Monday Morning Musings: Moving & Emily Dickinson

My apologies for missing last week's post. All of the things caught up with me at once and then I was very weary and worried about the beloveds who are struggling and then.....it was Wednesday.

I had a seminary professor who used to say that when two witnesses to something come into our life, we ought to pay attention. You know, those times when you haven't thought about that song from your high school years in, well, forever, and then you hear it (or hear it mentioned) several times in a short time span?

Recently, the same Emily Dickinson quote kept coming up: in pieces I was reading and in a gorgeous painting by the talented Cody F. Miller and then in a conversation, as well! It was clear that with all of these witnesses, I needed to pay attention.

The quote is: "I am out with lanterns, looking for myself." Curious, I looked for the source of the quote. Was it a poem? A sonnet? Turns out it was in correspondence that Dickinson wrote to her friend Elizabeth Holland. Dickinson is describing the process of moving when she writes: "I cannot tell you how we moved. I had rather not remember. I believe my "effects" were brought in a bandbox, and the "deathless me", on foot, not many moments after. I took at the time a memorandum of my several senses, and also of my hat and coat, and my best shoes - but it was lost in the melee and I am out without lanterns, looking for myself."

Change can be like that - it can leave us without a sense of where we put ourselves and as we search it feels as though we are groping in the dark for our very being. Hmmm.

This week is Valentine's Day (on Ash Wednesday) and Dickinson was known for some lovely poems about love. Here's one especially suited for this February 14th:

That I did always love

I bring thee Proof

That till I loved

I never lived --Enough--

That I shall love alway---

I argue thee

That love is life ---

And life hath Immortality---

This--does thou doubt---Sweet---

Then have I

Nothing to show

But Calvary------

Here is the piece I mentioned by Cody F. Miller inspired by the Dickinson quote.