You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Deuteronomy 6:5
Except it doesn’t say, might, not really. Actually, me’od, the word translated “might” in Hebrew isn’t used as a noun anywhere else in Hebrew Scripture. Usually, it’s an adverb meaning “very.” Translated literally, me’od is “very muchness.” And placed at the end of such a string of superlatives, me’od means full capacity, full gratuity, full abandon. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all of your very muchness.
Photo by Nancy Lee Jose+
I’ve got a theory about very muchness. This is my theory: I think that deep down, we’re just all way too much in one way or another. Every single one of us. Because that very muchness is the essence of who we are. The very muchness is the part of you that is you, your deepest you, the fullest you, the you you were created to become, the you you are, right now, even if you’re not living into it.
We don’t live into our very muchness, because most of the time, our very muchness makes other people uncomfortable. We’re taught from our very beginning not to make others uncomfortable. So we tamp it down, hide, deflect. We practice being someone else, someone who is decidedly not too much, until we’ve forgotten how to be ourselves.
The dissonance between our hidden very muchness and our presenting just a littleness causes pain. And therein lies the problem; at some point, the pain builds to the point that the very muchness must come out, but stymied very muchness always comes out sideways. In the best case scenario, sideways very muchness comes out as something we in our family call “batshit boring for evil” (don’t ask how we got there, but you know exactly what I’m talking about) and in the worst case scenario, sideways very muchness descends into depression, anxiety, or suicide. (A quick look at the mental health statistics for trans teenagers tells you all you need to know about this.) The hiding causes pain.
I’m too much. You’re too much. We’re all just way too much. But it’s precisely with our very muchness that we are told to love God. God wants you, all of you. All of your heart, all of your soul, all of your very muchness. So love with everything you’ve got. Be way, way too much.
Sources:
Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.
Cook, Stephen L. Reading Deuteronomy: A Literary and Theological Commentary. Macon, Smyth & Helwys, 2015.