Faith Works 4-4-2025

Faith Works 4-4-2025 

Jeff Gill

Scripture and the challenges of contact with the divine

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Previously we had been talking about the order and organization of the Bible, starting with the sections in Hebrew tradition of the 39 books most Christians call the Old Testament.

This general organization of the library of texts which make up "The Holy Bible" is echoed in the Greek texts of our New Testament, some 27 of them in varying lengths. We'll get to those in the next two weeks before Easter, which is April 20 this year.

I'm not attempting a book by book analysis here, even across multiple weeks. There's too much going on in the Bible for that. However, I am hoping to provoke some interest in actually reading the blessed thing, as opposed to setting it on the coffee table or mantlepiece as sacred decor.

There was some interesting feedback the last two weeks about whether or not reading the Bible is useful, or in the technical term, "edifying" for someone who has not yet made a confession of faith. Some argue the Bible can't do you any good UNTIL you've been sanctified; that only after the Holy Spirit has entered your life can scripture study take you where God wants you to go.

While I generally avoid doctrinal debates here, I would just be honest about my own biases. I believe about the Bible very similarly what I teach and preach about communion: that it is, to borrow John Wesley's phrase (and me not even a Methodist!) about communion being a "sanctifying ordinance." You don't have to be saved to take communion; you take communion as a means to moving ever closer to salvation and redemption.

Likewise, my own Restoration Movement tradition believes the Bible is generally able to speak "for itself" to the willing heart. A reasonably good translation and an openness to God can allow any soul to gain benefit from reading what we call, after all, God's word. Preachers and sermons and study groups and curriculum are all well and good, but let the Bible speak, and you will hear.

If someone is walking in faith, fully accountable to a worshiping community, are they likely to get more out of the Bible than someone just reading for themselves? Certainly, and there's texts to support that (II Timothy 3:14-17 for starters, plus I Peter 3:15 and Acts 17:11).

But if you haven't tried reading the Bible for a while, I think Lent, the season leading into Easter, is a good time to take and read (as St. Augustine memorably heard). One place in the Old Testament I think is worth your time: the Book of Job.

Job is a place where the scholarship is revelatory; it's written in a very old Hebrew, just as you could tell if I put a document from the era of the Declaration of Independence and a similarly themed document from 1976 in front of you, which was older. There are quirks of language and typography which give it away. So too with Job: it's OLD.

And in this ancient witness to how God is at work around us, there is a drama outlined in chapters 1 through 5, and then concluded in chapters 37 through 42. If you're getting started, try those eleven chapters alone. You'll find more of it familiar than you might think.

You may then think about making the longer journey through the whole book. But if that seems like too much, let me at least point you to the pivot point of Job: chapter 19, and verse 25. 

Which is a good place for us to pivot next week, to the New Testament.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's a big fan of Job and hopes you read the whole thing. Tell him your favorite neglected book of the Bible at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 3-28-2025

Faith Works 3-28-2025
Jeff Gill

A Lenten journey through Scripture
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If you relate to my question last week, of "Why bother reading the Bible?" — then I hope you'll jump in for a four week overview of the sixty-six books in the testaments both older and newer.

Let's begin at the beginning, and look at the origin stories we find in the first five books, so-called then as "the Pentateuch," or the "Five Books of Moses," perhaps best known as the Torah, or the Law.

Lots of names because Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy have a whole history of their own. They are a traditional unit in their own right; Hebrew designations of what Christians call the "Old Testament" are basically in three sections, the Torah or Law, the Writings, and the Prophets.

That's worth noticing because when we get to the "New Testament," there's an intentional echoing in how they're organized. The four Gospels are set together, paralleling the Law; the Writings include the history accounts in Samuel and Kings and Chronicles, which the second testament parallels with Acts, somewhat separated from its partner book, Luke's Gospel… but it makes sense as the stand-in for the Writings's history, then the letters as wisdom. The Prophets of the Hebrew scriptures are then matched in the Greek New Testament with the Book of Revelation.

Back to the first books in the Bible: they tell us where we come from, who made us and claims us. Yes, creation accounts, stories of origins, narratives of simpler outlines which flesh out more complex realities to come, like the story of Joseph and his brothers an accounting of the twelve tribes of what would become the nation of Israel, united, divided, destroyed all but a remnant, then rising and united again for a time . . . all with promises that God's intention is going to expand beyond any prophet's expectations.

So even in a scientific age we need these origin stories, because they are an anchor point to a thin red line, weaving through all of the books, which we will ultimately be able to follow all the way from Genesis to Revelation, from Alpha to Omega (using the Greek alphabet), from A to Z (in what's more familiar to us). The creator of heaven and earth has a plan for us, a hope for us, made known in various ways through history, explained through laws and guidelines, but always expanding in purpose to where ultimately that plan will reclaim us all.

Genesis gets us from the Fertile Crescent to the shores of the Mediterranean, through Canaan and on into Egypt; Exodus takes us back out of Pharaoh's land, and through Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy to the very banks of the Jordan River.

History books in the "Writings" like Joshua, Judges, and Ruth get us across the river and into the land of promise; how God's people can thrive and mess us and find redemption we see in Samuel's two books, likewise paired volumes of Kings and their parallel in Chronicles, telling the same story again from a new perspective. Ezra and Nehemiah and Esther tell us something of the period of exile to come, which we learn more about later in prophets like Daniel and Ezekiel.

Out of those eras arise the poetry of the Psalms, the insights of Proverbs, the ironies of Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs's lyrical beauty. And the five major prophets, plus twelve minor (as to length) ones, are dotted through that whole history as witnesses.

What I skipped over as the hinge between history and poetry is a vast book in both length and understanding, with the shortest title: Job.

We'll come back to Job's story next week.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's a big fan of Job. Tell him where the Old Testament inspires you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 3-27-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 3-27-2025
Jeff Gill

A peculiar word with some specific import
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With a little over a year to the big celebration of our 250th anniversary of American independence (see America250-Ohio.org for more info!), I asked you to think with me about the specific wording and intentions of that founding document for our lives in the United States today.

Officially speaking, the final version of our Declaration of Independence says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

There's a funny, and even mildly controversial word in there: unalienable. It's not one we use much in everyday speech. You could say "Hey, that hot dog is unalienable from my plate!" but it might not stop someone from swiping it.

As for unalienable, the early drafts of the Declaration as Thomas Jefferson wrote it, called our rights "inalienable." If you visit the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, the letters on the wall inside say "inalienable." In fact, Carl Becker, a legal scholar and historian pointed out in 1922: "The Rough Draft reads "[inherent &] inalienable.""

Jefferson's draft earlier didn't say "self-evident," either: he said "We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable," and went on to assert "that all men are created equal & independant." In other words, the Continental Congress had a say in the final version.

We don't know when or how that Congress changed "inalienable" to "unalienable"; but it appears in the official Congressional Journal and in the parchment copy. That's how John Adams wrote it in his notes: "unalienable." It might well have been his idea.

