It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a s...
If these laws [in the Bible] belonged to any other ancient culture we would approach them very differently. We need not bother to reject the code of Hammurabi. Presumably it is because Moses is still felt to make some claim on us that this project of...
A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which co...
No one ever said your life would be easy. The nature of being human makes life for all of us a challenge. The most important thing to consider here is this. Your life is only as challenging as you think it is. Think of challenge as a teacher and your...
When men evaluate each other as men, they still look for the same virtues that they’d need to keep the perimeter. Men respond to and admire the qualities that would make men useful and dependable in an emergency. Men have always had a role apart, a...
In a nutshell, the process they [abusers in a ritual abuse group] use on survivors is designed to: break the will and personality of the person until they become as nothing... with no will of their own...no identity...then they... rebuild the person ...
Mr. Brundy," she said with a nod, making the most perfunctory of curtsies to her father's guest. He made no move to take her hand, but merely bowed and responded in kind. "Lady 'elen." "My name is , Mr. Brundy," she said coldly. "Very well- 'elen," s...
Intuition is an essential part of the whole experience of living. Although it will not help predict the future or how people will behave, using intuition as a guide makes life more rewarding. It helps you follow what seems to be the right path, even ...
In a way, losing hope and losing importance are the same thing. It is that youthful vibrance, that eternal longing and believing, that makes youth so important--if you grow old and lose that without finding another way to be important, you will slip ...
Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the grou...
Certainty implies choice. But there is no real choice in our lives. There is order in the chaos and it is not up to us to understand why everything happens the way it that it does. Find a way to be okay with the chaotic order. It can either be a bles...
Humankind, which discovers its capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through its own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of things that are. People think that they can make arbitrary use of...
Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the t...
As a writer, you must truly possess a love for words." "Yes, that's right," I agreed. "I've noticed that some authors favor particular words, making frequent use of them. Do you have a favorite?" I nodded assuredly and shared my answer. "BECAUSE." My...
A library was nothing without its people. You say library and there’s this iconoclastic image of an old-lady librarian telling people to be quiet and not to run. But the thing was, that lady—that iconoclastic lady—was with us when we cleaned. S...
God makes it all come right in the end, that's what Johnnie told Dock Barker just before we parted company. I was raised a Christian-I admit I fell away a bit along my journey-and I believe that: we're stuck with what we have, but that's all right; i...
The world is as it used to be: “All nations striving strong to make Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters They do no more for Christés sake Than you who are helpless in such matters. “That this is not the judgment-hour For some of them’s a blesse...
We're a society of brats, fighting over the same toys. That, for me, is the closest we come to be inherently evil as a people. It leads to selfishness, inflexibility, and impatience -- among so many other traits that are ugly and harmful. We're comba...
I don't ever dream about you and me I don't ever make up stuff about us That would be considered insanity I don't ever drive by your house To see if you're in I don't even have an opinion On that tramp that you are still seeing I don't know your time...
Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue that in prac...
In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion,'" she repeats, making sure of it. If she had paper and pencil, it wouldn't surprise me if she wrote it down. "So what does that really mean? In simple terms." I think it over. It takes me a while to gat...
