Once she even successfully argued on behalf of my older brother, Dan, getting a BBGun, a weapon which he promptly turned against his younger siblings, outfitting us in helmet and leather jacket and instructing us to run across Eaton Park while he pra...
Let us be today’s Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today’s church. With Christ’s light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must b...
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sand of time; Footprints, that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solenm main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take h...
door I thought about life and how it resembled a ladder. Do you ever feel that way? Like life is one big uphill climb and there are always more people and circumstances tripping us and trying to pull us back down the ladder, while very, very few peop...
To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of b...
If you have ever procrastinated and then found yourself energized to complete a task at the last minute, then you have used the beneficial aspect of the fight or flight response (not the procrastinating part, but the energizing part). You see, with a...
God doesn't expect us to be a walking encyclopedia of biblical knowledge. He wants us to know Him, to be in a relationship with Him. This means not only hearing but allowing our understanding of God to change the way we live. Like the wise builder wh...
With intimacy comes the possibility of “engulfment” or being taken hostage by the demands of others. We may have distorted perceptions of the “demands” and obligations placed upon us by those who claim to love us. Trusting that love to be unc...
This isn't television! This isn't a movie! Giles and Buffy aren't gonna appear and show us how to deal with our wonderful new powers! Some fricking owl isn't gonna come sailing in through your window from Hogwarts! There's no Dumbledore! The Cullens ...
The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that ho...
History gives us the facts, sort of, but from literary works we can learn what the past smelled like, sounded like, and felt like, the forgotten gritty details of a lost era. Literature brings us as close as we can come to reinhabiting the past. By r...
Because the state uses violence to achieve its ends, and there is no rational end to the use of violence, states grow until they destroy civilized interactions through the corruption of money, contracts, honesty, family and self-reliance. No state in...
I’ve never been this happy,” I whispered, a little scared by it. Caine must have heard the fear, because he kissed my neck, tightened his hold on me, and said, “Me neither. But we’ll get used to it.” “Promise?” He lifted his head to mee...
Our culture, self-toxified by the poisonous by-products of technology and egocentric ideology, is the unhappy inheritor of the dominator attitude that alteration of consciousness by the use of plants or substances is somehow wrong, onanistic, and per...
I believe that all of us have a little bit of "crazy" in us, even if just a pinch. It could manifest out of extreme enthusiasm, foolish behavior or downright insanity. Aside from its legal concept, insanity or "crazy" is a personality trait, a neurot...
We were both holding on to this thing, this monster between us. And now that I saw it, I could almost feel it hovering there, tangible. It was wrapping its stickiness around our throats - and we were helping it. We were grabbing on to it tightly, bel...
Dolmens constantly remind us to live in harmony with nature, to live within our needs and not in our greed. It reminds us that we should keep on helping everyone in need; not only those who are right in front of our eyes, but everyone and everything ...
We don't need to have just one favorite. We keep adding favorites. Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change. We have other favorites that give us what we most need a...
We must give our children back their ability to see the divine; we must help them to return to their original innocence where they saw God everywhere they look. They saw the divine in the flowers and the insects of the world, they saw God in the anim...
It's just like when you've got some coffee that's too black, which means it's too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won't even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot,...
I am not a committed pacifist. I would not hold that it is under all imaginable circumstances wrong to use violence, even though use of violence is in some sense unjust. I believe that one has to estimate relative justices. But the use of violence an...
