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- May 15
May 15
Jakucho Setouchi, Thadeus Nguyễn Văn Lý, Emily Dickinson, Nakba Day, the Friends' Asylum, and the NWSA.
David Barnhart
May 15, 2025
Graffiti on the apartheid wall in Bethlehem, West Bank, 2019. Own photo.
On May 15, 1817, the Friends’ Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason officially started receiving patients. This institution, founded by the Quakers, was radically different from former “insane asylums,” in that it emphasized equality and dignity for mentally ill persons. One major difference is recorded in an annual report from the 1850’s, which states that chains were never used to restrain patients.
Also on this date in 1869, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Cady Stanton also wrote during this time “The Women’s Bible,” which challenged patriarchal religion and advocated a theology of liberation for women.
Today is the birthday, in 1922, of Jakucho Setouchi, a novelist who became a Buddhist nun and peace activist. Her novels were frank about women’s sexuality and scandalized traditional Japanese culture. In her role as a Buddhist nun she continued to speak candidly about her past and the human condition.
Today is also the birthday, in 1946, of Thadeus Nguyễn Văn Lý, a Vietnamese Roman Catholic priest, who has been jailed for many years for his pro-democracy activism. He remains under house arrest.
Today also marks the death, in 1886, of poet Emily Dickinson.
Today also marks the date of the Nakba, or catastrophe, in 1948 when Palestinians were displaced from their homes during the Arab-Israeli War.
Reflection:
The introduction to the 2016 Book of Resolutions of the United Methodist Church says:
“…God's love for the world is an active and engaged love, a love seeking justice and liberty. We cannot just be observers. So we care enough about people's lives to risk interpreting God's love, to take a stand, to call each of us into a response, no matter how controversial or complex. The church helps us think and act out a faith perspective, not just responding to all the other 'mind-makers-up' that exist in our society...
Taking an active stance in society is nothing new for followers of John Wesley. He set the example for us to combine personal and social piety. Ever since predecessor churches to United Methodism flourished in the United States, we have been known as a denomination involved with people's lives, with political and social struggles, having local to international mission implications. Such involvement is an expression of the personal change we experience in our baptism and conversion."
Of the story in Genesis 3, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote:
Note the significant fact that we always hear of the "fall of man," not the fall of woman, showing that the consensus of human thought has been more unerring than masculine interpretation. Reading this narrative carefully, it is amazing that any set of men ever claimed that the dogma of the inferiority of woman is here set forth. The conduct of Eve from the beginning to the end is so superior to that of Adam.
One of Emily Dickinson’s many poems:
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
Prayer: Mercy, God. Mercy for all your creatures who cannot gaze directly at the truth. Mercy for those who seek to tell it. Mercy for those who work for liberation. Mercy for those who obstruct their own liberation. Amen.