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Thursday, July 02, 2015

"Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself."

Check out the complete comic at the link.  ZEN PENCILS » 179. MAX EHRMANN: Desiderata: "Desiderata (Latin for ‘things to be desired’) is a famous poem with a complicated history. Max Ehrmann (1872-1945), a lawyer and poet from Indiana, wrote the poem sometime in the 1920s and distributed it locally, although it never received any widespread attention. However in the 1950s, the Reverend of St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore printed the poem in a collection of devotional pieces for his congregation with a notation stating “Old St. Pauls Church, Baltimore A.C. 1692.” As the booklet got distributed more and more over the years, it led to people believing the poem originated with the church and was hundreds of years old, despite the modern style of writing. The wrong credit gained more credibility after the death of American politician Adlai Stevenson in 1965. A copy of Desiderata was found on his bedside table, putting the poem in the spotlight again, but of course it had the incorrect St. Paul’s attribution. It went on to be hugely popular in the late 60s and early 70s among the counter-culture generation. So if you see the poem around with the wrong credit, make sure to give props to Max Ehrmann."





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