Theologian's Almanac for Week of March 20, 2022

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, March 20:

March 20 is the beginning of the first day of spring this year, when the vernal equinox occurs in the Northern Hemisphere. As the Earth orbits the sun, sometimes its axis is tilted toward the sun (summer in the Northern Hemisphere) and sometimes away from it (winter). Today, it’s neither; the North Pole and the South Pole are equidistant from the sun. The term “equinox” is from the Latin for “equal” (aequus) and “night” (nox), the idea being that today, night and day are as close to equal in length as they will be all year.

Of spring, Emily Dickinson wrote:

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown —
Who ponders this tremendous scene — 
This whole Experiment of Green —
As if it were his own!

March 20 is also the day in 1852 that Harriet Beecher Stowe published her novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The daughter of Lyman Beecher, a well known Congregationalist minister, Stowe’s ministry would take a literary form: Uncle Tom’s Cabin became a national sensation. One of the bestselling novels of all time, the novel was for many an eye-opening, unsparing, tragic depiction of the evils of slavery, and a vision that helped galvanize the abolitionist movement.

March 20 is also the birthday of legendary children’s television host Fred Rogers, born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1928. After graduating with a divinity degree from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1962, he was ordained by the Presbyterian Church. The following year, he appeared on camera for the first time on the show that would evolve into Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood — which debuted nationally in 1968. It went on to become PBS’s longest-running show ever, taping its final episode in 2000.  

Here’s a lovely gift from Rogers: “One Silent Minute.”

March 21 is the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, born in Eisenach, Germany, in 1685. He worked as the city of Leipzig’s director of church music for most of his life, composing a cantata every single week (and later, every month). In the midst of these demands, he composed a wide range of classic theological work, including The Passion According to St. John (1723), The Passion According to St. Matthew (1729), and the Mass in B minor (1733). After his death, later composers realized that even the exercises he wrote for his music students were themselves masterpieces.

He said, “I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.”

March 22 is the birthday of former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins, born in New York City in 1941. Of poets, he once remarked, “While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the window pane.” He’s one of the most accessible, witty, and popular poets in America today. Here’s a taste of his theological imagination: “Questions About Angels.”

March 23 is the twelfth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama. It’s one of the most far-reaching piece of U.S. federal legislation related to health care since 1965, when Medicare was passed. The goal behind the effort was to move toward universal health insurance coverage, and the ACA extended coverage to nearly 32 million Americans.

March 23 is also the day in 1942 when the U.S. government began forcibly relocating Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast to internment camps. Approximately 120,000 people were detained in this way, even as some Japanese-American men were drafted into the war effort. The camps remained operational for three years. In 1981, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians concluded that the internment was a “grave injustice” resulting from “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.” President Reagan offered survivors an apology and $20,000 each in 1988.

March 23 is also the day in 1743 that George Frideric Handel’s “Messiah” had its London debut performance. During the now-famous Hallelujah Chorus, King George II rose to his feet, the story goes, so moved was he by the cascading voices — and the audience, seeing the king stand, scrambled to join him. Thus was born the tradition of standing during the chorus, widely practiced to this day. Though the oratorio is now commonly performed at Christmastime, Handel wrote it for this time of year: the Lenten/Easter season.

March 24 is the birthday of American hymn-writer Fanny Crosby, born in Southeast, New York, in 1820. She lost her sight as an infant because of a doctor’s malpractice. She loved music throughout her life, penning thousands of hymns under something like 100 different pseudonyms, since hymnal publishers were reluctant to include too many hymns by any single writer. Her most famous is “Blessed Assurance,” which begins: “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!”

March 25 is traditionally the feast day of the Annunciation, commemorating Gabriel’s angelic announcement to Mary that she would give birth to Jesus. The day is nine months before Christmas, of course (and indeed, part of why December 25th was settled upon as Jesus’ birthday is that it’s nine months after Annunciation Day!). But the March date was also associated with the ancient Roman festival of Hilaria, honoring the “Great Mother” goddess Cybele; it was the first feast day after the spring equinox, heralding the coming season of new life.

The story of the Annunciation has inspired countless paintings; here’s one of our favorites here at SALT (by Antonello da Messina), not least because it puts the viewer in the position of Gabriel!

March 25 is also the birthday of American writer Flannery O’Connor, born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925. Her father died of lupus when she was 15, and she would die of the same disease at 39. But in her short life, she profoundly shaped American literature with dark stories about religion, sin, and redemption in the American South. Her first novel was Wise Blood, the story of a World War II veteran haunted by a crisis of faith. Critics found her work somewhat gothic and grotesque, with its emphasis on sin and other religious themes — but O’Connor responded, “To the hard of hearing shout, and for the almost blind, draw large and startling figures.”

She said, “I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.”

March 25 is also the day in 1911 that New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory burned down. One hundred and forty-six workers — the vast majority of them immigrant women and girls — died in the fire and its aftermath. It was the city’s deadliest workplace disaster until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Frances Perkins, who later became Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt’s Secretary of Labor, witnessed the blaze — and knew immediately that government action was needed to improve workplace conditions. “We’ve go to turn this into some kind of victory,” she said, “some kind of constructive action.” And that’s exactly what she did, in New York City and across the country.

March 26 is the birthday of American poet Robert Frost, born in San Francisco in 1874. He won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry an astonishing four times. He said, “One thing I care about and wish young people would care about, is taking poetry as the first form of understanding. If poetry isn’t understanding all, the whole world, then it isn’t worth anything.”

In this age of pandemic, distance, and division, Frost’s famous poem, “Mending Wall,” is worth revisiting.