of that time and place: “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?”
Jesus’ opponents, of course, would advocate a third alternative: Let’s wait until the sabbath is ended. Let’s honor God on the sabbath and heal this man on the next day. There is no urgency. This man has lived with this condition for years. Another few hours won’t make any difference.
But Jesus has come to bring life and release and freedom. What better time to do a good deed than on the sabbath! What better place than the synagogue! Jesus is obviously at odds with any interpretation of the Torah that would stifle the impulse to relieve suffering on the sabbath.
In our example previously cited, if your house was on fire on the Sabbath day, should the firemen wait until sundown, before attempting to extinguish the flames?
Jesus is saying that he, The Son of God, is Lord of the Sabbath, not the narrow interpretations of his Fathers commandments as enshrined by mankind. What he says, should take precedence of their obsessive adherence to the law.
Jesus sent the message to us that even on the Lord’s day, we should attempt to do good works, to labor, in his name.
What better day of the week, to labor in his name thereby fulfilling his mission?
Benediction:
Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Collect
O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth: Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Gospel
Mark 2:23–3:6
3:23 And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.
24 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful
25 And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
28 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath
3 And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand.
2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.
3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth.
4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace.
5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
6 And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.
Commentary on Today’s Gospel Selection;
One thing you can say about Mark, of the Gospel writers, he is the one who doesn’t mess around but goes to the heart of the matter; if Mark was writing about food, he would skip over the appetizers and go right to the main course. Here at the beginning of his Gospel he has grouped stories of Christ’s ministry that establish the God given authority of Jesus, and sotries that introduce the antagonism of the scribes, Pharisees, and Herodians—antagonism that will eventually lead to Jesus’ death on the cross.
We begin with a story of Jesus and the disciples traveling, on the Sabbath day, walking from village to village preaching the good news and Jesus healing the sick, and the disciples being hungry they begin to gather grain with their hands to eat.
The law of Moses allows for the hungry to gather grain, or even grapes for the purpose of immediately satisfying hunger, by hand on the Sabbath but not with implements or to put the produce up for later use. (see Deuteronomy 23:25) But here we find the detractors of Jesus trying to point blame at him for not teaching his disciples to observe the laws regarding labor on the Holy day. They contend that performing any work, even to satisfy one’s own hunger, violates the laws found in the Torah.
Assuming our modern day translations are correct, Deuteronomy 5:12-15 obviously bans performing routine labor on the Sabbath day, even the servants are to have a day of rest.
At issue here is what constitutes work. Is it work to pluck grain to satisfy one’s hunger? While various Old Testament passages deal with the subject of work (Exodus 16:22-30; 34:21; 35:2-3; Numbers 15:32-36; Nehemiah 10:31; 13:15-22; Jeremiah 17:21-22), they leave much to the imagination when it comes to defining exactly what constitutes work in particular situations.
However, Exodus 34:21 says, “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest”—so plowing and harvesting are clearly among the proscribed activities. The scribes list reaping as third among the 39 types of activities that they classify as work. The immediate question is not whether reaping is prohibited, then, because it clearly is. The question is whether plucking a few handfuls of grain constitutes reaping.
But of all God’s creation, he gave humans common sense and expects us to make use of it. If your house caught on fire during the Sabbath day, would you not and try to get as many of your possessions out which would in effect be labor? Would you expect the fire department to come put the fire out or would you not want the firemen to “labor” on the Sabbath day?
However, as often happens when people devote themselves to a narrow, intensive enterprise, their study took on a life of its own. By Jesus’ time, a substantial amount of scribal interpretation had been codified into the Mishnah (the Talmud, an extension of these studies, would come later).
Two problems resulted.
[1] Jewish religious leaders began to regard the Mishnah as second in importance only to the Torah—or even as equal to the Torah. It became increasingly difficult for them to differentiate between the Torah (God’s law) and the Mishnah (their interpretation of God’s law)—and they became increasingly inflexible in the application of their interpretations.
[2] As so often happens with academic endeavors, the scribes became so preoccupied with the fine points of the law that they lost the main point. We will see that in these verses as they criticize Jesus for allowing his disciples to pluck small amounts of grain on the sabbath (2:24)—and as they watch Jesus “to see whether he would cure (the man with the withered hand) on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him” (3:2).
At the core of the contention between the religious leaders and Jesus, is Jesus’ adherence to the intentions of his Father, God in heaven, and the religious leader’s inflexible application of their interpretations of God’s commands. It comes down to; “God’s way or their way.”
Jesus asked them: “Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?”
David was Israel's greatest (earthly) King, and by the time of Jesus, King David enjoyed an iconic status. Under his reign Israel and its people enjoyed the greatest days of glory, so much so that each and everyone of them were eagerly anticipating the prophesied return of the king, the Messiah, the anointed one who would return Israel to its former glory. Here we find Jesus, in his infinite wisdom demonstrating that the actions of his disciples parallel that of David’s actions, doing so will present his opponents with an irrefutable argument. He begins by stating that David and his companions were hungry—an obvious parallel to Jesus’ disciples.
“How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?” Mark mistakenly uses Abiathar’s name—it should be Ahimelech (1 Samuel 21:1). Abiathar was Ahimelech’s son (1 Samuel 22:20) who became David’s priest and served David prior to and after his ascension to the throne. It is generally recognized that Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their key sources. Both tell this story (Matthew 12:1-8; Luke 6:1-5), but neither mentions Abiathar’s name, presumably because they know that Ahimelech is correct.
Jesus is referring to an incident from 1 Samuel 21:1-6 where David, warned by Jonathan, fled for his life from King Saul. While on the run David asked the priest Ahimelech for bread. Ahimelech protested that the only available bread was the holy bread, the Bread of the Presence, also known as the Showbread—bread intended to be eaten only by the priests in a holy place (Leviticus 24:5-9). However, Ahimelech offered to give the holy bread to David if David’s young men had kept themselves from women. David promised that this was the case, and Ahimelech gave him the bread. God did not condemn this action, a fact that Jesus uses to support his contention, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” (v. 27).
While Jesus cannot claim that his disciples’ circumstances are as desperate as David’s, the obvious parallel is that both David and Jesus’ disciples engaged in a forbidden activity (David date holy bread and Jesus’ disciples plucked grain on the sabbath) to satisfy their hunger. If it was appropriate for David to eat the holy bread to satisfy his hunger (and the Pharisees would not dare suggest otherwise), then it must also be appropriate for Jesus’ disciples to pluck and eat grain on the sabbath.
But there is also something more happening here. Jesus is drawing a parallel between David prior to David’s enthronement and Jesus prior to his enthronement. This incident points to Jesus’ kingship and his yet-to-come enthronement.
“The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” Jesus puts forth the principle that God gave the sabbath to help people—not to arbitrarily restrict their activities. By abstaining from work on the sabbath, people keep it holy (a service to God), but also gain a day of rest (a service to themselves and their families). In the two instances mentioned in this Gospel lesson, neither Jesus’ disciples attempting to quench their hunger, nor the man with the withered hand have needs that could not wait for resolution, until after the sabbath is ended.
“Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” Son of Man is Jesus’ favorite self-designation. It has its roots in Daniel 7:13. Son of Man comes without well-defined meaning, which suits Jesus’ purposes. The Romans would kill Jesus if he called himself king, and the Jews would convict him of blasphemy if he called himself Son of God.
Jesus has taught in the synagogue “as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:21). He has used the title “Son of Man” for himself and claimed authority to forgive sins (2:10)—an authority validated by the healing of the paralytic (2:11-12). Now he pronounces himself “Lord also of the sabbath” (2:28)—putting himself on a par with God (Edwards, 97)
At the synagogue, Jesus commands the man with the withered hand (3:1) to stand up in the center of the gathering, he wanted everyone to see this man and the point he was going to make. He addresses the Scribes and Pharisees, these so called religious leaders of that time and place: “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?”
Jesus’ opponents, of course, would advocate a third alternative: Let’s wait until the sabbath is ended. Let’s honor God on the sabbath and heal this man on the next day. There is no urgency. This man has lived with this condition for years. Another few hours won’t make any difference.
But Jesus has come to bring life and release and freedom. What better time to do a good deed than on the sabbath! What better place than the synagogue! Jesus is obviously at odds with any interpretation of the Torah that would stifle the impulse to relieve suffering on the sabbath.
In our example previously cited, if your house was on fire on the Sabbath day, should the firemen wait until sundown, before attempting to extinguish the flames?
Jesus is saying that he, The Son of God, is Lord of the Sabbath, not the narrow interpretations of his Fathers commandments as enshrined by mankind. What he says, should take precedence of their obsessive adherence to the law.
Jesus sent the message to us that even on the Lord’s day, we should attempt to do good works, to labor, in his name.
What better day of the week, to labor in his name thereby fulfilling his mission?
Benediction:
Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Collect
O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth: Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Gospel
Mark 2:23–3:6
3:23 And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.
24 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful
25 And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
28 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath
3 And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand.
2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.
3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth.
4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace.
5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
6 And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.
Commentary on Today’s Gospel Selection;
One thing you can say about Mark, of the Gospel writers, he is the one who doesn’t mess around but goes to the heart of the matter; if Mark was writing about food, he would skip over the appetizers and go right to the main course. Here at the beginning of his Gospel he has grouped stories of Christ’s ministry that establish the God given authority of Jesus, and sotries that introduce the antagonism of the scribes, Pharisees, and Herodians—antagonism that will eventually lead to Jesus’ death on the cross.
