| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: and ask thy father to appoint another in my room.
The king's son said unto him, "This do, Zardan, first of all.
Sit thou down behind the curtain, and hear his communication with
me: and then thus will I tell thee what thou oughtest to do."
So when Barlaam was about to enter into his presence, Ioasaph hid
Zardan within the curtain, and said to the elder, "Sum me up the
matter of thy divine teaching, that it may the more firmly be
implanted in my heart." Barlaam took up his parable and uttered
many sayings touching God, and righteousness toward him, and how
we must love him alone with all our heart, and with all our soul,
and with all our mind, and keep his commandments with fear and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: would so shock your ears). "You miserable little ------," he
cried, "if the story were a thousand times true, can't you see you
are a million times a lower ----- for daring to repeat it?" I wish
it could be told of you that when the report reached you in your
house, perhaps after family worship, you had found in your soul
enough holy anger to receive it with the same expressions; ay, even
with that one which I dare not print; it would not need to have
been blotted away, like Uncle Toby's oath, by the tears of the
recording angel; it would have been counted to you for your
brightest righteousness. But you have deliberately chosen the part
of the man from Honolulu, and you have played it with improvements
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Soon in December
Over an ember,
Lonely we hearken, as loud winds blow.
AS ONE WHO HAVING WANDERED ALL NIGHT LONG
AS one who having wandered all night long
In a perplexed forest, comes at length
In the first hours, about the matin song,
And when the sun uprises in his strength,
To the fringed margin of the wood, and sees,
Gazing afar before him, many a mile
Of falling country, many fields and trees,
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