OMG. He's a gift shop, a lamb kebab with mint,/a solar panel poetry machine with biceps. He's the path/through the dark woods, the light on the page, a postcard/from the castle and a one-way ticket there. He's the most/astounding arrangement of molec...
Since ancient times, sacred texts from around the world foretold about a time period in human history when a mighty demi-god would appear on earth. Whether we call this figure Perseus, Krishna, or Messiah, he is epitomized in the figure of Jesus Chri...
He looked at me. His firm, broad face showed weight-loss in deep shadows under the cheekbones, his eyes were sunken and his mouth sorely chapped and cracked. God knows what I looked like, when he looked like that. He smiled. 'With luck we shall make ...
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain't no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction — you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of ...
When you're young, you always feel that life hasn't yet begun—that "life" is always scheduled to begin next week, next month, next year, after the holidays—whenever. But then suddenly you're old and the scheduled life didn't arrive. You find your...
Until two days ago what had driven him was the will to survive: deep, animal, full of rage—but always part of him had not cared at all whether he lived or died. Now he did care, and very deeply, and so for the first time in a long time he was afrai...
And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in...
Moral beauty existed as clearly as any other form of beauty and perhaps that was where we could find the God who was so vividly, and sometimes bizarrely, described in our noisy religious explanations. It was an intriguing thought, as it meant that a ...
Let no-one define how you see yourself...save God alone. See yourself through His eyes and His strength, and you'll see who you can be despite being who you are. But see yourself through your own eyes, and you'll be left to question, and to doubt, su...
I long for scenes where man hath never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
In serving others, the church will save itself from becoming nothing more than a spiritualized 501c3 not-for-profit, self-centered corporation, organized for the benefit of donor tax exemption. Serving others will remind us of our identity and call u...
I have learned that there's no way to open yourself to the experience of God while retaining your cool, your sense of ironic detachment.
By telling stories, Jesus isn’t somehow putting sugar in a spoon to make the medicine go down a bit easier. These stories are the medicine. These stories are an extension and explanation of Jesus’ revolutionary ministry. These stories show us tha...
Someday, Locke Lamora,” he said, “someday, you’re going to fuck up so magnificently, so ambitiously, so that the sky will light up and the moons will spin and the gods themselves will shit comets with glee. And I just hope I’m still around to...
Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.
The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of ...
The Official was bending over his desk, staring at the sergeant. "May I ask you a question?" "Yes." "Have you ever thought you were Christ?" "I can't say that I have. But I have considered that God was good to me to let me find what I was looking for...
I have this idea stuck in my head that you have to be born beautiful in order to dream beautiful things. God didn't write beautiful on my heart. I'm stuck with all my bad dreams. Bad dreams for bad boys. I guess that's the way it is for me. Look, the...
See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ... is the one fundamental treason which the scholar's mind must not allow is the bond uniting all the Oxford people in the last r...
There has been a rediscovery of the meaning of baptism as entrance and integration into the Church, of "ecclesiological" significance. But ecclesiology, unless it is given its true cosmic perspective ("for the life of the world"), unless it is unders...
Whether we "spiritualize" our life or "secularize" our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them at the secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave his only begotten Son, remains hopelessly...