| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: choose a sour life instead of a sweet, and abandon the charms of
dalliance, to tread the hard and rough road, which the Son of
Mary ordereth men to go? Dost thou not fear the displeasure of
the most puissant gods, lest they strike thee with lightning, or
quell thee with thunderbolt, or overwhelm thee in the yawning
earth, because thou hast rejected and scorned those deities that
have so richly blessed us, and adorned our brow with the kingly
diadem, and made populous nations to be our servants, that,
beyond my hope, in answer to my prayer and supplication, allowed
thee to be born, and see the sweet life of day, and hast joined
thyself unto the Crucified, duped by the hopes of his servants
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: This one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he
had it he took no trouble to exercise it. He carried his soul's
prevailing weather in his face, and when he entered a room
the parasols or the umbrellas went up--figuratively speaking--
according to the indications. When the soft light was in his eye
it meant approval, and delivered a benediction; when he came with a
frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees. He was a well-beloved
man in the house of his friends, but sometimes a dreaded one.
He had a deep affection for the Lester household and its several
members returned this feeling with interest. They mourned over
his kind of Christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: physical infirmity caused by mother's coldness? Was I the child of
duty, whose birth is a mere chance, or was I one whose very life was a
reproach? Put to nurse in the country and forgotten by my family for
over three years, I was treated with such indifference on my return to
the parental roof that even the servants pitied me. I do not know to
what feeling or happy accident I owed my rescue from this first
neglect; as a child I was ignorant of it, as a man I have not
discovered it. Far from easing my lot, my brother and my two sisters
found amusement in making me suffer. The compact in virtue of which
children hide each other's peccadilloes, and which early teaches them
the principles of honor, was null and void in my case; more than that,
The Lily of the Valley |
