LEAVES OF GRASS

Back in high school we read short excerpts from Whitman—about the Spider, and the Astronomer, and Captain, O Captain. I have quoted Whitman in sermons throughout the years. I remember one summer when we camped in Indiana in September in a lonely State Park, seeing no one, but hearing gun shots, that I sat by the camp fire and read large swaths of Leaves, trying to put Walt in some theological or philosophical camp.

A few months ago I decided to make Leaves of Grass my bathroom reading and read straight through the 466 page edition I have. After each flush I had a little more understanding of Walt’s celebration of all things fecund and feculent.

I can report that theologically he is a pantheist: God is everything, and everything is God. Thus,eternal life is Nature’s immortal, ongoing life to which we contribute at our death.

Perhaps the one word to sum up Whitman’s perspective and feeling is Embrace. He embraced everything and everyone. He saw America/Democracy as the coming together of the great differences in a divine Unity.

Leaves of Grass is about the journey of the soul toward communion with God—which means communion with All. His sensuous writing of the body and all things material is an affirmation of the world ‘as is.’ (Is this the inspiration for Galway Kinnell’s little poem that has the sentence: “Whatever what is is is what I want.”?) For Whitman soul and body are inseparable, and are part of the Big Soul.

Written before, during, and after the Civil War, Leaves seems in part to be Doctor Walt’s prescription for healing the brokenness of this land. As a nurse during the war, Whitman personally placed his healing hands on wounded and dying soldiers, sharing their grief and acting as companion on their journey through bloody hell. Whitman’s poetry is also a vision of healing and wholeness that Democracy offers as it accepts the great diversity of humankind.

The Poet is always on the road, and invites us to join his journey toward acceptance and celebration of Life. There is something deeply spiritual about this book. The radical embrace of grace pervades.

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