Notes from my Knapsack 6-19-2025

Notes from my Knapsack 6-19-2025
Jeff Gill

When a canal boat is a vehicle into the future


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Saturday morning in downtown Newark, 10:00 am June 28th under the broad canopy of the Canal Market District just south of Courthouse Square (which I promise I will get back to after the Fourth of July!), there's an occasion of some living history I'd love to invite you to.

We will be sitting "in" the Ohio and Erie Canal, so to speak. Newark's Canal Street marks where the canal itself, once filled with water and the passing canal boat, formerly rippled past the old County Jail and on towards an aqueduct over the North Fork of the Licking River, heading east towards Coshocton and ultimately Cleveland, or west if you prefer, back through Lockport's many canal locks, and then south down to Portsmouth.

Canal Street is a street today. It hasn't flowed since the Flood of 1913 gave it a final flush. But it all began 200 years ago, with the first spadefuls dug for this massive project for 1825 America, actually just south of the city, in today's Heath, Ohio.

Considered the "Licking Summit," a practical high point on the way from the Ohio River to Lake Erie, governors of Ohio and New York State came to the rural countryside of Licking County to formally get the Ohio and Erie Canal project started, a companion to New York's famous Erie Canal which was already changing the economic and social landscape of the Midwest. Begun in 1817, it was already in use but was a few weeks away from formal opening ceremonies when New York Governor DeWitt Clinton, a presidential hopeful, came to Licking County to help break ground for the state-spanning project.

July 4, 1825 was the groundbreaking, and after speeches by Thomas Ewing of Lancaster and Gov. Clinton, and a few remarks by Governor Jeremiah Morrow of Ohio, the two governors took turns with shovels before a large crowd of appreciative onlookers from not just Newark & Granville, but from all over the state. The Erie Canal connected the Hudson River, and in effect New York City, to Lake Erie at North Tonawanda, New York next door to Buffalo; the new means of transportation helped grow and develop both cities as hubs of commerce and industry, along with lowering food prices on the Atlantic Coast while helping enrich farmers and brokers in the Midwest.

The hope was that from Buffalo to Cleveland, lake passage would then connect to even deeper access to more of the Midwest, with financial benefits (it was said) to all involved.

The Ohio and Erie Canal was in use in parts by 1828, and from end to end by 1832. Granted, the rise of railroads in the 1850s began the obsolescence of the canal system, but canals played a key role in opening up the heart of the United States to commercial development. DeWitt Clinton unexpectedly died in 1828; Jeremiah Morrow ended his second two year term as governor in 1826, and would later serve in the U.S. House of Representative, but refused to run again in 1842 because he thought he was too old to serve. He was 70 years old at the time; he would live to age 80, and Morrow County to our north is named in his honor.

Fourth of July events take precedence, so our 200th anniversary for our pioneering infrastructure project will be on June 28th. It's a good time in any case for us to look back at canals and transportation, and look ahead to how business and industry are changing our landscape today. Come join us!


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's looking forward to speaking on behalf of the unsung Jeremiah Morrow at the program. Tell him what living history you've learned from at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.

Faith Works 6-13-2025

Faith Works 6-13-2025
Jeff Gill

Two giant shadows across this summer's landscape
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Walter Brueggemann said not long ago: "Churches should be the most honest place in town, not the happiest place in town."

Born in 1933, he died on June 5; it seems no coincidence to many ministers and teachers of religion in this area that David Woodyard, born less than a year earlier, died at the end of March, with a memorial service at Denison's Swasey Chapel last weekend, where he ministered as chaplain and taught as a professor for over 60 years. David and his wife Joanne were married in Swasey on her graduation in 1955, together 70 years as a couple.

There were echoes of Brueggemann's passing in the air as we talked about Dave Woodyard, Dr. Woodyard, Dean Woodyard, depending on who was speaking. Dignitaries from the stage, and friends of long-standing in the aisles before and after. David's father was an alumnus (Class of 1916), and later board member, so in sum there have been Woodyards shaping Denison University for over half its existence.

Both Woodyard and Brueggemann were known for their commitment to their students, sometimes to their discomfiture. I only knew Brueggemann by his writings, and one workshop almost thirty years ago where I heard him speak twice, preach once, and a couple of interactions afterwards in the hallways. Still I can say they shared a passionate intensity about the human ability to know something of God's intentions in this world, and a kind but relentless insistence that the text of the Bible shows us a divine purpose that is often at cross purposes to our own desires.

One thing said in a number of ways by multiple speakers at David Woodyard's memorial was "Dave showed up." He practiced a ministry of presence, on campus, in student spaces when invited, opening his home with Joanne to students and new faculty in many ways. He kept more than office hours, he came when called no matter the circumstances or tensions afoot, and in many ways we all called him fearless.

Which made him hard to argue with sometimes; I still did, and I enjoy some of the memories of our interactions even when they were disputes. Like Brueggemann, Dave Woodyard felt American Christians in general, and his own mainline Protestant fellows, were too comfortable. He argued from the sincerely held belief that church should not simply be a place you come to in order to find reassurance, especially to be reassured that you were right.

Walter Brueggemann said not long ago, according to Carey Newman in Baptist News, to a room full of pastors: "You are afraid of the text." 

Then, Newman says, he paused.

"You are afraid of what the Bible says."

Again, there was a pause.

"You are afraid of the what the Bible says because you are afraid of what the Bible will ask you to do."

That sounds very like something Dave Woodyard would say.

As someone who has spent the bulk of his professional life in congregational ministry, I pushed back occasionally on Dave's assertions that Christians are too comfortable, and needed to be challenged at every turn. I would offer from my own experience a counter-perspective about the very real pain and needs of even middle-class American Protestants, while admitting that there was a point to his concerns with how comfortable churchgoing people could insist on being.

Dave didn't blast me out of my seat, he listened, as I know he did with his students. Then he would, with respect but a sharp wit, push back. These were always useful discussions, I think for both of us.

Having taken that side so often in life, I will admit on his passing, and that of his fellow Christian and peer in both age and perspective, he and Brueggemann are right to worry. Now that they are gone from our midst, we need to pick up the theme. If faith is simply a source of comfort, it may not be the clarion call of God for justice and sacrificial love that scripture testifies so consistently.

Let us be uncomfortable at times in church, and thank Walter and Dave for the reminders of how this is part of God's love for us, as well.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he always knows it's a fine line between discomfort and justice in this life. Tell him how you need to be pushed at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.