Compassion Is Not Feeling Sorry For Others.

And Sometimes It's The Very Otherness Of A Stranger, Someone Who Doesn't Belong To Our Ethnic Or Ideological Or Religious Group, An Otherness That Can Repel Us Initially, But Which Can Jerk Us Out Of Our Habitual Selfishness, And Give Us Intonations Of That Sacred Otherness, Which Is God.

Myth Was Regarded As Primary; It Was Concerned With What Was Thought To Be Timeless And Constant In Our Existence. Myth Looked Back To The Origins Of Life, To The Foundations Of Culture, And To The Deepest Levels Of The Human Mind. Myth Was Not Concerned With Practical Matters, But With Meaning. Unless We Find Some Significance In Our Lives, We Mortal Men And Women Fall Very Easily Into Despair. The Mythos Of A Society Provided People With A Context That Made Sense Of Their Day-to-day Lives; It Directed Their Attention To The Eternal And The Universal.

He Was Decisive And Wholehearted In Everything He Did, So Intent On The Task At Hand That He Never Looked Over His Shoulder, Even If His Cloak Got Caught In A Thorny Bush. When He Did Turn To Speak To Somebody, He Used To Swing His Entire Body And Address Him Full Face. When He Shook Hands, He Was Never The First To Withdraw His Own. He Inspired Such Confidence That He Was Known As Al-amin, The Reliable One.

Like Art, Religion Is An Imaginative And Creative Effort To Find A Meaning And Value In Human Life.

Geniuses Are Not Always Pleasant People.