Notes From My Knapsack 4-22-07
Jeff Gill
Enjoying the Beautiful Game
Soccer is still not to the taste of all native-born Midwesterners. Not enough equipment, rare and glancing impacts, very few points: these all work against soccer in the minds of some.
The Little Guy is a fan and a player, if still more of an entomologist and botanist than aggressive forward. Five years after his first soccer league, he’s moved past having Dad as coach (and a good thing), and there are actual keepers (goalies, some say) guarding the net.
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what makes an offsides call, which is scary because my first exposure to soccer other than an export of Brazil in social studies class was to be a soccer ref.
It was a new sport for my hometown, where football and basketball had long reigned supreme, and all four of the high school guys who got hired to ref soccer for 5th and 6th graders knew nothing, except for the Belgian exchange student, who taught us all we needed to know about corner kicks, throw-ins (keep your feet on the ground), and the mysterious yellow and red cards.
He didn’t tell us enough about offsides to stick, though it looks something like icing in hockey, which I’ve never understood either. But plenty of smart people don’t follow the intricacies of the infield fly rule, so I can’t let it bother me.
During our recent seasonably unseasonable weather (for an Ohio April), the team practiced cheerfully, but the home practice suffered. Outdoors, anyhow.
We compensated by putting in extra time on one of the most fascinating aspects of the video game industry I’ve yet seen. Right, right, you don’t play (or don’t let your kids play them), but do you know that not all video games involve shootings and explosions and pixilated gore?
FIFA Street is a video game soccer program. There’s a Madden-labeled football game, and the NBA has a basketball offering that approaches what I’m talking about. FIFA is the international soccer body, overseeing things like the every-four-years World Cup, and they have approved a legit soccer video game on green grass and many players.
But they also have released FIFA Street, where you travel the world, playing soccer under highway overpasses in New York City, in the favelas of Rio, and by the docks of Marseilles, in a four-on-four street league with major players from around the world.
The level of play, and the strategy of field and body positioning that comes across in a TV set and the standard hand controller, is amazing. You fake the ball around a defender, kick passes high or low, bop headers into the middle, and score on roundhouse kicks while falling gracefully backwards onto the pavement.
Meanwhile, police cars cruise by, carry-out delivery guys on bicycles pedal past, and locals hang onto the mesh fencing and talk amongst themselves while the eight players dash and dive on the makeshift pitch.
My computer days are medieval, and my last real programming was on a Commodore 64 (well, a bit on a 128), but I still hold in my mind’s eye the sub-structure of all this. Graphical interfaces built on programming tools assembled from machine languages comprised of hexadecimal spun out of the ones and zeroes of binary.
Deep within this delightful version of what all the rest o’ the world calls “the beautiful game” is a data tool scanning myriad on and off switches. That’s all. But work up through those layers, and you have a son and father learning from and between each other how to play soccer a bit better.
There is little more I can add about shooting and shooters and violence and grief, except that we can all have less of it in our lives, even if we cannot avoid it. Guns and explosions and death does not have to be our entertainment, and we can pluck it as aggressively as we do the dandelions.
And the dandelions do us much less harm. So let’s avoid our tendency to look for extreme answers and mass exclusions, and just choose our activities and amusements with care. Get out and kick it around with the kids, and find the ways inside the hosue where you can keep things interesting without detonations and demolition.
But I’ll warn you: FIFA Street is way too much fun (plus you learn some geography), so schedule all the outdoor time you can first, and leave the gaming to after sunset.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, and a retired soccer coach and referee (by popular demand). Tell him about some of your favorite family activities at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Faith Works 4-14-07
Jeff Gill
Post-Easter Hash, Eggs On Top
Serving leftovers after a busy week is a useful tradition in many kitchens, and also in this workshop.
Plenty of bits that don’t quite constitute a full meal can go together nicely, especially with some judiciously applied eggs, and since we all have our own hardboiled eggs still in the fridge, I’ll serve up some scraps that I think are tasty, but not a full column.
First, there’s a fundraising concert tonight for Open Arms Shelter, which now is open with all code and zoning approvals needed, at 350 E. Main St. The concert is at Heath High School in the auditorium, starting at 7:00 pm. Gospel and country and bluegrass and probably everyone singing “Amazing Grace” will be on the program, or whoever the Lord sends with an instrument under their arm and a voice to raise.
Roger and Marilyn Morgan and the gang still have some work to do which is noted on the occupancy permit, and could use a skilled plumber, among other things. But they are cleared to serve the homeless individuals they are called to minister with, and that is reason to rejoice. The concert is to help Last Call Ministries purchase the former Larry’s Drugs building where they’re at, almost to Cedar St. next to Heartbeats.
Check out www.lastcalloutreach.org for late breaking info!
Do I have anything to say about Don Imus? Well, just a bit (this is hash, recall).
In 1981 I wasn’t out of college yet, writing book reviews and features for the Purdue Exponent, the campus/community paper. My editor got this “bound proof” of an upcoming book in the mail, called “God’s Other Son” by a New York DJ eager to prove his capacity for blasphemy and crudity called (drum roll) Don Imus.
She thought I should do the piece, because I was a DJ myself, a Christian, and did most of the book reviews anyhow; what she wanted was a “phoner,” an interview with the author by phone to go with the review.
I caught the book flung at me when next I came down the steps (they used to be next to the boiler room in the student union, now they have a really nice building with windows – sniff), and picked up a phone and called the number on the letter than was stuffed in the cover.
A very nice publisher’s assistant with a major Bronx accent was immediately receptive to the phoner idea, and said she’d call back in the next hour with a time for the interview.
It was some years before I learned how unusual it is to a) get a helpful person at a New York pulbisher’s office, and b) for them to do what they say they’ll do.
The call came, and she asked if I could do it in about an hour and a half. This meant skipping a class, so of course I said “yes” (sorry, mom), and killed time fiddling with our still new DEC terminals with an early version of Qwark on them, and reading stuff coming over the AP ticker, the 1981 version of browsing the internet.
At the right time, I placed the call, and then . . .
That’s where I really have nothing useful to say, because Imus was stoned out of his mind. Apparently he has been sober for 17 years, alcohol and cocaine, and speaks out for rehab causes, and I’m happy for him. If the publisher thought it was a “cool” or “hip” thing to give a college paper an incoherent author for an interview, too bad for them. I spoke to a person I was told was Imus for twenty minutes, who answered no questions, and likely didn’t hear or comprehend them anyhow. I quietly said “thank you, I’m hanging up now” in the middle of his third or fourth rant, and had no interview to use, and we didn’t review his ghastly book, either.
Looking him up on wikipedia, I see he re-released the book in 1994 when he became famous again and it was a NYT bestseller. Too bad I don’t still have the bound galleys of that first one, but I threw it out, right after I hung up.
Closing on a much brighter note, the Community Sunrise Service was a joy and delight; I saw many old friends and a few new, and heard at least dozen people say I’m taller than my picture. In fact, I am five foot, seventeen inches in height.
Tomorrow morning, an interfaith prayer service rooted in Native American spiritual traditions will gather at Observatory Mound (just behind Licking Memorial Hospital, walking access from Octagon State Memorial at 33rd and Parkview) for a 6:00 am “Warming of the Earth” observance of spring. As with the moonrise observances, the fact that the sunrise may not be directly visible doesn’t change the meaning of the ceremony, and the company will be present, snow or shine.
And that’s our post-Easter hash! In theory, we’ll have more coherent content for you next week.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story (coherently, please) at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Post-Easter Hash, Eggs On Top
Serving leftovers after a busy week is a useful tradition in many kitchens, and also in this workshop.
Plenty of bits that don’t quite constitute a full meal can go together nicely, especially with some judiciously applied eggs, and since we all have our own hardboiled eggs still in the fridge, I’ll serve up some scraps that I think are tasty, but not a full column.
First, there’s a fundraising concert tonight for Open Arms Shelter, which now is open with all code and zoning approvals needed, at 350 E. Main St. The concert is at Heath High School in the auditorium, starting at 7:00 pm. Gospel and country and bluegrass and probably everyone singing “Amazing Grace” will be on the program, or whoever the Lord sends with an instrument under their arm and a voice to raise.
Roger and Marilyn Morgan and the gang still have some work to do which is noted on the occupancy permit, and could use a skilled plumber, among other things. But they are cleared to serve the homeless individuals they are called to minister with, and that is reason to rejoice. The concert is to help Last Call Ministries purchase the former Larry’s Drugs building where they’re at, almost to Cedar St. next to Heartbeats.
Check out www.lastcalloutreach.org for late breaking info!
Do I have anything to say about Don Imus? Well, just a bit (this is hash, recall).
In 1981 I wasn’t out of college yet, writing book reviews and features for the Purdue Exponent, the campus/community paper. My editor got this “bound proof” of an upcoming book in the mail, called “God’s Other Son” by a New York DJ eager to prove his capacity for blasphemy and crudity called (drum roll) Don Imus.
She thought I should do the piece, because I was a DJ myself, a Christian, and did most of the book reviews anyhow; what she wanted was a “phoner,” an interview with the author by phone to go with the review.
I caught the book flung at me when next I came down the steps (they used to be next to the boiler room in the student union, now they have a really nice building with windows – sniff), and picked up a phone and called the number on the letter than was stuffed in the cover.
A very nice publisher’s assistant with a major Bronx accent was immediately receptive to the phoner idea, and said she’d call back in the next hour with a time for the interview.
It was some years before I learned how unusual it is to a) get a helpful person at a New York pulbisher’s office, and b) for them to do what they say they’ll do.
The call came, and she asked if I could do it in about an hour and a half. This meant skipping a class, so of course I said “yes” (sorry, mom), and killed time fiddling with our still new DEC terminals with an early version of Qwark on them, and reading stuff coming over the AP ticker, the 1981 version of browsing the internet.
At the right time, I placed the call, and then . . .
That’s where I really have nothing useful to say, because Imus was stoned out of his mind. Apparently he has been sober for 17 years, alcohol and cocaine, and speaks out for rehab causes, and I’m happy for him. If the publisher thought it was a “cool” or “hip” thing to give a college paper an incoherent author for an interview, too bad for them. I spoke to a person I was told was Imus for twenty minutes, who answered no questions, and likely didn’t hear or comprehend them anyhow. I quietly said “thank you, I’m hanging up now” in the middle of his third or fourth rant, and had no interview to use, and we didn’t review his ghastly book, either.
Looking him up on wikipedia, I see he re-released the book in 1994 when he became famous again and it was a NYT bestseller. Too bad I don’t still have the bound galleys of that first one, but I threw it out, right after I hung up.
Closing on a much brighter note, the Community Sunrise Service was a joy and delight; I saw many old friends and a few new, and heard at least dozen people say I’m taller than my picture. In fact, I am five foot, seventeen inches in height.
Tomorrow morning, an interfaith prayer service rooted in Native American spiritual traditions will gather at Observatory Mound (just behind Licking Memorial Hospital, walking access from Octagon State Memorial at 33rd and Parkview) for a 6:00 am “Warming of the Earth” observance of spring. As with the moonrise observances, the fact that the sunrise may not be directly visible doesn’t change the meaning of the ceremony, and the company will be present, snow or shine.
And that’s our post-Easter hash! In theory, we’ll have more coherent content for you next week.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story (coherently, please) at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Notes From My Knapsack 4-15-07
Jeff Gill
Time Is Money, Or Taxes
Thanks to page 81 of the 2006 IRS form 1040, we know that the majority of American taxpayers spend 30.3 hours “doing their taxes,” as we call it.
I don’t know what you include in the process of “doing your taxes,” such as procrastination, ordering pizza, sharpening pencils, and looking at your comic book collection you ran across while hunting receipts, but here’s how the IRS sees it.
They allocate 19 hours to “record keeping.” Does that include time spent looking for the right size bin to store your folders in, in dark grey since your older bins are grey, but now they only have blue, and you don’t like blue, so you visit three stores, only to go back and buy the darkest blue you can at the first store because they’re cheaper.
Anyhow, 19 hours.
Then “tax planning,” four hours worth. That would sound like the time you spend, holding the remote in your hand, about to turn off the TV, listening to what Jean Chatzky says on the morning show about how to save money on your taxes. Five minutes each time, maybe twenty times through the year, that’s an hour and half, but maybe they think some people make appointments and go talk to financial professionals. You could do that, I guess.
We’re up to 23 hours, and next on the table is another 3.7 hours for “form completion.” You know, stapling the forms to the sheet, then peeling them off since that’s your draft copy you do in pencil, then recopy in ink, then staple to the one you’ll send in. Maybe with a check, maybe not. 3.7 hours for looking for the magnifying glass to read the tables and charts that tell you in the end what you “owe” and then subtract what you’ve paid to see if you get a “refund,” also known as “money of yours they’ve been sitting on that you’re not seeing any interest on, no sir, not a chance, but thanks for playing!” As you can tell, it doesn’t feel like a refund to me.
And it sure isn’t a windfall, which is how people inexplicably treat it. Now the tax prep businesses helpfully promote this wacky idea by offering scratch-offs when you come in. Hey, it’s all random chance, anyhow; let’s see what you won! Refund, lottery, wages – all the same.
3.7 hours to fume over that.
Then there’s “form submission.” Am I the only one who just plain doesn’t like the sound of that one? But I’m not thrilled about clicking buttons on my browser window that say “submit,” either, so perhaps “form submission” is a more neutral term than I’m giving the IRS credit for. Half an hour they give you, which I assume includes ransacking the pantry shelves for a stamp in the evening of the deadline (Tuesday, this year, the 17th – woo hooo!), driving down to the special Post Office line where you can trim the deadline and postmark right on the edge.
And my favorite category, “All Other.” 3.1 hours, which is time for six pizzas to arrive and, sadly, eat them as well. Making labels for the bins with the receipts and forms and pencil copies would go here, too, I guess.
But the total went at the start: 30.3 hours. At the end of the table is “Average cost (dollars)” which for the 1040 filers comes out “$269.” Hmmm. So if that’s based on an hourly rate, I get $8.87 an hour.
Which means the federal gov’mint says my time is worth $8.87 an hour. Better than minimum wage, I’ll grant you, and some who have painted or stacked block with me would testify it’s more than I’m worth. Still, it makes me wonder where that figure came from exactly.
The point, no doubt, is to let us know that the government understands we spend time, and time is money, to send them money (or ask for our money back), and our contribution is recognized. Sort of.
You don’t get to credit that $269 on your taxes, and there’s no receipt or anything. But if you disagree with their assessments or assumptions, there’s an email you are encouraged to use along with a street address for sending in feedback.
No indication of how much time they think it would take to do that, but it gives me a column to write. If only I could get the Booster to pay me . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, which means he files self-employment estimated taxes four times a year; don’t even get his wife started on that one. Send your form feedback to knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Time Is Money, Or Taxes
Thanks to page 81 of the 2006 IRS form 1040, we know that the majority of American taxpayers spend 30.3 hours “doing their taxes,” as we call it.
I don’t know what you include in the process of “doing your taxes,” such as procrastination, ordering pizza, sharpening pencils, and looking at your comic book collection you ran across while hunting receipts, but here’s how the IRS sees it.
They allocate 19 hours to “record keeping.” Does that include time spent looking for the right size bin to store your folders in, in dark grey since your older bins are grey, but now they only have blue, and you don’t like blue, so you visit three stores, only to go back and buy the darkest blue you can at the first store because they’re cheaper.
Anyhow, 19 hours.
Then “tax planning,” four hours worth. That would sound like the time you spend, holding the remote in your hand, about to turn off the TV, listening to what Jean Chatzky says on the morning show about how to save money on your taxes. Five minutes each time, maybe twenty times through the year, that’s an hour and half, but maybe they think some people make appointments and go talk to financial professionals. You could do that, I guess.
We’re up to 23 hours, and next on the table is another 3.7 hours for “form completion.” You know, stapling the forms to the sheet, then peeling them off since that’s your draft copy you do in pencil, then recopy in ink, then staple to the one you’ll send in. Maybe with a check, maybe not. 3.7 hours for looking for the magnifying glass to read the tables and charts that tell you in the end what you “owe” and then subtract what you’ve paid to see if you get a “refund,” also known as “money of yours they’ve been sitting on that you’re not seeing any interest on, no sir, not a chance, but thanks for playing!” As you can tell, it doesn’t feel like a refund to me.
And it sure isn’t a windfall, which is how people inexplicably treat it. Now the tax prep businesses helpfully promote this wacky idea by offering scratch-offs when you come in. Hey, it’s all random chance, anyhow; let’s see what you won! Refund, lottery, wages – all the same.
3.7 hours to fume over that.
Then there’s “form submission.” Am I the only one who just plain doesn’t like the sound of that one? But I’m not thrilled about clicking buttons on my browser window that say “submit,” either, so perhaps “form submission” is a more neutral term than I’m giving the IRS credit for. Half an hour they give you, which I assume includes ransacking the pantry shelves for a stamp in the evening of the deadline (Tuesday, this year, the 17th – woo hooo!), driving down to the special Post Office line where you can trim the deadline and postmark right on the edge.
And my favorite category, “All Other.” 3.1 hours, which is time for six pizzas to arrive and, sadly, eat them as well. Making labels for the bins with the receipts and forms and pencil copies would go here, too, I guess.
But the total went at the start: 30.3 hours. At the end of the table is “Average cost (dollars)” which for the 1040 filers comes out “$269.” Hmmm. So if that’s based on an hourly rate, I get $8.87 an hour.
Which means the federal gov’mint says my time is worth $8.87 an hour. Better than minimum wage, I’ll grant you, and some who have painted or stacked block with me would testify it’s more than I’m worth. Still, it makes me wonder where that figure came from exactly.
