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aidanchaser · 1 month

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Marinette’s heart stopped as the glass door collided with the shop bell. She’d heard rumors that Adrien Agreste had finally returned to Paris, but she had not expected him to walk into her bakery, of all places.

In the five years since they had been apart, he’d gotten taller, of course, his shoulders broader, and his jaw squarer, but those weren’t the changes that bothered her. It was the way he threw those shoulders back and set his jaw in a hard line. It was the way his height seemed to loom over her as he approached the counter, the way his lean into her felt condescending. The pale three-piece suit beneath his white winter coat was new, too, and she didn’t care for how much it reminded her of his father.

His green eyes glanced past her like she was no more interesting than the handcrafted New Year’s decorations she had been in the process of taking down. This wasn’t the Adrien that she had met on the banks of the Seine, that she’d gotten to know rather by accident over the course of a summer, that she’d exchanged a hundred letters with before his father had shipped him across the Channel and the notes had abruptly stopped.

Instead, this young man’s eyes skated past her to the chalkboard list of prices as if he didn’t even recognize her.

“Can I help you?” she asked with a thin smile.

His hand touched the brim of his crisp white fedora, like he was about to take it off, then thought better of it and pressed his hand against the glass countertop. “What do you have?” he asked in a low, relaxed voice.

She adjusted her pink apron and gestured to the display case. “All of our items are clearly labeled. Is there anything in particular you would like?”

“You’ve got quite a lot of cakes,” he noted.

Marinette hummed in distracted agreement and glanced over his shoulder to the large bodyguard behind him. The man was dressed in all black, but the white daylily pinned to his lapel identified him as a member of the Agreste family’s organization—a generous word for what Marinette considered little more than a collection of bullies.

“What are those cookies?” Adrien gestured with his hat.

“They’re macarons,” Marinette said. “Cookies with jam between them.”

“That sounds novel. Let’s try one of those.”

Marinette reached for one of her father’s macarons, and as Adrien reached into his pocket for money, she caught sight of the holster beneath his suit coat and the pearled handle of the pistol that it housed.

“By the way,” he said as he slid a paper bill across the glass counter, which was now fairly well-smeared with his prints, “I was hoping for a chat with the business owner. Is he nearby?”

Marinette bit down on her tongue. Her parents were making a delivery across town. If this turned ugly, she would be all alone.

“He’s taking inventory.” Her eyes flicked between Adrien and his silent bodyguard. Adrien she could handle, but skilled as she was, she could only do so much against a man three times her size. “Perhaps you could speak with him another time.” She handed Adrien his change. “It’s the sort of task that requires concentration.”

“I can understand that.” Adrien slid his change into his pocket and left his hand there, as if he were keeping his weapon on display for her benefit. “My father was hoping to send a message to your boss. Perhaps I could ask you to carry it to him?”

Marinette made sure to meet Adrien’s eyes rather than the handle of his gun. “I’d be delighted to.”

“Just let him know that next time I come by, he needs to have what he owes my father.” Adrien took a bite out of the macaron and at least had the decency to look impressed. “And let your baker know he makes an incredible cookie.”

He tipped his hat to her and his bodyguard followed him out the door.

Once he was gone, the taut string that was Marinette’s spine snapped loose and she leaned against the counter, pressing her own palms against the space Adrien’s had just vacated. That he’d referred to the shop owner as her “boss” and not her father only confirmed that he had not recognized her.

But she couldn’t blame him for that; she had changed as much as he had. While his father had sent him to England to avoid the worst of the war, Marinette had stayed with her family in Paris. He’d gotten his education in some comfortable country estate while she’d earned hers helping in makeshift hospitals and dodging shells in the streets of Paris, only to trudge home to thin rations of flour and thinner rations of coal.

When her letters to Adrien had gone unanswered, she didn’t know if he’d died in a London air raid or if he’d simply abandoned her. Now he returned with no word, no note, and he had the audacity to walk into her bakery and extort her family’s business in the name of his father.

He wasn’t the Adrien she remembered. The boy she had known must have died in England after all.

✦✧✦✧

Before she left for the Lucky Lady, Marinette warned her parents that Gabriel Agreste’s men had stopped by, though she didn’t say it had been Adrien. She didn’t need them asking any uncomfortable questions.

Marinette entered the evening venue through the unmarked back entrance and immediately dropped her purse onto the dressing table that she and Alya shared. She snatched the red-sequined masquerade mask from her hook and replaced it with her coat then checked her reflection.

Her signature red dress with its black polka dots paired with a matching black-spotted mask had earned her the moniker, “Ladybug,” and had made her the face of the Lucky Lady. While the Lucky Lady itself had been Alya’s idea, Alya preferred to run things from behind the scenes.

She counted the coats that were already hung in the dressing room and which of their team’s masks were missing. Alix, Alya, and Rose must already be upstairs working, but the small gray mask, complete with silver fringe reminiscent of whiskers, and the striped tiger mask, were still hanging on their hooks.

The team that ran the Lucky Lady hadn’t always known each other’s identities. During the war, they’d kept everything secret, even from each other. They’d helped ship parcels to the frontlines, ran coded messages between troops, and distributed rations fairly amongst the people, even going so far as to raid the “businesses” that hoarded rations and resold them on the black market. Back then, they had done it all without knowing who hid beneath each mask. The less they had known about each other, the less they could share if they were caught.

After the Armistice, it was Alya who suggested they celebrate by revealing their identities to each other. That night was still a bittersweet memory for Marinette, who had been thrilled about the end of the war, but hadn’t realized that peace had meant her most trusted partner would leave her. He hadn’t even given her his name.

Now that peace and normalcy were slowly returning to Paris, the team—minus one—worked together both with and without masks, as necessary, to continue helping the city. But when it came to staffing the Lucky Lady, they found that the patrons enjoyed the icons of the masks.

So Marinette tied the signature black and red mask over her eyes, fastened the pair of black feathers into the back of her hair with red ribbon, and applied her bright red lipstick before heading upstairs to help Alix and Alya with what was bound to be a full Friday night house.

Though several businesses in Paris had sustained damage during the air raids, the Lucky Lady’s luck had held out. Her glass chandelier remained intact over the dining area, and her red velvet stage curtains had no sign of singe. Rose, in her tightly coiled curls and pink velvet mask, serenaded the guests that filled the dining tables and the bar, and Luka, dressed in a silk blue suit and a matching mask, provided her with a melody from his harp.

Kim manned the bar while Alya and Alix flitted between tables, refilling glasses and chatting easily with the guests. Alix’s large, fur-lined bow around her waist resembled a cottontail, and her white mask was paired with long white ears fastened into her short red hair. Alya dressed in reds and oranges, and instead of the plain velvet domino masks most of the Lucky Lady’s crew wore, she had crafted a hyper-realistic fox’s snout that hid most of her face.

Marinette counted the available seats at the bar top, checked in with Alya to confirm which tables she needed to manage that evening, then hurried to the door where Nino and Ivan waited.

Nino was the latest addition to their crew. He wore a mask, like the rest of them, but instead of the suits that Kim and Ivan wore, he still preferred his olive green fatigues. He’d arrived in Paris not long ago as an American soldier and had decided not to go home. He liked Paris, and he liked the people in Paris. He particularly liked the people at the Lucky Lady. Marinette was fairly sure that he liked a certain someone who managed the Lucky Lady, but she kept it to herself for now.

“Evening, Ladybug,” he smiled. “Running late again?”

Marinette ignored the jab. “Two bar tops and a table just opened up.”

He and Ivan, a burly fellow who had joined the Lucky Lady crew with his activist girlfriend Mylène, managed the line outside the bar. Nino motioned forward a pair of young men who were regular patrons of the Lucky Lady—had been ever since Ladybug had personally dragged them out of the rubble from an air raid—and let them in to take their seats at the bar.

“There’s a couple waiting on a table, but you’re not going to like them,” Nino said to her.

Marinette wrinkled her nose. “Chloé again?” She didn’t understand why Chloé kept insisting on returning to the Lucky Lady. She’d tried to join their resistance organization, but she was simply incapable of keeping secrets. She’d jeopardized more than one mission before they finally cut ties with her. Well, not quite all ties. She was still an excellent resource for intel on who was dealing on the black market, since her father was so heavily involved in the trade himself.

“It’s fine, Nino. She’s not so rude with Ladybug.”

“Yeah, but her date—”

“Oh my god, Ladybug, finally,” Chloé pushed her way forward through the small crowd. “We’ve been waiting forever—literally forever. Aren’t you going to let us in?”

“Of course, Chloé,” Marinette smiled. “Right this…” her voice trailed off as she looked over Chloé’s shoulder and up at Chloé’s date.

Adrien Agreste, still in his white suit coat and hat, looked down at Ladybug with a curious expression, like a child, mildly interested in a toy design he had never encountered before. She ran her tongue along her teeth and reached down deep for that Ladybug bravery.

“No guns allowed,” she said tersely.

Adrien’s neutral smile hardened. “I see my father’s reputation precedes me.” But he readily unbuttoned his coat and pulled the jacket aside to reveal only his vest underneath. There was no sign of the pistol nor even the holster he’d sported that afternoon. He glanced between Ivan and Nino. “Did you want to pat me down?”

“Oh, please, they’re not going to waste their time with that,” Chloé complained. “Just let us in. It’s freezing out here.”

Ivan looked at Marinette for her okay.

“He’s fine,” she muttered, and motioned for Adrien and Chloé to follow her inside.

She hung their coats by the door and seated them as centrally in the room as she could. She’d once told Chloé that the middle was where guests received the best service, and while that wasn’t untrue, the real reason Marinette put Chloé in the center of the room was so that all of the staff could hear her better.

Chloé liked to talk. And while a lot of what she said was nonsense, every so often she would let something slip, something that gave them a clue about goods moving illegally or even connections that would help them take down Gabriel Agreste and his network of thugs and black market dealers.

“I know the masks are a bit silly,” Chloé said to Adrien as he pulled her chair out for her, “but Ladybug’s an excellent friend of mine. And the service here is to die for.”

Marinette smiled politely and, true to Chloé’s claim about service, met Kim just a few feet from the table, who was already ready with Chloé’s favorite wine. They kept Chloé happy as long as she kept them informed.

“Your usual, Mademoiselle Bourgeois?” Marinette said, burying her irritation as much as she could.

“Of course,” Chloé said with a dismissive wave of her hand, then continued talking to Adrien as if Marinette was not even there. “I’m so glad you came to visit with your father this afternoon, Adrien. I didn’t even know you were in town! I mean, there were rumors, but I thought if you had come back to Paris, surely you would have come by to see me. I shouldn’t have to wait for your father to do business with Daddy just to see you.”

“It was a quiet return.” Adrien’s voice was low and restrained, nothing like Chloé’s exuberance. If they were going to get anything out of Adrien Agreste tonight, Ladybug would need to stay close to the table.

Once she had finished pouring, he picked his wine glass up by its stem and swirled the wine, paying close attention to the way it lingered against the glass before dripping back down the sides. “My father wasn’t exactly eager to let me run off on my own.” He took a sip and had the decency to look satisfied.

Marinette, intrigued as she was to hear what business Mayor Bourgeois and Gabriel Agreste were working on, had little excuse to linger once the wine was poured. She slipped away to the kitchen to put in Chloé’s usual order of hors d'oeuvres.

Juleka had just arrived on shift, and was busy tying an apron over her purple dress so Marinette handed the order off to Nathaniel. He wrinkled his nose as he saw the familiar ticket.

“Chloé’s arrived already? Who’s her date tonight?”

“Adrien Agreste,” Marinette said as casually as she could.

Even behind the pale domino mask Nathaniel wore, she could see his eyes soften. “Marinette, I’m sorry—”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, more sharply than she meant to. But she swallowed down her apology and hurried back to check on her tables—and to eavesdrop on Chloé and Adrien.

