She was crouched in the corner of the room, eating something off the floor. It was the old woman dressed in endless black. When she looked up this time there was no question she was there for me. She had the face of my mother but much older, her anci...
Museum architectural search committees have invariably included the Kimbell in their international scouting tours of exemplary art galleries (a practice pioneered by Velma Kimbell, the founder’s widow, in 1964). Those groups no doubt respond to the...
Verse 12 [of Ex. 12) tells us that the judgment of Yahweh is not only on the Egyptians but also on their deities. This is probably an allusion to the fact that Egyptians would often pray for the safety of their firstborn, particularly firstborn sons,...
They did not use the sonic stunners but the foray gun, the ancient weapon that fires a set of metal fragments in a burst. They shot to kill him. He was dying when I got to him, sprawled and twisted away from his skis that stuck up out of the snow, hi...
I was sitting at the bar of the Hegira that night when Ginny came in. The barkeep, an ancient sad-eyed patriarch named Jose, had just poured me another drink, and I was having one of those rare moments any serious drunk can tell you about. A piece of...
Men and women are needed whose prayers will give to the world the utmost power of God; who will make His promises to blossom with rich and full results. God is waiting to hear us and challenges us to bring Him to do this thing by our praying. He is a...
In the spring of 1990 I flew to Aspen, Colorado, to cover a summit meeting between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President George Herbert Walker Bush. This fairly routine political event took on sudden significance when, on the evening before ...
THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness the unbelievable: for there before him stood the legendary creature, startling white, that had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eye...
The Truth Is That I Was Recognized For Stubbornness And Not Goodness. Even, Though I Was Very Intelligent And Sent To School By A Little Few Supports From Sponsors And My Mother. My Brain Was Never Ever Cool. Due To All The Mistakes I Saw From A Very...
Ricky Roma: How are you? George Aaronow: Fine. You mean the board? You mean, you mean on the board? Ricky Roma: Yes, okay. The board. George Aaronow: I'm fucked on the board. I can't... I can't... I can't... my mind must be in other places cause I ca...
Why didn't Jacob simply refuse to go along with this bold, obvious swindle? Again, Robert Alter's insights are invaluable. When Jacob asks, 'Why have you DECEIVED me?' the Hebrew word is the same one used in chapter 27 to describe what Jacob did to I...
At this point we can finally see what's really at stake in our peculiar habit of defining ourselves simultaneously as master and slave, reduplicating the most brutal aspects of the ancient household in our very concept of ourselves, as masters of our...
I told her about the best and the worst. The slow and sleepy places where weekdays rolled past like weekends and Mondays didn’t matter. Battered shacks perched on cliffs overlooking the endless, rumpled sea. Afternoons spent waiting on the docks, s...
We have heard talk enough. We have listened to all the drowsy, idealess, vapid sermons that we wish to hear. We have read your Bible and the works of your best minds. We have heard your prayers, your solemn groans and your reverential amens. All thes...
Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies are of course not human--they are animals, and have a very ancien...
The greatest hunger in life is not for food, money, success, status, security, sex, or even love from the opposite sex. Time and again people have achieved all these things and wound up still feeling dissatisfied- indeed, often more dissatisfied than...
Shaykha Sultana al-Zubaydiyya Shaykha Sultana al-Zubaydiyya, famous scholar and saint, was the dauther of 'Ali al-Zubaydi, a man belonging to the martial Zubaydi clan of the tribe of Bani Haritha, itself an offshoot of the major tribe of Kinda, one o...
Aiden smirked. "Wonder what this one is called?" The hellhound's ears twitched as the massive body lowered preparing for attack. I slid my hand to the middle of the blade, feeling my heart pound and the adrenaline kick my system into overdrive. In th...
Often I felt that these men were play-acting: the unreality of their role was their security, even their own destinies were to them saga and folk-tale rather than a private matter; these were men under a spell, men who had been turned into birds or e...
I had always heard rumors of her, Nanook thought, she who can control the wind, the water, the earth, and fire ... she who can talk to time. But those were old myths of a woman who lived many thousands of years ago, the first daughter of the Earth. T...
This is a wonderful day,” Anthony was muttering to himself. “A wonderful day.” He looked up sharply at Gareth. “You don’t have sisters, do you?” “None,” Gareth confirmed. “I am in possession of four,” Anthony said, tossing back at...