Theologian's Almanac for Week of June 4, 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, June 4:

June 4 is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square confrontation, the day Chinese troops stormed the square in Beijing, cracking down on students’ pro-democracy demonstrations. Ordinary workers had gathered along nearby roads in support of the students; they tried to block the advance of the tanks toward the square, and many lost their lives in the process. The students left a message written on the wall behind them that said, "On June 4, 1989, the Chinese people shed their blood and died for democracy." The famous photograph of a student staring down a tank is one of the most influential revolutionary images of the 20th century. The identity of the steadfast student — and his fate — is unknown.

June 4 is also the anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women the right to vote in 1920. The 2020 elections, with its ground-breaking election of Kamala Harris to the office of vice president, was the 100th anniversary of the first elections in which women voted in the United States.

June 5 is the anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. Kennedy had just delivered a victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel after winning California’s Democratic presidential primary, and was exiting via the hotel kitchen. A 17-year-old busboy, Juan Romero, was shaking Kennedy’s hand when the shots rang out. As several people tackled the assassin, Romero knelt next to Kennedy, and put a rosary in his hand.

June 6 is the birthday of poet Maxine Kumin, born in Philadelphia in 1925. Growing up, she was an avid swimmer, and trained to become an Olympian as a teenager. She also loved writing poems, and eventually became a major poet and teacher of poetry. Here’s one of her masterpieces, bringing together her interests in swimming and spirituality. And here’s a glimpse of her teaching style: she would routinely ask her students to memorize 30 to 40 lines of excellent poetry a week, the better to internalize what great verse feels and sounds like. “The other reason,” she said, “as I tell their often stunned faces, is to give them an internal library to draw on when they are taken political prisoner. For many, this is an unthinkable concept; they simply do not believe in anything fervently enough to go to jail for it.”

June 8 is the birthday of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, in 1867. Wright would tell his students: “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” He used natural building materials and finishes like stone and wood, never painting them, and his designs were horizontal, with low rooflines, so that the structures would blend in with the landscape (his famous “Falling Waters” house is pictured above). He designed several sacred spaces over his career, including Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, built in 1908 and now considered one of the first examples of modern architecture.

June 8 is also the Feast of Corpus Christi, a holy day celebrated by Roman Catholics and others — historically with a public procession — to honor and give thanks for the “real presence” of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. For their part, Protestants also believe in the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, but don’t locate that presence exclusively or specifically in the Communion bread and wine. Some scholars argue that certain Protestant leaders opposed these public processions in part because monarchs sometimes used them, with spectacular pomp and circumstance, to conflate royal and divine power. On the other hand, such processions can also evoke the passion’s Via Dolorosa (“Way of Sorrows”), calling attention to the fact that the Body of Christ is a wounded body, an abused body, a victim of injustice in solidarity with all who suffer injustice, pain, and death, in all times and places.

June 9 is the birthday of the novelist and peace activist Bertha von Suttner, born in Prague in 1843, the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Suttner became a major figure in the peace movement of the day, publishing a bestselling novel, Lay Down Your Arms. She and her husband, Arthur, were devout Christians, and established the League Against Anti-Semitism in response to the pogroms and growing antisemitism in Eastern Europe. True religion, she wrote, is “neighborly love, not neighborly hatred. Any kind of hatred, against other nations or against other creeds, detracts from the humaneness of humanity." For a short time she had served as administrative assistant to the industrialist Alfred Nobel, who made his fortune by inventing dynamite and developing weapons of war — and she maintained an extensive correspondence with him until his death. She is widely credited with influencing his decision to include a peace prize among those he established with his fortune, and in 1905, she became the first woman to be awarded it, and the second female Nobel laureate ever (the first being Marie Curie).

June 10 is the day in 1881 that Leo Tolstoy began a fateful pilgrimage to a nearby monastery. His great novels — War and Peace and Anna Karenina — had made him rich and famous, but he felt a hollow emptiness in his life, and fell into a deep depression. Then one day, alone on a walk in the woods, he had an epiphany: “At the thought of God, happy waves of life welled up inside me. Everything came alive, took on meaning. The moment I thought I knew God, I lived. But the moment I forgot him, the moment I stopped believing, I also stopped living.” The monastery became for him a place of spiritual retreat, a refuge where he worked out the implications of his conversion. He decided to renounce meat, sex, alcohol, tabacco, and expensive clothing. He wanted to give away all his money, too, but his wife, Sophia, reminded him that they needed at least some resources to raise their 10 children!