The crew of the Lucky Lady all knew how Marinette had once felt about Adrien. Even before the war had ended and the masks had come off, many of them had been her friends from school or knew her through the bakery. They had comforted her when her letters to London went unanswered. And lately, they had been careful with her heartbreak when the rumors about Adrien’s return had begun to spread. But she didn’t have time to be hurt by Adrien Agreste. He’d clearly meant to cut ties by ignoring her letters, and she wasn’t interested in trying to renew any lost affection, especially not if he was choosing to embed himself into his father’s affairs.

And besides, she’d moved on while he was away. Her heart belonged to someone else—someone else she didn’t dare think about for too long.

“What I saw of your father’s collection was fascinating,” Adrien was saying as Marinette glided past their table. “I’ve never seen so many Egyptian artifacts in one place before.”

“Can we not talk business, please?” Chloé whined. “I don’t care what you and Daddy talked about.”

Marinette paused at a neighboring table and asked how her patrons were doing, but her ears were attuned to Chloé, praying that her patience would not go to waste tonight.

“You’re not even sad to see it go?” Adrien said.

“What do I care about some gross old mummies and ugly bugs? As long as your father’s buyer is paying enough to cover the renovations to our summer home, I don’t need to know details.”

“I’m sure it will be more than enough for that.” Adrien took a sip of his wine and leaned back in his chair. “My father found a gentleman in Germany eager to turn his funds into hard assets, so it sounds like a win for him and your father.”

Marinette would have loved to linger to hear more, but she was running out of excuses to stop at each of her tables. She hoped, as Chloé said, “You and I should get away this summer,” that Alix or Alya might pass by and catch the rest.

Gabriel Agreste arranging a sale between Mayor Bourgeois and someone in Germany seemed innocuous enough, but Marinette didn’t trust it. When she and Alix had a moment to confer in the kitchen, she shared her concerns.

“I think Adrien Agreste is up to something. This deal between his father and the mayor sounds fishy.”

“You’re just bitter Adrien’s back and didn’t say anything to you,” Alix said with a roll of her eyes. “I don’t blame you for being mad—you have every right to be, especially since, well—” But Alix didn’t finish that thought, perhaps put off by Marinette’s glare, and quickly returned to her original sentence. “—but that doesn’t mean every word out of his mouth is related to some scheme.”

“It sounds like Gabriel found a buyer for Mayor Bourgeois’ Egyptian collection—someone in Germany—”

Alix froze, hands halfway to a plate of roasted duck. “My father and Jalil have been trying to convince Mayor Bourgeois to return those artifacts to Egypt for years! We thought we were finally making headway—” Alix’s surprise quickly burned out into indignation. “Germany! That’s so unfair!”

Marinette picked up two plates of the icebox cake that Adrien and Chloé were waiting on. “Max and Alya will want something actually criminal if we want to get involved.”

“Surely we can dig something up,” Alix muttered. She took a moment to school her expression into something neutrally polite. Then she and Marinette hurried back onto the floor both to deliver their plates to their guests and listen for any clues that something more nefarious was happening, something that might convince Alya and Max that investigating this deal was worth pursuing.

While Alix and Marinette managed the intelligence and missions that the Lucky Lady crew undertook, Alya and Max managed the business of the Lucky Lady itself. The rest of the crew filled in where they were needed, and if Marinette and Alix wanted extra resources, they needed Max and Alya on board. And if they wanted the crew’s help, it truly would have to be a team decision.

But Adrien and Chloé had nothing else interesting nor incriminating for Marinette to overhear as they finished their dessert and paid their bill, nothing to prove one way or another whether there was something underhanded going on that the Lucky Lady crew needed to undermine.

Still, when Marinette took the mid-evening profits upstairs to Max’s office, she took the time to ask for his thoughts.

“It sounds suspicious, doesn’t it?”

Max shrugged as he counted the francs Marinette handed to him. “Considering Gabriel’s business dealing patterns of the past, perhaps.” He paused to add the total to the Lucky Lady’s ledger and slid the bills into the safe. “But on its own it is innocuous; I don’t think we have enough information to get involved.”

Marinette wrinkled her nose, but did not argue. She didn’t need Max’s approval to run her own investigations.

✦✧✦✧

There was usually a lull between the dinner crowd and what Max called the “evening entertainment” crowd, and Marinette used that brief moment of peace for a break. She grabbed her coat and slipped out the back door with a box of cigarettes in hand to keep her warm against the cold night.

It wasn’t snowing, though it certainly felt cold enough to start. Marinette pulled her collar closed against her throat and cheeks, keeping herself as bundled up as she could. She had a fairly narrow view of the street, illuminated by a nearby lamp, but the corner of the theater that backed the Lucky Lady cut through that light, giving her a space of quiet darkness to enjoy a reprieve during the chaos of an evening shift.

There were not many on the street on a cold night like this, but a painfully familiar voice cut through the crisp air.

“You can’t be out on a night like this.”

Marinette’s heart stopped in her throat. She hugged the brick wall, but could not deny her curiosity. She crept closer and peered around the corner.

It was indeed Adrien Agreste, chatting with a young man in a threadbare coat that looked like it might have once been a blue officer’s uniform, but had weathered enough snow and shrapnel to be little more than scraps. The right sleeve was pinned up to the shoulder.

Adrien shrugged out of his coat and handed it to the young man. “There’s some spare bills in the pocket. Get yourself something hot to eat and a room.”

He sounded like the boy who had abandoned her, not the man who had returned. His voice was gentle, uncertain. There was none of the swagger she’d seen in the young man in her shop that morning, nor the cold grin he’d sported when he’d entered the Lucky Lady.

Marinette turned away and closed her eyes against the pain in her chest. It was worse to know that somehow the Adrien she had once known was still in there somewhere. The Adrien she had fallen for did still exist, but she didn’t get to see him.

She swallowed down her heartache and irritably thumbed her lighter until it sparked to life. She took a long drag, letting the warmth of the smoke burn out all other pain in her chest. She let it out just as slowly, savoring the heat.

Instead of fading down the road, closer to the main street where he might be able to hail a cab, Adrien’s heavy footsteps grew closer. Marinette took in another lungful of cigarette smoke and held onto it, determined not to let it out until he had passed her by, but then the footsteps stopped.

“Bonsoir, Ladybug,” he said in that same delicate voice that tore through her chest.

She breathed the smoke out quickly and opened her eyes. “Bonsoir, Monsieur Agreste.” She hoped she sounded distant and unaffected.

He patted down his suit jacket pocket and frowned. “Could I borrow a light? I seem to have left mine in my coat.”

Marinette considered refusing him, but if she wanted consistent information about Gabriel Agreste, she needed Adrien to be a happy patron of the Lucky Lady. She handed him her lighter and a cigarette. “What happened to your date?”

“I called her a car. I was hoping to catch a moment with you before returning home.”

Perhaps in protest of her aching chest, a sneer curled around Marinette’s mouth. She hoped the darkness hid the worst of it. “What business could you have with me?”

He put the cigarette between his lips and brought the flame to its tip. The small orange fire illuminated his green eyes briefly. They were as soft as she remembered, without a trace of the coolness she’d seen that afternoon.

“I heard a rumor that if a gentleman is down on his luck, you’re the lady to see.” Adrien, like she had just moments ago, took a long draw of his cigarette and held it in his chest.

“I’ve been known to reverse fortunes,” she murmured. “From toppling those on thrones to lifting up those in the gutter. You don’t strike me as a man in a gutter.”

He shrugged and turned his head to blow the smoke away from her. The street lamp glinted off of his hat and his bangs, creating a golden halo. “One man’s heaven.” He let the rest of phrase disappear behind a rueful smile.

Everything about it prickled against Marinette’s skin like a bed of needles, but she persisted, unwilling to waste an opportunity here.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I only wanted to tell you that, if you’re interested in toppling thrones, my father has staked a lot of his reputation and finances into this one sale.”

“Mayor Bourgeois is the one selling.”

Adrien extinguished his cigarette against the wall. “I just balance the books. That’s all I can tell you.”

It was hard to keep the anger that curled in her stomach from spreading into her lungs. If balance the books was all that he did, then why had he walked into her father’s shop that morning? “How do I know this isn’t some trick? Or that you’re not using me to take down your father so you can take his place?”

The self-deprecating smile vanished. He let out a deep breath, and the warm air of his lungs collected in front of him as surely as if he had taken another drag on his cigarette. “Do it right, and there won’t be anything left for me to take over.” He tipped his hat to her. “Thanks for the light.” And he turned back to the street.

Marinette waited until he had rounded the corner and was well out of sight before snuffing out her own cigarette and hurrying back inside. She could already hear Max and Nino warning her it was a trap, but she felt recklessness curling inside her chest like cigarette smoke. She had to know what else was hidden in that art exchange, or it would burn her alive. She had to tear down Gabriel Agreste, and if Adrien came tumbling down with him, well, she wouldn’t complain.

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug fanfic #miraculous ladybug fic #ml fic #1920s ml fic #miraculous ladybug 1920s au #gunsmoke and mirrors

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mariacallous · 13 days

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In the summer of 1941, the United States sought to leverage its economic dominance over Japan by imposing a full oil embargo on its increasingly threatening rival. The idea was to use overwhelming economic might to avoid a shooting war; in the end, of course, U.S. economic sanctions backed Tokyo into a corner whose only apparent escape was the attack on Pearl Harbor. Boomerangs aren’t the only weapons that can rebound.

Stephanie Baker, a veteran Bloomberg reporter who has spent decades covering Russia, has written a masterful account of recent U.S. and Western efforts to leverage their financial and technological dominance to bend a revanchist Russia to their will. It has not gone entirely to plan. Two and a half years into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Russia’s energy revenues are still humming along, feeding a war machine that finds access to high-tech war materiel, including from the United States. Efforts to pry Putin’s oligarchs away from him have driven them closer. Moscow has faced plenty of setbacks, most recently by losing control of a chunk of its own territory near Kursk, but devastating sanctions have not been one of them.

Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia is first and foremost a flat-out rollicking read, the kind of book you press on friends and family with proselytizing zeal. Baker draws on decades of experience and shoe-leather reporting to craft the best account of the Western sanctions campaign yet. Her book is chock-full of larger-than-life characters, sanctioned superyachts, dodgy Cypriot enablers, shadow fleets, and pre-dawn raids.

More than a good tale, it is a clinical analysis of the very tricky balancing acts that lie behind deploying what has become Washington’s go-to weapon. The risky decision just after the invasion to freeze over $300 billion in central bank holdings and cut off the Russian banking system hurt Moscow, sure. But even Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh, one of the architects of the Biden administration’s response, told National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that he feared the sanctions’ “catastrophic success” could blow up global financial markets. And that was before the West decided to take aim at Russia’s massive oil and gas exports, which it did with a series of half-hearted measures beginning later that year.

The bigger reason to cherish Punishing Putin is that it offers a glimpse into the world to come as great-power competition resurges with a vengeance. The U.S. rivalry with China plays out, for now, in fights over duties, semiconductors, and antimony. As Singh tells Baker, “We don’t want that conflict to play out through military channels, so it’s more likely to play out through the weaponization of economic tools—sanctions, export controls, tariffs, price caps, investment restrictions.”

The weaponization of economic tools, as Baker writes, may have started more than a millennium ago when another economic empire was faced with problematic upstarts. In 432 B.C., Athens, the Greek power and trading state supreme, levied a strict trade embargo on the city-state of Megara, an ally of Sparta—a move that, according to some scholars, sparked the Peloponnesian War. (Athens couldn’t break the habit: Not long after, it again bigfooted a neighbor, telling Melos that the “strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”) The irony of course is that Athens, the naval superpower, eventually lost the war to its main rival thanks to a maritime embargo.

It can be tempting to leverage economic tools, but it is difficult to turn them into a precision weapon, or even avoid them becoming counterproductive. The British empire’s 19th-century naval stranglehold and love of blockades helped bring down Napoleon but started a small war with the United States in the process.

Britain was never shy about using its naval and financial might to throw its weight around, but even the pound sterling never acquired the centrality that the U.S. dollar has today in a much bigger, much more integrated system of global trade and finance. That “exorbitant privilege,” in the words of French statesman Giscard D’Estaing, enabled the post-World War II United States to take both charitable (the Marshall Plan, for starters) and punitive economic statecraft to new heights.

The embargoes on Communist Cuba or revolutionary Iran were just opening acts, it turned out, for a turbocharged U.S. approach to leveraging its financial hegemony that finally flourished with the so-called war on terror and rogue states, a story well-told in books such as Juan Zarate’s Treasury Goes to War or Richard Nephew’s The Art of Sanctions.

Osama bin Laden is dead, Kabul is lost, Cuba’s still communist, and a Kim still runs North Korea, but the love of sanctions has never waned in Washington. If anything, given an aversion to casualties and a perennial quest for low-cost ways to impose its will, Washington has grown even fonder of using economic sticks with abandon. The use of sanctions rose under President Barack Obama, and again under Donald Trump; the Biden administration has not only orchestrated the unprecedented suite of sanctions on Putin’s Russia, but also taken Trump’s trade war with China even further.

Despite U.S. sanctions’ mixed record, the almighty dollar can certainly strike fear in countries that are forced to toe a punitive line they might otherwise try to skirt. Banks in third countries—say, a big French lender—could be forced to uphold Washington’s sanctions on Iran regardless of what French policy might dictate. Those so-called secondary sanctions raise hackles at times in places such as Paris and Berlin, prompting periodic calls for “financial sovereignty” from the tyranny of the greenback. But little has changed. Countries that want to continue having functioning banks have little choice but to act as the enforcers of Washington’s will.

What is genuinely surprising, as Baker chronicles, is that the growth of sanctions as the premier tool of U.S. foreign policy has not been matched by a commensurate growth in the corps of people charged with drafting and enforcing them. The Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department’s main sanctions arm, is overworked and understaffed. A lesser-known but equally important branch, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, struggles to vet a vast array of export controls and restrictions with a stagnant staff and stillborn budget. Post-Brexit Britain has faced even steeper challenges in leaping onto the Western sanctions bandwagon, having to recreate in the past few years a new body almost from scratch to enforce novel economic punishments.

Punishing Putin is not, despite the book’s subtitle, about an effort to “bring down” Russia. The sanctions—ranging from individual travel and financial bans on Kremlin oligarchs to asset forfeiture to sweeping measures intended to kneecap the ruble and drain Moscow’s coffers—are ultimately meant to weaken Putin’s ability to continue terrorizing his neighbor. In that sense, they are not working.

One of the strengths of Punishing Putin is Baker’s seeming ability to have spoken with nearly everybody important on those economic frontlines. She details the spadework that took place in Washington, London, and Brussels even before Russian tanks and missiles flew across Ukraine’s borders in February 2022, and especially in the fraught days and weeks afterward. It takes a special gift to make technocrats into action heroes.

The bulk of Baker’s wonderful book centers on the fight to sanction and undermine the oligarchs loyal to Putin who have helped prop up his kleptocracy. Perhaps, as Baker suggests, Western thinking was that whacking the oligarchs would lead to a palace coup against Putin. There was a coup, but not from the oligarchs—and it ended first with a whimper and then a mid-air bang.

There are a couple of problems with that approach, as Baker lays out in entertaining chronicles of hunts for superyachts and Jersey Island holding companies. First, it’s tricky to actually seize much of the ill-gotten billions in oligarch hands; the U.S. government is spending millions of dollars on upkeep for frozen superyachts, for example, but can’t yet turn them into money for Ukraine. And second, the offensive has not split the oligarchs from Putin: To the contrary, a Kremlin source tells Baker, “his power is much stronger because now they’re in his hands.”

At any rate, while the hunt for $60 billion or so in gaudy loot is fun to read about, the real sanctions fight is over Russia’s frozen central bank reserves—two-thirds of which are in the European Union—and the ongoing efforts to strangle its energy revenues without killing the global economy. Baker is outstanding on these big issues, whether that’s with a Present at the Creation-esque story of the fight over Russia’s reserves and the ensuing battle to seize them, or an explanation of the fiendishly complicated details of the “oil price cap” that hasn’t managed to cap Russian oil revenues much at all. More on those bigger fights would have made a remarkable book a downright stunner.

The Western sanctions on Russia, as sweeping and unprecedented as they are, have not ended Putin’s ability to prosecute the war. They have made life more difficult for ordinary Russians and brought down Russia’s energy export revenues, but they have not yet severed the sinews of war. “But, in fact, the West didn’t hit Russia with the kitchen sink,” Baker writes. Greater enforcement of sanctions, especially on energy, will be crucial to ratchet up the pressure and start to actually punish Putin, she argues. The one thing that is unlikely is that the sanctions battle will end anytime soon—not with Putin’s Russia, and not with other revisionist great powers such as China, whose one potential weakness is the asymmetric might of U.S. money.

“As long as Putin is sitting in the Kremlin,” Baker concludes, “the economic war will continue.”

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sednonamoris · 1 year

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hang ‘em high

Pairing: John Marston x gn!reader

Summary: A high stakes bank robbery forces you and John to confront exactly how close - and how far - you are from one another anymore.

Warnings: Canon-typical GUN VIOLENCE AND GORE, strong language, hostage situation, stand-off/shootout, arguments, horrible people doing horrible things, the most fucked up declaration(s) of love you’ve ever seen

Word count: 2,918

A/N: Why did the gang have to flee the West so dramatically and why did the law chase them so furiously?? Read to find out the ghost story version 🥰 (better notes on AO3 but i don’t want to spoil everything up here!!)

Series masterlist • AO3

—

“Ghost, kindly relieve these people of their valuables,” Dutch orders from behind the black bandana pulled snugly beneath his glittering eyes.

Your own bandana hides a wild grin, all adrenaline and greed. Something savage in your eyes and the way that you move makes these smalltown folk afraid. The little of your face they do see is enough to have them emptying their pockets in short order.

You like it.

Never do you feel more powerful than when pulling big jobs like this, ones even Dutch is in on. This bank will be emptied before the law can scramble together enough men to try you. You’ll all be gone, smoke on the wind, making off like the bandits you are.

“Mr. M, take care of these vaults for us,” Dutch says to Arthur while holding the quaking teller at gunpoint, then jerks his head to direct John to the back entrance. The Callanders have the front of the building covered between them.

You continue to work the cowering crowd. Sun streams in from high windows and paints them all in unforgiving noontime light. It glints off of their valuables. A woman in splotchy rouge clutches heirloom pearls to her throat for a wide-eyed, gaping moment before handing them over. A man in faded tweed tosses you his antique watch. Gold inlay. Initials etched on the inside. An older gentleman relinquishes silver cufflinks embossed with some sort of crest, faded from where they’ve been rubbed for luck over the years.

One by one you take their treasures, stuff them in your pockets ‘til they’re fit to bust, and then keep stuffing. You have no idea exactly how much it’s all worth; give you some good horseflesh and you can list off prices all day long, but this sort of work has never been your specialty. At a guess, it’s at least a hundred bucks. At the devastated, teary-eyed looks on the faces before you, you’d think it was their whole world.

But what do these people know of the world? Of survival?

One of the women glares up at you. She’s staunch and sturdy, middle-aged and measured. Furious in a suffering sort of way.

“This is a hanging town,” she says. “When the sheriff gets his hands on you we’ll all watch you swing.”

You lean in, close and sudden, and kiss the barrel of your gun to the skin just beneath her dimpled chin. Her sharp inhale is barely audible over the commotion of Arthur blowing his way into the vaults in the next room.

“If you’re not careful, you won’t live to see much anything, Miss.”

Your grin grows wider for every inch she shrinks back in fear. Then, because you can’t resist, you call out to the boys on perimeter in your smuggest Van der Linde voice, asking if anyone’s seen hide or hair of this sheriff you’ve heard so much about.

The Callanders jeer their not here’s mean enough that you remember to pause and be grateful they’re on your side. You wait for a smart remark from John, raspy and rude, but none comes.

You try not to let it get to you - he’s been strange towards you ever since his return. Some days it’s like he never left, and others like there’s this vast, unknowable distance between you. This is the first big job you’ve worked together in almost two years now, and it’s not even because he wanted to; Dutch asked.

Just as you let out a deprecating sigh and move to your next victim, the back door bursts open with a bang.

The whole of smalltown law marches in with John at gunpoint. The look in his eyes is equal parts fury and shame, and it burns when he meets the wild, cornered-animal look in yours. This isn’t supposed to happen. They aren’t supposed to even know you were here yet, let alone spring traps. Without thinking you snatch up the nearest person. Gun to their head, body covering yours, they are both hostage and shield.

“Put the woman down,” the sheriff says, “and have everyone step out with their hands on their head.”

His voice is thick with authority, but the light catches on beaded sweat dripping down his brow. His revolver is white-knuckled at John’s throat.

“You first,” you sneer. “I promise, one hair on his head comes to harm and I’ll kill everyone here, starting with this bitch.”

They all shift uncomfortably, trigger fingers itching to take the shot. They must know they’ll never beat you on the draw, and surely they can tell you mean every word. Only one man can break the stalemate, and he doesn’t leave you waiting long.

“Well, gentleman,” Dutch interrupts smoothly, causing every head to snap in his direction, “looks like we’re at an impasse here.”

He steps out from behind the counter with a casual sort of grace, but his pistols are pointed, ready to fire. Over the ringing in your ears you can hear Arthur bagging the last of the money, and the sound of the Callanders coming in behind you with their own guns raised.

“My friends and I are not unreasonable,” Dutch continues. He steps slowly and deliberately backwards toward the front doors, until he’s safely behind you. Arthur follows soon after. “If you let our man go, we let your people live. Simple as that.”

“I think we both know this ain’t simple,” the sheriff says. “The West is civilized, now. If you put down your weapons and hand over the woman I’ll see to it you all get a fair trial.”

You snort a disbelieving laugh. “Way I hear, it’ll be a mighty quick one. Your little lady friend tells me the gallows ‘round these parts stay busy.”

His gaze hardens when you mention his take on justice, and you realize this isn’t going to be an easy out. Goddamnit.

“You boys get on out of here,” you tell Dutch. Your voice is quiet, but you could hear a pin drop in this bank right now. He opens his mouth to protest, but you shake your head to cut him off. “Trust me.”

The sheriff tells them to stop, while they still can, while he’s willing to let them live, but occupied with John he’s helpless to raise his own gun, and his men can’t make one move for fear you’ll dispatch your hostage. She quakes in your arms but makes no sound.

With a firm clasp of your shoulder in thanks, Dutch, Arthur, Mac, and Davey back their way out the front doors the sheriff was cocky enough to leave unguarded. Chalk it up to too much faith in a backdoor plan and a failure to understand just who exactly he’s dealing with; The Van der Linde Gang might have started small, but Dutch has dreams bigger than this wild, uncharted West. Bigger even than the fluttering pulse point that beats against the barrel of your gun.

The sound of hoofbeats galloping away lets you know the boys have made their escape, and you know that now, as ever, you’ll do anything to save John. Anything. And damn the consequences. The sheriff must see it in your eyes, or the way you hold your prisoner of war, because something snaps in his demeanor. Scaffold screams open, rope swings taut, snaps.

“I’m going to count to three,” he threatens, digging the barrel of his gun into John’s skin until he flinches, “and if that woman ain’t freed your friend here dies.”

One…

A split second of understanding is all you need. Please let him understand.

Two…

John’s grey eyes are flint sharp. You try to memorize the color just in case this goes wrong. If you didn’t know better you’d say he was doing the same.

Three.

At the same time you squeeze the trigger, John stomps down hard on the sheriff’s foot. His wiry body twists away in time to miss the bullet, but the woman in your arms is less lucky. It’s a baptism of blood and brains. Your eardrum bursts with the gunshot. If you listen carefully, somewhere between the muted screams and pitched ringing might even be the voice of God, but you wouldn’t know the difference.

In a blink, John’s shoved himself off the sheriff and tackled you to the ground. The rest of the men to open fire. The sheriff roars for them to take you alive as you scramble to help one another to your feet and run. You stumble over yourself and the rest of the bank-goers still frozen on the ground in fear, but still you almost make it out.

