My Worthiness is all my Doubt —

My Worthiness is all my Doubt —
His Merit — all my fear —
Contrasting which, my quality
Do lowlier — appear —

Lest I should insufficient prove
For His beloved Need —
The Chiefest Apprehension
Upon my thronging Mind —

Tis true — that Deity to stoop
Inherently incline —
For nothing higher than Itself
Itself can rest upon —

So I — the undivine abode
Of His Elect Content —
Conform my Soul — as 'twere a Church,
Unto Her Sacrament —


       -Fr791, J751, fascicle 37, 1863


There is a tricky thing Dickinson does in the first line of this poem, a move she often makes wherein, through syntax and the use of the line break, she is able to give two very different meanings to a line. For instance, you could read the first line here as saying, “I doubt my own worthiness,” but you could also read it as, “All my doubting is what makes me worthy.” These two opposing readings of the line get at the tension that underlies the poem. In trying to parse this poem, it's helpful to keep both readings of this line in mind at the same time. It's tough to do, especially because of the elided syntax. I’m reminded of Robert Frost’s useful warning that explication consists of “saying a poem over again, only worse.”

The first reading of this line sets up a pretty straightforward reading of the poem. The speaker is filled with doubt about her own spiritual adequacy and fears that she cannot live up to the perfection of the divine. Yet she reflects that it is in God's very nature to “stoop," to reach down to what is lower, since nothing is higher than God Himself. This realization allows the speaker, though she sees herself as an “undivine abode,” to prepare her soul like a church ready to receive a sacrament. 

But the second possible reading of the poem, based off the idea of there being worth in doubt, is trickier. It is triggered not only by the ambiguity of the first line, but also by the telling word "appear" in the phrase, "Contrast which, my quality do lowlier appear." It appears lowlier, but it isn't, because it is only in our doubts and struggles that we can relate to one another. 

Read this way, the tone of the entire poem changes. In the first reading of the poem, for instance, that second line, "His Merit — all my fear —" means something like, "I fear I can never reach the merit of God," but in the second reading it changes to fear of the Merit itself. The Merit itself is in question. I think it suggests that God is an impossible ideal, and you might even say this is at the root of the doubt. 

You see these two readings come to a head in the third stanza of this poem:

'Tis true — that Deity to stoop
Inherently incline —
For nothing higher than Itself
Itself can rest upon —

You can see the paradox in the idea that God must stoop to "incline." In other words, this poem is cleverly saying that to reach up, we must reach down. And so, being low is actually the ideal state, as it is what allows us to "conform" to the sacrament of the church. To reach up is to stoop. Stooping here is shorthand for dying on the cross, for humility, for helping the less fortunate, etc.

The second reading sets up the idea that it is our doubts that help make us worthy, because they are part of our humanity, part of our humility, and therefore part of what allows others to lean on us, and us, on them. Likewise, God must become human (become Christ) in order to be "rest upon." One thinks of Christ’s moment of doubt on the cross, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” That doubt, like Dickinson’s, makes Him human, and therefore relatable. 

I feel as if I put all of this badly, but I'm hoping that in wrestling with this poem I have gotten across its paradoxical point. The low is held high. This is at the crux of Christianity itself, and I think it is the part Dickinson felt aligned with. But conversely the gist of the second reading is that the high and mighty is held to be low. There is a "fear" of the arrogance of anything that purports to be perfect and above us. This ambiguity can be found in the tension of the fabric of the poetry itself.

Another key word in the poem is "content." The last stanza, if we fill in the elisions, goes something like this:

So I — the undivine abode
Of His Elect (am, though undivine, nonetheless) Content —
(to) Conform my Soul — as 'twere a Church,
Unto Her Sacrament —

We are "undivine," and are content to be so, because how else could we be truly aligned with our community (the church)? It's this alignment with the suffering of others that is sacred, that leads us to "Her Sacrament.

     -/)dam Wade l)eGraff


Note: It is interesting that God in this poem is a He and the church is a She. It's the Her of the church that Dickinson appears to be conforming to here, not some perfect Him on high.