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We pray together alone. We feel together even when we can’t be. Longing will do that. I prayed yesterday with someone I’ve never met, a writer whose sentences put me on the Canterbury trail. We commemorate John Donne on the date of his death, 31 March (1631). Born 22 January 1572, Donne is one of the greatest poets in the English language. A priest, he was Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, the church Christine served as Priest Vicar and Chaplain. Donne’s romantic poems are theological and his Holy Sonnets are erotic. As kids say these days, because obviously. Theology is desire or one helluva waste of time.

Donne’s St Paul’s was one of the longest churches in the world, and when he mounted the pulpit the place  was standing room only. He and his contemporary Lancelot Andrewes were absolute rock stars as preachers.

Donne’s Meditation XVII is one of 23 meditations he wrote when he thought he was dying in December 1623. Each consists of three parts: the meditation, the expostulation, and a prayer. The most famous passage from Meditation XVII explains why we call this wunderkammer, this cabinet of curiosities, Together Alone. 

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man / is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; / if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe / is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as / well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine / owne were; any mans death diminishes me, / because I am involved in Mankinde; / And therefore never send to know for whom / the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

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