After so many words written, spoken and read, I have arrived at that point in the year when I want to say as Phillip Larkin did—“That there is nothing to be said—then perhaps to just leave it at that. But I cannot help but wonder and then share with you the question: how was it that a poet, who spoke so persuasively to his audience, came to believe that he no longer had anything to say, and as a consequence he devastatingly believed that he was only giving them poems which were like something almost being said. It concerns me that Larkin’s observation reflects something of my own experience with the many words I have spoken, delivered in sermons over the last few weeks of the holiday season: that numerous words that I reached after were in fact only like something almost being said, but not actually said.
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.