Either way, so what? Most dictionaries make it clear it's a question of style; either word means the same thing. Something that's inalienable or unalienable is that which cannot be taken away.

Obviously, there's a tension here in that life or liberty, let alone pursuing happiness, can be taken away. It's been known to happen. Jefferson's argument, and the final form adopted by the Second Continental Congress, is that government cannot casually or justly take away life, restrict liberty, or restrain the pursuit of happiness. These rights pre-exist the government, and do not derive from the state or civic order itself: they are always "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Which is where I find "unalienable" interesting, and a source of our understanding of civil rights which comes to fuller flower in the Bill of Rights, some fifteen years later.

Because when a "Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." That's the unalienableness of our rights as Americans. Sure, government can take, or try to take certain rights: people do get pulled over in traffic, stopped for cause, arrested under warrant. Various forms of speech and communication can be limited under a variety of tests and with the strict scrutiny of a court's review.

But the rights come first, not the government, and if the government is abusive or neglectful of protecting our self-evident (even sacred and undeniable) rights, the consent of the governed comes into play. Ideally, through elections, and the electoral activity that takes place in between, up to and including recall, or even impeachment.

Meanwhile, our rights still exist, and are in an existential sense, unalienable.

Or inalienable, if you prefer.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to stop and ask questions about obvious things. That's his right, isn't it? Interrogate his questions at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 3-21-2025

Faith Works 3-21-2025
Jeff Gill

Taking a look at The Book for Lent
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"Why bother reading the Bible?"

As someone who is a Christian minister in a public role, forms of that question come up often. They're both highly variable, and all orbiting around the common axis of "it's an old book, so…"

In the modern world, there's a sort of built in assumption, a prevailing headwind, that any old book is generally superseded by new books.

In fact one of the reasons for my interest in the Bible as a durable, useful library of ancient texts is the intense and ongoing effort of sifting and sorting that has resulted in the collection of books that is what we call "the Holy Bible." Under that term, we talk about a library of texts, roughly three fourths (by verses) out of the Hebrew language and a quarter from Greek with fragments of Aramaic, a cousin of Hebrew, scattered within.

The book count in the Protestant Bible is 39 Old Testament books, 27 New Testament writings. Catholic Bibles include seven intertestamental books, plus modest additional sections for Esther and Daniel; the Eastern Orthodox Bible includes a few more deuterocanonical books, plus one more psalm. These are often referred to as "apocrypha," and generally the reason they are not in Protestant Bibles is because Luther in German Bibles and later Calvin in Geneva demoted them in terms of their sacred status.

All of which goes to my basic point: there's been a process of sifting a wide range of writings presented as sacred or inspired across religious history for over four thousand years. We still have hundreds, even thousands of ancient texts, many of which fall into the category of "pseudepigrapha," sometimes called "the lost books of the Bible."

Every year close to Easter, even before the cable era, media of all sorts would run stories about "what they haven't told you" or "books hidden from the general public" which people would latch onto and then ask me about as a parish minister. I get it, this was clickbait before we had clicks, and now it's all over the internet.

My usual response then, when we had three channels on broadcast TV, or now with the torrent of online misinformation, is "if these books are so hidden, why does some schlub in Ohio have paperback copies of most of them on his shelves?" And I'd pull a volume off, hand it over, and say "read it, and tell me if that deserves to be in the Bible along with Job and Luke's Gospel." For those who actually took the book and read a bit, the answer was always "that's a hot mess." Exactly.

For readers who are already believers, I can hear an objection to the tack I'm taking here. "Hey, Jeff, the Bible is the word of God, revealed to us for our salvation: say that!" Gotcha. But this column is, I like to keep mentioning, aimed not just at those already in a church: it's intended to speak to those who have some interest in faith, but may not find themselves drawn to organized religion. They don't start with even an acceptance that there is someone called "God" just to start with.

Inspiration is part of the final mix, I guarantee you. What I'd like to do for a few weeks leading to Easter, though, is invite even those not church affiliated to take a look at the 66 books collected over millennia, and edited by both saints and sinners, to give us a library of spiritual reflection, and yes, inspiration, called The Bible.

So keep reading, and let me know how the Spirit moves you…


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a few things to say about the Bible as it is. Tell him what you're curious about at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky. 

Faith Works 3-14-2025

Faith Works 3-14-2025
Jeff Gill

Forgetting is the least of the problems
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Looking ahead to this week, I had thought I’d be writing about the fifth anniversary of the onset of COVID as a social factor in the United States, and the lasting impacts on church and community life.

That will keep. There’s plenty to say and time to say it later.

What changed my course was a surge of chatter around the recent deaths of Betsy Arakawa and her husband, Gene Hackman, in Santa Fe. Admittedly, the scene in their hilltop mansion was unusual, so there was an autopsy. Many of us thought signs led to carbon monoxide poisoning with a faulty heater, but we were wrong.

The tragic details of the inquest showed the 65 year old wife died first of a respiratory infection, and the 95 year old actor died perhaps a week or more later. Friends said Gene Hackman’s condition, which the autopsy confirmed to have been worsened by Alzheimer’s disease, had gotten visibly worse in just the last few months.

Anyone saying "the story around the Hackman deaths doesn't add up" is telling me they've not dealt directly at length with family members having cognitive decline or Alzheimers. It’s not just about forgetting things. It’s about a global change in perception that has to be lived with to understand.

If I had died at any point in my father-in-law's last two years, certainly if I was upstairs, in the basement, or out of the house, and I didn’t have a wife living elsewhere to check on ME, he would have puttered along with minimal consumption of beverages for another week or two or even three. His demise in that scenario would have been attributed to a mix of dementia, heart disease, and lack of nutrition. Just like Gene Hackman’s death.

When my father died five years ago, let's just say my mother's behavior in the immediate aftermath of finding his body were our first indication that there was something cognitively awry with her. It all made no sense until you realized her executive functions & short-term memory were fried.

The tragedy in New Mexico is that for all their wealth & material security & social status, there wasn't anyone else in the mix enough to notice what had happened until the groundskeeper came by on their maintenance schedule.

Having said that, I have nothing but sympathy for Hackman’s adult children. There but for the grace of God, etc. My wife and I knew her father had challenges beyond the physical as he approached 90, but the resistance, and yes, the skillful evasions even in the teeth of obvious cognitive headwinds: it was hard. He just wanted to be left alone.

And my father: he had all sorts of plans and contingencies… based on dying in Indiana, where they were by his demise spending 5 months out of 12. So of course what happens? He died in Texas. Which he didn’t plan on. I’m sure the 30 year younger wife in Santa Fe thought “Gene will die first, and then…” Except life is funny & ghastly that way. And I know of half a dozen stories like that without even working at it.

We plan, when we do, for the most likely outcomes (and too often not even those). Contingency planning for implausible, but all possible outcomes? We put them in the lockbox of “never gonna happen.” Which turns out to be a container akin to a wet paper bag. Reality rips right through it.

