| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: common of the three, and one is their nature, one their
substance, one their glory, one their kingdom, one their might,
one their authority; but it is common of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost that they are of the Father; and it is proper of the Father
that he is unbegotten, and of the Son that he is begotten, and of
the Holy Ghost that he proceedeth.
"This therefore be thy belief; but seek not to understand the
manner of the generation or procession, for it is
incomprehensible. In uprightness of heart and without question
accept the truth that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Ghost, are in all points one except in the being unbegotten, and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: disadvantages: it is littered with the ruins of the children's
nurseries. These ruins are so close-welded to the rest of the home
that my forceps cannot extract them without difficulty; and to
remove them would be an exhausting business for the Clotho and
possibly beyond her strength. It is a case of the resistance of
Gordian knots, which not even the very spinstress who fastened them
is capable of untying. The encumbering litter, therefore, will
remain.
If the Spider were to stay alone, the reduction of space, when all
is said, would hardly matter to her: she wants so little room,
merely enough to move in! Besides, when you have spent seven or
The Life of the Spider |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain; but
when melancholy notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the
faculties without opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or
banish them. For this reason the superstitious are often
melancholy, and the melancholy almost always superstitious.
"But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your better
reason; the danger of neglect can be but as the probability of the
obligation, which, when you consider it with freedom, you find very
little, and that little growing every day less. Open your heart to
the influence of the light, which from time to time breaks in upon
you; when scruples importune you, which you in your lucid moments
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