Notes from my Knapsack 3-9-23
Jeff Gill
Disappearing in plain sight
___
We have an annual confusion over starting points and signs of the seasons. March 12 is time change, which is neither astronomical nor meteorological, but the impact on us in terms of daylight and evening time is immense.
Weather folk mark Spring from March 1, and most of us whether meteorologists or not think of "Spring" as March, April, May, then "Summer" as June, July, and August. It may be hot as Hades in September, but that's "Fall" to almost anyone, as are October and November.
Yet astronomical Spring begins with the vernal equinox, March 20 this year, regardless of the temperatures or foliage. June 21 is the summer solstice, ushering in astronomical Summer, but folk calendars tend to call it "Midsummer" as in old Bill's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with the longest day pushing back the shortest night.
May 24 is the last day of school in Granville, and for kids, that's the first day of summer; August 23 is the first day of the next school year, and there's an implicit sense of autumn in going back.
What's really interesting is the phenology calendar. Phenology, our friends at Ohio State tell us, is "the study of recurring biological phenomena and their relationship to weather. Bird migration, hunting and gathering seasons, blooming of wildflowers and trees, and the seasonal appearance of insects are examples of phenological events that have been recorded for centuries." Even if you're not a big outdoors person, you notice when the stuff starts happening: in your yard, on the horizon you watch out the bedroom window in the morning, along the roads you travel daily.
You can go deep in this matter at the OSU Phenology Center website, https://phenology.osu.edu/ or you can just look around. The silver maples are already starting to expand in outline, buds filling out their formerly skeletal profiles against the clouds, softening and detailing their limbs and branches.
Soon, the trees will disappear. No, seriously. You see the trunks and bark and each species' unique way of reaching up into the sky; oaks round out their branching extents where maples fan out. Once you start to notice those patterns, you can see which type of tree you're looking at from quite a distance. And for over half the year, that's who trees are to us.
But once the leaves open up and the canopy settles down as a shroud across the forest, you can't see the trees for the forest. You see leaves and greens, but you have to get much closer to see the tree itself for what it is. It's all just "the woods" and we lump the trees together, and likewise take them for granted.
In this margin between buds and foliage, take a few moments to appreciate trees for what they are, unique and valuable each in their own way. The birds do for sure, as do many other creatures, finding a different sort of refuge or foodstuff in every one.
It might help us see people around us differently as well.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's fascinated by trees and forests each in their own way. Tell him about what you see blossoming at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Friday, March 03, 2023
Sunday, February 26, 2023
Faith Works 3-3-23
Faith Works 3-3-23
Jeff Gill
To preach the word, in season and out
___
In 1923, as February ended and March begins, the minister of Valparaiso's First Christian Church in northwest Indiana is under fire from a major national organization that has suddenly exploded in numbers around the Midwest; our best information is from the March 9 edition of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana's weekly publication, with a March 5 dateline.
Rev. C.E. Burns opposed allowing the Klan to hold a program on Wednesday in the church's auditorium. On Feb. 27, the board met, and supported the minister over the Klan, but by a vote of 12 to 9. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. On March 4 he preached a message of opposition to the Klan's methods and agenda, while asking for cooperation on the areas where they did not disagree.
Again, we only have the Klan's side of the story here. But their indignation at being opposed, and their barely veiled thuggishness at the future of Rev. Burns's ministry, is clear. They aren't used to opposition of any sort.
For wider context, the Klan will hold a rally hosting tens of thousands in May and another with hundreds of thousands in attendance a few weeks later in nearby Kokomo. Klan candidates will sweep statewide elections in November.
Those impending events give us some sense of the pressures building, and what it meant to take any kind of public stand against a relatively new organization locally, but one not only growing, but making moves to purchase major institutions like Valparaiso University. Publicity about a collection to complete that sale would be a major feature of the May & July Klan rallies in Indiana; while all reports indicate much money was donated, somehow the closing payment never arrived, and VU would not be sold to the Klan but to the Lutheran University Association in 1925.
On my list of today's impacts of the Klan's particular mark from 100 years ago: both Lutherans & Catholics felt even more pressure from the Midwest Klan than did the racial groups we think of as the Klan's primary focus of hostility. That's because the earlier post-Civil War Klan, and the post-World War II Klan, made hostility to civil rights for African Americans their primary reason for being. But this "second era" Klan, while in the South still a racist terror group in most of its activities, was in the North and West more concerned with European immigrants in general, and Catholicism in particular. Lutheranism was swept up in that enmity, both out of their resistance to Prohibition which was a major talking point for northern Klan recruiters, and because it was seen as "less American" especially because of the common usage of German in their worship services.
