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January 29
David Barnhart
January 29, 2025
Moss, North Alabama, 2021.
On this day in 1996, France announced it was ending nuclear weapons testing.
On this day in 2008, Egypt loosened government restrictions on people who do not adhere to one of its three official religions.
Today is the birthday of Katharina von Bora, a former Roman Catholic nun who married Martin Luther. She was one of nine nuns who escaped her convent by hiding in a fish barrel. She famously declared that she would “stick to Christ like a burr clings to a coat.”
Today is also the birthday of Emanuel Swedenborg, an astronomer, Christian reformer, and mystic whose teachings inspired Johnny Appleseed and Helen Keller, among others.
Reflection
In My Religion, Helen Keller wrote:
“Since my seventeenth year, I have tried to live according to the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. By "church" he did not mean an ecclesiastical organization, but a spiritual fellowship of thoughtful men and women who spend their lives for a service to mankind that outlasts them. He called it a civilization that was to be born of a healthy, universal religion — goodwill, mutual understanding, service from each to all, regardless of dogma or ritual.”
Emmanuel Swedenborg wrote:
…if we would accept heaven's life, we need by all means to live in the world and to participate in its duties and affairs. In this way, we accept a spiritual life by means of our moral and civic life; and there is no other way a spiritual life can be formed within us, no other way our spirits can be prepared for heaven. This is because living an inner life and not an outer life at the same time is like living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses.