| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: have lost all its charm from the change.
Standing at the window talking, the girl, shrugging at the
evening damp, continually looking round at us, at one moment put
her arms akimbo, at the next raised her hands to her head to
straighten her hair, talked, laughed, while her face at one
moment wore an expression of wonder, the next of horror, and I
don't remember a moment when her face and body were at rest. The
whole secret and magic of her beauty lay just in these tiny,
infinitely elegant movements, in her smile, in the play of her
face, in her rapid glances at us, in the combination of the
subtle grace of her movements with her youth, her freshness, the
The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: waits for what luck will bring her: now some giddy weakling unable
to control its flight, anon some powerful prey rushing headlong
with a reckless bound.
The Locust in particular, the fiery Locust, who releases the spring
of his long shanks at random, often falls into the trap. One
imagines that his strength ought to frighten the Spider; the kick
of his spurred levers should enable him to make a hole, then and
there, in the web and to get away. But not at all. If he does not
free himself at the first effort, the Locust is lost.
Turning her back on the game, the Epeira works all her spinnerets,
pierced like the rose of a watering-pot, at one and the same time.
The Life of the Spider |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: relaxed by contentment into vanity. All these rebel forces of our
ill-coordinated selves, all these "disharmonies," of the inner
being, snatch us away from our devotion to God's service, carry us
off to follies, offences, unkindness, waste, and leave us
compromised, involved, and regretful, perplexed by a hundred
difficulties we have put in our own way back to God.
This is the personal problem of Sin. Here prayer avails; here God
can help us. From God comes the strength to repent and make such
reparation as we can, to begin the battle again further back and
lower down. From God comes the power to anticipate the struggle
with one's rebel self, and to resist and prevail over it.
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