Faith Works 5-23-2025
Jeff Gill
As we vacation on Amity Island
___
"Jaws" came out fifty years ago, and in the movie, Amity Island has a billboard celebrating "50th Annual Regatta — July 4th - 10th" which grounds the whole thing in history, kind of.
My high school basketball coach grew up on Martha's Vineyard, and he could not have loved "Jaws" more for the scenic tour of his old stomping grounds. I don't think he could have told you a thing about the plot of the thing, he just watched it multiple times to watch the scenery. Did he miss the point? He was entertained, and bought tickets, so everyone wins.
Monday is Memorial Day, and there will be celebrations and commemorations, and we will all miss the point in some ways. It is a day for remembrance — in Great Britain and Canada they have a Remembrance Day on Nov. 11, marking the end of World War I in 1918, which is also sometimes called Memorial Day (and we call Veterans Day here). Our day for memorials and remembrance of those who died in our nation's service goes back at least to 1868, and certainly in the fresh memory of the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, and the hundreds of thousands of deaths both North and South in that conflict.
So there is a solemnity to this weekend, and certainly to at least some part of Monday. Gen. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued his General Order Number 11 asking that veterans mark May 30 as a date to tend graves and honor the dead of the late conflict (it can easily be found online, and I think still rewards re-reading even if the language is as flowery as you might imagine for 1868). May 30 was Memorial Day up into the 1970s when we nudged many national observances to Mondays, in the ongoing creation of "weekends" as a civic reality.
Memorial Day weekend is also the beginning of summer, with schools letting out and camps opening and family vacations setting out. It can also be, for many parish clergy, a time to say goodbye to substantial amounts of their congregations, with cherished hopes that they'll see them again come Labor Day or after.
Honoring sacrifice, giving thanks to God for life, taking a day of rest: these all have their place in most religious traditions. We stir them in with patriotism, commercialism, and a frantic pursuit of leisure, if not happiness, and get the modern American summer. Memorial Day is one of the first casualties of this potentially toxic mix.
Longtime readers know around this point of the year I like to encourage people to visit places of worship while on vacation. It's so nearly counter-intuitive for our culture of recreation I feel compelled to keep mentioning it, even as I don't want to make it one more obligation you should feel as if you have to fulfill.
Going to church somewhere you've never been can really teach you things about your own faith community you'll never learn at home. It will make you appreciate things you didn't know you valued, and might even cause you to see why a minister or some other church leader wants to make certain changes. Plus being a stranger in worship will help you see strangers in your church very differently, and I suspect much more clearly.
The mayor of Amity said insistently "we need summer dollars!" His pursuits in the office you might say blinded him to other realities swimming off-shore. We need much each summer, to refresh, renew, restore. Just make sure you don't pursue your version of Amity's summer dollars to where you miss what you need to see right in front of you.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to Memorial Day observances for many reasons. Tell him how you revitalize in the summertime at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
Jeff Gill
As we vacation on Amity Island
___
"Jaws" came out fifty years ago, and in the movie, Amity Island has a billboard celebrating "50th Annual Regatta — July 4th - 10th" which grounds the whole thing in history, kind of.
My high school basketball coach grew up on Martha's Vineyard, and he could not have loved "Jaws" more for the scenic tour of his old stomping grounds. I don't think he could have told you a thing about the plot of the thing, he just watched it multiple times to watch the scenery. Did he miss the point? He was entertained, and bought tickets, so everyone wins.
Monday is Memorial Day, and there will be celebrations and commemorations, and we will all miss the point in some ways. It is a day for remembrance — in Great Britain and Canada they have a Remembrance Day on Nov. 11, marking the end of World War I in 1918, which is also sometimes called Memorial Day (and we call Veterans Day here). Our day for memorials and remembrance of those who died in our nation's service goes back at least to 1868, and certainly in the fresh memory of the Civil War from 1861 to 1865, and the hundreds of thousands of deaths both North and South in that conflict.
So there is a solemnity to this weekend, and certainly to at least some part of Monday. Gen. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued his General Order Number 11 asking that veterans mark May 30 as a date to tend graves and honor the dead of the late conflict (it can easily be found online, and I think still rewards re-reading even if the language is as flowery as you might imagine for 1868). May 30 was Memorial Day up into the 1970s when we nudged many national observances to Mondays, in the ongoing creation of "weekends" as a civic reality.
Memorial Day weekend is also the beginning of summer, with schools letting out and camps opening and family vacations setting out. It can also be, for many parish clergy, a time to say goodbye to substantial amounts of their congregations, with cherished hopes that they'll see them again come Labor Day or after.
Honoring sacrifice, giving thanks to God for life, taking a day of rest: these all have their place in most religious traditions. We stir them in with patriotism, commercialism, and a frantic pursuit of leisure, if not happiness, and get the modern American summer. Memorial Day is one of the first casualties of this potentially toxic mix.
Longtime readers know around this point of the year I like to encourage people to visit places of worship while on vacation. It's so nearly counter-intuitive for our culture of recreation I feel compelled to keep mentioning it, even as I don't want to make it one more obligation you should feel as if you have to fulfill.
Going to church somewhere you've never been can really teach you things about your own faith community you'll never learn at home. It will make you appreciate things you didn't know you valued, and might even cause you to see why a minister or some other church leader wants to make certain changes. Plus being a stranger in worship will help you see strangers in your church very differently, and I suspect much more clearly.
The mayor of Amity said insistently "we need summer dollars!" His pursuits in the office you might say blinded him to other realities swimming off-shore. We need much each summer, to refresh, renew, restore. Just make sure you don't pursue your version of Amity's summer dollars to where you miss what you need to see right in front of you.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to Memorial Day observances for many reasons. Tell him how you revitalize in the summertime at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.
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