What we do when defeat stares us in the face is the real touchstone of character. But the very fact that success has time and again proved the means of awakening people to the knowledge of greater ability than they ever before dreamed they possessed,...
Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fa...
Life is a big ball of chances, experiences, happiness, excitement, highs and lows that take us around and around until we stop. What we can do is make the chances greater, the experiences like none other, happier than happy at all times, excited abou...
We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and kno...
The only difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama is killing more people. He’s about double the numbers now. Can you imagine if McCain had won and did precisely what Obama has done, with every speech and every political maneuver overseas? Th...
The fatal flaw of human wisdom is that it promises that you can change your relationships without needing to change yourself. Every painful thing we experience in relationships is meant to remind us of our need for God. And every good thing we experi...
One of the many burdens of the person professing Christianity has always been the odium likely to be heaped upon him by fellow Christians quick to smell out, denounce and punish fraud, hypocrisy and general unworthiness among those who assert the fai...
Cyber Leader: Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Cybermen. Dalek Sec: This is not war - this is pest control! Cyber Leader: We have five million Cybermen. How many are you? Dalek Sec: Four. Cyber Leader: You would destroy the Cybermen ...
A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action which places us in a position to receive from God the power to do what we cannot accomplish on our own.... The deep waters of God's life are already flowing. We simply learn the strokes that ...
The experience of death is going to get more and more painful, contrary to what many people believe. The forthcoming euthanasia will make it more rather than less painful because it will put the emphasis on personal decision in a way which was blissf...
The sun shines every day without being told that it is brilliant. The mountains stand tall and majestic though no one informs them of their grandeur. The winds twirl and dance with clouds, lacking cheers or compliments to inspire their moves. Flowers...
A first impression works like a magic mirror; it reflects what intrigues us rather than echoing a truthful picture. A first impression is the creating of an imagined character, born from personal desires, perceptions, and biases. Though sparked by an...
You are all seen by a God who is proud of those day to day things you do. Ministry doesn't always mean speaking at a pulpit often it comes dressed as everyday work. Don't ever doubt that what you do matters, don't believe that a inspirational speaker...
Hope is something that is demanded of us; it is not, then, a mere reasoned calculation of our chances. Nor is it merely the bubbling up of a sanguine temperament; if it is demanded of us, it lies not in the temperament but in the will... Hoping for w...
Deep in the recesses of our mind is a trophy shelf on which sits many bottles. Each bottle contains the pain of a hurt that we have overcome and for which we have a scar - our badge of courage. Occasionally, a memory will knock the bottle off the she...
History gives us the facts, sort of, but from literary works we can learn what the past smelled like, sounded like, and felt like, the forgotten gritty details of a lost era. Literature brings us as close as we can come to reinhabiting the past. By r...
Anything which begins new and fresh will finally become old and silly. The educational institution is certainly no exception to this, although training the young is by implication an art for old people exclusively, and novelty in education is allied ...
Losing myself interests me. The fertile topsoil interests me, sprawling beneath a light dusting of snow, and the snow that crams the trunks and branches of the pines and elms and redwoods, having frozen up their roots, subdues me to consider life and...
Fiction may be about lying – on the surface, anyway – but fiction is about hiding the truth behind those lies. It's about using those lies to say something true and real. It's about showing the reader something. It's about making them feel. And h...
Appeasers will always try to get the least dangerous person to bend to the most dangerous person. This is one of the main problems in dysfunctional relationships. The more mature and rational you are the more you are victimized because, they are awar...
You are constantly being trained to be heroic only in the service of your masters - only in slaughter and sacrifice and subjugation. But there is no heroism in serving your masters. Real heroism is questioning why you have masters at all. All these s...
