From A Twilight Song by Walt Whitman:

As I sit in twilight late alone by the flickering oak-flame,
Musing on long-pass'd war-scenes--of the countless buried unknown soldiers,
Of the vacant names, as unindented air's and sea's--the unreturn'd,…

(Even here in my room-shadows and half-lights in the noiseless flickering flames,
Again I see the stalwart ranks on-filing, rising--I hear the rhythmic tramp of the armies;)

You million unwrit names all, all--you dark bequest from all the war,
A special verse for you--a flash of duty long neglected--your mystic roll strangely gather'd here,

Each name recall'd by me from out the darkness and death's ashes,
Henceforth to be, deep, deep within my heart recording, for many future year,

Your mystic roll entire of unknown names, or North or South,
Embalm'd with love in this twilight song.

George Odell:
We need one another when we mourn and would be comforted.
We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid.
We need one another when we are in despair and temptation,
and need to be recalled to our best selves.
We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone.

We need one another in the hour of success
when we look for someone to share our triumphs.
We need one another in the hour of defeat,
when with encouragement we might endure and stand again.
We need one another when we have come to die
and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey.
All our lives we are in need and others are in need of us.

Memorial Day originated as Decoration Day – after the Civil War when women began to go together to bring flowers to the graves of the fallen. A number of stories surround its origins – one, in particular, tells that a group of Southern women in Columbus, Mississippi, on April 26, 1866 went to lay flowers on the graves of Confederate soldiers – among the fifteen hundred confederate graves they were decorating were one hundred Union graves and they were moved to lay flowers on these as well. Officially, on May 5, 1868 General John Logan declared May 30 to be a Decoration Day and it remained on May 30^th until the 1960’s. It’s a national holiday – not a religious one. It’s a national day of memory, witness, and of war. Why should we observe or even mention Memorial Day in church -- this church or any other? Well, there is really no should about it – as a church there could be years when we don’t do more than recognize it in passing, I suppose. But war is branded into the crust of the earth and the hearts and minds of people. Today I want to talk about the way in which humans find healing – even in war – and yet so much else crowds to mind. Individual lives are shaped by war -- we carry it's stories folded in deep chests. It shapes history and cultural identity. It influences politics and economics. I know that many of us here have war stories – stories of our own service, our parents, our children, of ancestors whose stories are passed from generation to generation. We’re deeply touched by war -- it's trials and challenges -- by its victories, tragedies, and atrocities. Humans experience loss, dislocation, fallen and heightened humanity, heroism, cruelty, and cowardice. War is one of the greatest of human puzzles. War has an intensity that tests people up against morality and mortality both and out of that testing war has been witness to the best and worst in human nature. It calls for judgment and moral struggle because one way or another – the impact of war is not virtual, but real, deep, and lasting. On Memorial Day it is often the soldiers who have fought who are honored, but war has ripples – tidal waves and seismic shocks that tear through the lives of those who are not soldiers – victims, civilians, families. On the one hand, war occurs in great sweeps of command and action but on the other, it is made of countless small acts, personal impacts, and intimate scenes. It is the content of those countless small acts – pressed against the wall of human choice that tell the story of human nature – that ask what we mean to one another, and ask again and again who we are at our best and our worst -- that make war, in fact, a religious question.

The Civil War was one people could see and feel, homes were changed or destroyed by it and husbands, sons, father, brothers, sweethearts, went away as they do in all wars – but they went over the next hill or a march of days and weeks away. It was possible at some peril, to reach them.

So it was in December of 1862 that Walt Whitman set out to find his brother, George, outside of Washington, DC, near Falmouth, Virginia. On December 16^th the New York Herald had reported a "First Lieutenant G.W.Whitmore" wounded among the 13,000 killed or wounded after the Battle of Fredricksburg. Guessing correctly that it was his own brother Whitman traveled for three days and found George on December 19 – and in the process found himself.

Walt Whitman was 43 when he arrived at the winter encampment of the 51^st Division. The last few years of his life had been a low point. His work had been highly controversial, his family was in a constant state of turmoil and he was the primary caretaker of this extended and troublesome brood. His biographers speculate that it was a combination of issues that had made him restless and depressed. He had taken up with cabbies and stage drivers, a rough and tumble lot who appealed to his feeling for the common man. It was with these drivers that he had his first hospital experiences – for they brawled much, their work was dangerous, they were often injured and he would visit them. He was appreciated by both doctors and patients. But by the Winter of 1862 not his late night bohemian barroom cronies, his cabbies, nor any internal creative flame were sustaining him. The war inspired Whitman and his early poems were calls to arms "Beat, beat, drums – through the windows – through the doors – burst like a ruthless force" – he was forty one when the war began. He was yearning for some greater engagement in life – but he felt too weak to enlist – "A pale poetling" he called himself.

