I Fell Into Shame Like A Suicide

People Don't Do Right Because Of The Fear Of God Or Love Of Him. You Do Right Because The World Doesn't Make Sense If You Don't.

I Want Hard Stories, I Demand Them From Myself. Hard Stories Are Worth The Difficulty. It Seems To Me The Only Way I Have Forgiven Anything, Understood Anything, Is Through That Process Of Opening Up To My Own Terror And Pain And Reexamining It, Re-creating It In The Story, And Making It Something Different, Making It Meaningful - Even If The Meaning Is Only In The Act Of The Telling.

Class, Race, Sexuality, Gender And All Other Categories By Which We Categorize And Dismiss Each Other Need To Be Excavated From The Inside.

Write The Story That You Were Always Afraid To Tell. I Swear To You That There Is Magic In It, And If You Show Yourself Naked For Me, I'll Be Naked For You. It Will Be Our Covenant.

There Is A Place Where We Are Always Alone With Our Own Mortality, Where We Must Simply Have Something Greater Than Ourselves To Hold Onto-god Or History Or Politics Or Literature Or A Belief In The Healing Power Of Love, Or Even Righteous Anger.... A Reason To Believe, A Way To Take The World By The Throat And Insist That There Is More To This Life Than We Have Ever Imagined.