Emily Dickinson
1830-1886 19th century
Prayer held at arm's length, and held all the same.
Who was Emily Dickinson?
Born and dead in the same house in Amherst, she travelled little and, in her last years, rarely left her room. She wrote close to eighteen hundred poems, hand-sewn into small booklets; about ten appeared in her lifetime. Raised in a Puritanism she could never profess (she refused to declare herself converted during the revivals at her college), she spent her life questioning God at very close range, and never let go.
In their own words
Prayer is the little implement through which Men reach where Presence is denied them.
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.
I never spoke with God nor visited in Heaven, yet certain am I of the spot as if the checks were given.