The point, no doubt, is to let us know that the government understands we spend time, and time is money, to send them money (or ask for our money back), and our contribution is recognized. Sort of.
You don’t get to credit that $269 on your taxes, and there’s no receipt or anything. But if you disagree with their assessments or assumptions, there’s an email you are encouraged to use along with a street address for sending in feedback.
No indication of how much time they think it would take to do that, but it gives me a column to write. If only I could get the Booster to pay me . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio, which means he files self-employment estimated taxes four times a year; don’t even get his wife started on that one. Send your form feedback to knapsack77@gmail.com.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Faith Works 4-7-07
Jeff Gill
Holy Saturday Anticipation
Even those who aren’t in the mainstream of Christian observance have some knowledge that we just had Maundy Thursday and Good Friday on the liturgical calendar.
Tomorrow, of course, is Easter Sunday, where the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth on the “first day of the week” is celebrated not only once a year, but in each Sunday worship celebration. Jesus the Christ, the “anointed one of God,” proves the truth of all he’s said in the days before by living out his truth in rising from the grave, leaving behind an Empty Tomb.
But what’s today?
If you check out the calendar pages of this paper or most Christian church newsletters, you’d be forgiven if you thought it was the liturgical holiday “Easter Egg Hunt Saturday.” Folks of all sorts of faith perspectives hold this date as the sacred obligation to sugar up the little darlings as much as possible, from Kiwanians and Rotarians to Presbyterians and Free Will Baptists.
That actually isn’t what the day is for. Long enough ago, the eggs were rolled and hidden and hunted for after you got home from Easter worship and had a big family dinner – and many families do this themselves.
But with the advent of ending Lent with an outburst of nice clothes and flowers for mom, people didn’t want the chilluns rolling in the fresh, green grass in their powder blue slacks or white dresses with pink bows. That, and the big Easter egg hunt folks wanted to get it over with so they could go home and eat their ham with their family (and watch The Masters’ golf tournament on TV in the afternoon, falling asleep around the 14th fairway).
Any preacher worth their salt, or sugar, can justify the connection of bright colors, eggs, and rebirth, new life, and Easter. NASCAR theme pre-decorated eggs and Spiderman gift baskets, maybe not so much.
I have no concern with Easter Egg Hunts per se. But there is something reflective and profound about thinking, in the context of Holy Week, what this day really represents.
Yesterday, Good Friday, Jesus died. Were you there? . . .as the song says. We saw the centurion drive a spear in his side on the cross, and carried his lifeless body to the tomb.
Just the day before that, on Thursday, we celebrated the Passover with him, in a borrowed upper room, but with the timeless story of Egypt and the Red Sea and Mount Sinai. The Talmud teaches that we were there, that “all mankind was present at Sinai, at the giving of the law.” And we were there in Maundy Thursday services, as Jesus pointed out a different way of looking at the loaf of bread, and the cup of wine.
Today? Today he is dead. And we don’t quite know what to do. Some of us have hope, some have already lost it. Some know what to do, going around and gathering up spices and oils to prepare the body for the long sleep until the fullness of God’s plans are revealed, and others of us are just sitting, staring, wondering.
Were you, are you there? In Holy Saturday is a reminder that, even for all those whose faith is strong, there is the reality that death comes. Could God have raised Jesus in the moment the cross was lowered and the body touched the ground? If one, why not the other.
There is a significance, and importance that was hinted at with the references Jesus made to “the sign of Jonah,” to the “three days” from Friday noon to Sunday morning. There is an interval, a space set apart, and while we might want it arranged some other way, there is this pause, when all creation seems to stop breathing for a moment. Waiting to see what will happen, and only understanding it truly when -- what has already happened is accepted for what it was. Easter needs Holy Saturday for it to be fully what it is.
And what is that? Well, I suspect there’s a Sunrise Service somewhere near you, or you are most cordially invited to come to downtown Newark, before the sun rises, and join us in the Midland Theater at 6:30 am.
The Newark Area Ministerial Association is hosting a community service, and joining Second Presbyterian after to sponsor a breakfast whose proceeds go to the Licking County Jail Ministry. I hear that the sermon is on “Resurrection, Right Now!”
And if you don’t want to hear me preach, there’s going to be some joyful music and other prayers and dramatic readings shared. Wherever you go, may tomorrow be a day when new life and the rising of the Son be a Light for you and yours.
Today, reflect on the story not quite completed, and the place of Holy Saturday in that tale.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Holy Saturday Anticipation
Even those who aren’t in the mainstream of Christian observance have some knowledge that we just had Maundy Thursday and Good Friday on the liturgical calendar.
Tomorrow, of course, is Easter Sunday, where the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth on the “first day of the week” is celebrated not only once a year, but in each Sunday worship celebration. Jesus the Christ, the “anointed one of God,” proves the truth of all he’s said in the days before by living out his truth in rising from the grave, leaving behind an Empty Tomb.
But what’s today?
If you check out the calendar pages of this paper or most Christian church newsletters, you’d be forgiven if you thought it was the liturgical holiday “Easter Egg Hunt Saturday.” Folks of all sorts of faith perspectives hold this date as the sacred obligation to sugar up the little darlings as much as possible, from Kiwanians and Rotarians to Presbyterians and Free Will Baptists.
That actually isn’t what the day is for. Long enough ago, the eggs were rolled and hidden and hunted for after you got home from Easter worship and had a big family dinner – and many families do this themselves.
But with the advent of ending Lent with an outburst of nice clothes and flowers for mom, people didn’t want the chilluns rolling in the fresh, green grass in their powder blue slacks or white dresses with pink bows. That, and the big Easter egg hunt folks wanted to get it over with so they could go home and eat their ham with their family (and watch The Masters’ golf tournament on TV in the afternoon, falling asleep around the 14th fairway).
Any preacher worth their salt, or sugar, can justify the connection of bright colors, eggs, and rebirth, new life, and Easter. NASCAR theme pre-decorated eggs and Spiderman gift baskets, maybe not so much.
I have no concern with Easter Egg Hunts per se. But there is something reflective and profound about thinking, in the context of Holy Week, what this day really represents.
Yesterday, Good Friday, Jesus died. Were you there? . . .as the song says. We saw the centurion drive a spear in his side on the cross, and carried his lifeless body to the tomb.
Just the day before that, on Thursday, we celebrated the Passover with him, in a borrowed upper room, but with the timeless story of Egypt and the Red Sea and Mount Sinai. The Talmud teaches that we were there, that “all mankind was present at Sinai, at the giving of the law.” And we were there in Maundy Thursday services, as Jesus pointed out a different way of looking at the loaf of bread, and the cup of wine.
Today? Today he is dead. And we don’t quite know what to do. Some of us have hope, some have already lost it. Some know what to do, going around and gathering up spices and oils to prepare the body for the long sleep until the fullness of God’s plans are revealed, and others of us are just sitting, staring, wondering.
Were you, are you there? In Holy Saturday is a reminder that, even for all those whose faith is strong, there is the reality that death comes. Could God have raised Jesus in the moment the cross was lowered and the body touched the ground? If one, why not the other.
There is a significance, and importance that was hinted at with the references Jesus made to “the sign of Jonah,” to the “three days” from Friday noon to Sunday morning. There is an interval, a space set apart, and while we might want it arranged some other way, there is this pause, when all creation seems to stop breathing for a moment. Waiting to see what will happen, and only understanding it truly when -- what has already happened is accepted for what it was. Easter needs Holy Saturday for it to be fully what it is.
And what is that? Well, I suspect there’s a Sunrise Service somewhere near you, or you are most cordially invited to come to downtown Newark, before the sun rises, and join us in the Midland Theater at 6:30 am.
The Newark Area Ministerial Association is hosting a community service, and joining Second Presbyterian after to sponsor a breakfast whose proceeds go to the Licking County Jail Ministry. I hear that the sermon is on “Resurrection, Right Now!”
And if you don’t want to hear me preach, there’s going to be some joyful music and other prayers and dramatic readings shared. Wherever you go, may tomorrow be a day when new life and the rising of the Son be a Light for you and yours.
Today, reflect on the story not quite completed, and the place of Holy Saturday in that tale.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Notes From My Knapsack 4-8-07
Jeff Gill
Life Doesn’t Live Itself
Your lawn doesn’t need much to start growing.
If you want lush grass instead of a full crop of spring beauty (those lovely little white flowers), clover, and the nascent buds of crabgrass that will cover half your yard by July, you need some help. Bags o’ chemicals, all of which come with college textbooks helpfully taped to the side of the canister, sack, or jug, come in colors not known in nature.
These colors conveniently stain your skin, reminding you to wash up thoroughly before eating nachos. If you later fall ill, know that the corporate lawyer will introduce into evidence the fact that you “knew” this was an acceptable risk from the multi-fold label (“purchase of this product constitutes waiver of all rights and acceptance of all provisions of this document unless a notarized letter affirming your waiver of the waiver is received at our offices in the Turks & Caicos within two days of purchase, provision as such void in Vermont and Quebec”).
If you like a diverse ecosystem right in front of your front door, just let it go. If you live in a municipality, you’d better mow (six inches and then notes from the health dept. could show up on your door), but you’ll have something to mow no matter what you do.
Unless you spray wide-spectrum U-Kil-It on the whole deal.
Then you have a window of barren soil to look forward to, and then a sudden infestation of stuff only Howard Siegrist could love. Purslane and hairy dock and three kinds of plantain plus the inevitable dandelion army.
“Life will out,” or so it seems, and it takes a great deal of chemical death to stop life from growing in the patio cracks and through the mulch and along the fencerow. Some of the startling appearance of the drive along 161 to Columbus is from the wall of foliage coming down, revealing abandoned houses as disturbing to the eye as the recent family homes now gutted and gape-mouthed. A structure just left to overgrow a decade ago looks like Sleeping Beauty’s castle in the middle of the story, with no help from the spells of evil stepmothers, just the persistence of life.
Tell all this to the gardener, even now roto-tilling and planting peas and ‘taters. Life may run amok, but not necessarily the life we desire. The most organic of gardeners is still seeking a different equilibrium, placing marigolds to counter deer and corn where beans will later climb. You try to grow some things, and not others; that’s what sets gardening and farming apart.
Life alone is not quite a value; ask someone fighting cancer. Cancer is life and growth without control or intention, just for it’s own sake. When tumors thrive, “life” as we really mean it may be threatened.
Emerson famously said “he who is not busy being born is busy dying,” and the statement holds up in a variety of settings. What undercuts that paean to growth and life is when life chokes off more life than it promotes. This is the question and concern we feel as we drive along the Rt. 161 and Rt. 62 corridors. Seeds and sprouting are not always good news.
For much of the Christian world, this springtime weekend is a celebration of the victory of life over death, seen blossoming in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Some ask why a gift of new life would be so rarely given if a loving God actually could give it, usually with their own ideas about when and where they’d like to see life returned anew.
I don’t mind the question at all, but wonder if we really know what it would mean for rebirth from death into life to be more common. All the billions who have lived, and died, brought back to walk the earth again? No, just the “right ones,” most would say, with myriad definitions of who that would be.
Each of us has a person or people we would bring back, if only for a time, to share a last laugh, to clear up misunderstandings, or to help them finish uncompleted business. However we think that would work, it wouldn’t work very well in practice. There is new life, and harvest, and there is winter. We take in each in turn, and go through them as well.
Life is remarkably persistent, but has a cycle with an individual end, with those cycles tied into a larger weave rolling out longer (and stronger) than any one thread. Some of us see resurrection as part of what empowers this plan, but even if you don’t: Go easy on the pesticides and fertilizers, value each day you get out under the sun, mowing your lawn or hoeing weeds, and remember to plant some trees for the shade of future generations.
That’s a life plan all of us can agree on.
And a happy and blessed Easter weekend to everyone!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share a story with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Life Doesn’t Live Itself
Your lawn doesn’t need much to start growing.
If you want lush grass instead of a full crop of spring beauty (those lovely little white flowers), clover, and the nascent buds of crabgrass that will cover half your yard by July, you need some help. Bags o’ chemicals, all of which come with college textbooks helpfully taped to the side of the canister, sack, or jug, come in colors not known in nature.
These colors conveniently stain your skin, reminding you to wash up thoroughly before eating nachos. If you later fall ill, know that the corporate lawyer will introduce into evidence the fact that you “knew” this was an acceptable risk from the multi-fold label (“purchase of this product constitutes waiver of all rights and acceptance of all provisions of this document unless a notarized letter affirming your waiver of the waiver is received at our offices in the Turks & Caicos within two days of purchase, provision as such void in Vermont and Quebec”).
If you like a diverse ecosystem right in front of your front door, just let it go. If you live in a municipality, you’d better mow (six inches and then notes from the health dept. could show up on your door), but you’ll have something to mow no matter what you do.
Unless you spray wide-spectrum U-Kil-It on the whole deal.
Then you have a window of barren soil to look forward to, and then a sudden infestation of stuff only Howard Siegrist could love. Purslane and hairy dock and three kinds of plantain plus the inevitable dandelion army.
“Life will out,” or so it seems, and it takes a great deal of chemical death to stop life from growing in the patio cracks and through the mulch and along the fencerow. Some of the startling appearance of the drive along 161 to Columbus is from the wall of foliage coming down, revealing abandoned houses as disturbing to the eye as the recent family homes now gutted and gape-mouthed. A structure just left to overgrow a decade ago looks like Sleeping Beauty’s castle in the middle of the story, with no help from the spells of evil stepmothers, just the persistence of life.
Tell all this to the gardener, even now roto-tilling and planting peas and ‘taters. Life may run amok, but not necessarily the life we desire. The most organic of gardeners is still seeking a different equilibrium, placing marigolds to counter deer and corn where beans will later climb. You try to grow some things, and not others; that’s what sets gardening and farming apart.
Life alone is not quite a value; ask someone fighting cancer. Cancer is life and growth without control or intention, just for it’s own sake. When tumors thrive, “life” as we really mean it may be threatened.
Emerson famously said “he who is not busy being born is busy dying,” and the statement holds up in a variety of settings. What undercuts that paean to growth and life is when life chokes off more life than it promotes. This is the question and concern we feel as we drive along the Rt. 161 and Rt. 62 corridors. Seeds and sprouting are not always good news.
For much of the Christian world, this springtime weekend is a celebration of the victory of life over death, seen blossoming in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Some ask why a gift of new life would be so rarely given if a loving God actually could give it, usually with their own ideas about when and where they’d like to see life returned anew.
I don’t mind the question at all, but wonder if we really know what it would mean for rebirth from death into life to be more common. All the billions who have lived, and died, brought back to walk the earth again? No, just the “right ones,” most would say, with myriad definitions of who that would be.
Each of us has a person or people we would bring back, if only for a time, to share a last laugh, to clear up misunderstandings, or to help them finish uncompleted business. However we think that would work, it wouldn’t work very well in practice. There is new life, and harvest, and there is winter. We take in each in turn, and go through them as well.
Life is remarkably persistent, but has a cycle with an individual end, with those cycles tied into a larger weave rolling out longer (and stronger) than any one thread. Some of us see resurrection as part of what empowers this plan, but even if you don’t: Go easy on the pesticides and fertilizers, value each day you get out under the sun, mowing your lawn or hoeing weeds, and remember to plant some trees for the shade of future generations.
That’s a life plan all of us can agree on.
And a happy and blessed Easter weekend to everyone!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share a story with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Faith Works 3-31-07
Jeff Gill
Do You Bury a Bible?
Beyond the hype, the story of the so-called Jesus family tomb has some interesting sidelights worth checking out.
One is the website, which has a great interactive feature on the Land of Jesus, even if I don’t think much of the “Tomb of Jesus,” at
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/land/land.html.
The consensus of scholars, liberal and conservative, is that there wasn’t much “there” there in the story. My own lack of interest was rooted in remembering when the tomb first turned up, over a decade ago. I recall reading a few stories that pointed out the interesting cluster of names, confirming the everyday-ness of New Testament names, and mostly about the controversy over how the site should be stabilized, what with an apartment complex going up over the top of it.
What I never heard about, until the recent TV program, was what they did after the ossuaries were given to the governmental Antiquity Authority, and the bones given to Orthodox Jewish leaders for reburial. What about the tomb?
Well, as most of us know by know, they built structural walls around the area, capped the whole deal in concrete, and left an obscure hatch. After the series of towers went up, kids did what kids do, which was figure out how to break the lock and get in, so the hatch was replaced with a welded steel lid.
As for the now vacant tomb, the religious authorities did a very sensible thing, given the practices of Judaism.
They turned it into a genizah.
Genizahs aren’t part of Christianity, so I suspect most Licking Countians haven’t heard of them, unless they’ve done some serious Biblical studies, and even then they may have missed what a genizah was in the footnotes – just as you could have missed the re-purposed genizah even if you watched the “Lost Tomb” program.
In Jewish (and Islamic) practice, any text that includes the name of the Lord must be treated with particular respect. Mostly, this would refer to Torah scrolls, but in much of the ancient world contracts and other official document would include an invocation of the Divine Name, so they would come under this concern as well.
What do you do with an old scroll or document, worn almost to illegibility, or simply no longer of use? The idea was that they would receive a “proper burial” like any other valued member of the community of faith. You would set them aside for a term, usually seven years, and then take up the volumes and pages and texts and box them and bury them.
The Talpiot tomb, whoever really was first buried there, was full of old scrolls and books when the TV crew crawled in. The producers clearly wanted to move past this point and not get bogged down, but that’s what had been done with this rock-cut space now that all the human remains had been removed. Jerusalem genizahs (genizot for all you Hebrew scholars) had been emptied into Talpiot before the tomb was re-sealed.
