How?

How shall we sing the Lord’s songs
in a strange land? The old rhythms,
the melodies of praise, strangle
in our throats and the words
fall to the ground like leaves in autumn.
The air thickens with suspicion and doubt
and who’s to say, anymore, what
is true enough to last, to prevail?
Isolation feels like a punishment
for offenses we never performed.
Let us trust, now, the ground under
our feet—that which has proven steady
for generations. Look up. The heavens
are still there, unclouded, beatific.
We breathe, even though masks clothe
our faces. Prayer surrounds us, close
as our skin, weaving for us garments of
trust and solace. Even in our isolation
we are joined in love, never alone.

--Luci Shaw (1928- ), Anglo-American poet and Episcopalian, from The Generosity (2020).

Easter 2020

And where is Jesus, this strange Easter day? 
Not lost in our locked churches, anymore 
Than he was sealed in that dark sepulchre. 
The locks are loosed; the stone is rolled away, 
And he is up and risen, long before, 
Alive, at large, and making his strong way 
Into the world he gave his life to save, 
No need to seek him in his empty grave. 

He might have been a wafer in the hands 
Of priests this day, or music from the lips 
Of red-robed choristers, instead he slips 
Away from church, shakes off our linen bands 
To don his apron with a nurse: he grips 
And lifts a stretcher, soothes with gentle hands 
The frail flesh of the dying, gives them hope, 
Breathes with the breathless, lends them strength to cope.

On Thursday we applauded, for he came 
And served us in a thousand names and faces 
Mopping our sickroom floors and catching traces 
Of that virus which was death to him: 
Good Friday happened in a thousand places 
Where Jesus held the helpless, died with them 
That they might share his Easter in their need, 
Now they are risen with him, risen indeed.

--Malcolm Guite (1957- ), Anglican priest, poet, and musician, from his blog.

Meditation XVII (No man in an island)

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 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 bells 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 neighbours. 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 affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by 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 money, 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 man 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.

--John Donne (1572-1633), English priest, poet, and essayist, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, 1624, written as he lay ill for 24 days with a recurring fever.