Notes from my Knapsack 11-28-24
Jeff Gill
Thankful for what is no more
___
Thanksgiving season is obviously a time to work on feeling thankful.
The usual drill is to try and be more mindful of the blessings and advantages and gifts you have that you may well be taking for granted. And there's nothing wrong with working on that one!
What I have in mind this year, though, is more obscure, but I hope is something that might help me in that increased awareness of immediate reasons to be thankful.
If you've followed the saga of the 1900 Avalon Building in Newark, on social media a large number of people turn out to have had personal stories which wound through the apartments above and shops below over the previous century. Obviously there was sentiment to save it yet again, but old buildings are not like cats, and are lucky if they have two lives, three at most. The water from extinguishing the fire across the roof of the Avalon sealed its fate. And the hard reality about historic preservation is: you can't save 'em all.
So while I never lived in, shopped at, or even entered the Avalon, its demise has me thinking about other buildings now gone that are part of my life, if only now in memory and imagination.
For six years I had a desk in the 1886 county Children's Home on E. Main St. with the juvenile court. Torn down in 2013, while there were voices calling to preserve it, the structure was, like the Avalon, too compromised for preservation. It was a fascinating building, though, with a great deal of history taking place within it over a century and a quarter, and it pops up in my dreams at odd intervals still.
When I first visited Newark in 1989, the Auditorium Theatre was still standing, and had more going on inside of it than the then shuttered Midland across Second St. Built in 1894 as the Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall, it was an echo of my hometown of Valparaiso, Indiana, which also had the unique feature of a Memorial Opera House built instead of a towering monument to Civil War veterans. There was a practical spirit linking the two places which pleased me; why spend a pile of money on a monument when you could memorialize the soldiers and sailors with something everyone could use?
At that time, fires and decay had taken away the building's classical facade and sculptures, some of which you can still see at VFW Post 1060 on Forry Avenue; the pinnacle statuary group is on private property elsewhere in the county but survives as well. I saw performances and concerts in the old Auditorium, and think of it still when I walk past the Licking County Foundation's offices now on that site.
Recently I got to attend a friend's production of a play at the Eisner Center on the Denison University campus; it was in the Hylbert Family Studio Theatre, and well staged there. But I kept thinking back to the Ace Morgan Theatre, the knotty pine lobby, its history back with Morgan's friend Hal Holbrook, and later student stars in the making like John Davidson, Michael Eisner (whose center now occupies the location), Steve Carell, and Jennifer Garner.
Along with long-lost family homes and places where in years past I've enjoyed Thanksgiving dinners, there are so many buildings that I find myself thankful for which are no more. What lost locations helped shape you, and what do you recall of them?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; if he got going on lost church buildings this column would be a multi-volume book. Tell him about places that are gone but not for you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Monday, November 18, 2024
Faith Works 11-29-24
Faith Works 11-29-24
Jeff Gill
When we say we can't wait, we mean it
___
In the Christian liturgical calendar, Advent is the period of prayerful preparation leading up to Christmas Day.
Some years, it backs into November (in the Orthodox Church, it is longer and always does), usually observed with four Sundays of themed worship before Christmas Day itself, all leading up to that joyful day.
Advent is traditionally seen as a commemoration of the Incarnation, of God entering into this world in the person of Jesus, first as a tiny, helpless baby, but also as a penitential season preparing us for Christ's return, sometimes called the Second Advent of Jesus. In either case, it is a season of waiting.
Which we're terrible at.
Wait? Have you heard of one-click ordering? Wait? Do you know what my office sounds like when I'm getting on a video conference with people from multiple time zones, many of whom I've never met and may never meet, but will soon see and converse with, but first the window pops up: Updates are now downloading. Aiiiieeee! You mean I will have to WAIT a minute or two to do something that not all that long ago required a long car or train trip, perhaps a plane flight, a taxi to a conference center, checking in, then walking up to a meeting room? Instead of all that, I can do it NOW, unless I first have updates to download . . .
Waiting is not a spiritual practice much cultivated in the world we live in. Imagine the horror of going to the cereal aisle and seeing forty-eleven brands of breakfast snap-crackle-and-pop but not finding our preferred sugary discs? Someone will hear about this, now!
Advent says: or we could learn how to wait. To, if you will excuse the profanity against our modern era's commercial divinities, learn how to defer gratification. Christmas will come soon enough, on the 25th, but first, we could just try to enter into the waiting as a good place to be, and not just a desert of unfulfilled wants we're enduring, like the drive across Kansas (my apologies to the fine folk of that remarkably level state).
