While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystica...
When a homemaking aunt scolds a niece for following her evangelistic passion instead of domestic pursuits, her reply is interesting. First, she clarifies that God's individual call on her doesn't condemn those in more conventional roles. Then, she sa...
God? We don't know what He's like. But at least now that we're dead we all know we don't know, whereas on Earth we all thought we knew, and those who didn't know didn't know that they knew they didn't know. They didn't find that out till they'd been ...
Aren’t you going to hit him?” Éibhear asked. “I don’t feel like it.” “Good gods.” Gwenvael stood. “This is worse than we thought, Éibhear. Up, brother.” Gwenvael grabbed Briec’s arm and pulled him to his feet. “There is only o...
What’s going on?” “Nothing.” She coughed, and released Talaith’s hand. “Except you have some powerful enemies.” “Tell me what I don’t know, witch.” “Powerful enemies who are gods.” For a moment, Annwyl was shocked beyond all r...
Having faith requires leaps of faith, cerebral acceptance of miracles - immaculate conceptions and divine interventions. And then there are the codes of conduct. The Bible, the Koran, Buddhist scripture ... they all carry similar requirements - and s...
Does he lay with you in the grass? Does he stare up at the stars, speaking of his dreams, wishing he could roll over and kiss you and run his fingers along the breasts that tease him beneath the shirt--the shirt he knows he will carry home with him a...
Live with the consequences of your deeds and enjoy the warmth they create. The only warmth in the cold, indifferent universe is that which we create ourselves. And that is what a work of art is, it is what a constructed life is, a fulfilled life, the...
Jasmine had endured enough parochial schooling before middle school to have a residual attachment to the beautiful parts of believing, the certainty of knowing one is loved by something beyond comprehension, but also a niggling fear of those who beli...
So, yeah, my people figured that maybe there's something at the back of it all, a creator, a great spirit, and so we say thank you to it, because it's always good to say thank you. But we never built churches. We didn't need to. The land was the chur...
One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The m...
The best thing—in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing—about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. He didn't worry that the man was going to get him, because...
He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home to go back to. He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a whil...
Fuck you," said Czernobog. "Fuck you and fuck your mother and fuck the fucking horse you fucking rode in on. You will not even die in battle. No warrior will taste your blood. No one alive will take your life. You will die a soft, poor death. You wil...
The shape does not change. There was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. you may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are lik...
The aim of this book is not to make atheism a popular belief or even to overcome its invisibility. My object is not utopian. It is merely to provide good reasons for being an atheist. … My object is to show that atheism is a rational position and t...
When she spread her wings and leaped screeching into the air she had not the slightest doubt that every hand below her would stretch to catch her. And if one could leap from a height with no fear of falling, could one not be said to possess the secre...
You cannot devote your life to an abstraction. Indeed, life shatters all abstractions in one way or another, including words such as "faith" or "belief". If God is not in the very fabric of existence for you, if you do not find Him (or miss Him!) in ...
His ally was the age-old, unending human search for truth and security. In the first century as the twenty first, some were devout, some superstitious, others were frankly materialistic, even though in that age they paid lip service to the gods. Othe...
The State is like a great and noble steed who is tardy in his motions owing to his very size, and requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has given the State and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousi...
I went to him & put my Hand upon his Shoulder. Said he to me, “God forgive me. Her Name — I never knew her Name.” Which meant not a Jot to me — and yet my Heart was the Thing that broke.
