Greetings! If you need some rest from worries and cares, I offer this poem from Wordsworth. It often soothes me; I hope it does the same for you.
Whenever even its title comes to my mind, I soon take a walk, or go for a swim, or at least watch bluejays peck seeds from the birdfeeder by our picture window. One way or other, I get in touch with nature.
Visit The Poetry Foundation for this poem and others on this theme.
The World Is Too Much With Us
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
John+Arnett
I’m currently a panentheist believing that the Presence (or God if you wish…but language fails us) is in everything. And yet, to allude to the idea of being suckled by an out worn creed, I believe Jesus (who like Socrates never wrote anything down) was the best embodiment of that Presence. Had he talked about the Presence, however, no one would have understood so he had to anthropomorphize the Presence into “Father.” In an invocation he recently offered our building manager (Former minister) stated the task of the church (yes, some still exist) is to allow the (fallible) written word to be transformed into the living Word). And the living word is that the Presence loves and sustains the world My thoughts this year; next year they may change
Nylda Dieppa
Like John+Arnett stated above, Jesus needed to find a word to speak about the ineffable that people could relate to. Unfortunately, many of his listeners/ followers took the word “Father” literally and attributed to it all the anthropomorphic qualities of a powerful human: male, angry, vindictive, jealous, controlling, and ready to withhold love for any little infraction or sign of independent thought. Oh, and loving, too! The Bible says God made humans in his image. Humans returned the favor by making God in their image.
Charlene Edge
Thanks for reading and for your comments, John and Nylda.
I most relate to the first lines of the poem, and so my response has to do with my desire/need to get out and appreciate nature and not be like people, as the poet says, who “little we see in Nature that is ours.
“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”
John+Arnett
When looking through a regular (not electron) microscope at any blade of grass or leaf ones can see millions is individual cells each busily photosynthesizing water and carbon dioxide into the oxygen we breathe and carbon molecules that help the plant to grow. It’s quite marvelous to behold and to think that we all sprang from the first carbon containing nucleotide that settled on Earth some 4.5 billion years ago is awesome