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LTC Stephen F.
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Edited 4 y ago
Thank you my friend Maj Marty Hogan for letting us know that May 25 is the anniversary of the birth of American essayist, lecturer, philosopher and poet and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Sadly Emerson believed that a human's mind can reveal truths and that it holds greater power than a church sharing beliefs.
I doubt he is resting in peace since he seemed to be a lifelong transcendentalist

Ralph Waldo Emerson background from {[https://poets.org/poet/ralph-waldo-emerson]}
"1803-1882 , Boston , MA
Ralph Waldo Emerson
American poet, essayist, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803, in Boston, Massachusetts. After studying at Harvard and teaching for a brief time, Emerson entered the ministry. He was appointed to the Old Second Church in his native city, but soon became an unwilling preacher. Unable in conscience to administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper after the death of his nineteen-year-old wife of tuberculosis, Emerson resigned his pastorate in 1831.

The following year, he sailed for Europe, visiting Thomas Carlyle and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Carlyle, the Scottish-born English writer, was famous for his explosive attacks on hypocrisy and materialism, his distrust of democracy, and his highly romantic belief in the power of the individual. Emerson’s friendship with Carlyle was both lasting and significant; the insights of the British thinker helped Emerson formulate his own philosophy.

On his return to New England, Emerson became known for challenging traditional thought. In 1835, he married his second wife, Lydia Jackson, and settled in Concord, Massachusetts. Known in the local literary circle as “The Sage of Concord," Emerson became the chief spokesman for Transcendentalism, the American philosophic and literary movement. Centered in New England during the 19th century, Transcendentalism was a reaction against scientific rationalism.

Emerson’s first book, Nature (1836), is perhaps the best expression of his Transcendentalism, the belief that everything in our world—even a drop of dew—is a microcosm of the universe. His concept of the Over-Soul—a Supreme Mind that every man and woman share—allowed Transcendentalists to disregard external authority and to rely instead on direct experience. “Trust thyself," Emerson’s motto, became the code of Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, and W. E. Channing. From 1842 to 1844, Emerson edited the Transcendentalist journal, The Dial.

Emerson wrote a poetic prose, ordering his essays by recurring themes and images. His poetry, on the other hand, is often called harsh and didactic. Among Emerson’s most well known works are Essays, First and Second Series (1841, 1844). The First Series includes Emerson’s famous essay, “Self-Reliance," in which the writer instructs his listener to examine his relationship with Nature and God, and to trust his own judgment above all others.

Emerson’s other volumes include Poems (1847), Representative Men (1850), The Conduct of Life (1860), and English Traits (1865). His best-known addresses are The American Scholar (1837) and The Divinity School Address, which he delivered before the graduates of the Harvard Divinity School, shocking Boston’s conservative clergymen with his descriptions of the divinity of man and the humanity of Jesus.

Emerson’s philosophy is characterized by its reliance on intuition as the only way to comprehend reality, and his concepts owe much to the works of Plotinus, Swedenborg, and Böhme. A believer in the “divine sufficiency of the individual," Emerson was a steady optimist. His refusal to grant the existence of evil caused Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry James, Sr., among others, to doubt his judgment. In spite of their skepticism, Emerson’s beliefs are of central importance in the history of American culture.

Ralph Waldo Emerson died of pneumonia on April 27, 1882.

Selected Bibliography

Prose
Essays: First Series (1841)
Essays: Second Series (1844)
Addresses, and Lectures (1849)
Representative Men (1850)
The Conduct of Life (1860)
English Traits (1865)
Society and Solitude (1870)

"Ralph Waldo Emerson taught us about the presence of nature and something a little divine inside all of us. "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOkdFMw0pmk

FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen C. Maj William W. "Bill" Price Capt Seid Waddell CW5 (Join to see) SMSgt Minister Gerald A. Thomas SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SSgt (Join to see) SP5 Mark Kuzinski SGT John " Mac " McConnell SGT Robert George SP5 Robert Ruck SCPO Morris RamseyCPL Eric Escasio SPC (Join to see) SrA Christopher Wright SPC Margaret Higgins Kim Bolen RN CCM ACM SGT Gregory Lawritson
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SGT English/Language Arts Teacher
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"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in 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." From "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A favorite quote of mine.

COL Mikel J. Burroughs LTC Stephen F. SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen MAJ James Woods SPC Woody Bullard Sgt Wayne Wood Lt Col Charlie Brown SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth MSG Andrew White SFC Shirley Whitfield CSM Charles Hayden SPC Margaret Higgins Maj Marty Hogan LTC Greg Henning Maj William W. 'Bill' Price SP5 Mark Kuzinski SGT John " Mac " McConnell SSG Jon Hill SGT Jim Arnold
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SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth
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Great bio share on Mr Emerson.
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