Personally, I find this interesting because . . . well, look at it this way. The Barna Group says, based on data, that the average American house has five Bibles in it. If you count Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, and Spanish texts of scripture, I’m carrying more than my fair share: maybe 40 (lots of different translations, OK?).
Some of those I have because as more people have more Bibles, pastors more and more are getting asked by parishioners, especially after Great-Aunt Hattie dies or some such, “what’s the right thing to do with these very old, falling apart Bibles?”
It’s one thing to hold onto the big Family Bible with clippings inserted between testaments and a marriage and baptism list for the late 1800’s in the back. But we have more and more Bibles laying about, and still a desire to honor the word, and the Word, by how we handle, care for, and ultimately dispose of these texts.
Do we need a tradition of a Christian genizah? Church librarians are already starting to smile sadly and shake their heads, let alone clergy. Many of us have these in our basements already, not wanting to say “just throw it out,” but knowing that there is a steadily growing number of broken binding, crumbling page, non-reuseable Bibles slowly arcing their way towards us. The American Legion and the Boy Scouts often hold very moving “flag retirement” ceremonies at Memorial Day around the area, respectfully burning the tattered scraps. What of our Bibles?
I’ve already heard tales of boxes of old Bibles showing up on church doorsteps, like a child left at the orphanage. Truth is, folks, that just bumps the problem along; do we pulp them reverently, and use the recycled cellulose for the rosebushes by the sanctuary? Do we put them in a pine box and have a ceremony the Sunday after Easter each year? I’m seriously interested in your ideas.
You can tell them to me by email, or in person next Sunday at the Midland Theater, where the Newark Community Sunrise Service starts at 6:30 am. I’ll preach, I’ll shake hands after, but I won’t take your unwanted Bibles…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Do You Bury a Bible?
Beyond the hype, the story of the so-called Jesus family tomb has some interesting sidelights worth checking out.
One is the website, which has a great interactive feature on the Land of Jesus, even if I don’t think much of the “Tomb of Jesus,” at
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/tomb/land/land.html.
The consensus of scholars, liberal and conservative, is that there wasn’t much “there” there in the story. My own lack of interest was rooted in remembering when the tomb first turned up, over a decade ago. I recall reading a few stories that pointed out the interesting cluster of names, confirming the everyday-ness of New Testament names, and mostly about the controversy over how the site should be stabilized, what with an apartment complex going up over the top of it.
What I never heard about, until the recent TV program, was what they did after the ossuaries were given to the governmental Antiquity Authority, and the bones given to Orthodox Jewish leaders for reburial. What about the tomb?
Well, as most of us know by know, they built structural walls around the area, capped the whole deal in concrete, and left an obscure hatch. After the series of towers went up, kids did what kids do, which was figure out how to break the lock and get in, so the hatch was replaced with a welded steel lid.
As for the now vacant tomb, the religious authorities did a very sensible thing, given the practices of Judaism.
They turned it into a genizah.
Genizahs aren’t part of Christianity, so I suspect most Licking Countians haven’t heard of them, unless they’ve done some serious Biblical studies, and even then they may have missed what a genizah was in the footnotes – just as you could have missed the re-purposed genizah even if you watched the “Lost Tomb” program.
In Jewish (and Islamic) practice, any text that includes the name of the Lord must be treated with particular respect. Mostly, this would refer to Torah scrolls, but in much of the ancient world contracts and other official document would include an invocation of the Divine Name, so they would come under this concern as well.
What do you do with an old scroll or document, worn almost to illegibility, or simply no longer of use? The idea was that they would receive a “proper burial” like any other valued member of the community of faith. You would set them aside for a term, usually seven years, and then take up the volumes and pages and texts and box them and bury them.
The Talpiot tomb, whoever really was first buried there, was full of old scrolls and books when the TV crew crawled in. The producers clearly wanted to move past this point and not get bogged down, but that’s what had been done with this rock-cut space now that all the human remains had been removed. Jerusalem genizahs (genizot for all you Hebrew scholars) had been emptied into Talpiot before the tomb was re-sealed.
Personally, I find this interesting because . . . well, look at it this way. The Barna Group says, based on data, that the average American house has five Bibles in it. If you count Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, and Spanish texts of scripture, I’m carrying more than my fair share: maybe 40 (lots of different translations, OK?).
Some of those I have because as more people have more Bibles, pastors more and more are getting asked by parishioners, especially after Great-Aunt Hattie dies or some such, “what’s the right thing to do with these very old, falling apart Bibles?”
It’s one thing to hold onto the big Family Bible with clippings inserted between testaments and a marriage and baptism list for the late 1800’s in the back. But we have more and more Bibles laying about, and still a desire to honor the word, and the Word, by how we handle, care for, and ultimately dispose of these texts.
Do we need a tradition of a Christian genizah? Church librarians are already starting to smile sadly and shake their heads, let alone clergy. Many of us have these in our basements already, not wanting to say “just throw it out,” but knowing that there is a steadily growing number of broken binding, crumbling page, non-reuseable Bibles slowly arcing their way towards us. The American Legion and the Boy Scouts often hold very moving “flag retirement” ceremonies at Memorial Day around the area, respectfully burning the tattered scraps. What of our Bibles?
I’ve already heard tales of boxes of old Bibles showing up on church doorsteps, like a child left at the orphanage. Truth is, folks, that just bumps the problem along; do we pulp them reverently, and use the recycled cellulose for the rosebushes by the sanctuary? Do we put them in a pine box and have a ceremony the Sunday after Easter each year? I’m seriously interested in your ideas.
You can tell them to me by email, or in person next Sunday at the Midland Theater, where the Newark Community Sunrise Service starts at 6:30 am. I’ll preach, I’ll shake hands after, but I won’t take your unwanted Bibles…
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Notes From My Knapsack 4-1-07
Jeff Gill
Excitement With Four Corners
Clint Bowyer should have a huge fan base and much more attention than he gets, in my ignorant opinion.
Am I missing some dark secret in his past, or is it because the driver of the “07” car is sponsored by an adult beverage (which, by the by, I don’t drink myself), or do we just need more pieces written on the poor man?
NASCAR has a driver who, a few weeks ago, at their premiere raceway – Daytona, fer Pity’s sake – crossed the finish line a) upside down, b) backwards, c) on fire. The fact that he was a top ten finisher is just gravy on them biscuits.
Upside down, backwards, on fire: is this not the glory that is NASCAR, in a handy carry-home pack? I find myself checking each week for how 07 is doing in his black Chevy, but apparently frontwards, greasy side down, wheels turning isn’t as good for him as the groove he found at Daytona.
Still, I’d think he could coast on that one finish for a very long time. Cheer for Clint, wouldya?
Maybe we’ll even get to see him race here in Licking County someday soon.
You see, what I think would be ideal for all concerned is this – ever since the NHRA moved their focus away from National Trail Raceway, down by Luray on US 40, the drag racing has continued, but what if they changed formats?
Next door is a small airstrip, paralleling the dragstrip. What if NASCAR came in, bought both, and added short straights north and south, banked ‘em some turns at the corners, and add an east grandstand to match what National Trail already has up?
Call it NASCAR Trail Raceway. You have an area between Hebron and Kirkersville that already is used to huge influxes of traffic a bunch of times a year, over half the track built already, and access to the Columbus media market and a short hop to Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh. Throw in some Louisville folk who have sobered up after the Kentucky Derby in May, and you’d have a Midwest crowd hungry for live NASCAR action (although I hear they’re talking about switching from dirt to asphalt and converting Churchill Downs to NASCAR, so we’d better get hopping).
Why have all our local fans drive to Bristol and Charlotte and eastern Pennsylvania for their closest racing fix when we could draw those tourists right here to central Ohio? Between football season and basketball season for the Buckeyes, there’s room in our hearts for another sport, even with the Blue Jackets playing hockey until June.
There’s always time to sell more hotdogs, nights in hotels, shopping in local stores (like the new Hebron NASCAR Experience three story mini-mall), and the fan foam finger business could really take off. People may not love a down-wind ethanol refinery, but who wouldn’t want a race venue nearby? Especially any auto parts or RV repair businesses.
Yes, there’s a little thing called the Brickyard nearby, but no one really thinks that’s going to catch on. Indy is open wheel and really should stick to what they know, and leave the bumpin’ and runnin’ to the stock cars that can take it.
NASCAR Trails. What do you think, Licking County? Can we make this happen? I want to see Clint cross the line in front of the tower off the old National Road, upside down, backwards, and on fire!
Oh, and Happy April 1 everybody . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Excitement With Four Corners
Clint Bowyer should have a huge fan base and much more attention than he gets, in my ignorant opinion.
Am I missing some dark secret in his past, or is it because the driver of the “07” car is sponsored by an adult beverage (which, by the by, I don’t drink myself), or do we just need more pieces written on the poor man?
NASCAR has a driver who, a few weeks ago, at their premiere raceway – Daytona, fer Pity’s sake – crossed the finish line a) upside down, b) backwards, c) on fire. The fact that he was a top ten finisher is just gravy on them biscuits.
Upside down, backwards, on fire: is this not the glory that is NASCAR, in a handy carry-home pack? I find myself checking each week for how 07 is doing in his black Chevy, but apparently frontwards, greasy side down, wheels turning isn’t as good for him as the groove he found at Daytona.
Still, I’d think he could coast on that one finish for a very long time. Cheer for Clint, wouldya?
Maybe we’ll even get to see him race here in Licking County someday soon.
You see, what I think would be ideal for all concerned is this – ever since the NHRA moved their focus away from National Trail Raceway, down by Luray on US 40, the drag racing has continued, but what if they changed formats?
Next door is a small airstrip, paralleling the dragstrip. What if NASCAR came in, bought both, and added short straights north and south, banked ‘em some turns at the corners, and add an east grandstand to match what National Trail already has up?
Call it NASCAR Trail Raceway. You have an area between Hebron and Kirkersville that already is used to huge influxes of traffic a bunch of times a year, over half the track built already, and access to the Columbus media market and a short hop to Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh. Throw in some Louisville folk who have sobered up after the Kentucky Derby in May, and you’d have a Midwest crowd hungry for live NASCAR action (although I hear they’re talking about switching from dirt to asphalt and converting Churchill Downs to NASCAR, so we’d better get hopping).
Why have all our local fans drive to Bristol and Charlotte and eastern Pennsylvania for their closest racing fix when we could draw those tourists right here to central Ohio? Between football season and basketball season for the Buckeyes, there’s room in our hearts for another sport, even with the Blue Jackets playing hockey until June.
There’s always time to sell more hotdogs, nights in hotels, shopping in local stores (like the new Hebron NASCAR Experience three story mini-mall), and the fan foam finger business could really take off. People may not love a down-wind ethanol refinery, but who wouldn’t want a race venue nearby? Especially any auto parts or RV repair businesses.
Yes, there’s a little thing called the Brickyard nearby, but no one really thinks that’s going to catch on. Indy is open wheel and really should stick to what they know, and leave the bumpin’ and runnin’ to the stock cars that can take it.
NASCAR Trails. What do you think, Licking County? Can we make this happen? I want to see Clint cross the line in front of the tower off the old National Road, upside down, backwards, and on fire!
Oh, and Happy April 1 everybody . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Faith Works 3-24-07
Jeff Gill
We Devastate So We Can Build
If you haven’t recently driven from Newark to Columbus along Rt. 161, I need to warn you about something.
No, not the traffic, which is about as bad as ever, and steadily getting worse at certain times in different directions.
The landscape is devastated, and I really mean that. Even knowing what was coming, with the widening of the highway and the slow spread of orange spray paint on trees and little neon flags low to the ground, then the soil erosion fences near watercourses, you couldn’t be ready for this.
Of course, this being America, there are companies that specialize in narrow sub-fields, so a no doubt fine group of people called “Complete Clearing, Inc.” have taken the forefront. (“Woodchippers, Inc.” is no doubt at work, but they don’t have signage.)
With amazing speed and fearful efficiency, this particular part of the overall roadbuilding contract has stripped the hillsides and margins, buzzed the shrubbery and trees down more efficiently than a boot camp barber, and revealed, almost like a flasher, the naked outlines of the terrain.
Some salvage, and mainly demolition crews, have started in behind the tree chewers and earth movers to tear apart the houses and sheds and barns that flank both the current route and projected track of the four-lane 161.
These half-ruined (probably fully wrecked and obliterated by the time you read this) homes are the most viscerally shocking part of the trip. This may be a personal quirk, but this drive is one I’ve been making with semi-regularity for nearly twenty years. I’ve known a couple people who live along the route, but mostly I have a shadow narrative in my head of what it might be like to live here, and here, and next here, as I drive along.
Do you do this? Reflect on what houses look fun to live in, which farms or stables are part of a life you’ll never live, but fit into a “but maybe” scenario you toss around for a few moments each time you pass? And there have been houses that have always struck me as sad, sad looking before with occupants and tragic now with roof torn off and gaping windows staring crazily past you.
In fairness, some of those houses have been vacant almost as long as I’ve driven past them. But the shift from slow decay to sudden destruction – even that is a bit of a gut punch.
This is how we progress, so called. If cars are not to back up and slow and stop and idle and double pump carbon into the atmosphere, if we’re to get to the restaurant on time to meet George and Martha, if the trucks carrying the latest flat screen plasmoid hyperdrive quasi-3D TVs are to get into Licking County promptly, this is what we must do.
And there are spots, as you pass by and look rudely into the revealed landscape, where you can see that the familiar road itself supplanted another, older, slower, gentler road.
Near Moots Run, just before the Alexandria/Rt. 37 turnoff (where the Col. Scott house stands solitary, the lone reprieve along death row), you can see on the south where bridge abutments, long abandoned, now unbridged, softened by time, perch on either side of the creek. The narrow cut up the bank to the east shows where the roadbed once ran.
Many of the denuded banks of tree stump stubble are themselves the thirty-plus years gone overgrowth, run wild after the current road was thrust through, and I’m sure it looked ghastly then. The slopes drizzled soil, took root in grass, and the untended steeper banks went from shoots to stalks to the clumps of gangly trees that now are mulch.
We devastate, so we can build. Our waste and inefficiency may be more apparent than actual, but you can’t look at such a scene and not think: “is there a better way? What would that way look like?”
In this season, Christians think it looks something like resurrection. There are stones to roll away, oils and spices and unguents to set aside, grave wrappings to clear away, but life everlasting when the site prep is done. The Newark Area Ministerial Association has been kind enough to invite me to preach the Community Sunrise Service at 6:30 am in the Midland Theater Easter morning, and I’m looking for signs of new life and resurrection power.
Maybe they can be found even along the construction corridor of 161. I’ve got to drive it again today, so I’ll let you know.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
We Devastate So We Can Build
If you haven’t recently driven from Newark to Columbus along Rt. 161, I need to warn you about something.
No, not the traffic, which is about as bad as ever, and steadily getting worse at certain times in different directions.
The landscape is devastated, and I really mean that. Even knowing what was coming, with the widening of the highway and the slow spread of orange spray paint on trees and little neon flags low to the ground, then the soil erosion fences near watercourses, you couldn’t be ready for this.
Of course, this being America, there are companies that specialize in narrow sub-fields, so a no doubt fine group of people called “Complete Clearing, Inc.” have taken the forefront. (“Woodchippers, Inc.” is no doubt at work, but they don’t have signage.)
With amazing speed and fearful efficiency, this particular part of the overall roadbuilding contract has stripped the hillsides and margins, buzzed the shrubbery and trees down more efficiently than a boot camp barber, and revealed, almost like a flasher, the naked outlines of the terrain.
Some salvage, and mainly demolition crews, have started in behind the tree chewers and earth movers to tear apart the houses and sheds and barns that flank both the current route and projected track of the four-lane 161.
These half-ruined (probably fully wrecked and obliterated by the time you read this) homes are the most viscerally shocking part of the trip. This may be a personal quirk, but this drive is one I’ve been making with semi-regularity for nearly twenty years. I’ve known a couple people who live along the route, but mostly I have a shadow narrative in my head of what it might be like to live here, and here, and next here, as I drive along.
Do you do this? Reflect on what houses look fun to live in, which farms or stables are part of a life you’ll never live, but fit into a “but maybe” scenario you toss around for a few moments each time you pass? And there have been houses that have always struck me as sad, sad looking before with occupants and tragic now with roof torn off and gaping windows staring crazily past you.
In fairness, some of those houses have been vacant almost as long as I’ve driven past them. But the shift from slow decay to sudden destruction – even that is a bit of a gut punch.
This is how we progress, so called. If cars are not to back up and slow and stop and idle and double pump carbon into the atmosphere, if we’re to get to the restaurant on time to meet George and Martha, if the trucks carrying the latest flat screen plasmoid hyperdrive quasi-3D TVs are to get into Licking County promptly, this is what we must do.
And there are spots, as you pass by and look rudely into the revealed landscape, where you can see that the familiar road itself supplanted another, older, slower, gentler road.
Near Moots Run, just before the Alexandria/Rt. 37 turnoff (where the Col. Scott house stands solitary, the lone reprieve along death row), you can see on the south where bridge abutments, long abandoned, now unbridged, softened by time, perch on either side of the creek. The narrow cut up the bank to the east shows where the roadbed once ran.
Many of the denuded banks of tree stump stubble are themselves the thirty-plus years gone overgrowth, run wild after the current road was thrust through, and I’m sure it looked ghastly then. The slopes drizzled soil, took root in grass, and the untended steeper banks went from shoots to stalks to the clumps of gangly trees that now are mulch.
We devastate, so we can build. Our waste and inefficiency may be more apparent than actual, but you can’t look at such a scene and not think: “is there a better way? What would that way look like?”
