Rearing a Beardivist #8

When a small child asks “Father, why must we always sleep on our back?” he responds “A Beardivist must sleep on his back in order to commune.  For in the twilight hours, his whiskers outstretch, a sea of tiny antennae lifted towards the Great Beard in the sky.  It is of these transmissions that our dreams are made.”  If the child seems doubtful, try nighttime restraints.

“All men aspire to something which they might call their own. Bearding is your opportunity.”

“Beardivism is not the grains of sand on the ocean floor; it is not the polyps forging their coral reef or the secret things lurking therein. It is not even the flight of fish flickering overhead. Beardivism is the liquid solvent of this world: the sustenance and the serum; the haven and the vehicle.”

Beard of Action: Obi-Wan Kenobi

Few floccose figures have embodied the understanding of metaphysical balance Beardivism strives to achieve as fully as Obi-Wan Kenobi.  In addition to countless and much-celebrated earthly accomplishments, Kenobi transcended even the shackles fettering most mortals to the dimensions traditionally recognized by science, in order to guide his ward Skywalker down the path of good.  For his  archetypal spirituality, we name Obi-Wan Kenobi an intergalactic Beard of Action.

Beard of Action: Walter “Walt” Whitman

As a medical volunteer during the American Civil War, a school teacher and one of America’s most celebrated poets, Whitman’s pursuit of public lives was rivaled only by his much storied pursuit of private life.  Without question, his was a beard that saw through the surface of humanity, into the clandestine crux of culture and spirituality.  Thus we present this Beard of Action’s When I Heard the Learn’d Astromoner:

When I heard the learned astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

[Please excuse the line breaks]