Be under no illusion, you shall gather to yourself the images you love. As you go, the shapes, the lights, the shadows of the things you have preferred will come to you, yes, inveterately, inevitably as bees to their hive. And there in your mind and spirit they will leave with you their distilled essence, sweet as honey or bitter as gall, and you will grow unto their likeness because their nature will be in you.
As men see the color in the wave so shall men see in you the thing you have loved most. Out of your eyes will look the spirit you have chosen. In your smile and in your frown the years will speak.
You will not walk nor stand nor sit, nor will your hand move, but you will confess the one you serve, and upon your forehead will be written his name as by a revealing pen.
Cleverness may select skillful words to cast a veil about you, and circumspection may never sleep, yet will you not be hid. No.
As year adds to year, that face of yours, which once like an unwritten page, lay smooth in your baby crib, will take to itself lines, and still more lines, as the parchment of an old historian who jealously sets down all the story. And there, more deep than acids etch the steel, will grow the inscribed narrative of your mental habits, the emotions of your heart, your sense of conscience, your response to duty, what you think of your God and of your fellowmen and of yourself. It will all be there. For men become like that which they love, and the name thereof is written on their brow.
In July 2003 I attended a meeting where Freeman Hrabowski, President of UMBC presented a keynote address. He shared this from Oswald W.S. McCall.
