Walt Whitman remains America’s greatest poet of healing. His close-up witness to the tragedy of the Civil War, coupled with his robust faith in the American creed led to his majestic and compassionate poetry. I believe it was his — and is my preference — to always err on the side of compassion vs anything less.
In his poem, America, Whitman wasn’t describing what America was during the Civil War, but was envisioning what it could be and what the American experiment aimed to be. America, he wrote, you are the “Center of equal daughters, equal sons, / All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old.”
Whitman knew that the American Union could remain intact through the Civil War only by the inclusion of all, especially one’s enemies. It’s how we became one United States of America versus a Northern or Southern United States. Enemies were included!
Today, the healing prescription for cultural bitterness must adopt this vision. It requires hard work, but not the work of power; rather, a willpower that Ghandi described as truth-force. A man tending to the wounded and dying in a Civil War hospital tent cannot fake caring. It is the most profound reality-centric expression of compassion as compared to the unreality of nice words and slogans that remain distant but never get bloody.
In Leaves of Grass, Whitman wrote, “For every atom belongs to me as good belongs to you.” Quantum thought posits this as true. My atoms are yours and yours are mine. Your breath is mine and mine is yours.… read more...