Sunday, March 17, 2024

Faith Works 3-22-24

Faith Works 3-22-24
Jeff Gill

Eating in haste, but with memory
___

In one of the Lenten readings I heard this reminder, from the establishment of the Passover meal at Exodus 12:11 —

"In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD's Passover."

It occurred to me that in today's world, we eat quite a few Passovers, almost every day. But of course, not really.

We do eat in haste, too often. We eat with our belts fastened and running shoes on, the car idling outside in the drive. Translate all that as you will. We eat ready to go, if not on the road. We eat in haste.

In the ancient world, so much was different, but we can draw some connections, infer some lessons. Often, eating was more like twice a day. You'd break your overnight fast of a morning, get to work, pause for water, perhaps a snack or bite to eat at noon, but then dine later.

As some scholars have it, it wasn't three squares a day as we have an expectation of, but more like many small meals, only one main meal. Breakfast, the immortal second breakfast, midday collations and tea time late in the afternoon all define an English model, of a time gone by, with various pauses for nourishment before a true supper. In the days of Jesus, we're less sure, but the idea of one major time for eating the most substantial meal seems most common.

So if you aren't pulling some pieces of pita bread out of your pouch, walking from one vineyard to another, or between hauls on the net in the Sea of Galilee, if we're not talking about those more solitary and hurried repasts, we're looking at something more formal, more measured.

To be part of a real supper time, you removed your sandals, with a servant or even your host's family washing your feet. Your leather belt, from which various pouches or tools might hang, is removed. Staffs are left by the door. You're going to be here for a while, and once the stew or pottage or baked dish was in the coals, everyone would stay put, tell stories, sing songs, relax.

One argument about the so-called Mediterranean diet is that the healthful effects claimed for it are less to do with the vegetables and vitamins and nutrition in it, as is the cultural context of sitting down at a table, pouring wine you savor slowly, and enjoying company as much as the food. (Think "Mamma Mi" on a Greek island, right?)

Jesus and the disciples for their Passover would be looking forward to the main meal of the day, the main source of strength on the table, but also to the fellowship surrounding them.

They knew, as we read now in Exodus, that their heritage was the "bread of haste" and a lamb to be slain and expeditiously consumed, but then and now in today's Passover gatherings, the hurried context is a memory, while the remembering takes some time.

When we eat in haste today, often in the car, let alone with the car keys or staff in our hand, we are in a blur of forgetting. We forget where our food comes from, what a blessing it is, and too often we eat it alone.

Passover, and Maundy Thursday, and all the remembrance of the upper room which haunts our culture even at its most secular, where bread and cup represent life, and bodies, and blood: they all should remind us to take a moment, say grace, and be thankful.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's eaten too often out of drive-up windows himself. Tell him how you slow down to remember at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Notes from my Knapsack 3-21-24

Notes from my Knapsack 3-21-24
Jeff Gill

Who will watch the guardians?
___


There's an old Latin tag that traces back to Juvenal: "quis custodiet ipsos custodes."

You can translate it "who will guard the guardians" or in more contemporary terms, who will watch the watchers? "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" however you put it today is an enduring question.

With the Oscars behind us, I've had some thoughts about the vast and somewhat unwieldy film "Oppenheimer." It tells a story from our history, which a passing few can still remember, and there's new information revealed out of the archives, but the personalities at the center of the creation of the atomic bomb are certainly compelling and that's what the cinematic version of J. Robert Oppenheimer's life was trying to capture.

There was attention to the ethical issues around whether we should have developed nuclear physics to create the weapons we did, and when humanity should use them. "Never" is one answer, but it's been negated by the fact that it has been done, twice directly on human targets, more often if you count the human cost of nuclear testing which killed downwinders, movie actors (ironically, John Wayne may have been one of them, caught in swirling irradiated dust filming a movie and dying later of lung cancer), and even some of the technicians at work in places like Los Alamos and Oak Ridge.

Alfred Nobel was so struck by the destructive power of dynamite he'd helped bring into the world he created a prize to develop peace. Oppenheimer had his own hopes for what the world would do with the inventions he helped bring into being, and that to me is where the movie recently honored both revealed and obscured at the same time.

Robert Downey, Jr. justly earned a great deal of praise for his portrayal of a governmental official, Lewis Strauss, who had come into conflict with Oppenheimer in the post-war era, and ultimately helped see to it that the views of scientists were not, in fact, the ones that made the final decisions about weapons development, let alone deployment.

There's a further story beyond the simple rise and fall of one brilliant physicist which perhaps another filmmaker will take on. That's the tension, left unresolved at the end of "Oppenheimer," around "who will watch the guardians?" The genius of Los Alamos seems to have thought that scientific elites would have a key voice at the table, if not the deciding presence. Downey offered up a Strauss whose bitter and somewhat ominous presence shadowed the realization that politicians would be making the decisions from then on, about new bombs and future command and control protocols for nuclear weapon deployment.

Yet, perhaps unintentionally, the story in the film makes it clear that there is no such thing as a purely rational scientist, either. They are driven by urges and impulses they're not always entirely aware of, and need some balance brought into their lives and work. Gen. Leslie Groves is almost a moral center, and certainly the calming presence, in the story on screen and perhaps in actuality. So did Nolan mean to imply military control is our best course?

I kind of doubt that. But the question, left unresolved, is one we still have: in science, in weapons, in vaccines, in space. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? We're still working on finding an answer we're comfortable with.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he does not have a final answer on this one, either. Tell him how you'd manage such matters at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Twitter.

Faith Works 3-15-24

Faith Works 3-15-24
Jeff Gill

Trying to remember, and not always succeeding
___


Jersey City is a mystery I will likely never solve.

I've driven through it a few times, as many do and never notice it. If you're going from the Newark (NJ) airport into Manhattan, you'll almost zoom over it on elevated roadways. It's a city of some 300,000, just a bit smaller than Newark which is New Jersey's largest city, both in the shadow of New York City.

My father, who died four years ago this week, graduated from Iowa State in 1956 and got a job in Manhattan. He lived in Jersey City for that year, taking public transit and sometimes walking to his job on the other side of the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty on his right hand heading into work.

He talked about it once in my presence, actually to a group of children I was part of, explaining the meaning of the Statue of Liberty and of freedom to us. I never found out the company he worked for, where their offices were, or what he did.

Ron Gill grew up in a small town in western Iowa, attended a state school, and a day trip to Council Bluffs let alone over to Omaha was a big deal. He got a forestry degree, went west into national forests for his summer training, and had been through Los Angeles where an older sister lived, on his way to Portland, Seattle, then up into the Cascades. What I'm saying is he had seen big cities, but he'd never lived in one.

It may have been too big a leap, from Ames, Iowa to Manhattan and Jersey City. My impression, admittedly vague, is that it didn't go well. It had something to do with importing lumber and building products, and he ran back and forth a bit from the office to the docks, keeping accounts, checking invoices, "struggling to understand" how the business worked he said, but "glad to get back to the Midwest."

After his year in New York, he got a line on a sales job back in Chicago through a college friend, with the Edward Hines Lumber Company, and was happy to return west. He would work in the lumber business in the Chicago area the rest of his career. Not long after getting semi-settled in a YMCA residential hotel in LaGrange, he met another resident on the women's side, went to a football game at Wrigley Field with her (look it up!), met her parents at Thanksgiving and married her the next July. They were together 62 years.

During his last year, when I was back home I asked Dad about Jersey City. He was vague, and dismissive, and in retrospect, I think he was finding it hard to remember what I was talking about. "I wasn't there long."

Yes, but that first year after college is a big deal. He looked at me, puzzled; "I married your mother within a year of getting back to the Midwest." He went on to tell me familiar stories I knew well of that next year. But of the fall of 1956 to the fall of 1957 I was fated never to hear more of from him again.

It's a familiar reminder: talk to your parents, your grandparents if you still have them, older family members in general, while you can. It's good advice. No matter how well you inquire, you'll still have questions when they're gone, but it does feel good to know you did talk, there were new stories, that there were some puzzles made clear when you still could.

My point here is to press the urgency back even further. Don't wait too long. Memory is a funny, tragic, fleeting thing. Ask now. Take notes. Don't wait.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not always sure how far to trust his memory, either. Tell him what you've forgotten at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, March 04, 2024

Faith Works 3-8-24

Faith Works 3-8-24
Jeff Gill

Global relief and local awareness
___


Sunday, March 10, is UMCOR Sunday, which if you don't spend much time around Methodists sounds a little odd.

For Methodists, UMCOR is short for "The United Methodist Committee on Relief," and is their global program for responding to immediate needs in the face of both natural and human-caused disasters.

It began with World War II, and has continued to be the annual offering which is at work all year long, bringing resources and tools and assistance into the middle of sudden unexpected need.

UMCOR is how Methodists roll; my own Disciples of Christ have the "Week of Compassion," and Presbyterians and UCC folk call their "One Great Hour of Sharing" or OGHS which keeps the acronym vibe going. They're all much more than a Sunday or a week or an hour, but are a representative effort for a much larger attempt to minister in Christ's name to people who didn't ask for either the trouble or the help. Like most of these initiatives, Catholic Relief Services grew out of World War II's global needs, and there are many more.

