There is a thought among some brands of theology that souls are waiting up in heaven to be born. Now how in the world anybody comes up with that is beyond me, and how you can be so sure of that is also beyond me. I always like to go back to Snoopy's ...
I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He give...
Her lips curved up then, as if she liked his answer. “Are you working tomorrow?” Dax nodded. “Yeah. Training stuff.” He was running weapons-training exercises with three of his guys and a small team of DEA agents. They liked to do joint opera...
Instant Reading. A certain famous Fakir was claiming in the village that he could teach an illiterate person to read by a lightning technique. Nasrudin stepped out of the crowd: 'Very well, teach me – now.' The Fakir touched the Mulla's forehead, a...
Be a good person, do good things, learn, and love other people, but do these things because you love yourself, God, life and people, not because you fear going to hell if you don’t. Keep the commandments (or whatever tenets you believe) because you...
Actually," Clary said, "I think he stayed because of me." Jace's glaze flicked up to hers with a flash of gold. "Because of you? Hoping for another hot date, was he?" Clary felt herself flush. "No. And our date wasn't hot. In fact, it wasn't even a d...
I'm seven hundred years old, Alexander. I know when something isn't going to work. You won't even admit I exist to your parents." Alec stared at him. "I thought you were three hundred! You're seven huundred years old?" "Well," Magnus amended, "eight ...
Love releases us into the realm of divine imagination, where the soul is expanded and reminded of its unearthly cravings and needs. We think that when a lover inflates his loved one he is failing to acknowledge her flaws - "Love is blind." But it may...
When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the id...
Despite the sale of millions of copies of "How to.." books and programmes each year, very few people take actions and put what they learn into practice. Here´s why. The "how to..." book has usually been written by someone who accomplished something ...
Gabe watched, holding his breath as the figure slowly turned. The body moved in an almost unnatural way as it shifted and crawled slowly on all fours across the floor. When the candlelight at last fell on the figure, Gabe could make out the auburn ha...
I had lied to myself from the very beginning, deceived myself into believing that I was being fanciful and overly imaginative. Surely such monstrosities only existed in nightmares? Yet I had lived through a nightmare these past months, and that was n...
My pet-sitting day ends around sunset, and it's very satisfying to know that I've made several living beings happy that day. That I left their food bowls sparkling clean and fresh water in their water bowls. That I brushed them so their coats shined,...
In effect, terrorists now have the power to ignite war. They almost have their finger on the nuclear button. They almost have the status of heads of state. And that has enhanced the effectiveness and romance of terrorism. The US government's response...
But there was a discipline, it was just that we didn't understand. We thought he was formless, but I think now he was tormented by order, what was outside it. He tore apart the plot - see his music was immediately on top of his own life. Echoing. As ...
A person with less knowledge and more self-confidence (which is primarily a way of thinking and acting) will often run circles around a person with more knowledge and less self-confidence; which means that self-confidence has the upper hand to knowle...
I woke up this morning with the words clomping around in my head: 'Truth does not become wisdom until the exact moment you're ready for it. No one can force it on you, even though everyone thinks they have a right to try. So the rest of us should jus...
Another way to describe the dilemma for religious faith is that pluralism creates social conditions in which God is no longer an inevitability. While it is possible to believe in God, one has to work much harder at it because the framework of belief ...
She was not suicidal; that is what people never managed to grasp. Cutting relieved the pressure and stood as some enduring demonstration of her emotion, some way to be in control of a body that could toss her about with seizures. It was borderline ar...
He loved books like that, and telly, and films. He loved stuff where there was a Chosen One, a special person, a hero, and he loved to imagine that one day things like that would happen to him. But there was one thing he'd noticed, and that was that ...
You don't have to lie to me to be nice, Jake. You can just say, 'Wow, your nails look crappy.'" I did my best boy voice. "Well, I will tell you that's a crappy imitation of my voice." He smiled so wide I could see his eyetooth from across the table. ...
