Many people think that being Christian makes you sort of subhuman or, at least, less than fully human. Guys out there on the street (people think) are having a wonderful time enjoying human life to the fullest, and we in the church are sort of crampe...
The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target--you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is t...
Remember laughing? Laughter enhances the blood flow to the body’s extremities and improves cardiovascular function. Laughter releases endorphins and other natural mood elevating and pain-killing chemicals, improves the transfer of oxygen and nutrie...
Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But o...
I had never been interested in boys and had no notion that I ever would, seeing being in love and loving as a great tangle in which you could lose your head as well as your heart. Yet standing there that afternoon looking at the young man. I could we...
I know I have a reputation that is not so flattering, but I guess I owe it to just being a private person. I don't mean anyone harm, and I'm not being mean. I just don't socialise much; I don't party too much. I don't know what to say to the media if...
Madge: I don't know why I keep shouting at them. The Doctor: Because every time you see them happy you remember how sad they're going to be. And it breaks your heart. Because what's the point in them being happy now if they're going to be sad later. ...
She bent and placed a single daisy upon the grave. A simple white daisy. The plainest of flowers, perhaps the purest, Elspeth thought. It had cost next to nothing at all, and perhaps that was the point. She wasn’t being cheap. She was being symboli...
What I love about being queer is... Everything. I like that it makes me different, and I like that it makes people uncomfortable sometimes. I like that it makes people ask me lots of questions about things they probably would not normally ask people ...
I don't mind being pale. In high school, it seemed like everybody cared about being tan all year round, but I haven't really thought about it since then. I don't go to a tanning bed, and I get bored when I lay out. I put sunscreen on when I'm in the ...
What worries me is that a load of shite has been talked about digitisation as being the new Gutenberg, but the fact is that Gutenberg led to books being put in shelves, and digitisation is taking books off shelves. If you start taking books off shelv...
I think the church is often a culprit in the busyness, especially in the evangelical church. Again, it's part of being Americans. Part of being evangelicals too is that we're highly activist. We are always diving in, willing to solve problems, and ag...
I feel like there are fifty ways it's my fault. I fantasized. I took the big pill and the small pill, stuffed myself with substances to make being out in the world with people my own age a little easier. To lessen the space between me and everyone el...
As someone who sends texts messages more or less non-stop, I enjoy one particular aspect of texting more than anything else: that it is possible to sit in a crowded railway carriage laboriously spelling out quite long words in full, and using an enor...
People often ask me how I feel about my invention being used to kill people every day and the AK being a common weapon of ethnic conflicts. I want to make it clear that I created my assault rifle to protect my country. You can blame politicians for i...
What is success? What does it mean that someone is successful? Success can be different things to different people. For us being successful is a conscious choice to be oneself. Success does not have to be dependent on any external circumstances and r...
God never uses one approach to the get his job done in the world. Each soul has its own way of being reached. He has put inside of each of us an unique song, that only another heart can hear clearly. To wish you were someone else robs another human b...
In my 30s, I wrote in the back house of a ramshackle Spanish Revival we rented across from the ocean in the Santa Monica Canyon. I wrote thousands of pages there, but in order to see another adult human being, I had to steal out through the brambly s...
Anger is an essential part of being human. People are taught to deny themselves anger, and in this, they are actually opening themselves up to hate. The more you deny yourself the freedom to be angry, the more you will hate. Let yourself be angry, an...
Bach's music confront the player and the audience in a very alone way, and I try at that moment to put away pretensions-in levels of violin playing, pretensions of being a strong man, of being invulnerable- and instead say, 'this is where all of us u...
Being reveals itself in all its beauty, splendor, and mystery “to him who contemplates it reverently.” ... What's the most beautiful part of the world, the part that has the greatest dignity? It’s not really a part but a person – it’s every...