Every time I go to a big box store or grocery shopping, I see people who make me wonder "is anyone checking in on them more than once a month or so?" And I fear I know the answer.

 
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows this is a bleak ending, but sometimes that's where we have to go. Tell him what the solution is at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 3-13-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 3-13-2025
Jeff Gill

When philosophy is self-evident only if you think about it
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This spring I've had the pleasure of being involved with a series of programs, and an exhibit still up for you to see, at the Denison Museum. One of the co-sponsors of this is the America 250-Ohio Commission, preparing for the 2026 celebration of our nation's founding, in the passage of the Declaration of Independence.

Todd Kleismit and his merry minions have been hard a work for a while, and rightfully so, getting us to think about what got started in 1776. It all warrants some deeper reflection, this year let alone next.

It all went into motion June 7, 1776, when Richard Henry Lee introduced before the Continental Congress a resolution "that these united colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states." They appointed a Committee of Five to write an announcement explaining the reasons for declaring independence; John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and the primary drafter, Thomas Jefferson.

The delegates in Philadelphia had an idea of what they wanted to do, but they needed a clear set of arguments for why they could, in world where monarchs and moguls held tight to the reins of power.

Jefferson's intent in his initial draft was to establish the right of the United States of America to take a place "among the powers of the earth" as a free and independent nation. The Declaration immediately points to "the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them," setting up a case in which it could be said "Nature's God" had established a basis of truth beneath their rationale for independence from Great Britain.

To that end, they affirm: "We hold these truths to be self-evident." Before we get to those truths, let's look at how they are known: by being
"self-evident." Jefferson appeals to the potential reader of this declaration, and how any reasonable person might agree that it's beyond obvious "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Here's what's interesting. How self-evident is it that all of us are created equal? You could make a case from experience that it's evident some of us start with advantages, and it's been argued that this is the state of nature. But if a reader is tempted to go there, Jefferson has set you up to be tripped by a return to "Nature's God," pointing out that each soul is "endowed by their creator with certain… rights."

In 1776, it was an open question, just as it is to many today: does every human person, even all life, have an essence which is attached to or intrinsic within or endowed with an equal right to just treatment? In 1776, the vote was to affirm this somewhat radical concept, and it turns out the world was ready to affirm it in many locations around the globe (even if it's still up for debate in many quarters).

Those equally endowed rights, under law and in the light of heaven? They would be life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There is no natural cannon fodder or appropriate victim class. Life is a right. So is liberty, and Jefferson's own vexed and mixed record on slavery is complicated by how he tried to put a criticism of slavery in his declaration, but they were all removed by the time of final passage. A failure of nerve, a lack of consistency, which we also remember, and continue to wrestle with.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been thinking about the 250th anniversary of 1776 for a while now, and you'll hear more about it. Tell him what you think an unalienable right is at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 3-7-2025

Faith Works 3-7-2025
Jeff Gill

You can't go home again, at least the same way
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For everyone involved with this past winter's Emergency Warming Center effort, the level of commitment from volunteers has been inspiring.

Over a hundred people gave at least one shift, some multiple shifts within any one activation, from setting up to closing down and all the midnight hours in between.

There are two kinds of conversations I've had with volunteers that stick with me as the daffodils bloom and warmth increases both day and night. One sort is with people who came to our training last fall (we'll do that again in another eight months or so), or who wanted to participate after the winter season of warming center nights began.

That first kind of conversation is with someone who wants to help but isn't sure how well they can handle the situation. It may be a practical question of their ability to stay up at unusual hours like midnight to 5:00 am or so, or it can be concerns over preparedness for talking to people who are the guests of this operation. In general, I have no trouble being very encouraging, and explain that between coffee and more experienced volunteers, little comes up that anyone couldn't cope with. If you've been a band trip chaperone, it almost seems familiar (shout out to band parents everywhere!).

The tougher one is with people who've done a shift with the warming center, and have encountered what I think may be the hardest part of volunteering with an effort like this.

Going home, yourself.

Many people who have done a first experience with the warming center as a volunteer say they knew homelessness was a problem, was real, and happens to people very much like you or me. But then you help serve meals to people who are dealing with homelessness, assign cots and pass out blankets, pour coffee and hot chocolate for appreciative guests . . . and when your shift ends, go home. But it gets hard, sometimes on the drive home, occasionally once you're back to your own secure, warm, often quiet house in the middle of the night. And it hits you, hard.

I don't have a simple answer to how you handle the strange feelings that wash over you in that moment. Some people, I know, have done a single shift, and didn't come back not because the work of volunteering was so challenging, but the trip home felt almost impossible.

In fact, your own home looks and feels different when you return to it after working closely with a basement full of people whom you know don't have a place to go when our activation is over. The next night it is "only" 22 degrees out, and we stand down. Those who are living unsheltered, even when there's a clear path ahead in a week or two or three to a place they can rent or borrow or be assigned to, they have in the interim no place to go but their car, or some stairwell, or (insert options I'm aware of but don't want to describe lest others move to close off: this has happened before).

For myself, it's often a time of prayer and reflection that late night or early morning after I've done my shift, and I'm back in my own home. I don't want to say I feel less secure, but the contingency of any one person's situation is much more real to me. I see the jagged edges of the cliff now that were fogged and invisible to me before. It's better to know where they are, right? In the fog you can't see the abyss, but it's there. Now that I see some of those hazards, it's also hard not to think about how you could help others avoid a fall.

But home does not look the same. Which is fine, if it leads to thankfulness. That's a good place to be, wherever you find yourself.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows there's no place like home. Tell him how you found your way to yours at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 2-28-2025

Faith Works 2-28-2025
Jeff Gill

A different sort of cosmic experience
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There's an old riddle about the closest star to Earth.

It's not Sirius, or Alpha Centauri (or Proxima Centauri, either). Our Sun is the closest star, of course. So near it doesn't quite seem like the right answer.

Our star next door lights our days, and indirectly lights our nights by reflection off the Moon (hold that thought). We grow accustomed to the days growing longer in the spring, lengthening which from Old English comes "lencta" the basis for the church year term of Lent.

Next week, Lent begins with Ash Wednesday on March 5, and carries us on into Holy Week after April 13 and Palm Sunday, up to Easter on April 20.

Easter in the western tradition comes on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. This year, the astronomical date for day and night to be equal comes on March 20; Easter shifts later since the full moon comes March 14, so the canonical date has to wait for the next one, April 13, pushing Easter morning to the next Sunday, the 20th.

My old friend the Venerable Bede (he's like Beyonce, just Bede, really) in the early Eighth Century wrote a book with the marvelous title "The Reckoning of Time." He was, among many other things, a master of a discipline called "computus," which autocorrect really dislikes, since autocorrect isn't into archaic Latin. Computus is the field of study around how we came up with such an odd way of designating Easter, versus Christmas which just sits fat and happy atop December 25th.

