From 1993–2009, ER was a popular television series on NBC about the lives of emergency room doctors and nurses. In this scene from the medical drama's third season, Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) is upset because one of his patients, a woman with Down's syndrome who is in desperate need of a heart transplant, has been turned down by hospital administrators to receive a new heart through the ...

Remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would strongly be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, ...

In 2006, Yoko Ono placed a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for December 8—the anniversary of John Lennon's death—to be made a global day of healing.

"One day we will be able to say that we healed ourselves," Ono promised, "and by healing ourselves, we healed the world."

Contrast the creation of the first man according to Genesis 2 with the creation of the first human beings according to Mesopotamian tradition. True, in both, the recipe starts with dust or clay, the very earth itself, but it is with the second ingredient that the difference is clearly seen. And here we have variation in the Mesopotamian tradition.

In the Enuma Elish, humanity's dust is mixed with the ...

Set against Chicago's World's Fair in 1893, Erik Larson's bestselling book The Devil in the White City tells the true story of two men, each serving as an extreme example of what human beings are capable of. The first is Daniel Burnham, considered by many to be the greatest architect of his day.

Burnham was the driving force behind Chicago's World's Fair, transforming it into a phenomenon that forever ...

After entering a New York City subway station in the first week of 2007, 19-year-old film student Cameron Hollopeter suffered a seizure while waiting for a train. As his body convulsed out of control, the young man stumbled down the platform and fell onto one of the tracks—directly in the path of an inbound train. Fortunately, a 50-year-old construction worker named Wesley Autrey noticed his ...

For more than 30 years, Gordon Mackenzie worked at Hallmark, eventually convincing the company to create a special title for him: "creative paradox." Along with challenging corporate normalcy at Hallmark, MacKenzie did a lot of creativity workshops for elementary schools. And those workshops led to a fascinating observation that he shares in his book Orbiting the Giant Hairball.

MacKenzie would ask ...

Shane Claiborne, who spent a summer in the slums of Calcutta with Mother Teresa, wrote the following about one of his experiences there:

People often ask me what Mother Teresa was like. Sometimes it's like they wonder if she glowed in the dark or had a halo. She was short, wrinkled, and precious, maybe even a little ornery—like a beautiful, wise old granny. But there is one thing I will never ...

October 2, 2006, was a dark day for the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. That morning, a local milkman named Charles Carl Roberts barricaded himself inside the West Nickel Mine Amish School. He was armed with three guns, knives, and over 600 rounds of ammunition. When police attempted to intervene less than half an hour later, Roberts opened fire on 11 girls—all less than 14-years-old—killing ...

Love your neighbor as yourself; but don't take down the fence.

—Carl Sandburg, American poet, novelist, and historian (1878–1967)