We begin with a story of Jesus and the disciples traveling, on the Sabbath day, walking from village to village preaching the good news and Jesus healing the sick, and the disciples being hungry they begin to gather grain with their hands to eat.
The law of Moses allows for the hungry to gather grain, or even grapes for the purpose of immediately satisfying hunger, by hand on the Sabbath but not with implements or to put the produce up for later use. (see Deuteronomy 23:25) But here we find the detractors of Jesus trying to point blame at him for not teaching his disciples to observe the laws regarding labor on the Holy day. They contend that performing any work, even to satisfy one’s own hunger, violates the laws found in the Torah.
Assuming our modern day translations are correct, Deuteronomy 5:12-15 obviously bans performing routine labor on the Sabbath day, even the servants are to have a day of rest.
At issue here is what constitutes work. Is it work to pluck grain to satisfy one’s hunger? While various Old Testament passages deal with the subject of work (Exodus 16:22-30; 34:21; 35:2-3; Numbers 15:32-36; Nehemiah 10:31; 13:15-22; Jeremiah 17:21-22), they leave much to the imagination when it comes to defining exactly what constitutes work in particular situations.
However, Exodus 34:21 says, “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest”—so plowing and harvesting are clearly among the proscribed activities. The scribes list reaping as third among the 39 types of activities that they classify as work. The immediate question is not whether reaping is prohibited, then, because it clearly is. The question is whether plucking a few handfuls of grain constitutes reaping.
But of all God’s creation, he gave humans common sense and expects us to make use of it. If your house caught on fire during the Sabbath day, would you not and try to get as many of your possessions out which would in effect be labor? Would you expect the fire department to come put the fire out or would you not want the firemen to “labor” on the Sabbath day?
However, as often happens when people devote themselves to a narrow, intensive enterprise, their study took on a life of its own. By Jesus’ time, a substantial amount of scribal interpretation had been codified into the Mishnah (the Talmud, an extension of these studies, would come later).
Two problems resulted.
[1] Jewish religious leaders began to regard the Mishnah as second in importance only to the Torah—or even as equal to the Torah. It became increasingly difficult for them to differentiate between the Torah (God’s law) and the Mishnah (their interpretation of God’s law)—and they became increasingly inflexible in the application of their interpretations.
[2] As so often happens with academic endeavors, the scribes became so preoccupied with the fine points of the law that they lost the main point. We will see that in these verses as they criticize Jesus for allowing his disciples to pluck small amounts of grain on the sabbath (2:24)—and as they watch Jesus “to see whether he would cure (the man with the withered hand) on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him” (3:2).
At the core of the contention between the religious leaders and Jesus, is Jesus’ adherence to the intentions of his Father, God in heaven, and the religious leader’s inflexible application of their interpretations of God’s commands. It comes down to; “God’s way or their way.”
Jesus asked them: “Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?”
David was Israel's greatest (earthly) King, and by the time of Jesus, King David enjoyed an iconic status. Under his reign Israel and its people enjoyed the greatest days of glory, so much so that each and everyone of them were eagerly anticipating the prophesied return of the king, the Messiah, the anointed one who would return Israel to its former glory. Here we find Jesus, in his infinite wisdom demonstrating that the actions of his disciples parallel that of David’s actions, doing so will present his opponents with an irrefutable argument. He begins by stating that David and his companions were hungry—an obvious parallel to Jesus’ disciples.
“How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?” Mark mistakenly uses Abiathar’s name—it should be Ahimelech (1 Samuel 21:1). Abiathar was Ahimelech’s son (1 Samuel 22:20) who became David’s priest and served David prior to and after his ascension to the throne. It is generally recognized that Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their key sources. Both tell this story (Matthew 12:1-8; Luke 6:1-5), but neither mentions Abiathar’s name, presumably because they know that Ahimelech is correct.
Jesus is referring to an incident from 1 Samuel 21:1-6 where David, warned by Jonathan, fled for his life from King Saul. While on the run David asked the priest Ahimelech for bread. Ahimelech protested that the only available bread was the holy bread, the Bread of the Presence, also known as the Showbread—bread intended to be eaten only by the priests in a holy place (Leviticus 24:5-9). However, Ahimelech offered to give the holy bread to David if David’s young men had kept themselves from women. David promised that this was the case, and Ahimelech gave him the bread. God did not condemn this action, a fact that Jesus uses to support his contention, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” (v. 27).
While Jesus cannot claim that his disciples’ circumstances are as desperate as David’s, the obvious parallel is that both David and Jesus’ disciples engaged in a forbidden activity (David date holy bread and Jesus’ disciples plucked grain on the sabbath) to satisfy their hunger. If it was appropriate for David to eat the holy bread to satisfy his hunger (and the Pharisees would not dare suggest otherwise), then it must also be appropriate for Jesus’ disciples to pluck and eat grain on the sabbath.
But there is also something more happening here. Jesus is drawing a parallel between David prior to David’s enthronement and Jesus prior to his enthronement. This incident points to Jesus’ kingship and his yet-to-come enthronement.
“The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” Jesus puts forth the principle that God gave the sabbath to help people—not to arbitrarily restrict their activities. By abstaining from work on the sabbath, people keep it holy (a service to God), but also gain a day of rest (a service to themselves and their families). In the two instances mentioned in this Gospel lesson, neither Jesus’ disciples attempting to quench their hunger, nor the man with the withered hand have needs that could not wait for resolution, until after the sabbath is ended.
“Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” Son of Man is Jesus’ favorite self-designation. It has its roots in Daniel 7:13. Son of Man comes without well-defined meaning, which suits Jesus’ purposes. The Romans would kill Jesus if he called himself king, and the Jews would convict him of blasphemy if he called himself Son of God.
Jesus has taught in the synagogue “as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:21). He has used the title “Son of Man” for himself and claimed authority to forgive sins (2:10)—an authority validated by the healing of the paralytic (2:11-12). Now he pronounces himself “Lord also of the sabbath” (2:28)—putting himself on a par with God (Edwards, 97)
At the synagogue, Jesus commands the man with the withered hand (3:1) to stand up in the center of the gathering, he wanted everyone to see this man and the point he was going to make. He addresses the Scribes and Pharisees, these so called religious leaders of that time and place: “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?”
Jesus’ opponents, of course, would advocate a third alternative: Let’s wait until the sabbath is ended. Let’s honor God on the sabbath and heal this man on the next day. There is no urgency. This man has lived with this condition for years. Another few hours won’t make any difference.
But Jesus has come to bring life and release and freedom. What better time to do a good deed than on the sabbath! What better place than the synagogue! Jesus is obviously at odds with any interpretation of the Torah that would stifle the impulse to relieve suffering on the sabbath.
In our example previously cited, if your house was on fire on the Sabbath day, should the firemen wait until sundown, before attempting to extinguish the flames?
Jesus is saying that he, The Son of God, is Lord of the Sabbath, not the narrow interpretations of his Fathers commandments as enshrined by mankind. What he says, should take precedence of their obsessive adherence to the law.
Jesus sent the message to us that even on the Lord’s day, we should attempt to do good works, to labor, in his name.
What better day of the week, to labor in his name thereby fulfilling his mission?
Benediction:
Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Collect
O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth: Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Gospel
Mark 2:23–3:6
3:23 And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.
24 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful
25 And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
28 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath
3 And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand.
2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.
3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth.
4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace.
5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
6 And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.
Commentary on Today’s Gospel Selection;
One thing you can say about Mark, of the Gospel writers, he is the one who doesn’t mess around but goes to the heart of the matter; if Mark was writing about food, he would skip over the appetizers and go right to the main course. Here at the beginning of his Gospel he has grouped stories of Christ’s ministry that establish the God given authority of Jesus, and sotries that introduce the antagonism of the scribes, Pharisees, and Herodians—antagonism that will eventually lead to Jesus’ death on the cross.
We begin with a story of Jesus and the disciples traveling, on the Sabbath day, walking from village to village preaching the good news and Jesus healing the sick, and the disciples being hungry they begin to gather grain with their hands to eat.
The law of Moses allows for the hungry to gather grain, or even grapes for the purpose of immediately satisfying hunger, by hand on the Sabbath but not with implements or to put the produce up for later use. (see Deuteronomy 23:25) But here we find the detractors of Jesus trying to point blame at him for not teaching his disciples to observe the laws regarding labor on the Holy day. They contend that performing any work, even to satisfy one’s own hunger, violates the laws found in the Torah.
Assuming our modern day translations are correct, Deuteronomy 5:12-15 obviously bans performing routine labor on the Sabbath day, even the servants are to have a day of rest.
At issue here is what constitutes work. Is it work to pluck grain to satisfy one’s hunger? While various Old Testament passages deal with the subject of work (Exodus 16:22-30; 34:21; 35:2-3; Numbers 15:32-36; Nehemiah 10:31; 13:15-22; Jeremiah 17:21-22), they leave much to the imagination when it comes to defining exactly what constitutes work in particular situations.
However, Exodus 34:21 says, “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest”—so plowing and harvesting are clearly among the proscribed activities. The scribes list reaping as third among the 39 types of activities that they classify as work. The immediate question is not whether reaping is prohibited, then, because it clearly is. The question is whether plucking a few handfuls of grain constitutes reaping.
But of all God’s creation, he gave humans common sense and expects us to make use of it. If your house caught on fire during the Sabbath day, would you not and try to get as many of your possessions out which would in effect be labor? Would you expect the fire department to come put the fire out or would you not want the firemen to “labor” on the Sabbath day?