In this season, Christians think it looks something like resurrection. There are stones to roll away, oils and spices and unguents to set aside, grave wrappings to clear away, but life everlasting when the site prep is done. The Newark Area Ministerial Association has been kind enough to invite me to preach the Community Sunrise Service at 6:30 am in the Midland Theater Easter morning, and I’m looking for signs of new life and resurrection power.
Maybe they can be found even along the construction corridor of 161. I’ve got to drive it again today, so I’ll let you know.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Notes From My Knapsack 3-25-07
Jeff Gill
Making Predictions, Taking Chances
Of course, the wisdom of Yogi Berra says it all: "Predictions are difficult, especially about the future."
Ask Bill Gates, who said in the early days of Microsoft: “No one will need more than 637Kb of memory for a personal computer.”
He ended up doing OK, considering he was competing against the brilliant forecasters of IBM, who had told management in the 1960’s “The total requirements for computing in the United States can be satisfied by fewer than 100 IBM mainframe computers.”
Many of you recall growing up under the assumption that the US would always be in a state of near-war with the Soviet Union, which would dominate Olympic gymnastics, if not the world, pretty much always.
Through college, we all worried about the inevitable bloody end the everyone could see coming quite clearly for South Africa, what with Mandela still a prisoner and the white minority never letting go of control other than through a violent revolution by the majority.
And you may need to be a bit older to know who the Rev. Ian Paisley is, but for me it was a double shock to learn a) he’s still alive (soon to be 81, in fact), and b) about to meet with the Archbishop of Armagh, the Roman Catholic primate of Ireland. Apparently the peace negotiations have progressed to the point where “Rev. No” (among other things, he denounced Pope John Paul II to his face as the Antichrist) is saying yes to joining a government along with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the militant Catholic minority.
Nope, I didn’t see that one coming.
What’s going to happen in Iraq? I have not the faintest idea.
Donald Trump – sorry, The Donald – has no such hesitation. He said over last weekend that anyone can see how the whole place will turn into a bloodbath the moment we leave no matter what we do, so we should just leave now, the sooner to let them carnage it out.
Aside from the fact that Mr. Trump is making all the usual noises of a possible Democratic candidate for President (he almost did it once before, recall), I’m thinking he’s right in the one thing that he doesn’t realize is true.
Whatever the next major change is, in the land around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, steps to greater peace and everyday prosperity won’t come at the commands of armed men.
The sooner there are more leaders counting on their own quiet, future retirement than current riches and power; when business people are trying to plan for expansion rather than destruction as a tool for competition; once there are internet connections in villages and home improvement stores in towns and yes, Starbucks in the cities . . .
For all the wars and rumors of wars in the last century of this world, the sucker bet is still pessimism. A hundred years ago, the norm for a human being on planet Earth was actual or effective slavery (see “serfdom”), death by disease in the first three years, or around age 40 if you survived childhood, and fair measure of pain and discomfort through wars, harsh working conditions, and social viciousness (Google “lynching” and then come on back).
Today, we’ve seen some amazing things in the last twenty years that are still bearing fruit, such as in Northern Ireland. It wasn’t that long ago that the Palestinian problem and Northern Ireland were always mentioned in one breath as the intractable, unsolvable problems of now and forever.
Hamas and Syria and Hezbollah all keep me nervous about the likely near term outcomes for the Middle East, and the history of the Fertile Crescent justifies more wariness than the current administration seems to have used in planning their Iraq venture. But the desire of people, given half a chance, to nudge their leaders to less killing, more freedom, and general stability, is stronger than pessimism.
Here’s a crazy, wild-eyed prediction made in 1816: "Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a colossus we shall be." That’s just the thought of a gentleman farmer who was not himself so clear-eyed about slavery, but had a sense of what freedom might accomplish for his fellow Americans. Thomas Jefferson made a more outrageous forecast than Bill Gates and IBM put together, and all of them were looking at what was known, what had always been true, and what most people thought would be likely in the future.
It was the fellow from Monticello who added a small, measured dose of confidence, in people given a taste of freedom, who saw what might be done with that liberty, even beyond what he could see himself.
If I have to bet between The Donald and The Thomas, I don’t have to think long. As for the NCAA tournament, I’m for Butler…so don’t follow my brackets!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale of the unexpected at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Making Predictions, Taking Chances
Of course, the wisdom of Yogi Berra says it all: "Predictions are difficult, especially about the future."
Ask Bill Gates, who said in the early days of Microsoft: “No one will need more than 637Kb of memory for a personal computer.”
He ended up doing OK, considering he was competing against the brilliant forecasters of IBM, who had told management in the 1960’s “The total requirements for computing in the United States can be satisfied by fewer than 100 IBM mainframe computers.”
Many of you recall growing up under the assumption that the US would always be in a state of near-war with the Soviet Union, which would dominate Olympic gymnastics, if not the world, pretty much always.
Through college, we all worried about the inevitable bloody end the everyone could see coming quite clearly for South Africa, what with Mandela still a prisoner and the white minority never letting go of control other than through a violent revolution by the majority.
And you may need to be a bit older to know who the Rev. Ian Paisley is, but for me it was a double shock to learn a) he’s still alive (soon to be 81, in fact), and b) about to meet with the Archbishop of Armagh, the Roman Catholic primate of Ireland. Apparently the peace negotiations have progressed to the point where “Rev. No” (among other things, he denounced Pope John Paul II to his face as the Antichrist) is saying yes to joining a government along with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the militant Catholic minority.
Nope, I didn’t see that one coming.
What’s going to happen in Iraq? I have not the faintest idea.
Donald Trump – sorry, The Donald – has no such hesitation. He said over last weekend that anyone can see how the whole place will turn into a bloodbath the moment we leave no matter what we do, so we should just leave now, the sooner to let them carnage it out.
Aside from the fact that Mr. Trump is making all the usual noises of a possible Democratic candidate for President (he almost did it once before, recall), I’m thinking he’s right in the one thing that he doesn’t realize is true.
Whatever the next major change is, in the land around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, steps to greater peace and everyday prosperity won’t come at the commands of armed men.
The sooner there are more leaders counting on their own quiet, future retirement than current riches and power; when business people are trying to plan for expansion rather than destruction as a tool for competition; once there are internet connections in villages and home improvement stores in towns and yes, Starbucks in the cities . . .
For all the wars and rumors of wars in the last century of this world, the sucker bet is still pessimism. A hundred years ago, the norm for a human being on planet Earth was actual or effective slavery (see “serfdom”), death by disease in the first three years, or around age 40 if you survived childhood, and fair measure of pain and discomfort through wars, harsh working conditions, and social viciousness (Google “lynching” and then come on back).
Today, we’ve seen some amazing things in the last twenty years that are still bearing fruit, such as in Northern Ireland. It wasn’t that long ago that the Palestinian problem and Northern Ireland were always mentioned in one breath as the intractable, unsolvable problems of now and forever.
Hamas and Syria and Hezbollah all keep me nervous about the likely near term outcomes for the Middle East, and the history of the Fertile Crescent justifies more wariness than the current administration seems to have used in planning their Iraq venture. But the desire of people, given half a chance, to nudge their leaders to less killing, more freedom, and general stability, is stronger than pessimism.
Here’s a crazy, wild-eyed prediction made in 1816: "Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a colossus we shall be." That’s just the thought of a gentleman farmer who was not himself so clear-eyed about slavery, but had a sense of what freedom might accomplish for his fellow Americans. Thomas Jefferson made a more outrageous forecast than Bill Gates and IBM put together, and all of them were looking at what was known, what had always been true, and what most people thought would be likely in the future.
It was the fellow from Monticello who added a small, measured dose of confidence, in people given a taste of freedom, who saw what might be done with that liberty, even beyond what he could see himself.
If I have to bet between The Donald and The Thomas, I don’t have to think long. As for the NCAA tournament, I’m for Butler…so don’t follow my brackets!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him your tale of the unexpected at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Notes From My Knapsack 3-18-07
Jeff Gill
Spring Cleaning Means Planning, Too
Our Community Blueprint just arrived. The United Way has been
working for much of the last year to take an innovative
approach to gathering data in Licking County, and the results
are worth the wait.
My only qualification is that this is less a blueprint than the
architect’s notes from a series of client meetings. No, I’m not
being obtuse (which I’ll admit I often am). This isn’t the
plan, or even the clear outlines of a plan. What we’ve got is
even more important to get first, before you start drawing
lines on a sheet of paper and then debating whether to move
that line a little over here, or a bit over there.
This "Community Blueprint" is meant to give us all the clearest
possible perspective on what Licking County needs to a) stay as
a good a place to live and raise a family as it is in so many
ways, and b) where we need to improve matters, especially for
children and the most vulnerable.
The comparative survey is most intriguing to me, but that may
be because I live and work in many of the other statistics so
much they don’t catch me the same way.
Questions were asked of "key informants," or community
leadership type folk, whether they’re elected, or occupying
jobs and positions that give them a lead role; these same
questions were asked then of a random telephone survey across
the county. Each group was asked about how common certain
issues were off of a list, and to rank how "serious" they were
relative to each other. That last was done in the phone survey
by asking if the issue was in your household (and they defined
household however they defined it, which makes sense to me).
Leaders around Licking County said "lack of affordable health
insurance, affordable dental care, affordable medical care,
alcohol and/or drug abuse among young people, and alcohol
and/or drug abuse among adults" were their top five issues they
saw, in that order. But asked to say how seriousness ranked
them, they said "alcohol and/or drug abuse among adults,
affordable health insurance, affordable medical care,
unemployment, and shortage of affordable housing" were the top
five of concern.
Now, read back through those two lists of five, and think about
how the priorities shifted. Health insurance stays high, but
the immediate impact of drug/alcohol abuse made it a higher
concern. Unemployment and affordable housing are a little less
visible to folks, even in leadership, but they bump dental care
and youth drug and alcohol use when asked to consider
seriousness. (I wonder if underemployment vs. unemployment is a
distinction that folks stop to make, but that’s a matter of
interpretation.)
Now go to the households – randomly selected for phone surveys
across the county, remember. Their top five "issues" were "lack
of affordable health insurance, affordable dental insurance,
affordable dental care, affordable medical care, and lack of
jobs." Hmmmm.
And asked "in my household"? The list went this way: "mental
illness or emotional issues among adults, lack of affordable
dental insurance, affordable health insurance, affordable
dental care, and affordable medical care." Make the question
personal, and mental health issues and . . . dental issues:
those are the "top of mind" concerns.
You can see how this doesn’t exactly give us the blueprint for
breaking ground and building new capacity in our social safety
net right now, but it does start us down the path of planning
more sensibly. Is dental health a major community issue? If it
effects your ability to get jobs because you can’t sleep for
toothache, barely eat decent food and are all woozy from that
since you can’t chew, and may self-medicate, um,
"inappropriately" to deal with the pain . . . uh, yeah.
Mental health issues in Licking County, thanks to Moundbuilders
Guidance Center, the Community Mental Health and Recovery
Board, The Main Place, and Mental Health America of Licking
County, have some strong advocates and points of assistance.
Churches offer counseling, and schools work with many programs
and approaches to support healthy habits of mind beyond just
studiousness.
But when our local households put "mental illness or emotional
issues among adults" as the top item of concern "in my
household," that puts the matter in a slightly different
light.
There will be more to consider out of this comprehensive study of our county, and we’ll be getting some plans drawn up soon. Thanks to Chairperson Cheryl Snyder, staffers Donna Carpenter, Sylvia Friel, and everyone at Licking County United Way for giving us such useful architect’s notes, and see their website for the whole deal: http://www.lickingcountycommunityblueprint.com.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around
central Ohio; tell him about your blueprints for a better
future at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Spring Cleaning Means Planning, Too
Our Community Blueprint just arrived. The United Way has been
working for much of the last year to take an innovative
approach to gathering data in Licking County, and the results
are worth the wait.
My only qualification is that this is less a blueprint than the
architect’s notes from a series of client meetings. No, I’m not
being obtuse (which I’ll admit I often am). This isn’t the
plan, or even the clear outlines of a plan. What we’ve got is
even more important to get first, before you start drawing
lines on a sheet of paper and then debating whether to move
that line a little over here, or a bit over there.
This "Community Blueprint" is meant to give us all the clearest
possible perspective on what Licking County needs to a) stay as
a good a place to live and raise a family as it is in so many
ways, and b) where we need to improve matters, especially for
children and the most vulnerable.
The comparative survey is most intriguing to me, but that may
be because I live and work in many of the other statistics so
much they don’t catch me the same way.
Questions were asked of "key informants," or community
leadership type folk, whether they’re elected, or occupying
jobs and positions that give them a lead role; these same
questions were asked then of a random telephone survey across
the county. Each group was asked about how common certain
issues were off of a list, and to rank how "serious" they were
relative to each other. That last was done in the phone survey
by asking if the issue was in your household (and they defined
household however they defined it, which makes sense to me).
Leaders around Licking County said "lack of affordable health
insurance, affordable dental care, affordable medical care,
alcohol and/or drug abuse among young people, and alcohol
and/or drug abuse among adults" were their top five issues they
saw, in that order. But asked to say how seriousness ranked
them, they said "alcohol and/or drug abuse among adults,
affordable health insurance, affordable medical care,
unemployment, and shortage of affordable housing" were the top
five of concern.
Now, read back through those two lists of five, and think about
how the priorities shifted. Health insurance stays high, but
the immediate impact of drug/alcohol abuse made it a higher
concern. Unemployment and affordable housing are a little less
visible to folks, even in leadership, but they bump dental care
and youth drug and alcohol use when asked to consider
seriousness. (I wonder if underemployment vs. unemployment is a
distinction that folks stop to make, but that’s a matter of
interpretation.)
Now go to the households – randomly selected for phone surveys
across the county, remember. Their top five "issues" were "lack
of affordable health insurance, affordable dental insurance,
affordable dental care, affordable medical care, and lack of
jobs." Hmmmm.
And asked "in my household"? The list went this way: "mental
illness or emotional issues among adults, lack of affordable
dental insurance, affordable health insurance, affordable
dental care, and affordable medical care." Make the question
personal, and mental health issues and . . . dental issues:
those are the "top of mind" concerns.
You can see how this doesn’t exactly give us the blueprint for
breaking ground and building new capacity in our social safety
net right now, but it does start us down the path of planning
more sensibly. Is dental health a major community issue? If it
effects your ability to get jobs because you can’t sleep for
toothache, barely eat decent food and are all woozy from that
since you can’t chew, and may self-medicate, um,
"inappropriately" to deal with the pain . . . uh, yeah.
Mental health issues in Licking County, thanks to Moundbuilders
Guidance Center, the Community Mental Health and Recovery
Board, The Main Place, and Mental Health America of Licking
County, have some strong advocates and points of assistance.
Churches offer counseling, and schools work with many programs
and approaches to support healthy habits of mind beyond just
studiousness.
But when our local households put "mental illness or emotional
issues among adults" as the top item of concern "in my
household," that puts the matter in a slightly different
light.
There will be more to consider out of this comprehensive study of our county, and we’ll be getting some plans drawn up soon. Thanks to Chairperson Cheryl Snyder, staffers Donna Carpenter, Sylvia Friel, and everyone at Licking County United Way for giving us such useful architect’s notes, and see their website for the whole deal: http://www.lickingcountycommunityblueprint.com.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around
central Ohio; tell him about your blueprints for a better
future at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Faith Works 3-17-07
Jeff Gill
Triple Redundancy Is Just Good Design
When folks wave around shamrocks, or what passes for them, around the sacred festival of Saint Patrick’s Day (known around bars and police stations as “Amateur Night”), they usually get two things wrong.
No surprise for a semi-holiday that the culture has grabbed ahold of, given a boozy twist, and wrenched as far off its foundations in faith as any other.
For the record, a shamrock is not a four leaf clover. There is clover on the Emerald Isle, and it generally has three leaves, with the stray four leafer being rare enough to carry a wee bit of superstitious cachet.
Which wasn’t what Patricius, the once kidnapped Roman Briton youth, was after, when he returned a priest to the land of his captivity.
So clover isn’t the preaching illustration the missionary bishop, out in the wild, untamed Irish isles at the oceanic end of the world, was looking for. It was the true shamrock, something more like “hepatica” here in the Western Hemisphere (here beyond the one-time ends of the earth). Shamrock is a very particular plant, with a symbolism that Patrick, sainted by public consensus as the ancient church once did such things, wanted to make particularly clear.
Shamrocks, like our North American hepatica, are common plants, close to the ground, growing best in the hardest circumstances, verging on evergreen in their through the year hardiness.
And they have leaves with three “lobes.” If you glance at a shamrock, you see three leaves off of a common stem. With clover, three or four leaf, if you pick it and hold it close, you’ll see three distinct, separate leaves, with their veins connecting to the stem like spokes to a hub.
Not so the shamrock. When you pick it, as Patrick did in his preaching out in the fields and among the common people of ancient Ireland, and hold it close for nearer scrutiny, you see the apparent three leaves are actually one, merging before vanishing into their stem.
The lobes are divided by deep indentations that don’t quite go all the way to the base. You have to look closely to see, but when you examine them closely it’s quite apparent: this is a single leaf, with three sections that appear to be distinct leaves only from a distance.
St. Patrick took up the shamrock, not the shillelagh, because he wanted to help the Celtic folk of the Blessed Isles understand what he was saying to them about Jesus, and the Trinity.
Among modern Christians, even those of a fairly conservative theological bent, there is a worrisome (to me, anyhow) dismissal of theology as an eggheaded, unimportant area for preachers and teachers of the faith to tend to. Preaching is for conversion and life transformation, which are both very important tasks for the church to be sure, but consideration of the nature of God and how and why God acts in the world is for the seminaries and scholars, say too many (in my opinion).
Thank God that Patrick didn’t see it that way.
