I Believe In Those Whom I Love

It Was An Overcast Late November Morning, The Grass Splintered By Hoarfrost, And Winter Grinning Through The Gaps In The Clouds Like A Bad Clown Peering Through The Curtains Before The Show Begins.

I Think The Act Of Reading Imbues The Reader With A Sensitivity Toward The Outside World That People Who Don't Read Can Sometimes Lack. I Know It Seems Like A Contradiction In Terms; After All Reading Is Such A Solitary, Internalizing Act That It Appears To Represent A Disengagement From Day-to-day Life. But Reading, And Particularly The Reading Of Fiction, Encourages Us To View The World In New And Challenging Ways...it Allows Us To Inhabit The Consciousness Of Another Which Is A Precursor To Empathy, And Empathy Is, For Me, One Of The Marks Of A Decent Human Being.

My Feelings For Raphael Are Mine, And Mine Alone. I Loved Him, And That Is All Anyone Needs To Know. The Rest Is No Business Of Any Man's.

I Believe In Those Whom I Love And Trust. All Else Is Foolishness. This God Is As Empty As His Church. His Followers Choose To Attribute All Of Their Good Fortune To Him, But When He Ignores Their Pleas Or Leaves Them To Suffer, They Say Only That He Ignores Their Pleas Or Leaves Them To Suffer, They Say Only That He Is Beyond Their Understanding And Abandon Themselves To His Will. What Kind Of God Is That?

We Are Not Meant To Know The Time Or The Nature Of Our Deaths (for All Of Us Secretly Hope That We May Be Immortal).