Rather than stick to the calendar of saints, I’m going to begin this blog with one of my favorite saints, John Donne. Click here for the service. The entire service is less than 9 minutes, but if you want to skip ahead, the info on John Donne begins at minute 1.50. Noonday Prayer March 30 2022 John Donne March 31st is the feast of John Donne, priest and poet, who died on that date in 1631. Those of us who paid attention in English classes know him as a poet, but he was also a priest. And he wrote sermons that were famous in his own time and in ours. You’ve probably heard “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 bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” (Now you know where Hemingway got his title.) Donne was born in 1573 into a Roman Catholic family. His father died when he was just four years old. His mother remarried, so he was not without a father growing up. Donne studied at Oxford—he started there when he was 12—and Cambridge, but could not receive degrees from either, because as a Catholic, he couldn’t swear the oath of allegiance to the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I. He went on to Lincoln Inn, a prestigious law school. He planned a diplomatic career, even went with Walter Raleigh and Earl of Essex on some missions, but he made a tactical error. He fell in love with and in 1601 married his boss’s niece, 16-year-old Anne More, about whom, btw, he wrote some very fine love poetry. Also, clever lines: John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone. But he was fired as secretary and her father had him imprisoned for a time, which was the end of a career. There were poverty-stricken years in which he relied on friends’ generosity and on patrons. Anne died in childbirth in 1617, though 7 of the 12 children she bore lived. Donne had converted to Anglicanism about 1594. This wasn’t a career move, but the result of much thinking and prayer. He was ordained in 1615, and by 1622 he was dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a post he held until his death in 1631. I thought I’d share one of his religious poems that feels particularly apt right now in a time of covid and war. SONNET X For a YouTube of a young, British voice reading Sonnet X, click here.
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Saints Alive!
I have been privileged to offer Noonday Prayer at my church, usually on Thursdays, which doesn’t matter because it’s on Youtube forever. [It’s amazing what can be done with a smartphone and a smart, helpful parish administrator!] The service is brief, with a place for a meditation. We usually look at the Episcopal calendar of saints, who are nearly always honored on their death dates, not their birth dates. Here is a hymn by medieval saint Hildegard of Bingen to set the mood.
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