John Donne,
seventeenth-century poet, found himself listening to the megaphone of pain. An angry father-in-law got
him fired from his job and blackballed from a career in law. Donne turned in
desperation to the church, taking orders as an Anglican priest. But the year he
took his first parish job, his wife Anne died, leaving him seven children. And
a few years later, in 1623, spots appeared on Donne’s body. He was diagnosed
with the bubonic plague.
The illness dragged on, sapping his strength almost to the
point of death (Donne’s illness turned out to be a form of typhus, not the
plague). In the midst of this illness, Donne wrote series of devotions on
suffering which rank among the most poignant meditations ever written on the
subject. He composed the book in bed, without benefit of notes, convinced he
was dying.[1]