Bede in northern England was aware of how complicated mapping the lunar cycle was onto the essentially solar calendar of the year. In 725 A.D. he tracked the moon's peculiar movements as it rose back and forth along the eastern horizon, in a faster cycle from north to south than the Sun's annual track, but with a longer sequence from maximum to minimum northern rise points requiring him to compute a more complex cycle across many years . . . 18.6 of them, to be precise.

I find this British cleric's writing of interest here in today's Licking County because, of course, we have the Newark Earthworks, and the majestic scale and scope of the Octagon which was already tracking these movements centuries before even the Venerable Bede was born. The Native American builders of these earthen enclosures and alignments did not leave us a written account of what they were intending, but the precision and extent of the walls which mark the lunar cycle so closely strongly suggest to us there was some form of record keeping we do not yet have, perhaps on a perishable form (but we continue to hope for discoveries yet to come).

There was a form of computus at work here, tracking the puzzling yet knowable rhythms of the Sun and Moon and seasons, for purposes we do not yet fully understand. To that end, I've been spending more time in the last few years watching daytime moonrises.

Daytime moonrises? Yep. Like the Sun being our closest star, we can miss the obvious, that the Moon rises all around the clock over a month. Late evening full moon moonrises are impressive, but some of the key earthwork moonrises come just around noon, the Sun already high in the sky. A silvery Moon swims out of the blue sky slowly, a revelation no less than the bright orange spark of moonrise at nighttime.

On Friday, March 7, at 11:00 am, I'm part of a tour at the Octagon Earthworks at the end of 33rd St. off West Main in Newark. We will walk into the vast enclosures, and around 12:15 pm or so see the Moon by day, while thinking about the meanings of celestial movements, spiritual events, Native American accomplishments. I'll be thinking about good old Bede, and how he might help us understand the reckoning of time right here.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes the schedule for noontime moonrises more than midnights. Tell him how the skies make you wonder at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 2-27-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 2-27-2025
Jeff Gill

A few recurring thoughts about education
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Regarding education, public and otherwise, there is a small set of observations I have made in this space before, even more than once, but in hunting through back numbers it appears I haven't made these points here for more years than I'd have thought.

Seeing and hearing some of the comments online and in television punditry around this subject leads me to want to put three baseline realities out in front of y'all.

Point one: how much time does the average child spend in school, from birth to age 18? I'll save you some math and make my point in a single digit. 9 percent. Children spend 9% of their childhood in school.

Yes, I know, folks will say "wait, you're cheating here." Right, I'm counting it all. Before starting school, sleeping, vacations. Can you see why? If a child comes to school utterly unprepared in kindergarten or first grade, or if a high schooler comes to the morning bell without rest, if any kid is walking in the schoolhouse door hungry and fearful . . . see my point?

Teachers have access to less than ten percent of their students' lives. If the other 90+% is chaos, then you will have challenges in making good use of your 9%.

Point two: Ohio's current graduation rate is 84%; Granville's is 98.7%. What people don't understand is that grad rates have steadily climbed since the 1950s. Yes, increased. But many are certain our grad rates are in free fall. They are incorrect.

My grandfather was a school district superintendent. He retired in 1969, honored for successfully graduating . . . 50% of all the students who began first grade with his district for his last decade.

My mother had the blessing and misfortune to have him as her algebra teacher, her high school principal, and knew of his challenges in a rural Illinois setting, but she reacted strongly ten years ago hearing me make this point. "Oh no, all my classmates graduated."

Well, he kept yearbooks most of his years as principal and superintendent, and we went to them. In the early 1950s, there were about 75 kids per grade level in elementary; after eighth grade (which held a graduation ceremony; my grandmother sent me a card and gift when I finished eighth grade in the mid-1970s and I was at the time, baffled) the class head count went to about 45, and the graduating classes ran 22 to 25 in all her years of high school.

Mom was still certain the graduation rate in her days was closer to 100% than 50%. The yearbooks show it was more like 30%; her father deserved credit for bringing that up to 50% once he was in charge.

Point three: we haven't always educated everyone. This is related to the second point. In fact, Licking County (thanks to Eleanor Weiant) has a proud, long tradition of educating all children, even those with disabilities. That only became the law nationwide in the 1970s, and in many places wasn't fully deployed until the 1980s. I'm not even getting into legal discrimination by race nationwide.

The reality is since the mid-1980s we are educating many, many kids our schools didn't even formerly try to teach, or have in their buildings. Some of those situations incur costs which would stun you, but are now legal mandates (for the entity which only has them 9% of their lives).

Please consider these three points as we debate how education should operate in the challenging years ahead.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he was also the attendance officer for Granville Schools for sixteen years (long story). Tell him how you remember education at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 2-21-2025

Faith Works 2-21-2025
Jeff Gill

Looking for the presence of God
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One more time, we can hope one last time, our local "emergency warming center" operation swung into action this past week.

We will, by dawn Friday morning, have been in operation 18 nights this winter, which is two or three nights more than any winter since Jan. 2019 when this community volunteer-based operation got going. 18 times four shifts is 72 shifts (not counting the post-activation "shift" of laundering 50 or 60 heavy wool blankets & folding and returning them to our location, so technically 77 shifts this winter).

In general we need four volunteers per shift, not counting the food delivery & transport assistance from the hospital & county transit board, so volunteer-wise we've needed 288 "volunteer shifts" in total, 298 counting five laundry run duos. Obviously some people work multiple shifts, but it comes to at least 150 people "showing up" at some point over the winter. Bless them all.

It has been a rough winter, to be sure. Practically speaking, and spiritually. But in the Old & New Testaments I'm most familiar with, there are some guideposts as to where we should look for God's presence. For starters:

Deuteronomy 15:7-8 (Moses here): "If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be."

I Samuel 2:8 (Hannah speaking): "He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world."

Psalm 9:18: "For the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever."

Proverbs 14:31: "Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker, but those who are kind to the needy honor him."

Proverbs 16:19: "It is better to be of a lowly spirit among the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud."

Proverbs 19:17: "Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord and will be repaid in full."

Luke 4:18 (Jesus citing Isaiah 61 in Nazareth): "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor…"

Luke 6:20-21 (Jesus preaching again): "Then he looked up at his disciples and said: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh."

II Corinthians 8:9 (Paul here): "For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich."

Galatians 2:10 (at the Jerusalem conference with Peter, James, & John, where Paul & Barnabas were being instructed): "They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do."

James 1:27: "Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

Remember the poor, look for God's blessings at work in the midst of those who are without, and always be mindful of Matthew 19:30 (not the only place he says this), where Jesus notes "But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."

Sit with those who are distressed and cast aside, and you will encounter God. There are few clearer promises in Scripture.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; tell him where you meet the Living God at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads & Bluesky.

Faith Works 2-14-2025

Faith Works 2-14-2025

Jeff Gill

Is faith a romance?

___


Valentine's Day falls on the publication date of this column, and it's a hard conjunction to ignore, so of course I will not.