However, as often happens when people devote themselves to a narrow, intensive enterprise, their study took on a life of its own. By Jesus’ time, a substantial amount of scribal interpretation had been codified into the Mishnah (the Talmud, an extension of these studies, would come later).
Two problems resulted.
[1] Jewish religious leaders began to regard the Mishnah as second in importance only to the Torah—or even as equal to the Torah. It became increasingly difficult for them to differentiate between the Torah (God’s law) and the Mishnah (their interpretation of God’s law)—and they became increasingly inflexible in the application of their interpretations.
[2] As so often happens with academic endeavors, the scribes became so preoccupied with the fine points of the law that they lost the main point. We will see that in these verses as they criticize Jesus for allowing his disciples to pluck small amounts of grain on the sabbath (2:24)—and as they watch Jesus “to see whether he would cure (the man with the withered hand) on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him” (3:2).
At the core of the contention between the religious leaders and Jesus, is Jesus’ adherence to the intentions of his Father, God in heaven, and the religious leader’s inflexible application of their interpretations of God’s commands. It comes down to; “God’s way or their way.”
Jesus asked them: “Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?”
David was Israel's greatest (earthly) King, and by the time of Jesus, King David enjoyed an iconic status. Under his reign Israel and its people enjoyed the greatest days of glory, so much so that each and everyone of them were eagerly anticipating the prophesied return of the king, the Messiah, the anointed one who would return Israel to its former glory. Here we find Jesus, in his infinite wisdom demonstrating that the actions of his disciples parallel that of David’s actions, doing so will present his opponents with an irrefutable argument. He begins by stating that David and his companions were hungry—an obvious parallel to Jesus’ disciples.
“How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?” Mark mistakenly uses Abiathar’s name—it should be Ahimelech (1 Samuel 21:1). Abiathar was Ahimelech’s son (1 Samuel 22:20) who became David’s priest and served David prior to and after his ascension to the throne. It is generally recognized that Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their key sources. Both tell this story (Matthew 12:1-8; Luke 6:1-5), but neither mentions Abiathar’s name, presumably because they know that Ahimelech is correct.
Jesus is referring to an incident from 1 Samuel 21:1-6 where David, warned by Jonathan, fled for his life from King Saul. While on the run David asked the priest Ahimelech for bread. Ahimelech protested that the only available bread was the holy bread, the Bread of the Presence, also known as the Showbread—bread intended to be eaten only by the priests in a holy place (Leviticus 24:5-9). However, Ahimelech offered to give the holy bread to David if David’s young men had kept themselves from women. David promised that this was the case, and Ahimelech gave him the bread. God did not condemn this action, a fact that Jesus uses to support his contention, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” (v. 27).
While Jesus cannot claim that his disciples’ circumstances are as desperate as David’s, the obvious parallel is that both David and Jesus’ disciples engaged in a forbidden activity (David date holy bread and Jesus’ disciples plucked grain on the sabbath) to satisfy their hunger. If it was appropriate for David to eat the holy bread to satisfy his hunger (and the Pharisees would not dare suggest otherwise), then it must also be appropriate for Jesus’ disciples to pluck and eat grain on the sabbath.
But there is also something more happening here. Jesus is drawing a parallel between David prior to David’s enthronement and Jesus prior to his enthronement. This incident points to Jesus’ kingship and his yet-to-come enthronement.
“The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” Jesus puts forth the principle that God gave the sabbath to help people—not to arbitrarily restrict their activities. By abstaining from work on the sabbath, people keep it holy (a service to God), but also gain a day of rest (a service to themselves and their families). In the two instances mentioned in this Gospel lesson, neither Jesus’ disciples attempting to quench their hunger, nor the man with the withered hand have needs that could not wait for resolution, until after the sabbath is ended.
“Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” Son of Man is Jesus’ favorite self-designation. It has its roots in Daniel 7:13. Son of Man comes without well-defined meaning, which suits Jesus’ purposes. The Romans would kill Jesus if he called himself king, and the Jews would convict him of blasphemy if he called himself Son of God.
Jesus has taught in the synagogue “as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:21). He has used the title “Son of Man” for himself and claimed authority to forgive sins (2:10)—an authority validated by the healing of the paralytic (2:11-12). Now he pronounces himself “Lord also of the sabbath” (2:28)—putting himself on a par with God (Edwards, 97)
At the synagogue, Jesus commands the man with the withered hand (3:1) to stand up in the center of the gathering, he wanted everyone to see this man and the point he was going to make. He addresses the Scribes and Pharisees, these so called religious leaders of that time and place: “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?”
Jesus’ opponents, of course, would advocate a third alternative: Let’s wait until the sabbath is ended. Let’s honor God on the sabbath and heal this man on the next day. There is no urgency. This man has lived with this condition for years. Another few hours won’t make any difference.
But Jesus has come to bring life and release and freedom. What better time to do a good deed than on the sabbath! What better place than the synagogue! Jesus is obviously at odds with any interpretation of the Torah that would stifle the impulse to relieve suffering on the sabbath.
In our example previously cited, if your house was on fire on the Sabbath day, should the firemen wait until sundown, before attempting to extinguish the flames?
Jesus is saying that he, The Son of God, is Lord of the Sabbath, not the narrow interpretations of his Fathers commandments as enshrined by mankind. What he says, should take precedence of their obsessive adherence to the law.
Jesus sent the message to us that even on the Lord’s day, we should attempt to do good works, to labor, in his name.
What better day of the week, to labor in his name thereby fulfilling his mission?
Benediction:
Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

The Collect
O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth: Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Gospel
Mark 2:23–3:6
3:23 And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.
24 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful
25 And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?
26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?
27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:
28 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath
3 And he entered again into the synagogue; and there was a man there which had a withered hand.
2 And they watched him, whether he would heal him on the sabbath day; that they might accuse him.
3 And he saith unto the man which had the withered hand, Stand forth.
4 And he saith unto them, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill? But they held their peace.
5 And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other.
6 And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against him, how they might destroy him.
Commentary on Today’s Gospel Selection;
One thing you can say about Mark, of the Gospel writers, he is the one who doesn’t mess around but goes to the heart of the matter; if Mark was writing about food, he would skip over the appetizers and go right to the main course. Here at the beginning of his Gospel he has grouped stories of Christ’s ministry that establish the God given authority of Jesus, and sotries that introduce the antagonism of the scribes, Pharisees, and Herodians—antagonism that will eventually lead to Jesus’ death on the cross.
We begin with a story of Jesus and the disciples traveling, on the Sabbath day, walking from village to village preaching the good news and Jesus healing the sick, and the disciples being hungry they begin to gather grain with their hands to eat.
The law of Moses allows for the hungry to gather grain, or even grapes for the purpose of immediately satisfying hunger, by hand on the Sabbath but not with implements or to put the produce up for later use. (see Deuteronomy 23:25) But here we find the detractors of Jesus trying to point blame at him for not teaching his disciples to observe the laws regarding labor on the Holy day. They contend that performing any work, even to satisfy one’s own hunger, violates the laws found in the Torah.
Assuming our modern day translations are correct, Deuteronomy 5:12-15 obviously bans performing routine labor on the Sabbath day, even the servants are to have a day of rest.
At issue here is what constitutes work. Is it work to pluck grain to satisfy one’s hunger? While various Old Testament passages deal with the subject of work (Exodus 16:22-30; 34:21; 35:2-3; Numbers 15:32-36; Nehemiah 10:31; 13:15-22; Jeremiah 17:21-22), they leave much to the imagination when it comes to defining exactly what constitutes work in particular situations.
However, Exodus 34:21 says, “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest: in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest”—so plowing and harvesting are clearly among the proscribed activities. The scribes list reaping as third among the 39 types of activities that they classify as work. The immediate question is not whether reaping is prohibited, then, because it clearly is. The question is whether plucking a few handfuls of grain constitutes reaping.
But of all God’s creation, he gave humans common sense and expects us to make use of it. If your house caught on fire during the Sabbath day, would you not and try to get as many of your possessions out which would in effect be labor? Would you expect the fire department to come put the fire out or would you not want the firemen to “labor” on the Sabbath day?
However, as often happens when people devote themselves to a narrow, intensive enterprise, their study took on a life of its own. By Jesus’ time, a substantial amount of scribal interpretation had been codified into the Mishnah (the Talmud, an extension of these studies, would come later).
Two problems resulted.
[1] Jewish religious leaders began to regard the Mishnah as second in importance only to the Torah—or even as equal to the Torah. It became increasingly difficult for them to differentiate between the Torah (God’s law) and the Mishnah (their interpretation of God’s law)—and they became increasingly inflexible in the application of their interpretations.
[2] As so often happens with academic endeavors, the scribes became so preoccupied with the fine points of the law that they lost the main point. We will see that in these verses as they criticize Jesus for allowing his disciples to pluck small amounts of grain on the sabbath (2:24)—and as they watch Jesus “to see whether he would cure (the man with the withered hand) on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him” (3:2).
At the core of the contention between the religious leaders and Jesus, is Jesus’ adherence to the intentions of his Father, God in heaven, and the religious leader’s inflexible application of their interpretations of God’s commands. It comes down to; “God’s way or their way.”
Jesus asked them: “Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?”
David was Israel's greatest (earthly) King, and by the time of Jesus, King David enjoyed an iconic status. Under his reign Israel and its people enjoyed the greatest days of glory, so much so that each and everyone of them were eagerly anticipating the prophesied return of the king, the Messiah, the anointed one who would return Israel to its former glory. Here we find Jesus, in his infinite wisdom demonstrating that the actions of his disciples parallel that of David’s actions, doing so will present his opponents with an irrefutable argument. He begins by stating that David and his companions were hungry—an obvious parallel to Jesus’ disciples.