Church-based relief programs are common to all sorts of faith traditions or religious bodies. I've had the pleasure of working shoulder to shoulder with Emergency Relief teams from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and disaster response groups from the Mennonite Central Committee. Many of us have seen or even been blessed by the presence of relief workers from The Salvation Army.

Today there are also many parachurch organizations at work in both national and overseas emergency response; Samaritan's Purse is well known, and their big push is with Operation Christmas Child in the fall towards December. They and World Vision trace their origins to a minister named Bob Pierce who didn't want denominational boundaries to hold up aid, whose best known line may be "Let my heart be broken with the things that break the heart of God."

Obviously the seasons leading up to either Christmas or Easter are times when people in general and Christians in particular are more open to thinking about making a gift to things a little beyond their immediate surroundings. Many church-based campaigns use the disciplines of Lent and our preparations for Easter to make for an opportunity to focus and increase our giving.

This column came to mind because I do realize that like many preachers, I have tended to talk about giving and stewardship in the fall, which is when many congregations are planning the next year, and asking members and friends of the church to make commitments to the work ahead. We always say in those fall offering invitations that giving is something we need to think about all year, but it doesn't hurt to talk about it all year, too.

The hesitation is that some say they leave churches "because they talk about money all the time." I don't know how much is all the time, or how much is too much. I'm always reminded when I hear this that Jesus talked more about money and our stewardship of the possessions and material blessings God has given us than almost any other three subjects put together. If Jesus thinks we should talk about how we use our gifts for others, it's probably not a bad idea for preachers to do it, too.

So whether its an UMCOR Sunday where you are, if you still have a One Great Hour of Sharing or Week of Compassion envelope in your Bible, or there's an opportunity you've been mulling to go and serve on a mission trip where The Salvation Army or Samaritan's Purse is taking their rolling tool shed and shower truck to help you get through the week: it might just be time to give.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; your giving has helped him serve in many ways and places. Tell him where you like to give at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Notes from my Knapsack 4-7-24

Notes from my Knapsack 4-7-24
Jeff Gill

The politics of public health and cognitive decline
___


We're eight months away from the presidential election, and I have something to say.

It's from the heart, and it's not really meant to be political at all, but in a time when everything seems to be politicized, sometimes you just have to "grasp the nettle" and grab an issue as firmly as you can, discomfort aside.

In the discussions around the two leading candidates currently, the word "dementia" is getting tossed around rather casually.

This is where I can easily envision partisans rising up in a cold fury, or even something hotter, to retort angrily to my obtuseness.

One candidate, the older one to be sure, has the tag "dementia" attached to him quite often. I doubt this very much. My concern in looking at him is that I read his appearance as "frail," which is not unusual for someone into their 80s. Frailty is an issue, and I can discuss that as a reason for one's support or opposition.

The other candidate is chronologically not far behind, though, and his affect is often one of manic self-regard, if not showing a bit of cognitive decline himself. Those who are firmly opposed to him will often throw the word "dementia" around in his direction, too.

If you're still with me, I'd like to make a totally non-partisan distinction between cognitive decline and dementia. Any of us can have cognitive decline, such as me before my morning coffee. Cognitive decline can be something that comes and goes, and in cases where it's the result of an illness or physical condition, it can be reversed. Dementia is something that we can in a very few cases slow but in no way stop it.

Columbia University researchers recently found that around 10% of U.S. adults 65 and older have some form of dementia, while another 22% have mild cognitive impairment. Paralleling those findings, the Alzheimer's Association says 1 in 3 seniors will die of some form of dementia.

It's worth pointing out this means 2 of 3 seniors won't. Not everyone gets dementia, or even shows significant cognitive decline, just by getting older. Some of the sharpest people I've known were in their 80s and 90s.

But dementia is a steadily increasing problem in our country, with 6 million Americans believed to have Alzheimer's right now, and that number expected to reach 13 million by 2050. There's no pill or surgery that cures it. Those with dementia need care, which is personal and challenging, and one way or another expensive. We all need to talk about dementia and how to deal with it when it arises in our families and friend groups.

The current political debate is not helping. Dementia is not a casual insult. It's a diagnosis, and a reality all around us. I hope we can change how we see and share what we know, as we work and pray for better solutions ahead.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's working with dementia related issues these days, but you figured that out already. Tell him how you deal with dementia in your circles at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 4-1-24

Faith Works 4-1-24
Jeff Gill

Prayer and evangelism may be the combination you need
___


Easter is a month away and coming in fast. If you observe Lent, we're well into it, but plenty of that season left for prayer and preparation.

Last column I talked about prayer, on a very elementary level, and heard some useful feedback on how that landed for people looking at first steps. But I also had some questions around next steps, and was thinking in the car about what I could helpfully commend.

Then I got home, and saw where Geoff Mitchell, friend and colleague in ministry serving a congregation in Memphis, posted something on Threads (@pastorgeoffrey) that was much better than what I had in mind, and it's not stealing if I give credit, right?

Geoff said "Take a moment this week to empower leadership. Invite them to identify four people in their circle they will pray for between now and Easter. If they get a chance to invite, great, but they will pray for them. Prayer, not programs, helps us reimagine evangelism."

Did you get that? Invitation to worship is fine, but don't force it. In fact, don't worry if a natural opportunity doesn't come up. What if, I think my friend in Tennessee is saying, we live as if what we believe is true, that prayer has power all its own, and God might be able to work through it in ways we can't even imagine?

Consider four people you know you would ask blessings for, and pray that they might be blessed. Not as a program or a first step to your invaluable next contribution, not as a stage in a process where you have the primary responsibility: you simply pray for four people between now and Easter.

What if, and I'm just going off on my own now, what if you pray for four people, and you end up with opportunities arising in your life to invite four completely different people to a sunrise service, your Easter observance, to a work project going on this spring through your church? Does that mean your prayers didn't "work"? Or is it possible we tend to see prayer more like motor oil, an additive that lubricates other actions we undertake, and our spiritual lives as the engine, when that metaphor might have it backwards?

Prayer is powerful. That's a baseline assertion of most spiritual traditions. There are disagreements around technique and practice, but the common thread is that through prayer we are connected to power and initiative that's larger than we are, wider than our own horizons, deeper than even the immensity of now as we know it.

Praying for others isn't something we do for ourselves, but it's an open secret that praying just for ourselves is a fast ticket to nowheresville. That's how you get stuck in a loop of wants and disappointments. To open the loop by praying for others opens up our own hearts to letting go of some wants, and finding new, unexpected fulfillments.

Meanwhile, we pray for others not to reach the outcome we ourselves have figured out is what they need: we pray for blessing. We ask that our time and intention in prayer open up blessings for others, and then are privileged to witness how that can happen, which may well surprise us.

Or as Geoff suggests: "identify four people in [your] circle [you] will pray for between now and Easter. If [you] get a chance to invite, great, but… pray for them. Prayer, not programs, helps us reimagine evangelism."

Because evangelism is, at root, simply sharing good news. Not a program.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he likes to learn from others as well as praying for them. Tell him how you've seen good news at work in another's life at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Faith Works 2-23-24

Faith Works 2-23-24
Jeff Gill

Lenten spirituality rooted in prayer
___


We're already heading past the second week of Lent, and Easter is not that far away on March 31.

Whether you observed Ash Wednesday on Feb. 14 or chose to focus on your Valentine, and even if you don't practice any kind of Lenten disciplines, it's a time of year when people think about prayer.

It's a question I get asked not infrequently: how do you pray? The quick answer is: I talk to God. Like most conversation, I need to listen as well as speak my own mind, and maybe even not talk at all. For the skeptics who ask "listen to who? To what?" This may not be your column. Come back, we'll get to you, I promise.

For those who are into the idea of communing with the divine, for whom a Presence we call God is a reality worth considering, prayer is a primary form of communication. And none of us listens as well as we ought (if you're married, ask your spouse how you do at that).

Along with the practice of "active listening," I have a couple of other pieces of advice for those wanting to improve their prayer lives in this pre-Easter, even Lenten season. First off the bat: the Psalms. Read them. Pray them. Reflect on them as your own expressions to God.

The Psalms can jar, they jolt you. They say things you may not think you are allowed to say to God, but there they are in the literal middle of the Bible, so there you are. If the Psalmist (David or whomever) can say it to God, so can you. But let the Psalms take the lead. Pray the Psalms. They will teach you.

That's recommendation number one. Recommendation number two may seem too obvious, but I think it gets missed. Go to church. Find a faith community congenial to your spiritual journey as it is right now, and dive in.

How does this help you to pray? Well, because the average service is chock full of them, and you don't have to do anything but listen or read or repeat with them, as a guide and a support. Invocations early in many services, intercessions asked for individuals and for the congregation as a whole, common prayers some printed and some just familiar which you'll pick up over a few return visits; there is the usage of Biblical prayer as prayers like the Lord's Prayer (you don't get much more Biblical than that one), or other doxologies or "songs of praise" which come from scripture. Some have a pastoral prayer and if there's communion, prayers over the elements.

