2013.09.11 Good Wisdom

 The 1855 edition of Walt Whitman’s poetry, Leaves of Grass, contained a preface, which was left out of subsequent editions, and in it he wrote:

"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."

So there you have it. (Why in the name of anything did it get left out after 1855?)

This is perhaps the most charmingly beautiful word picture of—I don’t know what. I dare not project or theologize such naked truth. It’s just too darn beautiful. 

Oh, let me be a poem.

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd by Walt Whitman

Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
by Walt Whitman

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently
to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travell'd a long way merely to look on you to
touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.

Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am much of that ocean, my love, we are not so
much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how
perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate
us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us
diverse forever;
Be not impatient — a little space — know you I salute
the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love.

A poem ahead of its time. An quantum image of interconnectiveness science has now proclaimed. An ancient idea that describes the boundaryless oceanic love of Divinity. A truth revered and expressed in many different ways in all religions and spiritualities.

Now is the time for all good people not to get hooked on what disconnects and separates us but to pay attention to what connects us. Things like love, fear, hope, grief, doubt, humor, ego, humanity, anger, sweet flesh and suffering flesh, and a sense of something greater and deeper, more powerful and able than we are.