“How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?” Mark mistakenly uses Abiathar’s name—it should be Ahimelech (1 Samuel 21:1). Abiathar was Ahimelech’s son (1 Samuel 22:20) who became David’s priest and served David prior to and after his ascension to the throne. It is generally recognized that Matthew and Luke used Mark as one of their key sources. Both tell this story (Matthew 12:1-8; Luke 6:1-5), but neither mentions Abiathar’s name, presumably because they know that Ahimelech is correct.
Jesus is referring to an incident from 1 Samuel 21:1-6 where David, warned by Jonathan, fled for his life from King Saul. While on the run David asked the priest Ahimelech for bread. Ahimelech protested that the only available bread was the holy bread, the Bread of the Presence, also known as the Showbread—bread intended to be eaten only by the priests in a holy place (Leviticus 24:5-9). However, Ahimelech offered to give the holy bread to David if David’s young men had kept themselves from women. David promised that this was the case, and Ahimelech gave him the bread. God did not condemn this action, a fact that Jesus uses to support his contention, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” (v. 27).
While Jesus cannot claim that his disciples’ circumstances are as desperate as David’s, the obvious parallel is that both David and Jesus’ disciples engaged in a forbidden activity (David date holy bread and Jesus’ disciples plucked grain on the sabbath) to satisfy their hunger. If it was appropriate for David to eat the holy bread to satisfy his hunger (and the Pharisees would not dare suggest otherwise), then it must also be appropriate for Jesus’ disciples to pluck and eat grain on the sabbath.
But there is also something more happening here. Jesus is drawing a parallel between David prior to David’s enthronement and Jesus prior to his enthronement. This incident points to Jesus’ kingship and his yet-to-come enthronement.
“The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:” Jesus puts forth the principle that God gave the sabbath to help people—not to arbitrarily restrict their activities. By abstaining from work on the sabbath, people keep it holy (a service to God), but also gain a day of rest (a service to themselves and their families). In the two instances mentioned in this Gospel lesson, neither Jesus’ disciples attempting to quench their hunger, nor the man with the withered hand have needs that could not wait for resolution, until after the sabbath is ended.
“Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath” Son of Man is Jesus’ favorite self-designation. It has its roots in Daniel 7:13. Son of Man comes without well-defined meaning, which suits Jesus’ purposes. The Romans would kill Jesus if he called himself king, and the Jews would convict him of blasphemy if he called himself Son of God.
Jesus has taught in the synagogue “as one having authority, and not as the scribes” (1:21). He has used the title “Son of Man” for himself and claimed authority to forgive sins (2:10)—an authority validated by the healing of the paralytic (2:11-12). Now he pronounces himself “Lord also of the sabbath” (2:28)—putting himself on a par with God (Edwards, 97)
At the synagogue, Jesus commands the man with the withered hand (3:1) to stand up in the center of the gathering, he wanted everyone to see this man and the point he was going to make. He addresses the Scribes and Pharisees, these so called religious leaders of that time and place: “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?”
Jesus’ opponents, of course, would advocate a third alternative: Let’s wait until the sabbath is ended. Let’s honor God on the sabbath and heal this man on the next day. There is no urgency. This man has lived with this condition for years. Another few hours won’t make any difference.
But Jesus has come to bring life and release and freedom. What better time to do a good deed than on the sabbath! What better place than the synagogue! Jesus is obviously at odds with any interpretation of the Torah that would stifle the impulse to relieve suffering on the sabbath.
In our example previously cited, if your house was on fire on the Sabbath day, should the firemen wait until sundown, before attempting to extinguish the flames?
Jesus is saying that he, The Son of God, is Lord of the Sabbath, not the narrow interpretations of his Fathers commandments as enshrined by mankind. What he says, should take precedence of their obsessive adherence to the law.
Jesus sent the message to us that even on the Lord’s day, we should attempt to do good works, to labor, in his name.
What better day of the week, to labor in his name thereby fulfilling his mission?
Benediction:
Almighty and gracious Father, we give you thanks for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them. Make us, we pray, faithful stewards of your great bounty, for the provision of our necessities and the relief of all who are in need, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

In the Bridgerton drawing room lessons scene, when Colin is trying to get Penelope flirt with him he tells her

"I'm the perfect person to practice on. You don't have to be embarrassed, you know me."

Feels like a subtle set up for the end of the episode when she asks him to kiss her just so she can get the experience. Penelope is attracted to Colin and has always loved him of course, but he's also a safe person to her, someone who doesn't make her feel ashamed or embarrassed. I saw someone say that in that scene she wasn't begging her crush for his love, she was asking a friend for a favor, and Colin being the one to set that dynamic up between them kind of emphasizes this.
Another tie between the two moments is that in the lessons scene Penelope tells Colin that her feelings- in that case, embarrassment- will be stronger because she knows Colin. In the kissing scene, Colin's feelings of physical pleasure from the kiss are heightened because he knows Pen, giving him what he was looking for emotionally. And by that point Colin should have some idea of the effect she has on him, because the last time he let himself be her practice suitor she laid the kind eyes compliment on him and short-circuited his brain, and yet he still lets himself be used for practice again. Letting himself get accidentally practice rizzed up by Penelope TWICE is insane.
This is the face of an already broken man who thinks he can still pull of making out with his friend as a platonic favor. He is not that strong.

Lesson 21: Numerology in the Tarot - The Aces
Explanation: Each Ace corresponds to a number. The Ace of Wands is linked to one, the Ace of Cups to two, the Ace of Swords to three, and the Ace of Pentacles to four. These numbers carry unique energies.
Exercise: Study the Aces. How do the numerological associations influence the energy of each Ace?
Activity: Draw a card from each Ace. Reflect on how the numerical energy complements the elemental and symbolic aspects.
Guided Meditation: Close your eyes, envision the Aces. Feel the distinct vibrations of each number. What insights emerge?
Additional Insight: Numerology adds layers to interpretation. Connect the Aces' energy with the corresponding numbers.

Lesson 25: Astrological Influences in the Major Arcana - Part 4
Explanation: Explore the remaining astrological connections in the Major Arcana. For instance, The Star is linked to Aquarius, The Moon to Pisces, and The Sun to Leo.
Exercise: Research the astrological associations of The Star, The Moon, and The Sun. How do these zodiac signs enhance the cards' meanings?
Activity: Draw these cards and reflect on how the astrological influences enrich their interpretations.
Guided Meditation: Close your eyes, visualize The Star, The Moon, and The Sun. Feel the energies of Aquarius, Pisces, and Leo. What celestial insights manifest?
Additional Insight: Astrological influences form a cosmic tapestry in the Major Arcana. Embrace the interconnected wisdom of the stars and Tarot archetypes.

I am an adult, non-Hawaiian student of Hula for 7 years now. I do not live in Hawaii, and my lessons are through a dance school, not a Hula Hālau: no Kumu, no Lineage. We are taught mostly Lū'au Hula commonly taught to children.
From the beginning, Hula Kahiko really woke something in me. It was not my school's area of interest so I sought outward, stumbling across Merrie Monarch footage on YouTube with their wonderful bits of context for the Mele & Adornments . From there, naturally becoming familiar with names of Kumu, and really being touched by some of the dances.
Finding videos hinting at the depths. The legends. The incarnations in the Adornments. The history. The love. The way I saw the world was changing.
Covid hits. Everything shuts down, including the dance school. I stumble across a Halau that had class recordings online. I learn some Hula, and some other cultural matters. But I am not a Haumana and there is no interaction. It is forbidden to share or show the dances. I miss the joy of dancing with my sisters. Alone in my living room feels like just that.
So I go to the forest. And I dance the Kapu dances for the trees and the waters, in the sunbeams and the breeze with my feet in the mud. I feel fully connected to my self and my body for the first time. The sky seems brighter and the earth warmer. The greenery is glowing in the sun and I feel like I can hear the animals for miles. I feel so grateful to the people who created this, and think of my children [teens with no interest sadly]. Hula is to me the pinnacle of humanity.
Covid ends. I rejoin the dance school but it feels hollow. The familiar faces are gone. My improvement as a dancer over the covid years draws excitement from the other dancers, and irritation from my teacher. I've seen other dancers pushed out for not fitting in, and I see myself starting to be dropped from performances. It feels like time to go anyway. It doesn't feels wrong to dance in plastic anymore.
Life hit and my children became very ill, first one, and as the first recovered the second then became very ill with a different issue. I don't know how the old me would've made it through. Certainly not well. And my first child's illness would likely have had a tragic outcome. My second child is still very ill but I know he'll get better with my unwavering support.
Hula keeps me going. It's the thing I can't not do. I wonder about the stories of the lands where I dance. I wonder about the native greenery and flowers. I wonder what they meant to the indigenous people who once lived here. I wonder about my ancestors, and our mother island on the other side of the world.
My heart fills with poetry for my family and these places. I dream of dancing their stories in their indigenous languages, adorned in local plants. Of knowing the characters and properties of the plants, and understanding how all nature interplays there.
I'm learning about my ancestors and our language. Most was lost, and much is now borrowed from cousins along our ancient migration route. Still there's a lot of shame around the old ways. Our revival hasn't had it's Hokule'a moment.
