How beautiful, how grand and perfect death was, how good to look forward to. There one would wash off all the lies and ignominy and dirt that had been put upon one here, a perfect bath of cleanness and glad refreshment, and go unknown, unquestioned, unabased. After all, one was rich, if only in the promise of perfect death. It was a gladness above all, that this remained to look forward to, the pure inhuman otherness of death.

Paul felt life changing around him. The conditions of youth were gone.

If you are satisfied with the results you are now getting, why change? If you are not satisfied, why not experiment?

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash'd babe, and am not contained between my hat and my boots

Enough - the Centenarian's story ends; The two, past and present, have interchanged; I myself, as connector, as chansonnier of a great future, am now speaking.

Since you can't change the past, you may as well make the best of the present.

We recognize already that regeneration of the spirit is the paramount need of man.

The electric bulb cannot give light without electricity. Likewise, you cannot change yourself if today you are cut off from Christ. If there be any change or difference in you, it is not because you yourself have changed, for all is in Christ. Such is the way of God's salvation.[2]

Because it has been so united with the devil it is vital for man to receive from God a change of mind before he can receive a new heart.

And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly.

The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what's bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.

To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one's part in it anew.