If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it.

Whoever loses his life from my sake in the Gospels will find it.

What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his life?

For what can a man give in exchange for his life?

God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,

by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

Therefore let us go forth with him outside the camp bearing abuse with him, outside the camp bearing abuse with him and for him.

For here we have no lasting city, but we seek a city which is to come.

I was a prisoner in the King's prison. The prison called conviction and it was a very, very

strange prison. There were windows. But there were windows only on one side of the prison,

the side where the palace was, so that light from the palace could shine through the windows.

Mostly, I just tried to avoid the windows because I didn't like the way I looked in the light.

When I was in the hallways, where there were no windows,

the light was indirect, it was muted, and it made my skin look like it had some color in it.

And I like the way I looked.

But every time I got near one of those windows I look splotchy and anemic and pale and I mostly stayed away from the windows.

But not always. I would stand sometimes at the door looking into one of the rooms and watching the beam of light cast diagonally through the air through one of the windows and there would be something in me so strong that

wanted to walk into that room, stand right in that beam of light and look out that

window and see where it was coming from. And I would start in and I couldn't because I hated the way that light made

me look so anemic, so splotchy.

There were two doors, on that prison.

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