If so, then it was also here where I came to know I can survive what hurts. I believed in my capacity to stand back up and run into the waves again and again, no matter the risk.
I was wrong, Gabby, and I'll apologize for it forever if you want me to. But the truth is I couldn't face you. If I came to you and you sent me away, if I knew for certain that you didn't want me anymore...God in heaven, Gabriella Waverly, I've never...
This is important to writing. . . that is, it is important to my own writing. This. . . is landscape! Mine. This dirt came from the prairie where I was a child. I played in it, dug in it, planted in it, and walked over it. It is where I began. And al...
I once won a second prize in a history concert. My parents came to the ceremony. Somebody else had won the prize for best all-around student. Afterwards my father said to me, 'Never, ever disgrace me like that again.' When I tell my Western friends, ...
Instead of practicing philoxenos, which means loving the stranger, we find many times that the church is xenophobic. We forget that Jesus, whom we claim to follow, was the ultimate lover of otherness in people. Even differences in religion didn't fre...
The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature. If some of our great decorated trees had been grown in a remote forest area with lights that came on every evening as it grew dark, the whole world would come to look at them and marvel at...
The time groaned by as John made a fool of himself. Eventually, he grew numb to the death and sin around him. He even came to enjoy gallivanting cross-country like a true crusader. His name brought tears of joy or pain of anger to those he left in hi...
What are you? The voice came from nowhere. It was in the room. It was outside. It was in Magnus's head. "A warlock," Magnus answered. "And what are you?" We are many. "Please do not say you are a legion. Someone's taken that." Do you make mirth from ...
I came to understand that belief is a preconception about the way reality should be; faith is the willingness to experience reality as it is, including the acceptance of the unknown. An interesting way to understand the difference is to use the words...
I started in the club route. I did the alternative scene later on. When I lived in New York, I did the Luna Lounge and stuff, where Janeane Garofalo and David Cross and all those guys worked out of, but I came from a comedy club background. I'm proud...
I look up at the night sky, and I know that, yes, we are part of this Universe, we are in this Universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up—many people feel smal...
History-note: Wednesday 23 July 2014. A national day of mourning in the majestic land of windmills, wooden shoes and tulips. Today the first 40 bodies came back to us from the holocaustic plane accident that caused 288 innocent victims; the nine guar...
Conviction of sin is one of the rarest things that ever strikes a man. It is the threshold of an understanding of God. Jesus Christ said that when the Holy Spirit came He would convict of sin, and when the Holy Spirit rouses the conscience and brings...
There is a funny story I always tell my students...when I came for the first time to the US. I didn’t speak English (Only Spanish) & I saw on every door the word “exit” which in Spanish means Success = Exito. And then I said :”No wonder Ameri...
I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me, I discovered that He had simply giv...
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glo...
I grew up on the rough side of the tracks. If you looked like you were soft, you would be fodder for the wolves. I came up in my neighbourhood like, 'I'm just gonna be me,' and all the thugs just said, 'It's OK, he's special.' They knew I had the tal...
I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing ...
You know, a few months ago, I made a terrible mistake. I realized something, and instead of crushing the thought the moment it came I... I let it hang on, and now I know it to be true. And I'm afraid it's stuck in my head forever. These are the best ...
If I'm honest, I thought Westlife would keep going for longer than it did - we all did - but it sort of came to a natural end. When we decided we were going to split, I thought, 'If I'm going to sing, I'm going to have to do it solo.' Also, financial...
I’m glad it was Dylan who laughed first. Once he did I felt myself unravel. I giggled and he giggled. We were the experiment. And then there came a time when we weren’t laughing. When we locked eyes and breathed each other’s breath. Ohmystars! ...
