June 13

Ibn Battula, Walter Rodney, G.K. Chesterton, and the wedding of Katharina von Bora and Martin Luther

Author

David Barnhart
June 13, 2025

Flowers in Nablus, West Bank, Palestine, 2019. Own photo.

Today in 1325, Ibn Battula, a contemporary of Marco Polo, began his extensive voyages that would last a quarter of a century and take him four times as far, from Morocco to Mecca, to Delhi, and Beijing. He recorded his travels in a book called The Rihla, or A Masterpiece to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling.

Today also marks the day that Katharina von Bora married Martin Luther, signifying a Protestant move away from celibate clergy. With Luther’s help, she and other nuns had escaped her convent by hiding among barrels of fish. 

Today marks the assassination of Guyanese author, educator, and activist Walter Rodney, in 1980, whose book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, marked an important point in the academic study of colonization, and for decolonization. He connected the struggles of race and class liberation from Africa to the United States. His philosophy of liberation was a threat to cronyism and autocratic power.

Today is a feast day in the Roman Catholic church for English priest Thomas Woodhouse, who was tortured and killed by the Protestant monarchy for his loyalty to his church and faith.

Today is a feast day for G.K. Chesterton in the Episcopal Church, USA, who died on June 14, 1936. (I mentioned him on his birthday).  

Reflection: 

Walter Rodney wrote: 

“Many guilty consciences have been created by the slave trade. Europeans know that they carried on the slave trade, and Africans are aware that the trade would have been impossible if certain Africans did not cooperate with slave ships. To ease their guilty consciences, Europeans try to throw the major responsibility for the slave trade on to the Africans. One major author on the slave trade (appropriately titled Sins of Our Fathers) explained how many white people urged him to state that the trade was the responsibility of African chiefs, and that Europeans merely turned up to buy captives- as though without European demand there would have been captives sitting on the beach by the millions! Issues such as those are not the principal concern of this study, but they can be correctly approached only after understanding that Europe became the center of a world-wide system and that it was European capitalism which set slavery and the Atlantic slave trade in motion.”

and

“Black Power is not racially intolerant. It is the hope of the black man that he should have power over his own destinies. This is not incompatible with a multiracial society where each individual counts equally. Because the moment that power is equitably distributed among several ethnic groups, the very relevance of making the distinction between groups will be lost.”

It seems like everything that came out of G.K. Chesterton’s pen was a banger. He wrote: 

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

Prayer: God, it seems many of our sins come from failure to appreciate, or to give gratitude. For this reason, rich people always need more, and need a capitalist system of exploitation to fill a bottomless void in their souls. Save us from distorted desire - ours and theirs. Amen.