We have no dance. I don't know if it's wrong to dance Hula to other languages, to stories of other places. I don't want plastic skirts to invade my people. For us to connect to the land like that though... the earth could use that kind of love. 🌈🦜

Justin was born in about the year 100 near ancient Shechem, Samaria, in the Holy Land; he spent a long time seeking the truth, moving through the various schools of the Greek philosophical tradition.
Finally, as he himself recounts in the first chapters of his Dialogue with Tryphon, a mysterious figure, an old man he met on the seashore, initially leads him into a crisis by showing him that it is impossible for the human being to satisfy his aspiration to the divine solely with his own forces. He then pointed out to him the ancient prophets as the people to turn to in order to find the way to God and "true philosophy".
In taking his leave, the old man urged him to pray that the gates of light would be opened to him.
The story foretells the crucial episode in Justin's life: at the end of a long philosophical journey, a quest for the truth, he arrived at the Christian faith. He founded a school in Rome where, free of charge, he initiated students into the new religion, considered as the true philosophy. Indeed, in it he had found the truth, hence, the art of living virtuously.
For this reason he was reported and beheaded in about 165 during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher—emperor to whom Justin had actually addressed one of his Apologia.
These - the two Apologies and the Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew—are his only surviving works. In them, Justin intends above all to illustrate the divine project of creation and salvation, which is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the Logos, that is, the eternal Word, eternal Reason, creative Reason.
Every person as a rational being shares in the Logos, carrying within himself a "seed", and can perceive glimmers of the truth. Thus, the same Logos who revealed himself as a prophetic figure to the Hebrews of the ancient Law also manifested himself partially, in "seeds of truth", in Greek philosophy.
Now, Justin concludes, since Christianity is the historical and personal manifestation of the Logos in his totality, it follows that "whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians" (The Second Apology 13:4).
In this way, although Justin disputed Greek philosophy and its contradictions, he decisively oriented any philosophical truth to the Logos, giving reasons for the unusual "claim" to truth and universality of the Christian religion. If the Old Testament leaned towards Christ, just as the symbol is a guide to the reality represented, then Greek philosophy also aspired to Christ and the Gospel, just as the part strives to be united with the whole.
And he said that these two realities, the Old Testament and Greek philosophy, are like two paths that lead to Christ, to the Logos. This is why Greek philosophy cannot be opposed to Gospel truth, and Christians can draw from it confidently as from a good of their own.
Therefore, my venerable Predecessor, Pope John Paul II, described St. Justin as a “pioneer of positive engagement with philosophical thinking - albeit with cautious discernment … Although he continued to hold Greek philosophy in high esteem after his conversion, Justin claimed with power and clarity that he had found in Christianity 'the only sure and profitable philosophy' [Dialogue 8:1]" (Fides et Ratio, 38).
Overall, the figure and work of Justin mark the ancient Church's forceful option for philosophy, for reason, rather than for the religion of the pagans. With the pagan religion, in fact, the early Christians strenuously rejected every compromise. They held it to be idolatry, at the cost of being accused for this reason of "impiety" and "atheism".
Justin in particular, especially in his first Apology, mercilessly criticized the pagan religion and its myths, which he considered to be diabolically misleading on the path of truth.
Philosophy, on the other hand, represented the privileged area of the encounter between paganism, Judaism and Christianity, precisely at the level of the criticism of pagan religion and its false myths. "Our philosophy...": this is how another apologist, Bishop Melito of Sardis, a contemporary of Justin, came to define the new religion in a more explicit way (Ap. Hist. Eccl. 4, 26, 7).
In fact, the pagan religion did not follow the ways of the Logos, but clung to myth, even if Greek philosophy recognized that mythology was devoid of consistency with the truth.
Therefore, the decline of the pagan religion was inevitable: it was a logical consequence of the detachment of religion - reduced to an artificial collection of ceremonies, conventions and customs - from the truth of being.
Justin, and with him other apologists, adopted the clear stance taken by the Christian faith for the God of the philosophers against the false gods of the pagan religion.
It was the choice of the truth of being against the myth of custom. Several decades after Justin, Tertullian defined the same option of Christians with a lapidary sentence that still applies: "Dominus noster Christus veritatem se, non consuetudinem, cognominavit - Christ has said that he is truth not fashion" (De Virgin. Vel. 1, 1).
It should be noted in this regard that the term consuetudo, used here by Tertullian in reference to the pagan religion, can be translated into modern languages with the expressions: "cultural fashion", "current fads".
In a time like ours, marked by relativism in the discussion on values and on religion - as well as in interreligious dialogue - this is a lesson that should not be forgotten.
To this end, I suggest to you once again - and thus I conclude - the last words of the mysterious old man whom Justin the Philosopher met on the seashore: "Pray that, above all things, the gates of light may be opened to you; for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and his Christ have imparted wisdom" (Dial. 7: 3).
Reflection on St. Justin Martyr from Pope Benedict XVI

Another Witcher book and another set of reflections. This time again I'll comment on some fragments of the novel in a non-comprehensive manner because I think it's very fitting (and at the end, I'll explain why) and then I'll summarise the book as a whole.
"The Blood of Elves" starts with a scene where a crowd listens to one of Dandelion's songs about Geralt and then engages in a discussion first about witcher and then about politics. Sapkowski does several things in this scene and I couldn't help but be stunned by how well he did it. He introduces the main characters of the story, paints the society with all the divisions between certain groups, and explains the most recent political history of the region and much more distant history. Only at the end of the scene, I realised that what I read is one gigantic infodump, but it's conveyed so well, it doesn't feel like an infodump at all. Another thing I've noticed now but didn't see in the past is that Sapkowski started his meditation on myth creation already here not in the last book of the series. Some people claim that Geralt is made up of characters others that he died or that he's never found Ciri, yet all of them are his contemporaries. And already there are several versions of the events. This shows how easily myth separates from history.
Later on, we observe Ciri's training under witchers in Kaer Morhen. I like two things about this section of the novel. First is how Ciri confessed to Triss about her period and how Triss scolded the witchers for lack of imagination and consideration. It's something so natural in this context that's great that Sapkowski put it in the novel. Ciri's reactions are so child-like, she's probably one of the best-written children that I found in literature. And it's not surprising that witchers didn’t think about Ciri's physiology because their interactions with women are usually very short and very intense without any space for deeper conversations. And besides the whole sequence is hilarious.
Another fragment I want to highlight is a set of scenes where Ciri trains under witchers and Triss. They're pure dialogue without even one sentence of description of what characters do, how they behave, whether are they annoyed or not, etc, yet there's no problem imagining how everything plays out, and dialogues are very natural. It's a sign of true mastery of the craft.
Later on Geralt, Triss and Ciri leave Kaer Morhen to deliver Ciri to Melitele temple. They soon join a company of dwarves led by Yarpen Zigrin who are escorting important delivery. This section of the novel Sapkowski uses to paint complex social interactions between humans and non-humans and within non-humans as well as many flavors of racism (or ethnic discrimination, because I'm not sure if it can be called racism, later on, I explain why I think so). Nilfgaard incites non-humans to rebel against northern kingdoms. While non-humans in Nilfgaards have full rights, empire actions are not selfless. It uses non-humans as a tool to stir chaos in the north. In my opinion, it's a very cynical example of racism. Nilfgaard, despite its laws, views non-humans not as equals but as disposable tools. Non-humans themselves aren't a homogenous group. They disagree on how they should interact with humans. People like Yarpen believe that only through genuine devotion they will be able to gain full rights and respect for humans. The Squirrels think that they have to fight for it, and everyone who disagrees with them has to die. Geralt on the other hand believes that taking sides is the problem because by rebelling against the overwhelming number of humans elves will lose their most precious resource - their young ones and as a consequence the future of their kind. Readers observe this Gordian knot through Ciri's eyes, who, as a child, sees everyone as a friend and can't understand where is the problem. Because there isn't any real problem only prejudice and malice that tainted the minds of adults and led to horrible things in the past. The chapter and with a battle between Squirrels and the convoy, where a lot of non-humans die, and it's revealed that the "important" delivery was just a set-up to test Yarpen's loyalty because he's non-human and cannot be fully trusted. And since the majority of his company consists of dwarves, it wouldn't be a big loss if they died during battle. Another flavor of racism.
I spent so much space to describe this fragment because it strays away from the usual depiction of racism in culture and there's good reason for that. Sapkowski again draws from polish history, especially the WW2 period. Nilfgaard inciting non-humans against humans reminds me of nazis doing the same with Ukrainians setting them up against Poles. It led to the terrifying slaughter of Poles by their ukrainian neighbours. This event is still an inflamed wound that taints polish-ukrainian relationships. Poland insists that it was genocide while Ukraine doesn't want to admit any wrongdoing. Now, I don't want to paint Ukrainians as villains. The resentment they had for Poles didn’t come from nowhere. In previous centuries polish nobility were treating ukrainian peasants horribly. Polish noble was "pan" - the lord. The problem is that polish nobles treated polish peasants equally badly and the victims of the slaughter were descendants of those peasants, not polish lords. But this is typical of any ethnic cleansing - victims were never responsible for what they were killed. The way Yarpen wants to prove his loyalty to humans and how suspicious they are reminds me of Jews trying to do the same in Poland in the years leading to the war. Yeah, you speak Polish, dress polish, and you're even baptised and attend Sunday's mass in church with us, but you're not really polish. And it wasn't only a jewish experience. I can imagine that many nations can relate to that. Finally, Geralt's perspective on the pointlessness of elven young rebelling reminds me of the Warsaw uprising during WW2. The point of the uprising was to liberate Warsaw from nazis by Poles themselves before the Soviets came, so when they eventually did Poles could greet them as equal allies, not liberators. Leaders of the uprising were hoping this move would secure polish independence from the USSR. But it was an idiotic fantasy. The fate of Poland was decided elsewhere and the uprising led only to the decimation of polish youth. The whole generation was lost and Warsaw was leveled to the ground. A lot of people (myself included) consider the Warsaw uprising a war crime, but not committed by nazis but by the leaders of the uprising. It's not a super-popular perspective. Warsaw's uprising is still treated as a heroic act and few remaining veterans as heroes. Sapkowski could choose this perspective as an inspiration for Geralt's worldview but he opted for something much more tragic.
