How come when mortals want things, their only option is to make a deal with Hell and sell their soul? Why can’t they make deals with God in exchange for good behavior?" It was another of those rare moments when I’d surprised Carter. I waited for ...
All at once it seemed like too much of a betrayal to continue to pretend that his brother was delirious, hallucinating, not in his right mind. Lying when he was telling the truth. Maybe Kenzie was right-maybe secrets were more the problem than the so...
In the darkest corner of a darkened room, all Sherlock Homes stories begin. In the pregnant dim of gaslight and smoke, Holmes would sit, digesting the day's papers, puffing on his long pipe, injecting himself with cocaine. He would pop smoke rings in...
The possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth's part in life, and a day moth's at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meagre opportunities to the full, pathetic. He flew vig...
To understand the extreme lengths to which the Sufis were prepared to go in reading esoteric meanings into the quite simple language of their Scriptures, it is necessary to remember that the Koran was committed to memory by all deeply religious men a...
June is gone. For the first time, the enormity of that hits me. Every muscle aches, my heart most of all. I am throbbing with how much I miss her. It hurts worse than anything. I don't know how I'm supposed to be expected to live day to day carrying ...
I thought you might appreciate this..... “Excerpt from my lecture Sunday February 22, 2015 at Soul-Esteem Center 10 Commandments - God knew when he gave us choice some would make the wrong choices, but God wanted his creation, man, to have free wil...
As we embrace the mystery of love, we see that it contains not an absence of error, but the presence of grace. It contains not the absence of anger or pain, but the presence of forgiveness and healing. Not the absence of disharmony or confusion, but ...
Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, ’Of course I am happy here! It’s wonder...
All the morning since he got up he had been trying to fight through his duties—leaning against a hope—a hope that first had bowed, and then had broke as soon as he really tried its weight. There was not a sign of Sylvia’s liking for him to be g...
That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any ...
One is not loved accidentally; one’s own power to love produces love - just as being interested makes one interesting. People are concerned with the question of whether they are attractive while they forget that the essence of attractiveness is the...
Miss West is never idle. Below, in the big after-room, she does her own laundering. Nor will she let the steward touch her father's fine linen. In the main cabin she has installed a sewing-machine. All hand-stitching, and embroidering, and fancy work...
With some people there is easy conversation and not enough time in one meal to get out everything you want to tell her--all the things you didn't know you'd been holding in until you're suddenly confessing to Facebook-stalking ex-boyfriends and how n...
Don’t worry, though, because Prince Hubert is very handsome and kind. That’s all you wanted in a boyfriend, wasn’t it?” “No,” I said. She raised an eyebrow. “It must be. If you had admired any other qualities you would have developed th...
My dear nephew was only in his sixth year when I came to be detached from the family circle. But this did not hinder and I from remaining the most affectionate friends, and many a half or whole holiday he was allowed to spend with me, was dedicated t...
I don't know why I wanted a girl,' he says, as if to himself. 'I mean, I wouldn't swap Louis, but when they said, 'It's a boy!', I thought: 'Oh, well.' Everyone else was incredibly pleased that it was a boy – grandparents are always very pleased wh...
The night air was still and damp rising from the mud banks of the creek. Our lives had been determined by the random flow of water through weaknesses in the soil. Where there was water there was humanity. Especially now, with no stable forms of trans...
All of us lived life when sex was the farthest thing from our minds. Try to remember the careless freedom of play, basking in the beingness of others. As adults, responsibilities and obligations can often bind us to a daily grind. For some adults, th...
The words of the Quran all seemed strangely familiar yet so unlike anything I had ever read before,’ he told us. He embraced Islam in 1977, and changed his name to Yusuf, the Arabic for Joseph. ‘I identified with the story of Joseph in the Quran,...
Mogo living brings about true freedom. When you have the inner conviction to do the most good and the least harm, you are free to say no to media, social, and peer pressures. You are free from a nagging sense that your life does not have value or mea...