Gjerji raises his hand. In English he says, "I like to tell in the words of a great American philosopher what freedom is." "Say it in your language to your peers," I urge. Gyerji makes his statement. The class grows silent and thoughtful; there is mu...
All stories have a curious and even dangerous power. They are manifestations of truth -- yours and mine. And truth is all at once the most wonderful yet terrifying thing in the world, which makes it nearly impossible to handle. It is such a great res...
The song reminds me of my life lately and the way things that happen devastate you so badly but then turn around and totally surprise you by growing into something unexpected and astounding. Of course, i could be wrong. I mean, who knows what the son...
That small world, like the great one out of doors, had the capacity of easily forgetting its dead; and when the cook had said she was a quiet-tempered lady, and the housekeeper had said it was the common lot, and the butler had said who'd have though...
Strangman shrugged theatrically. "It ," he repeated with great emphasis. "Let's admit that. It makes it more interesting—particularly for Kerans. ' One of the few existential absolutes, far more significant than 'To be or not to be?', which merely ...
Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the d...
Could your god and this infernal be called enemies, then?" "It is more complicated than that. God knew what was going to happen, of course. The divine has a plan for the infernal. Because all is of God and nothing of God can truly be destroyed, the i...
In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tens...
Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his...
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remind us that there is always more of God than we know, always more of God than we can explain, always more of God than we can show. The Trinity says God is not in a box but is bigger, much bigger than we imagine. God is...
Elric knew that everything that existed had its opposite. In danger he might find peace. And yet, of course, in peace there was danger. Being an imperfect creature in an imperfect world he would always know paradox. And that was why in paradox there ...
The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of s...
But Shakespeare never drank coffee. Nor did Julius Caesar, or Socrates. Alexander the Great conquered half the world without even a café latte to perk him up. The pyramids were designed and constructed without a whiff of a sniff of caffeine. Coffee ...
Blindly reaching out for his bottle of Madame Beffy’s Headache Tonic, he knocked over a vase filled with glass marbles. They fell to the floor with a great clatter. As he watched them bouncing and skittering across the floor, he had an unexpected t...
Do you know why Satan is so angry all the time? Because whenever he works a particularly clever bit of mischief God uses it to serve his own Rigteous purposes." "So God uses wicked people as his tools?" "God gives us the freedom to to do great evil, ...
But you will die, Amora.” “I know.” She couldn’t help but smile at his bemusement. “It’s a fact I’ve always known, just like my ancestors before me. Don’t you see? That’s what makes us who we are. That’s what makes life valuable, ...
Work is so foundational to our makeup that it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm. Indeed, the Bible does not say we should work one day and rest six or that work and rest should be balanced evenly but directs us to...
And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves c...
God’s side is determined not by geography, but by those who do His will. If Germans, English, Japanese, and Americans prayed right, they would all be praying for the same intention: Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. And what is that Wil...
This withdrawal of theology from the world of secular affairs is made more complete by the work of biblical scholars whose endlessly fascinating exercises have made it appear to the lay Christian that no one untrained in their methods can really unde...
The Poison Maiden has conceived by him, and is plumb ready to enter the divine category of mother, only one last fiend clubs her to death. The final clinch of male romanticism is that each man kills the thing he loves; whether she be Catharine in A F...
