| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: bosom of the sea, and had brought from the deep the skins
of four sea-calves, and all were newly flayed, for she was
minded to lay a snare for her father. She scooped lairs on
the sea-sand, and sat awaiting us, and we drew very nigh
her, and she made us all lie down in order, and cast a skin
over each. There would our ambush have been most terrible,
for the deadly stench of the sea bred seals distressed us
sore: nay, who would lay him down by a beast of the sea?
But herself she wrought deliverance, and devised a great
comfort. She took ambrosia of a very sweet savour, and set
it beneath each man's nostril, and did away with the stench
The Odyssey |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lesser Bourgeoisie by Honore de Balzac: Paris usually demand as a guarantee from a principal tenant on a long
lease. Cerizet had spent a happy night; he fell asleep in a glorious
dream; he saw himself in a fair way to do an honest business, and to
become a bourgeois like Thuillier, like Minard, and so many others.
But he had a waking of which he did not dream. He found Fortune
standing before him, and emptying her gilded horns of plenty at his
feet in the person of Madame Cardinal. He had always had a liking for
the woman, and had promised her for a year past the necessary sum to
buy a donkey and a little cart, so that she could carry on her
business on a large scale, and go from Paris to the suburbs. Madame
Cardinal, widow of a porter in the corn-market, had an only daughter,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: and other modern movements of the kind. The conversion of a
publican into a Pharisee would not have seemed to him a great
achievement. But in a manner not yet understood of the world he
regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy
things and modes of perfection.
It seems a very dangerous idea. It is - all great ideas are
dangerous. That it was Christ's creed admits of no doubt. That it
is the true creed I don't doubt myself.
Of course the sinner must repent. But why? Simply because
otherwise he would be unable to realise what he had done. The
moment of repentance is the moment of initiation. More than that:
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