I’ve been in Oregon for a couple of weeks and while I was there I had a chance to visit a huge used bookstore, Powell’s.  Obviously, most authors who write today–fiction or non-fiction–do not intend to bring glory to God.  For that matter, they have little or no interest in addressing issues of sin and salvation.  This was not always the case.

Go back 150 years and American literature was soaked (some would say mired) in these biblical themes.  One writer deserves a lot of credit for changing this, for “liberating” literature from the shackles of Christianity–the poet Walt Whitman.  In his groundbreaking volume of poetry, Leaves of Grass, he cut the cord between salvation and literature, exalting in man’s independence, discussing more practical matters–the here and now.  Here are a few lines from the end of a poem entitled, appropriately, “Song of Myself”:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

 

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

 

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

If you want to see him again, don’t look in heaven–or hell–just look under the sole of your shoes–that’s all we are; that’s all there is to life.  Whitman’s poetry was really revolutionary–though today his theme of personal independence is old hat.

So that’s a little poetry for Friday–a poem about independence.  As Christians, we know, however, that we are finally and completely dependent upon God.  And as much as we may try to exert our independence, it is a futile effort, we were made to know Him and obey Him.

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