Theologian's Almanac for Week of October 8, 2023

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, October 8:

October 8 is the day in 1971 that John Lennon released his second solo album, Imagine. The title track was the best-selling song of his solo career. It’s often understood as anti-religious (“...no religion too…”), but Lennon insisted otherwise. He and Yoko Ono had received a prayer book, he explained, and that book inspired him to write the song as a kind of “positive prayer.” He put it this way: “If you can imagine a world at peace, with no denominations of religion — not without religion but without this my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing — then it can be true.”

October 9 is both Indigenous Peoples’ Day and Columbus Day, a chance to honor and mourn the brokenness and beauty of the world. On one hand, we can honor the courage and hope that led Europeans to cross the Atlantic — even as we mourn, condemn, and/or repent of the genocide and enslavement that followed. And on the other hand, we can renew our commitment to justice and equity for indigenous peoples all over the world — even as we celebrate the ways in which indigenous peoples continue to thrive today, and in many respects are helping show the world the way forward into the twenty-first century.

October 10 is the day in 1881 Charles Darwin published his last book. Entitled, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, it was his most successful book during his lifetime. The very ground we walk on, he explained, has passed through the bodies of worms, creating the rich soil on which all land-based life depends. He estimated that at least 53,000 earthworms are at work in any given acre of land — and so Darwin wrote rhapsodically of the earthworm as an “unsung creature which, in its untold millions, transformed the land as the coral polyps did the tropical sea.” Earthworms are beneficial “keystone” species in ecosystems all over the world (though not in the hardwood forests of North America, which evolved post-ice-age without worms; in these areas, some earthworms are invasive, destructive species).

October 11 is the birthday of Eleanor Roosevelt, born in New York City in 1884. During WWI, she visited wounded and traumatized soldiers in European hospitals. Later, during her husband's presidency, she campaigned tirelessly for civil rights issues — by no means universally popular causes in the 1930s and 1940s. She then pressed the United States to join and support the United Nations, and eventually became the country’s first delegate, chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and leader of the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

She said, “Religion to me is simply the conviction that all human beings must hold some belief in a power greater than themselves, and that whatever their religious belief may be, it must move them to live better in this world and to approach whatever the future holds with serenity.”

And again: “A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.”

And one more: “You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”

October 11 is also the day in 1962 that Pope John XXIII convened the first session of the Second Vatican Council, also known as Vatican II, with the goal of bringing the church up to date with the modern world — or as the pope put it, “to let in some fresh air.” Thousands attended, from bishops to laypeople to non-Catholic observers. Some of Vatican II’s more notable results were that priests were encouraged to perform mass in local languages (rather than in Latin) while facing the congregation (rather than facing the altar); and that Catholics everywhere were called to take up a revolutionary new openness to other religions. Roman Catholics had been discouraged from visiting any other houses of worship; now they could attend the weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs of their non-Catholic friends and neighbors. The church also acknowledged and affirmed for the first time its shared history and kinship with Judaism. Before Vatican II, Jews were often viewed with suspicion as “Christ-killers” — a perspective Vatican II decisively repudiated. One prominent American rabbi said the change “had the effect that the sun has when it comes up and interrupts the night… It provided an entirely new day. It changed everything.”

October 11 is also the birthday of Thich Nhat Hanh, the writer and Buddhist monk born in Quang Ngai, Vietnam, in 1926. One of the most accessible, elegant, compelling translators of Buddhism to audiences in the Western world, he has published more than 100 books, including Peace Is Every Step; Living Buddha, Living Christ; and The Miracle of Mindfulness.

Here’s a taste of his work: “When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and argument. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.”

And here’s one of his stunning poems: “Please Call Me By My True Names.”