“Power Living in the earth-deposits of our historyToday a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earthone bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-oldcure for fever or melancholy a tonicfor living on this earth in the winters of this climate.Today I was reading about Marie Curie:she must have known she suffered from radiation sicknessher body bombarded for years by the elementshe had purifiedIt seems she denied to the endthe source of the cataracts on her eyesthe cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-endstill she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencilShe died a famous woman denyingher woundsdenyingher wounds came from the same source as her power. ”

“The Samaritan woman grasped what He said with fervor that came from an awareness of her real need. The transaction was fascinating. She has come with a buket. He sent her back with a spring of living water. She had come as a reject. He sent her back being accepted by God Himself. She came wounded. He sent her back whole. She came laden with questions. He sent her back as a source for answers. She came living a life of quiet desperation. She ran back overflowing with hope. The disciples missed it all. It was lunchtime for them.”

“Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach. She could still recall that sickening interval before breath came back into her body. Now, as she looked at him, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.”

“A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passer her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.”

“Every time she saw a videotape of the planes she moved a finger toward the power button on the remote. Then she kept on watching. The second plane coming out of that ice blue sky, this was the footage that entered the body, that seemed to run beneath her skin, the fleeting sprint that carried lives and histories, theirs and hers, everyone's, into some distance, out beyond the towers.”

“Tirelessly they flew on and on, and tirelessly she kept pace. She felt a fierce joy possessing her, that she could command these immortal presences. And she rejoiced in her blood and flesh, in the rough pine bark she felt next to her skin, in the beat of her heart and the life of all her senses, and in the hunger she was feeling now, and in the presence of her sweet-voiced bluethroat dæmon, and in the earth below her and the lives of every creature, plant and animal both; and she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they had nourished her.”