These all can teach and model for us what prayer is, if only for others, and should spark in willing hearts more prayer from our own selves. There are books and manuals and video lessons that all talk about spiritual growth and deepening your prayer life, but anyone can start with those two. The prayers that are the Psalms, and praying in worship which you can welcome into your own prayer life the rest of the week. Those alone are a huge boost, a gracious gift offered to anyone who wants to "talk with God" in the form of prayer.

If I were to add a third suggestion, it would just be this. Practice prayer for others. I pray for you, good readers. Some I hear from, enough to know the breadth and diversity of who is out there reading these. And I do pray for you, for your blessing. I think that's good for me to do. It's a practice I recommend to anyone.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows there's plenty of reasons to pray, and appreciates your prayers for him. Tell him how you pray at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, February 12, 2024

Notes from my Knapsack 2-22-24

Notes from my Knapsack 2-22-24
Jeff Gill

Public health and politics, an unhealthy mix
___


At the end of January, something I'd been dodging for almost four years hit me square and knocked me down.

Yep, I got COVID; used one of the test kits I still had around (if you think yours are expired, note that the printed expiration date may be extended, which you can find through some simple internet searching). All the symptoms were there, plus the line on the sample under the control line told me for sure. I got it.

Being someone who lives at least a large portion of my life online, I posted that, and promptly heard from a wide range of people asking me if I was now ready to admit the whole vaccine and public health effort around COVID was a scam by Big Pharma and/or the Deep State.

This is a conversation (I hesitate to say dialogue) I've been in since COVID first erupted, in early March of 2020. I had a more "public facing" job then, and even before the national alerts and lockdowns were announced, I learned quickly that just talking about mitigation and precautions in the first days of March provoked a strong pushback.

Yes, the politics got tricky and weird after mask mandates and calls for vaccination went national. But I'm talking in those days before all of that, when we were less sure about what a coronavirus was, or how vectors worked, and even before Tom Hanks was announced as having it or NBA games shut down before the final whistle.

Me, I've gotten a fall flu shot since forever. I did not realize until after we got into the controversies around COVID vaccines that Ohio has a history of running around 40% of all adults getting a flu shot.

And I note wearily that right now in Licking County it's just under 60% have had even one COVID shot, ever, falling to 14% even as current as the bivalent booster.

Meanwhile, there's some very real concern that basic flu shots are less popular than they had been, what with the political controversies around vaccines in general, and even childhood vaccines are falling behind to where measles are on the upswing.

My sincerest sympathies are with public health officials in general, and the Licking County Health Department in particular. I've worked with past and current leadership there for many years, and I would say they are about as political as a "Yield to Oncoming Traffic" sign. They are working on addressing our health on many fronts: we still have 17% of adults in this county smoking regularly, 20% binge or heavy drinking, and STDs on the march. They walk a fine line on COVID issues, I know.

So let me just say for myself: I think being fully vaccinated kept me from getting sicker than I was, and I appreciate my doctor's care which was supported by my vaccine status. Talk to your doctor, and consider taking protective steps for your health.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's gotten the booster, and is glad he did. Tell him how you take care of yourself at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 2-16-24

Faith Works 2-16-24
Jeff Gill

Perceptions are challenging, and all we have
___


"Why was all the music new and strange?"

I know I'm not the only minister to have heard this.

If you are a member of a contemporary worship style church, it comes in a slightly different flavor, but the complaint comes even there, I'm told. "Were those all new songs today?" With the inevitable raised eyebrow.

In a more traditional church, it's interesting to hear it when out of three hymns, there was one old standard, a newer hymn the congregation has heard before, plus one admittedly new song, along with familiar tunes and words for a "Gloria Patri," the "Doxology," and a choir anthem sung many times before. But that line-up can still get you "what was the deal with all new music?"

Now that football season is over, it's interesting to look back over the phenomenon that is Taylor Swift, whose fortunes became entwined with the Kansas City Chiefs. Her relationship with a player (Travis Kelce already famous in his own narrower right) got her into a skybox with his mom, and being even more famous, she was shown in TV coverage on occasion. Football fans began to erupt on social media over how much Taylor Swift was displacing the old fashioned NFL football coverage. "Too much of the female singer! We're here for football!"

But ESPN personality Colin Cowherd put some interns to work clocking Swift on screen time, and found that on average viewers saw her for . . . 24 seconds out of three and a half hours of coverage. That's 12,600 seconds total, so she was seen 0.2 of 1 percent of the time.

Super Bowl sightings of Taylor Swift: 55 seconds (51 seconds before the score that ended the game) out of a broadcast that was four hours and 18 minutes long. This is counting her sightings from kickoff until the game coverage ended. That's 15,480 total seconds, so she was on screen more, to be fair: 0.35 of 1 percent of the game coverage.

Oh, and something I'm sure the NFL knows: their viewership is already 46% female. I'm not saying all women like Taylor Swift, nor that all men do not, but I think there's a very rational justification for showing a bit of successful, famous women cheering on their teams during game broadcasts. Men who expect things to stay the way they've always been, with crowd shots mostly of former players and the stray (male) politician? Nope. Things aren't changing: they've already changed.

Marva Dawn was a very articulate theologian of worship and Christian practice, and her work took her into the middle of what was called for decades "the worship wars." One of her often told stories was about a person who came up to her after church to complain about one of the hymns they just sang as being strange and unfamiliar. "It's okay," she told them. "It wasn't really about you anyway."

In fact, Dawn suggested it should worry us at least a little if we, long time church goers, love and are delighted by every last piece of music and verbiage we hear in worship. If it works SO well for us, she asked, then how is it working for newer, less familiar people coming to church for the first time, who are still working on their faith and understanding of who God is and what God is doing? Maybe it isn't a good sign if we feel perfectly at home with all the service from beginning to end.

Of course, can you have too much of a good thing? Perhaps. But when we think it's "all" new and different, it may just be our expectations that were unfulfilled, and not God's intention for the service.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's willing to admit he's terrible at picking hymns for worship. Tell him what strange song caught your spiritual attention at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Sunday, February 04, 2024

Faith Works 2-9-24

Faith Works 2-9-24
Jeff Gill

Sitting with death
___


Most of the last year I spent sitting with death. My father-in-law was declining slowly, but steadily, inexorably. Getting better was not in the cards. He was 94, tired, and ready, something he said often.

When I first came to live with him, as his mobility and memory were on a race to deteriorate the fastest (memory was winning that particular race), I would hear certain stories on constant repeat, but that was something I was used to, working with elderly people over many years.

The challenge was to see if, by gentle nudging, I could also get some new stories out of him. To my satisfaction and his apparent enjoyment this was successful. There were side trips off the beaten track I could get him to take, and by a judicious mix of carefully timed questions and well placed silences, I learned a number of things about Buck's childhood and early maturity.

One key was how he would often respond to a query with "oh, I can't remember that stuff, that's long ago and forgotten." If I could wait the right way, open to listening without giving the impression of expectation, he would after a long pause spark himself into a blaze of recollection. I treasure those moments, as well as those stories.

But there came a time when his replies grew fainter, trailed off faster, and stopped almost altogether. It was only the familiar pattern of meals and household routines that was left us, and even that in single phrases or even just a word, which themselves devolved into pointing and gestures. There were no more stories to tell.

We had a few months like that. The talking was almost entirely over. His hearing or comprehension (we were never sure which) was gone, and in time even the pattern of the day was mostly lost, with breakfast followed by lunch which preceded supper, unless towards the end even that was declined. In between, in a mix of dozing and wakefulness, we were waiting.

Buck often said, matter of factly, he was waiting to die. That was next on his list. It is not on mine, but I'm closer to it than I once was. As a reality forming the last bit of punctuation for life, the full stop, period or exclamation point, it was drawing near to both of us. And what I became more familiar with was how it is just that: an approaching reality like the setting or the rising of the sun. It will come when it comes, and there's not a great deal we can do about that.

As someone who has done many hundreds of funerals, and sat with people through dozens of last vigils, I thought I was used to this, but to simply sit for months with death was something new. It was a moving past being able to do anything, or to learn anything, or to help, even. It was a season of simple acceptance.

It was all more complicated than that in the details, but that was the underlying chord, the ongoing bass note for the rest of our days together. The need to accept that we were both of us sitting with death. And as Paul said to the fellowship in Rome, "whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."

And in the Lord, whose steadfast love endures forever, they are both of them very near to each other. Life, and death. Near enough that it reminds you, after sitting with it for long enough, that those who are in death are not all that far away from we who are in life. In either direction, we are near to one another, and love finds the distance no trouble at all.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's working on life a bit more these days. Tell him your thoughts on life or death at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Faith Works 2-2-24

Faith Works 2-2-24
Jeff Gill

What brings us together
___


If the map of where you find shredded chicken sandwiches was an arson investigation, you'd say the match was lit in Licking County.

To assess the spread of shredded chicken sandwiches as a pool of warm, filling goodness across Ohio and neighboring states, you would see it pouring out from the Newark area and spreading from there, a few splashes over the state boundaries to leave a puddle here and there in West Virginia and Michigan.

