Theologian's Almanac for Week of June 19, 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, June 19:
June 19 is Juneteenth, also called “Emancipation Day” or “Freedom Day,” symbolically marking the end of enslavement in the United States. President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, but it only applied to enslaved people in the Confederacy, and its enforcement depended on the presence of Union troops — and those troops didn’t arrive in Galveston, Texas, one of the southernmost outposts of enslaving territory, until June 19, 1865. Celebrations of the holiday have ebbed and flowed over the years, and are on the upswing today, especially (but not exclusively) in African American communities. The day is typically marked by African American music, food, dance, literature, and readings of the Emancipation Proclamation. In 2021, President Joe Biden signed legislation into law establishing Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
June 19 is also Father’s Day, the third Sunday in June each year, a holiday with roots in two early-twentieth-century occasions: a commemoration for fathers killed in the December 1907 explosion at a West Virginia coal company, and a 1910 celebration inspired by a Civil War veteran and widower who raised six children on a farm in Washington State. Happy Father’s Day!
June 19 is also the birthday of Blaise Pascal, the religious philosopher, mathematician, and physicist, born in France in 1623. Pascal invented the first mechanical calculator for sale to the public; the syringe; and the hydraulic press, as well as early forms of probability theory and integral calculus. Though his family wasn’t religious, he was deeply impressed with two Christian mystics who cared for his father during an illness, and he converted to Christianity. One night in November of 1654, he experienced a divine vision he later called a “night of fire,” poetic notes from which he scribbled down on a piece of paper, and then sewed the paper into the lining of his coat, so he could keep it close until his death. The year after his vision, he left Paris to live in the Abbey of Port-Royal, where he wrote his most famous (though unfinished) book, Pensées (“Thoughts”).
Here are two of his thoughts:
1) If you don’t have faith, Pascal wrote, try acting as though you do. Do the things that a faithful person would do, and over time, you may well find your actions leading your heart and mind in faithful directions. In other words, don’t worry too much about what you believe; focus instead on your actions, on how you are living, and your convictions will follow.
2) In what has become known as “Pascal’s Wager,” Pascal argued that, while definitive proof of God’s existence exceeds our grasp, this shouldn’t surprise us. Whenever we face ultimate, unanswerable questions, we are unavoidably in a position of “wagering,” effectively betting on perspective or another. And for Pascal, this is indeed the situation when it comes to God: either we bet on the idea that God is real, or on the idea that God is a fantasy. And if God is real, Pascal reasoned, there is a great deal to be gained by believing and acting as if God is real (and a great deal to be lost if we don’t!); and if God is a fantasy, there’s comparatively little lost no matter what we do. So it makes more sense, he concluded, to “wager” that God is real — and by extension, to live our everyday lives accordingly. This famous idea is often misunderstood as a kind of clever “proof” of God’s reality — but that’s the last thing it is. Pascal’s starting point is that such “proof” isn’t possible. Rather, his idea amounts to a recognition that genuine faith doesn’t involve proof or certainty, but rather a humble and courageous “betting our lives” on God.
June 19 is also the day the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed by the United States Senate. Often considered the most significant United States civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, the act prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin when it comes to employment, voting, and the use of public facilities.
June 21 is the first day of summer (this year the summer solstice technically will happen at 5:13am EST). What makes for summer’s heat isn’t Earth’s distance from the sun (we’re actually three million miles farther away than we are at the closest point in the planet’s orbit), but rather the tilt of Earth’s axis. For this section of our orbit, since the Northern Hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, we spend more time each day on the sunlit side of the planet, receiving more direct rays of light. It’s the length of summer days and the more direct angle of the sun’s light, then, that make the flowers grow and the mercury rise. And why are we tilted at all? Likely because of a primeval collision with another planet-like body, often called Theia, perhaps the same collision that created the Moon. So in a sense, we can thank the Moon for the seasons. Happy Summer!
June 24 is Midsummer Night or “Midsummer Eve,” a time of revelry also known as St. John’s Eve, the day before John the Baptist’s birthday. St. John is the patron saint of beekeepers, and this time of year, many beehives are brimming with honey. In fact, this month’s full moon has historically been called “the Mead Moon,” since honey was gathered and fermented to make mead — hence the term, “honeymoon.” In a time when the essential work of bees and other pollinators is increasingly appreciated, even as bee and insect populations are in alarming decline, celebrating St. John — who lived in the wilderness, preaching justice and eating “wild honey” (Matthew 3:4) — is more important than ever.
June 24 is also the birthday of St. John of the Cross, the mystic and poet born in Spain in 1542. He grew up in an impoverished family, and in his youth worked at a hospital for the destitute in order to contribute to his household’s income. Eventually, mentored by St. Teresa of Ávila, he sought to reform the Carmelite order — and was arrested and publicly punished for his efforts. He wrote poetry in prison, however, and today is widely considered one of Spain’s greatest poets; among his most famous works are “Spiritual Canticle” and “Dark Night of the Soul.” The patron saint of mystics, contemplatives, and Spanish poets, St. John wrote, “They can be like the sun, words. / They can do for the heart what light can for a field.”