Theologian's Almanac for Week of December 8, 2019
Welcome to SALT’s “Theologian’s Almanac,” a weekly selection of important birthdays, holidays, and other upcoming milestones worth marking - specially created for a) writing sermons and prayers, b) creating content for social media channels, and c) enriching your devotional life.
For the week of Sunday, December 8:
December 9 is the birthday of poet John Milton, born in London in 1608. He spent his life studying and writing, supporting himself as a civil servant, penning radical political pamphlets, and supporting the Commonwealth in the English Civil War, which eventually led to his arrest and being stripped of his property. His eyesight deteriorated, and he spent the end of his life blind, secluded in the countryside, dictating an epic poem to his assistants, line by line. That poem, some 10,000 verses long, was “Paradise Lost” - now regarded as one of the finest epic poems in English. It’s an account of the fall of Adam and Eve, and in it, Satan utters the famous line, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” It is said that the poem inspired Mary Shelley to write her classic novel, Frankenstein.
December 10 is the birthday of poet Emily Dickinson, born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830. She loved Shakespeare, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Thomas Carlyle. She wrote over 1,700 poems in her lifetime (though only about 10 were published); in 1862 alone, she wrote 366 poems, almost exactly one per day.
Many think of Dickinson as a recluse, but in fact she was quite outgoing and social, particularly in her youth - and maintained intense relationships throughout her life, including with Susan, her sister-in-law, who lived next door. Many scholars now believe Emily’s relationship with Susan was a lifelong love affair.
Dickinson was an avid, devoted gardener; “I was reared in the garden, you know,” she once said. She kept a leather-bound herbarium of pressed flowers, including more than 400 varieties collected from her garden, as well as from the fields and woods around her house.
Though she didn’t publish many poems during her lifetime, she did share them with correspondents in letters, or with friends and neighbors, tucked into gifts of baked goods or flower bouquets. Susan wrote in her obituary, “Very few in the village, excepting among the older inhabitants, knew Miss Emily personally … [but] there are many houses among all classes into which her treasures of fruit and flowers and ambrosial dishes for the sick and well were constantly sent.”
After her death, Margaret Maher, the Dickinson family’s maid - who had become her close friend over the years - discovered Emily’s handwritten poems stowed away in a trunk, the same trunk Maher had brought over from Ireland when she emigrated. Maher brought them to Emily’s sister, Lavinia, and though Emily had said the poems should be burned, Margaret and Lavinia agreed they should be published instead.
The family did honor one of Emily’s requests after her death: her coffin was carried not by the leading citizens of Amherst, but by six Irish farmhands, employees of the Dickinson family. They carried her coffin out of the house through the servant’s door, and into the garden, before making their way to her grave.
On poetry, Dickinson said: “If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.”
On theology, she had definite ideas. Here’s her classic, “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church”:
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.
December 11 is the birthday of Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, born in Kislovodsk, Russia, in 1918. He was one of the first to expose the Russian gulag and Stalin’s crimes against his own people. He famously wrote, “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
December 12 is the feast day of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe), the patron saint of Mexico, as well as of Central and South America. She appeared just north of Mexico City in 1531 to a native Mexican peasant named Juan Diego. Mary informed him - in his native language, Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs - that she wished to have a church built on the spot, which also happened to be the site of a shrine to the Aztec mother-goddess Tonantzin. The local archbishop didn’t believe Diego, the story goes, until Mary appeared again and miraculously produced some roses (Castilian roses, not native to Mexico), which Diego carried in his cloak to the archbishop. As he presented the flowers, they fell to the floor around the archbishop’s feet - and a portrait of Mary was revealed in a kind of impression left behind on the cloak. A grand basilica was eventually built on the site, and today it is a famous place of pilgrimage, the third-most-visited sacred site in the world.
In the midst of this larger story, when Juan Diego was hurrying home to care for a sick relative, Mary appeared to him and asked the question that is now carved over the basilica’s entrance, gently chiding him for not coming directly to her for help in the first place: “¿No estoy yo aquí que soy tu madre?” (“Am I not here, I who am your mother?”).
December 14 is the feast day of St. John of the Cross, born in Spain in 1542, founder (with Teresa of Avila) of the Discalced Carmelites, and a mystical writer. He is best known for his poems depicting the soul’s progress toward God, including the Spiritual Canticle and the Dark Night of the Soul, a masterpiece on the role of doubt and struggle in the life of faith. He was declared a Doctor of the Church in 1926.
December 14 is also the day in 1900 that physicist Max Planck published his theory of quantum mechanics, today regarded as one of the most significant scientific breakthroughs of the 20th century. In those days, physicists accepted the work of Isaac Newton without question; they assumed that all physical objects, from gargantuan stars to tiny atoms, obey laws that are clear and predictable. But no one had yet figured out how to understand the behavior of light. Planck worked assiduously on this problem, but the only way he could make his calculations work out was to assume that light travels in little packets, like bullets, which he was convinced couldn’t be right. He published his theory anyway - as “an act of desperation,” he later said - but he assumed some future physicist would find and correct his errors. Five years later, Albert Einstein took Planck’s theory of light seriously, and wrote his first major paper on it (Einstein dubbed the light packets “photons”). Though Einstein would become famous for his later theory of relativity, it was for his work on Planck’s theory of light that he received a Nobel Prize. And since then, the field of quantum mechanics has opened up an entire world of mind-bending mystery and practical application, including the electronic devices that have transformed modern life.
December 14 is also the day in 1972 the last moonwalk took place, part of Apollo 17, the longest and most successful of all the Apollo missions. Commander Eugene Cernan was the last human being to set foot on the Moon. Before leaving, the crew unveiled and left behind a plaque, which reads: “Here man completed his first explorations of the Moon, December 1972. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind.” A worthy sentiment for this, the second week of Advent, traditionally tied to the theme of peace.