I'm quite certain shredded chicken began somehow here, and followed the connections between glass factories, people who moved between plants making bottles or automotive glass, carrying with them the simple secrets of canned deboned chicken, crushed crackers, and perhaps some added cream soup or even evaporated milk to keep it moist over a long simmering stretch in a roaster.

One way to try to trace both across time and over the landscape how our local delicacy became a regional phenomenon would be to sift stacks of church cookbooks. There is a treasure trove of information in those volumes. Often spiral bound, easy to lay flat, found in all sorts of formats and page layouts, they were once a major fundraiser for ladies' aid and women's mission societies.

You will find in most of them a recipe for Scripture Cake, or references to the Holy Trinity (onion, carrots, celery in some areas; swap bell peppers for carrots in the Deep South). There's usually a charming recipe for a good life or a happy family, using a pinch of wisdom and a heaping helping of love, etc.

The real pleasure of church cookbooks, though, is how they are unique to their area and ethnic heritage. Hotdish in the Upper Midwest, burgoo in Kentucky . . . shredded chicken in central and northwest Ohio.

I suspect we could get closer to the origins of shredded chicken by searching back through church cookbooks. And while I proposed last week the connection to the glass making industry to explain the interesting pattern of where shredded chicken is, and where it isn't, following the locations of Owens-Illinois related plants in particular, I can't shake the sense that this mass feeding speciality has church-related roots.

In northern West Virginia, I learned that whether Catholic or Protestant, ethnically Italian or largely English in origin, church events like fellowship dinners, weddings, and funerals, always would have rigatoni with green beans garnished with slivered almonds. Always. A really classy event would have meatballs mixed in with the rigatoni and tomato sauce, liberally seasoned, but they weren't required. There's a story there, too.

Here, our shredded chicken is sold much more often at youth sporting events, or offered up at a concession stand for a band festival or choral contest. It's our preferred mass feeding option. And while churches may not still maintain a china tea service or punchbowl set for wedding receptions, they hold onto their roasters. Those big old roasters have many applications, but it's shredded chicken that I imagine in them whenever I walk past a row of them in a darkened church basement, waiting patiently to be filled in order to fill waiting stomachs.

We may still not have found a path to shared communion between all Christian traditions, but there's a place where we all welcome one another wherever you come from, and that's when churches feed people. After a graveside service in a church basement, Thanksgiving Sunday dinners, in seasonal celebrations of many sorts where guests are invited and made welcome.

For us, in this area, that place of communion is around the humble shredded chicken sandwich. There we may yet all be one.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's sure we can find unity around shredded chicken. Tell him how you see us living and eating as one at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Friday, January 26, 2024

Notes from my Knapsack 2-8-24

Notes from my Knapsack 2-8-24
Jeff Gill

Taking a breath of fresh air
___

On Feb. 8, 1910, now 114 years ago, the Boy Scouts of America were chartered. Scouting had begun just over two years earlier in Great Britain, the brain child of Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, who wisely tended to go by "B-P."

A war hero in England, he came home invited to do anything, but decided he wanted to find a way to use his unexpected fame to serve youth. His experiences around the world made him wonder about what it meant back home for children to grow up in the steadily developing Industrial Revolution, in housing tracts we'd call suburbia today, with less and less contact with nature or the chance to roam and ramble about in it.

"Scouting for Boys" began World Scouting in 1908; girls asked to join early on and in 1909 he developed Girl Guides in Great Britain. A chance encounter with Juliette Gordon Low led to Girl Scouts in the United States after 1912.

Today, the Scouting Movement spans over 200 countries with some 35 million or more members. Scouting is one of the most formative experiences of my life, and I owe Pack 20 and Troop 7, Camp To-pe-nee-bee and Wood Lake Scout Reservation, all more than I can say in this one column. As a Cub Scout and Boy Scout, a youth member and adult leader since 1979, what I've learned through participation in the Scouting program has helped me in all manner of activities and life pursuits far beyond campfires and dutch ovens.

Many are familiar with the Scout Oath and Law, but you may not know as much about the "Aims and Methods" of Scouting. The four aims are Character, Citizenship, Personal Fitness, and Leadership. Those are the elements we aim to develop in young people who participate in the Scouting program.

To achieve those aims, Scouting utilizes eight methods: Our Scouting ideals (exemplified by the Scout Oath, the Scout Law, the Scout Motto, and the Scout Slogan); use of the patrol method; our advancement system (best known in Scouts BSA through ranks and merit badges); the opportunity for healthy adult association; an ongoing emphasis on personal growth; attention to age appropriate leadership development throughout the program; the wearing of a Scout uniform which unifies all participants through a common set of non-trendy clothes; and there's one more to make eight.

That last method through which Scouting delivers on those four aims is an expectation for everyone to participate in outdoor programs. It's that outdoor element I think is still as needed as B-P believed it was, back in 1907 as he was putting the program together for the first time.

Just to get up, and get out of the house. If you do nothing else today, just make sure to go look at some clouds passing, or if they're gone, go see some stars tonight. Walk if you can, get outside when possible, and take in a breath of fresh air. B-P wanted us to start there.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been in Scouting a while and hopes to keep giving back. Tell him about youth serving work you've seen be effective at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, January 22, 2024

Faith Works 1-26-24

Faith Works 1-26-24
Jeff Gill

Work, food, and family
___

You've been traveling with me in search of shredded chicken sandwiches, those simple assemblies of deboned canned chicken, cracker crumbs, and perhaps a can of cream of something soup (to use the most basic recipe of the many that are out there, it turns out).

And we had a detour into West Virginia last week, to consider the homely delights of the pepperoni roll, a another simple meal very intentionally created to serve something filling in a way that travels and eats well for coal miner, even though they've developed far beyond those roots.

In seeking out the strange story of shredded chicken, it's worth repeating that they turn out to be a very location specific delicacy. People who grew up in Licking County or central Ohio have been shocked to move to Chicago or New Jersey let alone California and find out that as basic as the combo is, it's not everywhere.

Even within Ohio, somewhere around Ashland they stop showing up, and long-time local folk confirm you don't find shredded chicken on menus in Parma and definitely not in Cleveland. Towards Cincinnati, the range is maybe to Washington Court House but that's debatable: they definitely don't compete with chili over spaghetti in the Queen City area.

Yet they do run up through Toledo, and as far northwest as Wauseon. Which is where the story gets interesting, because of the opposite direction. I saw shredded chicken served at a few lunch counters in Fairmont, West Virginia — yes, the birthplace of the pepperoni roll — when I moved there in 1993.

I also was startled to see some familiar names in the obituaries, with ties directly back to Newark. It didn't take long to connect this through Owens-Illinois, glass manufacturing and bottle making. From 1910 to 1982, they had a plant there employing thousands, and clearly employees sometimes moved between sites. Newark Star Glass Works began in 1871, Edward Everett expanded their production taking over in 1880, becoming the Ohio Bottle Company and ultimately a part of Owens-Corning making fiberglas from 1934, as it continues to do so.

There's a whole complex corporate history glossed over in there, but between Shields and Everett here, and Edward Libbey plus Michael Joseph Owens up in the Toledo area, there's a web of connections (pulling Henry Ford in early on as they made automotive glass for him, and the Findlay area where Mr. Owens first figured out how to mass produce glass bulbs for Mr. Edison before branching out into bottle making technology). The common thread for me, though, is shredded chicken.

I can't prove it, and there no "miner's lunchbox" origin story, but the odd outline of shredded chicken territory seems to follow the glass making network, with interesting puddles in outlying places like Fairmont which to me seals the deal. Somehow, maybe with the gas burners always there to use in simmering a pot, I think shredded chicken began in bottle works and glass factories, and traveled with their skilled laborers as they moved about with the development of the mass produced bottle industry. Let's just say the data fits.

Yet within that well defined irregular splotch on the map of the Midwest, mostly within central and northwestern Ohio, there is a richness of variation. You could line up a dozen different shredded chicken sandwiches, and from a distance they'd look the same, but in the eating, they'd each have a unique recipe, process, and taste. They're the same, yet different.

Which takes me from lunch counters and football concession stands to church basements, and those deep roasters, and remembered scents, familiar flavors. All somewhat the same, each so very distinct.

Can you give me one last week on this delicious subject?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's feeling awfully hungry right now. Share your preferred recipe for shredded chicken at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, January 08, 2024

Faith Works 1-19-24

Faith Works 1-19-24
Jeff Gill

Comfort foods and a culture of community
___


Don't worry, I'll get back to shredded chicken sandwiches here in a bit. Didn't think I was done, did you?

During the bowl games, when the West Virginia Mountaineers were playing in a mayonnaise themed contest, the booth commentators took a break from play to sample pepperoni rolls.

Now, WVU is in Morgantown; Fairmont, West Virginia claims it is the one true home of pepperoni rolls, but you can find them up and down the Monongahela River all the way north to Pittsburgh, and south a ways. There are pepperoni roll outposts down towards Parkersburg and even around Charleston, and the state has adopted it their state food.

The roots are underground: they were made as a simple lunch to take down into the coal mines. Sticks of pepperoni, beloved of the southern Italians who were recruited by the thousands in the early 1900s, baked into small loaves which you could put into your pocket. Some today still maintain a true pepperoni roll has sticks baked longwise into the roll, but you can find them with a sheaf of pepperoni slices or even ground pepperoni in the dough.

