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Good Morning. The poet John Donne died on this day in 1631. When he was first a student and then the Preacher of Lincoln’s Inn, one of the four Inns of Court for those practicing law, he would hear the chapel bell toll – as it still tolls today - to mark the death of a senior member of the Inn.   This is the bell of the well-known line ‘never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee’.  The bell reminds us: No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. …. any man's death diminishes me .

In other words, Donne offers a chastening reminder that, however much we value our independence and like to go it alone, in the end doing our own thing in our own way does not work.  Despite our contemporary society’s love of individualism, we need each other. Societies which still function as tightly knit communities challenge us to reflect instead on Ubuntu – the African insight highlighted by Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela  - that my life is inextricably bound up with yours   - ‘I am, because we are’.   As individuals we only live and move and have being as part of community.

A prayer of Rheinhold Neibuhr.  O God, who has bound us together in this bundle of life, give us grace to understand how our lives depend upon the courage, the industry, the honesty, and the integrity of our fellow human beings; that we may be mindful of their needs, grateful for their faithfulness, and faithful in our responsibilities to them . Amen