Theologian's Almanac for Week of March 6, 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, March 6:
March 6 is the birthday of novelist Gabriel García Márquez, born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1927. His most celebrated book, published in 1967, is also one of the most important in all of Latin American literature: One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was from his grandmother, he said, that he learned the style and tone he used in the novel: she would tell stories “that sounded supernatural and fantastic, but she told them with complete naturalness ... what was most important was the expression she had on her face. She did not change her expression at all when telling her stories and everyone was surprised.” And so when it came to the fantastic stories scattered throughout One Hundred Years of Solitude, “I discovered that what I had to do was believe in them myself and write them with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.” The novel begins with the line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice...”
Márquez permitted most of his novels to be made into films — with the conspicuous exception of One Hundred Years of Solitude. He once offered the rights to a famous American film producer on one condition: that they “film the entire book, but only release one chapter — two minutes long — each year, for 100 years.”
March 6 is also the birthday of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, born in Durham, England, in 1806. She eloped with the poet Robert Browning and moved to Italy, and while she’s best known today for her love poetry (“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” is one of her most famous lines), her work in Italy focused largely on social justice. Her family had owned Jamaican sugar plantations dependent on enslaved labor, and she was a committed abolitionist. She also wrote about the horrors of child labor, the Austrian occupation of Italy, and other related subjects. Here’s a taste of her theology, from Aurora Leigh:
Earth’s Crammed with Heaven
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries…
March 6 is also the birthday of Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian sculptor, architect, and painter, born in Tuscany, Italy, in 1475. He began his career as a kind of con man, forging a sculpture in the ancient Greek style in an effort to pass it off as an expensive antique. The prospective buyer learned the truth and demanded a refund — but was so impressed with Michelangelo’s skill that he invited him to Rome. The artist ended up staying, and by the end of his career, had been commissioned by nine consecutive popes — including Pope Julius II, who commissioned the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Michelangelo once said: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” And again: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
March 7 is the anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, the day known as “Bloody Sunday.” Six hundred marchers — including the late, great John Lewis — departed from Selma, bound for the state capitol to demonstrate for African-American voting rights. They got all of six blocks before state and local law enforcement blocked them, ordered them to disperse, and then attacked them with tear gas and billy clubs. ABC News interrupted their regular programming to show footage of the violence, and the dramatic images helped shift public opinion. Demonstrations appeared across the country, and two weeks later, another march from Selma made it all the way to Montgomery, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. By the time they reached the capitol, their numbers had swelled to over 25,000.
March 8 is the day in 1855 that a train first crossed the very first railway suspension bridge, an event that took place in Niagara Falls, New York — which raises the question: How exactly do you build a suspension bridge across a 800-foot gorge, 250 feet above the rushing water below?
The answer begins with a kite. An engineer named Charles Ellet Jr. announced a prize of $5 for any child who managed to fly a kite across the gorge from the Canadian side to the American side, such that the kite string could be tied down on both sides. After a few days and many attempts, one enterprising boy managed the feat — and Ellet’s team then tied a slightly heavier line to one end of the kite string and, by means of the kite string, pulled the heavier line across the gap. They then repeated the process with still heavier lines, then ropes, then light metal cables, then heavy metal cables — until there were lines across the gap strong enough to support a railway suspension bridge, and eventually to support an entire train. All of which goes to show: the power of a kite!
March 10 is the day Harriet Tubman died in 1913. Her birth year is uncertain, but it was likely about 1820. As a 15-year-old, after refusing to help an enslaver restrain a runaway, Harriet was struck in the head, knocked unconscious, and left for days. After her recovery, she suffered from seizures, dizziness, and hypersomnia — and at the same time began to have prophetic visions and dreams, which she interpreted as communication from God.
In 1849, she escaped from enslavement in Maryland and made her way to Philadelphia. She then returned repeatedly to rescue members of her family and dozens of others, one small group at a time, traveling by night from safehouse to safehouse along the Underground Railroad. After the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850, she helped guide people even farther north into Canada. She became known as “Moses,” and is said to have accompanied hundreds of people from enslavement to freedom.
She also served in the Civil War as a scout and spy. After the war, she began taking in orphans, the infirm, and the elderly. She bought land near her home in 1903 and opened the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged and Indigent — where she herself died ten years later.
Frederick Douglass wrote to her in 1868: “Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day — you in the night... The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism.”
The Biden administration reportedly is working to speed up the process that eventually will result in Tubman’s image on the United States $20 bill.
March 10 is also the day in 1959 that 300,000 Tibetans surrounded the Dalai Lama’s palace, both to protest China’s occupation and to protect the Dalai Lama, whom they feared the Chinese military was about to abduct. A short time later, after the Dalai Lama was evacuated to India, tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed by Chinese troops. Many survivors followed the Dalai Lama to India, where he governs in exile from a location in the Himalayan mountains.
March 11 is the day in 1918 that the initial cases emerged of what would become the worst pandemic in world history, the influenza pandemic of 1918. More than 20% of the world’s population eventually became infected, and more than 50 million people died in just a few months, approximately 500,000 in the U.S. alone. To put that in perspective, 16 million people lost their lives in World War I, and at least 6 million have died of COVID-19, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
March 11 is also the day in 1818 that the novel Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus was first published. Initially, it was published anonymously — but after it became a sensation, 21-year-old Mary Shelley announced that she was its author. Many didn’t believe that such a young woman could have written such a compelling, sophisticated story of creation, philosophy, ethics, and cultural criticism: the tale of scientist Victor Frankenstein and the creature he constructs out of spare parts from corpses. Now considered a classic, Frankenstein inaugurated the genre of science fiction, and in the 1960s, became an icon of feminist literature.