During the Mountaineer football victory, the on air crew ate pepperoni rolls . . . with mayo. This provoked the Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia to strongly protest, suggesting penance was needed, while adding that the use of Miracle Whip on a pepperoni roll is an abomination. It was all in good fun, sort of. And yet said with a hint of seriousness.

Comfort foods are close to our hearts, and how to make them can be a ritual with religious overtones. They have a history, and we are telling a story to ourselves, and about ourselves, as we make and consume them. This is most obvious every Thanksgiving, and in many Christmas cookie recipes, but it's true all year long in certain ways.

Which brings me back to shredded chicken sandwiches. When I left here and we moved to Fairmont, West Virginia for six years, on the counter as a housewarming gift on our arrival was a bag of pepperoni rolls from Giuseppe Argiro's original bakery. We learned the story, and I came to understand the linkage to history and struggle and sacrifice every time one was eaten, even if I've never worked in a coal mine. And the core pepperoni roll territory tracks with the seams of coal and the mine shafts of West Virginia.

What's going on behind our fascination with shredded chicken sandwiches? One story claims that back a hundred years or so, every family raised chickens, and they laid eggs; you didn't kill a chicken until it stopped laying, by which time they were pretty tough, so you had to cook them down long and slow in a cream sauce. Yeah, I can see that.

But chickens are everywhere. We aren't and never have been the chicken capital of the world, or even Ohio. That doesn't explain the very precise footprint of shredded chicken commonality, exploding out of an apparent Licking County epicenter and sprawling north and west across the state.

We may never know the actual origin of the shredded chicken sandwich as we have it today, the core recipe of a can of boneless chicken, a tube of crackers crushed, and a can of cream soup, mixed together and simmered at length, served up on a hamburger bun. But I suspect I know how it spread as it did.

And my guess has to do with finding an unexpected outpost of shredded chicken . . . in Fairmont, West Virginia. The connection isn't coal mining, but something our two areas have in common besides crock pots and roasters.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's nearing an end (a temporary one) to his shredded digression into 2024. Tell him what foods keep you grounded at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Notes from my Knapsack 1-25-24

Notes from my Knapsack 1-25-24
Jeff Gill

Chickens and eggs and smartphones
___


Correlation does not equal causality.

It's a common statement around scientific endeavors in general and social science in particular. Just because something happens right before something else occurs doesn't mean the one caused the other. It could, for instance, mean they're both caused by the same as yet unmeasured trigger, but one phenomenon happens a little faster than the other.

Another funny way to make the point about correlation versus causality: there's a website by a guy named Tyler Vigen called "Spurious Correlations." His flexible brain working with modern data tools has been able to plot out graphs "showing" odd correlations such as how deaths by drowning in swimming pools closely follows by year the number of films Nicolas Cage appears in. Somehow, there is a statistical correlation, but surely not causation (I can hear some of you thinking furiously about how there might be, and you go right ahead).

An infamous version of this was a magazine story entitled "Bullying Can Make a Bully Healthier," that somehow picked up on data showing that bullies have a lower risk of chronic disease. Is there a connection? May well be, but causation? At the very least I hope not.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been getting a great deal of media attention, justified I would argue, for taking a wide range of survey data, and a global perspective, to demonstrate that starting in 2012 we've seen in the industrialized West a significant teen mental health crisis. His global view is important, because he is able to compare outcomes and changes within cultures and circumstances, and it's not a global shift caused by cosmic rays.

Or as Haidt said more recently, "(this crisis) was not caused by reality getting worse around 2012. Their material and physical health improved steadily." You can look up his work to see how he carefully demonstrates that aspect of what's going on. And then he says "(t)o paraphrase Epictetus: 'It is not events which disturb teens. It is the device through which they interpret all events.'" It's access on a personal, ongoing basis to smartphones.

Here's where I want to offer a note of caution, even as I've been standing with school administrators who are concerned that the incendiary effect of social media on personal devices are creating more intense, faster spreading tensions between students. They'd like to see smartphones limited in their buildings, more than they're allowed to in many cases.

Yet correlation is not causation. There's a growing assumption that the connection between smartphone enabled social media and increased mental health issues for teens is related to content, to challenges around self-image, invidious comparisons, teasing and taunting and bullying. That could be. We don't know.

But what won't get better, if we empower schools to decisively limit devices on school property, is if the decline in teen mental health and increases in anxiety and depression are all more connected to lack of sleep. The obsessive scrolling and clicking and gaming to 3 am most nights. Is sleep the true culprit here? We don't know.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; nope, he's not yet done with this subject. Tell him what you think, but not at 3 am, at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 1-12-24

Faith Works 1-12-24
Jeff Gill

Shredding my plans for the new year
___

Let's just say there's a serious level of interest out there in shredded chicken.

Yes, a few let me know that they would rather eat truck stop sushi past its sell-by date than have a shredded chicken sandwich again, but they are emphatically in the minority.

For many, shredded chicken sandwiches are a comfort food up there with grilled cheese and tomato soup, or mashed potatoes with gravy. Warming, filling, comforting.

More than a few of you touched on the Depression era roots of a simple meal which could be made with what was on hand, and there was usually an opened sleeve of crackers and a can of boneless chicken in the pantry. Or as some reminisced, there was a time when canning included chicken along with cherries and tomatoes in the Mason jars on the shelves.

What I did not realize was the rich, complex diversity of this simple entree. I had a sense of its geographic reach, and the reality that the beating heart of shredded chicken territory is Licking County, Ohio. That heart isn't quite a center, because the range stretches east up to but not quite along the Ohio River, south hardly at all, and to the northwest I heard from friends in Wauseon confidently assuring me that if I got up there to visit them, they could find me a menu with shredded chicken on it.

Columbus is within the realm of the sacred sandwich, but Cleveland is not and Cincinnatians are expressing horror at the very concept as I described it to them (but look at what they do to their spaghetti). Toledo is contested ground, but Lima and Clyde and Bowling Green are within the holy lands, so to speak.

There is, of course, a website: chickensandwich.info which has over two decades of data, sporadically updated. It shows an isolated outpost in Athens, but since it was at a Whit's, I'm guessing that's the Licking County influence at work.

The website also provides almost twenty recipes, and links to many more. Because it turns out there are even MORE ways to make the humble shredded chicken than I realized. When I posted last week's column on my social media, I heard from many former concession chefs for middle and high school events, which took my previous lore focused around church basements to a whole new level.

Roasters are the key element in making shredded chicken for the masses, and also why it's tricky to make just a few of them. Big families might be able to pull it off, but if you're just cooking for one or two, you're likely to do something quite different from mixing up large cans of boneless chicken, crushing and stirring in a box of crackers, and adding a significant amount of canned soup.

I suspect there's also something to the time spent simmering away in that roaster, and how experienced concession stand parents maintain their product. Evaporated milk had never crossed my mind as an element of shredded chicken sandwiches, but it has been explained to me that it helps keep your vat of shredded from drying out, but it cooks down nicely in the mix.

The cracker conundrum still hovers over this question: how best to make shredded chicken? A surprising number of folks told me they used half Ritz, half saltines, because just the latter is (no surprise) too salty.

Central to this whole issue is: why here? Why us? What makes Licking County the home and heartland of shredded chicken? I'm on a pilgrimage close to home as we try to understand: why.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's made a few roasters full himself. How long will this topic drive the "Faith Works" column? Tell him yourself at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Tuesday, January 02, 2024

Notes from my Knapsack 1-11-24

Notes from my Knapsack 1-11-24
Jeff Gill

Learning what from who, where, and when
___


Who was it that first said "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds?"

Well, I'm typing this on a laptop connected to the internet, plus I have a smartphone next to me with a good cell connection. Hold on a sec.

Huh. It is from an essay in 1841 entitled "Self-Reliance" by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

This is one of the huge advantages of the internet world we now live in. In school or even in seminary, I would have needed to not only have some research skills around how to use various reference tools to find the full source of that quote, I almost certainly would have needed to physically go to a library building, downtown or elsewhere, and possibly be sent from that library to a library at a college or other more distant location.

I remember when the rise of inter-library loan was seen as a massive transformation of the research process, that you could get books sent from another city or state to your local library for access. It was, truly, big stuff. (When? It was a college only thing when I was in high school, but . . . let's look it up. Oh my. So interlibrary loans between colleges began in 1876; the Ohio College Library Center began here in 1967, which grew to become the Online Computer Library Center, now based just down the road in Dublin!)

So when I talked at the end of last year about concerns around being too online for school age youth, I was echoing what an overwhelming plurality to school officials have been telling me these last few years. The constant checking and scanning and scrolling around personal platforms and messaging has, in their eyes, increased both anxiety and depression, as well as threats and conflict between students. None of us think the internet created these issues, but they've been an accelerant, like gasoline to a match, causing brush fires of interpersonal tensions to blaze out of control faster and more widely than they did just a decade ago.

Is a totally un-connected world feasible, in education or for parenting? I don't think so. It's a question of management, of guardrails and boundaries. And the everlasting question of how one family raises their child while a nearby family has different boundaries, if any at all, and what happens when they come together.

