What Would Walt Whitman Do? Veterans Day Service for The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Fredericksburg, Virginia November 8, 2009 the Rev. Jennie Ann Barrington, Interim Minister Opening Words [Walt Whitman]: I know [that] I am solid and sound-- To me, the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. The Morning Reading [Walt Whitman]: This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for [people who are called] stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men-- Go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families-- Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul-- And your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. The Morning Sermon: Last Saturday, I went to a Civil War Reenactment at Locust Grove Farm, in Walkerton, Virginia. Anyone who knows me well enough to know my pacifist tendencies would be surprised to hear that I did that. But the whole time I was at the reenactment, I thought about Walt Whitman. He would have approved of it for many reasons. Walt Whitman is considered to be one of the five greatest American poets. He inspired and was influenced by the Transcendentalists, including Unitarians Emerson, Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. Whitman was a mystic, which means he had ecstatic experiences of being in union with God, or that which is divine. And Whitman was probably also a pantheist, which means that, to him, all is God, and God is all. To him, everything was infused with the
divine, including the human body. Some of Whitman s poems celebrate his attraction to other men. Those poems have, for decades, been a source of great strength and understanding for people who are gay or bi-sexual. The definitive book on that aspect of Whitman s life is Gary Schmidgall s, Walt Whitman: A Gay Life. Others of Whitman s poems describe the beauty he perceived within the ocean, a variety of music, and even blades of grass. Whitman spent his entire adult life writing and re-writing his book-length masterpiece called, Leaves of Grass. In his biography, Walt Whitman, James E. Miller, Jr. writes [see pp. 38-39]: Leaves of Grass grew, much of its own accord, like a seed that contains within itself from the very beginning all its potential of size and shape. Whitman tended the seed, carefully cultivated it, and tried at times to abandon it; but he always returned to it, sometimes to prune, sometimes to graft, always to encourage fulfillment of its destined design. In all there were some nine lifetime editions of Leaves over a period of thirty years; each represented a stage in its growth that sent forth its own individual fruit and seeds. Seldom in the history of art have we been so privileged with an intimate view of the creation of a masterpiece. The miracle of Whitman is that, at the age of thirty-six, without warning or notice, suggestion or hint, he brought forth a volume of poetry that would have graced the literature of any nation, and which, even had it stood unchanged, would have assured his fame as a poet. Whitman sent a copy of the 1855 edition to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was then the ruling genius of American letters. It was in great part the anonymity of this impassioned poet that caused Emerson to rub his eyes-- and to sit down and strike off in the glow of his immediate response a small letter that was to have the largest reverberations of any letter in American literature: [Emerson wrote:] I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of Leaves of Grass. I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I have great joy in it. I still feel the joy, exuberance, and empowerment in Whitman s writing when I read it today. Yet not all of his poetry has always received such praise. The passionate sensuality in it has felt too bold and unconventional for some people to accept, or even understand. But that passionate sensuality had its foundation in some of the greatest poetry ever written down. As a youth, Whitman read voraciously --including Shakespeare, Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, Dante, and ancient Hindu poetry-- and including the poetry in the Christian and 2
Hebrew scriptures. Whitman wrote, in Specimen Days, while living in Brooklyn, I went regularly every week in the mild seasons down to Coney island, at that time a long, bare unfrequented shore, which I had all to myself, and where I loved, after bathing, to race up and down the hard sand, and declaim Homer or Shakespeare to the surf and seagulls by the hour. The poetry of Whitman s which some have found most shocking is actually very similar to The Song of Songs in the Old Testament. That book begins: O that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth! For your love is better than wine, your anointing oils are fragrant, your name is oil poured out; therefore the maidens love you The Song of Songs is metaphorical. For one of our UU ministers retreats a few years ago, the Rev. Carl Scovel, long-time minister of King s Chapel in Boston, interpreted The Song of Songs for us. He said it is a celebration of creation and creator. It should be read as an answer to Genesis, Chapters 2 and 3, in which humanity falls out of grace and into a state of shame or sin. The Song of Songs is about the restoration of original joy and shamelessness [the Rev. Scovel said to us]. In The Song of Songs, God is not separate from nor dominating over humanity. We have the potential to live in partnership with the divine in rightrelationship. In right-relationship, the reality of the pain of living, maturing, and aging are acknowledged, but desire and joy are also named and celebrated. Some things Whitman celebrated in his poetry --idealized, even-- were his vision of a unified America, a participatory democracy, and the ordinary working man and woman. Whitman s best-known poem is: I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear-- those of the mechanics the carpenter the mason the boatman the deckhand the delicious singing of the mother or of the young wife at work singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs. To Whitman, those songs all combined harmoniously into one American song. Whitman had a vivid imagination, and was an unusually sensual and passionate person-- As we can hear in his verse from this morning s reading, and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. So Whitman would have loved that the Civil War Reenactment in Walkerton last weekend taught everyone both participants and spectators-- about the truths of that war and that time period in an experiential way. Learning through smelling the smoke of the campfires; seeing authentic wagons and lanterns; women in hoop skirts, corsets, and ribboned bonnets; being able to try on the jackets, dresses, boots, and hats; hearing a pennywhistle and harmonica; seeing the horses across the field and meeting them face-to-face; and talking with people who taught 3
