She opens this poem with, “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church- I keep it, staying at Home” (Dickinson). The thematic differences between the two capitalized nouns “Church” and “Home” are central to the poem’s meaning. Church, as a public building of brick reserved for Christian services, opposes Dickinson’s Home, which revolves around privacy and nature. Home has a personal connotation, being where the narrator lives and practices religion, while as the Church is where “some keep the Sabbath”, it loses its intimacy. Furthermore, Dickinson compares tenses to differentiate her spirituality from others’ in writing, “So instead of getting to Heaven, at last- I’m going, all along” (Dickinson). While churchgoers are attempting to “get” to heaven, the narrator is “going”. Dickinson expresses a spiritual journey in her spiritual life; the consistency of change found in Dickinson’s religion directly challenges the grasping search of those in a church. These tenses of go emphasis the point of a liberating experience for the person worshipping at
She opens this poem with, “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church- I keep it, staying at Home” (Dickinson). The thematic differences between the two capitalized nouns “Church” and “Home” are central to the poem’s meaning. Church, as a public building of brick reserved for Christian services, opposes Dickinson’s Home, which revolves around privacy and nature. Home has a personal connotation, being where the narrator lives and practices religion, while as the Church is where “some keep the Sabbath”, it loses its intimacy. Furthermore, Dickinson compares tenses to differentiate her spirituality from others’ in writing, “So instead of getting to Heaven, at last- I’m going, all along” (Dickinson). While churchgoers are attempting to “get” to heaven, the narrator is “going”. Dickinson expresses a spiritual journey in her spiritual life; the consistency of change found in Dickinson’s religion directly challenges the grasping search of those in a church. These tenses of go emphasis the point of a liberating experience for the person worshipping at