Then, just as you reach the doors, blinding pain blossoms in your thigh. You fall forward on your knees and cry out in pain, a sound that stops John in his tracks. He tries to double back and half-carry you to the horses, but one moment of weakness is all it takes for the law to catch up with you. Kicking and screaming, they tackle and separate you both. Someone must hit you over the head with the butt of their gun, because all you remember is the scratchy, warped sound of John screaming your name and a world gone dark.

—

You wake to a dull, throbbing pain in your leg. Blinking past crusted eyes and dried blood, you try to piece together the events that led to being dumped on the hard wooden floors of a one-room jailhouse. More importantly, you try to figure out where John is. It comes slower than you’d like.

“Good,” an unfamiliar voice says, “you’re awake.”

You look up to find the sheriff lording over the cells from behind his desk. The dim lantern and late evening light cast strange shadows over the pockmarks in his face. His ginger sideburns and mustache, though impressive, do little to hide the redness of his face, burnt to a crisp from harsh living under a harsher sun. You chance a glance over to John, but his grim expression doesn’t do much to reassure you.

“I didn’t realize we had such celebrities in our midst.” He whistles lowly. “Mean Johnny Marston and the Van der Linde Ghost, formerly of New Austin. There’s quite a price on the two of you.”

“Make your point,” John says.

He flashes his teeth in a double-edged smile. “When I got to this town it was lawless - open murder in the streets, people acting like savages. A disgrace. I’ve brought order here and I intend to keep it. The only reason the two of you are alive right now is because you’re worth more that way. Once I wire the capitol, we’re all gonna watch you swing for what you’ve done.”

John opens his mouth to say something nasty, but you warn him off with a glare. In your experience, there’s nothing more immovable - or dangerous - than a principled man.

It takes only an hour more for the sun to finish setting. You sit in painful silence up until the moment the sheriff closes the jailhouse door behind him and locks it, promising he’ll be back at first light with news of your impending execution. You doubt he’s even made it down the steps before John starts in on you. Faster than you can respond he starts firing accusations like what the hell was all that, and were you trying to get killed back there, and can’t believe they shot you, and can’t believe we’re still alive, and then, finally, can’t believe you killed that woman like that.

“Really?” you say, and the bitterness in your voice surprises even you. Your wound aches. You want to scratch your skin off. You stare at him like none of this is true. “You want to go down this road?”

“Matter fact, I do.” Mean Johnny Marston bares his teeth, hackles raised and ready for a fight. “Since when do we kill innocent people in cold blood? Ain’t we s’posed to be better than that?”

You laugh. It’s a harsh, terrible sound. “We’re all killers, or have you forgotten?”

“My memory’s just fine. But Jesus, Ghost, she was unarmed!”

“That sheriff sure weren’t! In fact, I recall his gun was held right at your empty head after you let yourself get caught!” you volley back, and his face shutters closed. “Sure I killed her. I’d kill her all over again. You look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t, if I was the one he’d got. Tell me you’d spare a stranger to watch me die.”

“Fuck you.” There’s a savage kind of hate in his eyes and his voice as he says it.

Your chest heaves with emotions too wild and strong to restrain. “Fuck you, Marston.”

After everything, how could he think you’d let him die like that? Right and wrong are pretty ideas, but you’ve always known that the moment John’s life is in jeopardy you’ll dig your own way to Hell and drag everyone down with you. No amount of distance, time, or estrangement will change that. Not ever.

The two of you sit in that charged, vicious silence for what could be minutes or hours. You should be sleeping, or at least resting, but you just sit on opposite ends of your cells and glare at each other.

“How’s the leg?” John finally asks.

You look away. “Not infected yet.”

“...Good.”

—

The second day in that jail is infinitely worse than the first. The sheriff comes swanning in before the first fragile rays of light make it through the lone window of the building. He doesn’t have his telegraph yet, but the second he does you’re dead, he cheerfully reminds you.

Time scrapes by at an excruciating pace between the lack of food and water and the parade of townspeople that come through to stare at the spectacle of two infamous gunslingers caught in their smalltown cells. Your head splits with a headache that only worsens as they leer and jeer and spit on you from the other side of cast iron bars. Your leg is worse today, too. It’s hard to mask while the sheriff and his deputies circle like vultures, but you don’t dare show weakness.

Neither you nor John opens your mouth to speak until night once more has fallen, and you’re alone in the moonlit dark.

“You sure that thing ain’t infected?” he asks.

You peek under the dirty strips of torn clothing you’ve used as a makeshift bandage and grimace. “It ain’t infected, but it sure ain’t pretty. Could use Ms. Grimshaw right about now.”

“I’m sure Arthur ‘n Dutch will bust us out soon.” He doesn’t sound sure. “But Ghost, listen, if they can’t get us out, I want you to know—”

“It’s fine,” you cut him off with a wave of your hand. “You don’t have to understand why I did it, just know I’ve got your back. Always.”

“Sure,” his voice cracks on the word. “And I’ve got yours.”

You let out a wistful sigh, ignoring the uncomfortable, embarrassed flush crawling up his collar. “Us together used to be easy as breathing. Feels like all we do now is fight or pretend there’s nothin’ to fight about.”

“I don’t like fightin’ you,” he says. “I think we’re just…”

“Just what?”

“Scared. ‘Least I am,” he finally admits. “I don’t think things will ever be the same as they used to. Different could be good, though. Maybe. If you wanted to try.”

“Yeah?”

He shrugs, trying and failing to act casual.

Your answering smile is a fragile, hopeful thing. “I think I’d like that.”

In a tiny cell in a little town in the newly settled American West you shrug the weight of lost time off your shoulders and meet John Marston all over again. He tells you what he got up to during that missing year. You share the same - minus the letters, of course. He tells tall tales of all the jobs he’s been on since his return, ones he wanted to ask you on but never could. You reenact your most recent experience selling stolen horses with Sean, complete with accents, and laugh until your sides are sore.

It finally feels like you’re friends again. It feels like coming home.

—

You wake from a nap the next afternoon to strangled cries and the thud of bodies hitting floorboards.

“Word on the street is you two are meant for the hangman’s noose,” Dutch says. There’s a warning and a thank you in his dark eyes when they meet yours.

“Pair of fools, pullin’ a stunt like that,” Arthur gripes from behind his bandana.

Dutch crouches and snags the keys off the sheriff’s belt before tossing them to him. Both cells are open in moments.

You limp over the sheriff’s fallen body towards the back door where Dutch waits with the horses. John pauses. Arthur tells him to hurry but John shakes his head, crouches low to pick up the sheriff’s holstered gun, and shoots the unconscious man point-blank with it.

“What the hell, Marston!” Arthur seethes. “You want the whole damn town to kill us?”

John ignores him completely, joining you at the door and then helping you onto your horse like he hadn’t just done the very thing he damned you for earlier. His face is freckled with blood. The revolver in his hand reflects red. Even the slate grey of his eyes hold a bloodstained promise:

You and him. Forever. Always. And damn the cost.

#john marston x reader #rdr2 x reader #rdr x reader #ghost story #ch. 9 #fran writes #pay extra attention to the sentence john doesn’t finish :)#what was he going to say???? 👀

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ministerforpeas · 7 months

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A list of Spitting Image media I'm looking for to improve the wiki:

Best quality full footage of Series 13-18 and Specials of the original 1984 Spitting Image - I've found the episodes on Archive.org and Odysee but some episodes have recording errors such as low volume levels, low quality VHS video quality and cut-scenes (such as the ending of Series 14 Episode 2 where the song "Hey Good Lookin'" is cut off abruptly). This also causes some teaser sketches to either start abruptly or not be featured in the recording at all. I need higher quality recordings in order to make sure the episodes have good enough quality galleries, hence why I'm waiting for DVD releases so please do send me the best quality recordings if you can.

Spitting Back (1992?) - this is the only special listed on Wikipedia that I currently haven't found.

Thatcherworld (24/10/1993) - currently only found an ident, promo images on Shutterstock and the opening sequence. This is a really obscure TV movie that aired on a BBC channel as part of a series dedicated to Margaret Thatcher, and features Spitting Image puppets interacting with live-action humans. Also features pre-Spice Girl Emma Bunton as one of its leading characters! Out of all the things I'm looking for on this list, this is the most interesting and the one I want to see in full the most.

- Thatcherworld's Ident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s514JQvShkw

- Thatcherworld Opening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiPZDtS52Ss

The Second Beast of Spitting Image (01/01/1985)

The Six Horsemen of Spitting Image (15/08/1986)

The Writing of Spitting Image (24/08/1986)

Car Wars - 1986 Motor Show (15/10/1986)

A Question of Spit (05/02/1988)

Two Dogs and Freedom (04/01/1989)

Pearls of Spit (28/01/1989)

What Price Impartiality On Television (09/09/1990)

The South Bank Show - Series 14 Episode 12 (09/12/1990)

Amnesty International’s Big 30 (28/12/1991)

The Last Cigarette (09/08/1992)

The catalogue images from the July 2000 Spitting Image auction held at Sotheby's: (archived page but can't get to images) (various links/articles mentioning it). Not to be confused with the one titled "The Last Laugh" which was held in 2001.

A better quality recording of a 1996 Labour Party political broadcast featuring John Major and his Cabinet.

More books include:

- The Spitting Image Treasure Island

- A Nasty Piece of Work: The Art and Graft of Spitting Image

- Goodbye! End of the Royals Souvenir Issue 1066-1992

- The Spitting Image Video Guide

#spitting image #lost media

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yallemagne · 2 years

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Today's Voyage of the Nautilus is fucking hilarious.

“By the way, Professor Aronnax, you aren’t afraid of sharks, are you?” “Sharks?” I exclaimed. This struck me as a pretty needless question, to say the least. “Well?” Captain Nemo went on. “I admit, captain, I’m not yet on very familiar terms with that genus of fish.” “We’re used to them, the rest of us,” Captain Nemo answered. “And in time you will be too. Anyhow, we’ll be armed, and on our way we might hunt a man-eater or two. It’s a fascinating sport. So, professor, I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early.” This said in a carefree tone, Captain Nemo left the lounge.

Nemo, I know you think that's a very cute date idea... but no.

“Thank heavens!” I said to myself. “Conseil will never want to come along, and that’ll be my excuse for not going with the captain.”

Babe, you can just tell him you're afraid of sharks. He'll act disappointed, but he knows you're a dirty land-dweller, it's fine.

“Can one find several pearls in the same oyster?” Conseil asked. “Yes, my boy. There are some shellfish that turn into real jewel coffers. They even mention one oyster, about which I remain dubious, that supposedly contained at least 150 sharks.” “150 sharks!” Ned Land yelped. “Did I say sharks?” I exclaimed hastily. “I meant 150 pearls. Sharks wouldn’t make sense.”

This is comedy. That's a lot of sharks.

“How ingenious,” Conseil said, “to reduce dividing and classifying pearls to a mechanical operation. And could master tell us the profits brought in by harvesting these banks of pearl oysters?” “According to Sirr’s book,” I replied, “these Ceylon fisheries are farmed annually for a total profit of 3,000,000 man-eaters.” “Francs!” Conseil rebuked. “Yes, francs! 3,000,000 francs!”

HE DID IT AGAIN. he did it again oh my fuckgin god. It'd be funny if they priced pearls by how many sharks they cost. Like how you measure a horse's height in hands?

“But,” I said, “getting back to pearls of great value, I don’t think any sovereign ever possessed one superior to the pearl owned by Captain Nemo.” “This one?” Conseil said, pointing to a magnificent jewel in its glass case. “Exactly. And I’m certainly not far off when I estimate its value at 2,000,000 . . . uh . . .” “Francs!” Conseil said quickly.

Aw, Conseil picking up on Aronnax's problem...

“Ye gods, just give me a good harpoon! You see, sir, these sharks are badly designed. They have to roll their bellies over to snap you up, and in the meantime . . .” Ned Land had a way of pronouncing the word “snap” that sent chills down the spine. “Well, how about you, Conseil? What are your feelings about these man-eaters?” “Me?” Conseil said. “I’m afraid I must be frank with master.” Good for you, I thought. “If master faces these sharks,” Conseil said, “I think his loyal manservant should face them with him!”

