I was too, they claimed that the explosion came from the RV they showed a picture of. I thought they obtained the pic from what I thought was footage from a surveillance camera in the area. But then they said they didn't know if anyone had gotten killed, the person in the RV I guess, but if they had video footage showing the explosion coming from the RV then they should have footage of the person exiting the RV it would seem like.
“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, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
These famous few lines suggest a kind of compassionate solidarity, urging us to a sense of deep connection when others die, or might die. But we find his real point is not just compassion for others, even during a plague, but the necessity of attention to the self. In the prayer that follows that famous meditation, Donne says to God:
“I humbly accept thy voice in the sound of this sad and funeral bell. And first, I bless thy glorious name, that in this sound and voice I can hear thy instructions, in another man’s to consider mine own condition; and to know, that this bell which tolls for another, before it come to ring out, may take me in too.”
This is not exactly the stuff our usual holiday preparations are made of, even among the religious. In a more regular year, we still start clutching at the straws of seasonal jollity around now, since the gloom of even a normal winter can indeed oppress. Themes of light, peace and hope are appealing to us all amid the winter dark, as we look uncertainly to the portal of a new year. CO: Anabaptist World, (today)
AMEN.