Too Much or Not Enough
a writing prompt for you
William Wordsworth started a poem with the line: “The world is too much with us…” and goes on to lament how, in our “getting and spending” we’ve “given our hearts away.” Denise Levertov turned that opening line around in her poem below, saying “The world is not with us enough...”
I’m far from a poetry expert, but I think deep down they are saying something similar about how to approach living in a complicated world. Paying attention to the natural world and our experience moving through it can save us. Not just what we think about this world, but how we take it in through our whole selves: our senses, our bodies, what we see, hear, and taste, and then what all that does within us.
This is a week my faith tradition calls holy. We walk through stories of Jesus that are deeply sensory. We pour water and wash hands or feet, break bread and eat, touch nails and wood and stone and flowers, light candles and snuff them out, sing and sit in silence and then sing again.
As a worship planner and preacher, it’s easy to get stuck in my head about the whole theological meaning of it all. Instead, I’m trying to listen to Levertov’s advice this week: to taste and see, and pay attention to what this week in God’s world gifts to me and take it all in, trusting that it will transform within me into something that satisfies. Something that is neither too much, nor not enough. Something fully embodied and alive. I wish the same for you this week.
a writing prompt
Read Levertov’s poem below, then find a word, a phrase, an image, or an idea, and use it to start your writing. Keep your pen moving without stopping to edit or erase. Just write and see what emerges on the page.
O Taste and See
The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,
grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform
into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being
hungry, and plucking
the fruit.—Denise Levertov
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I often eat without tasting, and taste without gratitude and wonder. I'll be more thoughtful today, I hope. I saw the word "bite" as "bile" on a first read. (My eyesight is failing and sans serif doesn't help.) I knew that couldn't be right. But bile is part of the tasting. Bile comes with the good, the burp gone bad, a consequence of over tasting, too much of a good thing, tangerine, mushroom risotto, Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. Tears with laughter. Sweat and respite and afternoon shade. Thanks for your Holy Week post.