Who Is My Neighbor? Lessons from an Island and a Bell

JOHN DONNE (1572-1631) was an English poet and lawyer who lived his life in poverty and yet so rich with friends (no one is so poor as to have nothing to give; no one is so rich as to have nothing to receive!); spent his life in womanizing and traveling until he settled with Anne More, his wife, with 12 children (the pro-RH advocates will make his life as a case for the quest of quality life; the anti-RH advocates will make his case into a crusade to defend life); a brilliant satirist and a charismatic preacher whose sermons exposed the folly of the sanctimonious (the Christian fundamentalists will disown him; the Vatican will silence him, even if he's a protestant.) and unveiled the idiocy of the brainiacs (the atheists will berate him as irrational; the skeptics will dismiss him as irrelevant). In listening to his sermon, the hearers were confronted with ironies, metaphors, paradoxes--all intended to plunge them into existential anxiety and doubt, and in the process, exhorting them to think and wrestle with God. In this article, I reproduce his famous Meditation XVII where we find his two most popular quotes -- "No man is an island" and "For whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee".

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John Donne's Meditation XVII:

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.

There was a contention as far as a suit (in which both 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 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?

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Reflection:

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND is a powerful portrait of human solidarity. The ideal of isolation seems to be the overarching consciousness during the time of John Donne. It was the time of Renaissance (14th-17th CE), which is literally translated as rebirth. The Medieval era was focused on God and religion, and the scholastic, like Thomas Aquinas, were preoccupied in attempting to justify the reasonableness of faith by reconciling the Aristotelian non-theistic philosophy with Christian theology. The Renaissance was a shift in human consciousness to man himself-- from the theocentric concerns of the Medieval era to the  anthropocentric concerns. In philosophy, it was a period of going back to the Greeks, particularly the writings of Plato, which gave birth to a radical shift in intellectual interest from making commentaries on authoritative texts in Latin to writing treatises in vernacular. Four important themes emerged at the Renaissance --humanism, reformation, skepticism and scientific revolution. However, it was during the Enlightenment that human consciousness radically broke its ties from the past. Jon Sobrino wrote:

The movement [Enlightenment] has had two structurally distinct phases. One phase concentrated on the liberation of reason from dogmatic faith (Kant). The other phase championed the liberation of the whole person from a religious outlook that supported or at least permeated social, economic and political alienation (Marx). We might sum up the two phases as a general yearning for reasonableness and transforming praxis.

For Gustavo Guiterrez, the phenomena of Enlightenment characterized this new human consciousness as a historical praxis brought about by two contemporaneous and mutually dependent historical events-- first, the industrial revolution which revealed man's capability to transform nature; and second, the French revolution which demonstrated man's power to transform social order. Both of these events revealed to man his power over nature and society, and the necessary consequence of this freedom is his responsibility to create history. Man is no longer a product of historical process but assume his active role in history as a history maker.

The Utopia of Sir Tomas More of an ideal society apart from the rest of the human societies may serve as imagery of an island alluded to by John Donne. More's Utopia is a man-made society made possible because of the commitment human solidarity:

The Renaissance saw an expansion of horizons. Some people began to question aspects of society, while others attempted to transcend the achievements of others by thinking in new ways. In Sir Thomas More's Utopia, he questioned civilization as he knew it, especially its political corruption, and presented an imaginary vision of a new society. Utopia was a man-made society created as a separate government from the rest of the world; however, More's book does not idealize a separate, self-providing island dependant on no one, but rather a community that perfectly exists because of the individuals' commitment to a co-dependence on each other.

Albert Nolan, in his book Jesus Before Christianity, examined the Jewish understanding of collectivity, that is, a family, a tribe, a nation under God as King. The Jewish notion of group solidarity is nationalistic-- thus, for the Jews, there were only two types of people-- the Jews and the Gentiles. There's no in-between. And it was in this narrow understanding of inter-connectedness, of human solidarity, that Jesus proclaimed the good news of the Kingdom of God as inclusive.

