|
|
Hear Gifts by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Emerson's beliefs were characterized by his motto "Trust thyself" and a reliance on intuition as the only way to comprehend reality. After leaving his original profession as a minister, he became known as the chief spokesperson for Transcendentalism, the American philosophic and literary movement that challenged scientific rationalism in the nineteenth century. "Gifts", one of his famous Essays, reveals his notions on the true nature of a gift from one individual to another and of giving and receiving in a materialistic society. From Self-Reliance: "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."  Christine Sweet
Hear selections from Marked by Water and
The Asking Year, poetry of John F. O'Brien. In much of this work, O'Brien explores the influence of water, how it marks the body, mind and spirit as well as the landscape. Its presence - and at times its absence - shapes us as human beings: what we are, what we remember, where we want to be.
Christine Sweet
|
|
