Last evening Jan & I attended a potluck reception for the Pru Comm (the delightfully archaic name for the First Unitarian Church’s board of trustees). We munched and sipped and arranged ourselves in various small groups to talk of this and that, then rearranged and talked of that and this.
It was a sweet evening.
Among our choices of subject for conversation was the new production of Hair being produced in Manhattan’s Central Park. Two of us had been there and were enchanted, telling of their adventures getting the “free” tickets and the crowd and their children’s responses to the event as much as their own. My guess is they would probably have been too young to catch it the first time around, but I didn’t ask.
We were all taken with how their eldest was offended by the pro-drug aspects in the first half of the musical, but picked up on the anti-war conclusion.
One might recall St Paul wasn’t fond of long hair on men. In ancient Britain monks tonsured their hair by shaving the forehead in the Japanese manner, offending Roman sensibilities and marking out nationalist differences. I understand in early medieval Europe the male nobility wore long hair and beards while inferior classes were expected to wear it shorter. And, of course, Buddhist clergy, monks, nuns and priests have all traditionally shaved their heads.
In the sixties and early seventies in North America long hair was a sign of opposition to the status quo, both politically and religiously…
I’m still taken with those occasional young women I encounter with shaved heads, as they spark a sense of recognition, they look like Buddhist priests or nuns to me. Not their intent, I suspect. But unintended consequences appear to be the stuff of life…
I’ve been blessed with lots of it. And at sixty it doesn’t seem to be thinning in any way. Different color, however. (Does seem, once again, the Buddha was right…)
Glorious hair…
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