When the poetling arrived at the encampment of the 51^st New York Volunteers he was stirred awake by the suffering that he saw. The conditions the soldiers were in were, now famously, wretched conditions, though Clara Barton and others who worked during and after the terrible battle of Fredricksburg were laboring to improve them. Whitman was touched by the suffering of the men and that first day helped a number of the wounded write letters home.

He wrote to his mother:

"Now that I have lived for eight or nine days amid such scenes as the camps furnish and realize the way that hundred of thousands of men are now living – with death and sickness and hard marching and hard fighting (and no success at that) really nothing we call trouble seems worth talking about." He wrote in his notebook: I do not see that I do much good, but I cannot leave them. He joined his brother George and stayed at the camp and by the middle of January he had decided to stay. He wrote to Ralph Waldo Emerson, "the great New York stagnation is over." He found himself a decent room, some work at journalism, after facing the fact that his controversial reputation had followed him, and settled in Washington to tend the wounded and dying.

Whitman was an American mystic – none had ever written such love poetry for a people. In bursts of vision he had seen the great legions of humanity and felt his kinship with them – and he had written those visions into the verses of Leaves of Grass.

I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself,

And of these one and all I weave the song of myself.

The Civil War proved that his love was a sincere love – the true love of mate and companion – material and mundane – made not of vision and fancy but of touching and tending, of listening and bandaging, of vigil and witness. Even before he settled into his room he began long days at the hospital. He worked as any nurse might work – washing a patient, cleaning a wound, bringing a glass of water, fetching more help, rearranging a pillow or searching for more blankets – of which there were never enough. Whitman developed the habit of walking about with a healthy sack full of treats and coins to bring to the patients. He carried tobacco, cookies, pickles, shirts, socks, fruit, candy – sometimes in hot weather he brought ice cream. He didn’t hand these out like a Santa Claus – although he wore a dapper wine colored suit – he listened to the wounded and, when there was a need or longing he could meet he would do so. For one soldier he had his friend Nelly O’Connor make rice pudding. Through his family back home he asked for some funds to be raised to help with the cost of some of these treats and was able to raise a little money. He kept notebooks -- forty of them during the war – and in this way he could make lists of the things that he needed for the men. Union Colonel Richard Hinton observed that Whitman seemed to have what everyone wanted." He would record the men’s names and addresses as often as he could so that he could keep track of their wants and write letters to their families. At times, he would read to them but it is said that he never read his own work – in fact, he read them the things that they asked for. Few of them knew his work and or would have cared had they known – his simple acts of caring meant more meaningful volumes to these men and boys. Whitman was a loyal nurse moved by his heart as were so many civilians who arrived to work a while in the wretched wards.

In the context of such terrible suffering each person who came to serve was tested on their metal.

In the "Wound Dresser" he wrote:

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I go.
I am faithful, I do not give out – These and more I dress with impassive hand, (yet, deep in my breast a fire, a burning flame.)

It was necessity to find a deep reservoir within to sustain the work. Whitman said: "so much of a people depends on what it thinks of death, and how it stands personal anguish and sickness." For the real work was not only the dressing of wounds, bringing of trinkets, amputations of limbs, or the straightening of blankets – it was the time spent with the wounded and dying and bearing real witness to their suffering – providing a caring presence.

Louisa May Alcott, who arrived in Washington in 1863, seeking adventure, and worked less than a year as a nurse before falling seriously ill. She awoke to reality of the human need all around her when she wrote: "At last, I understood the wistful look that sometimes followed me… I knew that to him, as to so many, I was the poor substitute for mother, wife, or sister, and in his eyes no stranger, but a friend."

Donald Capps, in Living Stories, a book on pastoral counseling, wrote: Human history is replete with stories about how major changes were effected by "Small particulars." In the hospitals of the Civil War some of the greatest healing came in acts of intimate care. Sometimes bodily healing resulted, sometimes the healing of hearts and spirits.

Often it was a look of despair that called Whitman to a bedside. In the case of Private John Holmes, who was near death, Whitman wrote: "I saw, as I looked that it was a case for ministering affection first and other nourishment and medicines afterward." Holmes recovered and left the hospital, thanking Whitman for saving his life.

Whitman wrote: "I can testify that friendship has literally cured a fever, and the medicines of daily affection, a bad wound."

Often the writing of a letter home would help a man to feel less alone and unburden his heart and enable him to rest easier.

