Theologian's Almanac for Week of December 10, 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, December 10:
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 Dickinson’s death, Margaret Maher, the 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 13 is the feast day of St. Lucy, martyred in Syracuse is 304. She is said to have defiantly proclaimed her Christianity and given away all her possessions; her captors tore out her eyes, the story goes, but they were miraculously restored. She’s often depicted in paintings bearing her eyes on a plate; she is the patron saint of the blind. Because her name is related to the Latin word for “light” (lux), and because the solstice comes soon after her feast day, in Sweden she is the patron saint of light, as well as of harvest.
December 14 is the feast day of St. John of the Cross, founder (with Teresa of Ávila) of the Discalced Carmelites, and a renowned mystical writer, 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 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.”
December 15 is the day in 1791 that the Bill of Rights was ratified by the new United States of America. It’s no accident that the first freedom named in the Bill of Rights is the freedom of religion; nor are the various freedoms mentioned in the first amendment — religion, speech, press, assembly, petition — a random hodgepodge.
Rather, these five freedoms form a kind of choreography of liberty: at the foundation is freedom of religion (that is, freedom of “thought” or “conviction” about the deepest, widest questions human beings can ask); then comes the freedom to speak freely about one’s thoughts and convictions; then comes the right to spread that speech far and wide, through a free press; then comes the right to assemble and organize with others who share convictions; and finally comes the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances on the basis of those convictions. And it’s all grounded in the freedom of religion, broadly defined — what Jefferson called freedom of “mind” in his Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, a document which strongly influenced James Madison as he wrote the First Amendment.