Knapsack 3-18

Notes From My Knapsack 3-18-10

Jeff Gill

 

Things Are Looking Up, So Should You

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Aside from the mystery of the large yellow object in the skies over central Ohio last week, we've all been looking up at gutters the last few weeks.

 

Some went "Ooooh, ahhhhh" at the beauty of the ice formations, some, watching the soffit pull away from the joists, go "aiiieeeee," and those who make their living repairing roofs and gutters go "cha-ching, baby!"

 

If you've had serious roof and eaves damage from the recently ended winter onslaught, my sympathies are with you, truly. We know what you're looking at, and it's your wallet's contents taking wings and flying away over the horizon.

 

For the rest of us, neither professional housewrights nor pained homeowners, this has been a great opportunity to lift up our gaze and notice some things.

 

St. Luke's Episcopal Church was thankful that their realization of structural needs in their 1835 gem of a building was before the weighty snowfall, since the engineering review gave them (thanks to agile consultants and digital cameras) a view of their undulating roofline. You don't have to be an engineer to know that's not a good sign, but it takes some specialist knowledge and no little money to figure out how to fix it (contributions are still quite welcome, by the way).

 

Walking down Broadway, I realize again and again how much I miss their weathervane, the ornamental top over the golden cupola dome, a figure that's not quite representational and not quite abstract. It reminds me of cod shapes from similar New England churches, and I always wonder if it wasn't an evocation of exactly that, modified out of deference to the lack of local salt-water fisheries in central Ohio.

 

If you just glance up above the storefronts on the main business district, all of which are interesting enough in their own right, you'll see a nearly invisible but omnipresent element of our downtown, like the frame on the Mona Lisa. The fact that you don't notice it is usually the point, but it's part of the overall experience.

 

Above the Prudential Real Estate awning is some lightly colored glass, an over-window element that was probably critically important back before electric light became both cheap, and the norm. Getting the most out of daylight for just getting your work done or lighting the shop was a budget decision that shaped success – now, it's mostly covered over, and not so important.

 

Above windows and signage and awnings, the very brick itself of many of Broadway's buildings shows a subtle layering and variation of texture, with shapes and outlines that keep them from being bland boxes like so much of modern retail architecture.

 

Along with the brick, you can see how woodworking and some tin-smithy have been woven together to make the illusion of fine stonecarving. The rot and decay that eats steadily away around the water-holding edges of this ornamentation shows you why stone is a great way to go, but it's fascinating to see what's been done.

 

Brackets, gables, moldings; dentils, acanthus leaves, egg and dart; the usual Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian orders atop pillars and pilasters – around Granville, we've got all this and more, in various states of original condition and patchy repair. Look up, and check it out, and make an old walk a new experience.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.

Faith Works 3-13

Faith Works 3-13-10

Jeff Gill

 

An Object of Infinite Value

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This past week I went to a program over on OSU's Columbus campus, at the Wexner Center. I sighed as I wandered through the relentlessly off-putting architecture, found a friendly face at the front desk (Hi, Dawn!), and went on down to hear a talk in their theatre on "Do Museums Still Need Object?"

 

If you're at all curious, there's an answer provided by Steven Conn, a professor of public history at OSU and author of a book by the same title. It's "yes, but they don't play the same role they did a hundred years ago."

 

This program, moderated by the always marvelous Fred Andrle, included Dr. Conn and the directors of the four largest museums in Columbus, the heads of COSI, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Wexner Center itself, and the Ohio Historical Center represented by the new chief of the Ohio Historical Society. I thought they missed a bit of an opportunity by not rounding out the panel with the director of the Columbus Zoo, but it was a crowded ninety minutes as it was.

 

Everyone agreed that objects still had an important place in modern museum or science center visitor experience, but that the idea of coming to see a Hope Diamond or Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" or even King Tut's funerary mask doesn't quite occupy the same place in the imagination of a museumgoer today.

 

What had me thinking that there is a tie to our interests here on the "Your Faith" page is the role of special, or sacred objects. The unspoken theme in the presentations, as each panelist spoke, had a resonance in my mind of the "loss of the sacred" that some call a mark of the modern era.

 

Yes, I know, it's supposed to be all about the post-modern these days, but I think post-modernism is so yesterday that modernity is back in style again. Or at least we're back to a point where maybe we can try to figure out what "the modern era" stands for, since we seem to have jumped right across the World Wars into post-modernism without finishing up the questions posed by modern-ness (if that's a word, and it is now).

 

In the pre-modern world, there was such a thing as sacred space in worship buildings, and even the bar in the courtroom had a near mystical aura to its perimeter. Families had the good silver and the good china, and at church, the communion set in the most low church of Protestant congregations was silver and wrapped in purple velvet, rubbed and buffed in hushed tones.

 

My family was pretty solidly out of that tradition, with a fair amount of nervous skepticism in the air when matters Catholic came up as to confession or communion or priests, but it was a clearly understood matter that the Bible was never, NEVER to be placed on the floor, or have anything put on top of it – not another book, even a hymnal, let alone a coffee cup.

 

And I will confess as to having quietly and inobtrusively moved other people's cups off of Bibles out of sheer atavistic necessity. My grandmother is a quarter century gone from this life, but I can see her steely gaze out of the shadows when a mug sits down even on someone else's study Bible.

 

This is not the world we live in today, whatever you call it. Bibles are often paperback, underlined, and piled in corners even in churches with a very high view of Scripture; the title "the Reverend," not a professional designation like doctor (Dr.) or even esquire (Esq.), describes attributes to the relative sacredness of the person involved, bestowed through the act of ordination . . . but even in traditions that view ordination that way, the title is largely by the wayside.

 

So is it much of a surprise that, in a culture where even those who believe something is sacred believe that not much is, we don't hold much sacred? What would it mean to cry out "Is nothing sacred?" Or would you just get a quiet "Uh, no, not really" from most of the room?

 

In our churches, what is sacred? Where do we see the sacred, the set-apartness of God's intention, breaking through into our space, among our everyday items? Sacred objects shouldn't just be the good furniture in the parlor (keep those darn kids off of it), but what else is there? Some days, though, I think there is nothing much more sacred than a welcoming smile; certainly nothing more priceless.

 

Just don't put your coffee cup on my Bible. Nothing personal, it's just who I am. (And what does that say, anyhow?)

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he'd love to talk about where your sacred spots are around Licking County – tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow Knapsack @Twitter.