Wednesday, May 10, 2023

It is the 10th of May, 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

There is a special joy when I’m scouring my various websites and books for birth dates and deaths. I’ll see a name or event, and a special thrill arises: “Have I not done that yet!” I can spend the next couple of days reading and re-reading a person or topic that has special meaning for me.

Friends, today we commemorate one of my favorite authors of the 20th century- a man is known as a novelist but was also a Benedictine tertiary- that is someone who is a member of the Catholic order but as a “third thing” a “tertiary,” that is, a layman in the order. He was Walker Percy, and he died on this the 10th of May in 1990.

Walker Percy was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1916. He was born into a family of distinction but also tragedy- his grandfather committed suicide, as did his father. How mother and siblings moved in with relatives, and his mother would then die in a car crash (one that may have been suicide, too). He would live in Greenville, Mississippi, with a relative- the poet William Percy. Here, Walker would meet the future historian Shelby Foote and the two would remain lifelong friends.

Walker was a Tar Heel, graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1937, and then went to New York, where he received his MD from Columbia. But, in the process of becoming a medical doctor, he contracted Tuberculosis and spent two years in a sanatarium. After recovering, he would have a relapse of TB and spend another four months away. It was during this time that his focus shifted from medical science to philosophy and Christianity. He found the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, Thomas Aquinas, and others as he made the pivot from agnostic to Christian.  

In 1946 he married Mary Townsend, and the two entered the Roman Catholic Church. They would adopt a daughter and have one biologically.

Walker came to prominence in 1961 when his first published novel, The Moviegoer, it would win the National Book Award. It is the story of a businessman suffering existential malaise who found meaning in movies and later in extra-marital liaisons. His other books would include The Last Gentleman, Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of A Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World, and my personal favorite: Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book.  

Having first studied to be a medical doctor to then become a novelist, he believed that his vocation was essentially the same: to diagnose what has gone wrong. In one interview, he responded to a question about the modern world: “Something's clearly wrong, maybe even worse than usual in civilizations. I find it a natural stance from which to write both novels and nonfiction.”

If you’re unfamiliar with him, reading any of his interviews gives a great introduction to the man who was troubled and troubling, funny and trenchant.

He had a great respect for science but believed it was only successful in “subhuman reality”; he was great with physics and chemistry and learning about the cosmos but with an “extraordinary lack of success in dealing with man as man.” He found soulless “Scientific humanism” to be a colossal failure on an existential level- asked why it’s not good enough, he responded:

“This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer “Scientific humanism.” That won’t do—a poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact, I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less. I don’t see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed hold of God and would not let go until God identified himself and blessed him.”

He was a secular Oblate at St. Joseph’s Benedictine Abbey in St. Benedict, Louisiana. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1988, and it metastasized and was inoperable. Walker Percy would die on this day, the 10th of May in 1990, just short of his 74th birthday.

The last word for today from the daily lectionary- leaning into the Psalms these days and the Scottish Metrical Psalter:

¹⁶ All that fear God, come, hear, I’ll tell
what he did for my soul.
¹⁷ I with my mouth unto him cried,
my tongue did him extol.

¹⁸ If in my heart I sin regard,
the Lord me will not hear:
¹⁹ But surely God me heard, and to
my prayer’s voice gave ear.

²⁰ O let the Lord, our gracious God,
for ever blessed be,
Who turned not my pray’r from him,
nor yet his grace from me.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 10th of May 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man for whom May 10th is remembered as the birthday of the BetaMax in 1975- RIP- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man so often teased at the video rental shop- oh, you have An American Tail? Yeah, only in Betamax… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.