Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It *is*...
There are extremes within any population, but on average, at least among young adults, those who feel lonely actually spend no more time alone than do those who feel more connected. They are no more or less physically attractive than average, and the...
Writing … is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the w...
It may be easier to believe that we remain lean because we're virtuous and we get fat because we're not, but the evidence simply says otherwise. Virtue has little more to with our weight than our height. When we grow taller, it's hormones and enzymes...
...research tells us that we judge people in areas where we're vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we're doing. If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people's choices. If I feel good...
That thing you’re afraid of? That label you shy away from? That word that seems too bold? That audacious goal? The life you think you don’t deserve? Aren’t talented enough to have? Aren’t brave enough to claim? Fuck. That. Shit. None of that ...
Our work is not to change what you do, but to witness what you do with enough awareness, enough curiosity, enough tenderness that the lies and old decisions upon which the compulsion is based become apparent and fall away. When you no longer believe ...
The idea in our culture of body solely as sculpture is wrong. Body is not marble. That is not its purpose. Its purpose is to protect, contain, support and fire the spirit and soul within it, to be a repository for memory, to fill us with feeling - th...
Wait for me.” If his voice was just a bit hoarse, she didn’t seem to take note of it. She looked at him as though he had reached over and slapped her. “You don’t trust me? After all that talk of taking me for my word—” “This isn’t abo...
1 Cor 3:15a If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire. Number Five is one many deem unimportant, but the apostles and I do not. I tell you now the results of that day will last for all...
Sykes: Say, back there in Starbuck. How'd my boy do? Pike Bishop: Your boy? Crazy Lee? Sykes: Yeah, C.L., Clarence Lee, my daughter's boy. Not too bright, but a good boy. Pike Bishop: [thinks back on Crazy Lee agreeing to remain behind while the rest...
I would like to see you come undone. When you're laughing so hard that your eyes crinkle at the corners and your hand comes up to cover your mouth, like you're trying to conceal a secret. When you are overcome with a sadness so deep that your shoulde...
Having experimented in both poetry and prose, I can say that the two are such loaded words. But neither are quite as weighted as the word “poet”. I think some people can write poetry their whole lives, and never truly BE a “poet”. Whereas I s...
How to get the best of it all? One must conquer, achieve, get to the top; one must know the end to be convinced that one can win the end - to know there's no dream that mustn't be dared. . . Is this the summit, crowning the day? How cool and quiet! W...
Ruby said there were many songs that you could not say anybody in particular had made by himself. A song went around from fiddler to fiddler and each one added something and took something away so that in time the song became a different thing from w...
It is no coincidence that precisely when things started going downhill with the gods, politics gained its bliss-making character. There would be no reason for objecting to this, since the gods, too were not exactly fair. But at least people saw templ...
I remembered those frantic seconds when I’d thought all I loved and knew, all that was Sydney Sage, would be lost from this world. My battered friends and I had just had a brush with death, dancing with this evil. We’d destroyed it, but it was te...
After 1656 the Dutch, who had gained control over the Moluccas, chose the islands that could be most easily defended. They then burned all the nutmeg trees on the other islands to make sure no one else could profit from the trees. Anyone caught tryin...
Sometimes I still feel that there are two of me: one clean, flawless picture, the other imperfect and cracked; one boy, one girl; one voice that speaks aloud and one that whispers in my ear; one publicly known to have been troubled but be on the mend...
Without love even the most radical devotion to God is of no value to Him. Let me make sure that sinks in… You can gain all the spiritual gifts in the world. You can take the most radical steps of obedience. You can share every meal with the homeles...
Living in a constant chase after gain compels people to expend their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretense and overreaching and anticipating other. Virtue has come to consist of doing something in less time that someone else. Hours ...
