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I encountered my old friend Henry David Thoreau a couple of times today...in The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart [Richard Bly, James Hillman, Michael Meade – editors]. There he was as big as life, and bigger than most lives put together. Musing upon life he strolled through the woods near Concord , Massachusetts, smiling at a squirrel and examining the forest. Thoreau examined much more than the woods at Walden and charted far more than the famous pond. He surveyed humanity and justice and truth and love. He charted human freedom in his Civil Disobedience, written while he was in jail for refusing to pay taxes levied to finance what he determined to be an unjust war. He was a a conscientious objector and a conscious refusnik. This humble and gifted man might have turned his considerable gifts and insight to his own self interest. But when he looked within he saw that he cherished Liberty. This was not the water-rounded and chipped-away liberty that many accept today. It was robust, self-reliant, informed, and it was realistic and forceful in its expression. “I can do as I please so long as it does not transgress a law or prohibition.” Thoreau thought that conscience ought to shape and determine Law rather than the other way around. So he stood alone, buttressed by his convictions. “I do not want to give you my money so you can pursue your ambitions in an unjust war.” Henry David Thoreau gave of himself to all of us. It cost him personally, as all such things must. His gift to us has not gone unnoticed. For he has found his way into the collective psyche to speak calming sensible wisdom to us in his writing. His is not the conventional wisdom. Rather it is that unusual grasp of human experience that saints, prophets and poets give to everyone, underwriting it with their own fears, disappointments, sacrifices and so much more that is personal. The culture soon swallowed this rebel to make him its own. But it does seem that the culture never really digested him, in spite of that eager gulp which engulfed his weary self. His is an influence that creeps upon us quietly from within, where he seems to sit contentedly by the waterside. There, with wild straw in his teeth, he contemplates the heavenly bodies, the wonders of the earth, the depths of the soul. There in the depths he stands as a monument to human responsibility in the face of tyranny...even when that face in the mirror is our own. His echoing silent voice reminds us that we can change, think, tell, decide, pray and love. Here is the heart and foundation of true Liberty, which was set in place first, before the the edifice of Democracy was erected upon it. He is our friend, our teacher, our conscience and our hero. He has found a well deserved place in the culture as well as in ideas and letters. Alone and rejected and castigated, he stood for Liberty and still does. His soul feeds our souls. October 22, 2001. - Fear Farm - RJW – The Canadian Crusader |