As a faith and religion columnist, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it began as Saint Valentine's Day, a saint's feast day transmogrified by time and the seasons into an occasion for selling cards and candy and dinner reservations and other (ahem) romantic accoutrements.

Good St. Valentine was associated with Rome, but the bad old Roman empire Rome of martyrs and evil emperors. Tradition tells us he was a bishop, committed to evangelism and executed on this date for refusing to renounce his faith in Jesus as Lord. This all happened in the third century, with later tradition adding in miracles associated with courting couples and other reasons to see the poor man tied to red velvet hearts and cable network films where the lucky duo kiss finally in the last minute before the credits.

Give credit to St. Valentine, whose love for God led him to the ultimate sacrifice, before you move on to choosing between milk and dark chocolate. Where I did find myself stuck, though, was in that word "romance." Does it relate to St. Valentine's death in Rome?

I took enough Latin in school to know about the Romance languages, which are the various tongues descended from Latin, and I must suppose, out of Rome. Spanish and Italian, French and Portuguese, Catalan (around Barcelona) and Romanian the lesser known two along with a few smaller dialects around southern Europe. These are in contrast to northern Europe's Germanic languages, obviously related to German, and also Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Icelandic, as well as English.

English has a huge amount of Romance content, though, thanks to William the Conquerer (1066 and all that); enough that if you had a paragraph of Spanish or French in front of you, versus a few lines in Dutch or Swedish, you'd have more luck puzzling out a few words from the Romantic than the Germanic.

None of which explains the core of romance, the romantic atmosphere, around love but with a word referring to a city in Italy. Granted, there's a "La Dolce Vita" vibe of supposed romance around Rome, but in our culture that's stronger for Paris. What does romance point back to Rome?

The closest thing to a trail I could find is the idea of romance as a genre, like a novel but further back, more poetic, and "in the Roman style." There's something about love, even platonic love (let's not get started on Plato), and two star-crossed lovers, that seems to trace back to a Roman ideal of some sort about hearts coming together.

For Western Christianity, there's a trail leading back to Rome that's not simply a Catholic narrative. It comes from Jerusalem with Paul and Simon Peter, whose stories ultimately come to rest in Rome, from which the Christian message expands. There's an Eastern Orthodox story which wends through Constantinople, now Istanbul, but in the West, Catholic or Protestant, our stories of faith tend to come down through Rome.

In the Roman style, where tales of devotion and sacrifice arrive at a consummation whether happy or (at least for a moment) sad, there's a kind of story which is rooted in faith, even if it has a more emotionally romantic expression today in those seasonal cable movies (you know which channel I mean). A belief in something better, something greater, something love and endurance can achieve.

So may we nod at least to St. Valentine, and the church he witnessed for in love as a leader, even as we put his name to more mundane romance on his festal day. May love abound!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not always good at remembering Valentines since he stopped decorating shoe boxes in school. Tell him how you mark the day at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 2-7-2025

Faith Works 2-7-2025
Jeff Gill

What is a moment of silence
___


In a variety of settings, asking for "a moment of silence" is a frequent response to a recent tragedy, or an occasion of loss.

These can be quite meaningful, especially in a public forum like a football stadium or hockey arena, or even a press conference briefing room, when the usual background noise and turmoil all pause, and in the stillness, a time for reflection.

Obviously one big reason for the popularity of "a moment of silence" is that it crosses ecumenical and even interfaith boundaries very easily. To say simply "let us pray" infers a level of personal belief not always shared in a room, let alone an auditorium, and the elements of bowed heads or uplifting hands, eyes open or closed, all are variations which can leave some out while including others in.

Just a personal observation: there's a "civil religion" set of norms I see at work in how people generally respond to "let us have a moment of silence." Heads bend, but rarely bow; eyes may or may not close while hands are usually folded or at least kept still.

The challenge for any person in charge of leading "a moment of silence" is . . . how long. What's the proper duration of a moment, when silent? I've heard them where the pause barely was an intake of breath before a concluding "thank you" (the more common ending than "Amen," in keeping with the nonsectarian aim). Seconds long seems too short; you can have a moment of silence go too long as well, or so I'd suggest. Thirty seconds is fairly lengthy, actually, and anyone asking for a minute of silence might well be surprised by how long a minute feels in a room full of people trying to stay still and not make noise by rustling paper or creaking their chair.

You could say it's a bit of an empty gesture, but honestly I think moments of silence can be quite effective, especially if the stage is set — you don't just spring it on people without warning — and the duration is long enough for emphasis. They allow those who believe in prayer to compose themselves, their thoughts, even the words silently shared in prayer to God, however understood. For those who claim no religious orientation, they are an offering of respect without forcing a particular means of showing it.

In a world with so much motion, so much activity, and the dear Lord knows so much meaningless sound and fury signifying nothing, to stop the background music loop, to ask people to stand still just a moment, and to allow the silence to last long enough to become real: that is a form of respect which we can all recognize.

My Catholic friends might say a "Hail Mary" during a moment of silence; the Lord's Prayer isn't short enough to fit into most silent tributes, but the Jesus Prayer is. "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Other faiths have short prayers of their own which fill the space. Some might offer up a silent visualization of the person or people lost, or of the situation in question.

Where I've heard concerns about moments of silence has been when people express their own personal frustration that they can't or don't keep focused on the reason why there's a silence. As a pastor, I like to find ways to work some periods of silence into worship, but I've learned that this isn't always popular (or exciting — see last week's column).

Blaise Pascal some centuries ago said "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." Our ability to stay focused through a moment of silence might be a corollary to that observation.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes going on a silent retreat every year. Tell him you don't believe it at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 2-6-25

Notes from my Knapsack 2-6-25
Jeff Gill

Arcades from Paris to Ohio, a pedestrian tour
___


When the Newark Arcade has a grand re-opening on Feb. 7, it is perhaps ironic that this forerunner of shopping malls is finding new life even as those downtown destroying behemoths are themselves going onto life support.

A covered passage between buildings, opening up a variety of shopping outlets and business offerings to a short stroll, the Newark Arcade was built in 1909, becoming one of the earliest such "shopping arcades" in Ohio. Eugene Barney had built a grand one in Dayton just a few years before; you'll find his family name on a Denison campus building. The Cleveland Arcade was first in the state, and has already had a couple of renovations and repurposing over the years.

Providence, Rhode Island and Watertown, New York caught the arcade fever from Europe, and especially France; while this country's first two were built by 1850, in that year Paris had over a hundred. Usually glass covered to allow plenty of light to street level, you could stroll along in all weathers to see shop windows within the arcade's corridors. The construction of these interior block arcades, taking mercantile activity off of the busy streets, arose along with increasing freedom and mobility for women in the middle classes of French society.

You can easily connect the implied dots between arcades of the late 1800s and early 1900s to pedestrian shopping malls that began to spring up after World War II, with the mothers of the Baby Boom wanting a shopping experience where with their baby carriages they could safely and comfortably go out and shop for their household. Open shopping centers on town edges soon became enclosed shopping malls out in the suburbs, and as the downtowns changed in function and purpose, the arcades often were the first to decline, and often end up demolished.