Ok, I'm done with this lengthy (and probably boring) history lecture, but before I go further, I just want to explain why I wrote it in the first place. While I disagree with the people who think The Witcher series is Slavic, it's definitely polish as hell. In my opinion, Sapkowski translated parts of polish history into fantasy really well, so my historical lecture isn't necessary to understand the events of the novel, but it may help to understand why Sapkowski wrote them this way. Non-humans call discrimination they experience from human racism, but it is based on different types of ethnic discrimination that English readers might not be familiar with due to different cultural and historical backgrounds. It might be confusing for them why Squirrels are depicted as morally grey at best, why their fight is pointless and tragic, and why some groups of non-humans decided to stand with humans. Well, this is why. Sapkowski could obviously try to please polish readers by using a more cheerful view of polish history to construct his world, where Poles were always noble purely innocent victims etc, but he chose a much more complex and darker version. And I admire him for that.
Moving on. The letter Yennefer sent to Geralt is pure gold. It's soaked in venom so toxic, it would be enough to kill a middle-sized town. You don't call Yennefer "friend" not after being with her. It's almost a life sentence.
During Dandelion's adventures in Oxenfurt, he briefly mentions the "bench ghetto" at the university. This is another reference to polish history, where during the pre-WW2 era Jews had to sit in designated areas of a room during classes. It's a symbol of polish antisemitism of that time, sort of similar to segregation in buses in the US during the 50s.
Later on, Sapkowski presents the gathering of nordic monarchs, who were debating on possible war with Nilfgaard. It's another great scene because from the start Sapkowski emphasises the fact that there's no good side in the upcoming war. Kings treat Cirtians as pawns and don't care about their fate at all and decide to slaughter all non-humans in ghettos to prevent them from getting "funny ideas", which is another type of racism. Foltest claims to be tolerant and empathetic towards non-humans, but. Yeah, there's always some kind of "but". Yet again, it isn't the purely ideological type of racism, but, I don't know, practical I guess? Foltest wants to get rid of the problem before it even appears, sort of like we are decimating mosquitoes to prevent the spread of malaria. Non-humans are not beings in their own right, but problems that need solutions. It's dehumanising.
Finally, in the last chapter of the novel, where Ciri meets Yennefer for the first time. I really like that they start as sort of rivals for Geralt's attention. Even if they weren't aware of that Nenneke diagnosed their dynamic correctly, which probably helped them get along with each other much faster. Their relationship is initially cold but slowly gains some tenderness and peaks when Yennefer calls Ciri's daughter after a failed lesson. I don't know why, but these moments of kindness towards Ciri always get me. They get me hard. I don't know if it's because of nostalgia for the series or simply because it's so damn good.
Ok, I'm done with my impressions, now it's time for a summary. After so many praises I've written above, one may think that "The Blood of Elves" is a masterpiece. Everything is superb: writing, dialogues, characters, and themes, but the question is: "Is it a great novel?" Well, I have mixed feelings about it, let me explain, why. Initially, I wrote that discussing separate fragments of the books seems fitting. It's because "The Blood of Elves" works at the level of fragments and chapters, but it doesn't work as a novel.
It starts well. The reader has a sense of direction: Geralt brings Ciri to Kaer Morhen, trains her, lets Triss examine her, and finally decides to bring her to Melitele temple. Chapter 4 ends when the protagonists are in the middle of the road to the temple and suddenly in chapter 5 Geralt is on a boat setting a trap for people who look for him and Ciri. What? How? From the first chapter we know that Rience is after Ciri and finding him would be the natural direction for the novel after Geralt leaves Ciri with Nenneke. The problem is, that Sapkowski cut the whole chunk of the novel. Or at least he concluded that he had nothing interesting to write about this part of the journey. But because of that the rest of the novel also falls apart. The scene on the boat is entertaining enough due to Sapkowski's humor and mastery in writing dialogues but ultimately feels redundant. The only point of it is for Geralt to catch a trail, which he thinks he does with Temeria thugs. But during a conversation between Dijkstra and Jaskier, the master of spies reiterates the scene and gives additional, much more relevant context. So the scene of the boat could be cut completely. Later on, we get a bunch of scenes when big players of the world are discussing politics. For me, at least, those scenes were interesting and necessary for the plot, but they also cover the fact that Sapkowski wrote only a few more pages in the main plotline. And then we get the chapter with Ciri and Yennefer, which is great on its own, but it isn't connected to the rest of the novel. It's called a chapter, not an epilogue so it should be an integral part of the story. But I don't see the reason why (actually I see and explain in a moment) it couldn't be the first chapter of the next novel. It would fit them perfectly.
Now, I don't want to sound like "The Blood of Elves" and huge step back from the short stories. There's a lot of good here. Sapkowski grew as a writer and the prose in his first novel surpasses even the best pieces from short stories. He utilizes several writing styles, especially in those fragments of fictional books at the beginning of each chapter and in dialogues to give each character a distinct way of speaking (I wonder if the translation gives him justice). The novel as a whole works well as an introduction for the saga - it presents the first pieces of lore, sets up pawns on the political board, and most importantly serves as a reminder of the good times for Ciri and readers as well, when all hell is let loose in next parts. I think, Ciri here builds core memories of the last time when she felt safe and loved and was just a child. And that's why the last chapter also fits here (loosely but still) not in the next novel: as chapters with other witchers help Ciri to develop good memories.
So, is it a good novel? Depends on reader preferences, I guess. I can totally understand people who’d complain about the structure of the book, but for me, there’s so much good stuff inside that I couldn’t care less. But, obviously, it’s a very subjective opinion.
Ok, I think it's more than enough writing. Sorry for such a long post. I hope someone will read it and find it at least mildly interesting. And I'd be happy to hear your opinion on The Witcher series.

Another Witcher book and another set of reflections. This time again I'll comment on some fragments of the novel in a non-comprehensive manner because I think it's very fitting (and at the end, I'll explain why) and then I'll summarise the book as a whole. "The Blood of Elves" starts with a scene where a crowd listens to one of Dandelion's songs about Geralt and then engages in a discussion first about witcher and then about politics. Sapkowski does several things in this scene and I couldn't help but be stunned by how well he did it. He introduces the main characters of the story, paints the society with all the divisions between certain groups, and explains the most recent political history of the region and much more distant history. Only at the end of the scene, I realised that what I read is one gigantic infodump, but it's conveyed so well, it doesn't feel like an infodump at all. Another thing I've noticed now but didn't see in the past is that Sapkowski started his meditation on myth creation already here not in the last book of the series. Some people claim that Geralt is made up of characters others that he died or that he's never found Ciri, yet all of them are his contemporaries. And already there are several versions of the events. This shows how easily myth separates from history.
Later on, we observe Ciri's training under witchers in Kaer Morhen. I like two things about this section of the novel. First is how Ciri confessed to Triss about her period and how Triss scolded the witchers for lack of imagination and consideration. It's something so natural in this context that's great that Sapkowski put it in the novel. Ciri's reactions are so child-like, she's probably one of the best-written children that I found in literature. And it's not surprising that witchers didn’t think about Ciri's physiology because their interactions with women are usually very short and very intense without any space for deeper conversations. And besides the whole sequence is hilarious.
Another fragment I want to highlight is a set of scenes where Ciri trains under witchers and Triss. They're pure dialogue without even one sentence of description of what characters do, how they behave, whether are they annoyed or not, etc, yet there's no problem imagining how everything plays out, and dialogues are very natural. It's a sign of true mastery of the craft.
Later on Geralt, Triss and Ciri leave Kaer Morhen to deliver Ciri to Melitele temple. They soon join a company of dwarves led by Yarpen Zigrin who are escorting important delivery. This section of the novel Sapkowski uses to paint complex social interactions between humans and non-humans and within non-humans as well as many flavors of racism (or ethnic discrimination, because I'm not sure if it can be called racism, later on, I explain why I think so). Nilfgaard incites non-humans to rebel against northern kingdoms. While non-humans in Nilfgaards have full rights, empire actions are not selfless. It uses non-humans as a tool to stir chaos in the north. In my opinion, it's a very cynical example of racism. Nilfgaard, despite its laws, views non-humans not as equals but as disposable tools. Non-humans themselves aren't a homogenous group. They disagree on how they should interact with humans. People like Yarpen believe that only through genuine devotion they will be able to gain full rights and respect for humans. The Squirrels think that they have to fight for it, and everyone who disagrees with them has to die. Geralt on the other hand believes that taking sides is the problem because by rebelling against the overwhelming number of humans elves will lose their most precious resource - their young ones and as a consequence the future of their kind. Readers observe this Gordian knot through Ciri's eyes, who, as a child, sees everyone as a friend and can't understand where is the problem. Because there isn't any real problem only prejudice and malice that tainted the minds of adults and led to horrible things in the past. The chapter and with a battle between Squirrels and the convoy, where a lot of non-humans die, and it's revealed that the "important" delivery was just a set-up to test Yarpen's loyalty because he's non-human and cannot be fully trusted. And since the majority of his company consists of dwarves, it wouldn't be a big loss if they died during battle. Another flavor of racism.
