When it's summer, people sit a lot. Or lie. Lie in the sense of recumbency. A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic. Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to ...
Rising to her feet, she shot the Bird Man a furious glare, and then stormed off toward Savidlin's house. She was glad to be away from Richard, to be away from watching those girls pawing him. Her fingernails dug into her palms, but she didn't notice ...
There is nothing passive about mindfulness. One might even say that it expresses a specific kind of passion—a passion for discerning what is subjectively real in every moment. It is a mode of cognition that is, above all, undistracted, accepting, a...
Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their...
All Religions have this in common, that they are an outrage to common sense for they are pieced together out of a variety of elements, some of which seem so unworthy, sordid and at odds with man’s reason, that any strong and vigorous intelligence l...
Mrs. Almond lived much farther up town, in an embryonic street with a high number—a region where the extension of the city began to assume a theoretic air, where poplars grew beside the pavement (when there was one), and mingled their shade with th...
Of course, we in the West like to pat ourselves on the back and say we're more tolerant, and we are--but tolerance is not the same thing as acceptance. It just means, "We think you're crazy and going to hell, but we won't kill you for it--we'll you. ...
She was enfolded in the great wings of Mrs. Whatsit and she felt comfort and strength pouring through her. Mrs. Whatsit was not speaking aloud, and yet through the wings Meg understood words. "My child, do not despair. Do you think we would have brou...
Isn't it time we asked ourselves, are we willing to accept any behavior codified within religious or cultural practice? Is there no line to be drawn? If honor killings are okay, then why not virgin sacrifices or cannibalism or sex with children outsi...
[F]reedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that "Oh, I don't get involved in politics," as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder ti...
There's some ill planet reigns: I must be patient till the heavens look With an aspect more favourable. Good my lords, I am not prone to weeping, as our sex Commonly are; the want of which vain dew Perchance shall dry your pities: but I have That hon...
Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within... underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions, and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point ...
Red Rover, Red Rover, send Ardor right over," Eliza said. They laughed. The asteroid was a little bigger now, brighter, and still they went on laughing. Laughing in the face of what they couldn't predict or change or control. Would it be fire and bri...
Stupid women were lured into it and assured they would become young and beautiful if they let themselves be pummeled and pounded and smeared with sticky creams, and have their faces lifted and their stomachs flattened. They paid a lot of money to Mad...
Mr. Crossley suddenly wondered why he was why he was worrying about the note. It was only a joke, after all. He cleared his throat. Everyone looked up hopefully. 'Somebody,' said Mr. Crossley, 'seems to have sent me a Halloween message.' And he read ...
The real thing about evil," said the Witch at the doorway, "isn't any of what you said. You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell...
But behind each player sttod a line of ghosts unable to win. Eve. Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe. Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair. Bessie Smith unloved and down and out. Bluebeard's wives, Henry VIII's, Snow White cursing the day she left the seven d...
Now, we shall be able to judge the extent of the spiritual undernourishment if we look at all these movements from another angle: not as errors but rather as attempts to find healing. I use this comparison: For a long time medical men combated fever ...
Once I had an opportunity to talk with Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, about the fact that I was not able to do my practice properly. I had just started the vajrayana practices and I was supposed to be visualizing. I couldn't visualize anything. I tried a...
I force my eyes upward and look at Mia for the first time. She's still beautiful. Not in an obvious Vanessa LeGrande or Bryn Shraeder kind of way. In a quiet way that's always been devastating to me. Her hair, long and dark, is down now, swimming dam...
He lingered at the door, and said, 'The Lion wants courage, the Tin Man a heart, and the Scarecrow brains. Dorothy wants to go home. What do you want?'... She couldn't say not to Liir. She started to say 'a soldier,' to make fun of his mooning affect...