| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: upon a hard stone couch with a single pillow and a silken coverlet.
In the morning she leaned out of the window of her prison in the tower
to see if there was any way to escape. The room was not so very high
up, when compared with our modern buildings, but it was far enough
above the trees and farm houses to give her a good view of the
surrounding country.
To the east she saw the forest, with the sands beyond it and the ocean
beyond that. There was even a dark speck upon the shore that she
thought might be the chicken-coop in which she had arrived at this
singular country.
Then she looked to the north, and saw a deep but narrow valley lying
Ozma of Oz |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: aspects--as a man has--and a consistency we call his character.
These are theorisings about God. These are statements to convey
this modern idea of God. This, we say, is the nature of the person
whose will and thoughts we serve. No one, however, who understands
the religious life seeks conversion by argument. First one must
feel the need of God, then one must form or receive an acceptable
idea of God. That much is no more than turning one's face to the
east to see the coming of the sun. One may still doubt if that
direction is the east or whether the sun will rise. The real coming
of God is not that. It is a change, an irradiation of the mind.
Everything is there as it was before, only now it is aflame.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: could refuse nothing to Mademoiselle Cochet, Tonsard married as soon
as his house was finished and his vines had begun to bear. A well-
grown fellow of twenty-three, in everybody's good graces at Les
Aigues, on whom Mademoiselle had bestowed an acre of her land, and who
appeared to be a good worker, he had the art to ring the praises of
his negative merits, and so obtained the daughter of a farmer on the
Ronquerolles estate, which lies beyond the forest of Les Aigues.
This farmer held the lease of half a farm, which was going to ruin in
his hands for want of a helpmate. A widower, and inconsolable for the
loss of his wife, he tried to drown his troubles, like the English, in
wine, and then, when he had put the poor deceased out of his mind, he
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