The arcades of Paris have dwindled down to just a couple dozen, and are more of an upscale retail experience. They have an antique charm all their own; during COVID, I spent some time at home on my computer using a common map and street view program to "walk" most of the remaining 25 arcades in Paris.

My interest in arcades came from our own local landmark, and the work of Walter Benjamin, a cultural critic and philosopher who died in the opening days of World War II, having spent over a decade and a half on his magnum opus "The Arcades Project," which came out in English translation in 1999.

Benjamin is best known for his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" which invites the reader into a meditation on authenticity, between a real original and copies. If you work with museum exhibits and cultural resource interpretation, it's an interesting subject.

"The Arcades Project," which I'm not suggesting everyone run out and read (it's over 1000 pages with footnotes) anticipates both the coming of shopping malls, and their demise, as we seek authenticity in objects, and do not find it. How we shop, what material culture means to us, and what is real: you can find your first steps into this sort of reflection by visiting our own original Arcade in Newark. Maybe even dip into the book if you want to go farther.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's walked through the Arcade many times before and since the renovation. Tell him about how you find meaning in objects at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 1-30-25

Faith Works 1-30-25

Jeff Gill

Mercy as the gentle rain from heaven

___


An online etymology dictionary says of "Mercy (n.): [the origin of the word dates to the ] late 12th century, "God's forgiveness of his creatures' offenses," from Old French mercit, merci (9th C.) "reward, gift; kindness, grace, pity,"… in Vulgar Latin "favor, pity;" … in Church Latin (6th C.) it was given a specific application to the heavenly reward earned by those who show kindness to the helpless and those from whom no requital can be expected."

There's been an ongoing reaction to a preacher asking a president to have "mercy." Yet she did "ask," and there was little if any specific insistence on what that mercy would be. To ask of a sovereign "mercy" is a request that still acknowledges their power, but asks of them a use that might not be the full exercise of what they could do. What they should do is still up to them. Nothing rude or overbearing about that. Just a simple plea from the pulpit: "have mercy."

Where I specifically don't agree with Pres. Trump's reaction is in his initial retort to a reporter asking him about the service. His reply on the West Wing colonnade was "Not very exciting. Did you think it was exciting?" Of course there was more pointed criticism later on social media, calling the Bishop "nasty" (his go-to insult for women in any role, it seems), but he went on to reassert "the service was a boring and uninspiring one." So I'd like to focus on his initial response. "Not very exciting." This is a challenge many clergy face, and when leaders press the "make it exciting" button in such a public setting it's going to trigger a surge of similar criticisms for local ministers, well beyond any policy oriented preaching or political overtones.

Worship is not always exciting. Or as Rick Warren said in his best-selling "The Purpose Driven Life": "It's not about you." There's a question of spiritual formation here around what people have been taught to expect of an occasion for spiritual assembly. If "is it exciting?" becomes the primary measure of a quality service, then exciting worship becomes the expected norm. And I can hear the objections already: why shouldn't it be exciting? Why can't each service be exciting, moving, uplifting & transforming? Isn't that what you preachers & worship leaders are supposed to be crafting & delivering, a compelling service of sermon & song & excitement?

Routine & ritual & regular rhythms of the Christian year, quiet devotion & corporate thanksgiving, all that might be set aside in the pursuit of excitement. Psalmody, unison prayer, even silence might all get tossed onto the ash-heap of history in favor of jarring percussion, driving chords, startling graphics, and yes, fog machines.

When I'm preaching, my walk up song isn't "Crazy Train," it's more likely to be "Surely the Presence" or even the "Gloria Patri." I think good worship even includes sometimes choosing the live musician that isn't so good, versus the recorded track that slaps.

I know, many of my clerical friends are concerned about other aspects of the aftermath of that "Service of Prayer for the Nation" [link to outline below if you want it ~ ed.]. But I'm haunted in parallel with that reflexive "Not very exciting." It's a tendency that doesn't need encouragement. Quite the opposite. 

Let William Shakespeare have the last word, from Portia's speech in "The Merchant of Venice":

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The thronèd monarch better than his crown.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's preached a few unexciting sermons in his time. Tell him where you think mercy could be a gentle rain at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

=====

https://cathedral.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Service-of-Prayer-for-the-Nation-2025-Online.pdf 

Letter to the Editor 1.26.2025

Newark Advocate 1.26.2025
Jeff Gill

Letter to the Editor

There's a scene in "A Christmas Carol" from 1843 in London, that seems familiar to Charles Dickens in his telling.

Two visitors come to Scrooge & Marley's accounting offices. They are seeking contributions to assist the poor, and old Ebenezer famously asks if "the Union workhouses" (a form of public assistance in that time and place) or other forms of welfare were still available. When assured that they were, he ironically replies "Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course."

When asked to offer further help, Scrooge says "they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."

You know the response: "Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

And then: ""If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.""

If you don't know the book, though, you may not be aware the conversation continues in Dickens's telling. Scrooge continues, saying "Besides — excuse me — I don't know that."

"But you might know it," says the visitor, but Scrooge replies "It's not my business." He continues to press his rejection of being informed of the needs around him by saying "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's."

This is all foreshadowing of what is to come, after Scrooge's deceased partner Jacob Marley comes to tell another side of the story. The first ghost of Christmas would retort to Scrooge's indifference:

"Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business."

We've just concluded in Licking County a six night opening of an Emergency Warming Center, the longest run of nights in a row we've seen since this effort began in January of 2019. An all volunteer effort of churches and community agencies working together to keep people from freezing who can't access, or for whatever reasons don't go to our emergency shelters, which are full in any case this winter, like so many in the past few years.

I keep hearing two things that frustrate me. One is that these are all people who are coming here from "somewhere else." It's ironic that friends and colleagues in Zanesville, Mount Vernon, Albuquerque, New Mexico and Valparaiso, Indiana all tell me they hear the same community concern: "the homeless are from somewhere else." Yet in conversation, my experience is that our guests are mostly from right here in Licking County. Not all, but most.

The other challenge is "if you people didn't offer these services, there wouldn't be people who are homeless on our streets." You can see how the complaints fit together, and fall apart if either is false. Both are incorrect.

What I'm sure of is this: more people would die if we didn't open on frigid, bitter nights. And I believe there is no such thing as surplus population. No, not one.

Faith Works 1-24-25

Faith Works 1-24-25
Jeff Gill

Evidence of absence or absence of evidence
___


In my shuttling back and forth between Ohio and Indiana these last few years, there's a spot alongside I-70 that keeps me wondering.

It's right around the 78 mile marker, if you know the road as well as I do, north of London, Ohio and west of the Little Darby Creek but looking west across the Deer Creek drainage.

There are some twenty oaks and catalpas in a grove, set around plot with a barn towards the back of it, to the east of the road and cluster of tall trees.

