Meditation XVII

Posted by DJL on Nov 1, 2014 in Poetry | 0 comments

I had a terribly hard time finding a poem that I wanted to share on this November 1, a cold and rainy day here in Philadelphia that is also All Saints’ Day. There are plenty of “All Saints’ poems” out there, some quite beautiful. But for whatever reason, none seemed quite to fit the bill. Perhaps that’s because this All Saints’ is shaped by the loss of a friend in just the last week or two, a capable leader and compassionate pastor and friend taken too soon.

And so I’ve turned, as I often do on such occasions, to John Donne, mystic poet and priest who often sees to the nub of things. While his seventeenth meditation wasn’t written for All Saints’, it captures the reality that we are all bound together in a mystical and holy communion and that each joy we celebrate ennobles all and each death we mourn deprives us all. We are connected – interconnected – to each other. And while we may forget that – and even be induced to see those around us as competitors rather than as brothers and sisters – yet a part of All Saints’ Day should, I think, move us beyond only remembering the dead to also recommitting ourselves to the living, to seeing in each person around us a beloved saint and child of God.

Meditation XVII

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 manner of thy friends 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.

John Donne, “Meditation XVII,” from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions.