| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Smalcald Articles by Dr. Martin Luther: necessary, profitable, and certain way without the Mass.
Fifthly. But since the Mass is nothing else and can be nothing
else (as the Canon and all books declare), than a work of men
(even of wicked scoundrels), by which one attempts to
reconcile himself and others to God, and to obtain and merit
the remission of sins and grace (for thus the Mass is observed
when it is observed at the very best; otherwise what purpose
would it serve ?), for this very reason it must and should
[certainly] be condemned and rejected. For this directly
conflicts with the chief article, which says that it is not a
wicked or a godly hireling of the Mass with his own work, but
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: caught a wild power of language from the breeze among his native
forest boughs. But we may safely leave these brethren and
sisterhood to settle their own congenialities. Our ordinary
distinctions become so trifling, so impalpable, so ridiculously
visionary, in comparison with a classification founded on truth,
that all talk about the matter is immediately a common place.
Yet the longer I reflect the less am I satisfied with the idea of
forming a separate class of mankind on the basis of high
intellectual power. At best it is but a higher development of
innate gifts common to all. Perhaps, moreover, he whose genius
appears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save the
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Wife, et al by Anton Chekhov: happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually
reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that
however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or
later, trouble will come for him -- disease, poverty, losses, and
no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears
others. But there is no man with a hammer; the happy man lives at
his ease, and trivial daily cares faintly agitate him like the
wind in the aspen-tree -- and all goes well.
"That night I realized that I, too, was happy and contented,"
Ivan Ivanovitch went on, getting up. "I, too, at dinner and at
the hunt liked to lay down the law on life and religion, and the
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