The most revealing in this understanding of human solidarity is perhaps the story of the good Samaritan. The Samaritans, which said to be a mixture of Jewish blood and Gentile blood are considered impure. "Both Jewish and the Samaritan religious leaders taught that it was wrong to have any contact with the opposite group, and neither was to enter each other's territories or even to speak to one another." The antagonism between the two groups became a holiness-purity issue that whenever a Jew speaks  the word "Samaritan" he must spit in contempt. And imagine how Jesus, shocked his listeners and challenged their understanding of who is one's neighbor. Eamonn Bredin, in Rediscovering Jesus: Challenge of Discipleship, interpreted the story of the good Samaritan as a challenge to all forms of discrimination that chained us thus delimiting our relation with others as our brothers and sisters, and blinding us see beyond our narrow group interests to look at the others as our neighbors. At the core, this crippling chained and blindness hinder us to believe that our God is Abba to all people. This reflection of Eamonn Bredin on the story of the good Samaritan was quoted by John Fuellenbach in his book "The Kingdom of God: The Message of Jesus Today."

The historical setting is a Jewish audience. There are the two temple functionaries embodying a whole social and religious order. There are the Samaritans hated, loathed and despised by all. Jews despised their next-door neighbors as wretched, half-breed outcasts who has sold out on both their religion and their culture. To them the Samaritans were the scum of the earth. Orthodox Jews would have no dealing with Samaritans (Jn 4:9), they would cross and recross the Jordan rather than enter that province; some Rabbis believed that to accept any help from them would delay the redemption of Israel. With this in mind we must try to hear this story once again.

I am asked to identify with the man going sown to Jericho. That man is me! I am attacked, robbed and stripped. I am left lying half dead in the ditch and I hope for help from the priest who approaches. But he passes by. Why? Is he busy or afraid that if I am dead already he would become ritually unclean. The same with the Levite. The same reason as the priests. The hearers of Jesus, who would have expected the appearance of a thrid and final character (there are always three) begin to anticipate. They know who is coming next and eyes begin to brighten. Jesus is a layman. Ah, now, I see; he is being slightly anti-clerical! So a Jewish lay person will come around the corner and all of us will rejoice and applaud. But Jesus introduces a characteristic twist or shift into the story. The surface innocence of the language breaks and reveals the inescapable barb beneath. It is not a Jew who comes down the road, it is a Samaritan! No sooner had that unspeakable word (spit in contempt!) been mentioned than the antagonism of his hearers became palpable. But ignoring the reaction the story goes on to tell, in loving detail, about the Samaritan and his actions. Then at the end the provocative throw-away question of Jesus is found: "Which of these three do you think proved neighbor to the man who fell among robbers?"

Since I have identified myself with the injured man, I as a Jew must say what could not be said. I must say what has been ruled out as unspeakable--the Samaritan is my neighbor! So I am being forced/freed to say what cannot be said. I am to put into words never before united in the sntire history of separation between Judea and Samaria--the words "Samaritan" and "neighbor." This conclusion is revolting and sickening. It demands that my worldview, my familiar horizons, my understanding, my whole value system be called into question. All my familiarities, the lessons I ;earned from parents, grand-parents, and religious leaders, my very faith itself is radically questioned and completely turned upside-down in and through this story. But that is not the end of it. This story leads me further into what was previously unimaginable. If Jesus really had to tell a revolutionary story it would have been enough to have told it with the Samaritan in the ditch receiving help from me, the Jew. Now that kind of love of non-Jews would be sufficiently unthinkable! But this story says that my revered religious leaders, who should have refused, comes to my assistance!

Jesus does not mentioned God in the whole story at all. Could it be that it is only when my circumscribed world of closed options, set judgments, predetermined position, and guaranteed conclusions is torn asunder and turned upside-down, that there is room for God in my life?

The story of the Good Samaritan is an illustrative and provocative story of human solidarity. It is a human story of being an island inter-connected with another in love. This power of human solidarity defies and destroys all forms of discrimination, because for whom the bell tolls? It tolls to thee. Kudos!