When I was a boy, I went to war searching for glory. I didn't find it. I came here, thinking I'd find glory if I built a ranching empire or a thriving town. Instead I discovered that I didn't even know what glory was, not until you smiled at me for t...
Relativism poses as humble by saying: “We are not smart enough to know what the truth is—or if there is any universal truth.” It sounds humble. But look carefully at what is happening. It’s like a servant saying: I am not smart enough to know...
The great gift of a spiritual path is coming to trust that you can find a way to true refuge. You realize that you can start right where you are, in the midst of your life, and find peace in any circumstance. Even at those moments when the ground sha...
Do you like him? Ty asked. "Not that I care." "I do," I said, because it was true. Even though it didn't matter anymore. "Not that I care you don't care. Though you clearly do care, and I don't care about that either." "Well, I don't care that you do...
Vincent knew he was dying. A horrendous fever overwhelmed him with intolerable pain throughout many sleepless hours. It came as a result of a malaria epidemic that erupted in his hometown during early nineteenth century Europe. The disease spread so ...
When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinc...
As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead. The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known; as a strain of gentle music...
Almost everything about Afghanistan was troubling Mullen. As Obama was giving intense focus on the war, Mullen was feeling more personal responsibility. Afghanistan had been marked by 'incredible neglect,' he told some of his officers. 'It's almost l...
In the end, therefore, money will be the one thing people will desire, which is moreover only representative, an abstraction. Nowadays a young man hardly envies anyone his gifts, his art, the love of a beautiful girl, or his fame; he only envies him ...
I know what it is: it's a green mamba snake away up in the tree. You don't have to be afraid of them anymore because you are one. They lie so still on the tree branch; they are the same everything as the tree. You could be right next to one and not e...
How could he convey to someone who'd never even met her the way she always smelled like rain, or how his stomach knotted up every time he saw her shake loose her hair from its braid? How could he describe how it felt when she finished his sentences, ...
…I interviewed ordinary people about prayer. Typically, the results went like this: Is Prayer important to you? Oh, yes. How often to you pray? Every day. Approximately how long? Five minutes – well, maybe seven. Do you sense the presence of God ...
Black seamen - or "Black Jacks" as African sailors were known - enjoyed a refreshing world of liberty and equality. Even if they were generally regulated to jobs such as cooks, servants, and muscians and endured thier fellow seamen's racism, they wer...
See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It ...
And what do you want?” I almost choked. “How could you even ask me that, Henry?” He sighed. “Because I’m thousands of miles away. Because I Skyped into your living room late one night and there’s a dude sitting next to you in the dark. Be...
Tony's concern disintegrated. He could not understand C.J.'s determination to court death on a daily basis. Or maybe he did understand, and this was what caused his frustration. So many found the same solution his brother had. Selling death to their ...
Since words elude me when I need them most, I learned long ago that I cannot count on QUALITY time with God when I want to pray. I need QUANTITY and regularity. Quality is not something I can predict. My husband, Andy, and I might schedule an elabora...
From the managerial perspective, Sir Oliver Humperdink, a heinous sort for most of his career, said the release of pentup emotions might even have been healthy for mind and soul. "As heels, we were able to be as annoying and politically incorrect’ ...
I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. Bu...
Meditation is a mysterious method of self-restoration. It involves “shutting” out the outside world, and by that means sensing the universal “presence” which is, incidentally, absolute perfect peace. It is basically an existential “time-out...
Perhaps I shouldn't call it shit. That's a bit crude. I don't really despise Christianity or even the Roman Church, and certainly not the incontrovertible glory of the Middle Ages. What I do despise is the contemporary inclination to flop to the knee...
