Theologian's Almanac for Week of October 10, 2021
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 10:
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 — not 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) and facing the congregation (rather than facing the altar); and 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.”
October 15 is the feast day of St. Teresa of Avila, the widely influential Spanish monastic, author, mystic, and founder of a new Carmelite order in 1562. Her spiritual autobiography, The Way of Perfection, is a classic, as is her meditation on the contemplative life, The Interior Castle. In 1970 she was the first woman to be honored as a Doctor of the Church.
Here’s a taste of her imagination: She describes the stages of prayer in terms of bringing water into a garden of the soul, so the garden might grow. The first stage, she says, is like pulling a bucket of water directly up out of a well by strenuous effort; the second stage goes more easily, with God’s help, as if drawing the bucket up by means of a pulley; the third stage is virtually effortless, as if God is irrigating the garden; and the fourth stage, the stage of ecstasy, she describes as rain falling on the garden from above.
She wrote: “Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.”
And again: “I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.”
October 16 is the birthday of the Irish novelist and playwright Oscar Wilde, born in Dublin in 1854. Though he was an adamant agnostic throughout his life, he nevertheless was a thoughtful admirer of Jesus: “He is just like a work of art,” Wilde wrote. “He does not really teach one anything, but by being brought into his presence one becomes something.”