I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-lovi...
…I’m afraid of what the digital age will do to the world, to the things we think are important… it’s almost like people want to believe in some illusion that they’re robots and forget altogether that they’re real, living people… but eve...
Within biblical theology it remains the case that the one living God created a world that is other than himself, not contained within himself. Creation was from the beginning an act of love, of affirming goodness of the other. God saw all that he had...
I used to think that finding the right one was about the man having a list of certain qualities. If he has them, we'd be compatible and happy. Sort of a checkmark system that was a complete failure. But I found out that a healthy relationship isn't s...
Learning to pass, it turns out, is less a matter of acting than acting. You can become part of a given scene, situation, or people (' ,' as it were), simply by letting yourself serve as a mirror for those around you. When I was still in college, when...
We all have our patchwork ideas of India, our notions and opinions and prejudices–often fallacious and absurd–of this enormous, disparate country, which, as I take pleasure in reminding newcomers, bigger in population than all but its own contine...
Then a movement began among the people. They creaked to their feet, shuffled and fumbled up to the front, kneeling on the floor, and she saw little Thomas at the beginning of the row. The priest turned and made the sign of the cross and all signed th...
The night before a biochemistry class, I read the lecture notes from last year. I look at the pictures in the book. I read some of the book. Now, I've got the general concept. Sure...There's a couple of details to fill in and a few things to memorize...
In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, " Memento Mori": Remember you will die. A reminder of mortality would help the hero ke...
My life will be what I make it," he told her. "That is true for all of us all the time. We cannot know what the future will bring or how the events of the future will make us feel. We cannot even plan and feel any certainty that our most carefully co...
There are lots of real reasons to decide to leave something or someone, but there are lots of other reasons that are less valid and less real and less about a relationship than our own minds: Fear (of screwing up, of being left, of not being good eno...
I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: “Things will be better when you die,” the people of my grandma’s generation said as they worked themselves to death. “God wants you to forgive and love those who...
If you think about it, we get robbed of the mystery of being alive. I think we get robbed of the glory of it because we don't remember how we got here. When you get born, you wake up slowly to everything. From birth to 26, God is slowly turning on th...
[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the day before in some library or other, and treats in heathenish fashion people at whose feet he ought to sit, and the most ignorant of whom could give po...
A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil--of people passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices--of ...
Trying to be white? What the hell does that mean? I've never understood that. How could anyone be white when they aren't white? Seems like a simple enough thing to prove, right? Hold out your arm next to someone else's arm and do a simple swatch test...
Don’t you think it’s actually harder for you . . . to adapt, I mean? Because you’ve done all that stuff?’ ‘Are you asking me if I wish I'd never done it?’ ‘I’m just wondering if it would have been easier for you. If you’d led a smal...
Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no mat...
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke unde...
Nature is pitiless; she never withdraws her flowers, her music, her fragrance and her sunlight, from before human cruelty or suffering. She overwhelms man by the contrast between divine beauty and social hideousness. She spares him nothing of her lov...
Despite popular belief to the contrary, there is absolutely no power in intention. The seagull may intend to fly away, may decide to do so, may talk with the other seagulls about how wonderful it is to fly, but until the seagull flaps his wings and t...
