The theology of the cross is not a cerebral thing; it profoundly affects our Christian experience and existence, making demands upon our whole lives and turning theology into something which controls not just our thoughts, but the very way in which w...
The Piper is coming nearer," he said, "he is nearer than he was that evening I saw him before. His long, shadowy cloak is blowing around him. He pipes - he pipes - and we must follow - Jem and Carl and Jerry and I - round and round the world. Listen ...
And you spend your day going around from the house of the washerman to the house of the sweeper, asking about this one's son and that one's nephew, but spending no time with your own family. It is no secret that many people here think that you are a ...
Mandy smiled cheerfully at an overweight kid in a gold sweater and pink skirt who was chasing her little brother around along the boardwalk. When she was that age, on sunny days she’d be out on the boardwalk with Jud and Wendy, buying rainbow sorbe...
At the end of the school day, we walked the long, cold way home feeling happy and hungry. There we found a warm fire, country ham with gravy and hot biscuits, and a mother to hug us! If snow blew under the doors that night, what did it matter? Christ...
With a nod, Thorne started down the street. 'This way.' Five steps later, he paused, pondered, turned around. 'No, no, this way.' 'We're dead.' 'No, I've got it now. It's this way.' 'Don't you have an address?' 'A captain always knows where his ship ...
Glitter and streamers of light swirled around us, and a chorus of tiny voices sang out a single note. I winced, knowing there was only one person who thought a normal entrance, like walking through a door, wasn’t good enough for her; she had to ann...
Eroticism is mystique; that is, the aura of emotion and imagination around sex. It cannot be 'fixed' by codes of social or moral convenience, whether from the political left or right. For nature's fascism is greater than that of any society. There is...
You put on a bishop's robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and genuflect and like that, and try to kiss your ring, if not your ass, and pretty soon you're a bishop. So to speak. What is identity? he asked himself. Wher...
Life is too short to spend your precious time trying to convince a person who wants to live in gloom and doom otherwise. Give lifting that person your best shot, but don't hang around long enough for his/her bad attitude to pull you down. Instead, su...
How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told abo...
It’s a popular fact that 90 percent of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. . . . It is used. One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, to turn the unusual into the usual. Otherwise, human beings, fac...
Semantic search requires three things: Trust, Authority and Reputation. All three revolve around your digital profiles, their activity and the sentiment levels and engagement that each generates. Semantic search also requires differentiation – the ...
Well, we actually never went around. We worked together, struggled through the corporate maze, shared our dreams, and, somewhere along the way, we came closer to each other. At the end, we touched each other’s heart. The impact was profound, much m...
She remembered how it had felt and tasted, that slowly descending depression, like a thick glass jar that closed around you, sucking away the air you needed to breathe, creating a barrier between you and the world. The hell of it was that she'd been ...
A warm feeling fell over the boy. A mix of security and comfort, as if a blanket were wrapping its soft layers around his heart and nuzzling him snuggly. Gavin loved his mother, and he would be forever grateful to his father for protecting her. The w...
Don't hate the bullies. Experience tells me that hating them, or being angry with them, will always make it worse. Instead, put your arm around them. Love them. Tell them that they are valuable. Tell them that you expect great things from them. They ...
I can tell you that the writing of a book, no matter how deeply, profoundly personal-if it is literature, if you have attended to the formidable task of illumination the human heart in conflict with itself-will do the opposite of expose you. It will ...
She looked around for a place to be. A small place. The closet? ... It was both small and bright, and she wanted to be in a very small, very bright place. Small enough to contain her grief.Bright enough to throw into relief the dark things that clutt...
It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit’s joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe ...
Now don't jerk me around. This is the Midlands. There are no vampires here, and dressing up like one doesn't make it so. You can't even tell me how he's got no marks on his neck!" "Oh yes I can. It's the twenty-first century. These days we tend to cl...