In the Scouting movement, it's become a requirement along with knife and axe safety and how to handle fires and flames, to take a sort of cyber-safety course. Many schools have begun to include online etiquette and ethics in their plan of study.

And I will continue in 2024 to note that many of the ills blamed on the online life may have more to do with the sleep that is lost to them than the content you find in it. Lack of sleep is plaguing both youth and adults, and we're seeing that loss in many ways.

Some of you have proposed solutions, and I plan to share some of those ideas as we roll on into 2024.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he spent too much time reading about Emerson & the OCLC while preparing this column. Tell him how the internet distracts you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 1-5-24

Faith Works 1-5-24
Jeff Gill

Not to create a theological controversy
___


Rarely do I venture into the murky and deep waters of theological debate in this column.

The goal, as always, is to seek unity and shared understandings among those open to a faith based perspective, not to defend certain religious traditions or particular church structures.

Yet I've been intrigued recently by a subject which is on the teetering precipice of sectarian dispute. I've wondered about this for some time, and have never quite had the nerve to write about the subject. Here we are at the outset of a new year, and perhaps this is the time.

I'm talking about shredded chicken sandwiches.

Moving here from central Indiana in the fall of 1989, I'd never had them. Then I went to an early craft show that year, and the cafe to one side of the Christmas decor and other sale tables included "Shredded Chicken." It was a dollar, and fit both my budget and my current cash situation, and I was hungry. But what was it?

"Oh, everyone makes this around here." I was shown a can of Sweet Sue boneless chicken, and told you simply heated it up with crumbled saltine crackers and some pepper. I ate of it, and it was good.

But this was only the beginning. As the years scrolled by, I would sample shredded chicken sandwiches in a variety of homely settings: church basements, after funerals, at football games and basketball tournaments, in snack bars set up for choir and band contests. And I developed a cook's interest in asking when I could "how do you make it?"

This is where you get the second of the two interesting but fraught questions around the dreaded shredded (as some would say). The first is the boundary of the sandwich's domain — it's not everywhere, but it is everyone around here, if you can figure out where here is. Let's say from Urbana in the west to Mansfield in the north, and down to Portsmouth and over to somewhere this side of Steubenville and Martin's Ferry, but shredded chicken has made inroads up to the Ohio in a few points around past Marietta. This field needs further research.

The second and more truly theological question is what makes "true" shredded chicken. I learned early on that some will say "not saltines, but Ritz crackers." You get a buttery taste, 'tis true. Yet the saltine true believers hold Ritz to be an external imposition on the one true shredded chicken.

Adding to the denominational complexity: adding soup. There is a reformation of shredded chicken cooking which breaks out into many traditions, each certain of their own rightness. The mainstream is a can of cream of chicken to a much larger can of boneless chicken into the roasting pan. Others say the chicken on chicken effect is not useful, and prefer cream of celery; there are a few obscure sectarians who assert the ideal of a can of cream of mushroom (this may be a Great Lakes Lutheran influence, I don't know, again worth scholarly study).

Atop the soup/no soup distinction, there are the modifications of soup (but which one) plus crackers (saltine or Ritz, or even Club), plus I have had a perfectly satisfying shredded chicken sandwich which I learned had breadcrumbs added in, not crushed crackers.

Finally, in a liturgical flourish, there's the question of if the vat or roaster of shredded chicken should have pepper added, lightly or not at all, versus leaving the pepper quotient to the one stacking up their sandwich.

In central Ohio, these are existential questions. Where does your faith stand?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's eaten many shredded chicken sandwiches. What's your preferred recipe? Tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, December 18, 2023

Faith Works 12-29-23

Faith Works 12-29-23
Jeff Gill

A local Christmas tradition that hasn't started yet
___


If you have read the last four columns I've done about how we've observed Christmas in Licking County, thank you!

We considered Christmas in 1800, 1844, 1864, and 1944. I know, it would have been nice if I could have found a cool Christmas story from 1804, but the Stadden-Green wedding on Christmas Day in 1800 was too good to pass up. Plus, I didn't see anything in 1804 from the archives that took us where I wanted to go.

Which was: reflecting on what's timeless, and what's changing, and how it might yet change further, about our cultural and religious understanding of the holiday itself. The holiday, or holy day, which is where the term comes from.

The birth of Jesus, or theologically the Incarnation, is the core concept that does not change. Incarnation, or the idea that God incarnate, or "in the flesh" would be with us, let alone in a humble form, worshiped by shepherds and laid in a manger: that's the heart of Christmas, or "the reason for the season."

Other aspects of a traditional (to us) Christmas are more fluid. Early Christmases in Licking County talk about candles in the long nights after the winter solstice, and "decking the halls" with fresh scented greenery like pine garlands and holly branches, not to mention discreet sprigs of mistletoe, but not trees. This seems to be a post-Civil War fashion which the returning soldiers made a common practice, but not until 1865 and after.

Likewise, a tree would be cut and brought in and decorated pretty much altogether, on Christmas Eve, and sometimes removed after Christmas Day or perhaps by some until Jan. 6, Epiphany. They were locally cut on common woodlots, and propped up by makeshift stands.

Historically, it's a recent idea that we can own a purpose made stand with a water reservoir and tree to keep a Christmas tree up most of December; when artificial trees became more common I don't know, but that's more post-World War II. Likewise electric lights, not candles.

Now with mail order pre-lit artificial trees, you can have Christmas decor up for weeks and months, and many do. But that's a change, you see, don't you? And each such change due to technology or cultural adaptations subtly changes our holiday sense.

As a person of faith and a religious teacher, the shift of imperishable decor and LED lights doesn't bother me per se, except for how Christmas has done two odd things: it's backed into November, if not October for some (and certainly in advertising), and it chops off ruthlessly at the end of the 25th.

When I served a parish, I enjoyed saying "now that everyone has given us back Christmas, we can make the most of it!" There's a season of Christmastide in the great tradition, which extends from Dec. 25 through Jan. 6. Even as all the decorations get packed away in deference to a flood of Valentine's retail offerings on Dec. 26, that's when a believer in the Incarnation should be gearing up to move from Advent to Christmastide, to celebrate twelve days at least of Christ's nativity and presence among us.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's enjoyed looking back at other ways to do Christmas, and hopes you have too. Tell him what you'd like to learn about in faith and hope during 2024 at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 12-22-23

Faith Works 12-22-23
Jeff Gill

Christmas not so long ago but very different all the same
___


Christmas in 1944 was by all accounts an unsettled time, both overseas and here in Licking County.

It was the previous December of 1943 that "I'll Be Home for Christmas" had launched onto the scene, embraced both at home and in the trenches as an anthem of heartfelt hope. If you've listened closely to it, you know the wistful twist that it concludes with: "if only in my dreams."

Bing Crosby is better known today for "White Christmas," but it was that new classic in 1943 that by the holiday season of 1944 had become a standard, one which made him a hero to many soldiers, sailors, and Marines. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" took unarticulated thought and gave it voice; it was requested constantly at Bing's USO shows, and during World War II had a profound impact for encouraging everyone who heard it.

They needed it, because even by Christmas 1944, the outcome was not certain. The original hearers of the song had invaded Africa, Sicily, and into southern Italy within the European Theater of Operations, then D-Day the previous summer and to Paris and beyond; in the Pacific after turning back the Japanese Navy at Midway there had been successful invasions of New Guinea and Tarawa, but at a savage cost.

And in Germany and Belgium, on December 16, 1944 there had been the launch of a new Nazi offensive, whose outcome was as yet hard to predict (unless you were Generals George Patton or Tony McAuliffe). As it turns out, the 101st Airborne, 969th Artillery Battalion, and elements of the 10th Armored Division would resist a final Panzerkorps assault on Christmas Day, and it was the last German success in the Battle of the Bulge.

On a personal note, I cannot count the number of stories I've heard over the years from elderly men who were young in 1944, and in the weeks leading up to and following that dire Christmas were on the front lines around Bastogne and in the Ardennes Forest. What all of their stories have in common is one word: cold. Bitter, biting cold. Cold so severe that it likely caused more casualties than weapons, on both sides.

And in those weeks after Christmas, as American troops pressed forward, I have heard stories of how some soldiers died seeking warmth. It seems the US uniform jackets were short, while the Wehrmacht winter uniform included a long greatcoat, one of the most coveted parts of their gear. Some of our soldiers put on those long heavy coats taken from the enemy dead, but at night when only silhouettes and shadows were clearly visible, they would be shot at as hostile troops.

Yet even as knowledge of these deaths spread, some chose to take that risk if they found a German greatcoat: it was that cold.

In that frigid Christmas and New Year season, if only to take their minds off the cold if not for a hundred other reasons, they would dream of being home for Christmas, and wondered if it would be next year.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; this weekend he will help with his father-in-law's funeral, who in later years served in the 101st "Screaming Eagles." Recall your loved ones gone on before us this Christmas to knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, December 11, 2023

Faith Works 12-15-23

Faith Works 12-15-23
Jeff Gill

Christmas here has roots elsewhere, going deep
___


A few days before Christmas, 1864, a local lad made good, Lancaster's own William Tecumseh Sherman, sent a telegram to his commander-in-chief Abraham Lincoln saying to him: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton."