BETRAYAL BETRAYAL OF THE HIGHEST DEGREE CONSEIL YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO HIM

on the other hand I'm so excited to see Ned Land actually fight a shark.

#voyage of the nautilus #twenty thousand leagues under the sea #captain nemo #pierre aronnax #ned land #conseil

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svelandre · 3 months

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frmartinshomiliesandreflections · 1 year

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30th July >> Fr. Martin's Gospel Reflections / Homilies on Matthew 13:44-52 for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field’.

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

Gospel (Except USA) Matthew 13:44-52 He sells everything he owns and buys the field.

Jesus said to the crowds, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; he hides it again, goes off happy, sells everything he owns and buys the field.

‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls; when he finds one of great value he goes and sells everything he owns and buys it.

‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea that brings in a haul of all kinds. When it is full, the fishermen haul it ashore; then, sitting down, they collect the good ones in a basket and throw away those that are no use. This is how it will be at the end of time: the angels will appear and separate the wicked from the just to throw them into the blazing furnace where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.

‘Have you understood all this?’ They said, ‘Yes.’ And he said to them, ‘Well then, every scribe who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out from his storeroom things both new and old.’

Gospel (Except USA) Matthew 13:44-46 He sells everything he owns and buys the field.

Jesus said to the crowds: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; he hides it again, goes off happy, sells everything he owns and buys the field. ‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls; when he finds one of great value he goes and sells everything he owns and buys it.’

Gospel (USA) Matthew 13:44–52 He sells all that he has and buys the field.

Jesus said to his disciples: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all that he has and buys it. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind. When it is full they haul it ashore and sit down to put what is good into buckets. What is bad they throw away. Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.

“Do you understand all these things?” They answered, “Yes.” And he replied, “Then every scribe who has been instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like the head of a household who brings from his storeroom both the new and the old.”

Gospel (USA) Matthew 13:44–46 He sells all that he has and buys the field.

Reflections (7)

(i) Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

People have often stumbled upon a treasure hidden in a field or a bog. Some of the prized possessions in our National Museum have been discovered in that way. The Ardagh Chalice, along with a hoard of metalwork from the eighth and ninth centuries, was found in a potato field in Ardagh in 1868 by two young local boys. In the time of Jesus, when there were no bank vaults, people often kept some treasure safe by burying it in the ground. If the person subsequently died or forgot where the treasure was buried, someone else could stumble upon it and the law of finders-keepers applied.

In the first parable in today’s gospel reading Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which someone has found. We are to imagine a day labourer working in someone’s field. He was going about his work, trying to earn a day’s wages, perhaps to look after his family. As he was digging the field, he unexpectedly came upon a box with treasures in it. In what sense is this person’s experience like the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God? Jesus is suggesting that God is our ultimate treasure. Because Jesus is God with us, Jesus is our greatest treasure. The parable suggests that we can stumble upon the Lord almost by accident. Without actually looking for him, we find him because he is there just under the surface of our lives. We can be working away at our daily chores, like the day labourer in the parable, and suddenly we find the treasure of the Lord. We are not consciously thinking of him, but he touches our lives because he is often hidden there in our daily experience. We might meet him in the goodness and kindness of someone who supports us at a vulnerable moment in our lives. It is not so much that we find the Lord but the Lord finds us. There are many examples of people in the gospels who stumble upon the treasure that is the Lord. They were not looking for him, but he found them as they went about their daily tasks. Matthew the tax collector comes to mind. He was working away at his tax booth, collecting taxes for the Romans, when the Lord suddenly entered his life with his call, ‘Follow me’. There was something about the way the Lord found him and called him that made Matthew realize that the money he was making on his tax collecting was worth very little; it no longer was his treasure. The Lord became his treasure, and he gave his life to him. We can come upon the Lord when we are not looking for him because the Lord is always seeking us out. We need to leave ourselves open to the possibility of finding the Lord in the field of our lives, because that is where the Lord is present, often just below the surface.

The person in the second parable is not a poor day labourer, but a wealthy merchant who spent his life searching for the finest pearls and selling them on. One day he finds a pearl of the greatest value, worth more than all the other pearls he had found put together. Here was someone who had been searching all his working life for a pearl like this and eventually found it. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is like this merchant’s experience. Jesus may be saying that if we search for God we will find God. If we search for himself, Jesus, we will find him. If the first parable suggests that the Lord is always seeking us out, very often just beneath the surface of our lives, this parable encourages us to seek the Lord, like the merchant who sought after a truly valuable pearl until he found it. There are people in the gospels who sought out the Lord. One who comes to mind is Zacchaeus. Even though he was wealthy, he was dissatisfied. He hadn’t found his true treasure. When he heard that Jesus was passing through Jericho, he went looking for him. He even went to the extreme of climbing a sycamore tree to see Jesus, risking a certain ridicule. The risk he took paid off; he found the one he had been seeking. He discovered the truth of what Jesus once said in the gospels, ‘Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you’. Zacchaeus who sought the Lord then discovered that the Lord had been seeking him all along. When he invited the Lord to his table, he heard the Lord say to him, ‘the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost’.

The Lord’s search for us is prior to our search for him. He seeks us out even when we are not seeking him out, just as Matthew was not seeking Jesus when Jesus found him. Yet, Jesus encourages us to seek him out, to have something of that adventurous spirit of Zacchaeus. Jesus is God’s treasure, given to us to enrich our lives and to enable us to enrich the lives of others. He is worth seeking out. It is also worth allowing ourselves to be found by him who seeks us out.

And/Or

(ii) Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

You sometimes hear it said that he or she is very ambitious. As a rule, such an observation is not meant as a complement. Yet, ambition in itself is neither negative nor positive. What determines whether ambition is praiseworthy or blameworthy is the object of our ambition. Today’s first reading presents us with an expression of praiseworthy ambition. In response to the Lord’s invitation, ‘Ask what you would like me to give you’, Solomon replied, ‘give your servant a heart to understand how to discern between good and evil’. Solomon’s desire to have the wisdom he would need to govern God’s people justly was an acceptable ambition in the Lord’s eyes.

The Lord’s invitation to Solomon, ‘ask what you would like me to give you’, finds an echo in the question that Jesus once asked of his disciples, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ In responding to Lord’s invitation and his question, we reveal what it is we really value. The first two parables in today’s gospel reading suggest that our primary ambition as followers of Jesus is to be for ‘the kingdom of heaven’. What is meant by ‘the kingdom of heaven’, or, its equivalent, ‘the kingdom of God’? The clue to its meaning is to be found in the opening petitions of the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus gave to his disciples, ‘Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done’. To be ambitious for the kingdom of heaven is to be ambitious that God’s will be done. The disciple of Jesus is someone who wants what God wants and who lives accordingly. It is Jesus who revealed God’s will for our lives and who embodied that will in how he lived and died. To be ambitious for God’s kingdom then is to be ambitious to become true images of God’s Son. This is certainly God’s ambition for us; in the words of today’s second reading God always intended us to become true images of his Son. Our task is to make our ambition for ourselves and for others conform to God’s ambition for us.

According to our second reading, God wants his Son to be the eldest of many brothers and sisters who bear the image of his Son. God wants a universal family every one of whose members bears the image of God’s own beloved Son. God’s ambition is essentially communitarian in nature. To that extent our ambition for ourselves is inseparable from our ambition for others. We are to be ambitious for a community of people who are living images of God’s Son, because this is what God wants. This is the treasure in the field, the pearl of great price. Such a community is what the Book of Revelation speaks of as the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, which will emerge at the end of time when God has overcome all the powers of evil. Yet, it is God’s ambition, and ours, that the shape of such a city would be visible among us now. That is why Jesus calls on us to pray, ‘Your will be done on earth as in heaven’. Our earthly communities are to reflect the heavenly community of the end of time.

We can sometimes, to our amazement, stumble upon the kind of community that God wants, where God’s will is done, like the poor farm labourer who unexpectedly came upon treasure hidden in the field where he was working. He was not looking for any treasure at the time; without searching, he found something of great worth. Like this farm labourer, we too can be surprised by joy as we unexpectedly discover an expression of God’s kingdom in the here and now. Like the farm labourer, we may be moved by this joyful discovery to let go of our old ways of living so as to embrace this treasure that speaks to us of God who is Love.

The main character in the second parable Jesus speaks is not a poor farm labourer but a rich merchant who does not unexpectedly stumble upon a treasure he had not been looking for. Rather, he had invested a great deal of himself in searching for a pearl of great price. Eventually, his painstaking search paid off and he found what he was looking for. His reaction to the find was the same as that of the poor farm labourer. He sold everything he owned to buy it. Like the merchant, our own finding of the earthly expression of God’s heavenly community can come at the end of a long search, in response to the Lord’s promise, ‘Seek and you will find’. However we come upon what is of true worth, the gospel reading calls on us to take all necessary steps to grasp it.

And/Or

(iii) Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

It is probably true to say that there is something of the searcher/the seeker in each one of us. We are restless by nature; we are rarely fully satisfied with where we are; we like to look beyond. This is one of the reasons why people do so much travelling. We like to see places we have not seen before, to do things we have not done before, to learn more about a particular city or country or people. We are open to new interests, new experiences, new challenges, and that can be true at any age of our lives. People can develop a whole new interest quite late in life. The concept and the practice of life-long learning have come very much to the fore in recent years. We have come to a greater appreciation that we are always learners and seekers and that it is never too late to immerse ourselves in some new project.

One area where this restlessness can show itself is in the spiritual domain. We can experience within ourselves, at any age in life, a restlessness of spirit. We may feel some dissatisfaction, for example, with the way we pray. We experience a desire to pray in a different way. We can become aware of deeper hungers and thirsts in our lives that we have not paid much attention to in the past. At a certain stage in our lives they can become more present to us and we feel that we need to do something about them, respond to them in some significant way. The first words Jesus speaks in John’s gospel take the form of a question, addressed to the disciples of John the Baptist, ‘What are you looking for?’ Jesus was addressing those disciples as seekers, as people who were searching for something that would satisfy their deepest hungers and thirsts, their spiritual longings. The second set of words that Jesus spoke to those disciples took the form of an invitation, ‘Come and see’. In a sense, Jesus was placing himself before them as the one who could respond to the longings of their spirit and heart. The something they were looking for was, in reality, someone, and Jesus was claiming to be that someone. Jesus would go on in John’s gospel to speak of himself as the source of living water and as the bread of life, the one who could satisfy our deepest thirst and hunger. The gospels suggest that Jesus was always very responsive to those who was searching, even when others were unresponsive to such people. When a blind man cried out to Jesus, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me’, and the people around Jesus scolded him and told him to be quiet, Jesus insisted that the man be brought to him. Here was the cry of someone searching for light, and his cry would not go unheard.

This morning’s gospel reading from Matthew puts before us three parables. The second parable is the story of a seeker. A merchant has given his life over to searching for fine pearls and when he when he finds one of great value he sells everything he owns and buys it. Jesus offers this parable as an image of the kingdom of God. A little earlier in Matthew’s gospel, in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus had already said, ‘Seek first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be given to you as well’. Jesus was saying there that everything else we search for in life is to be secondary to that primary search for God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. We can understand God’s righteousness as God’s will or God’s way of being, God’s way of doing things. Because that is to be our primary search in life, Jesus places it as the first petition in the prayer he gave to his disciples, the Lord’s prayer, ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. The kingdom of God makes itself present on earth when God’s will is done, when we begin to live according to God’s purpose for our lives, as revealed to us by Jesus. According to this morning’s gospel reading, that is something really worth searching for, and, even, selling everything else for. In a sense Jesus is saying in this morning’s parable: ‘The coming of God’s kingdom - the doing of God’s will - is God’s priority. This is what God is searching for. Let God’s priority become your priority; let the object of God’s search become the object of your search too’. The one thing that is worth our while searching for is what God is searching for, what God wants.

