The Portable Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman

Incidentally, by connecting the self and divinity, Whitman does not pretend to see, control, and move all. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch ’d from.” Whitman’s poem considers the human-self (the Me myself and the You yourself) as testifying to a divine upper region. Whitman is a theist in a way, Song of Myself is a miracle story: “Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

Following Weddle, we can ask: where does he stand regarding miracles and sacrifice? Specifically, it is debatable as to whether Whitman is a fan or foe of religion. Now Weddle’s interpretation of religion’s two sides opens up a vantage point from which to consider something remote from the Old Testament -the poetry of Walt Whitman, who is typically considered America’s most eminent poet. Please take this otherwise bizarre act of wastefulness as signaling a heart that burns for you, and nothing of this world.” I imagine it saying: “God, the temple flame is currently turning my perfectly good lamb into ash. ” The minhah is less about God than it is about you. But Köhler enlightens us, “The purpose of the gift is to acknowledge the majesty of the recipient and to express the donor’s feeling of respect. As much as Warren Buffett needs your pocket change does the godhead need your lamb.

Indeed, the practice is initially puzzling. On the one hand, we have zebah, a temple slaughtering whereafter the community eats an extraordinary meal as Ludwig Köhler explains, “one of the participants in the sacrificial meal is God.” But the participants only deserve this blessing with the help of minhah, wherein participants lay bare their hearts, by allowing the temple flame to entirely devour a sacrificial gift, such as a lamb. Energized by the knowledge that the divine and mundane poles are not in fixed separation, religion is an organization with the purpose of bringing the willing, through self-purification or sacrifice, closer to the Divine.Įxemplifying the logic of sacrifice are two practices found in the Old Testament. The miracle story announces good news: the mundane plane upon which we typically live and have our being is not the whole story and the divine side of reality occasionally crosses over to ours. Weddle, religion rests on two pillars: miracle stories and practices of sacrifice.

The Portable Walt Whitman by Walt Whitman