I often find myself grateful for the comfort of strangers; a man who gave up his seat for me on the bus, a woman who helped me out with a heavy shopping bag. Remembering small acts of kindness puts the world in a finer, sweeter order.
Let today be the day you embrace your beautiful spirit and shine light for those living in the dark. Light their path so the road traveled will be seen more clearly. You never know how much a simple act of kindness is appreciated if you never try. Be...
History, in the end, is only another kind of story, and stories are different from the truth. The truth is messy and chaotic and all over the place. Often it just doesn’t make sense. Stories make things make sense, but the way they do that is to le...
Somehow, all the talk about tenure and anthropology had given her visions of a thick-walled, libraried adobe, the kind of place that was covered with kilim rugs and fertility sculptures. The white stucco in front of her looked only slightly more subs...
A garden should make you feel you've entered privileged space -- a place not just set apart but reverberant -- and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something...
I kind of thought actually that Trevor was gone completely mental when he called up here a few weeks ago. Like, why would he not text or email or Facebook? What's with all the reality, I thought. Does he not know he's a million times cooler in virtua...
It's kind of interesting you're driving a car big enough for a wolfhound and a mastiff to get in the back of today," I said. "And a greyhound, a dark brown bear, and a brindle utility vehicle," said Jill. "Greyhounds don't take up much room," I said....
...if anything matters then everything matters. Because you are important, everything you do is important. Every time you forgive, the universe changes; every time you reach out and touch a heart or a life, the world changes; with every kindness and ...
A guy rubbed against me,” I say. “But I think he was just trying to get by. He rubbed me, then said sorry. It was the ‘sorry’ that made me uncomfortable. The rub was kind of interesting, but when he apologized I felt like a creep because I ac...
She wanted to tell him what happened wasn't really his fault, but she knew that wasn't the way this kind of guilt worked. Intellectually, he already knew that. It was his emotions that were tripping him up. The tangle of love and memory and what migh...
It was the simplest of acts, the smallest of gestures, yet no one had taken the time to do something kind for her in a very long time. No one had made her feel special. Unbeknownst to her, a single, unfamiliar tear fell down her cheek as her worn and...
You see, the catch about portrait painting— I've looked into the thing a bit— is that you can't start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first. This makes it kin...
If there is such a thing as a universal--and I wasn't ready to throw all of mine out the window--it's that there is power in a story. And if someone pays you such a kindness as to make up a tale so you'll enjoy a gingersnap, you go along with that st...
For those who are gifted for the soteriological pathway of marriage, it, like every such pathway, naturally offers not only trouble, work, and suffering but the deepest kind of existential satisfaction. Dante did not get to Paradiso without going thr...
Look for the copper tablet-box, Undo its bronze lock, Open the door to its secret, Lift out the lapis lazuli tablet and read it, The story of that man, Gilgamesh, who went through all kinds of sufferings.
The holistic acupuncturist and the sea turtle rescuer may not be able to explain the feeling, 'We are serving the same thing,' but they are. Both are in service to an emerging story of the People that is the defining mythology of a new kind of civili...
Philologists assure us that żulm in Arabic originally meant "to put something out of its proper place," so that all wrong of any kind is injustice, i.e., an injustice against the agent himself) is, therefore, a very common term in the Qur’ān, wit...
I know what the world is like. Nobody does anything unless there's something in it for themselves. But there are some people who do more than they have to for what they get in return, and those people are kind right to the heart.
Jesus never asked me to give to an organization the kind of exclusive devotion he demands from his disciples. Over and over, Jesus calls people to himself - out of the church, the culture, the economy, and the family.
Until then, I would pretend my ankle was made of steel, like some kind of bionic joint, and that I could feel no pain. I was superhuman. I could do anything. But I'd take some Tylenol, just in case. Lots of Tylenol.
God gave man feet for which to walk. And crush grapes. Can I get you a glass of wine? It’s homemade, though it kind of smells funky.