In his missionary work, he was preaching to a largely unlettered populace, who had a healthy crop of everyday superstitions and folk magics (think leprechauns and that pot o’ gold) to harvest. Ol’ Paddy wanted to plant a belief in the unique role and person of Jesus of Nazareth, not as a particularly great bard or hilltop sage from a land far away.
If he had wanted to tell them about Jesus as a really, really wise man, the people of Ireland would have happily added him to the list of those whose wisdom was memorized and passed along by firelight, like Finn MacCool and Cuchulain the Fierce and Queen Maeve and Bridgit the Holy. No problem, always happy to have more wisdom, Pat; now have a little of this uiskebaugh, what we call the water of life.
Patrick wanted the Irish to know Jesus as he knew him, as the Son of God, as the very embodiment of God with us. But how do you have God walking among us, and God still eternally and unchangingly reigning over All Creation ™?
The historic short answer of the church has been: the Trinity. Three ways we know God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but God still One, coexisting together in unity.
To be fair, the theological discussions about how the Trinity actually works can get to be heavy going, and aren’t everyone’s cup of strong, black tea. But the Irish had a worrisome tendency to hear Christian preaching, and say “OK, three chief gods. Got it. We’ll give that serious consideration: we’ve got a bunch of three throne ruling divinities in the collective wisdom, so you may have a point. We’ll, um, get back to you about the whole “love one another” thing, though.”
St. Patrick’s inspired insight was to reach down and pluck a nearby shamrock, and use a closer look at it to help him show why the Christian God was not meant to be understood as three individuals, even though they had three persons of God to tell stories of.
What the Apostles’ and Nicean and Athanasian Creeds do with many complex words, Patrick did with an everyday plant, and an invitation to look closely at the mysteries woven right into the fabric of creation.
And in that spirit, a merry St. Patrick’s Day to you!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Triple Redundancy Is Just Good Design
When folks wave around shamrocks, or what passes for them, around the sacred festival of Saint Patrick’s Day (known around bars and police stations as “Amateur Night”), they usually get two things wrong.
No surprise for a semi-holiday that the culture has grabbed ahold of, given a boozy twist, and wrenched as far off its foundations in faith as any other.
For the record, a shamrock is not a four leaf clover. There is clover on the Emerald Isle, and it generally has three leaves, with the stray four leafer being rare enough to carry a wee bit of superstitious cachet.
Which wasn’t what Patricius, the once kidnapped Roman Briton youth, was after, when he returned a priest to the land of his captivity.
So clover isn’t the preaching illustration the missionary bishop, out in the wild, untamed Irish isles at the oceanic end of the world, was looking for. It was the true shamrock, something more like “hepatica” here in the Western Hemisphere (here beyond the one-time ends of the earth). Shamrock is a very particular plant, with a symbolism that Patrick, sainted by public consensus as the ancient church once did such things, wanted to make particularly clear.
Shamrocks, like our North American hepatica, are common plants, close to the ground, growing best in the hardest circumstances, verging on evergreen in their through the year hardiness.
And they have leaves with three “lobes.” If you glance at a shamrock, you see three leaves off of a common stem. With clover, three or four leaf, if you pick it and hold it close, you’ll see three distinct, separate leaves, with their veins connecting to the stem like spokes to a hub.
Not so the shamrock. When you pick it, as Patrick did in his preaching out in the fields and among the common people of ancient Ireland, and hold it close for nearer scrutiny, you see the apparent three leaves are actually one, merging before vanishing into their stem.
The lobes are divided by deep indentations that don’t quite go all the way to the base. You have to look closely to see, but when you examine them closely it’s quite apparent: this is a single leaf, with three sections that appear to be distinct leaves only from a distance.
St. Patrick took up the shamrock, not the shillelagh, because he wanted to help the Celtic folk of the Blessed Isles understand what he was saying to them about Jesus, and the Trinity.
Among modern Christians, even those of a fairly conservative theological bent, there is a worrisome (to me, anyhow) dismissal of theology as an eggheaded, unimportant area for preachers and teachers of the faith to tend to. Preaching is for conversion and life transformation, which are both very important tasks for the church to be sure, but consideration of the nature of God and how and why God acts in the world is for the seminaries and scholars, say too many (in my opinion).
Thank God that Patrick didn’t see it that way.
In his missionary work, he was preaching to a largely unlettered populace, who had a healthy crop of everyday superstitions and folk magics (think leprechauns and that pot o’ gold) to harvest. Ol’ Paddy wanted to plant a belief in the unique role and person of Jesus of Nazareth, not as a particularly great bard or hilltop sage from a land far away.
If he had wanted to tell them about Jesus as a really, really wise man, the people of Ireland would have happily added him to the list of those whose wisdom was memorized and passed along by firelight, like Finn MacCool and Cuchulain the Fierce and Queen Maeve and Bridgit the Holy. No problem, always happy to have more wisdom, Pat; now have a little of this uiskebaugh, what we call the water of life.
Patrick wanted the Irish to know Jesus as he knew him, as the Son of God, as the very embodiment of God with us. But how do you have God walking among us, and God still eternally and unchangingly reigning over All Creation ™?
The historic short answer of the church has been: the Trinity. Three ways we know God, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but God still One, coexisting together in unity.
To be fair, the theological discussions about how the Trinity actually works can get to be heavy going, and aren’t everyone’s cup of strong, black tea. But the Irish had a worrisome tendency to hear Christian preaching, and say “OK, three chief gods. Got it. We’ll give that serious consideration: we’ve got a bunch of three throne ruling divinities in the collective wisdom, so you may have a point. We’ll, um, get back to you about the whole “love one another” thing, though.”
St. Patrick’s inspired insight was to reach down and pluck a nearby shamrock, and use a closer look at it to help him show why the Christian God was not meant to be understood as three individuals, even though they had three persons of God to tell stories of.
What the Apostles’ and Nicean and Athanasian Creeds do with many complex words, Patrick did with an everyday plant, and an invitation to look closely at the mysteries woven right into the fabric of creation.
And in that spirit, a merry St. Patrick’s Day to you!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Gentle reader -- I've put this older column back up to the top, as a few websites have kindly pointed folk to this piece with the 225th anniversary of the Gnadenhutten Massacre last Thursday. At the end of the piece, which ran (with a different headline) in the Newark Advocate last weekend, i mention my plans to visit on the "day of." I did, and my account of that venture is just below the column. Scroll past all that to find the 3-10 Faith Works or the 3-11 Booster column, "Notes From My Knapsack."
* * *
* * *
Faith Works 3-03-07
Jeff Gill
Crawford Died For Your Sins
A man once died a particularly cruel and painful death, to make up for the evil actions of others, of which he himself was entirely innocent. His death led to the birth of a religious community which counts many adherents all around us to this day. The place of his death is well known, but not a scrap of his body can be found to this day.
No, not Him.
It was in Ohio, beginning 225 years ago this week.
One phase of this tragic narrative began on the morning of March 8, in 1782, as almost 100 old men, women, and children of the Moravian Delaware Indian community were massacred, mostly by mallet and hand axe, about an hour east of us at Gnadenhutten. Two boys survived, one by playing dead after a blow to the head, lying still under a pile of his family and fellow worshipers; the other was small enough to sneak out between the logs of their church building, where the community was kept overnight in singing and prayer before their execution at dawn.
They, too, were innocent. The adult men of the community had been working to plant the next season’s corn, and a few other Indians from Fort Detroit may have sheltered with them overnight who had raided across the Ohio, but of those killed there was no blood on their hands. That didn’t keep their blood from watering the ground at the Moravian log church’s door.
The blood of those 96 or 98 victims actually fueled the flames of hostility on the frontier, the western theater of the American Revolution, where British officers taught the fine art of scalping to young rootless warriors and offered money for European scalps. Some Native leaders like Chief Cornstalk and Killbuck had argued for a neutral stance, but the temptations of cash for killing led enough across the Ohio that reprisal parties answered raiding parties, leading to the senseless slaughter of Gnadenhutten, or "Huts of Grace" in the German of the David Heckewelder’s missionary efforts.
Innocent blood called out to warriors and leaders who had stayed so far aloof from the irregular combat. A massing of Native people came together at Upper Sandusky, and a second expedition was planned near Washington, PA, to cross again at Fort Henry (Wheeling, today) and find a new, more fitting target for their vengance.
The two groups met at Tymochtee Creek, just south of Carey, OH, with the Pennsylvanians led by George Washington’s friend Col. William Crawford, sent somewhat against his will to keep tighter control on the angry and undisciplined frontier militia, most of whom had been at Gnadenhutten a few months before.
The Americans were attacked, broke, scattered, and Crawford was captured. It was explained to him that he must die to satisfy the debt incurred in his fellow soldier’s killings. By all accounts, his courage and relative calm was moving to all, but not enough to end the torture and death designed for him.
Could Indians and Americans share in building a culture and a home across the Ohio Territory? Logan and Cornstalk and Guyasuta and Killbuck and White-eyes all thought so, and the Moravian pastors John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger both believed it, and began to prove it at Schoenbrunn, at Lichtenau, and at Gnadenhutten.
After 1782, with Gnadenhutten a smoking, bloody ruin, and the other settlements abandoned, the likelihood of the two cultures sharing in the land dwindled to nothing. The rationale for the massacre, or the relative atrocity of Crawford’s death, were points of dispute well into the 1900’s, and only in recent years has a truly honest assessment been possible.
But buried in those recriminations of the early 1800’s and into the twentieth century are stories of those violent and angry young men, hearts set on useless vengeance, who grew to be husbands and community leaders and respected figures when territories became states.
The religious revivals of the Upper Ohio valley that led to the Restoration Movement, the teachings of Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell against the harsh Calvinism of their day, found fertile soil in the hearts of men who believed that there was no forgiveness for those who had such evils in their past, and they knew what they had done was evil. Baptist and Presbyterian practice of their day was that you could not join or commune until you could honestly say that you knew your sins were forgiven.
The Restoration Movement preachers like Walter Scott said "come, be baptized, and receive forgiveness; you don’t have to say you are forgiven to have the right to receive baptism, you enter the water to find it waiting for you there."
They taught Christ’s baptism, but the example of Crawford dying in their place surely lit the way for those now 50 & 60 year old men who came forward, and brought their families with them.
Today’s Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, independent Christian Churches, and United Church of Christ folk have a solemn anniversary of sorts this week, and I plan to make the brief pilgrimage myself to a silent mound, still marked with prayer and offerings, in Gnadenhutten.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
* * *
* * *
"You Don’t Look Much Like an Indian"
---
It is written that they sang all night.
To really honor and keep vigil, even at 225 years’ worth of distance, I should have been there before dawn, when they were brought out blinking, facing the sun rising in the east, bluffs to the south looking down on the small settlement of log buildings, hemmed in by the Tuscarawas River looping north and west.
Some of the Pennsylvania and Virginia militiamen, even a majority out of the 450 or so who came from Fort Henry, refused to join in the slaughter, but neither did they stop it. None forgot it, though. Their testimony, and the frightened recollections of two small boys who escaped the Gnadenhutten Massacre, all agree that the 90 and more were divided, women in the church, males, elderly and youth, to the cooper’s shop. Told of their fate as evening fell March 7, they sang and prayed until dawn.
These were the Moravian Delawares, the Lenape Indians who adopted the Christianity taught by David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder. Their German-rooted faith carried a scattering of words from their old country naming homes in the new, like Gnadenhutten, meaning huts, or tents (tabernacles, really) of Grace.
Taken from other Moravian villages like Schoenbrunn and Salem, and herded together into this settlement, they were thought to be the raiders or at least supporters of war parties who had recently attacked colonial settlements in the early spring of 1782, egged on by the cash-for-scalps strategy of the British in Fort Detroit. In these simple structures built in the wilderness, they had hoped to find a Promised Land of peace, or at least the road to Heaven.
They were violently flung down the latter road, without a chance to find the former.I was there at noon, on a Thursday, long marked in my calendar as a "keep this date open" square. I came out of long developing awareness that, in trying to understand the vexed relationships of Anglo and Indian across the Ohio Territory before 1803, the cruel road to "removal" in the 1830’s for even the most assimilated tribes, and for social and religious movements across the early American Midwest, this place and the events of March 8, 1782 are a long missing key.
Knowing that this year was the 225th anniversary, and even knowing that it is an oddly Anglo habit to make much of certain numerical occurrences, I wondered if I would see anyone else. At least the circumstances of the season, the angle of the sun, the feel of nature, would echo something of what went on those days, which was reason enough for me to want to be there.
Pulling into the "Historical Park" around the site of the former settlement, there was still a thin coating of snow, unmelted from even the current relative warmth, showing that no one else had walked these paths for the last couple days.At the center of the long rectangle along the Tuscarawas was the monument. About 40 feet high, the obelisk catches your eye as you wind through the modern Gnadenhutten village cemetery which surrounds the park. When you approach it, the plinth reads, in very stark and deep carving:
Here
Triumphed In Death
Ninety
Christian Indians
March 8, 1782
and one level below, a single word in larger, all capital letters:
GNADENHUTTEN
…then on the opposite side, just as high but markedly less deep, as if unwilling to draw unnecessary attention to itself, the statement:
Erected June 5, 1872
For much of the year, when the sun rises, the shadow of the obelisk crosses the door of the mission house. It is a replica, with a small stone nearby quietly noting that the adjoining space is the actual site. Most of the time, and for all of my visits, you can’t get inside. There are windows, and an opposing window lets in a shaft of light that illuminates a slice of the large room, and illumination enough to see the split log benches, and the table to the front of the worship and gathering space.
You can’t get inside, I think; I cannot imagine that night, those hours, the actual experience of those hearts. They have literally seen the face of their implacable doom, set harshly on vengeance, standing at the one door to say that there is only a brief trip they will take out that door in the morning, they and their children. I do imagine that it was the women who began the singing, for women usually do, drawing the men across the way into their worship in the only way they could touch.
I cannot get inside the minds of the men outside, either. The accounts are clear about the killing and scalping and captive taking they had seen all around them, back across the Ohio River, and of their fury when a family that had settled across the river into Ohio was found murdered on the first day of their expedition to Upper Sandusky.
I can even sense some of the horror and mistrust that was sparked by the discovery of bloody rags in Gnadenhutten, cloth that one man among the now nameless militiamen (they never left a muster roll, or applied for compensation from their government, for obvious reasons) said that he was certain belonged to the dead woman of a few days before.
But as the night wore on, and the singing continued, how did they keep their hearts hardened? I don’t know, I don’t want to know, I need to know, I can’t ever know. David Williamson, a man so respected among his fellows that he was elected sheriff in later years for Washington County, Pennsylvania, was only in name the leader of this expedition."Colonel" Williamson is almost the only name known for certain with this venture, for he did gather them up and lead them with one purpose in mind. Stories agree that he was not in complete assent with the plans to slaughter the Moravian Indians, but also agree that he took a vote, and let the faction for murder have their way.
Did those two groups separate through the night? Did any of them sleep? No one knows. Rightly, all accounts focus on the singing, and the prayers, and the coming dawn.
Past the monument, the only other reconstructed building simply has another low stone carved with "The Cooper Shop – March 8, 1782." If you don’t know how that identifies this building, it seems to say, there’s no amount of text that will do it. It was a cooper’s large, heavy, wooden mallet that was taken up when the captives began to step out into the dawn’s early, brief light.
"Someone else take over, my arm’s getting tired," is the one quote preserved from the murderers, when the job was not even half done. So many stood by, but at least they remembered, and recorded.
The final home for those killed outside the doors of the church and cooperage was a few dozen yards to the south. The bodies were piled and burned, and a mound was raised over their remains later by the men of the settlement, who returned, from their attempt to begin planting the next year’s crop, to a scene of unutterable horror.
This low mound, no more than three feet high and about ten feet across, is now ringed with cypress shrubs gone woody, blocked from a gravel parking area by a few feet, and a row of old canal lock stones. They lay there between the pop machine at the museum’s back door, and a shuttered concession stand fenced about with piled picnic tables. When the Moravian missionaries returned with the adult men, they withdrew for some years from the Tuscarawas valley, but returned with now German Moravians and re-established the settlement. Their descendants are buried in the large cemetery all around, and now the folk of the village keep up the replica buildings and museum to tell the story of their faith’s heritage, largely for schoolchildren. There are some odd cutout figures attached to trees as silhouettes, and brightly painted panels for kids to push their faces through, giving them fake bodies to photograph, that gives the place a carnival atmosphere in certain angles. The main story seems to focus on the missionaries and the later, whiter settlement; but the fact that only the mission house and cooper shop are rebuilt says something about which story someone knew leaves the deeper mark.
I’ve pushed through the sentinel shrubbery just far enough to reach some windblown scraps of candy wrapper and newspaper, which I take to a nearby trashcan. However I feel about the décor, Gnadenhutten has always been neat and well tended whenever I’ve been by. Another walk past the mission house, looking through the window, and I come back to lean on my car, taking some notes, almost right next to the mound where this story didn’t, doesn’t end.
Another car drives around the museum, and pauses in the drive behind mine, not parking, but stopping. I see across the cemetery a fellow watching, by the maintenance shed, and just have a hunch that he may have called someone. Walking around the still running vehicle, I see the driver stab out a cigarette and roll down the window. She looks businesslike and a businesswoman, sharp featured and with knotted brow.
"You don’t look much like an Indian."
Now, in all fairness, I’m a tall, sandy haired, north of England looking fellow, who has been accused in heated arguments years ago of looking like a Hitler Youth poster. For the record, my eyes are brown, not blue, so Adolf might not have taken me. Anyhow.
"Ma’am?" I reply respectfully, thinking again that the park gate was open and that I’d seen no sign of closure, but also no sign of anyone else."You here about the anniversary?" she asked, glaring up at me, though in fairness the sun was bright, and behind my shoulder. So she knew.
