A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself...
Jake's POV: Meanwhile, Ally was here with Marshall Moss, who she was obviously going to hook up with later. They'd barely stopped touching each other all night. Even now, they were out in the middle of the dance floor dancing to some Black Eyed Peas ...
In northwest Alaska, kunlangeta "might be applied to a man who, for example, repeatedly lies and cheats and steals things and does not go hunting, and, when the other men are out of the village, takes sexual advantage of many women." The Inuits tacit...
Or perhaps is is that time doesn't heal wounds at all, perhaps that is the biggest lie of them all, and instead what happens is that each wound penetrates the body deeper and deeper until one day you find that the sheer geography of your bones - the ...
For myself I can say that, having had every good thing that money can buy, an experience like another, I could part without a pang with every possession I have. We live in uncertain times and our all may yet be taken from us. With enough plain food t...
He could see her, but dared not remain for fear of annoying her by seeming to be spying upon the pleasures which she tasted in other company, pleasures which - while he drove home in utter loneliness, and went to bed, as anxiously as I myself was to ...
The only appropriate war rhetoric is more rhetoric that calls our enemies spirits and people with flesh the victims of this war. Satan wants us to fight with one another, and I understand that some evil must be restrained, but our war, the war of the...
Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war.... We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and no...
Perhaps more than never, in a highly globalized world, we must recognize that multiculturalism is not simply understanding ethnic/racial histories or the mere appreciation of cultural “difference,” but accepting that multiculturalism spreads acro...
My Manager forced me to put my beetle in my own ear, a clear waste and an act that gave me nightmares: of a burning city through which giant carnivorous lizards prowled, eating survivors off of balconies. In one particularly vivid moment, I stood on ...
Francie had heard swearing since she had heard words. Obscenity and profanity had no meaning as such among those people. They were emotional expressions of inarticulate people with small vocabularies; they made a kind of dialect. The phrases could me...
With me, it was my liver that was out of order. […] I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general disinclination to work of any kind." What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have bee...
Dear God, you are beautiful. I tried to forget, to pretend I did not need you, but it was no use. You haunt my waking hours and my dreams, and though I know if I stay with you my soul my soul will be lost and my life damned, I cannot stay away, nor c...
You need to be able to find hope in your circumstances. We need it for ourselves and our children. Laurie and I both believe that when we reflect on all that we have and all that we love and all that we are thankful for, we feel that hope and that pe...
She wished she hadn't succumbed to irritation. Because she wanted to know about his inner feelings. She always thought people were like pieces of art glass-- strong enough to handle and use, delicate enough to shatter under a strong blow, and filled ...
Before they are preachers, leaders or church planters, the disciples are to be lovers! This is the test of whether or not they have known Jesus. This remains the case today: this cross-love is the primary, dynamic test of whether or not we have under...
Once again, I was conscious of the paradox of the compound: that here, at the heart of the unfolding events, we could catch no more than a glimpse of them. Fires were burning all over Dili; the smell was in our nostrils from the moment we wok up, and...
Like racism and all forms of prejudice, bigotry against transgendered people is a deadly carcinogen. We are pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each other as allies. Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between people who r...
What have I kept of Rae Evans from the moment when she half stood behind her desk and held out her hand to shake mine? I think it is the impression of white--white face, white shirt between two halves of a power dark suit. Hers were night colors, and...
Often what keeps us stuck and continually doing penance is the very feeling that we must pay for lack of action. We become caught in a circle of blame, condemn ourselves, feel hopeless, and feed the fire—or slow burn—by reciting like a mantra our...
That’s not necessary,” Mr. Bradshaw said, “although you are all perfectly welcome in the guest rooms upstairs, I won’t ask you to lie to your-” “Mr. Bradshaw.” Nathan grinned. “You’ve been asking us to lie to our parents from the mo...