Letter from Will Petersen, Feb, 1969

P2
Frank, it is right that I publish THE PREFIGURATION. This summer I will be able to do it.
So much comes clear. The work goes well,, family life is a delight---We work as one. I expect we will falter, lose the vision, stumble, take a false turn....
But how grateful I am that I'm no longer twenty or thirty! To be 40 and past so much, it is so good. I would not want to go through those pains again.
Only one more comment, and the rest must wait: Your letter ending: "See, I've started this letter feeling sorry for myself..." Looking over so many unmailed letters, I find letter after letter beginning in despair, grief, self-pity, confusion and ending with the spiritual--ending with an awakening, a realization of form. And happening so often with a word or a name that entered the letter and then altered its course...Zeami, Dante, Ryokan, St. Francis,...I'm not saying what I feel I want to say. I suppose this is where I err--dissecting. What is to be said is sayable only in the work. The work is done. Needs only typing up. I can send it off. And now I can, at last, return to the stone, complete the "from the Triune" print that has been so long in limbo. I'm eager to send it to you...
you are the only one who knows what I'm doing. the only man able to offer criticism.

"The fear of God" I've never comprehended, and always questioned. For love knows no fear. But it comes to me now, as I say: friendship is a frightening thing. Awesome. For one cannot be false.

Well, sir. How good it feels. There is nothing to say!
Namu Amida Butsin
In Gassho,
Will