Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we're afraid to do it. Taking a chance and stepping beyond the safety of the world we've always known is the only way to grow, though and without risk there is no reward.
Here in Bosnia I had already seen several cases of rheumatic fever and a case we thought was miliary tuberculosis, diseases now rare in America. It was sobering to think that the mundane process of vaccinating these children might ultimately save mor...
With the compelling convincingness of dreams, which are vague yet exact, the ghost voice draws us (to ourselves and all of our component selves), lifts them casually out of the well of the past--the well wherein nothing is lost, the deep well of forg...
That afternoon She listened to the grievances of the dead from two warring nations. Both sides had suffered, both sides had legitimate grievances, both pled their cases earnestly. She covered Her ears and moaned in misery. She knew Her humans were mu...
When you arrive in the afterlife, you find that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley sits on a throne. She is cared for and protected by a covey of angels. After some questioning, you find out that God's favorite book is Shelley's Frankenstein. He sits up at ...
Over the souls of men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart and soul and body of Man. Yet it may be in some far day the shadows shall fade and the Prince of Darkness be chained forever in his h...
Past and future are the same, and we cannot change either, only know them more fully. My journey to the past had changed nothing, but what I had learned had changed everything, and I understood that it could not have been otherwise. If our lives are ...
I remember asking my friend. . .for tips and her best one was: When watching football with your man, just look up once in awhile and ask, Now who did he used to play for?' He'll talk for at least fifteen minutes, you'll seem like you care, and then y...
Upon learning that her cancer had spread to her spine, Paula prepared her thirteen year-old son for her death by writing him a letter of farewell that moved me to years. In her final paragraph she reminded him that the lungs in the human fetus do not...
There's magic in that. It's in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, bec...
Last, I would like to thank the dogs, not just the Vick pack, but all of them, simply for being dogs, which is to say, tolerant and perseverant; willing to connect with a world that does not always return their affection; and for proving, time and ag...
Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The brain nee...
One spirit remained unaware of his presence, staring at Miss Parker with such longing that he reluctantly decided to let it stay. The spirit, a hollow-eyed girl with ringlets and clothing from long past, reached toward Percy, wishing to touch her. Al...
As she stared at the restless pixels on the screen, her impatience grew. This agitation was familiar, a paradoxical feeling that built up inside her when she was spending too much time online, as though some force was at once goading her and holding ...
Somewhere Dōgen wrote about the number of moments in the snap of a finger. I don’t remember the exact figure, only that it was large and seemed quite arbitrary and absurd, but I imagine that when I am in the cockpit of my plane, aiming the nose at...
It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everybody out there in cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit. And when I multiplied that sad feeling by all the millions of people in their lonely little rooms, furi...
Before I go," he said, and paused -- "I may kiss her?" It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren...
That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they could never tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they could never endure the notion of their children laying their heads on their pillows; ...
In WASP families, if you don't get along with someone, you have as little to do with them as possible. In Jewish families, you move next door, to make them as miserable as possible.
This tree, though, had not been fed on, so it was apparent that the culprit was a bull (elephant) who was filled with testosterone but no outlet for it, so he pushed over trees. It's a great release for a bull and a way of showing his strength after ...
Bound souls. He had always thought the stories of men and women bound throughout all eternity by the strength of passion, either love or hate, were but pleasant tales for long winter’s nights. Bound souls, two sides of the same counter, together th...
