Once for all, then, a short precept is given thee: Love, and do what thou wilt: whether thou hold thy peace, through love hold thy peace; whether thou cry out, through love cry out; whether thou correct, through love correct; whether thou spare, thro...
God does not believe for us, but through His Spirit He creates spiritual life in us so that we can believe. Faith is the gift of God. It's part of the whole salvation package that God gives to us through the work of Christ for us and the work of the ...
Like all cities, Beirut has many layers, and I had been familiar with one or two. What I was introduced to that day with Ali and Kamal was the Beirut of its people. You take different groups, put them on top of each other, simmer for a thousand years...
Each journey is unique, and each seeker charts a new path. But it is infinitely easier to do so having at least some knowledge about the experiences of those who have gone before. When we learn about the many different heroic paths available to us, w...
It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying "Come up again, dear!" I shall only look up and say "Who am I then? Tell me that first, and then, if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else"...
The celebrated maxim of the Romans, not to undertake two great wars at the same time, is so well known and so well appreciated as to spare the necessity of demonstrating its wisdom. A government maybe compelled to maintain a war against two neighbori...
Without the Dreamscape, we can’t sleep. My parents remind me all the time about stories their parents told them, of how things were in the Manic Age. The time before our bodies were upgraded to sync with the amazing invention called the Dreamscape....
He was thirteen then, Elijah almost seven. Now, ten years later, Elijah realizes he’s older than Danny was. That all of those changes have happened to him, too. The changes that nobody has any say over. The biology—“growing” and “up” as a...
Since the Leeburg Pike [at Tyson's Corner] carries six to eight lanes of fast-moving traffic and the mall lacks an obvious pedestrian entrance, I decided to negotiate the street in my car rather than on foot. This is a problem planners call the 'driv...
But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, hab...
A kiss can be dreadfully terrifying for the males of our species, I'm afraid." Rose said knowingly. "Sex is easy. All they really need is a few good thrusts. But when they kiss, they open themselves up and let you in. And that, my dear, makes some me...
The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have ...
I think the time that I knew that I was capable of all the things that I disliked the most in other people was, oddly enough, one of the most joyful moments: when our first child was born. And I just felt this love for this beautiful little girl who ...
Some readers may realize that this story, first published in 1956, has been overtaken by events. In 1965, astronomers discovered that Mercury does not keep one side always to the Sun, but has a period of rotation of about fifty-four days, so that all...
I think her favorite thing about our . . . collaboration was her actor and musician friends rubbing shoulders with my academic colleagues, she liked the atmosphere of challenge, the way anything that came under discussion could be claimed or rejected...
Are you mad?" I ask. "I was." He glances at the ceiling then back at me. "Or confused, anyway. The whole thing threw me through for a loop. I thought I'd finally met a guy at Underwood I could relate to, and it turns out he wasn't a guy at all." I sw...
Sometimes I can feel my darkness, like a fragment of nerves inside of me somewhere, sparking my hate. I picture it moving throughout my body, the other cells letting it pass by, yielding to its master. It moves to my tongue when it wants me to spew b...
He looks around at his guests. All are prepared. A Latin grace; English would be his choice, but he will suit his company. Who cross themselves ostentatiously, in papist style. Who look at him, expectant. He shouts for the waiters. The doors burst op...
It will no longer be necessary to leave one's own home in order to find work in the surrounding districts, which means spending week after week away from home, for no matter how restless a fellow might be, his own home, if he has a wife he respects a...
See what's inside a drop of water. The whole seed of the universe. Come, come. See what's inside a drop of blood. The composition of life. It's all there. Hate as well. We approach the mystery of life, but it's impossible to understand the mystery of...
The lengths to which you’re prepared to go to please a housekeeper make me wonder about the servant situation in Scotland. Good help must be thin on the ground.” Vale widened his eyes and took a drink. “She’s more to me than a housekeeper,”...
