Hippies

Rock 'n' Roll

in the Bible

CONTENTS

• Hippies and Rock 'n' Roll in the Bible
• hippies
• flower children
• a sociologist's perspective:
• The idea of paganism.
• (Job 38:39-40) "Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion?
• Who provided for the raven his food?
• The idea of changing place.
• Their young ones are in good liking, they grow up with corn
• The idea of salvation by the child.
• Who hath sent out the wild ass free?
• The idea of liberty.
• Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee
• The idea of psychological adjustment.
• She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers
• The idea of female equality.
• Hast thou given the horse strength?
• The idea of self-expression.
• Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom
• The idea of living for the moment.
• Rock 'n' Roll in the Bible
• the motion of the earth with respect to the sun.
• (Matt. 5:45b) "... your Father which is in heaven: ... maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."
• Rock 'n' roll songs about various dances
• Songs about various historical events
• Songs about fashion
• Songs about various stages of age
• Songs about consumerism
• Songs about getting ones heart broken
• Songs about war.
• Sports songs.
• Rock and roll ballads and stories.
• The pursuit of courtship.
• A lot of car songs and racing songs, and accident songs for that matter.
• Songs about poverty and the economy

Hippies and Rock 'n' Roll in the Bible

I've read through brother Jed Smock's book Who Will Rise Up?, typical of evangelical sentiment—I'm not singling it out—and surmise he'd have us all be covenant keepers rather than rebel against God. I've no argument with him there. What I've noticed in chapter 3 on hippies, and in chapter 11 on rock 'n' roll is that he's used the word of God more like a blunt instrument than a fine edged sword. I'm wondering if we can't use it with more finesse.

Let's look at hippies, no mere passing fad. "We suggest that the most surprising development of the sixties and the one with the most far-reaching significance was the rise of the hippie culture and its impact on the world."¹ And:²

A quite [non-alarmist] assessment of hippies was made in 1968 at the peak of the "flower children" phase. It appeared in the Christian quarterly Religion in Life:³

Hippies are actually dropouts from the middle-class
society. They have disengaged themselves from the most
basic social institutions and have cut themselves free
from family and other established relationships. Their
life of poverty and unkempt dress and vernacular speech is
deceiving. They are not "kooks" or misfits, as is some-
times believed. Instead they are from the leadership pool
of the age group; usually creative, intelligent, deeply
committed to humanistic values, and come from affluent
backgrounds...  They are not slum children or from
impoverished backgrounds. The majority are educational
dropouts; not because they lack ability, but because they
are weary of mass education and feel that what they are
getting in school is not worth the effort. ...

More than 30 years ago (a "generation," as Karl Mannheim reckoned social time, two generations as Jose Ortega y Gasset reckoned it, and three, four, or more as contemporary journalists and other grabbers of the main literary chance reckon it), the literary critic Malcolm Cowley wrote Exile's Return, a book about the experience of American literary expatriates in Europe in the 1920's. In it he treats to some extent the history of bohemianism, starting back in the middle of the 19th century with that important document of bohemian history, Henry Murger's Scenes of Bohemian Life. By 1920, Cowley says, bohemia had a relatively formal doctrine, "a system of ideas that could be roughly summarized as follows" (and as I go through these eight basic ideas, please keep in mind the hippies—and the fact that these ideas were formulated 33 years ago about phenomena that were then more than a hundred years old):

1. The first point in the bohemian doctrine is what Cowley calls "The idea of salvation by the child.—Each of us at birth has special potentialities which are slowly crushed and destroyed by a standardized society and mechanical modes of teaching. If a new educational system can be introduced, one by which children are encouraged to develop their own personalities, to [listen!] blossom freely like flowers, then the world will be saved by this new, free generation."
2. "The idea of self-expression.——Each man's, each woman's, purpose in life is to express himself, to realize his full individuality through creative work and beautiful living in beautiful surroundings." This, I believe is identical with the hippies' moral injunction to "do your thing."
3. "The idea of paganism.—The body is a temple in which there is nothing unclean, a shrine to be adorned for the ritual of love." Contemporary paganism, by no means limited to the hippies but especially prevalent among them, is manifest in the overpowering eroticism that their scene exudes: the prevalence of female flesh (toe, ankle, belly, breast, and thigh) and male symbols of strength (beards, boots, denim, buckles, motorcycles), or the gentler and more restrained versions of these, or the by-now hardly controversial assumption that fucking will help set you free.
4. "The idea of living for the moment. ..." Today, this might be formulated as something like being super WOW where the action is in the NOW generation, who, like, know what's happening and where it's at.
5. "The idea of liberty."
6. "The idea of female equality.—Women should be the economic and moral equals of men ..." with respect to cultural differences between the sexes, and evident in the insistence that men may be gentle and women aggressive, and in the merging of sexually related symbols of adornment (long hair, beads, bells, colorful clothes, and so on).
7. "The idea of psychological adjustment.—We are unhappy because ... we are repressed." To Cowley, the then-contemporary version of the doctrine prescribed that repression could and should be overcome by Freudian analysis, or by the mystic qualities of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff's psycho-physical disciplining, or by a daily dose of thyroid. Today, repression may be up-tightness or "game reality," and it is not Freud but Reich, not thyroid but LSD, not Gurdjieff but yoga, I Ching, The Book of the Dead, or some other meditational means of transcending the realities that hang one up.
8. Cowley's final point in the bohemian doctrine is the old romantic love of the exotic. "The idea of changing place.—'They do things better in ...'" (you name it).

    ...

Hippie morality, then, ... seems only the most recent expression of a long tradition. ... Hippie morality is not new, but I think that more souls are believing it. The proportions of the age-grade may not be any larger, but absolute numbers are enormous—for two very good and rather new reasons. First, there is the unprecedented, colossal size of the cohort between, say, 13 and 25, even a small percentage of which produces very large numbers indeed. Second, this cohort of morally deviant youth has been swelled by the group known as "teenyboppers"—pre-adolescents and early adolescents who have not, to my knowledge, previously played any significant role in bohemian movements.

But these eight doctrines go back a lot further than just two centuries, back to Job, in fact, the oldest book in the Bible. In a list of eight common animals each animal corresponds to a point in the bohemian/hippie doctrine (but in a different order). Let me compare (Job 38:39-39:30). Take:

¶ "The idea of paganism.³—The body is a temple in which there is nothing unclean, a shrine to be adorned for the ritual of love." Contemporary paganism, by no means limited to the hippies but especially prevalent among them, is manifest in the overpowering eroticism that their scene exudes: the prevalence of female flesh (toe, ankle, belly, breast, and thigh) and male symbols of strength (beards, boots, denim, buckles, motorcycles), or the gentler and more restrained versions of these, or the by-now hardly controversial assumption that fucking will help set you free.

(Song 4:2) "Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them." She's had both her baby teeth and her regular ones, all of them even in a row, all clean, and no gaps.

(Song 4:3) "Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks." Her lips are a continuous thread—no cleft pallet—, her speech mechanism functioning well, and a smooth forehead, not a wrinkled prune.

Israel loved bright colors. They colored their dress, the walls of their houses, and the faces of their women. ... ¶Nature had given the land of Canaan one of the most wonderful painters' palettes. The children of Israel needed only to stretch out their hands. Pomegranates and saffron yielded a lovely yellow; madder root and safflower, a fiery red; woad, a heavenly blue; ... ¶The lips, cheeks, and eyelids of beautiful women were dyed. "Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet ...; thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate ..."; "... how much better ... the smell of thine ointments than all spices" (Song of Solomon 4:3; 4:10), sings King Solomon himself in his Song of Songs, one of the most beautiful love songs in the world.

In highly poetic language it refers to Israel's delight in adornment and discreetly deals with the secrets of the beauty parlor. These perfumes and paints, ointments and hair dyes, choice and expensive, manufactured with the best ingredients that the world could provide would still do credit to the much-lauded cosmetics industry of Europe and America.

