In 2020, as the world entered a long dark night of the soul, I returned to a nearly 400-year-old manuscript for guidance. In it, I found a trustworthy companion for living through a pandemic ̶ or any other crisis. The words leaped out at me from the very first page of John Donne’s Devotions…nothing had prepared me for his raw account of confrontations with God.
Preacher and poet John Donne wrote Devotions in 1623, during a pandemic in his city of London. For a month he lay sick, hearing the church bell toll for others while wondering if his death would be next. From what he believed to be his death bed, the great poet wrote a triumph of literature that has given us such familiar phrases as “No man is an island…” and “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls…” I pared the descriptions of antiquated science and medicine, and streamlined Donne’s complicated syntax (one sentence alone had 234 words!). I believe this paraphrase of a great work has much to say to us today.
This new version of a classic work is arranged as a 30-day reader based on Donne’s meditations, with startling relevance as we face similar questions:
- What is God trying to tell us?
- Does God use illness as punishment?
- How do I find peace and comfort?
Undone combines Donne’s timeless reflections with
present-day commentary, offering universal truths on how to live and die
well. The heart of the project, and my motive for it, was to make
Donne’s classic accessible to modern readers.
(Rabbit Room Press, 2023)
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