This tendency to defend a belief structure is true in all cases, even the rational. Never underestimate our ability to convince ourselves of what we wish to be true, especially if we have invested time and money in our beliefs.
...no matter how liberal a church may seem, Christian dogma still revolves around an ancient, paternalistic image of God the Father, who quite frankly isn’t much more believable than the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus.
Breaking away from old psychological memes requires a Herculean effort in many cases. In essence, we are outgrowing a worldview while maintaining a relation-ship of sorts. Transcending an ideology can feel like going through a divorce and having to s...
These superhero and mythical stories have, in many cases, replaced Biblical stories as vehicles for communal myths, but they are hardly any better than ancient magical adventures tinged with mythical archetypes and the decidedly unnuanced black-and-w...
Once we got closer to the origins of these Eastern practices, we found that the monks and swamis were just as dogmatic and paternalistic, just as literal and conservative in their approach to spirituality as the Christian priests and ministers we wer...
I can feel Ari’s mounting excitement the farther we walk. She’s bouncing up and down like a kangaroo on speed. I feel the bulk of the box pressing against my leg as we walk, and I contemplate all that I’ve decided to tell her tonight. Lifting m...
In this passionately social world, loneliness dogged the spirit. People were constantly “getting together,” but they never really got there. Everyone was terrified of being alone with himself; yet in company, in spite of the universal assumption ...
it takes a village to build success in publishing a book - it takes friends that are willing to help - it takes hours upon hours of no's to get to a yes, it takes many twists and turns with seemingly no end to the detours, it takes courage to face th...
As we passed under a streetlamp I noticed, beside my own bobbing shadow, another great, leaping grotesquerie that had an uncanny suggestion of the frog world about it . . . judging from the shadow, it was soaring higher and more gaily than myself. 'V...
The sun, moon, and stars God gave to the world, but He embedded their glories in your countenance just for me. Woven in your hair are the sun's shimmering golden rays. From your face glows the pale luminescence of the moon. And in your eyes God sprin...
I dislike the phrase 'Internet friends,' because it implies that people you know online aren't really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a frie...
In these pages, and in my memories, she reminds me that a short life can also be a good and rich life, that it is possible to live with depression without being consumed by it, and that meaning in life is found together, in family and friendship that...
Students get the message bout what adults want. When 4th graders in a variety of classroomswere asked what their teachers most wanted them to do, they didn't say, "Ask thoughtful questions" or "Make responsible decisions" or Help others." They said, ...
When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those d...
I stare at the stars... And even though there are so many and they look so close together, I know they are light years apart. The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another, but th...
He lived with his mother, father and sister; had a room of his own, with the fourth-floor windows staring on seas of rooftops and the glitter of winter nights when home lights brownly wave beneath the heater whiter blaze of stars--those stars that in...
The ballpark is the star. In the age of Tris Speaker and Babe Ruth, the era of Jimmie Foxx and Ted Williams, through the empty-seats epoch of Don Buddin and Willie Tasby and unto the decades of Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice, the ballpark is the star....
In life, not everything we thought is right and not every right thing is what we must do because sometimes you can find even better solution or even better decision. Because everything can be changed or will change without us knowing. Like earlier, I...
In filmbees you will find how everything is well categorize for you so that you can read all the news not from the Bollywood industry but from the Hollywood, south Movies, Bollywood movie information etc… you read all the information about the upco...
Shaun: [looking behind Ed's shoulder at the old woman in the pub] All right, what about her, then? Ed: [looking back at her, then to Shaun] Ooooooh... cockacidal maniac. Ex-porn star. She's done it all. They say she starred in the world's first inter...
[last lines] Narrator: They ruled for 80 years. But no man can live forever, except he who possesses the heart of a star, and Yvaine had given hers to Tristan completely. When their children and grandchildren were grown, it was time to light the Baby...