Werner Keller, The Bible as History⁵

(Song 4:4) "Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men." Her neck is straight as a tower, no crick in it, on which lightly hang chains of jewelry.

(Song 4:5) "Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies." Her breasts are young and bouncy and identical.

(Song 4:6-7) "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee." He is enjoying the heightened sense of smell in the dark before daybreak. There is no decaying odor about her.

Now comes daylight. (Song 4:8) "Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards." Lebanon was noted for its tress. In a forest one is all closed in and can't see out. He wants to get away from that to a mountain top. From the top of a mountain one can see out, all over. Now that it's light he wants to see his spouse ... all over. "From the lions' dens." What can that mean but the boldness of the lion? The lion gets what it wants; it's not ashamed of its body and won't turn aside for any (Prov. 30:30). I shall use the following story to illustrate this verse.

As I lay half dozing, and the black Transylvania night turned to grey in the arrow-slit up in the wall, there was a gentle tap on the door, then another. I got up, cursing devoutly, and made my way across to the door, ...

'Who the Devil is it?'

A familiar musical laugh sounded from the other side. 'The Devil it's me, Elisabeth."

'Heilige Gottesmutter, Liserl — what on earth do you want at this hour?'

...

She placed a canvas haversack on the table. 'Come on, Otto my love, get dressed. We're going for a walk.'

'A walk — are you mad? What time is it in God's name?'

'It's 4.30 and we're going mountaineering.' She smiled and her dark green eyes sparkled. 'Really Herr Kommandant, I would hardly have thought that a distinguished Imperial and Royal U-Boat captain and officially certified war hero would have made such a fuss about being woken up just before dawn.'

'But mountain-walking, at this hour ...'

John Biggins, A Sailor of Austria⁶

We must have cut a strange figure as we climbed up the mountain pathway through the forest: a slim, pretty young woman who, but for her Magyar-Latin looks, might have been an English governess on holiday in Switzerland, accompanied by a Naval Lieutenant in a bow-tie and starched shirt. But before long there was no one to remark on our appearance. The path climbed steeply up the mountainside and before an hour was out we were sitting just below the tree-line eating a breakfast of bread and salami and brewing coffee in a Army mess-tin over a fire of twigs.⁶

We put out the fire and continued our climb up through the forest, Elisabeth striding ahead with that graceful, hip-swinging walk of hers, myself following with the rifle and the haversack. We climbed upwards until the oak and beech forest gave way to pine and birch. Then, quite suddenly, we found ourselves on the edge of a great expanse of mountain meadow on top of a ridge, about two hundred metres up I should think.

'Glorious, isn't it?' said Elisabeth, panting a little in the thin air.⁶

'Oh Otto, why can't it always be like this? No war, no U-Boats, no wounds to dress; only like this for always.'

'Yes. But I don't suppose it's a wish that will ever be granted. Somehow there always seems to be enough pain in the world to go round; and we've both got to go back to it all the day after tomorrow.'

She was silent for a while, then she said suddenly, 'Tell me Otto — why do you have to go back?'

The question was so directly put that it took some time to sink in.

'What do you mean, why go back? Damn it all, woman, if I don't go back I'll be arrested as a common deserter, even though I'm an officer, and probably get shot for it. Even getting back a day late without reasonable excuse would get me court-martialed.'

She looked at me, her eyes shrewd and searching beneath their strong, black brows. 'Very good then: become a deserter if that's what you want to call it; you'll certainly not be the only one. I was talking with Dr Navratil back at the hospital just before I left, and he said that the forests in Bohemia are thick with them. If they're going to shoot you for not fighting their rotten war for them then I don't think they deserve you anyway.'

I was speechless for a while, so outrageous — almost blasphemous — was this talk to someone who had spent his entire adult life as an officer of the House of Austria. Finally my voice returned.

'Elisabeth, have you gone completely mad? I'm an Imperial and Royal naval officer with twelve years' seniority, not some half-witted Ruthene ploughboy making a dash for the Russian lines ...'

'Yes, and I'm the woman who loves you and I don't give a copper farthing any longer for Austria or the Navy or the war after what I've seen. Listen, there's a shepherd's hut not far from here, over in that next valley. He owes me a good turn from when I was a girl and brought him some medicine when his wife had a fever. I got a message to him before we came here and he says that he'll gladly hide you. They'll never find you up here, or not until the war's long over, and I can always spin them some tale about you falling over a cliff. If the soldiers can walk out on the war, then why not the officers as well?'

'But Elisabeth — be reasonable for God's sake: I'm a U-Boat commander fighting the enemies of the Father —'

... No dearest, you're the only man I'll ever love and I'm not going to let them take you from me.'⁶

It now remains to look at "the mountains of the leopards" to complete the imagery.

We began to kiss: not with the decorum hitherto thought proper to our betrothed state but wild, intoxicating kisses. She pulled me to her lithe body, and began to fumble with my clothes.

'Otto, make love to me here ... don't go away from me.'

'Liserl, are you crazy? We're due to be married in July ...' ¶Well, here was a curious turn of events and no mistake: the seducer of many years' standing, practised in all the arts of getting women into the horizontal, now faced here with this delectable young woman importuning him to render his services — yet unaccountably reluctant to pay the tribute demanded of him. But please understand that whatever our own feelings in the matter, there were other considerations. Old Austria was a curious society, very prim in some respects and extremely licentious in others, but with very strict unwritten rules of behaviour. And while it was only expected that an unmarried officer should expend his vigour quite freely among actresses and shop-girls or even the daughters of the liberal intelligentsia, pre-marital relations with a noblewoman to whom one was betrothed were a slightly different matter. Quite apart from the lady's own honour, there was that of her family to be considered. I may sound like a cold-blooded calculating brute, but I knew that the Kelésvays would dearly like me out of the way: also that Miklos was reputed to be an excellent shot ...⁶

The same kind of imagery is present in The Warlord.⁷

It is a short northward trip to the town of Taian at the base of the central massif of Shantung. Tai Shan rises high above the other mountains, most of them barren, shorn of timber long ago by peasants needing fuel. Seeing Tai Shan in the distance with its crown of snow, the General remembers his promise to take Black Jade there. He has long carried a vision of them doing it: the two of them slowly mounting the famous brick-paved road toward the temples at the summit; at dawn, from that vantage point, they would have viewed the emerging world, pristine gold in the first light.

... Ahead is the long, winding six-mile Pan Lu Road, the Broad Way to Heaven, leading to the summit. ... Bending down, Tang picks up two palm-sized rocks and hands them to each of his aides. Do you know the practice? If you ever build a house for yourself, have your Tai Shan stone inserted in a corner. Get a carver to cut these words into the stone: 'A stone from Tai Shan. Let none dare harm the house that has it.'"

The exposure, the view, and the shelter for safety, unfolding in a leisurely walk: a trip that resonates with lovers.

Dr. Laura was offering advice on the radio to a married couple wanting to do something agreeable together. She suggested something "simple" like showering together three times a week. They liked that suggestion, and the man added they could go hiking in the mountains. Those two activities seemed to resonate together.

Have you seen the movie The Marine? In it a U.S. Marine John Triton gets summarily discharged after having ignored a direct order so he could save his fellow Marines in a hostile situation. His wife looking out her window sees John exiting a taxi, and she runs and is all over him for joy.

Soon they are seen but semidressed—but within the "sensuality" bounds of a PG-13 rating—discussing what he should do now. His wife says she wants him to do what makes him happy. At that he picks her up and starts carrying her off. She asks what he's doing. He responds, "What makes me happy." This works OK in a PG-13 film.

Next he loses his job as a security guard for going over the top. He discusses with his wife what can he do, he's trained in surveillance, tracking, infiltration, hand to hand combat, and rescue. Not much in demand in civilian life.

