August 31

Today is the birthday, in 1842, of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, a women’s rights and civil rights leader and newspaper publisher. In addition to her organizing work, she founded the first African-American women’s newspaper, The Women’s Era. 

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Aiden of Lindisfarne in the Church of England and the Episcopal Church. He died on this day in 651. Aiden founded the monastery (where the Lindisfarne gospels would be illustrated decades later), and is credited with evangelizing Northumbria. He was an Irish immigrant who had success where his predecessor had failed, because he was friendly with the local people and built relationships with them rather than talking down to them. 

Today is also a feast day, in the Roman Catholic Church, for Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, two Jesus-followers in the gospels who had positions of power in the Jerusalem Council. Joseph of Arimeathea owned the tomb where Jesus’s body was laid (Mark 15:43) and put himself at risk by making the request from Pontius Pilate to take Jesus’s body down from the cross. Nicodemus similarly stuck his neck out for Jesus by defending him in Council discussion (John 7:50), and then donating myrrh and aloe for his embalming (John 19:39). 

Relfection: 

Here is a prayer attributed to Saint Aiden of Lindisfarne. Although I can find no primary reference, the references to tides and islands is consistent with a monk who lived on Iona and Lindisfarne: 

I like the fact that both Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea get a feast day in the Roman Catholic Church, and that the gospels name them. Although they were bigwigs in their Jerusalem hierarchy, they risked censure (or worse) to speak up for a would-be-messiah from Galilee. They are positive examples of people using their privilege as accomplices to liberation. 

According to the legend of the Holy Grail, Joseph of Arimathea brought the cup from Jesus’s Last Supper to England. I still think this is an unlikely story, but when we visited the town of Bath, England in 2011, one item on display was the mummy of a Syrian trader in the first century. Travel to England from the Ancient Near East was apparently very common.  

Prayer: God of time and eternity, our vision of history is short and narrow. Like the movement of the tides, your story is persistent and slow, wearing rocks smooth as it shapes the continents. Shape us and our society in the same way so that we may more perfectly reflect your love and justice. Amen.