"Sure. Wanted to see what observances or anything were going on today," I answered."
Nothing that I’ve heard, but we were watching to see if anyone came around to cause…" I realized that what had her attention was the fact that, from her point of view, I was an armed man. She had caught me starting to write down some of my reflections on this visit, for this day, and I still had an uncapped pen and some paper in my hand. It made her nervous. I have an unwarranted suspicion that a holstered .357 on my hip wouldn’t have made her nervous, but my taking notes did.
Having some small faith in memory, I shoved the notes and pen in my pocket. Sure enough, she lightened up considerably. She was with the local historical society, which owned the property and ran the museum ("we need more funding" ran the old, old song, which I briefly sang in duet with her). They tried to keep the mound tidy and the grounds attractive. She knew that the tobacco offerings that occasionally showed up on the burial mound were to be left alone, and told me the fellow across the way "wasn’t sure what you were up to," leaving the call inferred. "I appreciate the care you give to the area," I said.
She gestured to the sign in front of my car, a state historic marker that the Ohio Historical Society had put up just a few years ago. Under "The Gnadenhutten Massacre" was the phrase "A Day of Shame," and she said, looking sideways at it, "there were some bad things done back then. Town’s come a long way." Assuming she meant something more than that there had been no additional massacres since 1782, I asked what else the area did to keep the story of Gnadenhutten alive.
"School’s mascot is an Indian," and she saw me wince. "Oh, you’re one of them," she sighed resignedly, her entire tone shifting to the hard suspicion we’d begun on. "I just wondered if there were any Indian groups who came around to. . .""They all went west long ago," she snapped. "Went" is one word you could use, I thought, but kept my silence as she went on. "Glad to have their people visit, but they better not get any ideas about coming back and claiming this for a casino or anything. This is sacred ground."So it turns out we agreed on something, though we had no chance to explore this common belief together. The gravel was too damp from the melting snow to spray satisfactorily as she drove off, which I suspect was a disappointment to her. I could be wrong about that. I waved to her rearview mirror, and with malicious intent, made sure to pull out my notecards and pen while she could still see me, before she got onto the road and sped off.
I still couldn’t get inside. Not the mission house, the cooper shop, the minds of those who camped outside their doors 225 years and a night ago, nor this silent snowy mound. The museum was closed to me as well, and I fear also the mind of my colleague in museumkeeping.
I still didn’t know what urge, which motives caused the obelisk to be raised in 1872, not yet the national centennial nor the 100th commemoration of the event itself. In the 1890’s Ohio historians had tried to acknowledge the significance of this slaughter of the innocents, and how the new surge of anger among previously neutral Indians, and the guilty consciences of many frontier men, triggered consequences and responses far into the future. Even then, reactions to painting any of the first families of the Northwest Territory as anything other than saintly, came fast and furious. Simon Girty and Lewis Wetzel were the designated scapegoats for us all, a twisted (not quite right, you know) white man for each side, American and English. The "Williamson Expedition" that sputtered to a bloody end at Gnadenhutten fit no useful template, and was cast aside.
But the obelisk still stands, and the records, and even the guilt made some helpful memories last. "They sang through the night," knowing their doom was inescapable, and the sound of their singing was unforgettable, even if it was not enough to strengthen any of them to make common cause in their defense with fellow humans, let alone for fellow Christians.
Though I came at noon, as fit my schedule, I remembered that they sang through the night. This is what I remember of 225 years ago, and the days that are passing. They sang through the night, and that is what I hope the lady in the car remembers, too.
You can hear them still, if you listen. Just when you think the singing has stopped, it picks up again, waiting for the dawn. We should keep vigil with them, across the lawn between the buildings, across the centuries. They sang through the night, and we are not asked to do anything half as hard. Keep on singing their song, waiting to see who will join along, and do not let the singing end if you can help it. Some won’t join in, and others will frown, waiting for the song to stop.
They sang through the night.
What is given to us to do, to keep the story alive?
* * *
* * *
Faith Works 3-03-07
Jeff Gill
Crawford Died For Your Sins
A man once died a particularly cruel and painful death, to make up for the evil actions of others, of which he himself was entirely innocent. His death led to the birth of a religious community which counts many adherents all around us to this day. The place of his death is well known, but not a scrap of his body can be found to this day.
No, not Him.
It was in Ohio, beginning 225 years ago this week.
One phase of this tragic narrative began on the morning of March 8, in 1782, as almost 100 old men, women, and children of the Moravian Delaware Indian community were massacred, mostly by mallet and hand axe, about an hour east of us at Gnadenhutten. Two boys survived, one by playing dead after a blow to the head, lying still under a pile of his family and fellow worshipers; the other was small enough to sneak out between the logs of their church building, where the community was kept overnight in singing and prayer before their execution at dawn.
They, too, were innocent. The adult men of the community had been working to plant the next season’s corn, and a few other Indians from Fort Detroit may have sheltered with them overnight who had raided across the Ohio, but of those killed there was no blood on their hands. That didn’t keep their blood from watering the ground at the Moravian log church’s door.
The blood of those 96 or 98 victims actually fueled the flames of hostility on the frontier, the western theater of the American Revolution, where British officers taught the fine art of scalping to young rootless warriors and offered money for European scalps. Some Native leaders like Chief Cornstalk and Killbuck had argued for a neutral stance, but the temptations of cash for killing led enough across the Ohio that reprisal parties answered raiding parties, leading to the senseless slaughter of Gnadenhutten, or "Huts of Grace" in the German of the David Heckewelder’s missionary efforts.
Innocent blood called out to warriors and leaders who had stayed so far aloof from the irregular combat. A massing of Native people came together at Upper Sandusky, and a second expedition was planned near Washington, PA, to cross again at Fort Henry (Wheeling, today) and find a new, more fitting target for their vengance.
The two groups met at Tymochtee Creek, just south of Carey, OH, with the Pennsylvanians led by George Washington’s friend Col. William Crawford, sent somewhat against his will to keep tighter control on the angry and undisciplined frontier militia, most of whom had been at Gnadenhutten a few months before.
The Americans were attacked, broke, scattered, and Crawford was captured. It was explained to him that he must die to satisfy the debt incurred in his fellow soldier’s killings. By all accounts, his courage and relative calm was moving to all, but not enough to end the torture and death designed for him.
Could Indians and Americans share in building a culture and a home across the Ohio Territory? Logan and Cornstalk and Guyasuta and Killbuck and White-eyes all thought so, and the Moravian pastors John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger both believed it, and began to prove it at Schoenbrunn, at Lichtenau, and at Gnadenhutten.
After 1782, with Gnadenhutten a smoking, bloody ruin, and the other settlements abandoned, the likelihood of the two cultures sharing in the land dwindled to nothing. The rationale for the massacre, or the relative atrocity of Crawford’s death, were points of dispute well into the 1900’s, and only in recent years has a truly honest assessment been possible.
But buried in those recriminations of the early 1800’s and into the twentieth century are stories of those violent and angry young men, hearts set on useless vengeance, who grew to be husbands and community leaders and respected figures when territories became states.
The religious revivals of the Upper Ohio valley that led to the Restoration Movement, the teachings of Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell against the harsh Calvinism of their day, found fertile soil in the hearts of men who believed that there was no forgiveness for those who had such evils in their past, and they knew what they had done was evil. Baptist and Presbyterian practice of their day was that you could not join or commune until you could honestly say that you knew your sins were forgiven.
The Restoration Movement preachers like Walter Scott said "come, be baptized, and receive forgiveness; you don’t have to say you are forgiven to have the right to receive baptism, you enter the water to find it waiting for you there."
They taught Christ’s baptism, but the example of Crawford dying in their place surely lit the way for those now 50 & 60 year old men who came forward, and brought their families with them.
Today’s Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, independent Christian Churches, and United Church of Christ folk have a solemn anniversary of sorts this week, and I plan to make the brief pilgrimage myself to a silent mound, still marked with prayer and offerings, in Gnadenhutten.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
* * *
* * *
"You Don’t Look Much Like an Indian"
---
It is written that they sang all night.
To really honor and keep vigil, even at 225 years’ worth of distance, I should have been there before dawn, when they were brought out blinking, facing the sun rising in the east, bluffs to the south looking down on the small settlement of log buildings, hemmed in by the Tuscarawas River looping north and west.
Some of the Pennsylvania and Virginia militiamen, even a majority out of the 450 or so who came from Fort Henry, refused to join in the slaughter, but neither did they stop it. None forgot it, though. Their testimony, and the frightened recollections of two small boys who escaped the Gnadenhutten Massacre, all agree that the 90 and more were divided, women in the church, males, elderly and youth, to the cooper’s shop. Told of their fate as evening fell March 7, they sang and prayed until dawn.
These were the Moravian Delawares, the Lenape Indians who adopted the Christianity taught by David Zeisberger and John Heckewelder. Their German-rooted faith carried a scattering of words from their old country naming homes in the new, like Gnadenhutten, meaning huts, or tents (tabernacles, really) of Grace.
Taken from other Moravian villages like Schoenbrunn and Salem, and herded together into this settlement, they were thought to be the raiders or at least supporters of war parties who had recently attacked colonial settlements in the early spring of 1782, egged on by the cash-for-scalps strategy of the British in Fort Detroit. In these simple structures built in the wilderness, they had hoped to find a Promised Land of peace, or at least the road to Heaven.
They were violently flung down the latter road, without a chance to find the former.I was there at noon, on a Thursday, long marked in my calendar as a "keep this date open" square. I came out of long developing awareness that, in trying to understand the vexed relationships of Anglo and Indian across the Ohio Territory before 1803, the cruel road to "removal" in the 1830’s for even the most assimilated tribes, and for social and religious movements across the early American Midwest, this place and the events of March 8, 1782 are a long missing key.
Knowing that this year was the 225th anniversary, and even knowing that it is an oddly Anglo habit to make much of certain numerical occurrences, I wondered if I would see anyone else. At least the circumstances of the season, the angle of the sun, the feel of nature, would echo something of what went on those days, which was reason enough for me to want to be there.
Pulling into the "Historical Park" around the site of the former settlement, there was still a thin coating of snow, unmelted from even the current relative warmth, showing that no one else had walked these paths for the last couple days.At the center of the long rectangle along the Tuscarawas was the monument. About 40 feet high, the obelisk catches your eye as you wind through the modern Gnadenhutten village cemetery which surrounds the park. When you approach it, the plinth reads, in very stark and deep carving:
Here
Triumphed In Death
Ninety
Christian Indians
March 8, 1782
and one level below, a single word in larger, all capital letters:
GNADENHUTTEN
…then on the opposite side, just as high but markedly less deep, as if unwilling to draw unnecessary attention to itself, the statement:
Erected June 5, 1872
For much of the year, when the sun rises, the shadow of the obelisk crosses the door of the mission house. It is a replica, with a small stone nearby quietly noting that the adjoining space is the actual site. Most of the time, and for all of my visits, you can’t get inside. There are windows, and an opposing window lets in a shaft of light that illuminates a slice of the large room, and illumination enough to see the split log benches, and the table to the front of the worship and gathering space.
You can’t get inside, I think; I cannot imagine that night, those hours, the actual experience of those hearts. They have literally seen the face of their implacable doom, set harshly on vengeance, standing at the one door to say that there is only a brief trip they will take out that door in the morning, they and their children. I do imagine that it was the women who began the singing, for women usually do, drawing the men across the way into their worship in the only way they could touch.
I cannot get inside the minds of the men outside, either. The accounts are clear about the killing and scalping and captive taking they had seen all around them, back across the Ohio River, and of their fury when a family that had settled across the river into Ohio was found murdered on the first day of their expedition to Upper Sandusky.
I can even sense some of the horror and mistrust that was sparked by the discovery of bloody rags in Gnadenhutten, cloth that one man among the now nameless militiamen (they never left a muster roll, or applied for compensation from their government, for obvious reasons) said that he was certain belonged to the dead woman of a few days before.
But as the night wore on, and the singing continued, how did they keep their hearts hardened? I don’t know, I don’t want to know, I need to know, I can’t ever know. David Williamson, a man so respected among his fellows that he was elected sheriff in later years for Washington County, Pennsylvania, was only in name the leader of this expedition."Colonel" Williamson is almost the only name known for certain with this venture, for he did gather them up and lead them with one purpose in mind. Stories agree that he was not in complete assent with the plans to slaughter the Moravian Indians, but also agree that he took a vote, and let the faction for murder have their way.
Did those two groups separate through the night? Did any of them sleep? No one knows. Rightly, all accounts focus on the singing, and the prayers, and the coming dawn.
Past the monument, the only other reconstructed building simply has another low stone carved with "The Cooper Shop – March 8, 1782." If you don’t know how that identifies this building, it seems to say, there’s no amount of text that will do it. It was a cooper’s large, heavy, wooden mallet that was taken up when the captives began to step out into the dawn’s early, brief light.
"Someone else take over, my arm’s getting tired," is the one quote preserved from the murderers, when the job was not even half done. So many stood by, but at least they remembered, and recorded.
The final home for those killed outside the doors of the church and cooperage was a few dozen yards to the south. The bodies were piled and burned, and a mound was raised over their remains later by the men of the settlement, who returned, from their attempt to begin planting the next year’s crop, to a scene of unutterable horror.
This low mound, no more than three feet high and about ten feet across, is now ringed with cypress shrubs gone woody, blocked from a gravel parking area by a few feet, and a row of old canal lock stones. They lay there between the pop machine at the museum’s back door, and a shuttered concession stand fenced about with piled picnic tables. When the Moravian missionaries returned with the adult men, they withdrew for some years from the Tuscarawas valley, but returned with now German Moravians and re-established the settlement. Their descendants are buried in the large cemetery all around, and now the folk of the village keep up the replica buildings and museum to tell the story of their faith’s heritage, largely for schoolchildren. There are some odd cutout figures attached to trees as silhouettes, and brightly painted panels for kids to push their faces through, giving them fake bodies to photograph, that gives the place a carnival atmosphere in certain angles. The main story seems to focus on the missionaries and the later, whiter settlement; but the fact that only the mission house and cooper shop are rebuilt says something about which story someone knew leaves the deeper mark.
I’ve pushed through the sentinel shrubbery just far enough to reach some windblown scraps of candy wrapper and newspaper, which I take to a nearby trashcan. However I feel about the décor, Gnadenhutten has always been neat and well tended whenever I’ve been by. Another walk past the mission house, looking through the window, and I come back to lean on my car, taking some notes, almost right next to the mound where this story didn’t, doesn’t end.
Another car drives around the museum, and pauses in the drive behind mine, not parking, but stopping. I see across the cemetery a fellow watching, by the maintenance shed, and just have a hunch that he may have called someone. Walking around the still running vehicle, I see the driver stab out a cigarette and roll down the window. She looks businesslike and a businesswoman, sharp featured and with knotted brow.
"You don’t look much like an Indian."
Now, in all fairness, I’m a tall, sandy haired, north of England looking fellow, who has been accused in heated arguments years ago of looking like a Hitler Youth poster. For the record, my eyes are brown, not blue, so Adolf might not have taken me. Anyhow.
"Ma’am?" I reply respectfully, thinking again that the park gate was open and that I’d seen no sign of closure, but also no sign of anyone else."You here about the anniversary?" she asked, glaring up at me, though in fairness the sun was bright, and behind my shoulder. So she knew.
"Sure. Wanted to see what observances or anything were going on today," I answered."
Nothing that I’ve heard, but we were watching to see if anyone came around to cause…" I realized that what had her attention was the fact that, from her point of view, I was an armed man. She had caught me starting to write down some of my reflections on this visit, for this day, and I still had an uncapped pen and some paper in my hand. It made her nervous. I have an unwarranted suspicion that a holstered .357 on my hip wouldn’t have made her nervous, but my taking notes did.
Having some small faith in memory, I shoved the notes and pen in my pocket. Sure enough, she lightened up considerably. She was with the local historical society, which owned the property and ran the museum ("we need more funding" ran the old, old song, which I briefly sang in duet with her). They tried to keep the mound tidy and the grounds attractive. She knew that the tobacco offerings that occasionally showed up on the burial mound were to be left alone, and told me the fellow across the way "wasn’t sure what you were up to," leaving the call inferred. "I appreciate the care you give to the area," I said.
She gestured to the sign in front of my car, a state historic marker that the Ohio Historical Society had put up just a few years ago. Under "The Gnadenhutten Massacre" was the phrase "A Day of Shame," and she said, looking sideways at it, "there were some bad things done back then. Town’s come a long way." Assuming she meant something more than that there had been no additional massacres since 1782, I asked what else the area did to keep the story of Gnadenhutten alive.
"School’s mascot is an Indian," and she saw me wince. "Oh, you’re one of them," she sighed resignedly, her entire tone shifting to the hard suspicion we’d begun on. "I just wondered if there were any Indian groups who came around to. . .""They all went west long ago," she snapped. "Went" is one word you could use, I thought, but kept my silence as she went on. "Glad to have their people visit, but they better not get any ideas about coming back and claiming this for a casino or anything. This is sacred ground."So it turns out we agreed on something, though we had no chance to explore this common belief together. The gravel was too damp from the melting snow to spray satisfactorily as she drove off, which I suspect was a disappointment to her. I could be wrong about that. I waved to her rearview mirror, and with malicious intent, made sure to pull out my notecards and pen while she could still see me, before she got onto the road and sped off.
I still couldn’t get inside. Not the mission house, the cooper shop, the minds of those who camped outside their doors 225 years and a night ago, nor this silent snowy mound. The museum was closed to me as well, and I fear also the mind of my colleague in museumkeeping.
