You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes t...
We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our...
We think that if we just meditated enough or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole,...
Each evening, I ached for the shelter of my tent, for the smallest sense that something was shielding me from the entire rest of the world, keeping me safe not from danger, but from vastness itself. I loved the dim, clammy dark of my tent, the cozy f...
We're not gods, Julia. We're helpers. That's all. People have called us terrible things in the past. But that was only because they didn't understand us. That understanding is for the future, a time not long from now. You may live to see it. Then per...
(I)t was Lady who saved my mother's life. Lady, who made it possible for her not only to walk away from my father, but also to keep going. Horses were my mother's religion. It was them she wanted to be with all those Sundays as a child, when she'd be...
A daughter, a wife, a grandson,' You could say this place took away all I had. I could easily appear to be one of those unfortunate white men you hear about, who thought too lovingly of the other races and civilization of the world, who left his own ...
Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter-all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for some one to wear them. ...
What a terrible thing it is for children to see death, you say. We have it all wrong. If you make a child terrified of death, he won't embrace it so easily. And death must be embraced if you wish to follow Christ. Listen to His teaching. 'Unless you ...
(Everyone, I guess, sees their position as the neutral one and everyone else's position as biassed. I wonder why 177 minutes of the Today programme is completely secular; you feel horribly excluded by 3 minutes of Thought for Today. I see a sinister ...
But I can tell you the reason for me being so youthful-looking for a man a century and a half old. I’m not exactly what you’d call human. Hell, I’m not human at all. The closest thing you might be able to relate me to is what’s known as a ‘...
I had a dream about you. We watched the water in the toilet swirl down like a liquid tornado, and we wondered if we’d just flushed away our last chance at love. We’d used all the toilet paper, so you had nothing to blow your nose with. So I gave ...
There dwells a life in every star; With brother spheres it rolls afar Its self-elected, radiant way. Still throb within the great earth-ball The forces which conduct us all From day to night, from night to day. - - - GER: Das Leben wohnt in jedem Ste...
Scully nodded. Of course. It made sense. Complete sense. No question about it. Mulder was perfectly sane in telling her all this. And she was perfectly sane in listening to it and nodding and urging him to tell her more. It was the rest of the world ...
Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. "My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained. But we knew this was a lie. Glen's pare...
But we can never change enough to impress God. And here's the reason: trying to impress God, others, or ourselves puts us at the center of our change project. It makes change all about my looking good. It is done for my glory. And that's pretty much ...
Language is changing constantly; printing and modern education have slowed it but have not stopped it. Given all this change, when, exactly, was language PERFECT, in the language pundit's mind? One has the feeling that the decline-mongers would feel ...
Until we find out who was born this time around, it seems irrelevant to seek earlier identities. I have heard many people speak of who they believe they were in previous incarnations, but they seem to have very little idea of who they are in this one...
It wasn't a perfect body but it was the body she deserved. Not just from every bar of chocolate or bag of crisps or laden plate of food that she'd eaten. This body was also testament to all the hours in the gym and cycling up hills on her bike and gl...
Take the stupidest thing you've ever done. At least it's done. It's over. It's gone. We can all learn from our mistakes and heal and move on. But it's harder to learn or heal or move on from something that hasn't happened; something we don't know and...
there’s nothing to discuss there’s nothing to remember there’s nothing to forget it’s sad and it’s not sad seems the most sensible thing a person can do is sit with drink in hand as the walls wave their goodbye smiles one comes through it a...
