“I Felt a Funeral in my Brain” or Lost Faith in God
When we think about poets, or authors furthermore, that are valuable to a Christian looking to strengthen their relationship with God, we often turn to those who already have faith in God and Christianity. Our first thought wouldn’t be to turn to someone who is atheist or questioning the legitimacy of God, but that in itself, is where I find merit in studying someone like Emily Dickinson, who was not an outright woman of faith.
In her poem “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church,” Dickinson assesses organized religious gatherings and finds that she doesn’t place much value in it. Dickinson often wrote critically about organized religion and I believe that her ideas on faith could be uncomfortable for some Christians to analyze. That being said, the merit in studying someone like Emily Dickinson as a Christian reader is to expand our worldview and the ideas and theories that other people may hold on religion. Her work also focuses on ideas dealing with grief, death, and mental illness, which I believe are topics that we as Christians try to mask.
We see examples of this in her poem entitled “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain,” where Dickinson compares the state of her mental health to a funeral service. She exemplifies the despair and hopelessness that someone with mental health issues may feel on a daily basis, again, something that most Christians aren’t comfortable with discussing openly. One of her poems that touched me was “If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking.” In the poem, Dickinson talks about how if she could ease the pain in just one person’s life, it would be worth it in a sense to her. I felt this poem was powerful because even though Emily Dickinson was struggling with mental health, the death of loved ones, and chronic illnesses, she cared for the well-being of others. An interesting view on Emily Dickinson that I found was in the perspective essay by Cynthia Griffin Wolff entitled, “On the Many Voices of Emily Dickinson.” Wolff talks about how Dickinson’s poems have different “characters” and voices ranging from a strong woman, an innocent child and even a man. The different people she embodies in her poetry is just another example of why she is a poetic genius.
Overall, the merit in studying a poet like Emily Dickinson as a Christian is that we are able to expand our worldview, mindset, and understanding of “less-than-religious” people that might not hold the same values as we do. There’s nothing wrong with exploring differing opinions and using those opinions to build the basis for what you believe in. I also feel as if Emily Dickinson was one of the first influential people to normalize the conversation of mental illness in all communities, including religious ones.