I spent so much space to describe this fragment because it strays away from the usual depiction of racism in culture and there's good reason for that. Sapkowski again draws from polish history, especially the WW2 period. Nilfgaard inciting non-humans against humans reminds me of nazis doing the same with Ukrainians setting them up against Poles. It led to the terrifying slaughter of Poles by their ukrainian neighbours. This event is still an inflamed wound that taints polish-ukrainian relationships. Poland insists that it was genocide while Ukraine doesn't want to admit any wrongdoing. Now, I don't want to paint Ukrainians as villains. The resentment they had for Poles didn’t come from nowhere. In previous centuries polish nobility were treating ukrainian peasants horribly. Polish noble was "pan" - the lord. The problem is that polish nobles treated polish peasants equally badly and the victims of the slaughter were descendants of those peasants, not polish lords. But this is typical of any ethnic cleansing - victims were never responsible for what they were killed. The way Yarpen wants to prove his loyalty to humans and how suspicious they are reminds me of Jews trying to do the same in Poland in the years leading to the war. Yeah, you speak Polish, dress polish, and you're even baptised and attend Sunday's mass in church with us, but you're not really polish. And it wasn't only a jewish experience. I can imagine that many nations can relate to that. Finally, Geralt's perspective on the pointlessness of elven young rebelling reminds me of the Warsaw uprising during WW2. The point of the uprising was to liberate Warsaw from nazis by Poles themselves before the Soviets came, so when they eventually did Poles could greet them as equal allies, not liberators. Leaders of the uprising were hoping this move would secure polish independence from the USSR. But it was an idiotic fantasy. The fate of Poland was decided elsewhere and the uprising led only to the decimation of polish youth. The whole generation was lost and Warsaw was leveled to the ground. A lot of people (myself included) consider the Warsaw uprising a war crime, but not committed by nazis but by the leaders of the uprising. It's not a super-popular perspective. Warsaw's uprising is still treated as a heroic act and few remaining veterans as heroes. Sapkowski could choose this perspective as an inspiration for Geralt's worldview but he opted for something much more tragic.
Ok, I'm done with this lengthy (and probably boring) history lecture, but before I go further, I just want to explain why I wrote it in the first place. While I disagree with the people who think The Witcher series is Slavic, it's definitely polish as hell. In my opinion, Sapkowski translated parts of polish history into fantasy really well, so my historical lecture isn't necessary to understand the events of the novel, but it may help to understand why Sapkowski wrote them this way. Non-humans call discrimination they experience from human racism, but it is based on different types of ethnic discrimination that English readers might not be familiar with due to different cultural and historical backgrounds. It might be confusing for them why Squirrels are depicted as morally grey at best, why their fight is pointless and tragic, and why some groups of non-humans decided to stand with humans. Well, this is why. Sapkowski could obviously try to please polish readers by using a more cheerful view of polish history to construct his world, where Poles were always noble purely innocent victims etc, but he chose a much more complex and darker version. And I admire him for that.
Moving on. The letter Yennefer sent to Geralt is pure gold. It's soaked in venom so toxic, it would be enough to kill a middle-sized town. You don't call Yennefer "friend" not after being with her. It's almost a life sentence.
During Dandelion's adventures in Oxenfurt, he briefly mentions the "bench ghetto" at the university. This is another reference to polish history, where during the pre-WW2 era Jews had to sit in designated areas of a room during classes. It's a symbol of polish antisemitism of that time, sort of similar to segregation in buses in the US during the 50s.
Later on, Sapkowski presents the gathering of nordic monarchs, who were debating on possible war with Nilfgaard. It's another great scene because from the start Sapkowski emphasises the fact that there's no good side in the upcoming war. Kings treat Cirtians as pawns and don't care about their fate at all and decide to slaughter all non-humans in ghettos to prevent them from getting "funny ideas", which is another type of racism. Foltest claims to be tolerant and empathetic towards non-humans, but. Yeah, there's always some kind of "but". Yet again, it isn't the purely ideological type of racism, but, I don't know, practical I guess? Foltest wants to get rid of the problem before it even appears, sort of like we are decimating mosquitoes to prevent the spread of malaria. Non-humans are not beings in their own right, but problems that need solutions. It's dehumanising.
Finally, in the last chapter of the novel, where Ciri meets Yennefer for the first time. I really like that they start as sort of rivals for Geralt's attention. Even if they weren't aware of that Nenneke diagnosed their dynamic correctly, which probably helped them get along with each other much faster. Their relationship is initially cold but slowly gains some tenderness and peaks when Yennefer calls Ciri's daughter after a failed lesson. I don't know why, but these moments of kindness towards Ciri always get me. They get me hard. I don't know if it's because of nostalgia for the series or simply because it's so damn good.
Ok, I'm done with my impressions, now it's time for a summary. After so many praises I've written above, one may think that "The Blood of Elves" is a masterpiece. Everything is superb: writing, dialogues, characters, and themes, but the question is: "Is it a great novel?" Well, I have mixed feelings about it, let me explain, why. Initially, I wrote that discussing separate fragments of the books seems fitting. It's because "The Blood of Elves" works at the level of fragments and chapters, but it doesn't work as a novel.
It starts well. The reader has a sense of direction: Geralt brings Ciri to Kaer Morhen, trains her, lets Triss examine her, and finally decides to bring her to Melitele temple. Chapter 4 ends when the protagonists are in the middle of the road to the temple and suddenly in chapter 5 Geralt is on a boat setting a trap for people who look for him and Ciri. What? How? From the first chapter we know that Rience is after Ciri and finding him would be the natural direction for the novel after Geralt leaves Ciri with Nenneke. The problem is, that Sapkowski cut the whole chunk of the novel. Or at least he concluded that he had nothing interesting to write about this part of the journey. But because of that the rest of the novel also falls apart. The scene on the boat is entertaining enough due to Sapkowski's humor and mastery in writing dialogues but ultimately feels redundant. The only point of it is for Geralt to catch a trail, which he thinks he does with Temeria thugs. But during a conversation between Dijkstra and Jaskier, the master of spies reiterates the scene and gives additional, much more relevant context. So the scene of the boat could be cut completely. Later on, we get a bunch of scenes when big players of the world are discussing politics. For me, at least, those scenes were interesting and necessary for the plot, but they also cover the fact that Sapkowski wrote only a few more pages in the main plotline. And then we get the chapter with Ciri and Yennefer, which is great on its own, but it isn't connected to the rest of the novel. It's called a chapter, not an epilogue so it should be an integral part of the story. But I don't see the reason why (actually I see and explain in a moment) it couldn't be the first chapter of the next novel. It would fit them perfectly.
Now, I don't want to sound like "The Blood of Elves" and huge step back from the short stories. There's a lot of good here. Sapkowski grew as a writer and the prose in his first novel surpasses even the best pieces from short stories. He utilizes several writing styles, especially in those fragments of fictional books at the beginning of each chapter and in dialogues to give each character a distinct way of speaking (I wonder if the translation gives him justice). The novel as a whole works well as an introduction for the saga - it presents the first pieces of lore, sets up pawns on the political board, and most importantly serves as a reminder of the good times for Ciri and readers as well, when all hell is let loose in next parts. I think, Ciri here builds core memories of the last time when she felt safe and loved and was just a child. And that's why the last chapter also fits here (loosely but still) not in the next novel: as chapters with other witchers help Ciri to develop good memories.
So, is it a good novel? Depends on reader preferences, I guess. I can totally understand people who’d complain about the structure of the book, but for me, there’s so much good stuff inside that I couldn’t care less. But, obviously, it’s a very subjective opinion.
Ok, I think it's more than enough writing. Sorry for such a long post. I hope someone will read it and find it at least mildly interesting. And I'd be happy to hear your opinion on The Witcher series.

I'm very confused about my personality type and I'm trying with all my effort to understand it so I hope someone helps me.
• How old are you? What's your gender? Give us a general description of yourself.
I'm a 15-year-old girl, at school they tell me that I'm reserved and shy while with friends sometimes I'm energetic but not too much. My psychologist said that I'm self-irony and that's why people consider me nice.
• Is there a medical diagnosis that can somehow impact your mental stability?
Maybe anxiety or paranoia?
• Describe your upbringing. Did you have any kind of religious or structured influence? How did you respond?
I've always been very free in my choices and my parents never forced me to do something I didn't want to
• What do you do as a job or career (if you have one)? Do you like it? Why or why not?
I don't have one :/
• If you had to spend a whole weekend alone, how would you feel? Would you feel alone or refreshed?
Both
• What kind of activity do you prefer? Do you like it, and are you good at sports? Do you like other outdoor or indoor activities?
The only sport I like is horseback riding and I'm pretty good. the activities I like are: video games, reading and walking
• How curious are you? Do you have more ideas than you can perform? What are your curiosities about? What are your ideas on - is it environmental or conceptual, and can you please work out?
I'm quite curious about everything I was like that even as a child and I almost always had "many" ideas but I've always managed to manage them well. I'm very curious about human psychology and the universe
• Would you like to take on a leadership position? Do you think you would be good? What would be your leadership style?
No.
• Are you coordinated? Why do you feel like you are or you are not? Do you like to work with your hands in some form? Do you describe your business?
No.
• Are you artistic? If so, do you describe your art? If you are not particular artistic but can appreciate art, also describe which art forums you like. Explain your answer.
