She wanted to confess and be forgiven. She wanted her soul to be clean, but it was impossible. To be forgiven, she would have to repent. Repent, as in resolve not to sin again. Fred prayed every day that God would give her strength to want to repent, but she never felt like she’d received that strength.

He told himself he would pretend nothing was wrong, but he couldn’t fool himself. He could forgive himself for having done something wrong, even something so immoral, so reckless. Harder to live with would be what would come next: living with the knowledge of what he’d done, but not letting on.

Not only have we not done the good things that God really wants us to do, but in fact, we’ve done just the opposite. We’ve all done a lot of sinful things that we’re not very proud of. The good news is that, before we even ask to be forgiven– before we even know we’ve done wrong, sometimes– God has this miraculous, saving love for us.

How often in our lives have we withheld the truth from someone we’re supposed to love? We justify it by telling ourselves we’re doing them some kindness, when in reality, we’re just being selfish. We don’t want them to know the truth because if they did, well, they might not love us anymore. How many of us have ever felt that no one would love us if they knew the real us? Love bears all things, the Bible tells us. The truth is, everyone who really loves you can bear the real you.

Starla, when you work in a restaurant, it’s not called ‘pie with ice cream on top.’ It’s called pie a la mode. Try saying it one time.”“A-la-mo,” she pronounced.“There’s a good girl,” Darius said, grinning. “The next time you ask a customer if he wants some dessert, you ask him if he wants pie Alamo.

So across the chaos, the Devil looks at God and falls deeply in love with Her. She looks at Him, and the same thing happens. They get married and have some children—first light, then the dry land, and all the trees, and so on and so forth. Last of all, She gives birth to Adam and Eve. They worship their mother, but not their father. He gets jealous. God and the Devil fight. They agree to split up. She gets to keep heaven, and He has to move in to hell. Then she talks bad about Him to their children, makes them hate Him.

The sun, the moon, the ocean– these were all the children of Ouranos and Gaia. They had hundreds more, and they were the grandparents of the gods and of human beings. Ouranos didn’t make any of this out of nothing, and neither did God. There had to be a wife.

...Everything that’s not asexual has two sexes, male and female. Most of the time it takes one of each to reproduce. Then there’s the whiptail lizard. This is a lizard that lives way the fuck out there in the middle of the desert, and sometimes it’s hard to find another lizard to mate with out there. Therefore, what the female whiptail can do is sort of make her eggs start dividing on their own. She makes daughters, clones of herself. It’s called parthenogenesis.

In art and mythology, the Goddess appears in three forms. White represents the virgin, red the mother, and black, the crone, or the death-goddess.

Is she a friend of yours?”“No,” Diana said flatly. “She’s my mother.

One of the privileges of being an athlete is that on days when I have practice and games, I’m present whether I’m present or not. It’s not fair, but that’s the system. What can I do about it?

What does ‘United States of America’ mean? That we’re some states, we’re united somehow, and that we’re in America. America could be anywhere on the continents of North or South America, so that’s not specific enough, and the part about the states doesn’t narrow it down, either. Mexico has united states, too. So does Canada, except they call them provinces. It’s not even a name. It’s just a vague description. It’s so generic, like naming a country ‘Country.