October, seen from behind an ancient oak

Just at the moment you begin to think you are alone, you look over your shoulder and there is the full moon, peering at you through the nearly bare branches of a huge, old oak tree, watching every movement you make. Wherever you hide, the full moon will search you out and find you.

Just the moon and me .... and, you ....

It seems to me that the magic of the moon -- the full moon, in particular -- is that it connects you with others.

You can look at a full moon, and realize that someone you know on the other side of the world has seen the same moon just a few hours earlier (or will see it, just a few hours later). You can be talking on the telephone to a person a few thousand miles away across America, and both be looking at the same full moon as you speak.

It is the same moon your earliest ancestor saw (and, perhaps, knelt before); the same moon which shone down upon the builders of the Egyptian pyramids; the same moon Homer watched rise as he wrote "The Odyssey;" the same moon your grandchildren's grandchildren will play beneath on a summer evening far into the future -- into a time when you can see it no more.

And, this October, the full moon found me once again, although I had fled from everything and from almost everyone as I always do when autumn makes its appearance.

Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
by John Donne

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each 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 manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Does each man's death diminish me?

My first encounter with the words of John Donne came from reading the words of Ernest Hemingway. He used "for whom the bell tolls" as his title for a novel about the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. He was there for a while. Hemingway, I mean, not Donne. All right, I am playing around trying to be funny again.

This was in high school. I did not actually begin to read Donne until a few years later, in college. The words of Donne's "Meditation" unquestionably are among the most beautiful and touching ever written. Incidentally, he led quite a life.

The questions to me always have been, are the concepts found in Donne's "Meditation" relevant? Are they true? Why should I accept them?

Without going into a detailed, back-and-forth discussion about these points, I will simply say that while the words are beautiful and touching, I believe them to be wishful thinking for a Utopian society that, in all probability, can never exist, today or tomorrow.

I think this because I do believe there are genuinely good and indisputably evil individuals born into this world. Most of "us" fall somewhere between good and evil, but some very few are at the furthest extents of the good/evil spectrum.

Therefore, I ask the question, does the death of an evil man diminish me?

To which, I say no.

What say you?