The cliché that it’s not the destination but the journey that matters is, of course, silly. If the destination didn’t matter, the journey wouldn’t either. What gives a journey its momentum—its... ...
How beautifully the essayist and social critic Henry David Thoreau speaks of the journeyer: "A traveler. I love his title. A traveler is to be revered as such. His profession is the best...
Once at a women’s retreat I was asked to be a small group leader, and in my group was a woman from Zimbabwe: Madelyn. ...
When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, respected by all the people, stood up and...
Jesus told a story of a man who went out to clear the land. He uprooted gnarled old trees and chopped up rotting stumps. He put a shoulder to large boulders and pushed...
I decided that a novel I was writing would climax in one of the most dangerous countries in the world. At the...
I sit on the floor, lean against the couch, and listen to a house wrapped in the unmistakable quiet of a child asleep. The refrigerator hum blurs into the muffled drone of rush-hour...
"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you. A...
On the first day of classes, a new freshman walked out of the Princeton library feeling exalted by his new status and the ivied walls about him. Nearby, loafing on the grass, a...
"Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God." —John Calvin ...
They were married more than 50 years, had three grown children and two grandchildren. He remembered every one of those years to his final hour, but Parkinson’s disease and a debilitating stroke...
“I grew up in a household where anger and resentment were served at every meal. In my home, love was a thing to be earned, never given. We got hugs for being good...
Oscar Wilde, the brilliant British writer, was asked by a customs agent if he had anything to declare upon arrival in New York. He said, “I have nothing to declare but my genius.”...
Hilma Untinen was born October 8, 1910, in a log cabin in Northern Minnesota—the ninth of eleven children born to poor Finnish immigrants. When she was 13 years old, her mother died. Hilma’s...
While I am grateful for the “Bartlett’s Quotations” strata of men and women who speak through outstanding books or speeches, it is among the many less notable individuals that I hear most about...
In the book Halftime, Bob Buford identifies the point in life when a person begins to ask “What’s next?” or “Is this all there is?” He offers a way to look at the...
Once when I asked a friend how she was doing, she said, “Truthfully, I feel as if my life is going nowhere. I can’t get beyond Get on your mark, get set ...
We tend to believe we are most effective when we are busy, and to an extent that is true. Tasks have to be performed, and goals have to be accomplished. ...
Horatio Spafford was well acquainted with personal tragedy. Following the death of a young son, he watched most of his worldly investments go up in smoke in the Great Chicago Fire, and then he...
“Never let me see you in this house again!” ...
