| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: hear the wind singing over hundreds of miles of snow. It was as if I had let
the old man in out of the tormenting winter, and were sitting there with him.
I went over all that Antonia had ever told me about his life before he came
to this country; how he used to play the fiddle at weddings and dances.
I thought about the friends he had mourned to leave, the trombone-player,
the great forest full of game--belonging, as Antonia said, to the `nobles'--
from which she and her mother used to steal wood on moonlight nights.
There was a white hart that lived in that forest, and if anyone killed it,
he would be hanged, she said. Such vivid pictures came to me that they
might have been Mr. Shimerda's memories, not yet faded out from the air
in which they had haunted him.
My Antonia |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther: then it follows that all they have becomes theirs in common, as
well good things as evil things; so that whatsoever Christ
possesses, that the believing soul may take to itself and boast
of as its own, and whatever belongs to the soul, that Christ
claims as His.
If we compare these possessions, we shall see how inestimable is
the gain. Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation; the soul
is full of sin, death, and condemnation. Let faith step in, and
then sin, death, and hell will belong to Christ, and grace, life,
and salvation to the soul. For, if He is a Husband, He must needs
take to Himself that which is His wife's, and at the same time,
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Peter Pan by James M. Barrie: But Tootles stood aloof.
Again came that ringing crow, and Peter dropped in front of
them. "Greetings, boys," he cried, and mechanically they
saluted, and then again was silence.
He frowned.
"I am back," he said hotly, "why do you not cheer?"
They opened their mouths, but the cheers would not come. He
overlooked it in his haste to tell the glorious tidings.
"Great news, boys," he cried, "I have brought at last a mother
for you all."
Still no sound, except a little thud from Tootles as he dropped
Peter Pan |
