The issue here revolves around the "right to be different (Mattos 1994:16). People have difficulty living harmoniously with those who are different. Because of this, they discriminate against anyone who has any distinctive characteristic whether of b...
Where are you going to put the other one?” asked Daniella. “Wherever you like,” said Ms. Terwilliger. “I can’t take him with me. The guards saw me come in with one cat. They’ll see me leave with one.” “What?” My mother-in-law’s vo...
Tiger Lily made an attempt at a smile. After having felt the need to glower at other children for most of her life, smiles never came easily to her face. But this one was half all right. "I miss you already," he said. Tiger Lily wanted to say it back...
I'm starting to believe that happily ever after includes people doing things that upset each other. We all get cranky, or impatient, or worried, or careless enough to do or say things that hurt someone else. Like it or not, that's normal. We can't bl...
We’ve all heard that little woman who says, “Oh, it’s terrible what these young people do to themselves, in my lsi other drugs, is a terrible thing”. Then you look, the woman who speaks in this way: you have no eyes, no teeth, no brains, no s...
You need to play to your strengths as a couple. Sharing is really awesome when you're messing around with Play-Doh in kindergarten. It's less awesome when you're adults and one of you is good at something and the other person sucks at it. So just let...
if you don't respect the other person, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don't know how to compromise, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can't talk openly about what goes on between you, you're gonna have a lot of trouble. And if yo...
A person is loved for the risk he or she takes for someone else, be it a mother, a father, a child, a lover, or a friend. It takes courage to reach out and connect with another human being. It requires risk and hard work. It takes courage and compass...
There should have been a dark whisper in the wind. Or maybe a deep chill in the bone. Something. An ethereal song only Elizabeth or I could hear. A tightness in the air. Some textbook premonition. There are misfortunes we almost expect in life—what...
Still on speaking terms with the Toilet Paper People, they consented to a box full of Legos that overnight manifested itself into a recording studio. I quickly remembered the power of my hands, my imagination, my will, and my conscience. These were t...
Eve.” He placed himself in front of her again. “We can’t have any more than today, but we can have today.” “What are you suggesting?” Eve’s pulse raced, wildfire in her veins. Marcus gripped her by the shoulders, his mouth opening raven...
In order to take control of our lives and accomplish something of lasting value, sooner or later we need to learn to believe. We don't need to shift our responsibilities onto the shoulders of some deified spiritual superman or sit around and wait for...
Ask anyone what that means, what it means to see a miracle, and they will say that it's something impossible, but they mean that a miracle is something formerly believed to be impossible that turns out not to be, not to be impossible, in other words,...
I wrote a song called "Stinky Sodomite." It isn't a pop song, a historical song, or a song condemning homosexuality. Rather, it is a children's song that teaches them how to count. In fact, the only time the words "Stinky Sodomite" appear in the song...
I was in the shower the other day and I noticed on the back of the shampoo bottle it said, "Avoid contact with eyes. In case of eye contact, flush with water." and I thought, "Avoid eye contact? What do you think I do, talk to shampoo bottles? And ev...
Carlyle's genius was many-sided. He touched and ennobled the national life at all points. He lifted a whole generation of young men out of the stagnating atmosphere of materialism and dead orthodoxy into the region of the ideal. With the Master of Ba...
He’ll think I’ll do it, he’ll act like I’ll do it, and so I will do it. But if he will think differently, maybe I will act differently. But I know me, I know him, he knows himself, he knows me, and he is my clone, so we will each act exactly ...
Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from th...
It matters to ourselves, of course, but it matters terribly to other people. Moral failure or spiritual failure or whatever you call it, makes such a vicious circle... It seems as if when we love people and they fall short, we retaliate by falling sh...
The greatest regret of my military career was as Commanding General of the 1st Cavalry Division in Iraq in 2004-2005, he later wrote of the decision he made. I lost 169 soldiers during that year-long deployment. However, the monument we erected at Fo...
Profound silence would brood over the valley, even weighing down our spirits with indefinable heaviness. There can be no other place in the world where man feels himself so alone, so isolated, so completely ignored by nature, so incapable of entering...
