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.
John Donne, Meditation XVII
via Wikisource
***
It is one year ago today that Papa died. I thought that also on this blog I wanted to post a tribute. Rather than sketch him as a father or as a person, which is self-indulgent and also bound to fall short of his true self, unless the description is lucky or very detailed; and rather than quote him in his own words — it's a tough task to find these, since he was modest in their use; I have fallen back on the above excerpt of a sermon from a 16th-to-17th-century English poet and clergyman.
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