Well, they decide to enjoy themselves, to take a trip to—where else?—the mountains where they both have memories. Well, on the way there they are low on gas and stop to fill up. At the gas station some real bad guys kill one cop, wound another, kidnap the Marine's wife, and steal their car. John, the dazed Marine, commandeers the police car and takes off in pursuit, eventually pursuing them through an alligator infested swamp and beyond. Now, in movies that make us feel good, a Marine gets home and we want to see him do what makes him happy. A trip to the mountains goes well here too. And when the wife gets kidnapped, we are perfectly fine with the husband, a big ex-Marine, pursuing in a souped up police cruiser, the bad guys being chased by a determined husband who's trained in surveillance, tracking, infiltration, hand to hand combat, and rescue. It works in a movie, it resonates with Song of Solomon in the Bible.

Now, getting back to Job and hippies, God is not presenting the leopard, just the lion's den. He is not telling hippies to have unrestrained sex, but to have boldness with respect to duties to remain covered. The lion is not ashamed of its body in seeking its prey in order to feed its cubs, so why should a woman be ashamed to, say, breast feed her baby in public? (Num. 23:24) "Behold, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain." (Nahum 2:11-12) "Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feedingplace of the young lions, where the lion, even the old lion, walked, and the lion's whelp, and none made them afraid? The lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin." And for that matter, it is downright inconvenient to cover up as the Muslim women are required to, and they could probably expose a "toe, ankle, belly, breast [to hungry baby], and thigh" without totally distracting the man with pure eyes—see Job 31:1. At any rate the hippies don't seem to be ashamed of their bodies, and perhaps there is something that could be said for that.

In case that explanation seems convoluted, let me clarify it:

Lion⁸
Asiatic lions disappeared from the Holy Land about the 14th century AD, though they remained in Mesopotamia and Syria until the 19th century.

---

Leopard⁸
Although leopards are now a vanishing species in the Middle East, in biblical times these large cats were plentiful in Lebanon and the Holy Land. Leopards inhabited mountainous terrain and forests ...

These were local denizens of the Holy Land in biblical times, but as types what they represent goes further, even down to today.

While they waited, Ruth Brandywine said, "Let me tell you about another classic experiment. There is a hallucinogenic plant in Peru that the Indians use to concoct a potent drink that gives them hallucinations that involve black panthers, leopards, flying snakes, the typical images that keep turning up in their art. Someone began to wonder what outsiders would see if they ingested this drug, and they tried it on Naïve North American students, people who knew nothing about it and its effects and the images. They saw black panthers, leopards, flying snakes." The waitress brought her drink; after she was gone again, Ruth Brandywine lifted the glass and said, "Many hypotheses have been suggested, but no explanation that satisfies has come yet. Cheers." She drank.

...

"But consider, Mr. Holloway. Worldwide—nationality aside, religion aside, belief systems aside—the same images turn up in the art of children. The same images turn up in the art of psychopaths. Would you see snakes and large cats under the influence of the Peruvian drug? Probably. We have the same latent images in our psyches, archetypes, if you prefer, the same pattern of behavior under certain conditions, all of us share them.

—Kate Wilhelm, Death Qualified⁹

What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria, on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip — labium, from labor (?) —laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet farther.

Thus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. ... You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.

I was invited to march with the La Leche organization in the Eugene Celebration parade, and why not? It's not gay pride or anything like that; their message is that breast feeding is healthy for baby, healthy for mother. In the South women in the holiness Pentecostal churches will breast feed their babies right in the front row.

A single gal I know who purports to be Christian had a baby saying she was only showing her boyfriend "hippie love." Yes, but she should have had a hippie wedding first.

Continuing down the list in Job:

Who provided for the raven his food? When his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat.

¶ Cowley's final point in the bohemian doctrine is the old romantic love of the exotic. "The idea of changing place.—'They do things better in ...'"

               The Twa Corbies

          As I was walking all alane,
          I heard twa corbies making a mane;
          The tane unto the t'other say,
          "Where shall we gang and dine to-day?"

          "In behint yon auld fail dyke,                  5
          I wot there lies a new slain knight;
          And naebody kens that he lies there,
          But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.

          "His hound is to the hunting gane,
          His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,          10
          His lady's ta'en another mate,
          So we may mak our dinner sweet.

          "Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
          And I'll pike out his bonny blue een;
          With ae lock o his gowden hair                 15
          We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.

          "Mony a one for him makes mane,
          But nane sall ken where he is gane;
          O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
          The wind shall blaw for evermair."             20
                                Anonymous
                    (Seventeenth Century)

     Title: "the Two Ravens."  alane (1): alone.  mane (2): moan.
     tane (3): one.  sall (4): shall.  gang (4): go.  auld fail
     dyke (5): old turf wall.  hause-bane (13): neck bone.  pike
     (14): pick.  een (14): eyes.  ae (15): one.  gowden (15):
     golden.  theek (16): thatch.

When I traveled around in a hippie commune bus, one of our favorite expressions was, "Keep on truckin'" which found universal acceptance among other hippies. Like we were always seeking something better and different. Here is another perspective:

Sam ducked his head and looked for a place as near the back as he could find, behind all the others except for a long-haired boy with the scruffy look of the '60s about him, who sat by himself at the very rear. ...

There was a scraping sound behind him, and Sam looked backward between the seats, to see the long-haired youth lifting a backpack from the rack above his head. Painted on the side, in orange Day-Glo letters, were the words THE CALIFORNIA KID IS ON HIS WAY! The pack was so old and worn that Sam wondered if he were still on his way to whatever he had had in mind when the words were painted. Perhaps ... he had never had any particular destination in mind, only the adventure of going.¹²

Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? Or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve? Canst thou number the months that they fulfill? Or knowest thou the time when they bring forth? They bow themselves, they bring forth their young ones, they cast out their sorrows. Their young ones are in good liking, they grow up with corn; they go forth and return not unto them.

¶ The first point in the bohemian doctrine is what Cowley calls "The idea of salvation by the child.—Each of us at birth has special potentialities which are slowly crushed and destroyed by a standardized society and mechanical modes of teaching. If a new educational system can be introduced, one by which children are encouraged to develop their own personalities, to [listen!] blossom freely like flowers, then the world will be saved by this new, free generation."

Who hath sent out the wild ass free? Or who hath loosed the bands of the wild ass? whose house I have made the wilderness, and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude of the city, neither regardeth he the crying of the driver. The range of the mountains is his pasture, and he searcheth after every green thing.

Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? Or will he harrow the valleys after thee? Wilt thou trust him, because his strength is great? Or wilt thou leave thy labor to him? Wilt thou believe him, that he will bring home thy seed, and gather it into thy barn?

¶ "The idea of psychological adjustment.—We are unhappy because ... we are repressed." To Cowley, the then-contemporary version of the doctrine prescribed that repression could and should be overcome by Freudian analysis, or by the mystic qualities of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff's psycho-physical disciplining, or by a daily dose of thyroid. Today, repression may be up-tightness or "game reality," and it is not Freud but Reich, not thyroid but LSD, not Gurdjieff but yoga, I Ching, The Book of the Dead, or some other meditational means of transcending the realities that hang one up.

The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, 'the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman praetors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor's land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor.' Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam.¹³

Lester never got famous. But he was one of the early rebels. ... By day he was a dockworker, and by night he was an FM-listening hashish-smoking compadre of jazz musicians, painters of the New York School and poets of the Beat generation. Lester had the quintessential Beatnik look: sandals, blue jeans, sweatshirt, T-shirt. "Work is what you don't want to do," he told me. "Pleasure is what life is for."

