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“We interrupt our regularly-scheduled programming to bring you this important message. . . .”

from HERO (2002), directed by Zhang Yimou, starring Jet Li

As I said I would, I’ll write to you soon about the Fire in “The Friend Who May Not Seem a Friend.”  But I have to share with you first an exceptional, timely gift that came to me this week.

Certain voices have the power to reach us over continents and decades, or centuries, as though the person speaking were at our elbow and knew just what we’re going through now.  I was reading Emerson:  The Mind on Fire by Robert D. Richardson, which my wife had recommended and lent to me.  When I read the passage below, I had to type it up, print it out, and put it next to this keyboard.  It’s from a letter that Emerson wrote to an English friend, John Sterling, in 1843:

A man must do the work with that faculty he has now.  But that faculty is the accumulation of past days.  No rival can rival backwards.  What you have learned and done is safe and fruitful.  Work and learn in evil days, in insulted days, in days of debt and depression and calamity.  Fight best in the shade of the cloud of arrows.



This post first appeared on Lawrenceruss | Photography And The Other Arts In Relation To Society And The Soul., please read the originial post: here

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