Walt Whitman was an American poet and atheist. He wrote without rhyme or meter, from lived experiences. He hung around with Transcendentalists like Waldo Emerson. He bound up the wounds of Civil War soldiers. He developed a vocabulary to celebrate embodied love, not discussed in the “proper” society of his day. He loved men, with what Oscar Wilde described as “the love that dare not speak his name.” If he were alive today, he would grieve with us for the lives lost in Orlando. He would celebrate as we continue the work of a Welcoming Congregation. Join us today as we explore his life and work, for which a religious educator endowed the Walt Whitman Fund through the UUA. He is one of our own, even as he belongs to the world he loved.