themselves this piece of American history because they wanted to know what the people felt who lived through that war. Generals Grant and Lee talked with us spectators, and then took questions from us, answering them as best they could. I learned that by the time of that battle, there had already been tens of thousands of casualties on both sides. I learned that a typical day for them would have been eight to ten hours on horseback. And I learned that both generals loved their horses-- Lee s was named, Traveler, and Grant s was named, Cincinnati. I knew that Walt Whitman had been a volunteer nurse during the Civil War. So had Clara Barton, who was both a Unitarian and a Universalist; she started the organization that later became the American Red Cross. So I said to the Generals that I was interested in what volunteer nurses did on the battlefronts. The generals told us that there was no system at all for nursing the wounded troops on the fields. The wounded were evacuated out. The troops needed to be on the move all the time. Strategically, it was important that they not become too static. So dead and wounded soldiers were moved out, and supplies were picked up to be brought back to the rest of the troops. To be honest, my question was one of the few that had to do with the specifics of conditions during the war. Most people seemed more interested in the costumes and pageantry. A lot of the spectators who were there were taking pictures of the re-enactors with their cell phones. And there weren t anywhere near as many spectators as I had thought there would be. All that made me ask myself why it is still important for us, today, to look at the Civil War-- and to look beyond the costumes and pageantry and examine in depth its historic specificity. My answer to that question is that the Civil War was a time in our nation s history of such extreme brokenness. I still cannot believe that there was no system in place to nurse the soldiers who were wounded on the front. But both Walt Whitman and Clara Barton, seeing that that was the case, did what they could to serve their fellow citizens anyway. They did what they could, and what they did was helpful in both immediate and lasting ways. I am very moved to think of all they did to be helpful in a time when so many in our nation felt hopeless. Whitman s initial reason for volunteering as a battlefield nurse was that his brother was listed as having been wounded right near Fredericksburg. But Whitman soon dedicated himself to that volunteer service with a deep sense of calling and a mature commitment. Whitman s earliest poems, written when he was a young man, celebrated himself and his emotions. And there s a time and a place for that when we are young. But his experiences serving the troops during the war taught him that there are larger causes for us to devote our gifts and graces to-- There are causes worth giving of ourselves in a selfless and sacrificing way. Whitman visited with 80,000 to 100,000 soldiers who were injured or sick. 4
He listened to what they had been through, gave them paper so they could write home, and he was a compassionate and sympathetic presence alongside their suffering. In his poem, The Wound-Dresser, Whitman wrote, But soon my fingers failed me, my face drooped and I resigned myself to sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently watch the dead. The many poems he wrote from those experiences have helped Americans process the pain of that war, of wars fought since then, and of wars still being fought today. And so as this is Veterans Day weekend, I am thinking about, with honor, those who have fought in our nation s wars, and those who have provided care for our troops, both contemporarily, and in those painful years in the 1860s. I think of both Walt Whitman and Clara Barton caring tirelessly for soldiers on both sides of the conflict at Chatham Manor, right down the road from us. When I think of their service there, in a make-shift hospital only seven minutes from my apartment, I get chills. We live in a place where history is close enough for us to reach out and touch it. The brokenness in our nation in Whitman and Barton s day compelled them to rise to the occasion and be of help in whatever ways they could. And so, thinking of them, I ask myself what the greatest sense of brokenness in our nation today is. You would each have your own answer to that question. And I very much want to hear your answers. But the answer that keeps coming to me these past several months is that the extended family has become over-extended. Everywhere I turn, I see families trying to care for one another without the geographic proximity families once had, nor the assistance and support they once had. And I think that, since our families of origin are so much more spread out than they once were, we must create ways within our geographic area for families to receive assistance and support, from people who are not their blood relatives, and from organizations, including our Fellowship. In our Fellowship, there are families that need information and help with caring for their loved-ones-- And in our Fellowship, there is certainly the desire to help families with caring for their loved-ones-- parents, siblings, children, in-laws There is a lot of need for help and support. But as a start, two of our honored elders, Gae and Bill Pinschmidt, will give a talk here on Monday evening, November 23 rd, about caring for a family member who is aging. I encourage you to attend and to help me spread the word. At the end of the evening, we will note down what ways you feel I or the Fellowship can be of more help in this regard-- whether that be more guest speakers, more referrals, or more Community Circles in which caretakers can advise and support each other. I and the pastoral care associates team will make note of what you say, and follow up. Our Fellowship is, after all, a religious organization. The great Jewish mystic and social activist Abraham Heschel wrote: The beginning of faith is not a feeling for 5
the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder, or fear. The root of religion is the question [of] what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder, or fear. Religion, the end of isolation, begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us. It is in that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which [humanity s] answer is given. Let us look carefully at the brokenness in our midst, rise bravely to occasions and do what we can, and retrospectively be those who did all we could. Parting Words [Dorothy Day]: People say, what is the sense of our small effort. They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words, and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There s too much work to do. 6