If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church. Click here.
This week’s challenge – write a poem resonating with Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” (The Daffodils) about crocuses/croci. Here’s the best I could do -
One mild afternoon it was early in spring
taking a tour on the Memphis slow buses,
we sat close together, our hearts they were touching,
our bag full of bulbs one day to be crocuses.
There on the corner of Third Street and Hawking -
a park full of purple and yellow croci.
It brought to my mind that time we went walking
and skipping with coffee through downtown Lodi.
Oh man – stuck inside of Memphis with those Lodi blues again!
Ok, on to
Some days from the church calendar -
April 21 Anselm He was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher and theologian of the Catholic Church, who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. As archbishop, he defended the church's interests in England amid the Investiture Controversy. For his resistance to the English kings William II and Henry I, he was exiled twice: once from 1097 to 1100 and then from 1105 to 1107.
April 22 John Muir and Hudson Stuck
Muir, born April 21, 1838, in a four-story stone house in Dunbar, East Lothian, Scotland, was noted for being an ecological thinker, political spokesman, and religious prophet, whose writings became a personal guide into nature for many people, making his name "almost ubiquitous" in the modern environmental consciousness. According to author William Anderson, Muir exemplified "the archetype of our oneness with the earth", while biographer Donald Worster says he believed his mission was "saving the American soul from total surrender to materialism".
Stuck was born in London (1863) and graduated from King's College London. He immigrated to the United States in 1885 and lived there for the rest of his life. After working as a cowboy and teacher for several years in Texas, he went to University of the South to study theology. After graduation, he was ordained as an Episcopal priest. Moving to Alaska in 1904, he served as Archdeacon of the Yukon, acting as a missionary for the church and a proponent of "muscular Christianity". He co-led the first expedition to successfully climb Denali (Mount McKinley) in June 1913. One of his books – Ten Thousand Miles with a Dogsled – is available at Peter White by inter-library loan. Ascent of Denali is available at Thriftbooks for $5-$195.
April 23 Toyohiko Kagawa born in 1883, he was a Japanese Protestant Christian pacifist, Christian reformer, and labour activist. Kagawa wrote, spoke, and worked at length on ways to employ Christian principles in the ordering of society and in cooperatives. His vocation to help the poor led him to live among them. He advocated for women's suffrage and promoted a peaceful foreign policy. He promoted something he called “Brotherhood Economics” - advocating that the Christian Church, the cooperative movement, and the peace movement unite in a 'powerful working synthesis' to provide a workable alternative to capitalism, state socialism, and fascism. After studying at Princeton, he encouraged farmers in Japan to plant trees to 1) control erosion, 2) provide food for humans, and 3) provide fodder for animals. He said "I read in a book that a man called Christ went about doing good. It is very disconcerting to me that I am so easily satisfied with just going about." He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947 and 1948, and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1954 and 1955. Arthur Miller writes about hearing Kagawa give an evangelical lecture in Hill Auditorium at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in 1935, and describes him as "a merchant of the sublime." He died on April 23, 1960. His last words to his family gathered around were “Please do your best for world peace and the church in Japan.”
Here’s one of his prayers – interestingly it’s titled (in the UMC Hymnal) “For Our Country”. I wonder which country he had in mind, if any particular one!
O God, keep our whole country under your protection.
Wipe out sin from this land; lift it up from the depths of sorrow, O Lord, our shining light.
Save us from deep grief and misfortune, Lord of all nations.
Bless us with your wisdom, so that the poor may not be oppressed
and the rich may not be oppressors.
Make this a nation having no ruler except God,
a nation having no authority but that of Love.
April 25 – well, it’s a Sunday, so a Feast of the Lord, but otherwise it would be the day we remember St Mark. We don’t really know who Mark was, or if he actually wrote the gospel with his name on it. We do believe that it was the first gospel written, and that Matthew and Luke both had copies that they used when they wrote their gospels. Some people think he was the man who carried water to the house where the Last Supper took place (Mark 14:13), or the young man who ran away naked when Jesus was arrested (Mark 14:51). Whatever -
Here’s the Collect from BCP for his day -
of Jesus Christ the Son of God: We thank you for this witness, and pray that we may be
firmly grounded in its truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and
the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
The Old Testament reading for the feast of St Mark is Is 52.7-10 “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news…..” Nice.
And some of the days from the earth/world calendar -
April 19
+ Charles Darwin died in 1882.
+ in 1987 The Simpsons began as a one minute segment of the Tracey Ullman show. I would make some clever quip here, but instead I have to confess/admit that I have never watched an episode of The Simpsons. I don’t think I ever saw a whole episode of the Tracey Ullmann Show either. A lost midlife!
+ in 1775 the Battles of Lexington and Concord were the beginning of the Revolutionary War. So that means it was last night that Paul Revere made his ride – “one if by land, two if by sea”. And which was it?
April 20
+ 15 people died after being shot at Columbine High School in 1999.
+ in 2010 the DeepWater Horizon oil rig exploded and began spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It kept on spilling oil until September 19.
April 21
+ Mark Twain (Samuel Clements) died in 1910. We think of him for Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and a few other stories. He was also intensely involved in copyright laws, wanting to preserve his assets for his descendants. It was at the Library of Congress hearings that he first showed up in what became his “trademark” white suit. Here’s a book about the suit and his later years.
+ The surgeon’s photo of the Loch Ness monster was taken in 1934. I remember that from the “email a Day” adventure.
April 22
+ fiber-optics was used for telephone transmissions for the first time in 1977.
+ Cervantes died on this day in 1616. If you want to sing along with To Dream the Impossible Dream, here’s a link to Frank Sinatra on youtube. If you scroll down you can sing with Luther Vandross or Gomer Pyle. Or a variety of others.
April 23
+ Shakespeare died in 1616 and Wordsworth in 1850. We think Shakespeare was maybe born on this day in 1564. The record we have is that he was baptized on April 26. If you are looking for a Shakespearean monologue to read or speak for today, here’s a list of 29 sorted out for men, women, teens, etc.
+ In 2005, the first video was posted to youtube. Me at the Zoo.
+ Kanellos Kanellopoulos, a Greek cyclist flew a human powered aircraft 72.4 mi from Crete to the Greek island of Santorini in 3 hours, 54 minutes, for the 1988 MIT Daedalus project. It was the longest human-powered flight in history. So I guess I could maybe ride halfway to the Island and back?
April 24
+ the Library of Congress was established in 1800. Here’s a challenge for the week – find out if/how you can access the books there.
+ IBM introduced the personal computer in 1981. I would guess that it is easier to access information using the PC than the LOC, but we’ll see what this week’s challenge brings.
+ Lucy Maud Montgomery died in 1942. Why do we remember her? (without checking the link?)
+ 1129-1134 people died in a building collapse in Bangladesh in 2013. Yes – they were making clothes for us to wear.
April 25
+ work started on the Suez Canal at Port Said in 1859. I don’t know if this had to do with a shortage of garden gnomes or not! It officially opened on Nov 17,1869.
That’s what I got for now….
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