In this morning’s second reading, St Paul puts his own words on what God is searching for, and, therefore, what deserves to be the object of our own searching. Pail says that God ‘intended us to become true images of his Son’. This is God’s will for our lives, to become true images of God’s Son. When we all become true images of God’s Son, God’s kingdom will come. Here, indeed, is a goal that is worthy of the deepest longings of our heart and spirit, to become true images of God’s Son. This is the pearl of great price that is worth searching for and sacrificing everything else for.

And/Or

(iv) Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I sometimes watch the programme called the Antiques Roadshow on BBC1. I love watching people’s faces when they discover that some object they have had on a sideboard for years is worth thousands of pounds. Recently a man was interviewed who had been digging in his garden. He found a ring which turned out to be a medieval love ring with a ruby stone in the centre that was worth about 20,000 pounds. Sometimes people can hit upon something of great value, a true treasure, purely by accident. I was reminded of that by the first parable in today’s gospel reading. The scene is that of a poor labourer working in someone’s field; out of the blue he hits upon this great treasure and, shrewd man that he is, he scrapes together whatever few bob he can afford and buys the field off the man he was working for.

Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven is a bit like that. In other words, we can stumble upon the kingdom of God without having had any intention of searching for it in the first place. Jesus seems to be saying that God can touch our lives out of the blue, without our having done anything much to make it happen. The Lord can come to us even when we are not looking for him. There are examples in the gospel of Jesus taking an initiative towards people who had made no effort to make contact with him. He sees these people and goes towards them, even though they have not seen him. As a result, such people discover the kingdom of God almost by accident. That can be the way for many people today too. They might find themselves at some event that relates to the message of the gospel, a prayer meeting, the Eucharist, some form of outreach to those in need. They suddenly find themselves touched in some way that surprises them, perhaps touched at a level of their being that is new to them. They are moved in some way. They leave with a strong desire to explore what they have stumbled upon; they set out on a journey which gradually opens up a horizon for them that casts a new light on all that they do in their lives. Jesus is saying in that first parable that God can come to us even when we are not looking for him. We can be surprisingly graced as we go about our daily business. When that happens, when God unexpectedly touches our lives, that first parable suggests that we need to take decisive action. We need to seize the moment, to respond with all we have, because it is a moment of profound significance. That first parable suggests that the Lord’s search for us is paramount. He seeks us out even when we are unaware of him. He finds ways of offering us the treasure of the gospel even when we are not looking for it. In today’s second reading Paul speaks about God’s purpose for our lives, which is that we would become true images of God’s Son. That is God’s intention, God’s desire for us and God will find ways to bring that purpose of his for our lives to pass. God will find ways of breaking through to us, in and through the ordinary tasks that we engage in every day. Like the man in the parable going about his daily work, it is in the ordinary circumstances of our lives that we often stumble upon the treasure of the kingdom, the treasure of God’s purpose for our lives, of God’s presence.

If the first parable in the gospel reading recognizes that sometimes wonderful discoveries are made by chance, the second parable acknowledges that sometimes they are made at the end of a long and painstaking search. The man at the centre of the second parable is not a poor labourer but a rich merchant. He did not stumble upon the pearl of great value. He had spent his life looking for the finest pearls. One day, after years of searching, he found a pearl which was more beautiful than any other pearl he possessed. He gladly sold all that he owned to purchase it. Jesus says that the kingdom of God is also like the rich merchant. If the first parable suggests the primacy of God’s search for us, the second parable highlights the significance of our own search in our relationship with God. At some level we are all searchers. We seek after love and friendship; we search for truth and justice, for meaning and purpose in our lives. In the first reading we find Solomon actively seeking out wisdom. In the beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus declares blessed all those who hunger and thirst for what is right, who seek after what God wants. A little further into the Sermon on the Mount Jesus declares, ‘seek, and you will find’. The second parable encourages us to keep faithful to that task of seeking, especially seeking the Lord, the ultimate source of all that is good. We seek the Lord in the knowledge that, as the first parable reminds us, the Lord is already seeking us out and will often grace us when we are least expecting it.

And/Or

(v) Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Treasure hunts can be a source of great joy to children. Something is hidden in some place and clues are left in various other places which, if properly followed, will lead to the hidden treasure. When someone finally makes it to the treasure, there is great joy at discovering the hidden treasure. There are different sorts of joy, and the joy of discovery is a very special joy. This joy of discovery is not confined to children. As adults we can experience that joy too. The first two parables that Jesus speaks in today’s gospel reading is about the joy of discovery. In the first parable we have to imagine a poor day labourer who is working in someone’s field. Out of the blue, without looking for it, he suddenly stumbles upon a treasure. He gathers his few possessions and happily sells them so as to have the money to buy the field with its hidden treasure, which no one knows about only himself. In the second parable we have to imagine a rich merchant who actively searches for the finest of pearls. One day his searching leads him to a pearl of much greater worth than all his other pearls put together. He gladly sells them all to buy this pearl of great price.

Both the poor labourer and the rich merchant experience the joy of discovering something wonderful. Apart from the fact that one was poor and the other was rich, they differ in one other way. The poor labourer accidentally stumbled upon the treasure while he was doing something completely unrelated to it. The rich merchant found his treasure after many years of diligently searching for it. Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God is like the experience of both of these people. The opening words of Jesus’ ministry were, ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’. Jesus was announcing that God was powerfully at work in and through his ministry, in and through all he said and did. Jesus revealed God’s presence to us, God’s love for all of humanity, God’s purpose for our lives. Jesus brings this wonderful treasure from God. Indeed, it could be said that Jesus is this treasure from God. He is the treasure hidden in the field; he is the pearl of great price. Jesus is saying in these two parables that those who encounter him as God’s treasure will experience a tremendous joy. The slight difference between the two parables suggests that some people will stumble upon the treasure that is Jesus unexpectedly, without really doing anything to find it, a little bit like the day labourer whose shovel just happened to hit upon the box of treasure. The person of Saint Paul comes to mind here. He was engaged in his work of persecuting what he considered to be a heretical Jewish movement, when suddenly Jesus came to him out of the blue. He wasn’t searching for this treasure; he literally stumbled upon it. Others will discover Jesus to be the treasure of God after much searching. The gospel character that comes to mind here is the elderly Simeon in the opening chapter of Luke’s gospel. He had spent his life searching for the Messiah. Then as he approached the end of his life he finally set his eyes on God’s Messiah, as the child Jesus was carried into the Temple of Jerusalem by his parents.

We are all here at this Eucharist this morning because, at some level, we have come to appreciate Jesus as a wonderful treasure, as a pearl of great price. For some of us, this treasure may have come to us without any real searching on our part. It came to us through others, our parents, our grandparents, those who journeyed with us in life. Others among us may have come to this treasure after much searching. Indeed, both parables may apply to some of us. Perhaps we were given the treasure of Jesus by others, just as the day labourer was given the treasure by the field he was digging, but we may have lost what we had been given. Then we may have set out on our own searching journey, like the rich merchant, and through our own searching found what we had once been given and had lost. Either way, Jesus is saying in those parables, that the treasure of the gospel is there to be discovered and to be rediscovered, and those who experience the gospel for the treasure that it is will find a joy that the world cannot give.

The day labourer and the rich merchant gladly sold all they had to preserve the treasure they had discovered and the joy that accompanied the discovery. Jesus is suggesting that he and all he stands for is a treasure that is worth sacrificing lesser treasures for. A great deal that comes our way in life can threaten this treasure of the gospel. That is why Jesus taught us to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’. We have been given this treasure not just for ourselves but for others; if we lose it or allow it to be taken from us, those who cross our path in life will be the poorer for it, and not just ourselves.

And/Or

(vi) Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Very occasionally someone stumbles upon some significant treasure. It might be someone digging in a bog or in a field on their farm. Some of the treasures that are on display in the National Museum were discovered in that very fortuitous way. In all cultures, people have hidden money and other valuables in the ground, especially during uncertain times such as war. Certainly, in the time of Jesus, when there were no financial institutions such as banks, one of the ways to keep large sums of money or valuables secure was to conceal them by burying them. Unforeseen circumstances, such as death or the ravages of war, could result in such treasures remaining undisturbed for many years. Then someone totally unconnected to the treasure could suddenly stumble upon it.

That is the scenario envisaged by the first of the three parables Jesus speaks in today’s gospel reading. The parable portrays a poor day labourer working in someone else’s field. He unexpectedly stumbles upon this treasure and, without telling anyone, he hides it again. He is determined to raise the money to buy the field. Being a poor labourer this involves selling everything he owns. It is a risky strategy. He initially makes himself even poorer than he is, but he is so happy at his unexpected discovery that he takes this risk just to gain the treasure that he has stumbled upon. Jesus says that the kingdom of God is a little bit like that whole scenario. In what way? At the beginning of his ministry Jesus had announced, ‘the kingdom of God’ is at hand. Jesus was declaring that God was powerfully present in and through his ministry. He was announcing that through him God’s loving and life-presence was fully available to all. Jesus reveals God’s reign; he the face of God’s merciful and hospitable love. To that extent, Jesus himself is the kingdom of God. He is God’s treasure freely given to us. In one of his letters, Saint Paul says, ‘we have this treasure in clay jars’. He was thinking of ourselves as the clay jars. Like the numerous clay jars in the time of Jesus which held oil and gave light, we are weak and vulnerable and brittle, and yet God has given us this wonderful treasure of his Son, the wonderful treasure of the gospel and all that flows from the gospel. Normally people would put treasure in a strong safe-box that could be sealed and locked. However, Paul acknowledges that God in giving us his Son has entrusted this wonderful treasure to clay jars. Paul goes on to say in that verse, ‘we have this treasure in clay jars so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us’.

Perhaps one of the messages of this short but though-provoking parable is that just as the day labourer unexpectedly found treasure hidden in the field that he was digging, so we can find the treasure of the Lord hidden in the sub-soil of our lives. We are being reminded that even when we are working away at some task, digging away at whatever it might be, with our mind only upon the task in hand, the Lord is not far from us. He is there, just under the surface of whatever it is we are doing. Because he is so close, even when our thoughts and interests seem very far removed from the Lord and his gospel, we can suddenly stumble upon him, almost by chance, without explicitly looking for him. The Lord can make his way to us through the soil of our lives, the stuff of life that we engage with each day. There are times in our lives when we can hit upon something that stops us in our tracks, that invites us to reflect and, even, to take some kind of decisive action, like the labourer in the parable who hit upon a treasure and sold everything he owned to possess it. The Lord can be in such experiences, even though we may not recognize him initially. He is there especially in those experiences of life that reflect the values of the kingdom of God, such as goodness, kindness, generosity, peace-making, community-building, self-emptying loving service of others. The Lord is to be found in the heart of the ordinary and he calls out to us from there. He stands ready to unexpectedly grace us from deep within the soil of our lives.

The second parable Jesus speaks in the gospel reading is very like the first but it has some subtle differences. The main character is a rich merchant who has a collection of fine pearls, one of the most precious commodities in the ancient world. He didn’t just stumble upon his treasure, the wonderful pearl that left the rest of his collection in the shade. He found it after diligently searching for it. Jesus says that kingdom of God is also like that experience. Yes, the Lord calls out to us from within the soil of our lives, but we are also encouraged to seek him with our hearts and minds, with all our strength and energy. That second parable suggests that the Lord is worthy of our earnest search because he is the pearl of great price.

And/Or

(vii) Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

I came across a quotation from the nineteenth century American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne recently, ‘Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you’. Is happiness something to be sought, or does it find you? Hawthorne suggests that happiness finds you if you dispose yourself to receiving it. His insight is reflected in the first of the three parables in today’s gospel reading. The poor labourer who was working in someone else’s field wasn’t seeking after a treasure that would bring him happiness. In a sense the treasure found him, happiness alighted upon him, without any seeking after it on his part. When he stumbled upon this unexpected treasure, in his joy he sells all he had so as to purchase the field and its treasure. The joy of receiving the treasure gave him the energy and freedom to take the risk of selling all he owned, so as to keep possession of this wonderful treasure which brought him so much joy.

Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven has something in common with this situation. By the term ‘kingdom of heaven’, Jesus doesn’t simply mean eternal life in God’s kingdom. The kingdom of heaven is as much a present reality as a future one. It is life together under God, life lived in response to God’s love for us through Jesus. It is life lived in relationship with God through our shared friendship with Jesus. It is a life shaped by the Holy Spirit who empowers us to befriend others in the way that the Lord has befriended us. Such a life brings us a joy that no earthly reality can bring us, a sharing in the Lord’s own joy. In the parable, Jesus is saying that this wonderful reality of the Lord’s loving relationship with us and ours with him is a treasure that is often stumbled upon. It is not always the end result of a long search. In the words of Hawthorne, this treasure and the happiness it brings can alight upon us when we are least expecting it, perhaps when we are sitting down quietly somewhere. Somehow, without looking for it, we have a sense of grace touching us, of the Lord alighting upon us. We sense not so much that we have found the Lord, but that he has found us. We have allowed him to find us, perhaps even in spite of ourselves. The Lord seeks us out even when we are not seeking him. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus refers to himself as ‘the Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost’. The Lord is always seeking us, which is why we can stumble upon him at any time, in any place, just as the labourer stumbled upon treasure in another man’s field. The Lord seeks out all. The third parable in today’s gospel suggests that his gracious love is like a great net thrown over all.

The second short parable in today’s gospel reading is very like the first parable, but it differs from it in important ways. The primary character is not a poor labourer but a wealthy merchant. He too finds a treasure, a pearl of great price. However, he doesn’t stumble upon it. He has been looking for a pearl like this all his life. The finding of this unique pearl brings him such joy that he too is prepared to sell everything he owns to possess it. Again, Jesus begins this parable by saying, ‘the kingdom of heaven is like this’. Life under God, life lived in friendship with Jesus, life inspired and shaped by the Holy Spirit, is like this. There is a pearl of great price here that is often found by those who seek it. Whereas the first parable highlighted the priority of the Lord’s search for us, meaning we can stumble upon him when we are least expecting to, this second parable acknowledges the value of our own seeking the Lord. Both are important in the gospels. The Lord who came to seek out the lost also says to us, ‘Seek and you will find’. In the gospels the Lord is very well disposed to all who were searching for a fuller light, a greater truth, a more generous love. The person of Nicodemus comes to mind who came to Jesus by night, stumbling out of the darkness towards the light. He would eventually help to provide Jesus with a dignified burial. The rich young man is another seeker who came to Jesus asking, ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ The gospel says that Jesus ‘looking at him, loved him’. The Lord will always respond to our searching spirit, offering himself to us as the treasure, the pearl, who can satisfy our deepest longings and as the source of present and ultimate happiness. The two parables suggest that when we do find this treasure, whether by accident or after a long search, it is worth sacrificing a great deal to hold onto it. We have all been graced in some way by this treasure of the Lord. Today’s gospel reading calls on us to value the Lord and all he offers us, to invest ourselves in this treasure.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

7 notes · View notes

number1spongebobfan · 11 months

Text

Mr. Krabs falls down the stairs

Parody of Peter Griffin falling down the stairs

Mr. Krabs: AGH OW ARGH *dolphin noise *blow horn

Mrs. Puff: Eugene are you alright?

Mr. Krabs: Mrs. Puff what the heck? Why did you take down the stairs?!

Mrs. Puff: I had to. They were so old and dirty and dusty.

Mr. Krabs: Well when did you do that?

Mrs. Puff: The other time when you spent your day in the bank.

Mr. Krabs: Oh yeah.

Mrs. Puff: Eugene, come downstairs. That show you like is on.

Mrs. Puff is watching The Price is Right.

Mr. Krabs: Hey lads, this is driving me crazy, was one of the dwarves named Snappy? Kind of well dressed? Er am I making that up - OH AGH *dolphin noise *blowhorn FISHPASTE!

Patrick: Mr. Krabs!

Pearl: Daddy are you okay?

Mr. Krabs: Aw I hate these new stairs! You know what fine, I'll just lie here until the pain goes away.

Squidward: Plankton you gotta help me, I'm in love with Squilvia but I don't know what to say to her!

Mr. Krabs is covered in pillowcases.

Mr. Krabs: Hey Squidward, me old arch nemesis Plankton . . . I'm just gonna . . . take this . . .

Squidward: I don't know what to do!

Mrs. Puff finally replaced the stairs.

Mr. Krabs: Yay I love me new stairs!!! Agagagagagagaga!

#spongebob squarepants #sbsp #mr krabs #mrs puff #squidward tentacles #sheldon j plankton #pearl krabs #family guy reference #parody #patrick star

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ladykailolu · 10 months

Note

Marigold has that green Magatama right?

Imagine mean old Morgan trying to take away and destroy hers because she “doesn’t deserve it”

It’s a bit hard when Pearl likes having a matching necklace with Marigold so just snatching it will upset her precious Pearl.

So she takes it when she sleeps and tries throwing it in the trash.

So Marigold wakes up distressed and fussing over where her Magatama is, as her mama gave her that. It’s special.

Luckily, Pearl finds it in the trash and gives it back to her.

But maybe one day Morgan takes it and throws it off that bridge that Phoenix later falls off.

It stays there for a while until old Nick in his delirious state, finds it nearby where he washes up. And so he grabs it before blacking out again and being taken to the hospital.

So when Marigold goes to visit him, she finally gets her magatama back.

I feel like whenever Marigold doesn't have that magatama on her person, she loses that connection to her mother. Like she feels that her mother's spirit is so distant and faraway that she feels completely alone, especially when she's living with Morgan. So Marigold doesn't sleep, and if she does, she more often has nightmares and disruptive sleep. Pearl, the closest person to her at this time, sees just how much she's struggling and tries to help, but she's only a 5-6 year old girl and doesn't know how to help. And let's say that Marigold is more susceptible to getting sick when she doesn't have her magatama with her.

If Morgan tossed it off that one bridge before she went to jail, then by a stroke of luck, the magatama washed up on shore and actually stayed there! Let's assume that there's no or very little snow on the river bank, so when Phoenix falls in, so he finds it in his stupor and puts it in his pocket before he passes out. Maybe he even hallucinates and thinks that it's a sign from Mia, that Mia is there with him in spirit and trying to help him out. Alternatively, he could interpret it as his "number" being up and he's gonna meet Mia again real soon.

Flash forward when Marigold visits Phoenix in the hospital. He's still sick but lucid enough to remember that magatama and give it to Marigold to cheer her up. And it works! She would hug Phoenix for finding it, but seeing how he's still sick, it wouldn't be a good idea. Flashforward to the end of the trial and Marigold tackle-hugs Phoenix.

Since that magatama is green, could it be made out of green jade? Jade comes in many colors, and I found a picture where it's cut to the shape of a magatama:

One of the significance of jade is that it symbolizes Heaven and Earth. It's a tool that brings spirits of the departed closer to Earth to be among the living, even if for a little while.

What do you think happened to Mia's magatama? Was it buried with her? Or would Maya or Marigold (probably Maya) carry it with her as a nice reminder of Mia? I feel like separating the magatamas would be like separating the family. Or did you say that Marigold inherited Mia's magatama after her passing?

The magatamas are slightly translucent, and apparently, the more translucent the piece of jade, the more valuable it is. Jade was highly revered in Chinese culture, to the point where there's a Chinese saying that goes like this: 'you can put a price on gold, but jade is priceless.' Fittingly, there was a large swath of time where jade was worn exclusively by royalty and nobility.

#mia fey #marigold estella fey #phoenix wright #pearl fey #morgan fey #the fey family #maya fey #ace attorney #oreocookiezzz #asks #lady k answers #ace attorney oc #not my oc

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ambiguouspuzuma · 2 years

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The Librarian

It was a meagre inheritance, as these things go. A small sum of money and an annual stipend, from a trust she couldn't access, and therefore didn't truly trust. Clara was grateful for the gift - and thankful to the distant relative for including her in his will, having received little from her own parents - but it wasn't the sudden windfall she'd read about in books. Nothing to write home about, and certainly no ancestral home to write it to.

Still, it was the price of freedom. She no longer had to work, if she didn't want to, and in truth she never had. Clara had never found a job that suited her - she had always been a housewife temporarily deprived of house and husband, a woman longing to be kept, a lady waiting on her leisure. Well, she had that now. It wasn't a life of luxury, if one counted such a concept in things, beluga caviar and brut champagne, diamonds and pearls and all of that, but at least she had the luxury of time.

The stipend supported her to do whatever she want, if what she wanted cost less than the average wage, which was sadly not the case. Clara had always felt a deep-seated desire to travel the world, to experience endless adventures in far-flung lands, but without a job she could barely save to afford one holiday. The stipend was swallowed by her living costs, the mundane tax of rent and bills and groceries. The life of her dreams would have to remain confined to her imagination.

So, in the absence of real world escapes, she became an avid reader instead.

Clara had never actually been to her local library before, but she'd passed by it a hundred times. It had never seemed like much, from the outside: a tired sheet glass front, on the corner between a retail bank and a hairdresser, with a row of benches just ahead. But the inside was different. Clara stepped through the revolving door one day in town, mostly just to get out of the rain, and found that in that single moment she was hooked.

The library was a whole new world within four walls. With sodden hair and tearful eyes, she walked into a labyrinth of shelves, rows of books separated only by vast stone pillars, a daunting anthology of every kind of text imaginable. It was a paper cathedral; a corridor of tiny hardback doors; a mosaic tiled with laminated stories. By the time Clara had opened her first book, she was already in love.

She lost herself inside that forest of paper and varnished wood, leafing through the pages of one book, rustling through the chapters of another, devouring them whole whilst the stacks drank her in. She read cover-to-cover, wall-to-wall, and dawn-to-dusk - or at least during the opening hours of eight to seven. She resolved to turn the whole place inside-out, one piece of paper at a time.

It started with the corner titled adult fiction, whatever that meant, but it didn't take her long to exhaust the library's supply: a few months, perhaps, but they flew by for a woman who had little else to do. One by one, she turned novel into familiar, filling her head with tales, honing her amateur taste with works of prose. Clara didn't discriminate: contemporary or classic, literary or genre, good or bad, she read them all.

She wept once she was done - the last book had been a real tear-jerking romance, on top of the finality of it all - but there were more worlds left to conquer. Clara delved into Young Adult, Middle Grade, all the way back into books that had more pictures than words, and more cardboard than paper. She cut clean through the non-fiction section, which had no demarcations for age, but probably should have. Some of that history had been gruesome - and that was without mentioning the scientific diagrams, which had taught her things Clara was sure nobody had to know.

But she didn't stop there. The library kept an archive of the local papers, and selected national broadsheets, and Clara read her way back through their more recent history, reported through the lenses of a present now past. She learnt to see the beauty in reference books, the poetry of trade directories; to read the stories in the shifting boundaries of a dusty atlas.

Then there were the marginalia. When Clara read cover-to-cover, that covered everything: the publication dates, the copyright, the profile on the inside of the dust jacket. She acknowledged the scribbled names of those who'd checked it out before; checked out the author's own acknowledgements. There were flaws, too. Sometimes she found foxing and dog ears, even the occasional grammatical correction in blue biro. She breathed it all in as one.

After a while, it wasn't even about the books. Clara learnt to read the patterns in the shelves, the books removed and not-quite-put-back: after adopting them herself, she helped them on their journey home. She had the order memorised, a sequence that she knew to five Dewey Decimal places. The world was her omnibus, and she knew how to read it like an open book.

Clara became more regular than regular. She was an ever-present, clocking in with the library staff and going home with them at night, or at least at the same time. She would greet them as they settled at the front desk, her hosts for the day, and found that they actually spent less time there than her. They all knew her as an inhabitant of the upper floors; and later, as the years passed and a new generation arrived with barcodes and scanners, as a fixture.

They asked her questions, sometimes, as she sat and read the messages on their new computers. "We're all getting name badges. What surname should we use on yours?" Well, that only seemed fair. The children who met the challenge of reading a mere ten books that summer had been rewarded with a whole sheaf of colourful stickers, and Clara had surpassed them all. Why shouldn't she get something to show for it?

