Quote for upcoming book on THE PROPHET

From: ...@...
Date: Tue May 17, 2005 9:11 pm
Subject: Quote for upcoming book on THE PROPHET

I would like to invite you to provide a quote in the upcoming publication of a
book (tentatively) titled: A New Path to the Prophet: Kahlil Gibran's
Masterpiece Retold for Everyone .

A New Path to the Prophet is intended to bring the extraordinary messages of
peace, hope, comfort, and universal brotherhood from Kahlil Gibran’s beloved
1923 masterpiece The Prophet to a new and expanded modern audience.

In effort to emphasize the universality of Gibran’s amazing messages, the book
will include a quote at the start of each chapter. These will be from
individuals from all corners of the world and all walks of life (from
celebrities to the homeless), and will represent what that individual feels is
especially meaningful and significant in a particular chapter.

The individual's name and brief biographical information will also be included.
Each person is chosen with hope that they will prompt the reader to examine the
quote and chapter on a deeper level.


I would like to include a quote chosen by you from the chapter on “Houses.”

Should you decide to participate, you should kindly limit your choice to a
maximum of two consecutive lines from the chapter (below).


A copy of the complete manuscript can be forwarded for your consideration. The
text from Gibran's 1923 original may be viewed at:
http://www.kahlil.org/home.html

The quote along with the permission statement may be cut and pasted into an
e-mail (from the text below). A hard copy of all relevant documents may also
been sent upon request.

Thank you for your time and consideration. Please do not hesitate to contact
me with any questions.

Sincerely,
Dr. Joseph J. Cilona


Chapter Nine

Then a builder said, Speak to us of Houses. And he answered and said:

Build houses in your imaginings just as you build houses in your cities.
Because just as you return home when your day is done, so does that part of you
that dreams and is forever distant and alone.
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun, sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it also dreams.
Doesn’t it also, in dreams, travel with you to other places?

If I could gather your houses into my hand, I would scatter them throughout the
land.
If only the valleys were your streets and the green paths your alleys.
If only you could seek each other and gather in nature, with the fragrance of
the earth in your clothes. But it still cannot be this way.
In their fear your ancestors gathered you too close together. And that fear
will last a little longer. And your city walls will separate you from your
lands a little longer.

And tell me, what do you have in your houses? And what is it that you guard
behind locked doors? Is it peace, the quiet will of your true power? Is it
your memories, the shining arches that span the reaches of your mind?
Is it the beauty that leads your hearts from material things to the true spirit
of life?
Tell me, do you have these things in your house?
Or do you have only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that thing that comes
into your house first as a guest, and then becomes host, and then master?

That lust for comfort also becomes a tamer, attaching strings to and making
puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are soft and silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand at your bedside and sneer at your dignity.

It mocks your good senses, laying them down in softness as if they are fragile
and delicate. Indeed, the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and
then walks grinning at the funeral.

But if you can find comfort in open space, and if you become restless with too
much rest, you will not be trapped or tamed by the lust for comfort.
Your house will not be an anchor holding you back, but rather a mast for a sail
and the winds to carry you.
It will not be a shining film that covers a wound, but instead like an eyelid
that protects the eye.
And you will not have to fold your wings so you can pass through doors, or bend
your heads so that they do not hit a ceiling, or feel fear that your breath will
cause walls to crack and fall down.
And you will not reside in tombs made for the living by the dead.
And however humble or magnificent, your house will never hold your secret or
shelter your desires.
Because the boundless in you resides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is
the sunrise and whose windows are the songs and silences of the night.



PERMISSION TO USE QUOTE

FOR GOOD CONSIDERATION, the undersigned irrevocably authorizes Dr Joseph J.
Cilona to use, publish or reprint in whole or in part the quotation (specified
by Osam Altaee) excerpted from the book with the (working) title: A New Path to
the Prophet: Kahlil Gibran’s Masterpiece Retold for Today. This authorization
shall extend only to the publication with the (working) title A New Path to the
Prophet: Kahlil Gibran’s Masterpiece Retold for Today, including all new
editions, reprints, advertisements, publicity and promotions thereto of said
work.