... Much later I realized how inspirational Lester's life was, compared to the millions of people trapped in ruts, grinding out meaningless work, coming home and being satisfied by television.¹⁴

His life example is comparable to this exhortation given to the salesman:

Being a Two-Dimensional Man¹⁵

There is the mistake of being a "lopsided" man, a two-dimensional individual who never develops his true potential for living. He is not a whole man. His two activities are working and sustaining life. As a person, he is fast beating a path to mediocrity.

You have seen this man. He has never achieved a proper balance among work, play, love, and spiritual values. He has never gotten beyond his own narrow enclosure, even to the extent of tasting a new dish. A suggestion that he develop an avocation draws only a blank stare. He is a fractional man.

A successful salesman must work hard, but if he singlemindedly excludes all other activities, he fails. He fails himself, his family, his employer, and his customer. A drudge will be treated for what he is by his clients. A "whole man" emits a spark, a zest for living lacking in the dull plodder. The lopsided salesman may get his order from time to time, but his prospects are as limited as his horizon.

The well-balanced man, on the other hand, is sought out by friends and customers alike. He possesses a magnetism that attracts business, often without any apparent effort on his part ... not satisfied with that treadmill existence. ...

Anyone can—and should—build an outside interest or activity to give his life a sense of balance. The rewards may not be immediate, but in the long run this balance will become a sort of negotiable currency. The exchange commodity? Achievement, simple happiness, success in its broadest meaning.

Material gain is bound to follow.

With his sharp nose, red at the tip, and his thin pinched lips, he always looked as though he were raging inwardly; and he was concise in his speech to the point of rudeness. All his time off duty he spent in his cabin with the door shut, keeping so still in there that he was supposed to have fallen asleep as soon as he had disappeared; but the man who came in to wake him for his watch on deck would invariably find him with his eyes wide open, flat on his back in the bunk, and glaring irritably from a soiled pillow. He never wrote any letters, did not seem to hope for news from anywhere; and though he had been heard once to mention West Hartlepool, it was with extreme bitterness, and only in connection with the extortionate charges of a boarding-house. He was one of those men who are picked up at need in the ports of the world. They are competent enough, appear hopelessly hard up, show no evidence of any sort of vice, and carry about them all the signs of manifest failure. They come aboard on an emergency, care for no ship afloat, live in their own atmosphere of casual connection amongst their shipmates who know nothing of them, and make up their minds to leave at inconvenient times. They clear out with no words of leavetaking in some God-forsaken port other men would fear to be stranded in, and go ashore in company of a shabby sea-chest, corded like a treasure-box, and with an air of shaking the ship's dust off their feet.¹⁶

I need only quote the line, 'Achievement, simple happiness, success in its broadest meaning' to show it lines up with the hippies' idea of happiness by some meditational means to escape repression, 'a proper balance among work, play, love, and spiritual values'. Now they have medicinal marijuana, but then I myself take a daily dose of thyroid by prescription, so what can I say? For my part I recommend some kind of observance of a Sabbath day of rest to get one's life in balance.

Here's another example of my last point:

She finished the coffee and set the cup down. "Look, Ben, the last thing I want to sound like is a some kind of nagging wife, or something. But you can't just work all the time, you know. I mean, I know how much the job means to you, I really do. But there's more to life than being a cop, even though you don't seem to think so. Sooner or later you're going to say, Hey—what am I doing? Where's the time I ought to have for myself, and for someone I want to share it with?"

"Yeah, I suppose that's true." Why did women always pick a time like this to try to get you into a deep discussion?

She was holding him in a cool, steady gaze. "Nobody wants to wait forever, you know."

This was getting too heavy. He drained his coffee and put the mug down. "I'll call you, when I know what's going on."¹⁷

Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wings and feathers unto the ostrich? which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them. She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers: her labor is in vain without fear; because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding. What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider.

¶ "The idea of female equality.—Women should be the economic and moral equals of men ..." with respect to cultural differences between the sexes, and evident in the insistence that men may be gentle and women aggressive, and in the merging of sexually related symbols of adornment (long hair, beads, bells, colorful clothes, and so on).

What Women's Lib people hate in men, and in the "Aunt Toms" who do not agree with them, are often things they hate in themselves. Deeply inside, they feel they have failed as women because something has gone awry in their nature which makes cooking the bacon that Daddy brings home repulsive, and raising children less a fulfillment than an attempt to keep them down.

Hatred of the mother role is implicit in the Lib mythology. Two of the movement's chief demands, as of now, are free 24-hour child care centers, and free abortion on demand. ...

The Women's Lib Movement is a product of the restlessness and rootlessness of our time. When American women got the vote, their sexual roles were sorely disoriented.¹⁸

"So, you don't share Shelly's resentment of women who work?"

"Mr. Deleeuw," she said, fixing me with a firm stare, "I am a woman who works, okay? And a feminist too. I guess I just feel more ambivalence about these things than Shelly does. Women who go to an office aren't automatically betraying their children. Women who hang around them all day aren't necessarily cheating themselves or providing lousy role models. It's not that simple. We're all different. We just have to do what works for each of us, depending on a hundred things, from finances to temperament, and try to be tolerant of everybody else. I think women will have arrived when everyone's choice is considered valid and important."

"True," I said. But we weren't at that point yet, I knew. There is a low-level civil war raging in any given suburban neighborhood or kindergarten class about all this. Some stay-at-home moms are convinced that careerists are harming their children. Some working women, wondering why homemakers don't go mad, resent the time housewives have to spend hounding teachers, running the PTA, picking the perfect piano instructor. Part-time workers feel pulled in both directions, often unable fully to please their families or satisfy their bosses. Men, for the most part, watch in bewilderment, trying to figure it all out and stay out of trouble.¹⁹

Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? The glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha! And he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.

¶ "The idea of self-expression.—Each man's, each woman's, purpose in life is to express himself, to realize his full individuality..." This, I believe is identical with the hippies' moral injunction to "do your thing."

I Am a Horse²⁰

Ignore the fact that I'm standing here placid and still; if truth be told, I've been galloping for centuries; I've passed over plains, fought in battles, carried off the melancholy daughters of shahs to be wed; I've galloped tirelessly page by page from story to history, from history to legend and from book to book; I've appeared in countless stories, fables, books and battles; I've accompanied invincible heroes, legendary lovers and fantastic armies; I've galloped from campaign to campaign with our victorious sultans, and as a result, I've appeared in countless illustrations. ...

Looking at me, observers frequently say, "Good God, what a gorgeous horse!" But they're actually praising the artist, not me. All horses are in fact distinct, and the miniaturist, above all, ought to know this.

Take a close look, even a given stallion's organ doesn't resemble another's. Don't be afraid, you can examine it up close, and even take it in your hands: My God-given marvel has a shape and a curve all its own. ...

I'm sick of being incorrectly depicted by miniaturists who sit around the house like ladies and never go off to war. They'll depict me at a gallop with both my forelegs extended at the same time. There isn't a horse in this world that runs like a rabbit. If one of my forelegs is forward, the other is aft. Contrary to what's depicted in battle illustrations, there isn't a horse in this world that extends one foreleg like a curious dog, leaving the other firmly planted on the ground. There is no spahi calvary division in existence whose horses saunter in unison, as if traced with an identical stencil twenty times back to back. We horses scrounge for and eat the green grass at our feet when nobody is looking. We never assume a statuesque stance and wait around elegantly, the way we're shown in paintings. Why is everybody so embarrassed about our eating, drinking, shitting and sleeping? Why are they afraid to depict this wondrous God-given and unique implement of mine? On the sly, women and children, in particular, love to stare at it, and what's the harm in this? ...

