Helena Woddis, Ipswich
No man is an Island entire of itself; every man 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 manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. 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.
I first encountered this ringing passage of John Donne's as a schoolgirl. Nothing much mattered to me then, except poetry and the pursuit of love. Safely cocooned in a girls' grammar school, dreaming of the magical possibilities of Oxford, where my interests might be indulged to the full, innocent and ignorant of the real world, I already recognised in the challenge of Donne's words a fiery attachment to life and 'telling it how it is'. I failed his challenge of course, for decades. I went with my family to church and sang in the choir. I don't know what I believed then, but the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible exercised my imagination in much the same way as Donne's poetry, and I kept on returning.
At Oxford the glorious music of the Anglican choral tradition was added to the familiar old words, and the highest points of my time there, (apart, of course, from love affairs) were in college chapels. I felt a kind of guilt at not encountering God full on. But 'He' was only there through a conceit, a skilful manipulation of sound. He never came out to meet me in his own naked right. This confusion (evasion?) about my religious belief, or lack of it, drifted into unimportance as love became a shotgun marriage, and then children. An exciting life in South America took over; but we never ceased to read poetry to each other, and indeed to anyone who would listen. 'No man is an island…', that wondrously rhythmic and balanced piece of prose, continued to be part of our canon. But I never looked for its source, nor analysed its meaning. It didn't mention 'God', only death… and in my (still cocooned) thirties, 'Death' was just an exciting subject for poetry.
Chance brought us back to Europe, and eventually to Manchester, where, appropriately, real life broke in and burst the bubble. Intensity was no longer on the written page, but in the anguish of a painful marriage, concerns for children, money problems, and for me, times of heartbreak and depression. And no, I didn't turn to God. 'He' had never been there except as a conceit. I continued to go to church as a way of belonging, but I discovered that the clergy only feel comfortable explaining God from the pulpit. If you tried to chat to them about 'Him' in the cosy after service tea spot, nothing came forth. I didn't complain. I felt it to be my failing. But the old yearning for something beyond, which had always been with me, but never hurt before, grew and grew. I never explored it or challenged it – just hung around the church with an utterly mistaken sense that it would show me the way.
Disillusionment was the next phase. Donne, with his vigorous challenge to us to live, to connect, to face reality, would have helped then. We moved south. For a long time I floundered on a fragile journey of self-discovery as I trained to be a therapist. The children left home. Something was missing. I suspect that in middle age there always is.
Then in my fifties I discovered the Sea of Faith. Here was a place for honesty, a place to tell it how it is. And I did. And as old age approaches I have abandoned the guilt, and have found a god of my own, indefinable perhaps, but attainable in music, in poetry, and above all in people. 'No man is an island… every man is a part of the main.' I have rediscovered my passionate love of life through connection with others, who allow me the freedom not to know. And, through the Sea of Faith, I discovered Quakerism, which may not have all the answers, but even more importantly, like SOF, asks all the questions. And I believe, as the end creeps into awareness, that 'any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.' I know for whom the bell tolls.