This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.
Family | Happy | Relationship |
I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such episode of absolute forgiveness and acceptance of her own self, then imagine—just imagine!—what God, in all His eternal compassion, can forgive and accept.
Distress | Effort | Enough | Good | People | Soul | Will | World | Crisis | Happiness | Think |
Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.
Beauty | Excellence | Experience | Pleasure | Trust | Will | World | Excellence | Beauty |
As I got older, I discovered that nothing within me cried out for a baby. My womb did not seem to have come equipped with that famously ticking clock. Unlike so many of my friends, I did not ache with longing whenever I saw an infant. (Though I did ache with longing, it is true, whenever I saw a good used-book shop)
Contentment | Distress | Focus | Friend | Global | Search | Sorrow | Suffering | Unhappiness | World | Trouble |
Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.
Family | Marriage | Relationship | Trust |
The Silly Putty-like malleability of the institution [marriage], in fact, is the only reason we still have the thing at all. Very few people... would accept marriage on it's thirteenth-century terms. Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves. (Though I suppose this would not be a very persuasive argument to those who probably also don't believe in evolution).
The search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. in search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. you abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope!) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you have given up... if we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity ; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.
Contentment | Search |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Get leave to work in this world,--'tis the best you get at all.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Of writing many books there is no end; and I who have written much in prose and verse for others' uses, will write now for mine,— will write my story for my better self, as when you paint your portrait for a friend, who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it long after he has ceased to love you, just to hold together what he was and is.
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place and touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run soon in long rivers down the lifted face, and leave the vision clear for stars and sun.
If spirituality is not religion or cynicism or sentimentality or narcissism, then what is it? One thing that we can confidently say is that spirituality is fearlessness. It is a way of looking boldly at the life we have been given here, now, on earth, as this human being. Who am I? How should I live my life? What happens when I die? Spirituality is nothing more than a brave search for the truth about existence. Nothing more, but nothing less as well.
When the karma of a relationship is done, only love remains. It's safe. Let go.
Madness |
Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A good neighbour, even in this, is fatal sometimes, cuts your morning up to mince-meat of the very smallest talk, then helps to sugar her bohea at night with your reputation.
Silence and solitude are universally recognized spiritual practices, and there are good reasons for this. Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.
The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.