The Girding of Loins

Environmentalism

They who know of no purer sources of truth, who

have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and

wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution,

and drink at it there with reverence and humility;

but they who behold where it comes trickling into

this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more,

and continue their pilgrimage  toward its fountain-

head. (Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”)l

 

When they came for the guitars I just stood there

and said nothing.  Ungirded loins.  To Do Wrong

among  the Parts & Devilish Details in order to Do

Right in  Accord with Higher Laws amounts to

Doing Wrong to Do Right. Fear & Trembling.

Wretch like me: I’m a goodie—wanna be good so

bad I can’t afford the bad-it-takes to get good 

to do good so as to throw the first stones.

Plenty of models  (Mark Hopkins sitting on a log,  any

prophet despised  in his own  home town,  Ichabod

Crane,  Anne Sullivan —Thoreau’s different  drummer—

rump a pum pum—). But Socrates is my  teaching model,

pedagogical patriarch —question everything: a  jesus of

liberal art—but not  the liberal arts: them majors  and

minors and poster and  capstone events.  I would gird

 my loins.

(I’m not spiritual worth a damn but I’m religious as hell
—especially when fearful, precarious, uncertain, needy,
anxious… then it’s all like Lord Jesus Christ, son of God,
have Mercy Upon Me, a Sinner, over and over, unceasingly
which happens to be my upbringing, heritage, tradition,
but I could as easily been some other—whatever. Essentials)