| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 1492 by Mary Johntson: we rowed for Asia.
Nearer and nearer. The water hung about us, plain marvel,
not dark blue, but turquoise and clear as air. We could
see the strange, bright-hued fish and the white bottom. The
air breathed Maytime, and now we thought we could tell
the spices. And so ivory-white it was, the long curved
beach, and so gayly bright the emerald of the wood! There
were many palms with other trees we knew not. It was
low, the island, and it shone before us silver and green, and
the trees moved gently in a wind more sweet, we thought,
than any Andalusian zephyr. Pedro Gutierrez stared.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Caesar's Commentaries in Latin by Julius Caesar: possent. Qui omnibus rebus subito perterriti et celeritate adventus
nostri et discessu suorum, neque consilii habendi neque arma capiendi
spatio dato perturbantur, copiasne adversus hostem ducere an castra
defendere an fuga salutem petere praestaret. Quorum timor cum fremitu et
concursu significaretur, milites nostri pristini diei perfidia incitati in
castra inruperunt. Quo loco qui celeriter arma capere potuerunt paulisper
nostris restiterunt atque inter carros impedimenta proelium commiserunt;
at reliqua multitudo puerorum mulierum (nam eum omnibus suis domo
excesserant Rhenum transierant) passim fugere coepit, ad quos consectandos
Caesar equitatum misit.
Germani post tergum clamore audito, eum suos interfiei viderent, armis
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: breviary.". . . And thenceforward he denied all such requests,
saying: A man possesses of learning only so much as comes out of
him in action, and a monk is a good preacher only so far as his
deeds proclaim him such, for every tree is known by its
fruits."[195]
[195] Speculum Perfectionis, ed. P. Sabatier, Paris, 1898, pp.
10, 13.
But beyond this more worthily athletic attitude involved in doing
and being, there is, in the desire of not having, something
profounder still, something related to that fundamental mystery
of religious experience, the satisfaction found in absolute
|