The 76th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, "The Licking Volunteers," had seen hard service from Chattanooga to Atlanta and then on the March to the Sea across Georgia, culminating in Sherman's gift to his president. Perhaps their worst day as a fighting force had been a year before, just as the Army of the Tennessee had set foot in Georgia, at Ringgold Gap where their colors had been taken by the Confederate opposition, and many brave soldiers had fallen.

You can continue to learn about the proud history of the 76th O.V.I. in Doug Stout's excellent columns about the soldiers, often telling their stories in their own words. But suffice it to say that of 900 some soldiers who marched out of the Great Circle Fairgrounds where they trained as 1862 began, there were no more than 300 of those original troops left by the end of 1864, between those killed or wounded.

What has me reaching over into this Civil War story is the reality of that Christmas in Savannah, as 1864 was ending, but the conflict far from over. They would still wear their uniforms halfway into 1865 before the Grand Review in Washington the next spring, and it would be summer before the soldiers and officers of the 76th would return to civilian life.

Christmas, 1864 that was all still uncertain. Many of the "old soldiers" had taken leave back home, but always so brief, then back to the front. Home was far away, and the encampments around Savannah in the respite before the new year's fighting were a home of sorts for the XV Corps and its First Division.

Around them in that year end encampment were other soldiers from Illinois and Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Troops from Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts weren't far off, digging in for a short season of stability, building their temporary homes around the perimeter of this southern city which did not love them.

So, the soldiers looked out for each other. They shared foodstuffs, coffee, tobacco, likely some rum or other spirits at times (but unofficially that last). Like soldiers throughout the ages, they told their war stories to audiences that best understood them, and who knew what was left unsaid. They sang songs and occasionally were satisfied with silences around their flickering campfires in the long nights through Christmas Eve.

It is said, by others who have delved more deeply than I into the records and accounts of American history around Christmas, that the roots of Christmas trees as a truly national custom go back into those encampments. Before 1864, there were groups, especially German ethnic communities, who marked Dec. 24th by cutting down a live tree and bringing it inside for decoration and the day of Christmas. But greenery, evergreen boughs and holly and mistletoe, were more widely used. Trees in the parlor? They were fairly uncommon . . . until after the Civil War.

It appears that on those cold nights, watching their Germanic fellows from eastern states or some of the Nordic troops around the upper Great Lakes all making a point of cutting down a pine and dragging it into their encampment, covering it with ribbons and streamers, and attaching what candles they could find: something struck a chord.

Come Christmas 1865, families all across the United States, and some Licking County veterans I am sure, chose to repeat the custom they'd first seen by firelight within their camps, now by lamplight in their homes. A Christmas tree, with connections now not just to the holiday, but to the fellowship of service in the Civil War.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a little tree up even amongst many distractions from the season. Tell him your decorating customs at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, December 04, 2023

Faith Works 12-8-23

Faith Works 12-8-23
Jeff Gill

Our local Christmas history, era by era
___

By 1844, Father Lamy had finally gotten a church building built for his parish of St. Francis de Sales in Newark, Ohio.

Jean-Baptiste Lamy had been born in France thirty years earlier, and over forty years later he would be buried as the retired first Archbishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the crypt of the St. Francis Cathedral he helped build.

Sunday, December 22 of 1844 would be the sixth anniversary of his ordination. It was also the fourth Sunday of the month, and as the priest for now four congregations, he was based in Danville, Ohio where his first parish was already well established. St. Luke's by now had a building, and in Mount Vernon, Father Lamy had built St. Vincent de Paul parish, so dedicated as his favorite saint; however, in his seminary studies he had come to love the writings of St. Francis de Sales, and that was the dedication he asked for his Newark parish.

It was to establish new parishes that he had come, responding to a call put forward into Europe from Bishop John Purcell of the Diocese of Cincinnati, which at that time encompassed all of the state of Ohio. The newly ordained Lamy wanted to pursue his calling on a mission frontier, and he found Maryland migrants and Irish and German immigrants hungry for a Catholic priest's service.

In Newark, as John Horgan notes in his 1975 biography "Lamy of Santa Fe," the priest writes to his bishop that he has a largely German parish, "We have then a very good choir of German Catholics with some fair instruments. They sing very well, but almost all in German, expect the Kyrie, Gloria and Credo in Latin, till they get some books of church music." Unsurprisingly, he asks for some additional financial support to do just that from his bishop, noting "we have got a little help from the Widow McCarthy" so they don't all appear to have been German.

There was a church building, on the location where the 1887 sanctuary stands today, but it was as yet unplastered inside; due to some rounds of illness in Newark, Father Lamy decided to start building a rectory for his monthly residence, trusting in his bishop's retroactive permission and his confidence that very soon they would have their own resident priest.

But on that Christmas Sunday, Lamy's sixth as a priest, on his regular visit to Newark, we can trust that the sanctuary was ornamented "with garlands of evergreen all around with a kind of lustre" as he records was the case a few nights later in Danville; Lamy's good friend Father Machebeuf in Sandusky wrote him that they had greenery, three hundred candles lit, and parishioners had cut perhaps that many stars out of gold paper and affixed them to the ceiling.

So we can imagine that Christmas Sunday in Newark of 1844: garlands of green in contrast to the raw unplastered brick, myriad bright candles, glittering stars overhead, and carols sung in German of the Christ child's birth, "Die Geburt des Christkindes."


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he wanders in other centuries from time to time. Tell him about times past that capture your imagination at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Friday, December 01, 2023

Notes from My Knapsack 12-28-23

Notes from My Knapsack 12-28-23
Jeff Gill

Media tools and mental development in 2024
___

I'm continuing on the question I last started with: Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?

Teachers and principals in general say no. Most school districts and each building has a policy of one sort or another about use of smartphones or internet devices during class time; often that has to do with a requirement to keep the device in the locker, and accessible only between classes or during lunch.

There's variation out there, but what I hear an increasing academic chorus plead for is some way to treat phones on campus the way we do handguns, and they're not kidding. Many think they should be banned, in no small part because of the hazards they represent.

Parents often feel otherwise, and that's what has top administrators and school boards in a bind. How to support parent and guardian concerns while also doing what's best for the students. I have a few, tentative ideas, which I'll lay out in order of feasibility and practicality.

First, to those parents and families with school age children: to me, the biggest unambiguous challenge with smartphones is how they carve into sleep time. I know there are other issues (fights, self-image, bullying) people think of around students with phones, but in my experience out around our schools, that's the driver for many, even most of the negative effects. Your child's phone should not be in their room at night. Period. Charge it on the kitchen counter, or better yet in your room. No phone after bedtime. Lack of sleep could be creating or magnifying most of the negative issues Haidt and Twenge describe in their research (see previous column).

Honestly, I think that could help our schools and our students more than anything else. Having laid that on the table, I support the idea that phones be deposited in a secure space or blocking bag on arrival and only get it back at last bell. I'm also aware of the opposition that will impede ever getting there.

But I'll take it a step further. I think it would be of interest for some school, or even a district, to declare online tools and internet devices and screens to be limited to only certain parts of the day, in certain classes under clear restrictions. That's not a simple request, because the trends are overwhelmingly to ebooks and online texts and to be fair, that's the world they will live in after graduation.

If I had a million or two laying around doing nothing, I'd be tempted to set up a charter school that was explicitly book and paper oriented, all but one period a day, just to see how learning happened in that setting again. There is so much we don't know yet about learning on screens.

Yet I'm teaching a graduate level course three times a year online myself, to students I mostly never meet. It's amazing. It's not all bad. We just still don't know so much. Which makes me wonder…


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's quite serious about the sleep thing, which is a boat anchor on students today. Tell him how you're sleeping at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Notes from My Knapsack 12-7-23

Notes from My Knapsack 12-7-23
Jeff Gill

Connections that short circuit communication, let alone learning
___

Should school age students have access to their phones during school hours?

There's a familiar fatalism to the discussions I've been hearing the last year. It's akin to the "vast wasteland" worries Newton Minow first voiced sixty some years ago about television. But kicked up a notch, both in the level of concern and the basis for it, and as to the presumed inability of anyone to do anything about it.

Jonathan Haidt, a highly respected non-partisan scholar at NYU, has put forward some unambiguous data showing the link between common smart phone use and juvenile mental health. I won't walk you through too much of it, and it's easily findable online (yes, irony, hold that thought), but his point is something has happened, and it tracks closely with the spread of hyper-connectedness by juveniles mostly through their phones.

Correlation is not causation, true (I heard you say that!), and good people are working on that; you can look at Jean Twenge's work for first steps to nail down those links and triggers. What has my attention is the near unanimous opinion among educational professionals, teachers and administrators alike (and they do not always agree on everything, but they do here) that everyone would be better off, emotionally, psychologically, and academically, if personal phones were treated, and I'm quoting what a number have said to me all not knowing others said it the same way, "like we would a weapon on campus." In other words, no phones. None.

That's what they'd like. They also all quickly admit they know it's not going to happen. Wait, if they all feel that way, from the office secretary to the substitute teachers, plus the principals and assistant superintendents, why can't that become a policy, at least in some districts as a test?

