Commemorating John Donne

Today we commemorate John Donne, the great English poet and preacher who was the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, for the last decade of his life; he died on this day in 1631. 

He was born in Elizabethan England and was gifted with a razor sharp intellect and deep poetic insights.  Almost all people, even post-literate late-moderns, have heard the line "no man is an island," a line taken from one of his meditations; it's a beautiful insight into our fundamental connectedness as nations, as people, as an entire race; here is the thought:  

No man is an island entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less, As well as if a promontory were,

As well as any manor of thy friend's,

Or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

The last line of the meditation is justly famous as well.  This thought (of our fundamental connectedness) is the key vision of a book some of us have been studying this Lent, a study that we may continue on into the Easter season. 

The last line of the meditation is justly famous as well.  This thought (of our fundamental connectedness) is the key vision of a book some of us have been studying this Lent, a study that we may continue on into the Easter season.  

There's another theme from Donne's life that I've been brooding on today: his life did not go as he had imagined.  He had all the skills to serve as Lord Chancellor and many thought/he thought he deserved to but a series of circumstances worked against him and he only reluctantly took up the call to ordination.  But as he grew into his role he came to see that the priesthood was indeed his true calling.  This reluctance to serve is something we can probably all relate to at one level or another, not necessarily with our life's calling in view, but in the everyday challenges of serving those around us.  But, by God's grace, that is, by Christ's own presence with us, we come to see that these simple acts of love and kindness are our true calling, our deepest meaning-making-moments and the acts, in God, which shape us and many others for the most profoundly. 

My prayer is that we will use all our gifts, whether brilliant intellects or artistic skill or practical organization or financial generosity to serve the people in our lives; it's what God has always wanted!