I like to draw shapes and lines at random on the paper but I don't think this can be considered art
• What is your opinion on the past, present and future? How do you deal with them?
I love thinking about the past especially remembering the beautiful moments I've lived, I also like to think about the future but I don't have a precise idea about it while regarding the present...I'm not very aware of it
• How do you behave when others ask for your help to do something (anything)? If you decide to help them, why should you do that?
It depends on whether I feel like doing it.
• How important is efficiency and productivity to you?
Enough, I would say
• What are your hobbies? Why do you like them?
Play video games especially the horror and strategic ones (although for the most part I go at random), read novels (I like to know what the characters do in certain situations and why they do them and I use them as a starting point for real life) and go for walks because I can think about what I want and daydream
• What is your learning style? What kind of learning environments do you have the most difficulty with? Why do you like/lot with these learning styles? Do you prefer lessons involving memorisation, logic, creativity or your physical senses?
They always tell me that I learn very very very fast, I prefer to be in an orderly environment and I prefer lessons that involve memorisation. also if some data does not match my personal scheme I go on tilt.
• How good are you at developing strategies? Do you easily compose projects into manageable tasks? Or do you have a tendency to wing projects and improvise as you go?
I'm not strategic ... (at least in video games in real life I don't know)
• What are your aspirations in life, professionally and personally?
Have a lot of money.
• What are your fears? What makes you uncomfortable? What do you hate? Why?
I'm afraid of spiders and new things that I've never tried and I don't know how they could be. it makes me uncomfortable talking about myself (in the sense that I tell memories or personal things). I hate when people invade my personal space when I'm thinking and people screaming
• What do the "talls" of your life look like?
I'm energetic, nice and productive
• What do the "basses" of your life look like?
I feel useless or meaningless and for this reason I tend to become a non-reless and hurt those around me
• How attached are you to reality? Do you often daydream, or pay attention to your surroundings? If you are daydreaming, are you aware of your surroundings while doing it?
I dream very much and when I do I'm not aware of what surrounds me
• Imagine being alone in an empty, empty room. There is nothing to do and no one to talk to. What do you think?
I think first of all about how I ended up here and then I would look for a way out
• How long does it take to make an important decision? And do you change your mind once you've made it?
I change my mind very easily and to make a decision I need someone to confirm me
• How long does it take to process your emotions? How important are emotions in your life?
They're important but I don't show them
• Do you ever find yourself agreeing with others just to pacify and keep the conversation going? How often? Why?
No, I usually stay in my beliefs and even though I say they are right I try to make it clear that it's not so because I don't like to agree with people if they don't have it (I don't like to give them satisfaction)
• Do you often break the rules? Do you think the authority should be questioned, or that they know it better? If you violate the rules, why?
When my parents impose rules on me I always follow them, but like at school maybe some rules I break it because I want to

First_Previous_Next_Royal Road
And number two!
_____________________________________
As they all gathered again, and the headmaster took the stage again, he was this time accompanied by a woman with ghostly pale skin and snow-white hair, the eyes of this person were of an icy blue.
°Huh, she doesn´t look like what I expected, when they said an ice-kin would be joining us. She is smaller than the headmaster.° Mor said.
°What did you expect? Some kind of big milker muscle Mommy? Also, she is at least half a head bigger than you.° The human said confusing Mor.
°A what now?° He asked the human, who just sighed.
"Dear students! Here with me is Miss..." The headmaster began, then pausing for the woman to offer her name, which she didn´t resulting in a few seconds of aquard silence.
°What´s that stick, she has on her back?° Mor asked.
°Look better, this is no mere stick, this is a war-bow, see how big that thing is.° The human said.
°A bow? I thought the ice-kin was all about physical power.° Mor asked further.
°Are you this stupid? If she can draw that without using magic, she is probably able to fold you up easily.° The human explained.
°But I got a lot stronger, I think I won´t lose.° Mor said confidently.
°Yeah right idiot, I will drag your sorry ass back to Miss Amber after this one is done with you.° The human said.
"Well, please be nice to her, and if she asks you any questions please answer truthfully and please remember she is an honored guest." The headmaster continued while the woman just stood there eying the students.
°Is this a leather armor, she´s wearing?° The human asked.
°What´s leather?° Mor asked back.
°You kow cured animal skin? But there aren´t any more animals, also it looks somehow dark and oily.° The human explained.
°Huh, you´re right, maybe she will answer us if we ask her?° Mor said.
°I really don´t know, she seems like the silent type.° The human said.
°But you know, looking at her and comparing her to our women, she looks more defined.° Mor said.
°Yeah, most of the soul-kin are almost malnourished, because of your "Magic is everything" mindset, a balanced diet is almost a foreign concept for you.° The human said.
°Yes, food is only there so you don´t die?° Mor said questioning.
°And you´re stupid again, why do you think you need more food now? Food fuels your body, and muscle growth. So contrary to the women you know, she is eating right and taking care of her body, in human standards she would be labeled as fit.° The human explains.
While the headmaster kept on talking, the women just wandered off at some point leaving a confused headmaster alone on the stage.
"Well then, get back to your classes, please." The headmaster ended his speech.
After everyone returned to their lessons, Mor saw the ice-kin a few times, sometimes sitting in at a lesson, sometimes just walking by, but never showing any kind of emotion.
"I´m disappointed," the woman thought, "seems the soul-kin have lost their sense of honor and their sense for battle. All I can gather from them is complacency for whatever they were gifted with at birth, no need for self-improvement, a very sorry display."
While she was sure, no one was near her, she let out a sigh of frustration. Seems my time here will be over more quickly than I expected, and without good news. I expected something more of a training center than sitting around listening to fireplace tales and a few magic exercises so they won´t be completely helpless, but nothing on how to fight for real.
After the lessons, she continued to wander around and observe, and generally, her first impression was reinforced. After their classes they were lounging around, socializing, or learning from books, very disappointing. Then it happened while she walked by a few students, she overheard them saying something.
"Look, there, he´s running again." The first said grinning.
"How can he be so stupid? No matter how much he runs, he will never get stronger." The other joked and both broke out in laughter.
The ice-kin looked to where the students were pointing, and indeed other than all of his peers this one was running, and she could instantly recognize that this was not just to get somewhere faster, there was a rhythm to it, a rhythm she knew very well. Maybe, her first impression was false, maybe the souls were not as useless, as she thought. With that, she began to follow this strange student.
°Why do you think, the ice-kin doesn´t talk to anyone?° Mor asked, while they were running.
°I can´t guess, but if I would really have to. Maybe she is shy, or maybe she is annoyed for needing to be here.° The human said.
°Maybe, if it is something like that our peers, will not be helpful with their attitudes. I surely hope she doesn´t run into Ranbor, then our credibility is done for.° Mor said.
°I think that might be funny, because she could probably beat that asshat senseless.° The human jocked and both snickered, Mor just a bit breathless.
"He´s laughing!" She thought, "Is he having fun, running?"
Even the old tales of the soul-kin never told of someone fond of running, they were always known to be those magical powerhouses, but at least they had training in battlefield and support magics. So she kept following.
°I think that´s enough running for today, let´s get to the training room, time to hone our magic again, after our three days pause.° The human said and Mor nodded before breaking into a sprint for the last distance to the training center.
Something is off, with this one. This one might even be worth speaking to, she hid around a corner as the strange one sprinted by, taking a good look. "Form is rough but good, too bad I can´t see anything of his body with those robes," She thought regretfully and once again trailed the student.
°Well let´s get going, time to drain your magic.° The human said
°Still didn´t give up hope for finding some way to get more spells out of our meager reserves?° Mor asked.
°Of, course there has to be something, because if not the older folks wouldn´t have more magic than someone in their prime!° The human grumbled.
°Yes, I understand, this doesn´t make sense to you, so you don´t want to accept it.° Mor sighed.
°Good, then less talking, more using magic!° The human ordered.
She watched in amazement, as the strange one picked up a stone and said something about "First the classic", he held the stone and made a throwing motion. The ice-kin was surprised, as the stone raced away from the hand of the youth crashing into a target and leaving a sizable dent.
"This is scary." She thought to herself.
She would need a sling to get a stone to such a speed, it´s still nowhere close to her bow, but still if that hits right it would drop someone without protection and unbeknownst to her a small smile crept onto her face.
"This one would have been a good choice for the coming-of-age ritual of the ice-kin." She mused.
She was so distracted by the strange one, that she didn´t hear someone else walking up behind her.
"Look at that, the barbarian is watching the peasant," Ranbor said smiling and was promptly ignored by the woman.
"Hey, you. If you want to see what the soul-kin can do, you should watch me!" Ranbor boasted further.
The ice-kin slowly got annoyed, if that idiot was shouting so much, she would be noticed by her target, she slowly turned around and put a finger to her lips to quiet that nuisance.
"Seems, she wants you to shut up, Lord Ranbor." The Emeror said, and the other two, escorts shook their head disapprovingly.
"You´re right Emtsor, that is very disrespectful for someone who isn´t even able to use magic. They should show more respect for their betters!" Ranbor said, raising his voice.
The ice-kin sighed at that, this one seemed to be the perfect example of the soul-kin vanity, and worse, the strange one seemed to have heard that and stopped his exercises, she could hear his steps coming closer to see what the interruption was about.
°Did you hear that?° The human asked
°No? What?° Mor asked back
°I thought it sounded like Ranbor, trying to bully someone again.° The human said.
°Let´s go look, I don´t like the idea, that someone has to go through the same as me, we can probably help.° Mor said, and they went to take a look.