If we were to find the journey part of the joy of the destination, then waiting would not be something to be endured, but a part of the plan we embrace. One of the worship practice elements some churches observe in Advent I find both charming, and instructive: to start the first Sunday of Advent with an empty manger scene. Then to add over the next days and weeks the cow, the donkey, the sheep, shepherds of course, Mary and Joseph . . . Jesus, who will arrive in due time.
You can even spice up the period after Advent, between Christmas and Epiphany, with a Biblically appropriate slow roll of the Magi and their camels making their way in post-Christmas, culminating January 6th.
We all need to wait better. I think that's spiritual counsel few would dispute. Advent is both a time, and a way, for us to work on that gift: to wait with God for fulfillment.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not that great at waiting patiently himself. Tell him how you've learned to wait well at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Jeff Gill
When we say we can't wait, we mean it
___
In the Christian liturgical calendar, Advent is the period of prayerful preparation leading up to Christmas Day.
Some years, it backs into November (in the Orthodox Church, it is longer and always does), usually observed with four Sundays of themed worship before Christmas Day itself, all leading up to that joyful day.
Advent is traditionally seen as a commemoration of the Incarnation, of God entering into this world in the person of Jesus, first as a tiny, helpless baby, but also as a penitential season preparing us for Christ's return, sometimes called the Second Advent of Jesus. In either case, it is a season of waiting.
Which we're terrible at.
Wait? Have you heard of one-click ordering? Wait? Do you know what my office sounds like when I'm getting on a video conference with people from multiple time zones, many of whom I've never met and may never meet, but will soon see and converse with, but first the window pops up: Updates are now downloading. Aiiiieeee! You mean I will have to WAIT a minute or two to do something that not all that long ago required a long car or train trip, perhaps a plane flight, a taxi to a conference center, checking in, then walking up to a meeting room? Instead of all that, I can do it NOW, unless I first have updates to download . . .
Waiting is not a spiritual practice much cultivated in the world we live in. Imagine the horror of going to the cereal aisle and seeing forty-eleven brands of breakfast snap-crackle-and-pop but not finding our preferred sugary discs? Someone will hear about this, now!
Advent says: or we could learn how to wait. To, if you will excuse the profanity against our modern era's commercial divinities, learn how to defer gratification. Christmas will come soon enough, on the 25th, but first, we could just try to enter into the waiting as a good place to be, and not just a desert of unfulfilled wants we're enduring, like the drive across Kansas (my apologies to the fine folk of that remarkably level state).
If we were to find the journey part of the joy of the destination, then waiting would not be something to be endured, but a part of the plan we embrace. One of the worship practice elements some churches observe in Advent I find both charming, and instructive: to start the first Sunday of Advent with an empty manger scene. Then to add over the next days and weeks the cow, the donkey, the sheep, shepherds of course, Mary and Joseph . . . Jesus, who will arrive in due time.
You can even spice up the period after Advent, between Christmas and Epiphany, with a Biblically appropriate slow roll of the Magi and their camels making their way in post-Christmas, culminating January 6th.
We all need to wait better. I think that's spiritual counsel few would dispute. Advent is both a time, and a way, for us to work on that gift: to wait with God for fulfillment.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not that great at waiting patiently himself. Tell him how you've learned to wait well at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Faith Works 11-22-24
Nate & Ben — I will shortly be sending you my Nov. 29 column, too, as I'm used to a request for early submissions around T'giving & Christmas! Pax, Jeff
===
Faith Works 11-22-24
Jeff Gill
A gentle reminder of a pressing reality
___
This whole column could easily be rendered down into two words: don't wait.
My justification for writing more, other than to fill the space this is intended to cover, is I have a very specific area of "not waiting" to urge upon all you readers.
When it comes to family gatherings and the holidays, we're all familiar with the sudden outburst of an unexpected story, and someone piping up at the end "you ought to write that down." Indeed, someone should.
What I have to add to that over these last few years of caring for aging family members is an encouragement from two angles.
One is from how I look back now over the years before my father's passing, and how I had tried to recover and record some family stories, with a special emphasis on gaps and missing turns between better known pieces of the narrative. I made special trips home with just that in mind, and in our last summer together, I will always be glad I encouraged him to take a trip with me where we shared a long car trip and a hotel room for a week at a church gathering we'd both attended many times in the past.
Again, I will long value the fact that I made those choices. But I have to tell this part of the story: for the most part, it didn't work. In many ways, the stories had already receded into a bit of gathering fog that obscured stories I knew had been vivid in years past. A few times I asked about a particular situation, and he wasn't sure what I was talking about, and more than once said "that didn't happen."
