Theologian's Almanac for Week of November 13, 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, November 13:
November 13 is the birthday of St. Augustine of Hippo, born in 354 in North Africa, in what is now Algeria. His most famous book, Confessions, one of the first autobiographies in all of literature, is a remembrance and inventory of his life, primarily addressed to God. He wrote more than 90 books in total, and through his written debates with Pelagius, he became one of the Church’s principal champions of the idea that God’s grace, not human effort, is the underlying cause of salvation. If we find ourselves turning toward God, Augustine taught, that’s only because God has already turned toward us: “our turning to God is itself God’s gift.” In a related vein, Augustine also developed the doctrine of “original sin,” essentially the idea that all people, not just some, require God’s merciful grace and forgiveness. Outside of the biblical writers, Augustine is arguably the most influential theologian in Christian history.
“You have made us for yourself, O God,” Augustine wrote, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
November 15 is the birthday of artist Georgia O'Keeffe, born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, in 1887. She’s most famous for her giant paintings of flowers, to which viewers often ascribe sexual connotations — but O’Keeffe insisted otherwise. She described her floral portraits this way: “A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower — the idea of flowers. You put out your hand to touch the flower — lean forward to smell it — maybe touch it with your lips almost without thinking — or give it to someone to please them. Still — in a way — nobody sees a flower — really — it is so small — we haven’t time — and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.” And so she painted flowers on a grand scale, to help us slow down and see them as they really are.
November 16 is the birthday of the novelist Chinua Achebe, born in Nigeria in 1930. His great-uncle hospitably received European missionaries into their village, and his father became an early convert to Christianity. Achebe grew up reading the Bible every day and attending church every week, but he was intrigued by the customs of the non-Christians in his village — as well as by the caricatured native characters in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. He set out to turn the tables on the colonialists — and the result was his novel, Things Fall Apart, now a classic in Nigerian literature and an international bestseller. Here’s a taste of the novel: “The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.” Things Fall Apart has been translated into more than 50 languages.
November 18 is the birthday of Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1939. Because her father was an entomologist, while she was growing up, her family lived for extended periods in insect-research stations in the northern Canadian wilderness. Atwood is most famous today as a novelist, and in particular as the author of The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) — but she began as a poet. For a taste of her poetry, here’s her classic, “I Was Reading a Scientific Article.”
Of late, she has stepped into controversy by raising questions about trans-inclusive language supposedly crowding out the word, “woman.” This seems unfortunate coming from Atwood, given the fact that so much of her work has opposed biological essentialism along lines of sex and gender. Thinking of her today, then, we can do two things at once: celebrate her ground-breaking, influential feminist writing; and underscore the importance of affirming the rights of women and the rights of transgender people as mutually reinforcing, not exclusive.
Atwood once said: “Men often ask me, ‘Why are your female characters so paranoid?’ It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.”
Looking ahead, here’s SALT’s “Brief Theology of Thanksgiving.”