tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3841671.post-921005852003-04-06T15:00:00.000-04:002003-04-06T15:14:39.000-04:00Sunday Thoughts.<blockquote>Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him....all mankind is of one author and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter 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... 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 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. --John Donne, from Meditation XVII</blockquote>The bells for our war dead have been sounding, and the scenes are all too familiar--flags clutched, held to the breast, the hot tears of loss, knowing that a husband or wife, son or daugther, mother or father, will not return, the puzzled faces of the young who sense the grief and yet still want to write daddy another letter. The survivors' lives have been narrowed by their loved ones' noble sacrifice in a just cause. We, the rest of us, those who watch at a distance, are diminished, too, by the deaths of these heroes, these American heroes. We are less, our country is less, for the passing of these soldiers. The bells will peal yet again this spring afternoon, as another soul departs. And when we hear those solemn bells that break our silence, we know they toll for us. And we, too, mourn.Davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09469631120776212711noreply@blogger.com