When we lay the soil of our hard lives opened the rain of grace and let Joy permeate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? for us? The clouds ope...
Joy is a flame that glimmers only in the palm of the open and humble hand. In an open and humble palm, released and surrendered to receive, light dances, flickers happy. The moment the hand is clenched tight, fingers all pointing towards self and rig...
Darren played with the ice cream before raising a spoonful to his mouth. I watched him lick it before he wrapped his lips around the spoon, closing his eyelids and savoring the flavor on his tongue. He slowly withdrew the spoon from his mouth and ope...
Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way…Silence sits...
We don’t even survive in the memories of the living. Science has destroyed that myth. Whenever we remember something, what we’re doing is remembering the last time we remembered it; our memory doesn’t go back to the original notch, the first on...
There is nothing greater in this world then love. Many things in this world have limits and expiration dates, but love is constant and everywhere. More important, it can take many forms and even when we lose those we care about, their love continues ...
He lay, often, looking at her sleeping face in the new light that fell in through the open walls of the strange house, and he stared at her skin and hair with his mouth open, transfixed by the quick stillness of her, struck dumb with the physical fac...
No. This would be better as a team." She dragged her top drawer open, rooted out her aspirin. "I should have fired her weeks ago. You were right about that. I was wrong." "I need to write this down. Can I borrow a pencil?" "Shut up." Grateful that hi...
The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It's as if someone has dumped rubies from heaven. Soon they will land on the plants in search ...
The gate is perfectly simple," Temeraire said. "There is only a bar across the fence, which one can lift very easily, and then it swings open; Nitidus could do it best, for his forehands are the smallest. Though it is difficult to keep the animals in...
When friends come to Rome in early summer to visit me I like to take them to the Pantheon during thunderstorms and stand them beneath the opening of the feathery, perfectly proportioned dome as rain falls through the open roof against the marble floo...
An old book was a time capsule. When you opened the front cover, you opened a door to another world—a world accessible through a kind of looking glass made of hard-board and cloth. The author’s voice resonated in the reader’s head with the same...
Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When th...
When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deser...
Dr. Dakota Block: [looking at the glove compartment] I want you to open that for mommy. Can you? [he opens it, and there is a gun sitting inside] Dr. Dakota Block: Take the gun. [He takes it] Dr. Dakota Block: Careful! That's it. And if anyone comes ...
The Abbot: We found the body after a hailstorm, horribly mutilated, dashed against a rock at the foot of the tower, under a window which was, uh, how shall I say this? I trust... William of Baskerville: Which was found closed. The Abbot: Somebody tol...
Maybe its like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And then things happen - these people leave us, or don’t love us, or don’t get us, or we don’t get them, and we lose and fail and h...
Claiming "the budget can't allow it" reminds me of when you walk into a restaurant at a civilized hour like ten o'clock and they say "the kitchen is closed." For years I would hear this, and think, "damn, just a little too late, oh well, thank you, I...
Be like a river. Be open. Flow.
I open my heart to her and lay it on the table.
He was being about as protective as a can-opener.
