A lot of things are inherent in life -change, birth, death, aging, illness, accidents, calamities, and losses of all kinds- but these events don't have to be the cause of ongoing suffering. Yes, these events cause grief and sadness, but grief and sad...
The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness ...
At around 6:00 a.m., April 30, 1987, we were awakened by a loud bull horn while inside our rented mobile home at an Ozark, Missouri trailer park. "Glenn Miller, Jack Jackson, Douglas Sheets, Tony Wydra, this is a United States Marshal. You have three...
At the lip of a cliff, I look out over Lake Superior, through the bare branches of birches and the snow-covered branches of aspens and pines. A hard wind blows snow up out of a cavern and over my face. I know this place, I know its seasons - I have h...
I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendshi...
His face set in grim determination, Richard slogged ahead, his fingers reaching up to touch the tooth under his shirt. Loneliness, deeper than he had never known, sagged his shoulders. All his friends were lost to him. He knew now that his life was n...
But Alonso kept smiling that smile and nothing made any sense with that smile looking you in the face. 'Jim, don't tell me that, you know, brother-shit. I have been through it all. Take, you know, advice. There is only one thing and that is the kick,...
For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level....
In The Bloudy Tenent, Williams points out that Constantine "did more to hurt Christ Jesus than the raging fury of the most bloody Neroes." at least under the Christian persecutor Nero, who was rumored to have had the Apostle Paul beheaded and Saint P...
We were breathing sooty air. The soot was composed of incinerated glass and steel but also, we knew, incinerated human flesh. When the local TV news announced that rescue workers sorting through the rubble in search of survivors were in need of tooth...
But about the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude, they know nothing. They don't know what it is to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette. Or to sit in a darkened flat on Halloween night, because you can't bear to ...
You all know and lived the 'secrets' to De La Salle's success-love, brotherhood, sacrifice, discipline, heart, courage, passion, honesty. These are not just 'catch words' we throw around to impress others or justify our existence. We know what these ...
All that guides me is fear, And all that finds me is loss Death defines which paths I cross It is within the shadows that I stumble And I am desperate without a voice Here I am threatened by the resolve that you are my soul But if my lies are the pat...
I know a man who drives 600 yards to work. I know a woman who gets in her car to go a quarter of a mile to a college gymnasium to walk on a treadmill, then complains passionately about the difficulty of finding a parking space. When I asked her once ...
The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished ...
England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards...
Miss Rasputin, what a delight to finally meet you,” said the vamp, speaking with only the faintest hint of an accent. “Let’s hope you still feel that way in a few minutes, Mr. Delacroix.” “Pierre, please. And may I call you Evangaline?” P...
It galls me that seeking out the seedy, the sordid, the sexual, and the deviant is the expected (if not altogether acceptable) behavior of male writers; it would surely benefit me, as a writer, if I had the courage to seek out more of the seedy, the ...
When you weep, Jesus weeps with you. And together you enter into the dance of tears. The dance of tears with Jesus is a precious intimacy He shares only with those who have known deep suffering. In the dance of tears, Jesus shares your pain. He carri...
Take the entire 4.5-billion-year history of the earth and scale it down to a single year, with January 1 being the origin of the earth and midnight on December 31 being the present. Until June, the only organisms were single-celled microbes, such as ...
It is acknowledged that father-daughter incest occurs on a large scale in the United States. Sexual abuse has now been included in child abuse legislation. A conservative estimate is that more than 1 million women have been sexually victimized by the...
