Words Twice a Week 12.19
Some days from the Church Calendar -
Dec 21 – St Thomas He gets called “Doubting Thomas”, but I’m not sure he deserves it. In Matthew, Mark and Luke he just gets mentioned in the lists, usually about in the middle. In John, when Jesus goes to raise Lazarus, thomas vows to go with him, even at the risk of death. At the last supper in John, when Jesus says they know the way, Thomas asks how can they know the way, and prompts Jesus to say “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.” After the Resurrection, the disciples are locked in because they are afraid, and Thomas is not there (because he is not afraid?), he says he will not believe unless he sees. When Jesus comes again a week later, as soon as he sees, Thomas says “You are my Lord and my God.” In John 21, Thomas is listed (this time second only to Peter) as one of those who are going fishing and take in the miraculous catch. So – doubting, practical, faithful, courageous, inquisitive, active, resourceful – what best describes Thomas in your mind?
Dec 22 – Henry Budd, “originally named Sakachuwescam, he was baptised and renamed Henry Budd (after his own mentor) by Anglican missionary the Rev. John West in 1822. He worked at one of the Hudson Bay company stations, and tried to make the station self-supporting, introducing farming methods to the native peoples, who previously subsisted on hunting and fishing and supplemented their diet by trading furs to the Hudson's Bay Company.” (Ok, a few issues there! Time to remember that we are living on the traditional homeland of the Anishinabe people, who had been here for years and years and got along pretty well without us!) Anyway, he was the first Native American ordained priest (1853) in the Angelican Church.
Dec 24 – Christmas Eve
Dec 25 – Christmas
Dec 26 – St Stephen – Deacon and Martyr, sometime around 33-35 AD. W Paul Jones says “Stephen, the first martyr, represents the shadow cast over all of us who follow the star. In being stoned to death for his faith, Stephen emulated Jesus – asking that his persecutors be forgiven, then relinquishing his spirit to God. Paul, the hater of Christians who became the greatest Christian missionary, never met Jesus. Instead, he encountered the Christlike martyrdom of Stephen.” So it was on this day the Good King Wenceslaus set out to bring the remains of the Christmas feast to the poor man gathering winter fuel.
Here’s the collect for St Stephen -
We give you thanks, O Lord of glory,
for the example of the first martyr Stephen,
who looked up to heaven and prayed for his persecutors to your Son Jesus Christ,
who stands at your right hand;
where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,
in glory everlasting. Amen.
Which, I’m sorry, just seems kind of lame to me. Here’s a challenge – write a collect for St Stephen which mentions Wenceslaus, and maybe the Christmas feast! We’ll see what we come up with!
And some days from the earth/world calendar
Dec 20
+ the Louisiana Purchase was completed on this day in 1802. Sacagawea, after making the trip, apparently died on this day in 1812, although there is an oral tradition that says Sacagawea left her husband Charbonneau, crossed the Great Plains, and married into a Comanche tribe. She was said to have returned to the Shoshone in 1860 in Wyoming, where she died in 1884. There are a variety of parks and educational centers named for her. I read the book (Undaunted Courage) about the expedition, and the amazing thing is that while she and her husband joined the expedition to translate, when they got to the Shoshoni territory and were sending out scouting parties to try to encounter/contact the Natives, they left Sacajawea back in camp and tried to communicate with signals! When they finally made contact with a group and were all sitting down to talk, suddenly Sacajawea jumped up and went to the “chief” who was in fact her brother! (And yes, her name is Anglicized in a variety of ways!)
Dec 21
+ Winter Solstice – light a fire! Jump through it? Maybe not. I guess we are going to have a dinner by candlelight.
+ the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. And it got dark early!
+ Phileas Fogg made it around the world in 80 days!
+ the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper in 1913. In 1924, R Simon and L Shuster started a publishing house with a book of crosswords. The New York Times was one of the last newspapers to publish a crossword – and now theirs is kind of the gold-standard!
Dec 22
+ the first home Christmas tree decorated with electric lights was by an associate of Thomas Edison in 1882. Don’t know how many of them stayed lit, or if when one went out they all did. Or if they blinked!
Dec 23
+ the metric conversion act for the US was signed into law in 1975. That’s why we all measure things in centimeters and liters and grams – Arlo Guthrie had a good riff on that in the “Inch by Inch” song, about how he was singing the song while stopped by Canadian customs and questioned by an agent who didn’t know what an inch was. He concluded with something like “we can only get out of the mess we are in the same way we got into it – inch by inch and mile after mile.”
Dec 24
+ the Christmas Truce happened in WWI on 1914. The Ku Klux Klan was created in 1865.
+ astronauts orbited the moon for the first time in 1968. One of them later said “I think it’s important for people to understand they are just going around on one of the smaller grains of sand on one of the spiral arms of this kind of puny galaxy – Earth is insignificant, but it’s the only one we’ve got.”
+ which prompts a few excerpts from A Small Fiction -
“Are you here to conquor Earth?”
The aliens exchanged a look.
“No,” one said, “this is more like an intervention. You guys need to relax.”
and
We broadcast a message into space.
One word.
“Help”
Ships showed up the next day. Scores of them.
“We thought you’d never ask!”
and
“We saw your distress flares; get in!” the aliens said.
“They’re fireworks. To celebrate!”
“Oh. We’ve been watching you and just assumed…”
Dec 25
+ so these people were born on Christmas – Isaac Newton (1642), Humphrey Bogart (1899), Rod Serling (1924) There’s a track on a Spike Jones Christmas cd that I picked up off the “Free” table at the library – My Birthday Comes on Christmas
Dec 26
+ first recorded production of Shakespeare’s King Lear if you are looking for just a little light holiday entertainment!
That’s what I got for now…..
Comments are moderated – by me – and may take a day to appear
No comments:
Post a Comment