No matter how bad you feel, God never sees you as a reckless person. He may see you as a sinner who needs to be re-washed to get back to his old vision for His purpose, but He will never see you as a hopeless being who was created for nothing. Now if...
According to Benedict's scheme, the community reads through... the entire book of Psalms every week. The monks are therefore exposed... to all the despairing, doubtful, bitter, vindictive, jingoistic, nationalistic, and seemingly racist passages in t...
What are you doing?” he gasped. He looked slightly ridiculous. It was not as if he was a defenseless damsel in distress. He could have stopped me, if he wanted to. But he didn’t want to. Besides, I’ve always considered this to be the most idiot...
How sad it was, Carmen thought, that you acted awful when you were desperately sad and hurt and wanted to be loved. How tragic then, the way everyone avoided you and tiptoed around you when you really needed them. Carmen knew this vicious predicament...
This maybe the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anyb...
For there are two kinds of forgiveness in the world: the one you practice because everything really is all right, and what went before is mended. The other kind of forgiveness you practice because someone needs desperately to be forgiven, or because ...
Technology isn’t what makes us “post-human” or “transhuman,” as some writers and scholars have recently suggested. It’s what makes us human. Technology is in our nature. Through our tools we give our dreams form. We bring them into the wo...
If you took the world away and just left the elctricity, it would look like the most exquisite filigree ever made - a ball of twinkling silver lines with the occasional coruscating spike of a satellite beam. Even the dark areas would glow with radar ...
Gonzo's father told his son to grieve without reservation or embarrassment until he could grieve solemnly and inwardly, and then finally to hang up his tears and wear them only occasionally, as befits the true men of the heart. Grief is not a thing t...
Too often when we say we feel joyful, we’re really feeling manic. There is a frenetic nature to our joy, a whiff of panic; we’re afraid the moment might end abruptly. But then there are other moments when our joy is more solidly grounded. I am no...
I hover over the expensive Scotch and then the Armagnac, but finally settle on a glass of rich red claret. I put it near my nose and nearly pass out. It smells of old houses and aged wood and dark secrets, but also of hard, hot sunshine through ancie...
Work is not your enemy but your friend. How you work, not what you do, determines the course of your life. You may work grudgingly or you may work gratefully; you may work as a human or you may work as a robot. There is no work so rude that you may n...
When I strip away my dreams, what I imagine to be my potential, all the things I haven't said, what I imagine I feel for other people in the absence of my expressing it, all the rules I've made for myself that I don't follow--I see that I've done as ...
When you have a personal relationship with God, it’s like being close friends with the most powerful and influential people in the world who have keys to open every door for you. And best of all, knowing the One helps us to know ourselves and make ...
The author called us to re-examine assumptions bequeathed to us from Greece and Rome. Just as a bridge built by the Roman Empire might have held up tolerably for centuries under foot traffic but crumble under the weight of a modern truck, the author ...
I ignored him, concentrating on Lilith. "According to the stories, after you were expelled from Eden you went down into Hell, where you coupled with demons and gave birth to all the monsters that have plagued the world." "I was young," said Lilith. "...
The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or...
You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies -which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world -what I w...
Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish...
When children are very young, they have natural curiosities about the world and explore them, trying diligently to figure out what is real. As they become "producers " they fall away from exploration and start fishing for the right answers with littl...
I haven't been around here for long. Well... actually, I haven't been around anywhere for long. I don't know who I am, or what I'm here for. I know that Lord Umber's important, though. I've seen all the good things he's done. I know for sure the worl...
