I attended a seminar this morning on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. It is popular these days in academia to champion Dickinson as a heretic, someone who saw through the failures of Puritanism and Calvinism and rejected Christian faith.
Well, none of us can know how true that is, any more than any of us can know the state of any soul. But just as most of us live– on any given day– somewhere between Nietzsche and Acquinas (as my friend Dan recently so aptly put it), I am guessing that Ms. Dickinson fell somewhere in between.
Here’s a poem we discussed in the seminar this morning. It’s only just after nine now, but the poem made my day.
How brittle are the Piers
On which our Faith doth tread–
No Bridge below doth totter so–
Yet none hath such a Crowd.
It is as old as God–
Indeed- ’twas built by him–
He sent his Son to test the Plank–
And he pronounced it firm.