Later, when she found her way into the staff break room and read their tea leaves, or the back of their coffee sachets, they said that they were digitising their personal records. Well, that made sense too: the books had been catalogued digitally for some years, and it was only natural for their readers to follow suit. Clara never did understand why they'd needed her bank details, but then she never noticed the salary that started to arrive every month.

Customers would ask her questions too, no doubt recognising her from the badge as a connoisseur of these shelves. "Can you recommend me a book?" they'd say, with some impossibly abstract description of the kind of thing they liked, or an example of a precedent they'd like to read again for the first time. But she always could.

"I loved it," one customer told her, returning the latest book for her to re-shelve. "Thank you, yet again - this was exactly what I needed. I don't know how you do it, but it's like your suggestions are always perfectly tailored to my tastes."

"I try my best," Clara said, her eyes tracing the faded furrow in their brow, the newfound lightness in the way they held themselves, the smile that danced across their lips, and deciding what to recommend them next. "I suppose that I'm just good at reading people."

#writing #creative writing #short story #original writing #original fiction

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nobully · 2 years

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[ reassure ] uvu

the intimacy of hands. | [ reassure ] – for the sender’s muse to place their hand over the receiver’s in a moment of stress and squeeze reassuringly.

Surely, somewhere out there, Wang Yi thinks to himself, Nicolette's having the same problem.

He stares at the assortment of items for sale in the stationery store and gives a long sigh. Sure, buying writing utensils is a no brainer for a scholar, but he knows better than to just give a bundle of pens. The more you honed your craft, the more sensitive you were about details. Zhilan's not the type to openly voice his complaints about anything, but damn if Wang Yi wasn't going to get him something he enjoyed writing with.

For one thing, the Liyuen script Zhilan's familiar with best has intricate characters, so he'd definitely prefer something with a thinner tip. 0.7 or 0.5mm both seem too thick, especially with how many notes the scholar can take in one session, so he looks for 0.4mm or less. 0.38mm is typically the sweet spot, but Zhilan has a few pens like that already, so he should aim for something slightly different...

Wang Yi's spent the good part of an hour staring down the pen selections (turning down three offers of help from store employees along the way) before his eyes trail over to the fountain pens. Of course, he'd used one in school too—but it was one of those cheaper models with disposable ink cartridges. He remembers that Zhilan's more used to a brush and might find the Western equivalent interesting—but if that was the case, he wants to buy him something nice.

A good fountain pen could last for years, if not generations. Plenty of modern high-end models used cartridges as well, so Zhilan wouldn't have to worry about carrying around bottles of ink. He could also get a mix of permanent and water-based ones, depending on how durable the guy wanted his notes. His eyes skim past the models, skipping past the ones with unnecessary bling for something practical and classy.

Not this one...not that one either...

This one has brass, that's too heavy...that other one's too showy...

And then he spots it: the perfect mix of past and present, a fountain pen with a retractable nib, its body adorned with neat stripes of traditional mother-of-pearl maki-e that glimmer in the light. The body is a little fatter than he expected, but he realizes the girth might be more comfortable for a guy used to holding brushes and besides—it's lightweight enough not to be a bother.

Wang Yi takes a closer look at the sticker on its side and blanches.

What the hell is this price tag?!

He bursts out the doors of the shop the next second, fingers tapping furiously on his phone. Whatever, there were ways to get this without breaking the bank...too much.

***

On the morning of Zhilan's birthday, he holds out the neatly wrapped box to his friend and clears his throat nervously.

' So I got you this pen—not just any one I mean, but a fountain pen. The tip's retractable so you can store it when not in use—plus it comes with a pen holder, so you don't have to worry if you drop it by accident. There's instructions for changing the ink inside if you've never used one before. '

' It's a brand I've seen in my world...their quality's solid and I picked a F nib on purpose so you can write really fine lines. It's also really smooth but...um... '

He shuffles in place and looks away.

' It's not new, though this one's barely used! I, I tested it to make sure it was working before I packed it. But uh, if you don't like it I'll get you something else... '

The words trail off. There's a hand resting over his own, which Wang Yi realizes have tensed around the box so much that they're wrinkling the wrapping paper.

' Sh—shoot, I didn't mean to crush it, uh— '

"Wang Yi." Zhilan's soft voice brings him back to reality, and he looks up like a guilty schoolboy caught breaking the rules.

' Y-yeah? '

"It's okay." Zhilan smiles at him and squeezes. You're okay.

And with that, Wang Yi relaxes until his fingers uncurl around the box, until he sees Zhilan accept it from his hands, until the scholar's unwrapped the thing and holding up his new pen to the light. The raden bands sparkle just like he'd hoped they would under the sun.

He exhales and finally breaks into a smile.

' Happy Birthday, Xiao Lan. '

#archaictold #drabbles;#happy birthday!! :3 #it's technically 12AM so i can gib u this now!!#excuse my nerding out about pens #i..actually didn't have zhilan speak too much in this one because it's YOUR gift lol you get to pick the feedback sjdfjsjfd #answered;

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catboylabia · 2 years

Text

NERD SHIT INCOMING

get out while you still can

SO. Hypixel skyblock, right? Go grind ur skills up and make minions get ur collections up and exploit stupid players in auctions to get money? We all on the same page here?

Y'all know that funny little sword, Aspect of the End? The one that most people consider to be a staple of any mid or late game build just because hey basically free teleporting? I've come across a neat combination of afflictions, it's called I have money and fuck it we ball, plus the secret third option of I don't want to grind my ender pearl collection up to get to the AotE.

So.

Just this once, I'm bidding on one in the auction house at 56k, which, I think, is priced fairly well for my bank size and money making methods. If I lose, I cope, if I win, I rejoice. We'll see how it goes tonight when i babysit the last half hour of the auction.

#minecraft #hypixel #hypixel skyblock

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thelabeldg · 6 days

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Tips to buy womens artificial jewellery online

Tips to buy womens artificial jewellery online has become increasingly popular due to the vast array of options and convenience it offers. From bold statement necklaces to delicate earrings, artificial jewellery allows women to stay trendy without breaking the bank. However, with so many online platforms offering different styles, it’s important to make informed decisions to ensure you get the best quality and designs that suit your needs. In this blog, we'll provide essential tips to help you navigate the world of online jewellery shopping and find the perfect pieces.

1. Know Your Style and Occasion

Before you begin browsing, it's essential to have a clear idea of your personal style and the occasion for which you need the jewellery.

Consider:

Daily Wear: For everyday use, opt for simple, elegant designs like studs, small hoops, or dainty necklaces that complement most outfits.

Special Occasions: For weddings, parties, or festive events, look for more elaborate and ornate pieces, such as Kundan or Polki sets.

Office Wear: Minimalistic and sleek jewellery pieces like understated chains, small earrings, or bracelets can add a touch of sophistication to your professional attire.

Knowing your style and the intended occasion will make it easier to narrow down your options and find jewellery that fits your aesthetic.

2. Carefully Read Product Descriptions

When purchasing women’s artificial jewellery online, it’s easy to be dazzled by stunning photos, but it’s crucial to dig deeper into the product descriptions to know exactly what you’re getting. The images might not provide all the necessary details.

Here are a few key things to look for:

Material: Check whether the jewellery is gold-plated, silver-plated, or made from a base metal like brass. This will give you an idea of the jewellery’s durability and how it may react to your skin.

Size and Weight: Ensure the product's dimensions are mentioned. Something that appears delicate in the image may turn out to be larger or bulkier than expected.

Type of Stones: If the piece includes stones, be sure to note whether they’re made of artificial materials, like cubic zirconia or faux pearls.

Allergy Concerns: If you have sensitive skin, look for hypoallergenic options or ensure the materials used won’t cause irritation.

Understanding these specifics will help you avoid disappointment and make sure your purchase lives up to expectations.

3. Shop from Trusted Online Stores

One of the most important tips for buying women's artificial jewellery online is to always shop from reputable and trusted online platforms. With numerous e-commerce sites out there, choosing a reliable store is crucial to ensure the quality of the product.

Here’s how to identify trustworthy stores:

Customer Reviews: Look for genuine customer reviews to get an insight into the product quality, customer service, and overall satisfaction.

Secure Payment Methods: Choose sites that offer secure payment gateways to protect your personal and financial information.

Return and Exchange Policies: Make sure the site has flexible and clear return or exchange policies in case the product does not meet your expectations.

Well-Established Websites: Stores like The Label DG, which specialize in stylish artificial jewellery, are known for providing high-quality pieces and great customer service.

4. Pay Attention to Pricing

While artificial jewellery is typically more affordable than real jewellery, prices can still vary depending on the design, materials used, and brand reputation. It's essential to strike the right balance between cost and quality.

Too Cheap Might Mean Compromise: While budget-friendly jewellery is appealing, be cautious of items priced too low. These pieces may be made from poor-quality materials that could tarnish or break easily.

Invest in Versatile Pieces: If you're looking for long-lasting and versatile pieces, it's worth investing a little more. For example, a simple gold-plated necklace or classic earrings can be worn for multiple occasions and still remain fashionable.

Take Advantage of Discounts: Many online jewellery stores offer discounts, especially during festive seasons or clearance sales. Keep an eye out for these deals to get high-quality jewellery at a reduced price.

5. Check for Certification

While artificial jewellery is primarily made from imitation metals and stones, some reputable stores may still offer certificates that authenticate the quality of materials used, particularly for gold-plated items. This can be important when purchasing higher-value artificial jewellery.

Before making a purchase, check if the store provides any kind of certification or guarantee of the quality. This is particularly important if you’re buying pieces that are gold-plated or use semi-precious stones, as it ensures you are getting good value for your money.

6. Read Customer Reviews and Ratings

One of the best ways to judge the quality of women's artificial jewellery online is by reading customer reviews. Reviews give you an honest, first-hand account of how the product performs, and whether it meets the expectations set by the seller.

Pay attention to:

Durability: Do the pieces hold up well after being worn multiple times?

Comfort: Are they comfortable to wear for extended periods, especially for earrings or bracelets?

Appearance: Does the product match the description and photos provided by the seller?

Overall Satisfaction: Did customers find the jewellery to be a good value for the price?

Taking the time to read reviews will save you from buying pieces that might not live up to their pictures or descriptions.

7. Check Shipping Costs and Delivery Time

When buying women’s artificial jewellery online, it’s important to factor in shipping costs and delivery times. Different stores offer different shipping options, and some may have higher fees, especially if you need the jewellery for a specific occasion.

Watch for Hidden Shipping Fees: Sometimes, the price of the jewellery is great, but the shipping cost can make it less of a deal. Always review the total cost before purchasing.

Delivery Times: Ensure that the store’s estimated delivery timeline aligns with your needs, especially if you’re purchasing jewellery for a special event. Opt for faster shipping if necessary to receive your items on time.

8. Look for Easy Return and Exchange Policies

Even after carefully selecting your jewellery, you might find that the piece doesn't meet your expectations. In such cases, having a clear and easy return or exchange policy is essential.

Before purchasing, make sure the store:

Offers Free Returns: Some stores may charge for returns or exchanges, so check for policies that allow you to return or exchange without any additional cost.

Has Flexible Policies: The return window should be long enough for you to make a decision once you receive the product.

Knowing you can return or exchange your jewellery with ease provides peace of mind while shopping online.

9. Care and Maintenance

After purchasing, take steps to maintain your jewellery to ensure it lasts as long as possible. Here are a few tips to keep your artificial jewellery in good shape:

Keep It Dry: Avoid contact with water and perfume, as this can cause tarnishing or fading.

Store Separately: Store each piece in its own pouch or box to prevent scratching or tangling.

Clean Regularly: Gently wipe down your jewellery with a soft cloth after each wear to remove oils and dirt.

By following these tips, your artificial jewellery will remain in great condition and shine for years to come.

Conclusion

Buying women’s artificial jewellery online can be a rewarding experience if you follow these tips. From knowing your style to reading reviews, paying attention to pricing, and understanding store policies, each step ensures a successful purchase. With trusted stores like The Label DG, you can explore a beautiful collection of jewellery that perfectly matches your taste and occasion. Happy shopping!

#Tips to buy womens artificial jewellery online

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