Theologian's Almanac for Week of June 25, 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 25:

June 27 is the birthday of poet Lucille Clifton, born in 1936 near Buffalo, New York, the daughter of a steelworker and a laundress. Lucille’s mother, Thelma, was a gifted poet herself — but Lucille’s father forbid her from writing, and forced Thelma to throw her poems into the fire. Lucille later wrote:

“fury”

for mama

remember this.
she is standing by
the furnace.
the coals
glisten like rubies.
her hand is crying.
her hand is clutching
a sheaf of papers.
poems.
she gives them up.
they burn
jewels into jewels.
her eyes are animals.
each hank of her hair
is a serpent's obedient
wife.
she will never recover.
remember. there is nothing
you will not bear
for this woman's sake.

And here’s Clifton herself, reading her classic poem about Jesus, “Spring Song.”

June 27 is also the birthday of Helen Keller, born in Alabama in 1880. When she was just shy of her second birthday, she was struck by an illness that left her both deaf and blind. And though she’s primarily known today as an inspirational figure who overcame adversity, she devoted her energies largely to improving the lives of others. Keller joined the International Workers of the World in 1912, visiting workers in appalling conditions. “I have visited sweatshops, factories, crowded slums,” she said. “If I could not see it, I could smell it.” She also fought for women’s suffrage, protested against World War I, and was one of the inaugural members of the American Civil Liberties Union.

She wrote, “To one who is deaf and blind the spiritual world offers no difficulty. Nearly everything in the natural world is as vague, as remote from my senses, as spiritual things seem to the minds of most people. But the inner or mystic sense, if you like, gives me vision of the unseen… My mystic world is lovely with trees and clouds and stars and eddying streams I have never ‘seen.’”

And here’s a fantastically interesting podcast episode (of Radiolab) on Helen Keller: “The Helen Keller Exorcism.”

June 28 is the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City, now considered a galvanizing and symbolic event in the struggle for LGBTQ rights. Police raided the Stonewall Inn bar, on the pretext that the bar was selling alcohol without a liquor license — but it was the third raid in a row on a Greenwich Village gay bar, and this time, the outraged patrons didn’t disperse, but rather gathered on the street and actively resisted the police. The ensuing unrest lasted five days, and inspired activism around the country. On the first anniversary of the uprising, the inaugural gay pride parades were held in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.

In honor of Pride Month, here’s SALT’s reflection on Homosexuality and the Bible.

June 28 is also the feast day of St. Irenaeus, the second-century Bishop of Lyons, who famously wrote, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

June 28 is also Eid al-Adha (“Feast of Sacrifice”), the second and most important of the two primary holidays in Islam (the other is Eid al-Fitr). The festival commemorates the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his beloved son, Ishmael, as an act of obedience and devotion to God (Jews and Christians have another version of the story, in which the beloved son is Isaac). At the story’s climax, God intervenes and saves Ishmael — revealing the original command to have been a test of whether Abraham’s devotion is actually contingent on his own self-interest. These events are said to have taken place on the rocky outcropping now surrounded by the Dome of Rock in Jerusalem, now the oldest example of Islamic architecture.

June 29 is the birthday of French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, born in Lyon, France, in 1900. He’s best known today for his 1943 novella, Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), the beloved classic exploring friendship, loneliness, and big philosophical ideas. Saint-Exupéry painted the watercolors for the book, which was posthumously published — after his plane mysteriously disappeared on a secret mission during WWII. Saint-Exupéry wrote, “All grown-ups were once children — although few of them remember it.” And again: “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

June 30 is the anniversary of a formal public debate over the theory of evolution at Oxford University in England, held by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Darwin's book, On the Origin of Species, had just appeared the previous year, to immediate controversy. The distinguished biologist Richard Owen was a vocal critic, as was Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, with Owen’s help. On the pro-Darwin side were several scientists, including Thomas Henry Huxley, and also several theologians, including Baden Powell, a mathematician and priest. It’s too seldom remembered that theology has been on both sides of this debate from the beginning! (And by the way, by most accounts, the pro-Darwin scientists and theologians won the Oxford debate.)

June 30 is also the birthday of Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, born in Szetejnie, Lithuania, in 1911. Traveling with his father through Russia, Milosz was fascinated by the region’s different religions: Catholicism, Greek Orthodox and Protestant Christianity, Judaism, and pagan mysticism. He translated many books of the Bible into Polish, and was particularly fascinated by the Book of Job and the Psalms. Asked how he arrived at faith in God, he said, "It's not up to me to know anything about heaven or hell. But in this world, there is too much ugliness and horror. [And this very observation implies that] there must be, somewhere, goodness and truth. And that means somewhere God must be."

July 1 is the birthday of French novelist George Sand, born Lucile Aurore Dupin in Paris, France, in 1804. Growing up, she was educated in an English convent in Paris, experienced a conversion, and decided to become a nun. Other girls dubbed her, “Saint Aurore.” But when her grandmother heard about her plans, she promptly withdrew her from the school. Writing under the pseudonym, “George Sand,” she became a prolific writer and a scandalous public figure, wearing men’s clothing, smoking cigars, and falling in love — including a relationship with the pianist Frédéric Chopin. Looking back on her life, she put it this way: “The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.”