During the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, you step out of time, out of the confines of earth and its physical limitations. The curtain, dividing present from past and future, eternity from temporalness, opens wide. Gathered there with me to worship are the angels and the saints, the apostles, the Theotokos, my children, my Orthodox Christian brothers and sisters and ancestors in Pennsylvania, Romania, Ethopia, my parents, my old college roommate and her family, men, women and children I've never met personally but am interlocked with like gear teeth. My faith, my actions, affect everyone. There are times I press forward, playing a part in propelling the body of Christ as a whole toward salvation and times when I, all limp and exhausted, am carried ahead solely by the prayers and selflessness of others. Blessed is the soul that loves his brother, said St. Silouan, for our brother is our life.
Today is poetry Wednesday. I picked a classic poem by John Donne that reminds me to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with with those who weep for I am not a neutral, impervious, removed bystander, but an essential "part of the main."
Forgive me for sometimes forgetting that.
No Man is an Island
by John Donne
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each 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 manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