I still didn’t know what urge, which motives caused the obelisk to be raised in 1872, not yet the national centennial nor the 100th commemoration of the event itself. In the 1890’s Ohio historians had tried to acknowledge the significance of this slaughter of the innocents, and how the new surge of anger among previously neutral Indians, and the guilty consciences of many frontier men, triggered consequences and responses far into the future. Even then, reactions to painting any of the first families of the Northwest Territory as anything other than saintly, came fast and furious. Simon Girty and Lewis Wetzel were the designated scapegoats for us all, a twisted (not quite right, you know) white man for each side, American and English. The "Williamson Expedition" that sputtered to a bloody end at Gnadenhutten fit no useful template, and was cast aside.
But the obelisk still stands, and the records, and even the guilt made some helpful memories last. "They sang through the night," knowing their doom was inescapable, and the sound of their singing was unforgettable, even if it was not enough to strengthen any of them to make common cause in their defense with fellow humans, let alone for fellow Christians.
Though I came at noon, as fit my schedule, I remembered that they sang through the night. This is what I remember of 225 years ago, and the days that are passing. They sang through the night, and that is what I hope the lady in the car remembers, too.
You can hear them still, if you listen. Just when you think the singing has stopped, it picks up again, waiting for the dawn. We should keep vigil with them, across the lawn between the buildings, across the centuries. They sang through the night, and we are not asked to do anything half as hard. Keep on singing their song, waiting to see who will join along, and do not let the singing end if you can help it. Some won’t join in, and others will frown, waiting for the song to stop.
They sang through the night.
What is given to us to do, to keep the story alive?
Faith Works 3-10-07
Jeff Gill
Tartar Sauce With Your Faith?
Driving down 21 st St. in Newark recently, four signs in quick succession indicated some kind of "fish sandwich special."
A chain that I won’t specify, but has a polite, bearded Colonel whose stock in trade is fowl, did an unusual thing last month, asking the Vatican in Rome to "bless" their new fish snacker. Something about how these restaurateurs just want to help us in our "busy modern lives."
The Pope’s answer has not, to my knowledge, been shared publicly, but the blessing seems to be on hold.
What’s the deal with fish? On those sign boards, there’s often a very precise "Friday" offer involved.
There is a long tradition in Christianity of "fish on Friday." Usually associated with Roman Catholicism, it actually isn’t just a Catholic Christian thing. Orthodox Christians of the Eastern rites (Greek, Russian, et alia) observe a rigorous fast throughout Lent, the period of preparation before Easter, where they abstain from meat and dairy entirely.
The point of "fish on Friday" isn’t so much fish, as it is the giving up of meat on the day Jesus was crucified and died. Christians of a variety of traditions have long had some form of fasting on Friday, whether from meat or other dietary niceties, throughout the year. The Catholic Church used to recommend this practice very strongly, and the observance is reinforced during Lent with the ubiquitous "Friday Fish Fry," at a parish near you.
Even if you aren’t helping the outreach budget of a Knights of Columbus chapter, there are plenty of you who stick to fish on Lenten Fridays, or so many fast food joints wouldn’t make it a selling point.
Going back into the Middle Ages of Europe, the ideal of fasting from rich, red meat was balanced by the availability of seafood, particularly in places like the British Isles and the Spanish and Italian peninsulas, where so many of our ancestors lived.
A preaching point helped to cement the message of "fish on Friday." Many know the two-curve glyph of a simple fish outline, signifying Christian belief. One of the roots of this icon is in an acronym for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior" in Greek, which from those Greek letters is "Ichthus," or "fish."
A fish was an object of marvel in the ancient world, being an animal that lived in the sea, a sea creature with eyes and mouth and group behavior. "Neither fish nor fowl," speaking of the two forms of life that lived in the margins of what human understand.
Jesus as man, Christ as God, the "God-Man" as ancient creed literally said, was in two worlds at once, in a way human understanding could not quite comprehend. So a fish, an image so common in the Gospels to start with, was a sensible symbol of Christianity.
Eating fish, then, became both a renunciation of usual habits with fasting from steak and mutton, and an opportunity to meditate on God’s purposes worked out on the margins of our experience, eating an animal that lived in the water and breathed not air. If God can create a fish, why not become man?
Fasting is suitable for most of us, whatever our religious tradition. There are indications that many faith groups are recovering a sense of discipline and devotion through practices like fasting, but little indication in the culture that an epidemic of fasting is threatening to close DonutDome or BurgerWorld.
Drastic fasts, reducing down to fluids only, or just juices, should get some medical counsel as well as spiritual guidance. But anyone could simply give up a little extra, set aside some savings for good works of your choice, and even have some fish and reflect on the marvels of the created world around us as Spring approaches.
Too much tartar sauce, though, would defeat the whole purpose.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he could do with giving up the fries with his fish fillets. Tell him about a culinary devotion of your own at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Tartar Sauce With Your Faith?
Driving down 21 st St. in Newark recently, four signs in quick succession indicated some kind of "fish sandwich special."
A chain that I won’t specify, but has a polite, bearded Colonel whose stock in trade is fowl, did an unusual thing last month, asking the Vatican in Rome to "bless" their new fish snacker. Something about how these restaurateurs just want to help us in our "busy modern lives."
The Pope’s answer has not, to my knowledge, been shared publicly, but the blessing seems to be on hold.
What’s the deal with fish? On those sign boards, there’s often a very precise "Friday" offer involved.
There is a long tradition in Christianity of "fish on Friday." Usually associated with Roman Catholicism, it actually isn’t just a Catholic Christian thing. Orthodox Christians of the Eastern rites (Greek, Russian, et alia) observe a rigorous fast throughout Lent, the period of preparation before Easter, where they abstain from meat and dairy entirely.
The point of "fish on Friday" isn’t so much fish, as it is the giving up of meat on the day Jesus was crucified and died. Christians of a variety of traditions have long had some form of fasting on Friday, whether from meat or other dietary niceties, throughout the year. The Catholic Church used to recommend this practice very strongly, and the observance is reinforced during Lent with the ubiquitous "Friday Fish Fry," at a parish near you.
Even if you aren’t helping the outreach budget of a Knights of Columbus chapter, there are plenty of you who stick to fish on Lenten Fridays, or so many fast food joints wouldn’t make it a selling point.
Going back into the Middle Ages of Europe, the ideal of fasting from rich, red meat was balanced by the availability of seafood, particularly in places like the British Isles and the Spanish and Italian peninsulas, where so many of our ancestors lived.
A preaching point helped to cement the message of "fish on Friday." Many know the two-curve glyph of a simple fish outline, signifying Christian belief. One of the roots of this icon is in an acronym for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior" in Greek, which from those Greek letters is "Ichthus," or "fish."
A fish was an object of marvel in the ancient world, being an animal that lived in the sea, a sea creature with eyes and mouth and group behavior. "Neither fish nor fowl," speaking of the two forms of life that lived in the margins of what human understand.
Jesus as man, Christ as God, the "God-Man" as ancient creed literally said, was in two worlds at once, in a way human understanding could not quite comprehend. So a fish, an image so common in the Gospels to start with, was a sensible symbol of Christianity.
Eating fish, then, became both a renunciation of usual habits with fasting from steak and mutton, and an opportunity to meditate on God’s purposes worked out on the margins of our experience, eating an animal that lived in the water and breathed not air. If God can create a fish, why not become man?
Fasting is suitable for most of us, whatever our religious tradition. There are indications that many faith groups are recovering a sense of discipline and devotion through practices like fasting, but little indication in the culture that an epidemic of fasting is threatening to close DonutDome or BurgerWorld.
Drastic fasts, reducing down to fluids only, or just juices, should get some medical counsel as well as spiritual guidance. But anyone could simply give up a little extra, set aside some savings for good works of your choice, and even have some fish and reflect on the marvels of the created world around us as Spring approaches.
Too much tartar sauce, though, would defeat the whole purpose.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; he could do with giving up the fries with his fish fillets. Tell him about a culinary devotion of your own at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Notes From My Knapsack 3-11-07
Jeff Gill
Are We Running Out of Oil?
Are we running out of oil?
Of course we are.
Pretty much every serious scientist who has looked at the question agrees that
there is a finite amount of petrochemicals that exists in pockets and strata
below the surface of the earth. It was made through long, deep processes of
geology and chemistry that cannot be reproduced through mechanical means, so
when we use it up, that’s it.
A non-renewable resource, they call it, with reason.
Footnote: I say "pretty much" because there is an intriguing, if highly
unlikely loophole. Go Google "abiogenic, petroleum, origin" and enjoy if you
want. I don’t buy it.
The point remains, though, that we don’t even really understand how clubmoss
and fern pollen becomes black gold. (Hint: bacteria)
More optomistically, the real energy locked up in traditional oil and coal is
actually (wait for it) solar power. Yep, the energy of a sunny day long ago is
literally "fossilized" into carbon deposits, hence fossil fuels. Our best plan
for the future is to use this odd interlude in human history, which we get to
burn through but once, to figure out how to tap the original source, which is
our nearest star, the Sun.
(Um, but you said we’re running out. Could you go back to that?)
Sure. We are, indisputably, using up our fossil fuels. They’ve powered the
world’s economies, from Britain’s Industrial Revolution out of the northern
English coal fields, to today’s Middle Eastern to Microchip global tangle.
We’ve expanded wealth, generally and as available to a percentage of the world’
s population, beyond any point in recorded history. More people are fabulously
wealthy in the world (that’s you, happy Booster reader, relatively speaking)
than ever before, and even the poor have longer lifespans and better prospects
for health and understanding than their ancestors did a hundred years ago.
The problem, of course, is that it isn’t sustainable.
I am, however, irritatingly optomistic on this front (my friends and family
assure me of the irritating part, anyhow). Just as photos of Licking County
from 1907 show a barren and denuded landscape from deforestation (I’m talking
anywhere in the county, folks; stripped), largely for firewood, and street
scenes virtually reek of the horsemuck, many feet deep, helping folks rich and
poor die of cholera . . .
The year 2107 isn’t going to show a gasoline and Conesville electric plant
world. How will we get our power from the sun, the seas, or the deep core?
Dunno.
What I’m sure of, though, is that we’ll develop new technologies and industries
around the end of fossil fuel and the "Carbon" Economy the start of the "Blank"
Economy.
What I’m less sure of is what all this will do in the Middle East. Tom Friedman
has pegged this one, as he does so often, with his passionate arguments for a
"Geo-Green" strategy for the United States.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been ruled since the 1920’s by one man, with 50
to 1000 children from more than 17 "official" wives, whose successors to date
have all been sons. (King Ibn Saud died in 1953, but their official legal code
says the ruler must be a son or grandson of the founder, and they’re still well
stocked). The country is literally staffed by foreigners, since Saudis
themselves are largely out of the labor market.
Recently, it was shown that Saudi Arabia is working harder to produce the same
amount of oil. Put starkly, they’re running out of oil they can afford to sell
for what it costs to get.
When a quarter of your population are aliens who can’t vote and aren’t allowed
to worship or gather, and you can’t pay them anymore, what happens? When you
have to get them out of your country before your own dissidents start fomenting
rebellion among them, who drives the garbage trucks and runs the water plant,
or brings the mango chutney to your table? Oil is 90% of their economy.
We (that’s you and me, kids) helped make this feudal nightmare work for almost
a century. Like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Iraq, the nations we built in
1920 after World War I are hitting their balloon payment dates, and the bill
has come in innocent blood. The first two are almost fully reconstituted along
reasonable lines, and we’re working on what Iraq will become. That land’s been
a piece of cake compared to what the endgame will be for Saudi Arabia.
We need sustainable energy, domestically produced, and soon, but not for the
reasons the doomsayers offer. This country is the chief support of a non-
sustainable government in the Middle East, and we’re going to have to be part
of finding a soft landing for them. The sticky mess was partly our fault back
when it was just sand, and oil has only made it messier.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio;
argue with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Are We Running Out of Oil?
Are we running out of oil?
Of course we are.
Pretty much every serious scientist who has looked at the question agrees that
there is a finite amount of petrochemicals that exists in pockets and strata
below the surface of the earth. It was made through long, deep processes of
geology and chemistry that cannot be reproduced through mechanical means, so
when we use it up, that’s it.
A non-renewable resource, they call it, with reason.
Footnote: I say "pretty much" because there is an intriguing, if highly
unlikely loophole. Go Google "abiogenic, petroleum, origin" and enjoy if you
want. I don’t buy it.
The point remains, though, that we don’t even really understand how clubmoss
and fern pollen becomes black gold. (Hint: bacteria)
More optomistically, the real energy locked up in traditional oil and coal is
actually (wait for it) solar power. Yep, the energy of a sunny day long ago is
literally "fossilized" into carbon deposits, hence fossil fuels. Our best plan
for the future is to use this odd interlude in human history, which we get to
burn through but once, to figure out how to tap the original source, which is
our nearest star, the Sun.
(Um, but you said we’re running out. Could you go back to that?)
Sure. We are, indisputably, using up our fossil fuels. They’ve powered the
world’s economies, from Britain’s Industrial Revolution out of the northern
English coal fields, to today’s Middle Eastern to Microchip global tangle.
We’ve expanded wealth, generally and as available to a percentage of the world’
s population, beyond any point in recorded history. More people are fabulously
wealthy in the world (that’s you, happy Booster reader, relatively speaking)
than ever before, and even the poor have longer lifespans and better prospects
for health and understanding than their ancestors did a hundred years ago.
The problem, of course, is that it isn’t sustainable.
I am, however, irritatingly optomistic on this front (my friends and family
assure me of the irritating part, anyhow). Just as photos of Licking County
from 1907 show a barren and denuded landscape from deforestation (I’m talking
anywhere in the county, folks; stripped), largely for firewood, and street
scenes virtually reek of the horsemuck, many feet deep, helping folks rich and
poor die of cholera . . .
The year 2107 isn’t going to show a gasoline and Conesville electric plant
world. How will we get our power from the sun, the seas, or the deep core?
Dunno.
What I’m sure of, though, is that we’ll develop new technologies and industries
around the end of fossil fuel and the "Carbon" Economy the start of the "Blank"
Economy.
What I’m less sure of is what all this will do in the Middle East. Tom Friedman
has pegged this one, as he does so often, with his passionate arguments for a
"Geo-Green" strategy for the United States.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been ruled since the 1920’s by one man, with 50
to 1000 children from more than 17 "official" wives, whose successors to date
have all been sons. (King Ibn Saud died in 1953, but their official legal code
says the ruler must be a son or grandson of the founder, and they’re still well
stocked). The country is literally staffed by foreigners, since Saudis
themselves are largely out of the labor market.
Recently, it was shown that Saudi Arabia is working harder to produce the same
amount of oil. Put starkly, they’re running out of oil they can afford to sell
for what it costs to get.
When a quarter of your population are aliens who can’t vote and aren’t allowed
to worship or gather, and you can’t pay them anymore, what happens? When you
have to get them out of your country before your own dissidents start fomenting
rebellion among them, who drives the garbage trucks and runs the water plant,
or brings the mango chutney to your table? Oil is 90% of their economy.
We (that’s you and me, kids) helped make this feudal nightmare work for almost
a century. Like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Iraq, the nations we built in
1920 after World War I are hitting their balloon payment dates, and the bill
has come in innocent blood. The first two are almost fully reconstituted along
reasonable lines, and we’re working on what Iraq will become. That land’s been
a piece of cake compared to what the endgame will be for Saudi Arabia.
We need sustainable energy, domestically produced, and soon, but not for the
reasons the doomsayers offer. This country is the chief support of a non-
sustainable government in the Middle East, and we’re going to have to be part
of finding a soft landing for them. The sticky mess was partly our fault back
when it was just sand, and oil has only made it messier.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio;
argue with him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Faith Works 3-03-07
Jeff Gill
Crawford Died For Your Sins
A man once died a particularly cruel and painful death, to make up for the evil actions of others, of which he himself was entirely innocent. His death led to the birth of a religious community which counts many adherents all around us to this day. The place of his death is well known, but not a scrap of his body can be found to this day.
No, not Him.
It was in Ohio, beginning 225 years ago this week.
One phase of this tragic narrative began on the morning of March 8, in 1782, as almost 100 old men, women, and children of the Moravian Delaware Indian community were massacred, mostly by mallet and hand axe, about an hour east of us at Gnadenhutten. Two boys survived, one by playing dead after a blow to the head, lying still under a pile of his family and fellow worshipers; the other was small enough to sneak out between the logs of their church building, where the community was kept overnight in singing and prayer before their execution at dawn.
They, too, were innocent. The adult men of the community had been working to plant the next season’s corn, and a few other Indians from Fort Detroit may have sheltered with them overnight who had raided across the Ohio, but of those killed there was no blood on their hands. That didn’t keep their blood from watering the ground at the Moravian log church’s door.
The blood of those 96 or 98 victims actually fueled the flames of hostility on the frontier, the western theater of the American Revolution, where British officers taught the fine art of scalping to young rootless warriors and offered money for European scalps. Some Native leaders like Chief Cornstalk and Killbuck had argued for a neutral stance, but the temptations of cash for killing led enough across the Ohio that reprisal parties answered raiding parties, leading to the senseless slaughter of Gnadenhutten, or "Huts of Grace" in the German of the David Heckewelder’s missionary efforts.
Innocent blood called out to warriors and leaders who had stayed so far aloof from the irregular combat. A massing of Native people came together at Upper Sandusky, and a second expedition was planned near Washington, PA, to cross again at Fort Henry (Wheeling, today) and find a new, more fitting target for their vengance.
The two groups met at Tymochtee Creek, just south of Carey, OH, with the Pennsylvanians led by George Washington’s friend Col. William Crawford, sent somewhat against his will to keep tighter control on the angry and undisciplined frontier militia, most of whom had been at Gnadenhutten a few months before.
