Theologian's Almanac for Week of February 28, 2021
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, February 28:
March 1 is the birthday of the American writer Ralph Ellison, born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1914. The grandson of enslaved people, Ellison originally dreamed of being a classical composer — but the renowned African-American writers Langston Hughes and Richard Wright persuaded him to become a writer. One day, recovering from an illness on a friend’s farm in Vermont, Ellison found himself sitting in a barn with a typewriter, staring at an empty page — and then a sentence came to him: “I am an invisible man.” He spent the next seven years exploring that idea, and in particular, how racism can make a person “invisible.” Invisible Man was published in 1952, and today is regarded as a classic of twentieth century literature.
March 1 is also St. David’s Day, a national holiday in Wales (where St. David is the patron saint). All over Wales today, school-aged children are competing in (presumably online or physically-distanced!) music competitions and poetry recitations, all performed entirely in the Welsh language. The tradition is over a thousand years old, and it’s known as “eisteddfod,” a word from the Welsh “to sit” and “to be.”
March 6 is the birthday of novelist Gabriel García Márquez, born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1927. His most celebrated book, published in 1967, is also one of the most important in all of Latin American literature: One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was from his grandmother, he said, that he learned the style and tone he used in the novel: she would tell stories “that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness ... what was most important was the expression she had on her face. She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories and everyone was surprised.” And so when it came to the fantastic stories scattered throughout One Hundred Years of Solitude, “I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.” The novel begins with the line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice...”
Márquez permitted most of his novels to be made into films — with the conspicuous exception of One Hundred Years of Solitude. He once offered the rights to a famous American film producer on one condition: that they “film the entire book, but only release one chapter — two minutes long — each year, for 100 years.”
March 6 is also the birthday of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, born in Durham, England, in 1806. She eloped with the poet Robert Browning and moved to Italy, and while she’s best known today for her love poetry (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” is one of her most famous lines), her work in Italy focused largely on social justice. Her family had owned Jamaican sugar plantations dependent on enslaved labor, and she was a committed abolitionist. She also wrote about the horrors of child labor, the Austrian occupation of Italy, and other related subjects. Here’s a taste of her theology, from Aurora Leigh:
Earth’s Crammed with Heaven
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries…
March 6 is also the birthday of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian sculptor, architect, and painter, born in Tuscany, Italy, in 1475. He began his career as a kind of con man, forging a sculpture in the ancient Greek style in an effort to pass it off as an expensive antique. The prospective buyer learned the truth and demanded a refund — but was so impressed with Michelangelo’s skill that he invited him to Rome. The artist ended up staying, and by the end of his career, had been commissioned by nine consecutive popes — including Pope Julius II, who commissioned the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Michelangelo once said: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” And again: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”