A few days ago on Facebook I shared
the John Donne meditation often referred to as "For Whom The Bell
Tolls". I was prompted to do this when
a heterosexual male friend informed me that gay marriage was not his fight. I haven't
thought about the meditation since high school but it keeps repeating in my
mind as I am inundated with the media storm surrounding the Chick-Fil-A public stance
on Gay Marriage. I respect that Chick-Fil-A chooses to run its business based
upon religious (Christian) principals. I wish morality were more prominent in
corporate America. I'm proud that in the USA individuals and groups are free to
express opinions. More so I'm relieved that people are encouraged to respond with
their own statements and actions.
There are many ways to interpret any
document, especially the Bible. Chick-Fil-A representatives have the right to
their dogma. Like the company’s president, I am a practicing Christian. My
understanding of most major religious doctrine is that they state that humans are obligated to
treat all creatures with dignity and fairness. I work hard to uphold these
standards. Basic equality issues are my fight. However, there’s no
need for me to babble about this when John Donne and the United States
Supreme Court eloquently have stated my feelings.
This year we
celebrate the 45h anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the definitive
answer to the constitutionality of mix-race marriages. In the 1967 case the
United States Supreme Court declared
Virginia's anti-miscegenation
statute, the Racial
Integrity Act of 1924, unconstitutional. By doing such the
Court overturned Pace v. Alabama a precedent setting case on the topic and
ended all race-based
legal restrictions on marriage
in the United States.
In its decision, The Court wrote:
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“Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights
of man," fundamental to our very
existence and survival.... To deny this
fundamental freedom on so
unsupportable a basis as the racial
classifications embodied in these
statutes, classifications so directly subversive
of the principle of equality
at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is
surely to deprive all the State's
citizens of liberty without due process of law.
The Fourteenth Amendment
requires that the freedom of choice to marry not
be restricted by invidious
racial discrimination. Under our Constitution,
the freedom to marry, or not
marry, a person of another race resides with the
individual and cannot be
infringed by the State.”
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Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
MEDITATION XVII. - By John Donne
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 head which is my head too, and ingraffed 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.
There was a contention as far as a
suit (in which, piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which
of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was
determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright
the dignity of this bell, that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad
to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as
well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it
doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that 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?
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.
Neither can we call this a begging of
misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of
ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the
misery of our neighbors. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for
affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath
afflicion enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God
by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold,
and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as
he travels. 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 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.
*Thank
you Wikipedia for the source material used in this post
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