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December 8
Margaret Hughes, Anne Marshall, Bernice Fisher, John Trudell, and Bodhi Day
David Barnhart
December 08, 2025
Vaulted ceiling at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. 2022.
Today is Bodhi Day for people in some Buddhist traditions, which marks the day Buddha attained enlightenment, around 500 BCE. It is marked by festivals of lamp-lighting in the winter dark.
Today also marks the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Roman Catholic church and Marian traditions. The Immaculate Conception refers not to Jesus’s miraculous conception, but his mother, Mary’s, whose parents were (by tradition) Anne and Joachim.
On this day in 1660, a woman first appeared on an English stage for a production of Othello. The actor was likely Margaret Hughes, although some historians believe she was Anne Marshall. Women had previously been banned from acting. Only two years later, because of homophobia, the king decreed that women’s roles should only be played by women, illustrating both the malleability of cultural norms for sex and gender and the intersectionality of oppression.
Today is the birthday, in 1916, of Bernice Fisher, civil and labor rights activist and the pioneer of the nonviolent sit-in. She was a founding member of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, in 1942.
Today marks the death, in 2015, of John Trudell, Native American activist and writer/musician.
Reflection:
John Trudell wrote:
“All human beings are descendants of tribal people who were spiritually alive, intimately in love with the natural world, children of Mother Earth. When we were tribal people, we knew who we were, we knew where we were, and we knew our purpose. This sacred perception of reality remains alive and well in our genetic memory. We carry it inside of us, usually in a dusty box in the mind's attic, but it is accessible.”
Prayer: God, reconnect us with reverence for Mother Earth. Amen.