The Island and the Bell

 There are stories that are written primarily because someone wanted to hear them, and stories written primarily because someone wanted to tell them.  I'm not deluded enough to suppose mine is the former.

Yet there is a privilege that comes with being in relationship with others (and I mean any kind of relationship), where things that don't really concern them can still be interesting to them.  It's one of the strangest concepts, and I still don't fully understand it, but it's clear: people still want to know things that don't directly affect them.

I'm sure the evolutionists would argue that we are more likely to survive if we are armed with more information, even information that doesn't seem to matter.  The basic urge to learn and know is still there and is part of being "the fittest".

Me not being an evolutionist, my thinking falls more along the lines of John Donne's Meditation XVII from Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.  I read this in the fourth year of my high school Great Books class, and it's one of the passages that has impacted my thinking the most.

Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris (Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.)


Perchance, he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.

For anyone who finds the 17th century language a little dense, what he's saying in that first sentence is that someone sees that he's ill and rings the death bell for him; he, not knowing how ill he is, assumes that it rings for someone else.

And later, starting with a line I'm sure you'll recognize:

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 if a 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.

 There are two very interesting ideas here, which I'll talk about separately.

The Island

Donne asserts that we're all connected, not voluntarily or merely in name.  We don't choose to be connected, and we're not connected by strings or extensions.  Don't imagine holding hands, imagine the blood running through someone's veins.  It's deeper than skin, heavier than a cloak that you put on.  It's blood and bone and soul.

We're big on independence here in America.  And don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing against personal responsibility, against freedom or liberty, or choosing to live life differently than others would.  But I do think we underestimate how actually connected we are to others.

Donne's argument is not that we should choose to be part of each other's lives, but that we already are, and therefore should act like it.  That in a very real way, if someone else dies, even if we never knew of his existence, we are harmed by that, even if we don't feel it.

This is based on our very origin: our being created by God.  That as we exist as mankind, we are inherently concerned with each other.  Mankind being fallen, the redeemed form of this exists in the church.  This is where you should read 1 Corinthians 12, which I'll quote part of here.

But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

Now John Donne certainly wasn't infallible, so this shouldn't be taken as gospel.  Even the Corinthians passage ends by mentioning that we are individually members of the body of Christ.  There are so many different views that can be taken of every issue, and I'm inclined to think almost all of them can inform me in some way, even those that I don't agree with.  And because I find Donne's position so interesting and appealing, it's even more important that I look at other sides.

Not in this post though, because, to quote the Highwaymen, "The road goes on forever, and the party never ends."  And I actually do have other things to do today.

The Bell

This is where Donne started, and it's where he ends.  The island is the reasoning behind it, but the bell is where that thinking meets real life.

The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

If we are all part of each other, the bell tolling for another tolls in some way for ourselves as well.  That's why earlier he said, "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."  Because of that, it doesn't matter if it was originally ringing for us or not.  Without doubt, there is pain in this world.  There is loss, and there is no perfection apart from Christ.  When the bell tolls, there is no lack of death for me to examine and draw closer to God over.

Here is how Donne ends it:

Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

I pray to God that I don't ignore the bells that toll, that I don't assume they ring for someone else and so waste the gold that could be applied to me.  No man is an island; another man's pain is my own.

I said earlier that Meditation XVII has impacted my thinking.  Unfortunately, my thinking hasn't always impacted my actions.  Every day I struggle with how self-focused I am, how little I really feel for others.

Yet Christ will bring me closer.  It is, after all, his body that I am a part of.  That is my only hope.

I'd encourage anyone reading this to read the entire passage by John Donne.  I quoted about half of it here, but it's worth reading to see it all together.  You'll probably find that I missed or misconstrued some of it, but I think you'll also find it interesting.