I put my hand on his arm. "You know, Drew was exaggerating. I'm a nice person. Most of the time." Jake raised an eyebrow, the hint of a smile on his lips. "So, you didn't really slap a guy in the middle of someone's wedding?" I bit my lip. "Technical...
Rage flared up in Tessa and she considered belting Woolsey with the poker whether he came near her or not. He had moved awfully quickly while fighting Will, though, and she didn’t fancy her chances. “You don’t know James Carstairs. Don’t spea...
A red dragonfly hovers above a backwater of the stream, its wings moving so fast that the eye sees not wings in movement but a probability distribution of where the wings might be, like electron orbitals: a quantum-mechanical effect that maybe explai...
These words [of Romans 12:1-2] are overflowingly rich in consolation; for just then when afflictions come over us, we should be of good courage, because that is the good will of God. Therefore we should be greatly pleased when things happen to us whi...
If the Christian church is to move responsibly towards the future, it must restore or renew its ties with its past. Contemporary Catholic and Protestant radicals want to claim that Christianity means whatever "Christian" today happen to believe and p...
...they knew each other as much as they knew themselves, and their intimacy, rather like too many suitcases, was a matter of perpetual concern; together they moved slowly, clumsily, effecting lugubrious compromises, attending to delicate shifts of mo...
Cosmopolitanism promotes a sense of new _we-ness as regarding every individual human being as a citizen of the cosmos. However, the _we-cosmic-citizens_ are not to promote the _we-ness-in-sameness_, but rather the we-ness-in-alterity_.Unlike the soli...
With the ferrule of his walking-stick Denis began to scratch the boar's long bristly back. The animal moved a little so as to bring himself within easier range of the instrument that evoked in him such delicious sensations; then he stood stock still,...
Ahead in the distance we could see the main gate, but there was a sea of cars, none moving, people standing, milling around, waiting nervously, perhaps fearfully, as heavily armed MPs and military working dogs searched every square inch of every vehi...
...this woman, moved by some private sorrow as much as the words being spoken, cried almost silently, unobserved by others, apart from Mma Ramotswe, who stretched out her hand and laid it on her shoulder. , she began to whisper, but changed her words...
For even now the drums were in our blood, we sat forward almost hearing them across the bay, and the van raced on through the streets so that the driver could hustle back for another load of pleasure-seekers, so bent on pleasure they were driving rig...
I'm fat," she blurted out. "You are not fat. You're the most beautiful, voluptuous woman I know." His eyes moved down her body, deliberately, slowly, then back up to her face. What she saw in them sent fire squirming through her stomach and lower. "I...
Our God is vulnerable. He is. This might be striking to some. The prominent view of God is strong, mighty, courageous - not vulnerable. God? Vulnerable? God didn’t only hang naked on a wooden cross, and He didn’t only do that because He loved us ...
The smell of the sea, of kelp and fish and bitter moving water, rose stronger in my nostrils. It flooded my consciousness like an ancestral memory. The swells rose sluggishly and fell away, casting up dismal gleams between the boards of the pier. And...
I continued to move my fingers across his skin exactly as I had before, but I needed to make a decision. I had reached for him, but I could back out of it by trailing my fingers down his arm and settling my hand in his, like I wanted us to be friends...
I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply ...
With a gentle pressure, our lips met. His hands slipped more firmly about me, and I held myself back, not afraid, but wanting to feel everything slowly as I leaned in, tasting the wine on him, feeling the warmth of his body pressing into mine, breath...
I became simply a pair of eyes, staring through my mask at Char. I needed no ears because I was too far off to hear his voice, no words because I was too distant for speech, and no thoughts - those I saved for later. He bent his head. I loved the hai...
I am inclined to trust you. You shouldn’t be like that with another man, not ever; but I can’t help it. I felt it strongly from the instant I heard your voice; and though I thought momentarily that it would falter, it didn’t. It’s still here....
When I was about nine, my siblings and I fell out of our moving van at an intersection. My dad didn’t notice for about five blocks. It was back before seat belts. It was also back before parents used any sort of common sense whatsoever. It was a ti...
The day the earth-moving machines arrived, it was as if aliens had invaded Earth. Overnight they appeared, diggers with huge scoops, plodding their slow and ancient ways across the landscape. By the next week they had multiplied and evolved into dive...