Maybe my childhood memories of some stories had turned astray, but mostly I knew from other records and information (I got my love of history and genealogy from him, so there's a fair amount of that, too) the incident I had in mind was a story he had told, but now had no recollection of it.
I waited too long, in other words. After he died, I found a number of fragments on his computer which I treasure, and I suspect a few were triggered by those conversations I started on visits home, which for me went nowhere. So there's that, along with the obvious fact that the time spent was worthwhile in its own right.
The other side of this is an awkward, perhaps even painful subject for many of us, but it's relevant. My mother is still with us, and she's happy to talk, but her stories are getting . . . interesting. As in often, clearly implausible, and not infrequently I have plenty of basis for saying "that just didn't happen."
Occasionally, my siblings and I can piece together how she's merging events from her childhood and her parents with her earlier motherhood and raising us. It's an interesting exercise. Names have gotten fairly random (and we think strongly influenced by what was recently on TV), but any suggestion of "Mom, do you mean Jeff" will get a chortle and a very firm, emphatic, "no, that's not who I mean."
Author Richard Russo's mother Jean died in 2007, and the circumstances of her passing are echoed in his 2009 novel "That Old Cape Magic," something you can find confirmed in his memoir "Elsewhere" which came out in 2012. He describes a lengthy period of storytelling by a elderly, dying parent, which may or may not be influenced by morphine, but moves back and forth from solid facts to a stormy ocean of likely fiction. The son is left to sort out what really happened.
All of which is to say: don't wait. If you want stories from older relatives, don't wait to ask, don't wait to write down or record them. Do it now.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a handful of narratives he's knocking into shape while he's still thinking clearly. Tell him your favorite family stories at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
===
Faith Works 11-22-24
Jeff Gill
A gentle reminder of a pressing reality
___
This whole column could easily be rendered down into two words: don't wait.
My justification for writing more, other than to fill the space this is intended to cover, is I have a very specific area of "not waiting" to urge upon all you readers.
When it comes to family gatherings and the holidays, we're all familiar with the sudden outburst of an unexpected story, and someone piping up at the end "you ought to write that down." Indeed, someone should.
What I have to add to that over these last few years of caring for aging family members is an encouragement from two angles.
One is from how I look back now over the years before my father's passing, and how I had tried to recover and record some family stories, with a special emphasis on gaps and missing turns between better known pieces of the narrative. I made special trips home with just that in mind, and in our last summer together, I will always be glad I encouraged him to take a trip with me where we shared a long car trip and a hotel room for a week at a church gathering we'd both attended many times in the past.
Again, I will long value the fact that I made those choices. But I have to tell this part of the story: for the most part, it didn't work. In many ways, the stories had already receded into a bit of gathering fog that obscured stories I knew had been vivid in years past. A few times I asked about a particular situation, and he wasn't sure what I was talking about, and more than once said "that didn't happen."
Maybe my childhood memories of some stories had turned astray, but mostly I knew from other records and information (I got my love of history and genealogy from him, so there's a fair amount of that, too) the incident I had in mind was a story he had told, but now had no recollection of it.
I waited too long, in other words. After he died, I found a number of fragments on his computer which I treasure, and I suspect a few were triggered by those conversations I started on visits home, which for me went nowhere. So there's that, along with the obvious fact that the time spent was worthwhile in its own right.
The other side of this is an awkward, perhaps even painful subject for many of us, but it's relevant. My mother is still with us, and she's happy to talk, but her stories are getting . . . interesting. As in often, clearly implausible, and not infrequently I have plenty of basis for saying "that just didn't happen."
Occasionally, my siblings and I can piece together how she's merging events from her childhood and her parents with her earlier motherhood and raising us. It's an interesting exercise. Names have gotten fairly random (and we think strongly influenced by what was recently on TV), but any suggestion of "Mom, do you mean Jeff" will get a chortle and a very firm, emphatic, "no, that's not who I mean."
Author Richard Russo's mother Jean died in 2007, and the circumstances of her passing are echoed in his 2009 novel "That Old Cape Magic," something you can find confirmed in his memoir "Elsewhere" which came out in 2012. He describes a lengthy period of storytelling by a elderly, dying parent, which may or may not be influenced by morphine, but moves back and forth from solid facts to a stormy ocean of likely fiction. The son is left to sort out what really happened.
All of which is to say: don't wait. If you want stories from older relatives, don't wait to ask, don't wait to write down or record them. Do it now.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a handful of narratives he's knocking into shape while he's still thinking clearly. Tell him your favorite family stories at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
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