So the existence of Valparaiso University as a Lutheran affiliated school derives largely from a desire to create a safe haven for Lutheran students to pursue higher education. Just down the road, the Klan attempted to march across the Notre Dame campus in South Bend. After the Klan was run off, they became known as: The Fighting Irish.
For churches caught in the middle, the battle lines often ran right through the congregation. And that's what I wonder about as I read the scraps we have available today about how it was, to preach and lead in 1923. Rev. Burns, who prevailed in keeping the Klan from holding their meeting at the church whose pulpit he served, was run out of town after three different occasions when crosses were burned on the parsonage lawn. And his "denouncing" of the Klan seems painfully mixed with pleading that the Klan allow him to do his work. I can only image how difficult that sermon was to write, and deliver.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's read enough old newspapers to know there is nothing new under the sun (actually that's in the Bible). Tell him what's new again at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Page 2:
http://bl-libg-doghill.ads.iu.edu/gpd-web/fierycross/192339.pdf
Picture #1, Buckeye Lake Ohio Klan Konklave, July 12, 1923:
https://ohiopix.org/contentdm-search-results/?cdm-keywords=Ku%20Klux%20Klan%20(1915-%20)--Ohio--History--20th%20century&cdm-mode=all&cdm-field=subjec
Jeff Gill
To preach the word, in season and out
___
In 1923, as February ended and March begins, the minister of Valparaiso's First Christian Church in northwest Indiana is under fire from a major national organization that has suddenly exploded in numbers around the Midwest; our best information is from the March 9 edition of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana's weekly publication, with a March 5 dateline.
Rev. C.E. Burns opposed allowing the Klan to hold a program on Wednesday in the church's auditorium. On Feb. 27, the board met, and supported the minister over the Klan, but by a vote of 12 to 9. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. On March 4 he preached a message of opposition to the Klan's methods and agenda, while asking for cooperation on the areas where they did not disagree.
Again, we only have the Klan's side of the story here. But their indignation at being opposed, and their barely veiled thuggishness at the future of Rev. Burns's ministry, is clear. They aren't used to opposition of any sort.
For wider context, the Klan will hold a rally hosting tens of thousands in May and another with hundreds of thousands in attendance a few weeks later in nearby Kokomo. Klan candidates will sweep statewide elections in November.
Those impending events give us some sense of the pressures building, and what it meant to take any kind of public stand against a relatively new organization locally, but one not only growing, but making moves to purchase major institutions like Valparaiso University. Publicity about a collection to complete that sale would be a major feature of the May & July Klan rallies in Indiana; while all reports indicate much money was donated, somehow the closing payment never arrived, and VU would not be sold to the Klan but to the Lutheran University Association in 1925.
On my list of today's impacts of the Klan's particular mark from 100 years ago: both Lutherans & Catholics felt even more pressure from the Midwest Klan than did the racial groups we think of as the Klan's primary focus of hostility. That's because the earlier post-Civil War Klan, and the post-World War II Klan, made hostility to civil rights for African Americans their primary reason for being. But this "second era" Klan, while in the South still a racist terror group in most of its activities, was in the North and West more concerned with European immigrants in general, and Catholicism in particular. Lutheranism was swept up in that enmity, both out of their resistance to Prohibition which was a major talking point for northern Klan recruiters, and because it was seen as "less American" especially because of the common usage of German in their worship services.
So the existence of Valparaiso University as a Lutheran affiliated school derives largely from a desire to create a safe haven for Lutheran students to pursue higher education. Just down the road, the Klan attempted to march across the Notre Dame campus in South Bend. After the Klan was run off, they became known as: The Fighting Irish.
For churches caught in the middle, the battle lines often ran right through the congregation. And that's what I wonder about as I read the scraps we have available today about how it was, to preach and lead in 1923. Rev. Burns, who prevailed in keeping the Klan from holding their meeting at the church whose pulpit he served, was run out of town after three different occasions when crosses were burned on the parsonage lawn. And his "denouncing" of the Klan seems painfully mixed with pleading that the Klan allow him to do his work. I can only image how difficult that sermon was to write, and deliver.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's read enough old newspapers to know there is nothing new under the sun (actually that's in the Bible). Tell him what's new again at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
Page 2:
http://bl-libg-doghill.ads.iu.edu/gpd-web/fierycross/192339.pdf
Picture #1, Buckeye Lake Ohio Klan Konklave, July 12, 1923:
https://ohiopix.org/contentdm-search-results/?cdm-keywords=Ku%20Klux%20Klan%20(1915-%20)--Ohio--History--20th%20century&cdm-mode=all&cdm-field=subjec
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