Faith Works 1-6-23
Jeff Gill
How far would you travel to know
___
Epiphany, also known as the Twelfth Day of Christmas, is necessarily on January the Sixth.
In the Christian calendar it marks the visit of the Magi, or "wise men from the East" in certain translations, to the presence of the newborn Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph.
In parts of Christendom, Epiphany is the day for gifts and celebration; in our neck of the woods, it's when the tree comes down if it hadn't long before. Across the history of Biblical interpretation around the birth of Jesus, from Balaam's prophecy in the Book of Numbers to the statements about camels and gifts in Isaiah, to the nativity tale in Matthew's Gospel, these mages, these wise folk, astronomers or perhaps astrologers, bearing three gifts whether that's how many of them there were or not, are said to have traveled.
They came from the east, the tribes and nations and peoples beyond the conquering arc of Alexander the Great, extending beyond the orbit of the Pax Romana. In this place beyond everything familiar, there were wise people who watched the skies and the stars, and who saw signs leading them first to Jerusalem in Judea, and then on to Bethlehem (or Nazareth, some suggest, but the question is open).
We don't get the details in the Matthean account, but we are told the consequences. The Magi traveled a long distance, which took a long time, across hazardous terrain. They entered a place they didn't know before, they had the boldness needed to approach the court of a distant king, by the name of Herod, and they continued even when they realized they'd backed into some vicious internecine conflict in this land.
Somehow, in some way, the movements of stars and planets and their positions in relation to the circling constellations, all told these intrepid pilgrims there was good news of some sort worth taking the effort to see first hand. Which leads me to a question.
Mark Twain in his "Innocents Abroad" of 1869 said: "To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else — these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. Lifetimes of ecstasy crowded into a single moment." Is this why the Magi came to the manger?
Contrariwise, Samuel Johnson in the late 1700s told potential tourists about a site in northern Ireland: "[The Giant's Causeway] is worth seeing, but not worth the effort of going to see." Yet the Magi, without knowing for sure what or who it was they would see at the end of their journey, continued on in the face of dangers and distractions and surely just the temptation to turn around and go home, where they had no doubt comfortable beds and knew in their sleep where the alarm clock was, to reach out and turn it off and doze another half hour.
Which makes one lesson of Epiphany, for me, this question: what news would motivate and empower me to make that kind of trip? Is there out there any learning or knowledge or illumination that I need or want enough I'd cross the Tigris AND the Euphrates to reach?
What possible information would keep me atop a camel, across a desert, and in defiance of a king's powerful and vicious will, to gain for myself, to know firsthand and see face to face?
My your Epiphany start you off on a journey of illumination and inspiration in 2023.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's made some trips, but usually just to see family. Tell him what's put you on the road to find what you're looking for at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Friday, December 30, 2022
Notes from my Knapsack 1-5-23
Notes from my Knapsack 1-5-23
Jeff Gill
Taking responsibility, sharing accountability
___
Welcome to a new year, 2023!
Or as Pete Townshend might have said, meet the new year, same as the old year. But I suspect we will get fooled again, now and then.
I do expect new events and changes in circumstances during the coming twelve months, simply because if the last twelve or the dozen before that are any indication, a year is long enough for stuff to happen.
But most of the stuff will be fairly predictable.
One of the challenges for a columnist is to ask of oneself, let alone of readers, what change or transformation or shift is possible, let alone necessary.
For myself and in my own views of the community in which I live, I find myself wrestling often with the tension between personal responsibility and community values. I do think it's important, as a general rule, for individuals to take responsibility for their choices, because that's the best way we can learn from them. If you do something dumb, a bad outcome is a great way to internalize the lesson "don't do that again." A common phrase which I think contains some deep wisdom goes "play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
A modest form of this is one adults wrestle with in Scouting. We can work overtime to ensure every youth has all the items they're supposed to bring when they camp out or do an activity out in nature, away from home and stores and security. But at a certain point, you need to learn the lesson of packing your own gear, checking your supplies, ensuring your own comfort. If you skip layers, and it gets cold in the sleeping bag, you learn things that long night, awaiting the chilly dawn.
