Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more completely. Perhaps the best way to phrase it is to say that...
But life has a way of chopping people off at the knees, and he was no exception. Ten years of his life had been stolen from him. Now he wasn't wasting another minute. He wanted to experience everything he had missed, to eat and drink and read and wor...
In this shifting landscape, we may tend to forget “what the old folks say.” Most of us probably now realize that our ancestors did indeed have it right! Their common-sense ways allowed them to get through the worst of conditions throughout histor...
It must be one of life’s little jokes... how we take everything, even life itself, for granted. We waste our childhoods wishing for what we don’t have, longing for the future, dreaming of ways to speed the time so we can hurry up and see the worl...
God was something I did not understand the way kids who went to church did. They said God was a man in the sky with white hair and a beard like Santa. This seemed strange to me. When I thought of God, I imagined only mist over the pond, a sliver of m...
Twitter is more than just a collection of fleeting observations about everyday life. Twitter can connect people to events, information and each other in ways that have never been experienced before.
When we see the greatness of God in even our very darkest moments, then we can be free. “Even the crappiest crap we go through glorifies God,” Amber likes to say, in her Amber way. “God makes beauty from ashes, and the devil hates when He does ...
Francesca was a strong believer in fate. She assumed he picked up the habit from her therapist who was constantly preaching that “everything happened for a reason”, but regardless she now spouted out that philosophy like she was paid to. Everythi...
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...
Too bad I didn't know you back then, I would have come and rescued you." Like he was Prince Charming or something. Which he is, in a way, because he rescued me from the simple, uncomplicated life I thought I liked until I realized how much I was miss...
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...
The problem is that we don't believe that we are much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholic and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one human family in this world, and to care about...
Imprisonment is the form of punishment which may detrimentally affect not only the offender but also his family and his employment and because of its duration it can seldom be kept from becoming general public knowledge. It [...] can have a lasting d...
From this outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living. Did all dying people feel this way, as if they had never lived? Did life seem that short, indeed, over and done before you t...
I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is...
Crying is NOT a weakness. Cry as much as you have to. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to let your tears flow. Crying is a natural part of life. We all have feelings, and sometimes crying is all that we can do. Crying can help relieve the pain, hurt, dis...
It is impossible to empathise with these mono-dimensional heroes. For half the novel, their lives are nothing short of bliss, which is another way of saying that next to nothing happens. This is exemplary of the dialogue: This is revolting. (The dog'...
When we understand who we are, and how our realities work, we can choose more consciously to shape our lives in an optimal way. Knowledge of oneself is the very key to a happy life. Happiness is not something outside of our own consciousness that nee...
For a moment she knew exactly what he was thinking, not just about Tom, but about her, and himself, and all of life, and she liked the way he saw things. She could spend her life tuning into the calming frequency of his thoughts. He wasn't a stiff, a...
The Zen Monk Kyō Has Changed His Name to Mujū Dōryū. I Wrote This Verse to Celebrate The Great Prospects That Lie Before Him Unwillingness to remain in the ruts of former Buddha patriarchs Unsurpassed aspiration and fierce passion to achieve the ...
Rabbits (says Mr. Lockley) are like human beings in many ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and to let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality wh...