They say that once upon a time there was a feeble and nervous shah in Shiraz. He was in mortal fear that his enemies would have him deposed so his son could assume the throne; rather than sending the prince to Isfahan as provincial governor, he imprisoned him in the most out of the way room of his palace. The prince grew up and lived in this makeshift cell, which looked onto neither courtyard nor garden, for thirty-one years. After his father's allotted time on Earth ran out, the prince, who'd lived alone with his books, ascended the throne and declared: "I command that you bring me a horse. I've always seen pictures of them in books, and am curious about them." They brought him the most beautiful gray steed in the palace, but when the new king saw that the horse had nostrils like mine-shafts, a shameless ass, a coat duller than in illustrations and a brutish rump, he was so disenchanted that he had all the horses in his kingdom massacred. After this brutal slaughter, which lasted forty days, all the kingdom's rivers flowed a somber red. But Exalted Allah did not refrain from meting out His justice: The king now had no calvary whatsoever, and when faced with the army of his archenemy, the Turkmen Bey of the Blacksheep clan, he was routed and, in the end, hacked apart. Let there be no doubt: As all the histories will reveal, the nation of horses had taken its revenge.

When we chose a Bible translation, we weren't like many of today's believers keeping one foot firmly planted in current English usage while the other curiously probes the meaning of the ancient text, "extend[ing] one foreleg like a curious dog, leaving the other firmly planted on the ground," but we chose a dialect suitable for the Bible which is the King James Version.

We weren't the Sunday-go-to-meeting spiffily dressed churchmen who "assume a statuesque stance and wait around elegantly," but were down to earth as we lived out our dynamic faith.

When I read Job I see a bunch of relentless whiners analyzing the fairness of God in the face of a righteous life, and I see as part of God's response from the whirlwind a suggestion in the form of eight common animals, that there are actions we mortals can do, and perhaps have not been doing, that could increase our happiness without compromising our righteousness. One of them is that we don't have to be conformists afraid to do our own thing. If Jesus bids us consider the fowls of the air, maybe God would like us to consider the horse.

Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom, and stretch her wings toward the south? Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high? She dwelleth and abideth on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place. From thence she [motionless] seeketh the prey, and her eyes behold afar off. Her young ones also suck up blood: and where the slain are, there is she.

¶ "The idea of living for the moment. ..." Today, this might be formulated as something like being super WOW where the action is in the NOW generation, who, like, know what's happening and where it's at.

       But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
       In proving foresight may be vain:
       The best-laid schemes o mice an men
       Gang aft agley
       An lea'e us nought but grief an pain,
       For promis'd joy!

       Still thou art blest, compar'd wi me!
       The present only toucheth thee:
       But och! I backward cast my e'e,
       On prospects drear!
       An forward, though I canna see,
       I guess an fear!

Let's take a human example from down by the border:

Funny how often he recalled those early days in the valley now, as if they were some golden age, as opposed to the last days, which was pretty much how they had seemed to him at the time—recently divorced, house gone, job gone. Fifty years old and every expectation confounded. No money. No hopes. No plans. But he'd gotten a rush out of those runs to the border, thinking then there was really nothing left to lose and he supposed now the happier for it. Later would come the valley itself, Jack and the horses, the modest job and the trailer among the Oaxacans who had taught him something about life in the moment, which was, as near as he could tell, pretty much how one ought to live it—a far cry from the philosophy that had driven him in his previous life, selling real estate in the heart of Orange County, juggling mortgages on three properties, balancing his portfolio and looking toward retirement ... storing up treasures where moth and rust corrupt, just like the good book said.²¹

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. ...

I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse and a turtledove and am still on their trail. Many are the travelers I have spoken to concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.²²

The momentary viewing of the eagle is, in fact, intimated in the Proverbs. Prov. 23:4-5 "Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven." Ah, the "treasures where moth and rust corrupt" are so quickly gone, like an eagle flying away.

Now, in Who Will Rise Up?²³ brother Jed castigates "'flower children' .. rebel[ing] against God and His standards of home, cleanliness, purity and order." This is good as far as it goes, but I'd like to point out that all through the book of Job was portrayed "God's standards of home, cleanliness, purity and order," but God's reply included the demonstration that he created flower children—"Their young ones are in good liking, they grow up with corn"— with all eight points of the hippie/bohemian doctrine represented, so it's not being a hippie per se that goes against God's standards, but rather all the youthful lusts from the youth influx into hippiedom.

And why does brother Jed include in the literature of "wisdom, madness and folly" Henry David Thoreau's, Walden Pond [sic]? Jed says that in turning to such literature he had "cast off the restraints of parental influence, job responsibilities, material possessions, financial burdens, and church teachings."²³ It seems to me that Thoreau for the most part is critical of unnecessary and burdensome material possessions just as was the Lord. As for job responsibilities, Thoreau's chapter on Higher Laws illustrates well, (Prov. 19:15) "Slothfulness casteth into a deep sleep; and an idle soul shall suffer hunger." He says:

From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious?

We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, recreating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year's life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors — why the judge does not dismiss his case — why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.

Brother Jed (center) prays in the moment what to speak while students stream by on their busy schedules.

Hey, if you want to live righteously and preach the gospel, living in the moment, who is going to stop you? I mean, I was one of the workers the first year that was started the Renaissance Fair, now the Oregon Country Fair, which is a Mecca for hippies, and I go every year because I feel there should be a Christian presence there. I am not against hippiedom, as we find it in the Bible, book of Job, just against the excess of youthful lusts that have attended it. As a Christian worker it helps to have the sword of the word of God sharp enough to distinguish between the two. As brother Jed has quoted from Charles Finney's preface to his Systematic Theology:

A Christian profession implies the profession of candor and of a disposition to know and obey all truth. It must follow, that Christian consistency implies continued investigation and change of views and practice corresponding with increased knowledge. No Christian, therefore, and no theologian should be afraid to change his views, his language, or his practices in conformity with increasing light. The prevalence of such a fear would keep the world, at best, at a perpetual stand-still.

There has always been a counterculture, taking on different forms over the past several decades, from Bohemians to the Beats, from the hippies to the Yippies, from punk to hip hop. The first "underground paper" in prehistoric times was a boulder out in the field where kids could disagree with their parents' mainstream etchings on the walls of their caves.

God's listing of those animals, in fact, developed from a kid's disagreement with his elders' mainstream speeches—perfectly evident if we look at Job. In this book Job's comforters spend many chapters in argument with him over what constitutes righteousness and its results, what their values are and how well life will go if one lives them. They eventually run out of things to say, at which point a young fellow speaks up. (Job 32:6-12,16-20;34:2) "And Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite answered and said, I am young, and ye are very old; wherefore I was afraid, and durst not shew you mine opinion. I said, Days should speak, and multitude of years should teach wisdom. But there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgment. Therefore I said, Hearken to me; I also will shew mine opinion. Behold, I waited for your words; I gave ear to your reasons, whilst ye searched out what to say. Yea, I attended unto you, and, behold, there was none of you that convinced Job, or that answered his words: ... When I had waited, (for they spake not, but stood still, and answered no more;) I said, I will answer also my part, I also will shew mine opinion. For I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me. Behold, my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it is ready to burst like new bottles. I will speak, that I may be refreshed: I will open my lips and answer. ... Hear my words, O ye wise men; and give ear unto me, ye that have knowledge."

After young Elihu's speech, God answers them all from the whirlwind and includes in his answer a response to Elihu. (Job 38:36) "Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath given understanding to the heart?" The answer, of course, is that God did, confirming Elihu's justification for speaking up to his elders: "there is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding."

God continues: (Job 38:37-38) "Who can number the clouds in wisdom? or who can stay the bottles of heaven, When the dust groweth into hardness, and the clods cleave fast together?" It is God who lets the clouds fill up with moisture until they have to vent themselves on the dry earth. The clouds are God's bottles of water that must be emptied when full. This answer is a response to Elihu's, "I am full of matter, the spirit within me constraineth me. Behold, my belly is as wine which hath no vent; it is ready to burst like new bottles. I will speak, that I may be refreshed: I will open my lips and answer." So God not only gives wisdom to man—young men when their elders don't get it—, but he fills them up with it until they have to speak up: Elihu coming forward, or the underground paper, of the rock in the field with the animals on it.

