Faith Works 3-20-2026
Jeff Gill
Opening up the inbox, and taking a deep breath
___
As is so often the case, I have no one to blame but myself.
Most mornings, fairly early, I open my laptop, and toggle to the email. It is almost always a torrent, a literal steady flow down the page of new content, subscription account updates, solicitations to respond to opportunities to write about this or that.
Let's stipulate for starters that I have too many news and media sources. Given what I do here, that's no surprise (and no, I don't get free access to this paper, in print or online, that's on me). Newspapers, magazines, Substacks, online newsletters of various sorts, and while I get too many I did not ask for, it's not like the torrent would be manageable if it was just the ones I agreed to at first.
This is before I turn on the television set or open up an app on my phone, and decide which firehose of content I want to have pour out into my eyeballs. I'm just talking about my online and even email inputs.
How do I sort it out? I get asked about this fairly often, and I wish I had a better answer which I felt good about for myself, let alone to give others. There are a handful of benchmark pages and writers whom I would hasten to point out are not those I agree with — part of why I'm not going to provide a list here today — but whose perspectives seem to me to be helpful in getting a starting point in what's going on.
It won't surprise most of you to hear that's not from scanning the headlines, which I do look at on what I know many call "legacy media." That comes after a time sifting some religion content, usually tied to the Christian calendar (did you know we're in Lent? that we just passed Laetare Sunday, halfway to Easter?) as a healthy grounding. Saints days are not part of my Protestant tradition, but I like how they function as milestones, guideposts if you will, along the vast annual track we cycle through, month after month, season after season. Nothing says I can't mark saints' days, so I do.
Last week I spoke in defense of print Bibles; I support a general acknowledgment of the church calendar (without getting into peculiar debates over rules for the colors of pulpit coverings and such, which can be overdone). I'd also like to say we do well to keep our hand in with writing.
Yes, the guy who writes vast amounts of stuff on his computer keyboard, who has reached that point where he doesn't have to look at his hands to type, says we should write things down. Why? Because of the same factors that lead me to say a physical Bible is important, which have to do with memory.
And memory is not about passing tests or showing off knowledge. Your memories are in large part who you are. I've had some powerful reminders of this over the last six years. There is something powerful, and even useful, in forgetting (a subject to which I'll return), but we are also very much what we choose to remember, to hold onto, to focus on. What stories, or events, or values, do we choose to keep "front of mind"?
Online stuff is tied to (spoiler alert) algorithms and technology that helps to wipe our memories and upload new content on a regular basis. Like that firehose I confront on my computer screen most mornings. What you write down? That sticks in the brain, and somewhere deeper than neurons, I think. Notes and underlinings and scribbles in margins. Letters and journals, even. With pencil or pen, on cards or notebooks. The act of writing is a work of memory, which shapes who we are, who we become.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he carries two pens and a pocket of index cards everywhere. Tell him how you remember who you are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
Opening up the inbox, and taking a deep breath
___
As is so often the case, I have no one to blame but myself.
Most mornings, fairly early, I open my laptop, and toggle to the email. It is almost always a torrent, a literal steady flow down the page of new content, subscription account updates, solicitations to respond to opportunities to write about this or that.
Let's stipulate for starters that I have too many news and media sources. Given what I do here, that's no surprise (and no, I don't get free access to this paper, in print or online, that's on me). Newspapers, magazines, Substacks, online newsletters of various sorts, and while I get too many I did not ask for, it's not like the torrent would be manageable if it was just the ones I agreed to at first.
This is before I turn on the television set or open up an app on my phone, and decide which firehose of content I want to have pour out into my eyeballs. I'm just talking about my online and even email inputs.
How do I sort it out? I get asked about this fairly often, and I wish I had a better answer which I felt good about for myself, let alone to give others. There are a handful of benchmark pages and writers whom I would hasten to point out are not those I agree with — part of why I'm not going to provide a list here today — but whose perspectives seem to me to be helpful in getting a starting point in what's going on.
It won't surprise most of you to hear that's not from scanning the headlines, which I do look at on what I know many call "legacy media." That comes after a time sifting some religion content, usually tied to the Christian calendar (did you know we're in Lent? that we just passed Laetare Sunday, halfway to Easter?) as a healthy grounding. Saints days are not part of my Protestant tradition, but I like how they function as milestones, guideposts if you will, along the vast annual track we cycle through, month after month, season after season. Nothing says I can't mark saints' days, so I do.
Last week I spoke in defense of print Bibles; I support a general acknowledgment of the church calendar (without getting into peculiar debates over rules for the colors of pulpit coverings and such, which can be overdone). I'd also like to say we do well to keep our hand in with writing.
Yes, the guy who writes vast amounts of stuff on his computer keyboard, who has reached that point where he doesn't have to look at his hands to type, says we should write things down. Why? Because of the same factors that lead me to say a physical Bible is important, which have to do with memory.
And memory is not about passing tests or showing off knowledge. Your memories are in large part who you are. I've had some powerful reminders of this over the last six years. There is something powerful, and even useful, in forgetting (a subject to which I'll return), but we are also very much what we choose to remember, to hold onto, to focus on. What stories, or events, or values, do we choose to keep "front of mind"?
Online stuff is tied to (spoiler alert) algorithms and technology that helps to wipe our memories and upload new content on a regular basis. Like that firehose I confront on my computer screen most mornings. What you write down? That sticks in the brain, and somewhere deeper than neurons, I think. Notes and underlinings and scribbles in margins. Letters and journals, even. With pencil or pen, on cards or notebooks. The act of writing is a work of memory, which shapes who we are, who we become.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he carries two pens and a pocket of index cards everywhere. Tell him how you remember who you are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
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