We adults are there to ensure safety, and I'd never want a youth in my care to be harmed or hurt or frostbitten just to learn a lesson. But there's a certain amount of discomfort we know it's not our job to prevent, in the interests of the young Scouts themselves.
In the adult world, this gets trickier in matters like, say, harm reduction. If you've never heard of it, let me say it boils down — for me, anyhow — to this: people may make decisions I don't agree with, but no one should die to learn a lesson.
Because death, and I ask y'all to bear with me, is the opposite of any lessons whatsoever. You don't learn anything, at least in an earthly sense, by dying. You cease to learn. And your opportunities to learn new lessons, to make different decisions, end.
This can result in some actions and interventions which cause us as a community to wrestle hard with that interplay between personal responsibility and community values. And I get it that providing life saving interventions to people who keep making the same mistakes which lead to hazard and unconsciousness and near-death seems like we would be not leading people to different decisions.
Except I will say again: death is the end of learning, in any earthly sense. I have good friends with different views on substance use and abuse than my own, but we agree on this: people should be able to live long enough to make different choices. Harm reduction may keep people using dangerous and even illegal substances for longer, but that's longer versus ending. Period.
In 2023, I hope and pray we can have some new conversations about harm reduction, and addiction, and recovery, and hope. Because I have grown tired of having some of the same ones for too many years.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's sure we can do better but isn't certain we will. Tell him how our community can balance responsibility and respect at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Jeff Gill
Taking responsibility, sharing accountability
___
Welcome to a new year, 2023!
Or as Pete Townshend might have said, meet the new year, same as the old year. But I suspect we will get fooled again, now and then.
I do expect new events and changes in circumstances during the coming twelve months, simply because if the last twelve or the dozen before that are any indication, a year is long enough for stuff to happen.
But most of the stuff will be fairly predictable.
One of the challenges for a columnist is to ask of oneself, let alone of readers, what change or transformation or shift is possible, let alone necessary.
For myself and in my own views of the community in which I live, I find myself wrestling often with the tension between personal responsibility and community values. I do think it's important, as a general rule, for individuals to take responsibility for their choices, because that's the best way we can learn from them. If you do something dumb, a bad outcome is a great way to internalize the lesson "don't do that again." A common phrase which I think contains some deep wisdom goes "play stupid games, win stupid prizes."
A modest form of this is one adults wrestle with in Scouting. We can work overtime to ensure every youth has all the items they're supposed to bring when they camp out or do an activity out in nature, away from home and stores and security. But at a certain point, you need to learn the lesson of packing your own gear, checking your supplies, ensuring your own comfort. If you skip layers, and it gets cold in the sleeping bag, you learn things that long night, awaiting the chilly dawn.
We adults are there to ensure safety, and I'd never want a youth in my care to be harmed or hurt or frostbitten just to learn a lesson. But there's a certain amount of discomfort we know it's not our job to prevent, in the interests of the young Scouts themselves.
In the adult world, this gets trickier in matters like, say, harm reduction. If you've never heard of it, let me say it boils down — for me, anyhow — to this: people may make decisions I don't agree with, but no one should die to learn a lesson.
Because death, and I ask y'all to bear with me, is the opposite of any lessons whatsoever. You don't learn anything, at least in an earthly sense, by dying. You cease to learn. And your opportunities to learn new lessons, to make different decisions, end.
This can result in some actions and interventions which cause us as a community to wrestle hard with that interplay between personal responsibility and community values. And I get it that providing life saving interventions to people who keep making the same mistakes which lead to hazard and unconsciousness and near-death seems like we would be not leading people to different decisions.
Except I will say again: death is the end of learning, in any earthly sense. I have good friends with different views on substance use and abuse than my own, but we agree on this: people should be able to live long enough to make different choices. Harm reduction may keep people using dangerous and even illegal substances for longer, but that's longer versus ending. Period.
In 2023, I hope and pray we can have some new conversations about harm reduction, and addiction, and recovery, and hope. Because I have grown tired of having some of the same ones for too many years.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's sure we can do better but isn't certain we will. Tell him how our community can balance responsibility and respect at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
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