From Chapter XI, About Time, Book I of Upon A Time in France, by James I Kepner

“Stories have a path of their own through time. They require so much of some times and little of others lest their point be lost in a welter of detail and chronology. A story finds its way through the labyrinth of life, like Ariadne’s thread through the Minotaur’s maze, turning back and forth, with many turns and paths untaken, that it should find its way to its appointed end.

So too does the soul weave its stories across many lifetimes, not all in the order of time as we understand it. The soul’s life is much like the Minotaur’s maze: blind paths that turn one back the way one has come, ways that exit unexpectedly back into the garden from which one has entered, only to begin again. And of course, one hopes to avoid the Minotaur but, ofttimes, is eaten by him. And there is also Ariadne, in the form of loving and helping souls, trying to guide us as if by a thread.

This is the nature of things, especially the nature of time and the soul’s journey. May my reader excuse my approach, which jumps like a skipping stone through time. I hope my stories will coalesce in my reader’s mind, one story interweaving with the others, until the maze that is my life can be seen as a whole, as if from a bird’s-eye view. Or an angel’s.”