It is always the first and last steps that are the hardest to take. We walk away and try not to turn back, or we stand just outside the gates, terrified to find what's waiting for us now that we've returned. In between, we stumble blindly from one pl...
Suddenly, as one, all the Greys stop talking and gape at Christian. What? Christian is singing softly to himself at the piano. Silence descends on us all as we strain to hear his soft, lyrical voice. I've heard him sing before, haven't they? He stops...
You and your scars. Please! You don't kill youself like this!" I gesture, holding a wrist turned up to the ceiling, then pretending to cut across it with my other hand. "That's just a cry for help. That's just attention. Everbody knows that. Cutting ...
For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, by poverty, or by the voice of duty, we must learn, each one of us, ...
What I am suggesting is that each of us turn from the negativism that permeates our society and look for the remarkable good among those with whom we associate, that we speak of one another’s virtues more than we speak of one another’s faults, th...
Night was falling. Birds were singing. Birds were, it occurred to me to say, enacting a frantic celebration of day's end. They were manifesting as the earth's bright-colored nerve endings, the sun's descent urging them into activity, filling them ind...
Thirty years ago [written 2009], over-regulation, over-taxation, mis-regulation, statism, state corporatism, and economic folly, cosiness and regulatory capture, and a crescent ideological enemy without, who were assisted by enemies – both fifth co...
O my God, how does it happen in this poor world that you are so great and yet nobody finds you, that you call so loudly and yet nobody hears you, that you are so near and yet nobody feels you, that you give yourself to everybody and yet nobody knows ...
If you desire to find the true spirit of Christmas and partake of the sweetness of it, let me make this suggestion to you. During the hurry of the festive occasion of this Christmas season, find time to turn your heart to God. Perhaps in the quiet ho...
Jesus is not saying, “Make sure you pray a prayer of repentance, start going to church, and wait for Me to come back.” He is saying, “You can live a radically different life because there’s a new world order that just broke in, so stop walkin...
Last week my boss told me to rewrite a twenty-page proposal on engagement benchmarking. I turned it in and he wrote a note on the cover that just said, "No, no. Not this." I had no idea what he wanted, so I just put it off, and then when he came in t...
How much more mysterious and inviting is the street of an old town with its altering realms of darkness and light than are the brightly and evenly lit streets of today! The imagination and daydreaming are stimulated by dim light and shadow. In order ...
Lately it's started to seem to me that here in America our fetishization of self-reliance has taken a wrong turn and has helped enable us to jettison compassion as a national value while still maintaining a vision of ourselves as essentially well-mea...
The man who cannot listen to an argument which opposes his views either has a weak position or is a weak defender of it. No opinion that cannot stand discussion or criticism is worth holding. And it has been wisely said that the man who knows only ha...
And he began, "What chance or destiny has brought you here before your final day? And who is he who leads your pilgrimage?" "Up there in life beneath the quiet stars I lost my way," I answered, "in a valley, before I'd reached the fullness of my age....
She is playing a game that she doesn't want to play, but can't seem to quit. As a player she wishes to see how the game concludes, but she also wishes the other player would retreat. She wants to win after-all and she makes for a sore loser, but her ...
When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego, and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselv...
The panther prowled around me in a loose, wide circle. Its mouth turned down, almost in a pout, and it seemed disappointed that I wasn't going to run away. Or scream, at the very least. Its tail, which was at least three feet long, twitched back and ...
We all experience highs and lows in life. If you are feeling down right now, each second that passes is another moment to turn it all around. Feelings, good and bad, always come and go. The trick is to be grateful when your mood is high and graceful ...
Lennie Pike: This is stupid. You call me a "stupid idiot?" Well, let me tell you something. You're a "stupid idiot!" Mrs. Marcus: But he'll go all the way to Plaster City. Lennie Pike: So he goes all the way to Plaster City. I don't know about you, b...
Dr. Frederick Chilton: What you are doing, Miss Starling is coming into my hospital to conduct an interview, and refusing to share information with me, for the third time. Clarice Starling: Sir, I told you, this is just a routine follow-up on the Ras...