Then in the very next verse, 39, God segues into his discourse on the eight animals which points are just those the young men will make to fill a void in the establishment's wisdom. If youth is to complain to the establishment, then God seems to be saying they should promote the hippie ideals.

Did Elihu the first hippie have long hair?

"During these ninety years I have made a careful study of human nature, and I know a person by the touch of the hand or the sound of the voice. Even the footstep is to me a token of the character of its owner. I never feel safe in the company of a person with a very pious, whining voice. I have seldom made a mistake in the selection of my friends during these ninety years. Once in a while I have been fooled by frauds, but not often. Dwight L. Moody once told me something that has often helped me. 'Fanny,' he said, 'be careful whenever you see a man with long hair or a woman with short hair. Usually (though not always) they are freaks; and schism and freaks were ever strong hindrances to the advance of the Christian faith.'

—Fanny Crosby,²⁵ 1912

From a Pauline point of view that is equivalent to her being bald. (I Corinthians 11:3-6) "But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head. But every woman that prayeth or prophesieth with her head uncovered dishonoureth her head: for that is even all one as if she were shaven. For if the woman be not covered, let her also be shorn: but if it be a shame for a woman to be shorn or shaven, let her be covered." A woman's covering symbolized the headship of her man over her. That Job's wife bosses him so is equivalent to her being shorn. Job on the other hand submits to the headship of God in accepting bad as well as good from Him. Job says his wife speaks as one of the "foolish women", or as Moody put it, "a freak."

What Kovalik sees is young women in the streets with their hair grown past their ears, when last in town, he'd seen them with their hair bobbed for the revolution.

—Malcolm Bosse, The Warlord.²⁶

---

You asked her that question I will never forget, "How come those women come in your beauty shop to have that stinky stuff put in their hair?" ...

To answer the question honestly would have been to acknowledge a quiet and long-standing acquiescence to an ideal of attractiveness that they aspired to and were imprisoned by. It put restrictions on how they could think about themselves. It would subordinate them. To sport a natural style would have been unthinkable to those women then (and in large part to their daughters and granddaughters now). In the business world, it's seen as unfeminine and slightly radical—a sign that this person might not be a team player. Nice middle-class black women (and those who aspire to that status) don't wear their hair in short Afros, braids, or dreadlocks; the acceptable thing to do is straighten the hair with chemicals and hot combs so that in texture and style it approximates that of white women.

What was the answer to your question?

"They come in here so they won't walk round lookin' like pickaninnies I guess."

—Brent Wade, Company Man.²⁷

Like most of the homegirls, she wears a plastered mass of straightened hair, dulled wisps, stiff as a hedgehog's, that go in one direction, another shiny patch of bangs shellacked in place with spray. The Afro, the do of liberation, is long gone, one more forgotten fashion of the disrespected past.

---

When he was last here, for arraignment, his hair was ponytailed and not especially clean. Since then, he's shaved and had a dramatic haircut too, albeit not a particularly becoming one. He looks as if he simply bargained to let the barber cut off half. Charged up by the winter static, his brownish hair Christmas-trees about his ears, resembling some hapless Dutch boy's. Nonetheless, as the resident emblem of authority, I'm pleased Nile has made these concessions to respectability, even if off the bench I'd regard the same gestures as silly or conventional.

—Scott Turow, The Laws of our Fathers²⁸

This drawing published in London, 1825, shows a dark and
curly haired Elihu seated between two of Job's long and gray haired
comforters on the right, the third one on the left.

A week, seven days and nights, sitting there after having "sprinkled dust upon their heads" does not leave much room for grooming. I mean they weren't going to any barber shop that week. So when we get to Elihu's speech at the end of Job we sort of expect him to be a longhair whose hair just grew some more.

Looking at hairstyles of the time:

Hair²⁹
In biblical times the Israelites—both male and female—wore their hair long. Barbers existed (Ezek. 5:1), but they apparently trimmed hair rather than cut it short. Absalom had hair so long and luxuriant that each year he cut off "two hundred shekels" (2 Sam. 14:26)—about six pounds.

By New Testament times, men tended to wear their hair much shorter than women, imitating Roman hair styles, which were cropped close to the head.

Here from James A. Michener's historical novel The Source—where he did some fine historical research—depicting a man's hair style in 1419 B.C.:

Governor Uriel was still laughing when the first Hebrew appeared. He was a tall old man, covered with dust and clothed in rough-spun garments, bearing a staff and nothing more. He was bearded, and his white hair fell to his shoulders. He wore a rope about his waist and heavy sandals and walked with a determination ...³⁰

AUTONOMIC SIGNALS³¹
Actions and other changes resulting from body-stress

There is another Autonomic Signal that deserves mention. It is a puny signal for the human animal, but a signal none the less. When adrenalin floods the system of a mammal, it has the effect of making the hair stand on end. This is part of the cooling system and exposes the surface of the skin more to the outside air. For many species this has led to impressive hair erection displays, with dramatic manes, crests and tufts expanding as the animal responds. For the wretched human pelt this is of little use as a display, but our short hairs stand on end all the same when we experience a strong enough shock. We feel the reaction as a creeping sensation on the skin, especially on the back of the neck and, although this may signal nothing to anyone else, it acts as a sure sign to us ourselves that we are experiencing a powerful body change.

Again from the Apocrypha, The Book of Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)
[The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus]
Sir 1
[A Prologue made by an uncertain Author]
This Jesus was the son of Sirach, and grandchild to Jesus of the same name with him: this man therefore lived in the latter times, after the people had been led away captive, and called home again, and almost after all the prophets.

About the time of the Maccabees, their revolt from Rome, hence an influence of Roman hairstyles. (Sir 27:14) "The talk of him that sweareth much maketh the hair stand upright; and their brawls make one stop his ears." Here he is talking of hair in general, presumably head hair which is now shorter per Roman hair styles.

Now the book of Hermas who was "bred up at Rome;"

                      VISION III.
         Of the building of the church triumphant,
         and of the several sorts of reprobates.

    7.  "When I saw these things ordered
    in this manner, and that there was
    nobody in the place, I began to be
    astonished, and my hair stood on end,
    and a kind of horror seized me;
    for I was alone."

In modern times it is more likely the short neck hair that one hears about:

... a sudden knuk-knuk sounds on his office door and his heart jumps beneath his shirt.

He had heard no footsteps, nor can he hear anything now. A ghost could have floated along the darkened hallway and tapped on his door. "Yes?" he calls.

Silence holds, while the hair on the back of his neck remains aloft. Pushing from his chair, he reaches to open the door, expecting—even as he knows he heard a knock—to see nothing.

— Theodore Weesner, Novemberfest³²

---

"Hackles rose when I heard that. Hair standing up on my neck, what the Russians call chicken skin. Sinclair'd had much the same response.

—James Sallis, Ghost of a Flea³³

First Elihu comes across as Mr. Natural. (Job 33:4,6) "The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life. Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am formed out of the clay." God made him out of clay and breathed into him the breath of life. What you see is what you get.

Then there is his example of a man finding God on his sickbed—a place where one's hair is allowed to grow uncut. (Job 33:19-29) "He is chastened also with pain upon his bed, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain: So that his life abhorreth bread, and his soul dainty meat. His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; and his bones that were not seen stick out. Yea, his soul draweth near unto the grave, and his life to the destroyers. If there be a messenger with him, an interpreter, one among a thousand, to shew unto man his uprightness: Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom. His flesh shall be fresher than a child's: he shall return to the days of his youth: He shall pray unto God, and he will be favourable unto him: and he shall see his face with joy: for he will render unto man his righteousness. He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light. Lo, all these things worketh God oftentimes with man."