The answer is parents. Even attempts to limit and manage student phone access during the day, such as a disciplinary action on a student who has admittedly broken school rules and been on their phone repeatedly without permission during class, in restrooms, etc.: the parents are all over administrators and the district office. In general, I'm told, school staff don't believe school boards would support it.

There's a complicator here: the school shooting issue of the last decade or two has parents wanting to be able to contact or be contacted by their child if something happens at the school. It's a mix of pragmatism and sentiment stirred up by strong parental emotions. My child needs to be able to call me at any time.

Those of us who readily recall one phone, in the office, used only with great necessity by a student and not always then, will sigh. That train has left the station. We are all used to constant contact and "find my phone" tracking and the like.

Meanwhile, good people with close attention to the issue have real concerns about the impact of smartphones on learning and emotional health at school. What can we do? I'll try to suggest some ideas in my next column.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not promising to solve the whole question, but he's been thinking about some solutions. Tell him your ideas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, November 27, 2023

Faith Works 12-1-23

Faith Works 12-1-23
Jeff Gill

How Our Christmas Has a History
___

What I want to do this December is go back to a few particular years, and look at our local roots, which have a wide reach, for how Christmas came to be in Licking County: what we can easily think of as "how it's always been." 1800, 1844, 1865, and 1944. There are other points of interest along the way, but I'd like to visit, each in turn, a Christmas memory out of each of those four years.

1800 marks what is effectively the first Christmas observed as such in our area. We have some historical records of people passing through in other months during earlier years, 1751 and 1773 in particular, but not during December.

What we call pioneers were the first European American visitors to leave records; there were Native Americans here for thousands of years, and as I wrote previously, there were African Americans here through the winter of 1773, with a community presided over by a Shawnee woman who was chief of a mixed Delaware and Shawnee settlement, but we know nothing more about their story, or if they marked Dec. 25th in any way.

The first pioneer settlers out of Pennsylvania and Maryland that we have confirmation for arrived in the spring of 1800, most of them men without family at first, but not all. The initial work to clear land, plant crops, then build cabins came first, and for most the word would be sent back through the nearest post office at Zanesville to come on west.

Isaac Stadden and his brother, Col. John Stadden were among that earliest group of arrivals; Isaac is buried just east of the giant basket, in the Bowling Green Cemetery which holds so many of our early settlers. They worked to prepare a place, planting often in openings left by earlier Native American clearing and burning efforts for their crops, speeding the pioneer process.

Benjamin Green and his son-in-law Richard Pitzer had tried out some land for a year near Marietta, then came up the spring of 1800 to land about where O'Bannon Ave. is today, but Benjamin and Catherine had eleven children, some full-grown, so their whole family were involved from the start (they would have three more, after relocating to the Hog Run/White Chapel area south of Newark a few years hence).

Isaac Stadden left his brother in charge once the crops were in and the cabin built, and went back in person to escort his wife, also a Catherine, and their two children to what would become in 1808 Licking County.

By the time they arrived, fall was in the air, and so was something else. John was a widower, and Benjamin Green had a daughter Elizabeth, better known as Betsey. She and John were about the same age, and had determined to share their challenges together in marriage, had set a date of Dec. 10, 1800 to be married. By all accounts everyone was happy for them, including brother Isaac. As he had business with the territorial magistrate, Judge Henry Smith back in Zanesville, he offered to call on his services to marry the happy couple.

But the judge explained to Isaac that the law required notice be posted at three prominent places for a minimum of fifteen days before a marriage could be solemnized. As a good brother, Isaac took it upon himself to ride about, post the notices, and then on Christmas Day escorted to the bride and groom their officiant.

Our earliest history of Christmas is practical, functional, but not without a small note of romance. That's very much what Christmas was in the earliest days of settlement in Newark and Licking County.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows he could have picked other years, but believes you'll learn from the ones on offer. Tell him about your customs of Christmas at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Monday, November 13, 2023

Faith Works 11-24-23

Faith Works 11-24-23
Jeff Gill

Advent is a necessary season
___


The four Sundays leading up to Christmas starts late this year; in fact, December 3rd is the latest it does come.

Most ministers, I believe, prefer Advent to start after the Sunday following Thanksgiving, just to buffer the chaos of travel and family events around the fourth Thursday of November, before diving into the four Sundays preceding Christmas Day (still the 25th).

I always felt odd when Advent began in November, but I also think it odd that the World Series now can extend into November, although the Rangers saw to it we only had one day of baseball into this month.

November 26th has a liturgical role all its own; I know many Christians are not liturgical, even a little, and there are non-Christian readers here. But aside from the Feast of Christ the King of Reign of Christ Sunday (have at it, if you so observe!), I'm wanting to nod in preparation towards a season of preparation, called Advent.

Liturgical purists will debate musical propriety and how or when ornamentation goes up and where. Some of this, I want to note, is because for long centuries we didn't have trees and garlands and wreaths made from mysterious plastics and polymers. All our decor was natural, and as is the way of all flesh, and of all greenery, it came to pieces fairly quickly.

So both churches and families tended to place and decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, and keep it up perhaps a few days, at most until January 6 and Epiphany. Lights were small clipped candles, and not a few of those candles helped speed the end of the decorations.

Now, just to bring everyone up to speed, we have electricity, and decor in stores from just after the Back to School displays come down. I'm neither defending nor endorsing manic holiday decorations, it's just a historical development. We used to couldn't, so we didn't. Now we can, so we do.

As to worship and spiritual disciplines, I prefer to operate from the other end. Rather than spend so much time on what we can't or shouldn't do in Advent, or trying to ban and exclude stuff, I just want to say: Advent is cool. You should try it. Let the full bore Christmas stuff wait a bit, and try out some of these Adventy ideas.

I'm not, for instance, entirely on board with "no carols until Christmas Eve!" but I do think it is a wonderful thing to always sing something with an Advent theme on those Sundays leading up to the celebration of Christ's birth. "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is an ancient classic, and has some fascinating contemporary settings; "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" is plaintive and eminently adaptable. "Breath of Heaven" by Amy Grant is to me a very Advent oriented song, and "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" is directly on point.

Until I started putting this together, I had in the back of my mind the idea that both "Break Forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light" and "Lo, How a Rose 'Ere Blooming" were by J.S. Bach, but I realize the latter is in fact a German carol, but the tune is by Michael Praetorius. Either one is majestic, brooding, and thought provoking.

Because that's the point of Advent. To enhance our ultimate celebration by thinking and praying and working through, very carefully, what it means to anticipate the coming of God-with-us into the world.

That's what Advent is all about, Charlie Brown!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not a purist in much, truth to tell. Tell him how you observe Advent at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.

Faith Works 11-17-23

Faith Works 11-17-23
Jeff Gill

Thankful for what we do not yet have
___


Thankfulness is an art, and like any art, it must be practiced.

Anyone who has practiced, whether it's shooting free throws or sketching landscapes, turning wood on a lathe or diagnosing patients, knows that you can't just practice when it's easy or convenient. Sometimes the best practice in sailing is during a storm; when you can master a skill even as you're weary or distracted, that's a good sign you are at home in your art.

So it is with the art of thankfulness.

Our government is not in the best of order right now, on many levels; I am thankful that we have the outline and tools of democracy still at hand, and ready to be used more responsibly.

The world is not at peace; I am thankful for my awareness that some of the sense of war everywhere is because we can know things previous generations, even our parents's generation, could not, and there is more peace to work from than we might think from a quick glance at the news.

Members of our armed forces have challenges aplenty before them, whether you know any personally or not; I am thankful for the contrast I see looking at life for the average enlisted soldier in most of the great armies of the world, and for our troops. May they train hard so their sweat replaces the blood that might otherwise be shed, and have leave to remind us at home of their sacrifices as we honor their service.

Harvest time is finishing up; I am thankful that I do not have to spend long days and longer nights out in harvester machinery and transport trucks, bringing today's sheaves and selling them at elevators, balancing costs of fuel and taxes on their land against the high calling of growing useful crops. Blessings on our farmers and their families.

Schools face unprecedented challenges in today's world, and are expected to manage tools and technologies the rest of us still are baffled by, both in their use and how to react to potential abuse; I am thankful for teachers and secretaries and administrators and attendance officers and parents and grandparents and yes, thankful for students who keep reminding us, if you pay attention, that there are many fine young people who will exceed our every hope and expectation.

And churches. God bless all the faith communities and new plants and different belief systems all trying to fathom what the Eternal One is saying to the times and seasons we face today; I am thankful for having a religious tradition that feeds my soul and helps me stay connected, and I pray that more people find seek out such a connection in their lives, for I truly believe that in community there is both hope and strength.

If I were to list all the worries, doubts, and concerns that come to mind without much mental effort at all, I could easily fill this column and many more. What takes time and intention is to be thankful, to use Alex Haley's advice: "find the good, and praise it."

There is much good at work in our community this very day, and those who love and seek goodness continue to serve and witness. For them, and those about to join them, I am thankful both now, and in anticipation of more yet to be thankful for.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has to work at thankfulness from time to time. Tell him what you're thankful for at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.