Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"

"Song of Myself" is a long and complex poem. It can be daunting to think of approaching it alone. My objective for the week is, first, simply to help people feel up to the challenge of reading a work of this kind, to offer a space for the reading and an assurance from someone who has been through the poem before--many times--that it can be done, that the poem is intelligible, coherent, meaningful, faithful, and lovely.

But, more deeply, I hope that through reading in a spirit of worship people may see some of what I see in this poem: the value of Whitman’s struggle to reconcile the degrading and the evil with the goodness of creation, the beauty of his expressions of faith in God, the power of his portrait of ecstatic mystical union. I hope that the poem will call to people’s own struggles, their own faith, their own answers. I know that the poem speaks to the theme of this year’s Gathering, “Accepting Gifts of the Spirit,” both in its acknowledgment of the abundance we are offered, and in its wrestling with questions of how to reconcile that abundance and goodness with the suffering and despair we also encounter. I also know that we can’t predict which themes of the poem will be most meaningful for us; that always depends on the group reading it. It is always a journey of both the known and the unexpected.

We will read the poem aloud together (no one is required to read aloud), pausing at each section break for reflection and discussion. We will end each morning with about half an hour of waiting worship.

There is no need to read the poem before arriving in Ohio, though you may if you wish. I will bring copies of the poem for each participant.