If God works this oftentimes, maybe Elihu went through that process himself and is so standing there with God on his side notwithstanding his hair being long. Moody says a long-haired man is "not always a freak." That would be one case, where a man is on a sickbed where he can't cut his hair and then he finds God and gets better but his hair is still long. He's okay.

Another exception that Elihu gives us is the man in prison, in fetters and irons, because he was bad, but he's learned his lesson. Can't cut his hair there either. (Job 36:8-11,16) "And if they be bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of affliction; Then he sheweth them their work, and their transgressions that they have exceeded. He openeth also their ear to discipline, and commandeth that they return from iniquity. If they obey and serve him, they shall spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures. Even so would he have removed thee out of the strait into a broad place, where there is no straitness; and that which should be set on thy table should be full of fatness." If a prisoner reforms but hasn't had time to get his hair cut, Moody won't hold it against him. Another reason Job should withhold judgment on Elihu's long hair.

Those were two examples Elihu gives, and now Mr. Natural ends up with a third. (Job 37:5-10,14,17) "God thundereth marvelously with his voice; great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend. For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth; likewise to the small rain, and to the great rain of his strength. He sealeth up the hand of every man; that all men may know his work. Then the beasts go into dens, and remain in their places. Out of the south cometh the whirlwind: and cold out of the north. By the breath of God frost is given: and the breadth of the waters is straitened. ... Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God. ... How thy garments are warm, when he quieteth the earth by the south wind?"

Here is Elihu's reasoning: God makes the snow (and rain and showers) to fall on the earth—remember Elihu is a Mr. Natural too, to receive snow and rain on his head. God seals up the hand of every man, limits what men are allowed to do. Doesn't want them to be barbers, say. The beasts go into their dens to stay warm when it snows, so Elihu's head will stay warm under his full head of hair. Furthermore, God makes frost and ice. Job uses his coat to stay warm. How can he then hold it against Elihu to have long hair to help him?

Those are the three witnesses in his speech that Elihu feels self-conscious about his long hair, which we'd expect him to have anyway. How could he not have long hair? I can't picture him with his hair short. Can you? Of course, in those bible days all the men wore their hair long by our standards, so we are merely looking at relative hairiness here, perhaps a lack of trimming.

Elihu as well as Eliphaz promotes instruction in one's sleep : (Job 33:14-16) "For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, ..." What pair of hypnotists do these two dream learners remind us of?

The world of the wandering bishops is a small one, and everyone knows everyone else. Bryan belonged to the American Orthodox Catholic Church as did Ferrie. ... The parallels do not stop there, however. ¶David Ferrie was something of an amateur hypnotist, and he used hypnosis and drugs in some combination in his dubious "therapies." William Joseph Bryan was a much more successful hypnotist (it was his career), and often used hypnosis for pretty much the same purposes as Ferrie. A large, bearded man who taxed the scales at nearly 400 pounds, he was even stranger in appearance than hairless Ferrie; a fat man who used hypnosis to exploit others.

—Peter Levenda, Sinister Forces³⁴

Hippies were also known for not bathing, but I think that needs clarification. Hippies were first of all natural. Daily bathing removes the natural oils in the skin which then disrupts one's skin ecology A weekly bath is probably all one needs if it weren't for body odor. But if the hippies held to a vegetarian diet mostly, then their skins would not be releasing the sour toxins that come from meat. So, you see, infrequent bathing has a sort of logic to it among hippies and should not be taken as mere slovenly hygiene.

Let's see how an orthodontist regards Job's bathing:

The Skin of My Teeth

What did Job mean by his statement when he said, (Job 19:20) "My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth"? This much we know. He was afflicted with a disease which produced skin infections of some type in every part of his body. He was apparently starving also, because of the painfulness of lesions even on the inside of his mouth; he had some canker sores. He asked, (Job 6:6-7) "Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg? The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat." Try eating the pure raw white of an egg. In fact, this used to be a way to get children to vomit who had swallowed something they shouldn't have. It feels like you're swallowing nasal mucous.

He couldn't put salt on his food because it would have really irritated the sores in his mouth. Warm salt water rinses in dentistry help a patient with mouth sores only if it is very dilute. Too much salt in a wound is painful. ...

Satan Understood Skin Sensitivity

Apparently, the one "skin" of Job's body that wasn't affected by this skin disease was the skin on his teeth because it was so different and also put "out of bounds" by God. This tooth skin was an enamel-repairing mechanism maintained and fed by the saliva, unlike all the rest of the surface skin or mucous-membrane layers in his body. He was affirming that this tooth skin was intact by his famous statement later to be adopted only as a symbolic expression. I believe that he was declaring it to be crucial to the preservation of his life.

God told Satan, (Job 2:6) "Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life." It was the only skin that Satan was not allowed to touch when Satan (Job 2:7) "smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown." Previously Satan had answered the Lord, (Job 2:4) "Skin for skin!". Satan understood skin sensitivity very well since the snake he inhabited lost his legs after the curse in the Garden of Eden and had to crawl on the skin of its belly. This was probably very painful until its underside skin toughened up from prolonged rough usage, like calluses on our hands.

We should also learn some information about the biological properties of saliva in order to understand what might be the meaning of the skin of the tooth which provided Job with a method to save his life.

In 1995, researchers at the Semmelweis University Medical School in Budapest, Hungary, concluded that the saliva has certain growth and healing properties that come from the substances secreted from the salivary glands of the mouth. They said in their title, "The fountain of youth resides in us all." They cited 90 reference studies in this review. In speaking about the biologic and physiologic factors of saliva, they said that there is a "wide range of growth factors" secreted in saliva. "Animal studies with epidermal growth factor have provided evidence of a role in both oral and systemic health, through promotion of wound healing rates."³⁵ The Nobel Award Committee in 1986 gave their prize in Medicine and Physiology to Levi-Montalcini; and Cohen for their identification and characterization of epidermal growth factor from mouse salivary glands in the 1960s. It has also been demonstrated that salivary hisatin 5 (a protein of the saliva) has anti-microbal action against such things as Candida Albicans, a type of yeast (Fungus).³⁶ It is candidacidal, meaning it kills them. Other proteins in the saliva are also anti-microbial, such as proline-rich proteins, lysozyme enzymes, and lactoperoxidase enzymes.³⁷ Let me add that my own opinion is that the quantity and potency of the anti-microbials today is probably infinitesimal to what it was in Job's day. But don't forget that Satan was really working on Job. As soon as one sore in his mouth would heal over, two or three may have popped up. Even his powerful regenerating mechanisms were fighting for dominance over these evil agents. ...

Job Spat on his Wounds

To come back to our modern level of battle against infection, just think of what a dog or cat does when a part of its paw or leg is hurt or cut. They lick it! God has built this response into their instinct system. Therefore, in regard to these growth factors, the Semmelweis researchers said, "Thus, the ability to manipulate their rates of synthesis and absorption from the saliva holds the potential to enhance tissue regeneration and homeostasis (health)." I would add here, yes, if we could magnify them.

Ancient people like Job and the Neanderthals probably had higher rates of saliva secretion in their mouths with very powerful regenerative capacities for teeth and the skin of their own entire bodies. We have [but] remnants today of this very potent system. It doesn't take much to destroy us.

Besides scraping his wounds with a broken clay pot (Job 2:8), Job probably was spitting on his wounds. How do we know this? He said to God during his agony and torment, (Job 7:19) "How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?" While this could mean: "Won't You leave me alone until I humble myself," if could also mean: "Won't You let me alone (stop allowing Satan to torture me) until I stop spitting on my wounds and swallow my spittle instead."

