A Reflection and Poem for IX Pentecost All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, NC July 17, 2016 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
“Your
Very Flesh Shall Be A Great Poem”
A couple of weeks ago I came across the Preface to
the 1855 edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves
of Grass. That edition only had twelve poems, and as he added more poems in
later editions, he dropped this Preface. I was so moved by reading it, I
decided that I needed to share it:
This is what you shall
do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every
one that asks, stand up for the 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 of families, read these leaves in the open air every
season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school
or church or in any book, 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.
Whitman spent his life writing, and being, great poetry,
finding his own voice and the voice of a nation.
The first part of our lives we learn the rules, the
normal way of doing things as our community defines them. This is how we get
along in this world, how we fit in. Then one day we wake up and we say “These
old rules don’t work anymore. They were fine when I was a child, but I need to
be an adult.” At this point we make a decision between three options:
(1) Accept the norms
and accept that they will kill our souls, but we will survive in a quiet despair,
as if life is about survival. We begin
to enter a process of a negation of self in order to “get along”.
(2) Throw out all of
the norms and live life in rebellion, and in our anger, we become as a slave to
own wants and desires and let the rest of the world go to hell in a handbasket,
where we are the center of our own universe as we escape from any
responsibility or meaningful connection to others.
(3) Go deeper into the
norms and find the core of their spirit of being and our being. There is a meaning
to life, and it is in that spirit that we find it. We will find that path of
faith difficult because the world does not appreciate thinking outside the
boxes of its own making.
The lessons for today have to do with questioning
what you have always heard is true as the prophets write and live great poetry.
Amos in the Hebrew Testament lesson for today calls the nation to account for
going along with the corrupt religious, economic, and political systems. In the
fourth vision of his book, God shows him a basket of summer fruit. It looks
pretty, desirable, and tastes great, but in a time without refrigeration and in
hot summer, it will soon begin the process of rotting. Amos goes deeper into the vison to say that living a life of
luxurious comfort sleeping in Ivory Beds, paid for by the selling of the poor
for a pair of shoes and swindling the vulnerable while getting the religious
authority’s approval for the smart business done, is soon to come to an end. The
poem they write with their flesh uses pretty but fleeting shallow words.
The Psalm for today reflects an awareness of the
Prophets’ warnings about the Temple worshipping the norms of the larger
community. In the first verse the poet asks God the question: “Lord, who may dwell in your tabernacle? * who may
abide upon your holy hill?” The poet uses two different words here - the word “dwell”
is used for someone living in a tent, a temporary dwelling, and the word “abide”
means one with a solid foundation. If you are just visiting, then it is all
about following the religious ritual business rules, but if one is abiding, one
makes a home in the solid foundation of how one treats the neighbors. We see
this here on the Outer Banks. We have thousands of people coming in here every
week who rent a dwelling, and they are here to have their wants met. They could care Jack about what is good for
the larger community. All they care about is getting the biggest bang for their
buck and time. But there are people who keep coming back year after year, and
they connect themselves to the deeper vision of abiding in a community in which
they share a love for all that God is sharing with us.
In a way it is similar to the residents of Dare
Challenge in our ministry moment for today. If they come to dry out and get
three hots and a cot, then they are dwelling there temporally. If however they
come in order to find a deeper foundation for living that will be with them
wherever they go, then they find a higher power, a deeper spirit in whom to
abide and to be a great poem in their own flesh.
The writer of the Epistle to the Colossians writes,
and lives, a poem about how to live in a world where we are all connected through
Christ in whom all things have their being and reconciling all making peace
through the blood of his cross. In order to understand that, we have to see it
in the light of a prevailing world view that peace is only possible by shedding
the blood of someone else. That is what the political and religious authorities
did to Jesus; they wanted peace and they killed Jesus to keep him out of the
way of their own agendas for control. Yet this Christ shows that real peace is
not through puffing oneself up but by empting oneself out; peace not through
revenge, but through forgiveness. Instead of feeling sorry for himself for all
he has to do without, the poet feels joy that his suffering is able to bring
growth to others.
Again, in this way it is similar to Dare
Challenge. If they want to feel sorry
for themselves and throw a pity party because they are the victims of an addiction,
then they are wasting their time and that of others. If, however, they honestly face the suffering
they have undergone and see that this is the path is a greater healing, then
they are where they need to be. A good friend of mine used to say that the best
thing that ever happened to him was when he discovered he was an alcoholic,
instead of just a drunk, because working on recovery was the way to a full
sobriety of life, whereas if he just quit drinking, he would still be a jerk -
a pleasant, dried-out jerk, but still a selfish and angry jerk. Now he could be
used to make the world a better place.
The poet Luke relates a story of Jesus visiting the
home of Mary and Martha. Martha wants to
follow all the rules of hospitality for someone who is temporarily dwelling
with them. This is a fine and noble thing. But Mary breaks the rules and
becomes a woman who joins with men in order that Jesus might abide with her.
The deeper truth is that Jesus isn’t just a guest in our house, but he is the
soul of the space between us and in us.
At the 8:30 service we did a baptism, and I am a
sucker for babies. If we just did a religious ritual where a baby dwells in a
tub of water, then it was a waste of time – fun, but a waste. If, however, this
is an entrance to an abode on this earth, not made with human hands but with
understanding hearts from those who surround this child, then this will help
all of us learn how to write our poem that is our life.
What is the poem of your life? Don’t get hung up on
rhymes or meter as if writing a jingle, but go deeper to find the true poem
inside each of you that God writes in your heart.
“Your Very
Flesh Shall Be A Great Poem” (Poem)
Walt’s
self’s prayer, for fellow poems and us untimely born
who
worry about rhyme and meter. Wondering if it will sell,
get
favorable reviews, get picked up for another season, even
win awards, fearing, like Wyatt’s loves, once
seekers fleeing.
Our
greatest treasons, our worst reason, to posture life like a
someone
else, as if words echoing would make a poem rise off
page,
coming alive as if filled with faux creative spirit breath.
Abiding breath comes as false selves empty to live
our words.
We
are not passing through to fit in, to entertain, or even make
others
happy, even if we have that power, which we don’t. We
want
to please and be admired but then it is only temporarily a
dwelling,
a cameo in someone else’s poem passing through.
We’re
set free to abide; to live, move, grow and have our being.
in
our poem of blessing, bringing the joy trapped deep within us
to
be the poem we were called to sing; dancing with the love we
give
and receive until, and even yet beyond, the final stanzas.
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