I am personally optimistic. I share the widespread view that we are entering a new epoch during which we can achieve conscious evolution and the elevation of humanity to a constructive steward of the Earth.
The Countess was considerably younger than her husband. All of her clothes came from Paris (this was after Paris) and she had superb taste. (This was after taste too, but only just. And since it was such a new thing, and since the Countess was the on...
judgment, as it is portrayed in the parables of Jesus (not to mention the rest of the New Testament) never comes until after acceptance: grace remains forever the sovereign consideration. The difference between the blessed and the cursed is one thing...
Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!
What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. Not everyone gets to have a whole new shiny-but-messy life like I have, and I've never come up with a satisfying explanation for why that ...
God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden... The best gift of the desert is God's presence... The protective love of the Shepherd gives me courage to face the interior j...
Your inspiration taps hidden reserves of promise that sustain people through times that induce despair. You enable people to envision a future that sustains the best from their past while also holding out new possibilities.
Blanket could be used to form a new word—tenkalb—which in turn could be used, or not used at all. But that’s not so bad, because many words aren’t used at all. Like the word drimorious, for example, which means “An honest politician.” Act...
My mother always told me not to pick my nose, so I’m going let the plastic surgeon decide what my new nose will look like. I’m hoping he makes it look like either a Tiffany lamp, a Heckler and Koch assault rifle, or Bill Clinton’s erect cigar.
I journeyed alone for almost ten years before I found home. Adoptions are like very delicate gardening with transplants and grafts. Mine took hold, rooted, and bloomed, even though there were inevitable adjustments to the new soil and climate. Yet I ...
Change is possible through dialogue and unity. We must be ever vigilant to uncover the historical roots of the conflicts that divide us, ever vigilant to speak the truth to power. And it is to history that we must look to find our way forward, to fin...
We sit for a few more moments, although there's really nothing left to say. This is new to me, too, an entire conversation that takes place in silence, because the heart has its own language. I will remember what Eric says even though he doesn't say ...
The clandestine operation tucked several floors below ground level inside a Los Angeles high-rise had never before made her queasy. Today the copper walls, marble flooring, refrigerated temperature and minimal furnishings took discomfort to a new lev...
This new co-consciousness brought me to a state of awareness in which my core personality was directly able to experience "her" personality. Being co-conscious with her, he explained, would stop me from experiencing the feeling of leaving my body or ...
[N]o such thing as objective writing, . . . every inscription, every traveler's tale, every news account, every piece of technical writing, tells more about the author and his time than it does about the ostensible subject.
At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament ar...
I submitted a poem last night to The New Yorker. They said it can take up to three months to hear back. I got rejected immediately.
Mum had a Charles-and-Diana wedding mug that had survived longer than the marriage itself. Mum had worshipped Princess Di and frequently lamented her passing. "Gone," she would say, shaking her head in disbelief. "Just like that. All that exercise fo...
I could see it on the faces of people as they passed. I would smile to share my joy, but it was AS IF I upset them with my happiness. In Confusion they would reply with a negative remark. Hoping it would spark a new chain of negative thoughts in me b...
So I'd been captured? So I was starving? Did that mean I had to shrivel up and die? I could still slither. I could still hiss. Nothing had been stolen from me except my freedom. What I needed was a new plan.
Life on earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive life form – perhaps a self-replicating molecule – that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanis...