Clearly there was a farm house, a pretty substantial one at that, in the middle of those tall trees. It had to still be standing there in Madison County in 1960, maybe even 1970, since the interstate gently bends around that parcel adjoining the right of way. Not much, but enough to suggest the original designers avoided the extra cost of purchasing and demolishing a private home by going just south of it.

Yet the land shows no marks today, other than the outline of the trees and the presence of the outbuilding which would have been well behind the home. It's been gone a while. Perhaps some local historical society or old maps could tell me more, but I haven't gone that far yet. Once I did take an exit, and drove around by way of a small town that would have been a few miles south of the farm house I imagine, up to the gate, and I walked back just for a quick loop around under the trees, which were even taller than I'd imagined in my mile-a-minute passage past them.

Why do I keep idly wondering about this distant, somewhat isolated spot? Other than passing it often enough to keep the curiosity fresh? Matters of loss and absence have obviously been on my mind in recent years; there's also an echo of a book and film which color in some imagined details here, "A Thousand Acres," by Jane Smiley. If you know the work, my mullings may well make more sense to you than for others. It's a story that's not my own, to be sure, but issues of how memory loss and dementia can mark and bend a family are front and center in this modern retelling of "King Lear" set in Iowa or Illinois (the latter where the movie was filmed, on land I know somewhat).

In that story, a spoiler alert, but at the end there is a grand old farmhouse that is ultimately torn down, and the land merged into a corporate mega farm. Only a few old tall trees remain to mark a home for generations of farmers.

So I wonder about the generations who lived there by what would become an interstate highway. Possibly a widow found she no longer wanted to live in a house with traffic day and night a few hundred yards away, and the children had no interest in farming. That's a simple story, but reality has a way of being much more complex. There is a story there, and I don't know it, I just sense the presence of a complex story as I pass that clump of trees.

Homes are torn down, churches close, businesses end their run, and the locations change in function and purpose, each with different marks left behind which few can read clearly. Hebrews 13:8 says "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" with a promise that goodness endures, while evil passes away and is dissolved. It's a promise we need to hear, and hold onto. Bad news seems to leave all the permanent marks, while love and goodness appear to wash away all too quickly.

I John 5 says there is a record in heaven, a truth that endures. May it be so.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's thinking about what endures. Tell him your lasting memories at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Notes from my Knapsack 1-23-25

Notes from my Knapsack 1-23-25
Jeff Gill

You, and only you, can manage your local brush
___


You may have noticed that Smokey Bear has changed his tagline.

In fact, it's been different for years now, but with current news stories it catches the ear differently.

Many of us grew up with Smokey saying "Remember, only you can prevent forest fires." In recent years it has been said in Sam Elliott's rumbling tones, and in 2024 Brian Tyree Henry became the voice of the U.S. Forest Service mascot. But what they have been saying is "Remember, only you can prevent wildfires." Fires burning wild are the problem, not all fires in the forest.

After the Yellowstone fires of 1988, the entire approach of wilderness management began to change. It had been from "The Big Burn" of 1910 when the U.S.F.S. model was "put those fires out," and Pulaski tools and smokejumpers all became part of the standard assumption of what a fire in the woods meant: a problem, to be extinguished.

Then the problem became one of our having done things too well. We put fires out all across the West, quickly and completely, which ended up allowing brush to build up in the understory of mature forests. Brush, aka kindling. Fuel. Fire accelerant.

Add in the simple biological fact that there are a number of trees and plants which actually benefit from the aftermath of fires, and we've come to the realization that controlled burns in some places, and yes, allowing forest fires to burn in others, means less total fire damage and ecosystem harm in general. Putting out every forest fire isn't the ideal outcome, hence "Remember, only you can prevent wildfires" from our pal Smokey.

Now we see in Southern California some of the challenges in this same thinking in urban wildernesses and undeveloped lands. Brush cleared aggressively can look "unnatural" and jagged ended to a certain perspective, but it's either clearing brush now, or feeding fires later in the dry season.

Before you think this is a western problem alone, I'll note that we have the advantage of not seeing an annual "Dry Season" in Ohio, but brush and undergrowth and fuel loads can create challenges here, too, especially when there's a drought running. Granville Township Fire Department has a Tanker 201 and a Grass 201 vehicle, and they're not just for show. Brush fires may be more common in grasslands during our summers, but if it's dry enough and the wind is blowing, they can spread. We have our own Fire Weather Watches or Red Flag Warnings.

It's worth noting that directly across from Ross IGA, on the other side of Main St., was Beaver Field, the local baseball diamond. Yes, the woodlot south of the old Denison power plant. Frederick P. Beaver, a trustee of the college, would later donate a dorm built in his wife's honor in 1925, but first he built a ball field. Now? You'd never guess. But that was an open field seventy years ago. That's how fast second growth and scrub can shoot up.

We don't have California's problems in Our Fayre Village, but it's worth learning from them before we have our own.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been on a few fire lines swinging a Pulaski. Tell him how you keep your brush clear at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 1-17-25

Faith Works 1-17-25
Jeff Gill

Limits of understanding and extensions of faith
___


One of the most rewarding things about caring for elderly parents is to have opportunities to learn about the past, even when the present is rather complicated.

The time it takes to do caregiving, and the pace of a life with limitations, means you might get into conversations which wouldn't come up in the usual round of coming and going and doing.

There are stories you will hear many, many times (oh so many times, never brushed aside by "yes, you've told me that"), and you generally won't get to hear the ones you go fishing for. If there's a gap in the family narrative you'd like to fill in, I can almost guarantee you in advance you'll not get what you're looking for.

But if you have the patience, and are willing to go unexpected places, you can find yourself in unexplored territory, and realize you always wanted to hear more about something you'd never even wondered about.

My father-in-law had his cycle of Army stories in Germany during the Korean War years, but when an opening appeared about his youth in Indianapolis during World War II, I did my best to paddle with the current, and found out a great deal about operating a Kroger grocery, albeit one with three employees plus a teenager, operating out of a city corner building. A superstore it wasn't.

My mother recently told a story about events in 1960, not long before my birth, which I'd never heard before. My paternal grandfather died, and my father immediately drove home across Iowa in their one car while Mom was teaching third grade; my mother told her father, who unexpectedly (to her) drove across Illinois, as a school superintendent schmoozed her boss, the elementary school principal, into covering her classes so he could drive her on to the funeral, which he stayed for, then drove home across most of Iowa and Illinois leaving Mom to return home with Dad.

It's a lovely story, one in keeping of what little I remember of him (he died when I was nine, over fifty years ago), and it fits what facts I knew around those events. All of which is key, because in general, Mom's stories these days can't be trusted. She tells us her father is coming to visit (which sounds portentous, but she's been saying that for many months now, so it doesn't have the same ominous impact it originally did); she tells hairdressers she's still teaching and driving, neither of which have been the case for years. Events in one place like her hometown get mashed up with events in where she raised her family in another state, and are tangled with the here and now.

