“You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers!”

If you read the title of this post and are alarmed…don’t be, or maybe it is a good thing if you are…it is just Uncle Walt doing what he does best in his poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.”I read this line as being a moment where Whitman sees that perhaps the ministers have been waiting for far too long. The entire poem confronts injustices that Whitman sees and he uses poetry to create a variety of images for the reader so they too can experience inequalities in city life. He takes you on a journey and that journey evokes a feeling of justice as well as provides practical advice for society. In my reading of this piece Whitman suggests ministers can be conduits for radical change and I would argue that ministers must be at the forefront of change.
Unfortunately, some ministers have fallen victim to waiting for change to happen, instead of advocating and implementing change. We discussed this as an immersion group–sometimes churches wait until something bad happens to respond, but action is needed by church communities before accidents occur. One of the reasons I chose PSR is because boldness has been part of the institutions’ tradition and its desire to continually uphold justice is still valued in the classroom today. PSR provides a unique learning environment where getting one’s hands dirty is encouraged, thus making me hopeful that we are not sending out “dumb, beautiful ministers,” no longer lamenting “you have waited, always wait.” I also chose PSR because some of my writing heroes have lived in Bay Area communities, so I knew that living in a dynamic community was a must to bettering myself as a creative writer who wants to see more spaces for spoken word and slam poetry in the church. I know stories in Berkeley, Oakland, and San Fran are waiting for active storytellers to observe and record.

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Whitman’s poetry gives us an opportunity to combine religion and the arts. He uses spiritual and religious imagery and awakens the sacred nature of artistic endeavor. It was not until this trip, crossing a ferry to Brooklyn and standing on the shores overlooking the water, that I truly could understand what it was that Whitman was talking about in his poem.
I saw the, “Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes!”
I felt, “The certainty of others—the life, love, sight, hearing of others.”
It seemed to also be, “My river and sun-set, and my scallop-edg’d waves of flood-tide,”
and I watched, “The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight, and the belated lighter;”

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You get the idea. I was transported to the 1900’s, yet firmly rooted in 2013. Different sites, but not so different after all. I hope PSR would provide more opportunities such as this to intentionally put students face to face with art. Art engages all the senses, it is transformational, and if we are not engaging the senses, then art will be confined to distanced study. The same is true for religious studies. Whitman was credited with saying, “The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.” While this comment doesn’t seem to have much hope for institutions, this for me rings of religious and artistic engagement that tells the stories of common people. Jesus was a common man, why are we so afraid to embrace common humankind? Often we forget in our institutions that the common people are who we are working for and art an be a window into the lives of commoners, but we still find ourselves waiting, for what? In my opinion the art of ministry requires we stop waiting. At PSR, the Doug Adams Gallery provides an excellent source for artistic engagement, but there are so many museums in the Bay Area as well as local art that can take the classroom off Holy Hill. Even if we stay on Holy Hill there are other ways to engage in religion and art discourse.

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The first time I learned about Walt Whitman’s poetry I was sitting in my eleventh grade American literature class and the only detail I remember about the lesson was Walt Whitman was “America’s first democratic poet.” We did not go into any specifics. My appreciation for Walt Whitman did not manifest until my sophomore year of college–three years after my first meeting with Whitman’s poetry. My creative writing professor was a huge inspiration for my writing and he also happened to be the advisor for the poetry society on campus. I was in charge of the poetry society at the time and he suggested for Coming Up Month (the name I gave our Underground Poet’s Society observation of National Poetry Month) we do a chain reading of a poem. We made it a point to read Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to honor the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass. For an entire day we stationed ourselves in the campus hub, the dining hall round, and read from a microphone with a small amplifier. We handed out copies of the book and I imagined how individuals would open that book, find things they had never considered before.
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But I knew hearing the words had a completely different effect on my understanding of the text. “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” was meant to be read aloud. The poem became a conversation, and though we were reading Whitman’s work, the bard always changed which, added new revelations and insight. It is my hope that this recording reflects the power of Walt Whitman’s body of work, gives voice to poetry’s embodiment of democracy and gives voice to the artistic ministers who are no longer waiting, but instead taking action.
After all, “It is not you alone, nor I alone…”