For Job to stop spitting on his wounds would be a sign of really giving up; complete brokenness and surrender, totally resigned to the will of God and, of course, death. Spitting on his wounds represented his only fractional means of healing. Maybe he did stop shortly before God healed him. Whatever the case, the story ends with God "turning" or "restoring" Job to health. The Hebrew word is "shub" which means to come again, to be turned, to be restored. Return again signifies a return to health. But to Job, he had escaped total decimation by the "skin of his teeth." He was expressing the fact that because this tooth skin was intact and it was dependent on the salivary glands for its very existence, then the saliva was still potent for healing purposes. ... ¶If the skin of his teeth and saliva weren't spared, I believe Job would have died. Remember, God commanded Satan to spare Job's life and Satan knew what that meant long before the biochemists at Semmelweiss did.

—Jack Cuozzo, Buried Alive³⁸

At this point we may surmise that Job sat back down and went about tending his wounds, bathing them with saliva. He still hurt, of course, and that was his only option. Now, how does Elihu regard Job ministering to himself, after having argued to a standstill his three comforters? (Job 33:5) "If thou canst answer me, set thy words in order before me, stand up." He wants Job to stand up, to stop his bath, as it were.

Then a little further in his speech he suggests, (Job 35:4-5) "I will answer thee, and thy companions with thee. Look unto the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds which are higher than thou." He wants Job to get his eyes off himself and regard something higher. Next, he wants Job to stop his pacing and regard the works of God, (Job 37:14) "Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God."

Now, this may seem to be an inconvenient interruption to Job's anti-bacterial scrub, but look how God directly addresses him right after that, (Job 38:3) "Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me." Like, God wants him to "gird up his loins," tighten further those clinging clothes. It makes sense only as "for Job to stop spitting on his wounds would be a sign of really giving up; complete brokenness and surrender, totally resigned to the will of God," which he then was, (Job 42:6) "Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

Whatever the attitudes of the people brother Jed preaches to, it seems to me that the long hair and limited bathing in the original context of Job were signs of brokenness before God and a complete surrender to his will. Brother Jed calls them "dirty hippies" but their prototype cast dust on his head to help Job mourn, so perhaps it's an epithet we should keep. God is not seen to rebuke Elihu for his long hair or for his forward speech or for anything else, but God does seem to channel Elihu's zeal into the stream of hippie-type values à la '60s. What is regrettable is that so many hippie ideals were so soon forsaken.

"Woodstock's commercial undertones foreshadowed the reality that the hippies of the 1960s would soon become the yuppie entrepreneurs of the materialistic 1970s and '80s. The counterculture's rebellious ideals eventually became just another facet of American consumerism."³⁹ That is not my subject here, so I shall leave it with an epitaph from Gina Arnold's book on The Death of Punk:

Only two rock movements have destroyed themselves for filthy lucre, and both, alas, are the ones that swore they never would: the hippies and the punks. Idealistic, angry, completely opposed to mainstream values—they are now besmirched beyond recognition by their dull and stupid associations. But the hippies have more to answer for than the punks. They did it first, and they did it worse.⁴⁰

Hebdige's work—Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 1979) pp. 94-95— on the British punk movement identifies this shift as the moment of incorporation or recuperation by dominant culture and perceives it to be a critical element in the dynamics of the struggle over the meaning(s) of popular expression. "The Process of recuperation," Hebdige argues, "takes two characteristic forms ... one of conversion of subcultural signs (dress, music, etc.) into mass-produced objects and the 'labeling' and redefinition of deviant behavior by dominant groups—the police, media, and judiciary." Hebdige astutely points out, however, that communication in a subordinate cultural form, even prior to the point of recuperation, usually takes place via commodities, "even if the meanings attached to those commodities are purposefully distorted or overthrown." And so, he concludes, "it is very difficult to sustain any absolute distinction between commercial exploitation on the one hand and creativity and originality on the other."

—Tricia Rose, Black Noise⁴¹

And to be fair, there are a number of holdouts not completely compromised.

What I know: If the Evaluator is married, it's to his work. He looks tired behind his glasses, is on his second or third cup of coffee. Middle-aged, idealistic hippie, hence his job within the System instead of a lucrative private practice at his age.

A workaholic chained to the here-and-now, which makes me his momentary mission in life.

—Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist's Handbook⁴²

Michael Frain has this to say in "The Survivor's Guide," May 16, 1990:

The sixties are often regarded as a storm that came and passed, a cyclone that blew through, its damage long repaired. But among the era's more enduring legacies was established a style of youth, of being young, that's been passed on for thirty years now by example in an endless chain of kids. Whether it's matters of speech—using the word "like" as an article, or the omnipresent "man"—or the torn jeans, the shoulder-length hair like Spanish moss, or the hazards of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, we developed rites of passage of a surprisingly enduring nature. Listening to my daughter, I often feel a little like the American natives who puzzled as Columbus told them he'd discovered a New World.

Which only goes to augment the fundamental Boomer dilemma. Unable to reform the world, many of us decided to have families in hopes of creating a more perfect order at home. We didn't want children so much as allies. Thus, the sixties became the nineties tied together by the motif of child worship. And as a result there can be no generation more thoroughly unprepared for the inevitable discovery that we've become our parents.

Then we had a reunion. I still had my beard in the '80s and got voted "the person who has changed the least." You can see my picture below wearing the T-shirt I won, although by the '90s when it was taken, I'd shaved off my beard.

At that first reunion I was asked several times if I weren't reminded of the old days. My reply is that I was more reminded by the children and this "reunion" seems more like parents day, we being the parents.

To really be fair (and biblical), I believe we should briefly consider the conclusion of Job. Remember, (Job 1:1-3) "There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east." That was his start, then his trial, the cyclone as it were, and then: (Job 42:10-13) "And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold. So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He had also seven sons and three daughters." Job ended up with twice as much as he had to start out with, and he was reintegrated with his family.

According to my Criswell Study Bible note, "Many scholars appear to be almost angry that this tangible, objective, material blessing poured out upon Job is a part of the ending of the book. They claim that the material blessings are not true to reality, overturning the entire debate by proving the friends to be right. But, in fact, this is a necessary part of the story because it represents God's promised healing and restoration."

I'd like to be permitted to look at the historical context of Job, which most scholars seem unable to discover. (Job 1:1a) "There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job." According to my Jewish Study Bible⁴³ "The location is Uz (1:1); this is the poetic name for Edom (Lam. 4:21). Transjordan, of which Edom is the southernmost part, is often referred to in the Bible and other ancient Near Eastern texts as Kedem, translated in 1:3 as 'the East,' and Kedemites were known for their wisdom (I Kings 5:10)." Remember from the story of Exodus: "The plan of campaign to conquer Jordan from the east, ... Edom [being] the first kingdom that has to be negotiated on the way to Upper Transjordan."⁴⁴ The land of Uz was close by to Egypt which figures in the story.

I shall compare three sources: a translator's note at the end of The Septuagint⁴⁵—which derives some information from the Syriac book—, the Book of Jasher, and Genesis in the Bible.

There was a baby boom of Israelites in Egypt which concerned Pharaoh. Feeling insecure he sought counsel. All of the details are not recorded in the Old Testament, but—per Joshua 10:13 & 2 Samuel 1:18—we are allowed to look for historical context in the Book of Jasher which is extant.

JASHER 66

12. And all the elders of Egypt and the wise men thereof said unto the king, May the king live forever; thou didst counsel us the counsel against the children of Israel, and we did unto them according to the word of the king.
13. But in proportion to the increase of the labor so do they increase and grow in the land, and behold the whole country is filled with them.
14. Now therefore our lord and king, the eyes of all Egypt are upon thee to give them advice with thy wisdom, by which they may prevail over Israel to destroy them, or to diminish them from the land; and the king answered them saying, Give you counsel in this matter that we may know what to do unto them.
15. And an officer, one of the king's counsellors, whose name was Job, from Mesopotamia, in the land of Uz, answered the king, saying,
16. If it please the king, let him hear the counsel of his servant; and the king said unto him, Speak.
17. And Job spoke before the king, the p