SermonStudio

"No man is an island," wrote the seventeenth century Anglican priest, John Donne. Without denying the validity of that insight, we need to see the opposite is also true. Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset wrote: "Each man is an island in that he lives and dies in the solitude of his own consciousness." Each of us is alone, shut up in his own skin and thoughts. The word alone comes from two medieval English words: "al" (all) and "one" (one). To be alone is to be all by one's self, to be apart from other persons and things. To be physically alone is solitude.