We just moved Mom to a memory care unit, where her greatest concern is that her car is going to be towed. Where she thinks she is right now is not clear. All of which makes taking literally any new story she tells a risky proposition. I've dealt with situations as a parish minister where an elderly parent with increasing dementia starts to tell stories which leave their adult children more than a little worried that the tale might actually be true, but how would they know?

I have been thinking about all of this as I watch the news and social media boil over with competing theories about California wildfire origins and obstacles, which echo some of the battling narratives around vaccines and public health we've been dealing with since COVID. I'm not saying our society has dementia . . . not exactly. But the challenges for sorting out truth from fiction from falsehood: they're not dissimilar at all.

Faith, authority, understanding, and choices . . . choices we have to make about what to believe, and who.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's often confused, but always curious. Tell him how you discern the truth at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 1-10-25

Faith Works 1-10-25
Jeff Gill

Two decades in newsprint, actual and virtual
___


This is an anniversary of sorts. Jan. 8, 2005 was my first "Faith Works" column for the Newark Advocate. You're reading what's just past the 1040th entry I've had the privilege of adding to these pages.

My first column here was written in the aftermath of the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, devastating coastal areas of Sri Lanka, Indian, Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia along with other countries from Africa to the south Pacific. Over a quarter of a million people were killed that day, and millions of survivors displaced along those distant shores, yet already in less than two weeks a number of church organization and faith-based agencies had started offering direct assistance in the areas affected, and I listed a few of them who had ties to local faith communities.

Those are the sorts of stories I've tended to hunt up and tell here in this column: how "faith works," the ways in which our beliefs held individually and in common have had practical import in our community, and farther afield. Just as our area is known for the expansive earthworks built by Native Americans two thousand years ago, our local works of faith have built some interesting connections worth talking about.

Truth be told, my personal intentions twenty-some years ago were to write a book or two in my spare time. There were and are a few things I wanted to say to a wider audience than a sermon on a Sunday, of which I've preached quite a few, but writing for publication is slightly different thing. I still have some chapters and rough outlines in mind on the subjects I have interests in, and that dream is not entirely behind me.

Still, I've spent my time preaching, and writing columns, and have never gotten a book written, which feels like the thing I really ought to get done. But a friend in publishing some years back pointed out some things he thought I should keep in mind.

First, how many books come out each year, let alone are there in total? Major publishers put out 10,000 new titles annually; niche or academic titles included bring the number of new published books per year up to a few hundred thousand, and with self-published volumes added in you can find annual totals around 2.2 million new books (an exhausting number to contemplate, cf. Ecclesiastes 12:12). The folks with the ISBN system (International Standard Book Number) said at the end of 2023 there were roughly 158,464,880 unique books in the world, so add another 2.2 million to that.

But of those new books, their sales come to an average of 1,000 copies a year apiece (Publisher's Weekly said 500, and they oughta know); only 10 books sold more than a million copies last year (nine that aren't called "The Bible"), and fewer than 500 sold more than 100,000.

The average traditionally published book will sell about 3,000 copies over its entire print lifetime, and who knows how many of those go to the remainder bin, unread and unloved? Today there are ebooks, but what data we have suggest half of those buying them never complete them, which may have been true with print books, to be perfectly honest.

Here's the thing: looking at novels and non-fiction works in general, the average length of them is 75,000 words. I've submitted and seen into print about 730,000 words in twenty years of "Faith Works," which adds up to almost ten books.

That's not all: I have been writing another column since this same week in 2002, starting in the old "Community Booster" which was merged into the "Granville Sentinel" weekly, a shorter piece running about every other week. Those columns add up to date to about 330,000 words, or another four books.

So I can say I haven't gotten around to writing a book yet, or I could say I've written fourteen, and the readership of what I've published is possibly three times the average book audience. Thank you for reading this far, and I plan to keep on adding chapters here for some time to come.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's just a writin' fool. Tell him what you think he should be writing about at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Blue Sky.

Notes from my Knapsack 1-9-25

Notes from my Knapsack 1-9-25
Jeff Gill

Jimmy & Rosalynn were a matched pair
___

As the nation says farewell to Jimmy Carter, and we in faith celebrate his reunion with his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, this story sticks with me.

I never had the pleasure or privilege of speaking to our former president, but his spouse… about twenty years ago, Rosalynn Carter came to Denison University, and I had the chance to help with setting up a reception for her and the program she was coming to promote, so I was early to the campus building where it was happening, moving tables and setting up chairs and such in what was then Cleveland Hall (now the Bryant Art Center).

She and her two Secret Service men also showed up early, and the faculty in charge of the event talked to her, and I faded back into the rear of the room, which opened onto a balcony. The people coming to the reception started flowing up the interior stairs, and suddenly the profs pivoted to something else, and Mrs. Carter retreated back towards where I was waiting. To be perfectly honest, I had made a point of putting a Habitat lapel pin on the jacket I was wearing. It worked.

She turned, saw my pin, walked right over and introduced herself (ha!); I explained my involvement with Habitat and more with a transitional housing program. Her immediate question was about how we dealt with mental health issues. She knew her stuff, and I told her what our problems were in navigating that interface, with Medicaid billing a big complication.

The crowd grew, but between the refreshments and the punch, they all talked to each other while lining up for nosh, and Mrs. Carter and I stepped back onto the balcony. One Secret Service agent had stayed near the interior stairs and entrance; the one with her handed us both cups of punch he'd grabbed, smiled at us and said "I'll stand here in the doorway so you two can talk."

We chatted about Habitat and how builds went and what "Jimmy" liked to do (framing), whom she referred to often, but not cloyingly so. Clearly a partnership, and a loving relationship, which everyone knows, but it was sweet to hear by inference. She said they both worried that when they showed up they were more distraction than help, but they tried to make up for it with working the best they could "and not just for the cameras!" She was smiling when she said that, but you could hear a tinge of irritation -- and you'd never get her to say who she might have been talking about.

Rosalynn Carter had opinions about how Medicaid and mental health was working, and certainly in 2005 was talking in terms of a federal single payer health care program as the only logical, practical solution she could see; she was curious about how we handled incoming persons who didn't have Medicaid and were reluctant to sign up for it. I'll admit the challenge as the crowd grew and the hubbub increased around us was that she was very soft voiced, and approximately half my height (or so it seemed), so I increasingly hunched over to bring my ears a little closer.

To my everlasting frustration, we had just started talking about how she wished churches had taken more of an interest in mental health treatment & recovery, when the event leader came up to our doorway, and said to the Secret Service agent "We need Mrs. Carter to help us get started." She asked if I was coming to the big evening event, and I said yes, and she said "Maybe we'll get to talk more then; you take care."

I did see her in Swasey Chapel that night. She waved at me across the crowd at one point as people were settling in; afterwards, there was an event with students planned, and I went home because I had an early morning meeting the next day, so we did not talk again. But I remember that wave, and her smile. Godspeed, ma'am. Tell Jimmy I said hi.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; I suspect there are other Jimmy Carter stories out there! Feel free to share them with him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Blue Sky.