The Americans were attacked, broke, scattered, and Crawford was captured. It was explained to him that he must die to satisfy the debt incurred in his fellow soldier’s killings. By all accounts, his courage and relative calm was moving to all, but not enough to end the torture and death designed for him.
Could Indians and Americans share in building a culture and a home across the Ohio Territory? Logan and Cornstalk and Guyasuta and Killbuck and White-eyes all thought so, and the Moravian pastors John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger both believed it, and began to prove it at Schoenbrunn, at Lichtenau, and at Gnadenhutten.After 1782, with Gnadenhutten a smoking, bloody ruin, and the other settlements abandoned, the likelihood of the two cultures sharing in the land dwindled to nothing. The rationale for the massacre, or the relative atrocity of Crawford’s death, were points of dispute well into the 1900’s, and only in recent years has a truly honest assessment been possible.
But buried in those recriminations of the early 1800’s and into the twentieth century are stories of those violent and angry young men, hearts set on useless vengeance, who grew to be husbands and community leaders and respected figures when territories became states.
The religious revivals of the Upper Ohio valley that led to the Restoration Movement, the teachings of Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell against the harsh Calvinism of their day, found fertile soil in the hearts of men who believed that there was no forgiveness for those who had such evils in their past, and they knew what they had done was evil. Baptist and Presbyterian practice of their day was that you could not join or commune until you could honestly say that you knew your sins were forgiven.
The Restoration Movement preachers like Walter Scott said "come, be baptized, and receive forgiveness; you don’t have to say you are forgiven to have the right to receive baptism, you enter the water to find it waiting for you there."
They taught Christ’s baptism, but the example of Crawford dying in their place surely lit the way for those now 50 & 60 year old men who came forward, and brought their families with them.
Today’s Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, independent Christian Churches, and United Church of Christ folk have a solemn anniversary of sorts this week, and I plan to make the brief pilgrimage myself to a silent mound, still marked with prayer and offerings, in Gnadenhutten.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Crawford Died For Your Sins
A man once died a particularly cruel and painful death, to make up for the evil actions of others, of which he himself was entirely innocent. His death led to the birth of a religious community which counts many adherents all around us to this day. The place of his death is well known, but not a scrap of his body can be found to this day.
No, not Him.
It was in Ohio, beginning 225 years ago this week.
One phase of this tragic narrative began on the morning of March 8, in 1782, as almost 100 old men, women, and children of the Moravian Delaware Indian community were massacred, mostly by mallet and hand axe, about an hour east of us at Gnadenhutten. Two boys survived, one by playing dead after a blow to the head, lying still under a pile of his family and fellow worshipers; the other was small enough to sneak out between the logs of their church building, where the community was kept overnight in singing and prayer before their execution at dawn.
They, too, were innocent. The adult men of the community had been working to plant the next season’s corn, and a few other Indians from Fort Detroit may have sheltered with them overnight who had raided across the Ohio, but of those killed there was no blood on their hands. That didn’t keep their blood from watering the ground at the Moravian log church’s door.
The blood of those 96 or 98 victims actually fueled the flames of hostility on the frontier, the western theater of the American Revolution, where British officers taught the fine art of scalping to young rootless warriors and offered money for European scalps. Some Native leaders like Chief Cornstalk and Killbuck had argued for a neutral stance, but the temptations of cash for killing led enough across the Ohio that reprisal parties answered raiding parties, leading to the senseless slaughter of Gnadenhutten, or "Huts of Grace" in the German of the David Heckewelder’s missionary efforts.
Innocent blood called out to warriors and leaders who had stayed so far aloof from the irregular combat. A massing of Native people came together at Upper Sandusky, and a second expedition was planned near Washington, PA, to cross again at Fort Henry (Wheeling, today) and find a new, more fitting target for their vengance.
The two groups met at Tymochtee Creek, just south of Carey, OH, with the Pennsylvanians led by George Washington’s friend Col. William Crawford, sent somewhat against his will to keep tighter control on the angry and undisciplined frontier militia, most of whom had been at Gnadenhutten a few months before.
The Americans were attacked, broke, scattered, and Crawford was captured. It was explained to him that he must die to satisfy the debt incurred in his fellow soldier’s killings. By all accounts, his courage and relative calm was moving to all, but not enough to end the torture and death designed for him.
Could Indians and Americans share in building a culture and a home across the Ohio Territory? Logan and Cornstalk and Guyasuta and Killbuck and White-eyes all thought so, and the Moravian pastors John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger both believed it, and began to prove it at Schoenbrunn, at Lichtenau, and at Gnadenhutten.After 1782, with Gnadenhutten a smoking, bloody ruin, and the other settlements abandoned, the likelihood of the two cultures sharing in the land dwindled to nothing. The rationale for the massacre, or the relative atrocity of Crawford’s death, were points of dispute well into the 1900’s, and only in recent years has a truly honest assessment been possible.
But buried in those recriminations of the early 1800’s and into the twentieth century are stories of those violent and angry young men, hearts set on useless vengeance, who grew to be husbands and community leaders and respected figures when territories became states.
The religious revivals of the Upper Ohio valley that led to the Restoration Movement, the teachings of Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell against the harsh Calvinism of their day, found fertile soil in the hearts of men who believed that there was no forgiveness for those who had such evils in their past, and they knew what they had done was evil. Baptist and Presbyterian practice of their day was that you could not join or commune until you could honestly say that you knew your sins were forgiven.
The Restoration Movement preachers like Walter Scott said "come, be baptized, and receive forgiveness; you don’t have to say you are forgiven to have the right to receive baptism, you enter the water to find it waiting for you there."
They taught Christ’s baptism, but the example of Crawford dying in their place surely lit the way for those now 50 & 60 year old men who came forward, and brought their families with them.
Today’s Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ, independent Christian Churches, and United Church of Christ folk have a solemn anniversary of sorts this week, and I plan to make the brief pilgrimage myself to a silent mound, still marked with prayer and offerings, in Gnadenhutten.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; contact him at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Notes From My Knapsack 3-4-07
Jeff Gill
Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ears
Clint Eastwood doing translation from Italian to English on live television: how cool is that? Dirty Harry can order calamari in Napoli and flirt with the waitresses va bene. Of course he speaks the musical tongue of the land of spaghetti westerns, but it says something about what kind of artist he is that he bothered to do so, instead of sending a personal assistant to get his fried squid rings for him. So much for Oscar excitement.
I’m a big fan of the Tony Awards where the recipients not only rarely read off of a piece of paper, but they say interesting and unexpected things. The Morricone lifetime acheivement Oscar was the most exciting speech, and we knew about that one a month ago.
Speaking off the cuff in public is a rare talent; some would call it a gift. Doing so effectively under adverse circumstances is even less common. The bar was set in 1912 by Teddy Roosevelt, who was getting set to give a speech in Milwaukee, in his campaign for the presidency on the Bull Moose ticket. The Republican Party had left him behind in favor of William Howard Taft (you may recall his great-grandson, recent governor hereabouts), and TR wanted to make a stronger case against Woodrow Wilson than his party was willing to hear, so he ran as an independent. Stepping onto the platform, he was shot by a man who had stalked him for weeks, waiting for a clear shot. In Milwaukee, the moment came, and Roosevelt fell with a bullet in his chest.
Here’s how we know the speech was largely unread: Teddy stepped to the podium to calm the crowd, brandishing the text of the speech he was to give. The heavy paper, folded lengthwise in half and thrust in a jacket breast pocket, had slowed the bullet, along with the tweed jacket. His skin was broken, but the bullet lost enough energy going through the entire speech, twice, that it slid off a rib and stopped between them, just under the skin. He barely bled, and said he "just had the wind knocked out of him," like falling off a horse.
And then, still waving the pierced sheaf of paper, he gave his speech to a *very* attentive crowd.
Part of what had me thinking recently about that speech, and the value of a third party candidate, is the fairly dreary sheaf of candidates, R and D, we’ve got jostling already for the 2008 presidential election. Even Obama, whom I’d love to go hear speak, has policy idea number one still back in the focus groups, but next to nuttin’ in his speeches. And the GOP gang -- yikes.
What did a bruised, breathless, ultimately futile Teddy Roosevelt want to say on the platform in 1912? Why did he keep speaking to a rapt audience while his friends on the podium kept urging him to sit down and let attendants carry him off the stage? (He did go to a hospital after the speech and have the slug cut out of his chest and get wrapped in bandages.)
Here are the main points of the speech: Americans deserve an eight hour day, a forty hour week, with at least two weeks of paid vacation you could take without losing your job. He passionately maintained that factory child labor should be abolished all across the country, and that the minimum wage should apply to women who had paying work, just like it did for men.
That wild-eyed radical, Teddy Roosevelt.
For standing up for those "Progressive" views, he couldn’t even get a voice at either party convention; so he ran as an independent. He lost, but his ideas won.
Full disclosure: my first adult involvement in politics was to work for the Indiana state organization for John Anderson. No, he didn’t win, and while you couldn’t get him to say so in public, he knew he had not a prayer of winning. He also knew that he had precisely no ability to influence the Reagan ticket by helping him as an Illinois supporter, but could get issues on the table as a candidate. I liked his emphasis on the governmental responsibility to maintain infrastructure, which needed and needs a spotlight, other than new bridges to nowhere. His take on welfare reform was in line with what didn’t happen until the Clinton administration fifteen years later, and Anderson was passionate about public education, especially support for state universities as a primary piece of civic infrastructure and economic development. I still don’t regret working for him (he’s still alive, 85, and teaching in Florida, smart man that he is), and believe he influenced the debate to a useful degree. Could we use a strong third party voice this year? No, Nader hasn’t shown himself to have even Anderson level support, and his views are outliers from the perspective of most Americans. Anderson ran a fusion ticket, asking a Democratic governor to run with him.
I keep thinking Lieberman-Hagel, myself. They’d have courteous, incisive debates while they waited for the other candidates to show up for the sound check. Then they’d get really good . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; throw your political opinions in the ring at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Jeff Gill
Countrymen, Lend Me Your Ears
Clint Eastwood doing translation from Italian to English on live television: how cool is that? Dirty Harry can order calamari in Napoli and flirt with the waitresses va bene. Of course he speaks the musical tongue of the land of spaghetti westerns, but it says something about what kind of artist he is that he bothered to do so, instead of sending a personal assistant to get his fried squid rings for him. So much for Oscar excitement.
I’m a big fan of the Tony Awards where the recipients not only rarely read off of a piece of paper, but they say interesting and unexpected things. The Morricone lifetime acheivement Oscar was the most exciting speech, and we knew about that one a month ago.
Speaking off the cuff in public is a rare talent; some would call it a gift. Doing so effectively under adverse circumstances is even less common. The bar was set in 1912 by Teddy Roosevelt, who was getting set to give a speech in Milwaukee, in his campaign for the presidency on the Bull Moose ticket. The Republican Party had left him behind in favor of William Howard Taft (you may recall his great-grandson, recent governor hereabouts), and TR wanted to make a stronger case against Woodrow Wilson than his party was willing to hear, so he ran as an independent. Stepping onto the platform, he was shot by a man who had stalked him for weeks, waiting for a clear shot. In Milwaukee, the moment came, and Roosevelt fell with a bullet in his chest.
Here’s how we know the speech was largely unread: Teddy stepped to the podium to calm the crowd, brandishing the text of the speech he was to give. The heavy paper, folded lengthwise in half and thrust in a jacket breast pocket, had slowed the bullet, along with the tweed jacket. His skin was broken, but the bullet lost enough energy going through the entire speech, twice, that it slid off a rib and stopped between them, just under the skin. He barely bled, and said he "just had the wind knocked out of him," like falling off a horse.
And then, still waving the pierced sheaf of paper, he gave his speech to a *very* attentive crowd.
Part of what had me thinking recently about that speech, and the value of a third party candidate, is the fairly dreary sheaf of candidates, R and D, we’ve got jostling already for the 2008 presidential election. Even Obama, whom I’d love to go hear speak, has policy idea number one still back in the focus groups, but next to nuttin’ in his speeches. And the GOP gang -- yikes.
What did a bruised, breathless, ultimately futile Teddy Roosevelt want to say on the platform in 1912? Why did he keep speaking to a rapt audience while his friends on the podium kept urging him to sit down and let attendants carry him off the stage? (He did go to a hospital after the speech and have the slug cut out of his chest and get wrapped in bandages.)
Here are the main points of the speech: Americans deserve an eight hour day, a forty hour week, with at least two weeks of paid vacation you could take without losing your job. He passionately maintained that factory child labor should be abolished all across the country, and that the minimum wage should apply to women who had paying work, just like it did for men.
That wild-eyed radical, Teddy Roosevelt.
For standing up for those "Progressive" views, he couldn’t even get a voice at either party convention; so he ran as an independent. He lost, but his ideas won.
Full disclosure: my first adult involvement in politics was to work for the Indiana state organization for John Anderson. No, he didn’t win, and while you couldn’t get him to say so in public, he knew he had not a prayer of winning. He also knew that he had precisely no ability to influence the Reagan ticket by helping him as an Illinois supporter, but could get issues on the table as a candidate. I liked his emphasis on the governmental responsibility to maintain infrastructure, which needed and needs a spotlight, other than new bridges to nowhere. His take on welfare reform was in line with what didn’t happen until the Clinton administration fifteen years later, and Anderson was passionate about public education, especially support for state universities as a primary piece of civic infrastructure and economic development. I still don’t regret working for him (he’s still alive, 85, and teaching in Florida, smart man that he is), and believe he influenced the debate to a useful degree. Could we use a strong third party voice this year? No, Nader hasn’t shown himself to have even Anderson level support, and his views are outliers from the perspective of most Americans. Anderson ran a fusion ticket, asking a Democratic governor to run with him.
I keep thinking Lieberman-Hagel, myself. They’d have courteous, incisive debates while they waited for the other candidates to show up for the sound check. Then they’d get really good . . .
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; throw your political opinions in the ring at knapsack77@gmail.com.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Faith Works 2-24-07
Jeff Gill
Bridal Tips From "The Officiant"
Today is the Advocate sponsored Bridal Show out at Indian Mound Mall.
Nope, no one asked me to help flack the company event, I was just reading my
Bridal Show insert last weekend. There were tips on booking the reception hall,
finding a photographer, picking the color of your dresses.
But who performs the wedding?
Now, right there, I’ve always wondered. How did the term of art around this
legal function become "perform a wedding"? Although many of the clergy, judges,
and mayors who have done more than a few know that images of a circus come to
mind, quite often.
The legal truth is that the Secretary of State issues the certificate that
allows one to "solemnize a marriage" (now I can agree with that term!), in
whatever county of Ohio. Mine is signed by Sherrod Brown, as it happens, before
he became our US Senator.
The county Probate Court issues a license, checking the legal status of the two
to enter into this legal state, and it is "good for" thirty days.
Within thirty days of getting your license from the courthouse, you have to
find someone who is willing to authorize it. That means a person who is a
judge, mayor, or clergymember (with a certificate from the Sec’y of State) who
will verify you are the two listed on the license, will ask and witness to the
answer of "do you commit yourselves to one another in marriage?" and will sign
and return said license to the Probate Court, where on arrival it becomes
registered and you are now legally married.
Wait, you say, what about the church?
Don’t need one. That’s the answer. Now, if your religious tradition requires
the use of sacred space, a specific ritual, and particular acts, that is what
constitutes "duly married" in the church, but it is completely separate –
except in practice! – from legally married.
For instance, as is best known, there are many couples, even within Catholic
parishes, who are legally married, but are not "married in the eyes of the
church." Their status is not in question under the law, but their freedom to
receive the sacraments of the church or hold certain offices in parish life is
subject to limitations.
There are also situations, admittedly rare, but by no means unheard of, when
couples get married by an officiating clergyperson, but are not "legally
married." Think "Romeo & Juliet" and Friar Lawrence.
Some older couples have asked their pastor to hold a wedding ceremony for them,
but for legal or financial reasons choose not to become a legal couple. That
rarely makes as much sense as people convince themselves it does, and I’ve
never done one, but I hear about these all the time.
And many of you heard about the young woman last fall who had a terminal
disease, and a fiance who had no health insurance, so they married at church,
moved into the young woman’s parent’s home, but did not get a legal marrige so
she could stay on her dad’s policy. That’s a tough one, and I would not dream
of criticizing the clergy who officiated there.
But the point I’m wanting to make for all the bridal planners out there: no one
"has to" perform your wedding. If you book the photographer, the reception
hall, that crazy cake baker from Baltimore on The Food Network, and the band
(even "The Band"), and then go to your friendly neighborhood pastor . . . um.
They might have a family vacation planned, there might be another bride who got
there first, or they may not do weddings on three weeks’ notice.
Many churches, in fact, require both a certain period of notice, and meetings
with the minister or classes along with other couples. Six months is not
unusual. Some churches simply don’t do non-member weddings at all.
And if you don’t have a church home, but want a church wedding, here’s a
thought for you both. Talk through *why* you want a church wedding. Make sure
you know why, and have communicated about it.
No pastor likes to say "no" to a couple, truly. But when you’re talking to
folks who get hugely upset at the news that you won’t do it on less than three
months’ notice, that they have to meet with you, or that you can’t redecorate
the sanctuary from apse to nave or pick exactly the music you want . . . you
just say "no" and try to save everyone heartache.
Add in that many clergy won’t do wedding services other than in a church, and
you may need to be planning as carefully for an officiant as you do a caterer.
You should, and you won’t regret it. That gives them a chance to help you keep
in mind that the wedding is just the prelude to a marriage. The marriage is
what this is all about, anyhow.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio,
and he’s performed a few weddings. Tell him your wedding tales at
knapsack77@gmail.com.
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