How far would I go to be friends with someone? Halfway.
But at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy girl with think, dark hair, He would have made me that way, but He didn't. Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully ther...
There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe ...
The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyo...
But at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy girl with thick, dark hair, He would have made me that way, but He didn't Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully there...
You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to c...
When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching p...
Ilse and I hunted all over the old orchard today for a four-leaved clover and couldn't find one. Then I found one in a clump of clover by the dairy steps tonight when I was straining the milk and never thinking of clovers. Cousin Jimmy says that is t...
part of the art of teaching is the ability to rearrange the world for students - to force them to see things in a new way. i've known too many stupid intellectuals to believe that education and wisdom come as a package deal along with facts, it's you...
True, luck may rule over parts of a person's life and luck may cast patches of shadow across the ground of our being, but where there's a WILL-- much less a strong will to swim thirty laps or run twenty kilometers -- there's a way to overcome most an...
The real Journey is a personal venture into your own mind content. Nobody, not the greatest mystic, the most vaunted guru, the most hailed psychologist, though they might shuttle you along the trail for a ways, will get you there. Only you yourself c...
I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that eve...
We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It’s never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really ...
More and more obstacles seem to be other people's issues that form in the way of a hand to block one, to take notice of them? Sometimes noticing ahead of time, and taking the time to notice them, makes the hand part of an arm that embraces you. The o...
One concrete way in which we all landscape our sanity is by having our experience of reality confirmed by others. When our experience of reality is disconfirmed by others, our confidence in our own sanity can be undermined. (page 125, Chapter 9, Grae...
To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy.
As far as cosmetics are used for adornment in a conscious and creative way, they are not emblems of inauthenticity: it is when they are presented as the real thing, covering unsightly blemishes, disguising a repulsive thing so that it is acceptable t...
Driving a hot car is a lot like sex to me, or a lot like I keep thinking sex should be: A total body experience, overwhelming, to all the senses, taking you places you've never been, packing a punch that leaves you breathless and touches your soul. T...
Cassandra wondered at the mind's cruel ability to toss up flecks of the past. Why, as she neared her life's end, her grandmother's head should ring with the voices of people long since gone. Was it always this way? Did those with passage booked on de...
When we really understand it, we will always find grace offensive. And that's exactly the way it should be. If we start to feel comfortable with grace, then we've lost what it really means.
But in so many ways I'm still that kid, not sure exactly how to be emotionally intimate with a girl without feeling weak, not sure my work is good enough, not sure if the people who are clapping would really like me if they got to know me (page 2)
