Theologian's Almanac for Week of August 21, 2022
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, August 21:
August 22 is the day in 1864 that twelve European nations signed the First Geneva Convention, in effect launching the international humanitarian law movement. The gathering was the brainchild of Henri Dunant, the founder of the International Committee for the Relief of the Wounded (later the International Red Cross), who had witnessed death and suffering during the war for the unification of Italy; many wounded soldiers were simply left on the battlefield to die. The convention focussed primarily on establishing ground rules for fair treatment of combatants; the obligation to treat sick and wounded, regardless of which side they were on; and the protection of medical personnel and equipment. The twelve attending nations signed the treaty on August 22; all major European countries ratified it within three years. In the United States, Clara Barton, a nurse in the American Civil War, led the fight for ratification; it passed, at last, in 1882.
August 24 is the day in 1456 the first Gutenberg Bible was completed in Mainz, Germany. It was the first volume printed with moveable metal type, and the press produced 180 copies. Gutenberg’s innovation was to streamline and synthesize already-existing techniques (assembling the type, folding the pages into folios, binding the volume) into an efficient printing process, the basic contours of which were subsequently used widely for hundreds of years. The publication of the Gutenberg Bible thus represented a breakthrough in the history of the dissemination of knowledge to ordinary people.
August 24 is also the birthday of American writer John Green, born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1977. His blockbuster novel, The Fault in Our Stars, is inspired by Green’s experiences as a student chaplain at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, while enrolled at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Here’s a taste of his writing from The Fault in Our Stars: “There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities… There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful.”
August 25 is the day President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the 1916 act that established the National Park Service. A few national parks had been established (Yellowstone was the first, in 1872), but Congress hadn’t yet assigned a part of the government to run them. The idea was spreading that the parks were not only spectacular sites but also sanctuaries for flora and fauna worth protecting — but there was no-one on the ground at the parks with the authority to implement this emerging vision, and so developers and poachers went largely unchecked. The National Park Service did a great deal to change all that, and still does today. On one hand, at their best, the NPS is as vivid an expression as any of humanity’s sacred vocation to protect and care for creation’s many creatures (Genesis 1-2; 6-9). And yet, at the same time, a shadow side of this history is that the NPS often treated Native American people unjustly: usurping land, obscuring histories, and cracking down on “poachers” who were actually carrying on subsistence and traditional hunting practices as their ancestors had for generations. For more on this latter aspect of NPS history, check out this fascinating podcast episode, Outside/In’s “The Problem with ‘Fortress Conservation.’”
August 26 is the birthday of Mother Teresa, born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Skopje, present-day Macedonia, in 1910. In Albanian, “Gonxhe” means "rosebud" or "little flower." After taking religious vows at the age of 21, she taught at a schoolhouse outside Calcutta, and soon began to be deeply disturbed by the poverty around her. On the train one day, she experienced what she later understood as a divine summons: “I was to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them. It was an order. To fail would have been to break the faith.” She traded in her traditional habit for a simple, inexpensive white cotton sari with a blue border, and after two years of ministering to the poor, sick, and hungry on the streets of Calcutta, she received permission from the Vatican to start a congregation that would eventually become the Missionaries of Charity. By the time of her death in 1997, Missionaries of Charity had grown to more than 4,000 workers in 133 countries, opening orphanages, homes for people with tuberculosis and leprosy, soup kitchens, hospitals, mobile health clinics, and schools.
After her death, some of Mother Teresa’s private writings were published, revealing that for long periods of her life, she was haunted by feelings of loneliness, desolation, and God’s absence, even as she persevered in her work.
She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Asked by the Nobel committee what advice she had for people who want to promote world peace, she said, “Go home and love your family.” Another interviewer once asked her about her practice of prayer, and she said, “When I pray, mostly I just listen.” “And what does God say?” said the interviewer. “Mostly, God just listens,” she replied.
August 27 is the anniversary of the first profitable oil well, inaugurating the modern petroleum age. Oil had long been known to seep up out of the ground in certain places, and was sometimes collected and used for medicinal purposes, or for lamps, or to lubricate farm machinery — but it was George Bissell, a New York lawyer, who had the idea to intentionally drill for the stuff, refine it, and sell it commercially. That first oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859 — and consequently, that state dominated the oil market for decades (which is where “Pennzoil” and “Quaker State” come from). Modern petroleum revolutionized human society, from home heating to asphalt to transportation fuels to all manner of plastics — and at the same time, in less than a couple of centuries, helped create multiple ecological crises, including widespread plastic pollution and the current climate emergency.