All year long Sylvia had been trying to overthrow her guileless, college girl image. She knew "cottons with big full skirts and university personalities" would have looked hopelessly naive in New York. Sylvia wanted to be hard and urban.
All these things we do bespeak a terrible anxiety: that our children simply will not be able to make it through life if we do not perform totemic acts to keep them on the path toward self-perfection and keep their lives pure and unfettered by distrac...
Communicating with God is the most extraordinary experience imaginable, yet at the same time it's the most natural one of all, because God is present in us at all times. Omniscient, omnipotent, personal-and loving us without conditions. We are connec...
For the ancient Greeks, who lacked our social media, the only way to achieve mass duplication of the details of one's life in the apprehension of others was to do something wondrously worth the telling. Our wondrous technologies might just save us al...
Please don’t think so lightly of liking someone. It’s terribly important. It is a kind of loving, you know, and one that frequently lasts a lot longer than romance. You can fall out of love, as well in. Most of us do, especially if you don’t ac...
Our conversation with God should be utterly free and familiar, because God is the only person who will never, ever misunderstand us and never, ever reject us (hate us, ignore us, or be indifferent to us). These are the tow reasons we hid from other p...
Treat yourself like a fat person with aches and pains and a suitcase full of excuses, and good luck--you'll stay exactly where you are. Train like an athlete and, though you may not look like one now, you will become one.
Mr. Frimpong is the oldest person from church. That's when I knew why he sings louder than anybody else: it's because he's been waiting the longest for God to answer. He thinks God has forgotten him. I only knew it then. Then I loved him but it was t...
There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as...
To a man, professional soldiers despised terrorists, and each would dream about getting them in an even-up-battle; the idea of the Field of Honor had never died for the real professionals. It was the place where the ultimate decision was made on the ...
The very meaning of a leader is that people must follow him. If no one follows, you cannot be a leader even if you are the most intelligent, powerful and wealthy person in the world. Interestingly, you cannot become powerful or wealthy unless you are...
Academically brilliant persons usually make excellent managers and bureaucrats as they can efficiently implement the vision of the government or world leaders by following the prescribed methods. However, they may prove to be poor leaders, for they m...
The mystery of the world is revealed only to the person who can look upon the material world with his physical eyes and simultaneously has the spiritual vision necessary to see the unseen spiritual world. One who knows both Matter and Spirit is thus ...
You cannot be fair to others without first being fair to yourself. Know that a well-honed sense of justice is a measure of personal experience, and all experience is a measure of self. Know that the highest expression of justice is mercy. Thus, as th...
The protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. But increasingly, and especially in the US, it seems that the p...
There is no evidence that we've been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects of our personalities, are quite of...
A truly intelligent person is not one who can simply spout words and numbers; it is someone who can react ‘intelligently’ to all the opportunities, simulations and problems provided by the environment. Real intelligence means engaging your brain ...
Responsibility and Trust -- these two are like Yin and Yang, together perfectly complete, and each one requiring the presence of the other. The next time you mistrust someone, consider this -- does that person feel responsible for you in any way? If ...
Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most foun...
In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anyt...
A priest is a functionary of a social sort. The society worships certain deities in a certain way, and the priest becomes ordained as a functionary to carry out that ritual. The deity to whom he is devoted is a deity that was there before he came alo...
