Your Home Is That Thing To Which

There Is So Much About My Fate That I Cannot Control, But Other Things Do Fall Under My Jurisdiction. There Are Certain Lottery Tickets I Can Buy, Thereby Increasing My Odds Of Finding Contentment. I Can Decide How I Spend My Time, Whom I Interact With, Whom I Share My Body And Life And Money And Energy With.

In 1954, Pope Pius Xi, Of All People, Sent Some Vatican Delegates On A Trip To Libya With These Written Instructions: "do Not Think That You Are Going Among Infidels. Muslims Attain Salvation, Too. The Ways Of Providence Are Infinite.

I Wanted To Experience Both. I Wanted Worldly Enjoyment And Divine Transcendence. I Wanted What The Greeks Called Kalos Kai Agathos, The Singular Balance Of The Good And The Beautiful. I'd Been Missing Both During These Last Hard Years, Because Both Pleasure And Devotion Require A Stress-free Space In Which To Flourish And I'd Been Living In A Giant Trash Compactor Of Nonstop Anxiety. As For How To Balance The Urge For Pleasure Against The Longing For Devotion...well, Surely There Was A Way To Learn That Trick.

I Think That If You Can Roast A Chicken, You Can Get Whatever You Want Out Of A Woman. Maybe It's Just Me But I Would Suspect That A Man Trying To Impress A Woman Would Be More Likely To Bring Out The Steak - "i Killed This For You, Now I'm Grilling It For You."... A Man That Can Cook You A Proper Meal That Is Like A Weekday Meal - Which I Think Cannot Be Better Than In The Form Of A Roast Chicken - That's The Greatest.

I'd Learned Enough From Life's Experiences To Understand That Destiny's Interventions Can Sometimes Be Read As Invitation For Us To Address And Even Surmount Our Biggest Fears. It Doesn't Take A Great Genius To Recognize That When You Are Pushed By Circumstance To Do The One Thing You Have Always Most Specifically Loathed And Feared, This Can Be, At The Very Least, An Interesting Growth Opportunity.