At times the only healing was to be a steady companion during the time of death. "I have at night (he wrote) watch'd by the side of a sick man in the hospital, one who could not live many hours." And after death had come Whitman would extend his care to the families of those who had died. He wrote in a lengthy letter to the parents of Erastus Haskell, "Dear friends, I thought it would be soothing to you to have a few lines about the last days of your son… I am only a friend, visiting the wounded and sick soldiers." He offered to them his comforting presence – family when family was far away and to the family he offered solace and the understanding that their loved one had not died alone.

In this role he was not the Good Gray Poet, nor the Singer of Himself but simply the presence of the human divine – the human face of care.

War is chaos – but not in the creative sense – too often identities as well as lives are lost. Too often beds and graves went unmarked. Whitman felt with even the most unknown of them. "One died before he could be carried through the hospital gate – there is nothing to identify him -- It is enough to rack one’s heart." In writing and hospital work Whitman, like Alcott and so many others tried to bring humanity into a dehumanizing context.

Isolation can be poisonous to the human heart – hence we congregate here. Caring human companionship is healing. In the beleaguered hospitals of the civil war – and the human situations of today the healing comes in listening and often in silence, in the simple bearing of companionship and witness in suffering.

In fact, this was a true ministry. Hinton also wrote: "When this old heathen gave me pipe and tobacco it was the most joyous moment of my life. Every Sunday there were half a dozen old roosters who would come into my ward and preach … though we were wishing the blamed old fools would go away. He didn’t bring any tracts or Bibles, his funny stories and pipes and tobacco were worth more than all the preachers and tracts in Christendom."

Without tracts or treatises Whitman saved souls -- with human care – late by candlelight reading a newspaper to a man, holding a frightened hand, kissing a fevered forehead. Of a young solider named Wilber Whitman wrote:

He’d asked me to read to him a chapter in the New Testament. I complied, and asked him what I should read. He said: Make your own choice. I open’d at the close of the one of the first books of the evangelists, and read the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ, and the scenes of the crucifixion. The poor, wasted young man asked me to read the following chapter also, how Christ rose again. I read very slowly for he was feeble. It pleased him very much, yet the tears were in his eyes. He asked me if I enjoyed religion. I said, "Perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean, and, yet, maybe, it is the same thing." He talked of death and said he did not fear it. Nine days later he died.

Whitman embodied the human divine – the healer that lives in humanity .

We do not come into the world alone – and in those moments when life is more roughly tested, it is the caring company y of other humans that is needed. In our hymnal is this passage by George Odell – all our lives we are in need and others are in need of us. Simple -- We are made of that need and of the need to meet it.

For Whitman, to offer his care to these suffering men was a gift to himself. It had pulled him out of his New York malaise and made real his mystical love of comrades. He believed that he was given back far more than he gave. It is true that he corresponded with some families and soldiers for many years after the war ended. But, the real gift was the way in which he was drawn out of his private life and into the sweep of history and human need. Deep into that place where our bitterest and sweetest truths live. He wrote: "These thousands and twenties of thousands of men, badly wounded, open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights, new things, exploring deeper mines than any yet, showing our humanity. It is immense, the best thing of all, nourishes me of all men." I bet that some of you are nodding inside – perhaps you are recalling the comfort that someone brought you – perhaps you are recalling the comfort that you gave another – a hand held, a silent vigil kept, a story heard for the countless time, the remembrance of a loss. We are enriched when we reach out – yes – we are those who create the pain and suffering – we wage the wars – some just, some expedient, perhaps all deserving of our moral scrutiny. As much as we turn and destroy one another so do we deeply need one another. That is the great puzzle. That just the very same we are those who reach to touch and to heal. We are the face of Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love – the human divine.

Whitman was, in the process of tending to the sick, wounded, and dying of the Civil War, given back his sense of purpuse, connection, and creative spark. Called out of himself, he was given back to himself. Whitman’s poetry reveals a metaphysics much like the one we affirm here – beneath all of our diverse religious positions and our sacred individuality we affirm that we are connected. Whitman was the great poet of the individual but his individual was materially, through blood and water, air, and need, part of all of creation. And that is, as I see, the challenge thrown down by life at all times. Said the bard, A man is a summons and challenge. The war humanly, tangibly, made his mystic vision walk in the world – made him, as Tom Owen-Towle calls it, a free-thinking mystic with hands. It lead him back to sources of meaning – meaning, which does not live in the realm of poetry but in the living of life – in the service of life.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters,
On Memorial Day we sit in mindful awareness of the bitterest and sweetest truths of human existence. War has an intensity that tests people up against morality and mortality both. We are fine and terrible creatures – we will out as we choose to – as we choose to answer that summons. Not only in war -- that summons that is the nature of life -- for Whitman it was the choice to take his vision and turn it into action – So may we all choose as service is our law – to live together in peace and to help one another.
In this way we are the face of Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love – the human divine – the Better Angel.