...in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power-almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to lear...
When her grandchildren would whine with words resembling 'I'm hungry', my Oma would tenderly correct us with 'No, you feel like eating' which to me seemed be the same thing. Oma had survived Amsterdam during WW1 and truly knew what hunger was. It is ...
Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness ...
Ghosts Take shape under moonlight, materialize in dreams. Shadows. Silhouettes of what is no more. But ghosts don't bother me. The day brings bigger things to worry about than flimsy remains of yesterday. No, spooks don't scare me. Gauzy apparitions ...
Why should anything exist at all, you might ask? Existence didn't just spring out of nothing whatsoever. Even if there was a time of No-Thingness, then there must have been an inherent or precursory realm of possibility; a possibility that something ...
Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire -- meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathizing, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were thi...
Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapel...
What I Found in My Desk A ripe peach with an ugly bruise, a pair of stinky tennis shoes, a day-old ham-and-cheese on rye, a swimsuit that I left to dry, a pencil that glows in the dark, some bubble gum found in the park, a paper bag with cookie crumb...
Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shape...
The hope that we have in Christ is so gloriously wonderful, why would we ever keep it to ourselves? When we refuse to communicate the Gospel there is nothing more cruel or selfish in all of humanity. Because we do believe that it is the only way-Chri...
Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the ...
Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live ...
I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the soc...
We teach girls shame. Close your legs; cover yourself. We make them feel as though being born female, they're already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they tru...
Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept us safe among them... The animals had rights - the right of man's protection, the right ...
Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suici...
This Obamacare thing really scares me. The United States government / politicians are trying to turn the American people into a brand X “One size fits all” country. The past ten years has been very grim for Americans. Our current state is very gr...
Galvanized people can do careless things. It is in the extreme and emotion-laden moments that distance and coolness are most required. I am tempted to howl in rage. It is not my place to do so. My job is to try to dissect the event, place it in conte...
I used to think that kid might become a preacher. Now I don't see how he's going to stay out of prison. Nobody in this family ever went to prison for sex crimes. He'd be the first." Yes," says Jesus, "you never know about these things." He and Grandp...
Let things take their natural course, they will generate their own momentum, that if you try to interfere with will only result in a crash. Physics knows what it is doing, it applies to everyday life, emotion, feeling, desire, and every thought in ou...
Music, this complex and mysterious act, precise as algebra and vague as a dream, this art made out of mathematics and air, is simply the result of the strange properties of a little membrane. If that membrane did not exist, sound would not exist eith...
